Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23130243 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Phyllis Rackin (University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1987 |
| Volume | 102 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-41 |
| Publication date | 1987-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0030-8129 • E-ISSN: 1938-1530 |
| Publisher | Modern Language Association (MLA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/462490 |
| OpenAlex | W2315807403 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 29 |
Changing conceptions of gender and of theatrical mimesis can be seen in the representations of transvestite heroines on the English Renaissance stage. This paper compares their roles in five comedies: Lyly's Gallathea ; Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, As You Like It , and Twelfth Night ; and Jonson's Epicoene. In each play the plot centers on marriage, the bride-to-be wears transvestite disguise, and the disguise plays a crucial role in the plot. In all five plays, the sexual ambiguity of the boy heroine is associated with the problematic relations between the male actor and the female character he portrays, the dramatic representation and the reality it imitates, the play and the audience that watches it. Increasingly rigid gender definitions and a devaluation of the feminine are associated with a rejection of fantasy, the development of neoclassical mimetic theory, and a deepening anxiety about the process of theatrical representation.
Aesthetics · Ambiguity · Androgyny · Art · Art history · Character (mathematics) · Drama · Fantasy · Linguistics · Literature · Masculinity · Plot (graphics) · Psychoanalysis · Representation (politics) · Sociology · The Renaissance · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
“The outward shows be least themselves”
In the Field of Dreams
Constructions of Female Homoerotics in Early Modern Drama
Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night
Tragic Flaws
The Cambridge Introduction to Early Modern Drama, 1576–1642
Introduction
Sexual Dissidence
Mediating Boys
Speaking Pictures
Not One Thing Exactly’
Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England
The Convention of the Boy Actor in Early Modern Tragedies
Redressing cross-dressed Shakespeare
A painter's eye
Critical theory since Plato.
Becoming visible
The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London, 1576-1642
Society and Culture in Early Modern France
The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500-1800
The Renaissance Notion of Woman
Literary Criticism
The Antitheatrical Prejudice
The Death of Nature
The Order of Things
Comic Women, Tragic Men, A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare
Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays
The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance
Elizabethan Erotic Narratives
Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays
The Renaissance Notion of Woman
Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century
Renaissance self-fashioning
Still Harping on Daughters
Shaping Fantasies
Travesties of Gender and Genre in Aristophanes' 'Thesmophoriazousae
Costumes of the Mind
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,42 |
| Citation span | 1990 - 2021 (32) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |