Tags
Language
Tags
March 2024
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
25 26 27 28 29 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 1 2 3 4 5 6

Philippa Berry, "Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and The Unmarried Queen" (Repost)

Posted By: TimMa
Philippa Berry, "Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and The Unmarried Queen" (Repost)

Philippa Berry, "Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and The Unmarried Queen"
Publisher: Routledge | 1995 | ISBN: 0415056721 | English | True PDF | 208 pages | 5.41 Mb

In Of Chastity and Power, Philippa Berry combines Renaissance scholarship with feminist literary criticism to reject former accounts of the cult of Elizabeth, which presented both the queen's gender and her marital status as unproblematic.

Through readings of key Elizabethan texts by Lyly, Raleigh, Chapman, Shakespeare and Spenser, Phillipa Berry shows that while Elizabeth's combination of chastity with political and religious power was repeatedly idealized, it was also perceived as extremely disturbing. By placing these texts within a wider context of European culture and history, Berry shows that the figure of the unmarried queen implicitly challenged the masculine focus of Renaissance discourses of love and of absolutist political ideology, ultimately subverting the philosophical division between spirit and matter upon which Renaissance ideas of women were founded.

Review
`Philippa Berry possesses both a detailed knowledge of Elizabethan texts and a sophisticated grasp of feminist critical theory. In this incisive account she offers a new perspective on the materiality of sexual politics in the Renaissance.' - Catherine Belsey

` … this is a brilliant little book.' - English Historical Review

`Her reinterpretation of Elizabethan politics and culture is intelligent, scholarly, and often compelling and will be of interest to historians and cultural critics alike' - Journal of the History of Sexuality

Philippa Berry, "Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and The Unmarried Queen" (Repost)