ABSTRACT

Women, `Race' and Writing in the Early Modern Period is an extraordinarily comprehensive interdisciplinary examination of one of the most neglected areas in current scholarship. The contributors use literary, historical, anthropological and medical materials to explore an important intersection within the major era of European imperial expansion. The volume looks at: * the conditions of women's writing and the problems of female authorship in the period. * the tensions between recent feminist criticism and the questions of `race', empire and colonialism. *the relationship between the early modern period and post-colonial theory and recent African writing. Women, `Race' and Writing in the Early Modern Period contains ground-breaking work by some of the most exciting scholars in contemporary criticism and theory. It will be vital reading for anyone working or studying in the field.

chapter |14 pages

Introduction

part I|56 pages

Defining Differences

chapter 2|18 pages

The Color of Patriarchy

Critical difference, cultural difference, and Renaissance drama

chapter 2|20 pages

"The Getting of a Lawful Race"

Racial discourse in early modern England and the unrepresentable black woman

chapter 3|16 pages

The Face of Domestication

Physiognomy, gender politics, and humanism's others

part II|89 pages

Male Writing, Exoticism, Empire

chapter 4|11 pages

Cannibalism, Homophobia, Women

Montaigne's "Des cannibales" and "De l'amitié"

chapter 5|17 pages

Fantasies of "Race and "Gender"

Africa, Othello and bringing to light

chapter 6|17 pages

An English Lass Amid the Moors

Gender, race, sexuality, and national identity in Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West

chapter 7|20 pages

Amazons and Africans

Gender, race, and empire in Daniel Defoe

chapter 8|22 pages

The Other Woman

Polygamy, Pamela, and the prerogative of empire

part III|79 pages

Female Authorship and Negotiating Differences

chapter 10|17 pages

"I Rather Would Wish to be a Black-Moor"

Beauty, race, and rank in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania

chapter 11|14 pages

The Tenth Muse

Gender, rationality, and the marketing of knowledge

chapter 12|16 pages

Juggling the Categories of Race, Class, and Gender

Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

part IV|59 pages

Gender, Race, and Class: Colonial and Postcolonial

chapter 15|13 pages

Andean Witches and Virgins

Seventeenth-century nativism and subversive gender ideologies

chapter 16|15 pages

Invaded Women

Gender, race, and class in the formation of colonial society