Female Quixotism

Download or read book Discerning Characters written by Christopher J. Lukasik and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-07-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this path-breaking study of the intersections between visual and literary culture, Christopher J. Lukasik explores how early Americans grappled with the relationship between appearance and social distinction in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Through a wide range of evidence, including canonical and obscure novels, newspapers, periodicals, scientific and medical treatises, and plays as well as conduct manuals, portraits, silhouettes, and engravings, Discerning Characters charts the transition from the eighteenth century's emphasis on performance and manners to the search for a more reliable form of corporeal legibility in the wake of the Revolution. The emergence of physiognomy, which sought to understand a person's character based on apparently unchanging facial features, facilitated a larger shift in perception about the meanings of physical appearance and its relationship to social distinction. The ensuing struggle between the face as a pliable medium of cultural performance and as rigid evidence of social standing, Lukasik argues, was at the center of the post-Revolutionary novel, which imagined physiognomic distinction as providing stability during a time of cultural division and political turmoil. As Lukasik shows, this tension between a model of character grounded in the fluid performances of the self and one grounded in the permanent features of the face would continue to shape not only the representation of social distinction within the novel but, more broadly, the practices of literary production and reception in nineteenth-century America across a wide range of media. The result is a new interdisciplinary interpretation of the rise of the novel in America that reconsiders the political and social aims of the genre during the fifty years following the Revolution. In so doing, Discerning Characters powerfully rethinks how we have read—and continue to read—both novels and each other.

Download or read book The Female Quixote written by Charlotte Lennox and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Female Quixote completely inverts the adventures of Don Quixote. While the latter mistook himself for the hero of a Romance, Arabella believes she is the fair maiden. She believes she can fell a hero with one look and that any number of lovers would be happy to suffer on her behalf.

Download or read book The Practice of Quixotism written by S. Gordon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-11-13 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using postmodern theory, The Practice of Quixotism explores eighteenth-century women's texts that use quixote narratives, which typically demand that individuals purge their minds of internalized fictions to insist instead that the reality we encounter is inevitably mediated by the texts we have read.

Download or read book Executing Race written by Sharon M. Harris and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Executing Race examines the multiple ways in which race, class, and the law impacted women's lives in the 18th century and, equally important, the ways in which women sought to change legal and cultural attitudes in this volatile period. Through an examination of infanticide cases, Harris reveals how conceptualizations of women, especially their bodies and their legal rights, evolved over the course of the 18th century. Early in the century, infanticide cases incorporated the rhetoric of the witch trials. However, at mid-century, a few women, especially African American women, began to challenge definitions of "bastardy" (a legal requirement for infanticide), and by the end of the century, women were rarely executed for this crime as the new nation reconsidered illegitimacy in relation to its own struggle to establish political legitimacy. Against this background of legal domination of women's lives, Harris exposes the ways in which women writers and activists negotiated legal territory to invoke their voices into the radically changing legal discourse.

Download or read book The Age of Reasons written by Wendy Motooka and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading novels by the Fieldings, Lennox and Sterne alongside the works of Adam Smith, Motooka argues that the legacy of sentimentalism is the social sciences of today.

Download or read book Female Quixotism written by Tabitha Tenney and published by . This book was released on 1841 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Women’s Narratives of the Early Americas and the Formation of Empire written by Mary McAleer Balkun and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection examine the connections between the forces of empire and women's lives in the early Americas, in particular the ways their narratives contributed to empire formation. Focusing on the female body as a site of contestation, the essays describe acts of bravery, subversion, and survival expressed in a variety of genres, including the saga, letter, diary, captivity narrative, travel narrative, verse, sentimental novel, and autobiography. The volume also speaks to a range of female experience, across the Americas and across time, from the Viking exploration to early nineteenth-century United States, challenging scholars to reflect on the implications of early American literature even to the present day.