The “Mighty Voice of Gandersheim”: Hrotsvit’s Didactic Motivation in Her Plays

Karnad has revolutionized the image of women in drama through ‘Yayati’, one of his initial plays. He has contested the typical women image created by the dominant patriarchal idealogy. Though the women characters in ‘Yayati’ shows a spirit and strength unlike the docile nature and meekness expected of them, they all finally succumb to the bounds set by the patriarchal framework. However much rebellious they were to the norms of patriarchal set up; all these female characters could only partially succeed in creating an image of an emancipated woman. The play do not show the characters in an open wage against the societal structure and male domination but the female characters are shown to be thinking beyond the bounds set by the dominant ideology. The courage to break away from thinking along the lines of dominant misogynic ideology is a great step towards women’s emancipation. The essay is an attempt to show how Karnad’s female characters are struggling to break the fetters of patriarchy and yet are failing at it and succumbing to the patriarchal order of society ultimately.

Fifteenth-century Italian humanists constructed elaborate genealogies of brides and grooms in Latin wedding orations. These family histories not only demonstrate the creative ways in which humanists praised elites by referring to classical and mythic pasts, but also the surprising extent to which humanists integrated and emphasized pagan and barbaric origins. This article focuses on two orations. In one, the Ferrarese orator Ludovico Carbone fabricates an Ottoman Turkish genealogy in which he asserts the Trojan origins of the Turks and praises the infamous sacker of Constantinople, Mehmed II. In the other, the Milanese orator Giovanni Marliani praises the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate and Attila the Hun as Christian-persecuting ancestors of the groom. These extraordinary genealogies are compared to those of their brides' families, the Sforza and the Strozzi.This praise of enemies both displayed the orators'rhetorical skill and the value that Renaissance audiences placed on antiquity of origins.

This study explores intersectional identities in female characters to investigate hidden patriarchy in Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This study aims to explore the intersectional identities of female characters and how they expose the hidden patriarchal structures within the narrative. Using a qualitative descriptive approach with textual analysis applied to selected female characters as primary data, this study used Crenshaw’s intersectional feminist lens to explore how overlapping identities affect equality in society. The findings of this study uncover the female characters only function as supporters, enforcers, or extensions of male authority. It highlights that the female characters experience overlapping oppression and are positioned in a male-dominated hierarchy. The conclusion of this study proves that the existence of hidden patriarchy in the narrative is revealed through the lens of intersectionality which clarifies gender-based boundaries. It is recommended that further discussions and critical analyses be conducted to challenge patriarchal narratives in popular literature, as literary representations continue to reflect and reinforce societal norms.

Producing his artistic works in a period marked by a patriarchal social structure, Shakespeare created vivid and controversial female characters that both reflected and subverted the image of women of his time in a great majority of his plays. Regardless of the genre, most women in his plays are often witty and admirably strong; sometimes unruly, disobedient, ambitious and occasionally naïve, submissive and conformist. Endowing his female characters with such multifaceted qualities, the playwright was seen as either a misogynist or proto-feminist due to the fact that he could portray women who were often incompatible with one another. After remembering the diverse representations of women in his various works and how his female characters, from submissive figures to strong, rebellious ones, embody both compliance with and resistance to societal expectations, the article posits that Shakespeare’s depictions of women, as both victims and assertive challengers, reflect his intricate understanding of gender dynamics, highlighting the resilience and intellect of his female characters amidst a rigidly patriarchal society. While not a feminist by contemporary standards, Shakespeare’s empathetic portrayals suggest a proto-feminist sensitivity through his female characters who challenge male authority in subtle but powerful ways. This study aims to revisit Shakespeare’s portrayal of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet to demonstrate that the playwright had a proto-feminist attitude and attempted to establish a balance between his time’s cultural codes and his humanist/individual self despite the patriarchal culture he belonged to.

