A Contextual Study: The Religious, Gender, and Identity Politics of Obedience in Edward III

• Main Authors: Yu-wen Wei, 魏毓文
• Other Authors: Ying-nan Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/21379293104044736689

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 92 === Abstract In this thesis, I investigate the religious, gender, and identity politics of obedience as manifested in the recently attributed Shakespearean play, Edward III, within a cultural materialist framework. In chapter one, I begin my project by examining the impacts of the Protestant marital ideology on the social status of women and the ways in which patriarchal writers appropriate the Bible to construct women as psychologically, intellectually, and morally inferior, thereby justifying the social and political subordination of early modern women. In chapter two, I turn to investigate how females were represented on the early modern stage by examining Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling (1653), John Wesbter’s The Duchess of Malfi (1623), and George Peele’s The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe (1599). This chapter focuses on the ways in which dramatists engaged with the contemporary querrelles des femmes through the representation of a number of strong women that challenge patriarchal society with varying degree of success. Finally, in my third chapter, I situate Edward III in the context of the Reformation movement and delineate the ways in which the play participates and intervenes in the religious, gender and identity politics of obedience in early modern English culture. I interrogate the pessimistic idea in current critical literature that a strong female presence in history plays is always demonized, victimized, or marginalized. I contend that the English nation-building project is impossible without the presence of a strong and virtuous female that helps to shape and direct the course of history in Edward III.