As a reader of her literary predecessors, and as a writer who
herself contributed to the emerging literary tradition, Margaret
Cavendish is an extraordinary figure whose role in early modern
literary history has yet to be fully acknowledged. In this study,
Lara Dodds reassesses the literary invention of Cavendish-the use
she makes of other writers, her own various forms of writing, and
the ways in which she creates her own literary persona-to transform
our understanding of Cavendish's considerable accomplishments and
influence. In spite of Cavendish's claims that she did little
reading whatsoever, Dodds demonstrates that the duchess was an
agile, avid reader (and misreader) of other writers, all of them
male, all of them now considered canonical-Shakespeare, Jonson,
Donne, Milton, Bacon. In each chapter, Dodds discusses Cavendish's
moments of reading of these authors, revealing their influence on
Cavendish while also providing a lens to investigate more broadly
the many literary forms-poetry, letters, fiction, drama-that
Cavendish employed. Seeking a fruitful exchange between literary
history and the history of reading, Dodds examines both the
material and social circumstances of reading and the characteristic
formal features and thematic preoccupations of Cavendish's writing
in each of the major genres. Thus, not only is our view of
Cavendish and her specific literary achievements enhanced, but we
see too the contributions of this female reader to the emerging
idea of literature in late seventeenth century England. Most
previous studies of Cavendish have been preoccupied with literary
biography, looking into her royalist politics, materialist natural
philosophy, and ambivalent protofeminism. The Literary Invention of
Margaret Cavendish is significant, then, in its focus outward from
Cavendish to her most enduring and positive contributions to
literary history-her revival of an expansive model of literary
invention that rests uneasily, but productively, alongside a
Jonsonian aesthetics of the verisimilar and a Hobbesian politics of
social strife.
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