Reviewed by: Education, Religion, and Literary Culture in the 4th Century CE. A Study of the Underworld Topos in Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae by Gabriela Ryser Alison John Education, Religion, and Literary Culture in the 4th Century ce. A Study of the Underworld Topos in Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae Gabriela Ryser Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020. Pp. 440. ISBN: 978-3-525-57321-1 In the final years of the fourth century Claudian began his De raptu Proserpinae (DRP), leaving it incomplete before his death in 404. Gabriela Ryser's study examines this epic treatment of the Proserpina myth, situating it within the literary, religious, and socio-political contexts of the late fourth century. By exploring Claudian's treatment of the underworld topos, central to both the epic genre and religio-philosophical debates about the afterlife, Ryser provides an important contribution to our understanding of the intersections of religion and literary culture in the late antique West. The first chapter serves as an introduction, situating the study within scholarly debates and outlining its main objectives. Ryser argues that while much of the previous scholarship on the DRP has been concerned with proving or disproving the "militantly pagan" under-tones of the poem on the one hand or dismissing it as a "second-rate" imitation of earlier Latin epic on the other hand, she is interested in examining the DRP in its own right. Arguing for the overall poetic coherence of the DRP, Ryser sees Claudian not just as an imitator but an innovator and considers the influences of both religion and rhetorical education on Claudian's poetic programme. Chapter 2 discusses the function of mythology in the religious and literary landscapes of the ancient world, from archaic Greece to Late Antiquity. Ryser asks to what extent mythological literature carried religious meaning and authority, and ultimately emphasizes the overarching literary quality of poetic representations of the classical gods. While it was not impossible for pagan readers to extract religious meaning from literary texts about the gods, such literary depictions did not necessarily have the same authority as philosophical notions of the gods or ritual practice. Central to Ryser's argument is the fact that classical [End Page 308] literature about the gods, such as epic, formed the basis of Roman literary education. The primary purpose of classical schools of grammar and rhetoric was never to teach polytheism, but rather to teach the literary and rhetorical skills that would prepare young men for public life and socialize them to be members of the Roman cultural and political elite. Crucially, Christians also attended the classical schools of grammar and rhetoric and, by the late fourth century, were just as invested and interested in mythological literature as were pagans. Mythological literature was part and parcel of Roman education, and this education, in turn, defined the Roman social elite. As Ryser argues, "while a mythological epic, for example, might have been theologically interpreted by people like Praetextatus, there was no obligation to do so for every pagan and all the less for Christians, it being foremost a work of poetry" (58). Mythological references and allusions in Claudian's DRP, therefore, should not necessarily be interpreted as carrying pagan religious messages. The third chapter surveys depictions of the underworld in earlier Latin epic, including Vergil's Aeneid (6.236–899), Ovid's Metamorphoses (4.432-80, 10.1–77, 11.1–66), Lucan's Pharsalia (6.507–830, 9.1–14), the Argonautica (1.730–850, 3.377–458) of Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus's Punica (13.395–895), and the Thebaid (2.1–54, 4.406–645, 7.794–8.126) of Statius. Ryser takes a broad approach to what constitutes an "underworld" scene, including not only the familiar heroic catabasis, but also scenes of necromancy and the calling up of spirits. This allows Ryser to consider Claudian's inspiration for his depictions of Pluto's realm and its infernal characters more comprehensively. Chapter 4 turns to the DRP itself. The first section discusses Claudian's use and innovation of earlier depictions of the Proserpina myth, including Ovid's versions in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti, the Homeric Hymn...

St. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Riddle of Human DesireThe Necessity of a Reversal of Priorities in the Human Life of Desire Pyong-Gwan Pak SJ (bio) Introduction Is desire a riddle of human existence? It is evident that it is a puzzle. We seem to be more than anything else creatures of desire. Being a bundle of desires, we live in and by desire. Often it is not that clear whether we live our desires or the other way around. Often we do not know and cannot articulate what we really want. Moreover, we all know the perplexing situation in which we find more and more hidden desires emerging from the depths of our being. When shall we be able to truthfully claim that we live with complete clarity about our desires? Perhaps the whole of human life is an apprenticeship of desire, in which we may come to learn what our desire is all about. We people of the twenty-first century live in a peculiar predicament in connection with desire. Namely, we live in a consumerist culture where a social mechanism of inducing desires is operative in the form of the constant creation of desirable objects. But why is it that the people of our age remain unsatisfied despite the superabundant objects of desire? In this predicament, we are more than ever in need of learning about Christian wisdom concerning human desire. [End Page 126] If we are perplexed about our desires, we can well turn to the twelfth-century abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, St. Bernard (1090–1153). His teaching on love-desire has special significance for us. It is a treasure trove of theological hermeneutics, psychological insights, and ascetic-contemplative wisdom. It combines and correlates profound theology with a rich phenomenology of the life of desire. So from him we can profitably learn a hermeneutics to discern our life of desire. Already before the time of Bernard, there had been profound Christian reflections on love and desire in the works of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Augustine.1 They posited a necessary transformation of human love-desire on our way to union with and enjoyment of God as the ultimate object of desire. But the theme of “ordering of love” (ordinatio caritatis) took on new significance and urgency in twelfth-century Europe when monastic authors all earnestly took up “the problem of love” in their writings2 and sought to offer a solution.3 Inheriting the legacy of this tradition of Christian wisdom concerning desire, Bernard offered the people of his age a powerful teaching on the ordering of love. His writings contain a wealth of valuable insights and sagacious counsels regarding desire that were born out of his own life experiences and penetrating reflections. In Sermon 51.3 of the Sermons on the Song of Songs, he declares to the monks of Clairvaux:4 “I am telling you of what comes within my own experience”; and in Sermon 3.1, he invites the monks to check whether or not his teaching makes any sense by probing “the book of our experience” in the light of his sermons. By measuring and testing Bernard’s teaching against their own experience, each one was invited to decide for himself whether it makes sense or not. By this mystagogical strategy, Bernard still invites us today to do the same and think along with him about the mystery of human desire.5 The present article intends to visit some salient aspects of Bernard’s teaching on the ordering of human love-desire as found in On Loving God (De diligendo Deo [Dil]) and the Sermons on the Song of Songs (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum [SCC]).6 It focuses on the [End Page 127] predicament of human desire, the abbot’s theological anthropology, the ultimate destiny of human desire, the need for a reversal of priorities in our life of desire, two contrasting ways of living desire, his mysticism of the Word, and the dialectic between divine desire and human desire. In general, studies on Bernard’s thought include a treatment of his teaching on love, which tends to focus on doctrine.7 Certainly...

This study examines representations of gender injustice in Niqula Haddad’s novel Ḥawwāʾ al-Jadīdah. The purpose of this research is to identify the patterns of oppression depicted in the narrative and analyze how these forms of injustice reflect broader social norms within Arab society. The study employs a descriptive qualitative method and uses Kate Millett’s radical feminist theory as a theoretical framework, which views patriarchy as the fundamental source of women’s subjugation. Data were obtained through library research, involving close reading, annotation, and classification of textual evidence related to gender injustice, followed by analysis of the narrative elements. The findings, analyzed through Kate Millett’s radical feminist framework, reveal five prominent forms of gender injustice experienced by the female characters: marginalization, subordination, negative stereotyping, physical and non-physical violence, and the burden of double work. Marginalization is reflected in the restriction of female characters’ access to rights, mobility, and opportunities. Subordination appears through the positioning of female characters as inferior and powerless within both family structures and broader social systems. Negative stereotyping is manifested in the labeling of women as morally weak, emotionally unstable, or inadequate, which reinforces discriminatory attitudes. Violence is expressed through coercion, harassment, and objectification, indicating how women’s bodies and agency are controlled by male authority. The double burden emerges when female characters are expected to fulfill domestic responsibilities while simultaneously contributing to economic needs without equitable support from men. The study concludes that gender injustice in the novel is not merely an individual experience but a structural manifestation of entrenched patriarchal values embedded in social, cultural, and familial institutions. The study contributes to Arabic literary criticism and feminist discourse by demonstrating how literature reflects and critiques structural gender inequalities in Arab society. This research contributes to feminist literary studies by highlighting the role of Arabic prose in documenting and challenging gender-based injustice, while also encouraging readers to develop greater awareness of the need for social justice.

