The moral lesson that women as the weaker sex should be accompanied by elder people or male relatives is presented in this work. A justification of the customs of those days, the chivalry of gentlemen and the politeness of ladies is the motif. A charming depiction of the lives of men and women that borders on fairytale atmosphere.

The essays in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance examine the nexus of religious, political, economic, and aesthetic values that produce the Western European myth of virginity, and explore how those complex cultural forces animate, empower, discipline, disclose, mystify, and menace the virginal body. As the title suggests, the virgin can be seen alternately or even simultaneously as menaced or menacing. To chart the history of virginity as a steady, evolutionary progression from a religious ideal in the Middle Ages toward a more secularized or sovereign ideal in the Renaissance would obscure how unstable a concept chastity is in both periods. What this collection demonstrates is that medieval and early modern attitudes toward virginity are not general and evolutionary, but specific, changeable, and often conflicted.

Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.

Cottegnies (English literature, University of Paris 8-Saint Denis) and Weitz (University of Oxford) offer a collection of essays on Margaret Cavendish's innovative use of genre. These interdisciplinary and multinational contributions present a variety of critical approaches to the problem of placing Cavendish's writing in the context of contemporary literary and philosophical history. The book is distributed by Associated University Presses. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Contending that early modern fictional portrayals of sexual violence identify the position of the author with that of the chaste woman threatened with rape, Amy Greenstadt challenges the prevalent scholarly view that this period's concept of 'The Author' was inherently masculine. Instead, she argues, the analogy between rape and writing centrally informed ideas of literary intention that emerged during the English Renaissance. Analyzing works by Milton, Sidney, Shakespeare and Cavendish, Greenstadt shows how the figure of 'The Author' - and by extension ideas of the modern individual--derived from a paradigm of female virtue and vulnerability. This volume supplements the growing body of studies that address the relationship between early modern textual representation and notions of gender and sexuality; it also adds a new dimension in considering the wider origins of modern concepts of selfhood and individual rights.

Contending that early modern fictional portrayals of sexual violence identify the position of the author with that of the chaste woman threatened with rape, Amy Greenstadt challenges the prevalent scholarly view that this period's concept of 'The Author' was inherently masculine. Instead, she argues, the analogy between rape and writing centrally informed ideas of literary intention that emerged during the English Renaissance. Analyzing works by Milton, Sidney, Shakespeare and Cavendish, Greenstadt shows how the figure of 'The Author' - and by extension ideas of the modern individual--derived from a paradigm of female virtue and vulnerability. This volume supplements the growing body of studies that address the relationship between early modern textual representation and notions of gender and sexuality; it also adds a new dimension in considering the wider origins of modern concepts of selfhood and individual rights.

Margaret Cavendish was one of the most prolific, complex and misunderstood writers of the seventeenth century. A contemporary of Descartes and Hobbes, she was fascinated by philosophical, scientific and imaginative advances, and struggled to overcome the political and cultural obstacles which threatened to stop her engagement with such discourses. Emma Rees examines how Cavendish engaged with the work of thinkers such as Lucretius, Plato, Homer and Harvey in an attempt to write her way out of the exile which threatened not only her intellectual pursuits but her very existence. What emerges is the image of an intelligent, audacious and intrepid early modern woman whose tale will appeal to specialists and general readers alike.