Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth-Century Women's Historical FictionGendering Classicism explores the intersection of feminism, historical fiction, and modernism through the work of six writers, all of whom wrote historical novels set in ancient Greece or Rome: Naomi Mitchison, Mary Butts, Laura Riding, Phyllis Bentley, Bryher, and Mary Renault. As women gained access to higher education in the late nineteenth century, they gained access also to the classical learning that had for so long demarcated and legitimated the British ruling classes. Steeped in misogyny, the classical tradition presented educated women with a massive project: the recasting of that tradition in terms that acknowledged the existence of women - as historical agents and interpreters of the historical past. |
Contents
Reading History Resisting History | 1 |
Greece Gender and The Golden Bough | 15 |
History Ritual and Gender in Naomi Mitchisons Greece | 25 |
Mana and Narrative in Mary Buttss Greece | 43 |
Laura Riding Unwrites the White Goddess | 57 |
Genital Ambiguity in Mary Renaults Historical Novels | 73 |
Gender and Narrative in Bryhers Gate to the Sea | 89 |
Ancient Rome Gender and British Imperialism | 103 |
Naomi Mitchison and Rome | 119 |
Mary Buttss Cleopatra | 137 |
Historical Fiction as Equivocation | 151 |
Bryher the GraecoPhoenician and Rome | 165 |
Works Cited | 181 |
Other editions - View all
Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth-Century Women's ... Ruth Hoberman Limited preview - 1997 |
Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth-Century Women's ... Ruth Hoberman Limited preview - 1997 |
Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth-century Women's ... Ruth Hoberman No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
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