The depiction of women in comics is a complicated issue because female characters' representation is not univocal and fixed, neither temporally nor geographically, neither physically, nor conceptually. Women can be as strong and indomitable as hypersexualized. They can be relegated into domesticity, only dreaming of a perfect married life, or, on the contrary, they can occupy a position of power. Women can be damsel in distress, sidekicks, superheroines, girlfriends, wives, lovers, slaves, mistresses, and villainesses. They can be what they want or what men wanted them to be. This essay will briefly analyze how gender issues, violence against women, toxic masculinity, objectification, disempowerment, and depreciation are presented and received in selected and prominent comics, mostly from the USA and from the two major editorials (Marvel and DC), including Alias (vol.1), Avengers #200, Batman: The Killing Joke, Green Lantern #54, Identity Crisis, Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do, The Amazing Spiderman #121, V for Vendetta, and Wonder Woman, among others.

SCHAFFER, TALIA. Romance's Rival: Familiar Marriage in Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 352 pp. $65.00 hardcover. Romance s Rival: Familiar Marriage in Fiction is a meticulously researched, consummately assembled book that offers a revelatory argument about in era. Schaffer's thesis that an alternative model of marriage privileging trust, comradeship, practical needs, and larger organization coexisted with newly popular notion of marriage in nineteenth-century novel complicates an array of existing critical conceptions of especially those that have emphasized erotic desire, progressivism, or individualism (2-3). In demonstrating how familiar emerged as a literary convention both cope with changing ideas about and to work through different ways of thinking about a subject's future, Schaffer's book opens up new vistas for our understanding of and of female subjectivity in many novels she discusses and beyond (7-8). Not least among many delights of Romance's Rival are seamless structure of book and crystalline clarity of Schaffer's prose. Her style is everywhere engaging and book just as unfailingly engages, accounting at every turn for many discourses that have informed and are now meaningfully altered by her work. Seeking provide a larger historical context in which connect varied findings of previous scholarship on and novel. Schaffer situates her project among foundational studies of Stone, Watt, and Armstrong as well as amid more recent enlargements of field by Perry, Corbett, Davidoff, Ablow, Marcus, Hager, Michie, and McAleavey (26). Over course of this comprehensive book. Schaffer likewise intervenes in research on class, anthropology, disability, and women's work. Schaffer's first chapter defines familiar against its long-studied counterpart, romantic marriage, an approach mirrored by nineteenth-century fiction itself as Victorian plots very often stage a rivalry between a familiar and (7). Analyzing Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre as her principal introductory case study, Schaffer explains that her term refers in particular a female character's with someone familiar, such as a or extended family member (4). Although there are many, most significant distinction Schaffer formulates between and familiar is way in which latter enables a female character and agency in a network, rather than ensconcing her within the private conjugal dyad (4). The import of this claim is reflected in Schaffer's method of giving special attention four of main formulations of familiar marriage: neighbor cousin disabled and vocational marriage (8-9). As she goes on show in chapters three through six. each organized around one of these categories, these types of connubial arrangements allowed female characters secure, respectively, social empowerment. familial benefit, caretaking networks, or career access in ways that often foreclosed (9). Although she pinpoints her focus on texts written between 1850s-1870s, Schaffer's book provides an expansive view, detecting germination of familiar plot in both history and literary tradition from early modern period onward (15). Her second chapter examines an at first surprising composite of disparate texts--Romeo & Juliet, Clarissa, and Northanger Abbey--but as she traces the changing means of during two centuries preceding era. stressing cultural expectations and legal changes that gradually accumulated create these rival suitor types, her treatment of these works is illuminating and convincing (41-42). …

