Shakespeare, Tragedy and Menopause
Title | Shakespeare, Tragedy and Menopause PDF eBook |
Author | Victoria L. McMahon |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Total Pages | 312 |
Release | 2023-10-27 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 3031272048 |
Shakespeare was not only aware of the socio-cultural fears and anxieties generated by the older woman’s body but with the characterization of his tragic ageing females, Shakespeare becomes the first literary giant to explore the physiological and psychosocial condition that we have come to know as ‘menopause’. Although ‘menopause’ was not defined as a medical, physiological or sociocultural event for the early moderns, this book argues that such a medical and cultural transition can, in fact, be identified by sub-textual clues distinguished by various embodied anxieties. It explores several ageing women of the Shakespearean tragedies as they transition through this liminal menopausal period. Theoretically underscored by humoral theory, the analysis is metonymically centered upon the womb as the seat of menopausal anxiety. These menopausal undercurrents, not only permeate the dramatic action of each play, but also emanate outward to reflect the medical, physiological, cultural, social, and religious concerns generated by the ageing woman of the early modern period at large.
Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender
Title | Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender PDF eBook |
Author | Shirley Nelson Garner |
Publisher | Indiana University Press |
Total Pages | 346 |
Release | 1996-02-22 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 9780253210272 |
While considering Shakespeare's earliest attempts at tragedy in Richard III and Titus Andronicus, this volume covers the major tragic period, giving special attention to Othello.
Shakespeare's Feminine Endings
Title | Shakespeare's Feminine Endings PDF eBook |
Author | Philippa Berry |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 212 |
Release | 2012-11-12 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 1134914938 |
Philippa Berry draws on feminist theory, postmodern thought and queer theory, to challenge existing critical notions of what is fundamental to Shakespearean tragedy. She shows how, through a network of images clustered around feminine or feminized characters, these plays 'disfigure' conventional ideas of death as a bodily end, as their figures of women are interwoven with provocative meditations upon matter, time, the soul, and the body. The scope of these tragic speculations was radical in Shakespeare's day; yet they also have a surprising relevance to contemporary debates about time and matter in science and philosophy.
Fantasies of Female Evil
Title | Fantasies of Female Evil PDF eBook |
Author | Cristina León Alfar |
Publisher | University of Delaware Press |
Total Pages | 266 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 9780874137811 |
Focuses on Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The winter's tale. UkBU.
Menopausal Shakespeare and the Anxious Womb
Title | Menopausal Shakespeare and the Anxious Womb PDF eBook |
Author | Victoria McMahon |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 0 |
Release | 2021 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Unsex Me Here
Title | Unsex Me Here PDF eBook |
Author | Judy Celine A. Ick |
Publisher | Office of Vice Chancellor for Resear Rsity of Philippines |
Total Pages | 226 |
Release | 1999 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN |
Comic Women, Tragic Men
Title | Comic Women, Tragic Men PDF eBook |
Author | Linda Bamber |
Publisher | Stanford University Press |
Total Pages | 223 |
Release | 1982-06-01 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 0804765693 |
This book proceeds from the assumption that Shakespeare, so often perceived as the one writer who appears to have transcended the limits of gender, inevitably writes from the perspective of his own gender. From this perspective, whatever represents the Self is necessarily male; and the Other, which challenges the Self, is female. The author's approach gives us a fresh understanding of both Shakespeare's characters and the structure of the plays. The author defines genre in terms of the nature of the challenge offered by the Other to the Self. Using specific plays and characters of Shakespeare, the author shows how in tragedy the Other betrays or appears to betray the Self; in comedy the Other evades the social hierarchies dominated by versions of the male Self; in romance the Other comes and goes, leaving the Self bereft when she is gone and astounding him with happiness when she reappears. History is defined as a genre in which the masculine heroes confront no challenge from the Other but only from each other, from other versions of the Self. The book consists of a long theoretical introduction followed by chapters on comedy, history, and some individual plays: Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and The Tempest.