Research Catalog

Title

Widows and suitors in early modern English comedy / Jennifer Panek.

Author

Panek, Jennifer

Publication

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 243 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

"The courtship and remarriage of a rich widow was a popular motif in early modern comic theatre. Jennifer Panek brings together a wide variety of texts, from ballads and jest-books to sermons and court records, to examine the staple widow of comedy in her cultural context and to examine early modern attitudes to remarriage. She persuasively challenges the current critical tendency to see the stereotype of the lusty widow as a tactic to dissuade women from second marriages, arguing instead that it was deployed to enable her suitors to regain their masculinity, under threat from the dominant, wealthier widow. The theatre, as demonstrated by Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher and others, was the prime purveyor of a fantasy in which a young man's sexual mastery of a widow allowed him to seize the economic opportunity she offered."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• 1500-1600
• Courtship in literature
• Engels
• English drama (Comedy) > History and criticism
• English drama > Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 > History and criticism
• Geschichte 1590-1642
• Hofmakerij
• Toneelstukken
• Weduwen
• Widows in literature

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 222-236) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The widow's choice : female remarriage in early modern England -- The widow's threat : domestic government and male anxiety -- The suitor's fantasy : courtship and compensation -- The husband's fear : the lusty widow as wife -- A playwright's response : four Middletonian remarriage plots.

ISBN

0521832713

LCCN

^^2005297391

OCLC

56660576

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library