Women, Space and Utopia 1600–1800

Women, Space and Utopia 1600–1800
Author: Nicole Pohl
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351871420

The first full length study of women's utopian spatial imagination in the seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries, this book explores the sophisticated correlation between identity and social space. The investigation is mainly driven by conceptual questions and thus seeks to link theoretical debates about space, gender and utopianism to historiographic debates about the (gendered) social production of space. As Pohl's primary aim is to demonstrate how women writers explore the complex (gender) politics of space, specific attention is given to spaces that feature widely in contemporary utopian imagination: Arcadia, the palace, the convent, the harem and the country house. The early modern writers Lady Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish seek to recreate Paradise in their versions of Eden and Jerusalem; the one yearns for Arcadia, the other for Solomon's Temple. Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell redefine the convent as an emancipatory space, dismissing its symbolic meaning as a confining and surveilled architecture. The utopia of the country house in the work of Delarivier Manley, Sarah Scott and Mary Hamilton will reveal how women writers resignify the traditional metonym of the country estate. The study will finish with an investigation of Oriental tales and travel writing by Ellis Cornelia Knight, Lady Mary Montagu, Elizabeth Craven and Lady Hester Stanhope who unveil the seraglio as a location for a Western, specifically masculine discourse on Orientalism, despotism and female sexuality and offers their own utopian judgment.

Women, Space and Utopia 1600-1800

Women, Space and Utopia 1600-1800
Author: Nicole Pohl
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-03-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9781138264816

The first full length study of women's utopian spatial imagination in the seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries, this book explores the sophisticated correlation between identity and social space. The investigation is mainly driven by conceptual questions and thus seeks to link theoretical debates about space, gender and utopianism to historiographic debates about the (gendered) social production of space. As Pohl's primary aim is to demonstrate how women writers explore the complex (gender) politics of space, specific attention is given to spaces that feature widely in contemporary utopian imagination: Arcadia, the palace, the convent, the harem and the country house. The early modern writers Lady Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish seek to recreate Paradise in their versions of Eden and Jerusalem; the one yearns for Arcadia, the other for Solomon's Temple. Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell redefine the convent as an emancipatory space, dismissing its symbolic meaning as a confining and surveilled architecture. The utopia of the country house in the work of Delarivier Manley, Sarah Scott and Mary Hamilton will reveal how women writers resignify the traditional metonym of the country estate. The study will finish with an investigation of Oriental tales and travel writing by Ellis Cornelia Knight, Lady Mary Montagu, Elizabeth Craven and Lady Hester Stanhope who unveil the seraglio as a location for a Western, specifically masculine discourse on Orientalism, despotism and female sexuality and offers their own utopian judgment.

Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660

Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660
Author: Marcus Nevitt
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2006
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780754641155

An important study of the relationship between female agency and cheap print throughout the revolutionary decades 1640 to 1660, this book offers an analysis of the ways in which groups of non-aristocratic women circumvented a number of assumptions about f

English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700

English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700
Author: Alexandra Verini
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2022-06-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3031009177

English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood uncovers a tradition of women’s utopianism that extends back to medieval women’s monasticism, overturning accounts of utopia that trace its origins solely to Thomas More. As enclosed spaces in which women wielded authority that was unavailable to them in the outside world, medieval and early modern convents were self-consciously engaged in reworking pre-existing cultural heritage to project desired proto-feminist futures. The utopianism developed within the English convent percolated outwards to unenclosed women's spiritual communities such as Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin and the Ferrar family at Little Gidding. Convent-based utopianism further acted as an unrecognized influence on the first English women’s literary utopias by authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell. Collectively, these female communities forged a mode of utopia that drew on the past to imagine new possibilities for themselves as well as for their larger religious and political communities. Tracking utopianism from the convent to the literary page over a period of 300 years, New Kingdoms writes a new history of medieval and early modern women’s intellectual work and expands the concept of utopia itself.

Gender and Utopia in the Eighteenth Century

Gender and Utopia in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Brenda Tooley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317130308

Focusing on eighteenth-century constructions of symbolic femininity and eighteenth-century women's writing in relation to contemporary utopian discourse, this volume adjusts our understanding of the utopia of the Enlightenment, placing a unique emphasis on colonial utopias. These essays reflect on issues related to specific configurations of utopias and utopianism by considering in detail English and French texts by both women (Sarah Scott, Sarah Fielding, Isabelle de Charrière) and men (Paltock and Montesquieu). The contributors ask the following questions: In the influential discourses of eighteenth-century utopian writing, is there a place for 'woman,' and if so, what (or where) is it? How do 'women' disrupt, confirm, or ground the utopian projects within which these constructs occur? By posing questions about the inscription of gender in the context of eighteenth-century utopian writing, the contributors shed new light on the eighteenth-century legacies that continue to shape contemporary views of social and political progress.

Utopianism for a Dying Planet

Utopianism for a Dying Planet
Author: Gregory Claeys
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2024-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691236682

How the utopian tradition offers answers to today’s environmental crises In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today's thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. Gregory Claeys unfolds his argument through a wide-ranging consideration of utopian literature, social theory, and intentional communities. He defends a realist definition of utopia, focusing on ideas of sociability and belonging as central to utopian narratives. He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. Claeys contends that the current global warming limit of 1.5C (2.7F) will result in cataclysm if there is no further reduction in the cap. In response, he offers a radical Green New Deal program, which combines ideas from the theory of sociability with proposals to withdraw from fossil fuels and cease reliance on unsustainable commodities. An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it.

Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space

Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space
Author: Sotirios Triantafyllos
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1648892868

'Topos in Utopia' examines early modern literary utopias' and intentional communities' social and cultural conception of space. Starting from Thomas More's seminal work, published in 1516, and covering a period of three centuries until the emergence of Enlightenment's euchronia, this work provides a thorough yet concise examination of the way space was imagined and utilised in the early modern visions of a better society. Dealing with an aspect usually ignored by the scholars of early modern utopianism, this book asks us to consider if utopias' imaginary lands are based not only on abstract ideas but also on concrete spaces. Shedding new light on a period where reformation zeal, humanism's optimism, colonialism's greed and a proto-scientific discourse were combined to produce a series of alternative social and political paradigms, this work transports us from the shores of America to the search for the Terra Australis Incognita and the desire to find a new and better world for us.

The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature
Author: Gregory Claeys
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521886651

Using a combination of historical and thematic approaches, this volume engages with the fascinating and complex genre of utopian literature.

Utopian Negotiation

Utopian Negotiation
Author: Oddvar Holmesland
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2013-06-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0815652089

Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) were two of the boldest women authors of seventeenth century England. They made gestures toward a utopian future involving female emancipation and gender agreement, but depicted a world too complex for simple answers. In the first book-length exploration of the two authors together, Holmesland reevaluates the nature of utopianism in the writings of both, considering a wide range of their literary output. Both writers try to avoid fixed positions, exploring areas in between, seeking mediating solutions through "utopian negotiation." Requiring more equal gender relations, for instance, they challenge patriarchalism; however, while seeking to redefine the heroic code of honor, idealizing gentleness in men, they call for a femininity with heroic resources. Aspiring to such ideals of male-female mutuality, both authors extend this thinking to their view of the body politic.