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Indlæser... Elizabeth I: A Feminist Perspective (Berg Women's Series)af Susan Bassnett
   Ingen Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. 4   mcalister | Aug 15, 2010 |  ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Elizabeth I is probably the most famous English woman ever to have lived. She has been celebrated as a great stateswoman, during whose reign England acquired some degree of security in the troubled European arena and at the same time began to lay the foundations for its future empire. She presided over a country undergoing a cultural renaissance previously unimagined. By the time of her death at the age of seventy in 1603, she was being heralded as rival to the Virgin Mary, as a second Queen of Earth and Heaven, as a woman more than mortal women. She has provided subject-matter for innumerable books: seventy biographies have appeared since 1890 and it is impossible to list the enormous number of historical novels based on some part of her life.However, among the many books written about Elizabeth I there is none like this one: Bassnett looks at the life and achievements of Elizabeth from a twentieth-century feminist perspective and considers her as writer, politician, scholar and woman. As a result she succeeds in presenting a more rounded portrait of a figure who has fascinated successive generations but whose private and public life has frequently been the subject of fantasy and speculation. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsIngenPopulære omslag  
 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)942.05History and Geography Europe England and Wales England 1485-1603, TudorsLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (4.17)
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5
This is not a "standard" work of biography, in that Bassnett does not attempt to educate the reader about the complete story of Elizabeth's life from birth to death. Instead, Bassnett examines Elizabeth's life topically, using each chapter to explore a different aspect of the Elizabethean mythos. As such, this book will probably not appeal to anyone looking for an introduction, but rather to those readers already somewhat familiar with her life.
Her argument centers around the idea that the Elizabethan mythology has been both structured and fractured by the accretions of centuries. Elizabeth's unique story and strong personality have both fascinated and repulsed historians and writers, probably since the day she took the throne. Biographers, whether consciously or not, have ever since tried to "explain" her by resorting to interpretive typologies that, Bassnett claims, have unfortunately all been subtly shaped by sexism: "Elizabeth the despot, Elizabeth the lover, Elizabeth the inadequate monarch, Elizabeth the incomplete woman and many others." (120) As Bassnett readily admits, Elizabeth was often publicly ambiguous and remains difficult to interpret, but she finds the constant reliance on negative interpretations (capricious, flirtatious, etc.) to be a subtle if enduring expression of sexist stereotypes about women, rather than reasoned explanations of how Elizabeth was able to rule so strongly in spite of the odds.
This is an exquisitely written book -- short, to the point, and happily free from both jargon and theory. Anyone interested in the life and legend of Elizabeth I, or the pitfalls of biography in general, should read this book. (