S. P. Cerasano, Morton Wynne-Davies (Editors)
Gloriana's Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance.
Wayne State University Press, 1992. First printing. 0814324266 xiv/234 pages
Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9.5", is bound in black cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"This collection of original essays examines the dichotomy between the public and private worlds of women from the early Renaissance to the 1650s.
The essays are arranged to highlight the movement from the private, Elizabethan woman to her more public, Carolingean counterpart. Through the changing images of Elizabeth I's portraits, the introduction contextualizes the transformation from the iconographic queen to her more independent identity as Gloriana. Individual essays explore women's diaries, the fashioning of Elizabeth I's political persona in her parliamentary speeches, and the maternal subtexts of Sidney's "Arcadia" and of "King Lear." Other essays analyze the framing nomenclature associated with Shakespeare's Kates, the legal and linguistic subversion of "Much Ado about Nothing," and the disruption of conventional women's identities in the Jacobean court masque. Finally, the radical puritanical sects are discussed in light of their feminist spirituality."