Short description:

* Provides the definitive feminist statement on Shakespeare for the 21st century.

* Addresses issues vital to feminist inquiry, including race, sexuality, the body, queer politics, capitalism.

* Appropriates for feminism questions of textual editing and theater history.

Long description:

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken by all-women team of contributors to
A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare.

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. The all-women team of contributors to
A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare argues that not only is Shakespeare important for women, his works are specifically important for feminism.

The collected essays address issues vital to feminist inquiry such as race, sexuality, the body, queer politics, and the advent of capitalism, but also appropriate ground that has been hitherto regarded as terrain hostile to feminism, such as textual editing and theatre history.

Contributors include both influential voices in the field and new feminist scholars offering fresh and exciting insights. Each contributor is committed to providing beginning students (both female and male) with an accessible foundation for study, while negotiating for the more advanced reader the urgent issues of the field.

A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare is the first feminist statement on Shakespeare for the 21st century.

"These 19 original essays reveal the exciting range of inquiry within the feminist community of early-modern scholars . . . the anthology excels in offering clear statements about the implications of feminist practice and absolutely up-to-date scholarship . . . This excellent volume should become a classic of feminist Shakespeare criticism". Choice. <!--end-->

"A feisty collection of articles - all by women - intensely critical of patriarchal control of the Bard and how that has underpinned Western social injustices". Times Literary Supplement.

Table of Contents:

List of Contributors.

Introduction: Dympna Callaghan.

Part I: The history of feminist Shakespeare criticism:.

1. The Ladies' Shakespeare: Juliet Fleming.

2. Margaret Cavendish, Shakespeare Critic: Katherine M. Romack.

3. Misogyny is Everywhere: Phyllis Rackin.

Part II: Text and Language:.

4. Feminist Editing and the Body of the Text: Laurie E Maguire.

5. Made to write 'whore' Upon?: Male and Female Use of the Word "Whore" in Shakespeare's Canon: Kay Stanton.

6. A word, Sweet Lucrece: Confession, Feminism and The Rape of Lucrece: Margo Hendricks.

Part III: Social Economies:.

7. Gender, Class, and the Ideology of Comic Form, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night: Mihoko Suzuki.

8. Gendered 'Gifts' in Shakespeare's Belmont: The Economies of Exchange in Early Modern England: Jyotsna G. Singh.

Part IV: Race and Colonialism:.

9. The Great Indian Vanishing Trick-Colonialism, Property and the Family in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Ania Loomba.

10. Black Ram, White Ewe: Shakespeare, Race, and Women: Joyce Green MacDonald.

11. Sycorax in Algiers: Cultural Politics and Gynecology in Early Modern England: Rachana Sachdev.

12. Black and White and Dread All Over: The Shakespeare Theater's "Photonegative" Othello and the body of Desdemona: Denise Albanese.

Part V: Performing Sexuality:.

13. Women and Boys Playing Shakespeare: Juliet Dusinberre.

14. Mutant Scenes and 'Minor' Conflicts in Richard II: MollySmith.

15. Lovesickness, Gender, and Subjectivity: Twelfth Night and As You Like It: Carol Thomas Neely.

16. In the Lesbian Void: Woman-Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare's Plays: Theodora Jankowski.

17. Duncan's Corpse: Susan Zimmerman.

Part VI: Religion:.

18. Others and Lovers in The Merchant of Venice: M. Lindsay Kaplan.

19. Between Idolatry and Astrology: Modes of Temporal Repetition in Romeo and Juliet: Philippa Berry.

Index.