The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Sisters : Gender, Transgression, Adolescence /
Jennifer Higginbotham.
- 1 online resource (240 pages).
- Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture .
- Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture. Book collections on Project MUSE. .
Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-219) and index.
'A wentche, a gyrle, a damsell' : defining early modern girlhood -- Roaring girls and unruly women : producing femininities -- Female infants and the engendering of humanity -- Where are the girls in English renaissance drama? -- Voicing girlhood : women's life writing and narratives of childhood -- Epilogue : mass-produced languages and the end of touristic choices.
Open Access
The first sustained study of girls and girlhood in early modern literature and culture. Jennifer Higginbotham makes a persuasive case for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system. She challenges the widespread assumption that the category of the 'girl' played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. And she demonstrates that girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare's late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult 'roaring girls' in city comedies. This monograph provides the first book-length study of the way the literature and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constructed the category of the 'girl'.
9781474429801
Girls--Social conditions--Great Britain--17th century. Girls--Social conditions--Great Britain--16th century. English literature--History and criticism.--Early modern, 1500-1700 Girls in literature.
Great Britain--Civilization--17th century. Great Britain--Civilization--16th century.