Authorizing Early Modern European Women
From Biography to Biofiction
Naomi Miller editor James Fitzmaurice editor Sara Jayne Steen editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Amsterdam University Press
Published:6th Dec '21
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.
Co-Honorable Mention for the 2022 Collaborative Project Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG)
"This innovative and groundbreaking volume addresses a gap in scholarship as it investigates the diverse approaches and strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights and screenwriters who are bringing women of the early-modern era to life for the public. Although early modern women increasingly appear in popular culture, such depictions have until now received little scholarly attention. Overall, this collection makes a significant contribution towards the growing field of biofiction, and will begin important conversations concerning how such fictionalizations can offer insight into both the early modern period and contemporary culture and its concerns."
- Professor Lisa Walters, University of Queensland, Australia
"The richly various essays in this collection, ranging over topics, including literature, embroidery, music and art, offer an extraordinary range of insights into the lived experience of women’s lives in the early modern period. But they do more than that: they also show how these women’s lives and works have informed and interacted with our own and continue to matter today."
- Professor Lisa Hopkins, Head of Research Degrees in the Social and Economic Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University, UK
ISBN: 9789463727143
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
288 pages