Synopses & Reviews
Study of women as readers and writers of Renaissance romance.
Review
"Provocative and lively.... Like any ambitious study, Hackett's book intriduces as many new questions into the critical arena as it answers, but in doing so, it takes a timely step that ought to invite more interest in this particular aspect of Renaissance romance." Sidney Journal"Hackett's book represents an important intervention in the study of Renaissance romances precisely because she offers the most comprehensive, clear and succinct deconstruction of such misconceptions, as well as providing useful paradigms for alternative ways of reading the Renaissance romance...Hackett's argument is strong, clear and convincing." The Spenser Review"Hackett makes her way deftly and perceptively through many texts and many issues, since "women" in her title refers to female characters, to female readers real and imagined, and to female authors." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations and a note on the text; Introduction; 1. The readership of Renaissance romance; 2. Renaissance romance and modern romance; 3. Novellas of the 1560s and 1570s; 4. Spanish and Portuguese romances; 5. Fictions addressed to women by Lyly, Rich and Greene; 6. The Arcadia: readership and authorship; 7. The Arcadia: heroines; 8. The Faerie Queene; 9. Shakespeare's romance sources; 10. Lady Mary Wroth's Urania; Epilogue: the later seventeenth century; Notes; Bibliography; Index.