Matter of Virtue - Women''s Ethical Action From Chaucer to Shakespeare

Crocker explores what happened to virtue when late-medieval and early-modern English poets thought about the material body not as a tool of an empowered male agent but rather, and as women more frequently experienced it, as something fragile and open, subject but also connected to others.

List of contents

Introduction. Virtues That Matter

PART I. PRESCRIPTIVE FAILURES

Chapter 1. The Fragility of Virtue, from Chaucer to Lydgate

Chapter 2. The Matter of Virtue, from Henryson to Shakespeare

PART II. GRACE, ENACTED: ROMANCE AND MATERIAL VIRTUE

Chapter 3. Virtue's Grace: Custance and Other Daughters

Chapter 4. Virtue's Knowledge in Lodge and Spenser

PART III. HOMELY VIRTUES

Chapter 5. Shrewish Virtue, from Chaucer to Shakespeare

Conclusion. Legends of Good Women

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

About the author

Holly A. Crocker

Summary

In The Matter of Virtue, Holly A. Crocker explores what happened to virtue when late medieval and early modern English poets thought about the material body not as a tool of an empowered male agent but rather, and as women more frequently experienced it, as something fragile and open, subject but also connected to others.

Product details

• Authors: Holly A Crocker, Holly A. Crocker
• Publisher: University of pennsylvania pr
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2019
• EAN: 9780812251418
• ISBN: 978-0-8122-5141-8
• No. of pages: 360
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Vereinigtes Königreich, Großbritannien, Lyrik, Poesie, Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, POETRY / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh