1st Edition

Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain Literary and Historical Explorations

    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    Presenting a broad spectrum of reflections on the subject of female transgression in early modern Britain, this volume proposes a richly productive dialogue between literary and historical approaches to the topic. The essays presented here cover a range of ’transgressive’ women: daughters, witches, prostitutes, thieves; mothers/wives/murderers; violence in NW England; violence in Scotland; single mothers; women as (sexual) partners in crime. Contributions illustrate the dynamic relation between fiction and fact that informs literary and socio-historical analysis alike, exploring female transgression as a process, not of crossing fixed boundaries, but of negotiating the epistemological space between representation and documentation.

    Introduction, Richard Hillman, Pauline Ruberry-Blanc; Part I Imag(in)ing Female Transgression and Transgressors; Chapter 1 Criminalizing the Woman’s Incest: Pericles and Its Analogues, Richard Hillman; Chapter 2 Body Crimes: The Witches, Lady Macbeth and the Relics, Diane Purkiss; Chapter 3 The Witch of Edmonton: The Witch Next Door or Faustian Anti-Heroine?, Pauline Ruberry-Blanc; Chapter 4 Fact versus Fiction: The Construction of the Figure of the Prostitute in Early Modern England, Official and Popular Discourses, Frédérique Fouassier-Tate; Chapter 5 Appropriating a Famous Female Offender: Mary Frith (1584?–1659), alias Moll Cutpurse, Pascale Drouet; Part II Reading (into) the Social Picture; Chapter 6 Mothers, Wives and Killers: Marital Status and Homicide in London, 1674–1790, Marisha Caswell; Chapter 7 Women and Violence in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England: Evidence from the Cheshire Court of Great Sessions, James Sharpe; Chapter 8 ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’: Violent Women in Early Modern Scotland, Anne-Marie Kilday; Chapter 9, Jennine Hurl-Eamon; Chapter 10, Krista Kesselring;

    Biography

    Richard Hillman is Professor of English, Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais de Tours/CNRS, France. Pauline Ruberry-Blanc is Senior Lecturer in English, Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais de Tours/CNRS, France.

    'This is a wide-ranging collection that both literary critics and historians will find informative and thought-provoking, and which offers new insights on well-known themes related to women, crime and transgression.' Garthine Walker, Cardiff University, UK 'The first three essays in this collection demonstrate the strengths of analysing literature alongside its factual context for creative insights ... the collection is worthwhile for students and academics interested in the subject.' Parergon