Refiguring the Sacred Feminine

Refiguring the Sacred Feminine
Title Refiguring the Sacred Feminine PDF eBook
Author Theresa M. DiPasquale
Publisher Penn State Press
Pages 406
Release 2008-04-21
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 0820705195

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Theresa M. DiPasquale’s study of John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton demonstrates how each of these seventeenth century English poets revised, reformed, and renewed the Judeo-Christian tradition of the sacred feminine. The central figures of this tradition—divine Wisdom, created Wisdom, the Bride, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Ecclesia—are essential to the works of Donne, Lanyer, and Milton. All three poets are deeply invested in the ancient, scripturally authorized belief that the relationship between God and humankind is gendered: God is father, bridegroom, king; the human soul and the church as corporate entity are daughter, bride, and consort. This important text not only casts new light on these poets and on the history of Christian doctrine and belief, but also makes enormous contributions to our understanding of the feminine more broadly. It will be of interest to scholars who study the Literary Studies, religion, and culture of early modern England, to feminist theologians, and to any reader grappling seriously with gender issues in Christian theology and spirituality.

Poetic Relations

Poetic Relations
Title Poetic Relations PDF eBook
Author Constance M. Furey
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Pages 261
Release 2017-06-05
Genre Religion
ISBN 022643429X

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What is the relationship between our isolated and our social selves, between aloneness and interconnection? Constance M. Furey probes this question through a suggestive literary tradition: early Protestant poems in which a single speaker describes a solitary search for God. As Furey demonstrates, John Donne, George Herbert, Anne Bradstreet, and others describe inner lives that are surprisingly crowded, teeming with human as well as divine companions. The same early modern writers who bequeathed to us the modern distinction between self and society reveal here a different way of thinking about selfhood altogether. For them, she argues, the self is neither alone nor universally connected, but is forever interactive and dynamically constituted by specific relationships. By means of an analysis equally attentive to theological ideas, social conventions, and poetic form, Furey reveals how poets who understand introspection as a relational act, and poetry itself as a form ideally suited to crafting a relational self, offer us new ways of thinking about selfhood today—and a resource for reimagining both secular and religious ways of being in the world.

Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England

Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England
Title Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England PDF eBook
Author Sarah E. Johnson
Publisher Routledge
Pages 198
Release 2016-04-01
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 1317050657

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Though the gender-coded soul-body dynamic lies at the root of many negative and disempowering depictions of women, Sarah Johnson here argues that it also functions as an effective tool for redefining gender expectations. Building on past criticism that has concentrated on the debilitating cultural association of women with the body, she investigates dramatic uses of the soul-body dynamic that challenge the patriarchal subordination of women. Focusing on two tragedies, two comedies, and a small selection of masques, from approximately 1592-1614, Johnson develops a case for the importance of drama to scholarly considerations of the soul-body dynamic, which habitually turn to devotional works, sermons, and philosophical and religious treatises to elucidate this relationship. Johnson structures her discussion around four theatrical relationships, each of which is a gendered relationship analogous to the central soul-body dynamic: puppeteer and puppet, tamer and tamed, ghost and haunted, and observer and spectacle. Through its thorough and nuanced readings, this study redefines one of the period’s most pervasive analogies for conceptualizing women and their relations to men as more complex and shifting than criticism has previously assumed. It also opens a new interpretive framework for reading representations of women, adding to the ongoing feminist re-evaluation of the kinds of power women might actually wield despite the patriarchal strictures of their culture.

John Milton: Paradise Lost

John Milton: Paradise Lost
Title John Milton: Paradise Lost PDF eBook
Author Mike Edwards
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Pages 219
Release 2013-04-26
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 1350310239

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Paradise Lost is for many the greatest poem written in English. Composed late in the author's life, it deals with nothing less than the destiny of mankind. This essential introductory guide: - Leads the reader into the epic poem through detailed analysis of key extracts, exploring Milton's original thought and style - Provides useful sections on 'Methods of Analysis' and 'Further Work' to aid independent study - Offers valuable information on Milton's life, times and literary legacy - Examines the development of critical opinion and discusses some recent critical views of the poem. John Milton: Paradise Lost is ideal for anyone who is studying this complex and beautiful work for the first time. It will enable you to approach your own critical analysis of the poem with confidence.

Economic Imperatives for Women's Writing in Early Modern Europe

Economic Imperatives for Women's Writing in Early Modern Europe
Title Economic Imperatives for Women's Writing in Early Modern Europe PDF eBook
Author
Publisher BRILL
Pages 272
Release 2018-10-22
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 9004383026

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Economic Imperatives for Women’s Writing in Early Modern Europe addresses the central question of the professionalization of women’s writing before the eighteenth-century from a comparatist perspective, offering intriguing case studies on as yet an underdeveloped area in early modern studies.

Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700

Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700
Title Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700 PDF eBook
Author Victoria Brownlee
Publisher Manchester University Press
Pages 399
Release 2016-05-16
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 1526110628

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At once pervasive and marginal, appealing and repellent, exemplary and atypical, the women of the Bible provoke an assortment of readings across early modern literature. Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700 draws attention to the complex ways in which biblical women’s narratives could be reimagined for a variety of rhetorical and religious purposes. Considering a confessionally diverse range of writers, working across a variety of genres, this volume reveals how women from the Old and New Testaments exhibit an ideological power that frequently exceeds, both in scope and substance, their associated scriptural records. The essays explore how the Bible’s women are fluidly negotiated and diversely redeployed to offer (conflicting) comment on issues including female authority, speech and sexuality, and in discussions of doctrine, confessional politics, exploration and grief. As it explores the rich ideological currency of the Bible’s women in early modern culture, this volume demonstrates that the Bible’s women are persistently difficult to evade.

A History of Early Modern Women's Literature

A History of Early Modern Women's Literature
Title A History of Early Modern Women's Literature PDF eBook
Author Patricia Phillippy
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 463
Release 2018-01-18
Genre History
ISBN 1107137063

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This book contains expansive, multifaceted narrative of British women's literary and textual production from the Reformation to the Restoration.