{"title":"Women, class, and the language of madness in early modern English drama","authors":"S. Clark","doi":"10.34136/sederi.2014.1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the depiction of madwomen in a range of early modern English plays including some by Shakespeare in order to show how their madness operates at the intersection of gender, genre, and social class. Its particular focus is on language, and it argues that the speech styles of madwomen are essentially similar whatever their social class. For women, madness is a linguistically liberating condition, bringing together high and low cultural discourses. While stage madwomen’s language has similarities with that of madmen, it is more licentious and transgressive because the violation of social and behavioural norms is more extreme.","PeriodicalId":41004,"journal":{"name":"SEDERI-Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies","volume":"217 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"SEDERI-Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.34136/sederi.2014.1","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper discusses the depiction of madwomen in a range of early modern English plays including some by Shakespeare in order to show how their madness operates at the intersection of gender, genre, and social class. Its particular focus is on language, and it argues that the speech styles of madwomen are essentially similar whatever their social class. For women, madness is a linguistically liberating condition, bringing together high and low cultural discourses. While stage madwomen’s language has similarities with that of madmen, it is more licentious and transgressive because the violation of social and behavioural norms is more extreme.
期刊介绍:
SEDERI, Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, is an annual open-access publication devoted to current criticism and scholarship on English Renaissance Studies. It is peer-reviewed by external referees, following a double-blind policy.