Children’s literature plays a crucial role in shaping young minds by constructing and representing gender roles and expectations. In classic stories, the male protagonists are usually active, adventurous, and solvers of problems, whereas the female roles are supporting, nurturing, and waiting to be rescued. This study seeks to examine images of femininity and power relations in society dealt with in children’s literature through its female characters’ levels of agency, power, and children-related roles. The data of the study involves selected excerpts from the classic children’s literature “Sindbad, the Sailor’s Seven Voyages” written anonymously in (1835) in “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” by Philadelphia/Thomas Wardle. Connell’s (1987) model of power and gender is adopted for the analysis where nine excerpts are randomly selected from the seven voyages stories of Sindbad. Each excerpt is given, then the effects of themes like authority, financial inequality, and social norms on both family and society are reflected along with discussion for each analysis. It is concluded that the traditional children’s literature often reinforces patriarchal norms, particularly in the portrayal of femininity and power dynamics. Female characters are often marginalised and used as tools to maintain male authority, reinforcing traditional gender roles and limiting female agency. Hence, the findings imply that Sindbad the Sailor’s story reflects a world shaped by patriarchal power, with women showing little economic power, not much authority, and being stuck in roles based on traditional gender norms. The conclusion proves the given hypothesis.

Women in Victorian Fantasy Anita Wilson (bio) Honig, Edith Lazaros . Breaking the Angelic Image: Woman Power in Victorian Children's Fantasy. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988. In Breaking the Angelic Image, Edith Lazaros Honig explores the "notions of femaleness that Victorian children acquired from their fantastic readings," and posits that Victorian fantasy provides a literary link between Victorian and modern fictional women. Her study is structured around four types of recurrent female characters in Victorian children's fantasy: mothers, single women (spinsters), girls, and "magical women" who combine "almost godlike power with feminine grace." Taking Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a touchstone, Honig also focuses upon fantasies by George MacDonald, Mrs. Molesworth, E. Nesbit, James Barrie, and Ford Madox Ford. Additional works are discussed less extensively, including Ruskin's The King of the Golden River, Dickens's Christmas Carol and The Magic Fishbone, Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring, Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, two tales by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and two Alice imitations, Wanted—A King, by Maggie Browne, and The Wallypug of Why, by George Edward Farrow. Honig's list of selected works is fairly predictable, since she chose to concentrate on "a small number of popular, well written, truly memorable fantasies." Although this is a reasonable approach, it would be interesting to see how Honig's analysis of female characters might apply to second-rate Victorian fantasy literature. Restricting the list to book-length fantasies also eliminates some briefer literary fairy tales with significant female characters, such as Margaret Gatty's The Fairy Godmothers and Lucy Clifford's "The New Mother." Honig draws upon Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic and Nina Auerbach's Woman and the Demon, among others, in arguing that Victorian fantasy constituted "a subversive element, a . . . quiet rebellion," in its portrayal of non-stereotypical female characters of all ages. Mothers, frequently idealized in Victorian children's fiction, were often rather distant figures in children's fantasy; this enabled authors to grant a degree of independence to their juvenile characters and to avoid the idealized maternal image without defying it overtly. As Honig points out, the distancing of mothers in fantasy literature did not necessarily render them inconsequential or weak characters. The mother in E. Nesbit's Five Children and It plays a minor role but is strong and capable when a crisis arises—hence her nickname, "The General." Even the comically vicious Duchess in Alice in Wonderland counteracts the maternal "Angel in the House" stereotype by going to the opposite extreme. The portrayal of spinsters divides along gender lines. Female authors were more likely to acknowledge the achievement and satisfaction that unmarried women could find in work, generally as teachers or governesses. Male writers usually depicted "beautiful, young, nonworking spinsters who end up happily married." A notable exception is George MacDonald's complex and sympathetic portrait of Lilith, who achieves some control over her life without rebelling overtly against male authority figures. More numerous and significant were portrayals of girls and "magical women" in Victorian fantasy. Honig regards the latter as the first positive depiction of powerful women in Victorian fiction. For a writer like Mrs. Molesworth, who wrote over one hundred books while raising seven children, and who eventually separated from her husband after years of a difficult marriage, "the magical woman afforded . . . an opportunity to show the real power of women like herself." More well developed and intriguing, however, were the magical women in George MacDonald's fantasies: the North Wind, the grandmother in The Golden Key, old Irene in The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, and Watho in The Day Boy and the Night Girl. The North Wind's relationship with Diamond shows that power and maternal love are not incompatible; in fact, as Honig observes, the North Wind enhances the maternal image in ways that Diamond's sweet and sentimental mother cannot. The grandmothers combine qualities of power and beauty with the wisdom of old age, providing role models for young girls like Tangle in The Golden Key who "need not wither into submissive adulthood" but instead can mature into women of strength as well as beauty. Watho, whose...

