Read more
*APPROVED*
Examines the way that theatrical representations of chastity inform broader concerns about the commoditisation of people in early capitalism
Chaste Value reassesses chastity's significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage's production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity-itself a quasi-commodity-to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labor can be incorporated into market exchange.
Katherine Gillen is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Her work focuses on issues of economics, social difference, and theatrical representation in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. She has published articles in edited collections and in journals such as Early English Studies, Cahiers Elisabéthains, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, and Studies in English Literature.
About the author
Katherine Gillen is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Her work focuses on issues of economics, social difference, and theatrical representation in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. She has published articles in edited collections and in journals such as
Early English Studies,
Cahiers Elisabéthains,
Shakespeare Jahrbuch, and
Studies in English Literature.
Summary
Chaste Value 'reassesses chastity's significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage's production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference.
