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First published in 1987. Passionately praised and equally
passionately criticised by contemporary and later writers, the
figure of Milton inherited by the twentieth century is by no means
unified, despite the appearance of monumental unity his work
sometimes acquires in the classroom and in academic criticism. This
collection of essays gathers together disparate and often
conflicting representations of Milton as author and cultural
figure. Critics familiar with the traditions of Milton scholarship
and with debates in literary theory reconstruct Milton from
evidence provided by his own prose and poetry, by his
contemporaries (including some little-known women writers), by
Romantics such as Blake and Wordsworth, and, finally, by a
tradition of Afro-American writing that reflects Milton's influence
in ways previously unexamined by critics. The process of
reconstruction can also be seen as a process of "re-membering." The
volume draws inspiration from, but also interrogates, the figure
used in Areopagita to describe the quest for truth. Likening Truth
to the dismembered body of Osiris, Milton urges Truth's friends to
seek up and down, gathering "limb by limb" the body scattered
through time and space. Re-membering Milton includes work by
established critics from both sides of the Atlantic. Together these
contributors place Milton and different Milton traditions firmly
within the arenas of modem critical debate. As a result, the
collection will be of interest to a wide range of readers: scholars
concerned with Milton and Renaissance literature and history;
advanced undergraduates and graduate students; researchers in
women’s studies; and all readers generally concerned with trends
in literary and cultural theory.
First published in 1987. Passionately praised and equally
passionately criticised by contemporary and later writers, the
figure of Milton inherited by the twentieth century is by no means
unified, despite the appearance of monumental unity his work
sometimes acquires in the classroom and in academic criticism. This
collection of essays gathers together disparate and often
conflicting representations of Milton as author and cultural
figure. Critics familiar with the traditions of Milton scholarship
and with debates in literary theory reconstruct Milton from
evidence provided by his own prose and poetry, by his
contemporaries (including some little-known women writers), by
Romantics such as Blake and Wordsworth, and, finally, by a
tradition of Afro-American writing that reflects Milton's influence
in ways previously unexamined by critics. The process of
reconstruction can also be seen as a process of "re-membering." The
volume draws inspiration from, but also interrogates, the figure
used in Areopagita to describe the quest for truth. Likening Truth
to the dismembered body of Osiris, Milton urges Truth's friends to
seek up and down, gathering "limb by limb" the body scattered
through time and space. Re-membering Milton includes work by
established critics from both sides of the Atlantic. Together these
contributors place Milton and different Milton traditions firmly
within the arenas of modem critical debate. As a result, the
collection will be of interest to a wide range of readers: scholars
concerned with Milton and Renaissance literature and history;
advanced undergraduates and graduate students; researchers in
women's studies; and all readers generally concerned with trends in
literary and cultural theory.
Elizabeth Cary (c.1585-1639) was an accomplished scholar of
languages and theology. Her considerable strength of character was
demonstrated by her public conversion to Catholicism in 1625
thereby creating an irrevocable rift in her marriage and her
family. Her biography, written by her daughter, says she wrote 'for
her private recreation' and mentions various works, now lost,
including the lives of saints, and poems to the Virgin Mary. She is
best known today, however, for the works reproduced here.
The discovery and re-examination of women authors has been a key
part of early modern women's studies, but a major problem has been
the inaccessibility of the texts themselves. This series is
designed to make available a comprehensive collection of writing in
English from 1500 to 1700, both by women and for and about them.
Each text is preceded by a short introduction providing an overview
of the life and work of the writer, along with a survey of
important relevant scholarship. The series is in two parts,
covering the periods 1500 to 1640, and 1641 to 1700. It is
complemented by a separate facsimile series of essential works and
original monographs.
Our common definition of literacy is the ability to read and write
in one language. But as Margaret Ferguson reveals in "Dido's
Daughters," this description is inadequate, because it fails to
help us understand heated conflicts over literacy during the
emergence of print culture. The fifteenth through seventeenth
centuries, she shows, were a contentious era of transition from
Latin and other clerical modes of literacy toward more vernacular
forms of speech and writing.
Fegurson's aim in this long-awaited work is twofold: to show that
what counted as more valuable among these competing literacies had
much to do with notions of gender, and to demonstrate how debates
about female literacy were critical to the emergence of imperial
nations. Looking at writers whom she dubs the figurative daughters
of the mythological figure Dido--builder of an empire that
threatened to rival Rome--Ferguson traces debates about literacy
and empire in the works of Marguerite de Navarre, Christine de
Pizan, Elizabeth Cary, and Aphra Behn, as well as male writers such
as Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Wyatt. The result is a study that
sheds new light on the crucial roles that gender and women played
in the modernization of England and France.
"The Tragedy of Mariam" (1613) is the first original play by a
woman to be published in England, and its author is the first
English woman writer to be memorialized in a biography, which is
included with this edition of the play.
"Mariam" is a distinctive example of Renaissance drama that serves
the desire of today's readers and scholars to know not merely how
women were represented in the early modern period but also how they
themselves perceived their own condition.
With this textually emended and fully annotated edition, the play
will now be accessible to all readers. The accompanying biography
of Cary further enriches our knowledge of both domestic and
religious conflicts in the seventeenth century.
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