To her self-posed questions What is a woman's narrative? and Why Warren? Lucy Ferriss responds with an acutely perceptive examination that is groundbreaking in two regards. Sleeping with the Boss opens up the feminist critical project by showing that author gender has no bearing on the creation of feminine-structured narrative. Moreover, by exposing a considerable in the major fictional works of Robert Penn Warren, it departs dramatically from previous criticism of Warren. Ferriss, a novelist as well as a critic, expands on narrative poetics to suggest that female subjectivity is the central concept in defining a woman's narrative. Specifically, the subjective voice of a female character is present to such a degree that the traditional structures of masculine narrative (described as linear, forward moving, and authoritative) can no longer hold. Leapfrogging over existing feminist theory, she asserts that such female consciousness may permeate the writing of men as well as women. Within Warren's traditional masculine narrative style, Ferriss detects the complicating presence of female voice, with its potential to alter the focus and direction of the plot. As she demonstrates, the degree to which Warren distances himself from or steps inside his female characters' consciousness varies enormously across his career. Still, his novels reveal the consistent pattern of a major woman character in a liaison with a wealthy or powerful man; those sexual relationships, Ferriss maintains, are pivotal in establishing female personae whose subjective effect on the narrative disturbs or overturns conventional readings of the novels' meaning. For example, she presents a startlingly subversive analysis of the character Amantha Starr (Band of Angels), heretofore viewed as a simpering victim by critics. In addition to nine of Warren's novels, Ferriss critiques his book-length poem, Brother to Dragons, which in the powerful voice of Lucy Lewis exhibits the moral and narrative limitations of the male speakers even as that female voice is itself thwarted and cut off. She also explores Warren's frequent motif of the female empty-handed gesture, reading in it the author's own assumption of the feminine perspective by expressing his abdication of narrative authority and ambivalence toward ascribing meaning. Sleeping with the Boss represents a new generation of Warren scholarship, revitalizing the poet-novelist's complex oeuvre in light of contemporary concerns. It provokes a radical rethinking of some of the plot elements taken for granted by other critics of Warren's work and offers a wide range of new ways to encounter his female characters.

