Colonial Women - Race and Culture in Stuart Drama

Zusatztext Hutner provides suggestive readings of various Tempest adaptations and adds new insights into that increasingly significant text The Widow Ranter.... Hutner's sometimes passionate, often informed readings point the way toward the necessary rereading of seventeenth- (and eighteenth-) century plays in order to decode the contemporary reading of colonial America. Klappentext Colonial Women examines the women-as-land metaphor in English colonial dramatic literature of the seventeenth century! and looks closely at the myths of two historical native female figures--Pocahontas of Virginia and Malinche of Mexico--to demonstrate how these two stories are crucial toconstructions of gender! race! and English nationhood in the drama and culture of the period. Heidi Hutner's interpretations of the figure of the native woman in the plays of Shakespeare! Fletcher! Davenant! Dryden! and Behn reveal how the English patriarchal culture of the seventeenth century defined itself through representations of native women and European women who have "gone native."These playwrights use the figure of the native woman as a symbolic means to stabilize the turbulent sociopolitical and religious conflicts in Restoration England under the inclusive ideology of expansion and profit. Colonial Women uncovers the significance of the repeated dramatic spectacle of thenative women falling for her European seducer and exploiter! and demonstrates that this image of seduction is motivated by an anxiety-laden movement to reinforce patriarchal authority in seventeenth-century England. Zusammenfassung Colonial Women is the first comprehensive study to explore the interpenetrating discourses of gender and race in Stuart drama. Analyzing the plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Davenant, Dryden, Behn and other playwrights, Heidi Hutner argues that in drama, as in historical accounts, the symbol of the native woman is used to justify and promote the success of the English appropriation, commodification, and exploitation of the New World and its native inhabitants....

Product details

• Authors: Heidi Hutner, Heidi (Assistant Professor Hutner, Hutner Heidi
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.09.2001
• EAN: 9780195141887
• ISBN: 978-0-19-514188-7
• No. of pages: 152
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; English, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Drama, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Indigenous Studies, HISTORY / Women, LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors, Colonialism & imperialism, Indigenous Peoples, Relating to indigenous peoples, Literary studies: general, Colonialism and imperialism, Gender studies: women, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Gender studies: women and girls, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, National liberation and independence, Literary studies: plays and playwrights