Women and Shakespeare's Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal

ISBN-13: 9780367881658 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 244 str.

Cristina Leon Alfar

Opis

Focusing on six plays by William Shakespeare, early modern English court records, marital complaints and private letters, Cristina Leon Alfar identifies a series of cultural narratives that disclose the various motives for and strategies of men’s accusations of adultery and women’s practical and cogent answers. In Shakespeare, Cuckoldry, and Women,

Spis treści

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Neither Silent nor Obedient: Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays

Chapter One: Early Modern Women’s Narratives of Marital Betrayal

Chapter Two: ‘A woman of quick sense’: Women’s Agency in Troilus and Cressida and The Merry Wives of Windsor

Chapter Three: ‘Manhood is melted into curtsies’: Shifting Masculine Honor in Much Ado about Nothing

Chapter Four: ‘An essence that’s not seen’ or ‘an odious damned lie’: The Ethics of Competing Narratives in Othello

Chapter Five: ‘Paper bullets of the brain’: Revising the Cuckoldry Play in The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline

Post Script

Index

O autorze

Cristina León Alfar is Associate Professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY, USA.