1st Edition
Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700 Volume 7: Margaret Cavendish
Edited By Sara H. Mendelson
Copyright 2009
432 Pages
by
Routledge
432 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
A maverick in her own time, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) was dismissed for three centuries as an eccentric crank. Yet the past few decades have witnessed a true renaissance in Cavendish studies, as scholars from diverse academic disciplines produce books, articles and theses on every aspect of her oeuvre. Cavendish's literary creations hold a wide appeal for modern readers... Read more
Contents: Introduction; Selected bibliography; Chronology; Part I Self-Fashioning as a Female Writer: The spider’s delight: Margaret Cavendish and the ’female’ imagination, Sylvia Bowerbank; Margaret Cavendish on her own writing: evidence from revision and handmade correction, James Fitzmaurice; Dismantling the myth of ’Mad Madge’: the cultural context of Margaret Cavendish’s authorial self-presentation, Hero Chalmers. Part II Genres: Essays and Drama: Margaret Cavendish and the female satirist, Mihoko Suzuki; ’Our wits joined as in matrimony’: Margaret Cavendish’s Playes and the drama of authority, Karen L. Raber; Margaret Cavendish and the theatre of war, Alexandra G. Bennett; Margaret Cavendish’s dramatic Utopias and the politics of gender, Erin Lang Bonin. Part III Natural Philosophy: A science turned upside down: feminism and the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish, Lisa T. Sarasohn; The mechanist-vitalist soul of Margaret Cavendish, Jay Stevenson; Producing petty gods: Margaret Cavendish’s critique of experimental science, Eve Keller; In dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish’s natural philosophy, Sarah Hutton; The philosophical innovations of Margaret Cavendish, Susan James; ’Plain and vulgarly express’d’: Margaret Cavendish and the discourse of the new science, Richard Nate; Gender subversion in the science of Margaret Cavendish, Lisa Walters; Mad science beyond flattery: the correspondence of Margaret Cavendish and Constantijn Huygens, Nadine Akkerman and Marguérite Corporaal. Part IV The Blazing World: New Trends in Cavendish Scholarship: Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World: natural art and the body politic, Oddvar Holmesland; Royalist, romancist, racialist: rank, gender and race in the science and fiction of Margaret Cavendish, Sujata Iyengar; Margaret Cavendish, scribe, Jonathan Goldberg; The city of chance, or, Margaret Cavendish’s theory of radical symmetry, B.R. Siegfried; Index.
Biography
Sara H. Mendelson is a Professor of History, Arts & Sciences Program at McMaster University, Canada.
