Research Catalog

Hymeneutics : interpreting virginity on the early modern stage

Title
Hymeneutics : interpreting virginity on the early modern stage / Marie H. Loughlin.
Author
Loughlin, Marie H., 1962-
Publication
Lewisburg : Bucknell University Press ; London ; Cranbury, NJ : Associated University Presses, [1997], ©1997.

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Description
226 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
  • This book examines the socio-medical and anatomical construction of the virginal female body in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts in order to develop a historically and culturally specific understanding of virginity and chastity in early modern England. This investigation permits a reevaluation of a series of plays by John Fletcher and his collaborators approximately between 1609 and 1620 that concentrates heavily on the virginal and chaste woman.
  • Instead of seeing Fletcher's frequent, violent interrogations of these women as springing from his personal, pornographic proclivities (a charge which has often been levelled), contemporary medical and anatomical discourses demonstrate that the uncertainty about women's virginity which fuels such interrogations is widespread in the early modern period.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-221) and index.
Contents
1. Virginity in Early Modern England: Medical and Dramatic Representations -- 2. Hunting the Hymen: Anatomizing the Virginal Body in The Faithful Shepherdess and Cymbeline -- 3. Virginity and Dismemberment: The Erotics of Domination in Philaster -- 4. "Hide That Fatal Ring": Rape, Female Authority, and the Production of Virginity in The Queen of Corinth -- 5. "So This Compulsive Wrong Makes You More Perfect": Making Chaste and the Stain of Rape in Valentinian -- 6. Beyond Property: Virginity as Aristocratic Ethic in The Loyal Subject.
ISBN
0838753396 (alk. paper)
LCCN
96031110
OCLC
  • 35033686
  • ocm35033686
Owning Institutions
Columbia University Libraries