Women and Race in Early Modern Texts

by Joyce Green MacDonald

Overview

Joyce Green MacDonald discusses the links between women's racial, sexual, and civic identities in early modern texts. She examines the scarcity of African women in English plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the racial identity of the women in the drama and also that of the women who watched and sometimes wrote the plays. The coverage also includes texts from the late fourteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, by, among others, Shakespeare, Jonson, Davenant, the Countess of Pembroke and Aphra Behn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521810166
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2002
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.33(h) x 0.79(d)
Lexile:	1760L (what's this?)

About the Author

Joyce Green MacDonald is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction: women, race, and Renaissance texts; 1. Cleopatra: whiteness and knowledge; 2. Sex, race, and empire in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra; 3. Dido and Sophonisba of Carthage: marriage, race, and the bonds between men; 4. The disappearing African woman: Imoinda in Oroonoko after Behn; 5. Race, women, and the sentimental in Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko; 6. Chaste lines: writing and unwriting race in Katherine Phillips' Pompey; 7. The Queen's minion: sexual difference, racial difference, and Aphra Behn's Abdelazer; Conclusion: 'the efficacy of imagination'; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This elegant, innovative book fulfills and extends the promise of early modern race studies of the past decade." Renaissance Quarterly

"Her discussion of early women writers ... contributes valuably to other recent work that is providing a much-needed correction to a field that has sometimes devoted too much energy to establishing a female literary tradition and ignored the differences." Seventeenth-Century News

From the Publisher

Integrating ideas of critical race theory and feminist history, MacDonald (English, U. of Kentucky) explores the relationship of race and gender in early modern texts written by men and women. Issues of citizenship and empire are also explored in discussions of textual representations of the Roman Empire and British colonialism. Among the texts analyzed are Shakespeare's , Thomas Southerne's , Katherin Philip's , and Aphra Behn's . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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