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dc.contributor.advisorRhodes, Neil
dc.contributor.authorHeard, Rachel E.
dc.coverage.spatial231 p.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2018-06-29T11:55:54Z
dc.date.available2018-06-29T11:55:54Z
dc.date.issued2003
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/14747
dc.description.abstractThis thesis attempts to provide an historicised account of excuse-making strategies in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature. This issue is considered, broadly, in the light of the pervasive influence of rhetoric in early modem culture at large, and specifically, as an aspect of the rhetorical construction of moral ambiguity in Shakespearean drama. Its chief concern is with the intractable ambiguity of 'favourable interpretations' or 'charitable constructions' of actions or events, the apparent desirability of which seems beyond doubt. Chapter I uses the 'generosity' often regarded as Shakespeare's own trademark as a way into exploring the aims of the thesis. Its central section focuses more closely on the ambiguity inherent in a 'female rhetoric' of mitigation, apology and extenuation. Where these chapters concentrate on 'covert' excuse-making strategies. Chapter V, by contrast, begins with an exploration of the early modern transformation (or domestication) of classical, female orators into decent, modest, seventeenth-century women. The thesis concludes with an account of Shakespeare's suppliant women, a group of petitioners who are repeatedly represented 'between men'. The persistence of this pattern, I argue, stresses the extent to which excuse-making is gendered, and might be read, as well, as the playwright's own attempt to 'contain' the radical moral ambiguity (radical because as difficult to condone as to condemn) generated by such 'female' excuse-making.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of St Andrews
dc.subject.lccPR2991.H4
dc.subject.lcshShakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretationen
dc.subject.lcshSex role in literatureen
dc.titleShakespeare, gender and the rhetoric of excuseen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.contributor.sponsorArts and Humanities Research Boarden_US
dc.contributor.sponsorUniversity of St Andrewsen_US
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen_US
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD Doctor of Philosophyen_US
dc.publisher.institutionThe University of St Andrewsen_US


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