Quotation and Self-Fashioning in Margaret Paston’s FFousehold Letters Valerie Creelman St. Mary’s University T he private co rrespo n d en ce an d papers of the Pastons, a fif­ teenth-century gentry family of Norfolk, England, have been an invalu­ able primary source for medieval scholars in piecing together the social, cultural, economic, and domestic details of a gentlewoman’s life in the late medieval period.1 O f particular interest have been the letters of Margaret Paston, whose correspondence represents the largest preserved collection of female-authored letters by a gentlewoman in late medieval England. Despite this abundance of material, few scholars have moved beyond the historical and philological interests of these letters to discover what they can teach us about women’s rhetorical skill, compositional practices, and participation in applied rhetorics like medieval letter-writing. Recent scholarly work on the Paston women’s letters demonstrates, however, that important steps are being taken in this direction: Diane Watt, for example, explores what she terms “household rhetoric” in discussing the Paston letters, and Roger Dalrymple examines the reactive, consolatory, and redressive aspects of the Paston women’s letters. Broader in scope, l For sociohistorical discussions of fifteenth-century gentlewomen see Archer, Goldberg, Jewell, Leyser, Power, Shahar, Swabey, and Ward. ESC 30.3 (September 2004): 111-128 Valerie Creelman is an assistant professor at Saint M ary’s University. Interested in medieval women’s writing and literate practices, she explores such topics as gender, social relations, and identity through her study of fifteenthcentury gentlewomen’s letters— particularly correspondence related to household and estate administration. She recently completed her dissertation entitled Household Words: The Rhetoricity ofFifteenthCentury Gentlewomen’s Household Letters and is currently working on several projects related to medieval women’s epistolography. Earlier this year, she was nominated for the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal based on her doctoral work at the University of Waterloo. Albrecht Classen’s and Malcolm Richardson’s respective efforts have worked to provide scholars with a methodology and corpus of medieval women’s epistolary writings for further study. Each author’s scholarly work not only charts new approaches and directions in studying women’s episto­ lary writings, but also emphasizes the need for and importance of studying the rhetoric of women’s household letters to enrich our understanding of women’s literary history. While scholars agree that Margaret Paston’s letters display a woman of considerable influence and consequence in the Paston family, less attention has been directed to the language of Margaret Paston’s letters to determine how her linguistic and rhetorical choices contribute to this impression of her. One distinctive feature of Margaret Paston’s household letters is her frequent reference to and recital of external sources (individuals’ state­ ments or words) in her reports. Despite the prevalence of this practice throughout her correspondence, its purpose and rhetorical effects have not been fully explored. One obvious effect of Margaret’s incorporation of others’ reported speech is that it constructs her authorial position as a reporter, chronicler, and, perhaps, even translator of the household and estate-related events, information, and experience she recounts in her household letters. This reporting role has, however, largely character­ ized Margaret Paston’s subject position in these letters as a passive and peripheral one. This characterization is not entirely surprising given that, in discussions of medieval women’s literary history, the authorial roles of chronicler and translator have been identified as strategies of submission used by women to attach themselves to male authorities and participate in male literary activities (Barratt 12-16). Margaret’s own literary activity falls within this purview, for her routine composition of these household letters is attached to the male authority of her husband, John Paston 1. Margaret’s letter-writing is, after all, primarily motivated by her husband’s request that she provide him with an ongoing written account of household and estate matters. Consequently, the report mode that characterizes her speech function throughout her letters is one that speaks of her subordinate position as a wife obligated to provide her husband with frequent written reports in governing estate business in his absence. Taking this social dynamic into consideration, this...

This research paper examines Shakespeare's complex representation of female characters as both products of and challengers to Elizabethan gender ideologies. Through close textual analysis of key plays including As You Like It, Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale, this study reveals how Shakespeare employed theatrical conventions to critique contemporary restrictions on women's speech, sexuality, and autonomy. The paper argues that Shakespeare's stage became a subversive space where female characters could temporarily circumvent patriarchal structures through strategies of disguise, rhetorical manipulation, and performative resistance. By comparing these dramatic representations with period conduct manuals and sermons, the research demonstrates how Shakespeare both reflected and transcended Renaissance gender norms, creating female characters whose complexity continues to resonate in contemporary feminist discourse.

This thesis examines the musical and dramatic representation of female characters in two early Venetian operas: Cavalli's Ormindo (1644) and Cesti's Orontea (1656). Venetian opera is viewed through the lens of three theories of Bakhtin: 1) “polyphonic” or multiple voices; 2) “becoming” as openness to growth and change; and 3) serio-comic genres opposing authority through parody and satire. I argue that a Bakhtinian perspective provides a nuanced understanding of Venetian female characters' "voices" as conveyed in both libretti and music, in their private thoughts and public words. Both drama and music play critical roles in portraying female characters torn by inner conflicts in these operas. I argue that the strong yet flawed women who were the centrepieces of Venetian opera in its first two decades were characters with whom Venetian audience members could identify and played a role in keeping new possibilities for women alive in the social imaginary.