Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary TextsRoutledge, 2016 M12 5 - 276 pages Proposing a fresh approach to scholarship on the topic, this volume explores the cultural meanings, especially the gendered meanings, of material associated with oral traditions. The collection is divided into three sections. Part One investigates the evocations of the 'old nurse' as storyteller so prominent in early modern fictions. The essays in Part Two investigate women's fashioning of oral traditions to serve their own purposes. The third section disturbs the exclusive associations between the feminine and oral traditions to discover implications for masculinity, as well. Contributors explore the plays of Shakespeare and writings of Spenser, Sidney, Wroth and the Cavendishes, as well as works by less well known or even unknown authors. Framed by an introduction by Mary Ellen Lamb and an afterword by Pamela Allen Brown, these essays make several important interventions in scholarship in the field. They demonstrate the continuing cultural importance of an oral tradition of tales and ballads, even if sometimes circulated in manuscript and printed forms. Rather than in its mode of transmission, contributors posit that the continuing significance of this oral tradition lies instead in the mode of consumption (the immediacy of the interaction of the participants). Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts confirms the power of oral traditions to shape and also to unsettle concepts of the masculine as well as of the feminine. This collection usefully complicates any easy assumptions about associations of oral traditions with gender. |
Other editions - View all
Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts Mary Ellen Lamb,Karen Bamford Limited preview - 2017 |
Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts Mary Ellen Lamb,Karen Bamford Limited preview - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
Adam Fox Anne Arcadia Artegall Ascanio Aubrey Aubrey's audience authority Baldwin's Beaufield Beware the Cat Book Britomart broadside ballads Cambridge University Press Cassio characters court cries culture curtain lecture Desdemona discourse Early Modern England Emilia England English essay Eurymine Eurymine's Faerie Queene fairy fantasy female criers feminine fiction figure folktale free maids gender girl heroine History husband Iago identity John labor lacemaking Leontes libel libelous poetry literary London Maid's Metamorphosis male Margaret marriage Mary masculine metaphysics of presence mistress Mother Hubberd Mouse-slayer narrative narrator old wives Olivia Oral and Literate oral performance oral tradition Orsino's Othello Oxford Pepys play play's players poem popular Renaissance rhetorical ritual role romance Samient servant sexual Shakespeare Sidney's sing social speak speech Spenser stage story storytelling Streamer's street criers suggests tell Twelfth Night Urania voice wife William Winter's Tale witches woman women words writing written Wroth's York