1 / 9

The “Nature” of Sovereignty & the Female Intellectual in Milton’s Paradise Lost

The “Nature” of Sovereignty & the Female Intellectual in Milton’s Paradise Lost. By Megan Trotter. Female Sovereignty as Access to Literature. Rise in consumerism—rise in female readership and politicized female authorship

ciqala
Download Presentation

The “Nature” of Sovereignty & the Female Intellectual in Milton’s Paradise Lost

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The “Nature” of Sovereignty &the Female Intellectual in Milton’s Paradise Lost By Megan Trotter

  2. Female Sovereignty as Access to Literature • Rise in consumerism—rise in female readership and politicized female authorship • In Genesis, Eve caused Fall when she ate from the Tree of Knowledge • Would intellectual overreaching of women in 17th century be equally catastrophic?

  3. Georges Batailles on Sovereignty • Reign of Elizabeth I fueled discourse interested in female sovereignty • For Batailles: “that which is opposed to the servile and subordinate” • Servile to work, servile to seek knowledge • Sovereign moment: when anticipation meets disappointment

  4. Shifting Topography of the Book Culture • The book as a commodity symbolizing wealth • Female idleness—female readership • Politicized female authorship • Genesis-inspired tradition of gender debate: protofeminine arguments vs. gynophobic attacks

  5. Adam’s labor-mindedness Eve’s connection to nature

  6. “So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off Human, to put on gods, death to be wished, Though threatened, which no worse than this can bring” -Satan to Eve (Book IX; lines 713-15)

  7. Works Cited Batailles, Georges. “What I Understand by Sovereignty.” The Accursed Share: Volume 3. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books, 1991. 197-237. Print. Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Inventing the Early Modern Woman Reader through the World of Goods: Lyly’s Gentlewoman Reader and Katherine Stubbes.” Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Ed. Heidi BraymanHackel and Catherine E. Kelly. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.15-35. Print. Legler, Gretchen T. “Ecofeminist Literary Criticism.” Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Ed. Karen J. Warren. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991. 355-618. Print.

  8. Works Cited Miller, Shannon. “Serpentine Eve: Milton and the Seventeenth-Century Debate Over Women. Milton Quarterly 42.1 (2008) 44-68. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. Print. Pruitt, Kristin A. “Abundant Gifts: Hierarchy and Reciprocity.” Gender and the Power of Relationship: “United as one individual soul” in Paradise Lost. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2003. 45-59. Print.

  9. Acknowledgments Kevin Curran, PhD Deborah Needleman Armintor, PhD Susan Brown Eve, PhD Gloria Cox, PhD

More Related