The Convent Of Pleasure

Download or read book The Convent of Pleasure written by Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle and published by Young Writers. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays written by Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle and published by . This book was released on 1999-06-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), until recently remembered more as a flamboyant eccentric than as a serious writer, was in fact the most prolific, thought-provoking, and original woman writer of the Restoration. Cavendish is the author of many poems, short stories, biographies, memoirs, letters, philosophical and scientific works (including The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, the first work of science fiction by a woman), and nineteen plays. "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays collects four of Cavendish's dramatic works that are among the most revealing of her attitudes toward marriage and her desire for fame. Loves Adventures (1662) centers on a woman succeeding in war and diplomacy by passing as a man. Similarly, the heroine of Bell in Campo (1662) rescues her husband at the head of an army of women in this tale of a marriage of near equals. The Convent of Pleasure (1668) proposes a separatist community of women and has received attention for its suggestion of lesbian sexuality. The Bridals (1662), a more typical restoration comedy satirizing marriage, rounds out the collection. Edited with notes and annotation by Anne Shaver, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays also contains a timeline, biography and bibliography of the Duchess, an appreciation of Cavendish's life and work, and a bibliography of critical essays. Also included are all of Cavendish's epistles To the Reader as well as Other Preliminary Matter from Playes (1662), and Cavendish's original preface to Plays Never Before Printed (1668). A valuable collection from an extraordinary writer, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays raises important issues about women and gender.

Download or read book The Convent of Pleasure written by Margaret Cavendish and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Convent of Pleasure (1868) is a closet drama by Margaret Cavendish. Intended for private performance rather than the stage, The Convent of Pleasure is a comedy that critiques the institution of marriage and explores the possibility of lesbian desire in a patriarchal society. Published under the author’s own name—a rare feat for a woman of her time—The Convent of Pleasure is a groundbreaking work of queer utopian literature that continues to inform and inspire artists and critics alike. “Put the case I should Marry the best of Men, if any best there be; yet would a Marry'd life have more crosses and sorrows then pleasure, freedom, or hapiness: nay Marriage to those that are virtuous is a greater restraint then a Monastery.” Tired of the ways of men, Lady Happy encourages her friends to join an experimental cloister devoted to feminine autonomy, friendship, and desire. Despite opposition from angry Monsieurs and the skeptical Madam Mediator, the woman forge a tight-knit group and seem prepared to defy the institution of marriage while pursuing romantic relationships with their fellow women. Before long, a mysterious Princess seeks entry to the convent. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Download or read book The Sixteen Pleasures written by Robert Hellenga and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art and poetry, mystery and desire collide in this sensual and “elegantly moving” literary romance set in the cobbled streets and painted halls of Florence, Italy (New Yorker). Margot Harrington, an American volunteer in Florence, is an expert at book conservancy. While struggling to save a waterlogged convent library, she comes across a fabulous volume of 16 erotic drawings by Giulio Romano, accompanying 16 steamy sonnets by Pietro Aretino. When first published over 4 centuries ago, the Vatican ordered all copies destroyed. This one—now unique—volume has survived. The abbess prevails upon Margot to save the order’s finances by selling the magnificently illustrated erotica discreetly—meaning without the bishop’s knowledge. Margot’s other clandestine project is a middle-aged Italian who is boldly attempting radical measures to save endangered frescoes. She is 29 and available; he, older and married. He shares her sense of mission and soon her bed in this daring story of spiritual longing and earthly desire.

Download or read book Convents and Novices in Early Modern English Dramatic Works written by Vanessa L. Rapatz and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convents and Novices in Early Modern English Dramatic Works attends to the religious, social, and material changes in England during the century following the Reformation, specifically examining how the English came to terms with the meanings of convents and novices even after they disappeared from the physical and social landscape. In five chapters, it traces convents and novices across a range of dramatic texts that refuse easy generic classification: problem plays such as Shakespeare's Measure for Measure; Marlowe's comic tragedy The Jew of Malta; Margaret Cavendish's closet dramas The Convent of Pleasure and The Religious; Aphra Behn's Restoration comedy The Rover; and seventeenth-century dialogues that include both a Catholic treatise promoting women's entrance into European convents and a proto-pornographic exposé of such convents. Convents, novices, and problem plays emerge as parallel sites of ambiguity that reflect the social, political, and religious uncertainties England faced after the Reformation.

Download or read book Paper Bodies written by Margaret Cavendish and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2000-01-20 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Cavendish was one of the most subversive and entertaining writers of the seventeenth century. She invented new genres, challenged gender roles, and critiqued the new science as well as the mores of society. “Paper Bodies” was the wonderful phrase she used to described her manuscripts, which she hoped would continue to make “a great Blazing Light” after her death. There are connections here to Cavendish’s most famous work, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), a unique tale of a woman travelling through the north pole to a strange new world. In addition to The Blazing World, this volume includes Cavendish’s brief autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life (1667), her play The Convent of Pleasure, and selections from her Sociable Letters, her poetry, and her critical writings. A variety of background documents by other seventeenth-century writers helps to set her work in context for the modern reader.

Download or read book Lace written by Shirley Conran and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" Four elegant, successful, and sophisticated women in their forties are called to New York's Pierre Hotel to meet Lili -- a beautiful, young, and notoriously temperamental Hollywood movie star. None of the women knows exactly why she is there; each has a reason to hate Lili and each of them is astonished to see the others. They are old friends who share a guilty secret and who have for years been doing their best to keep that secret quiet. Their lives are changed forever, however, when Lili suddenly confronts them. When the women refuse to answer her, Lili proceeds to travel around the world through the playgrounds of the rich and famous, seeking to answer the question that has obsessed and almost destroyed her. From Paris to London, from the boardroom to the bedroom, Lace takes the reader into the rarified world of five unforgettable women who are as beautiful, as complex and as strong as...lace.