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"Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood is the first scholarly study devoted entirely to Shakespeare's girl characters. Revealing the dramatic and cultural centrality of the young girl in early modern English culture, and highlighting the 'girl' as a distinctive category in Shakespeare, this book locates Shakespeare's girl characters and representations of girlhood at a pivotal moment in the history of girlhood as an identity and social condition. Illuminating Shakespeare's girl characters in their relationship to earlier historical discourses and representations, and charting the development of Shakespeare's construction of the girl as a dramatic and literary figure throughout his career, Deanne Williams demonstrates that Shakespeare's girl characters are consistently and self-consciously invested in performance, from playing dramatic and musical parts, to performing public and domestic roles. Calling attention to the influence of Shakespeare and his girl characters on girl performers, patrons, andplaywrights, Williams makes an original contribution to the history and culture of the early modern girl"--
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Girls Included! 1. Peevish and Perverse 2. Isabelle de France, Child Bride 3. Enter Ofelia playing on a lute 4. Lost Girls 5. A Dancing Princess 6. The Lady and Comus 7. My Lady Rachells book 8. Perpetual Girlhood in The Concealed Fancies Conclusion: Girlhood After Shakespeare's Heroines
Bericht
"Williams' book emerges as an original and engaging contribution to the current critical conversation around childhood and youth in early modern literary studies. ... Williams' argument that girlhood is an unstable category constituted through performance is ultimately persuasive, and the strengths of her book are many: it is lucid and compelling, a work of great breadth and impressive scholarship, and a truly absorbing read." (Rachel Prusko, Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 30, 2017)
"Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood opens new doors for future studies ofthe legacy of Shakespeare and childhood. It is a text invested in Shakespeare studies, social histories, literary theory, and feminist studies that advances each of these fields. Williams's analyses and contextualizations of the works in question offer original ways of understanding the girls in Shakespeare's works and how such works went on to influence the modern understanding of girls and girlhood." (M. Tyler Sasser, Early Theatre, Vol. 19 (1), June, 2016)
"Williams adds valuable information to the history of girls and performance-in medieval entertainments and community festivals, in convent productions, in court masques and closet dramas, and as playwrights and public performers on the Restoration stage. Her book would be of interest and use to any scholar in the field of early modern gender and drama, but the writing is accessible and clear enough for general readers and undergraduate students as well." (Laura Schechter, English Studies in Canada, Vol. 42 (1), 2016)
"Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood offers an original approach and an important contribution to the existing literature on Shakespeare and woman's history... The findings in this study help enrich the notion of (young) women as participants in and contributors to their local and national cultures in relation and at times in contrast to the representation of girls in plays written by male authors. The study of Jacobean girl dramatists who staged and performed images of family life in the contexts of their own households will be of particular interest to scholars and students of early modern drama and social history." (Nadia T. van Pelt, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, Vol. 7, 2015)
"Richly researched and persuasively written... [Williams] opens up fresh perspectives for further research in 'the rich history of girls on stage' that she so elegantly explores in this volume." (Janice Valls-Russell, Cahiers Élisabéthain, Vol. 87, Spring 2015)
