Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England |
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Author:
| Habermann, Ina |
ISBN: | 978-1-351-77004-0 |
Publication Date: | Dec 2023 |
Publisher: | Routledge
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Book Format: | Digital (delivered electronically) |
List Price: | USD $54.95 |
Book Description:
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This title was first published in 2003. Though the historical evidence of slander and defamation increasingly attracts the attention of early modern cultural historians and literary scholars, much of the current critical debate has failed to take into account the diverse signifying structures in which slander is embedded. In this book,the author examines oral defamation - the negative fashioning of others - as both a specific mode of communication and a symbolic practice, paying...
More DescriptionThis title was first published in 2003. Though the historical evidence of slander and defamation increasingly attracts the attention of early modern cultural historians and literary scholars, much of the current critical debate has failed to take into account the diverse signifying structures in which slander is embedded. In this book,the author examines oral defamation - the negative fashioning of others - as both a specific mode of communication and a symbolic practice, paying particular attention to the inherent theatricality of the "slander triangle", which requires an accuser, a victim and an audience. Presented as an exciting chapter in the history of culture, this study traces slander in language and rhetoric, social interaction and the law, literature and authorship as well as religion, subjectivity and the body. Looking at sexual slander in particular, Habermann shows how femininity was fashioned between praise and slander and how the "slandered heroine" came to embody an influential fantasy of femininity, which points to the importance of slander for a cultural history of gender and gender relations.