| Description |
xx, 233 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm |
| Contents |
1. Popular balladry, Mary Ambree, and the beginnings of the Female Warrior motif, 1600-1650 -- 2. The fashion for Female Warrior ballads: new "hits" and old favorites, 1650-1800 -- 3. The museum life of Mary Ambree and the decline of the Female Warrior, 1800 to the present -- 4. The Female Warrior motif as an idea -- 5. The Female Warrior and everyday life in the early modern world -- 6. The Female Warrior and the construction of gender -- 7. Hic-Mulier: imaginative preoccupation and genotype for the Female Warrior -- 8. The Female Warrior, Gay's Polly, and the heroic ideal |
| Summary |
Masquerading as a man, seeking adventure, going to war or to sea for love and glory, the transvestite heroine flourished in all kinds of literature, especially ballads, from the Renaissance to the Victorian age. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850 identifies this heroine and her significance as a figure in folklore, and as a representative of popular culture, prompting important reevaluations of gender and sexuality. Dugaw has uncovered a fascination with women cross-dressers in the popular literature of early modern Europe and America. Surveying a wide range of Anglo-American texts from popular ballads and chapbook life histories to the comedies and tragedies of aristocratic literature, she demonstrates the extent to which gender and sexuality are enacted as constructs of history |
| Notes |
Originally published: Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1989. (Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 4) |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 220-223) and index |
| Subject |
Ballads, English -- England -- History and criticism.
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Ballads, English -- Great Britain -- History and criticism.
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Cross-dressers in literature.
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Cross-dressing in literature.
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Heroines in literature.
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Popular literature -- England -- History and criticism.
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Popular literature -- Great Britain -- History and criticism.
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War poetry, English -- History and criticism.
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Women heroes -- In literature.
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Women in literature.
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Women soldiers in literature.
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| LC no. |
95034137 |
| ISBN |
0226169162 (paperback: alk. paper) |
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