Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England

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Cornell University Press, 1994 - History - 309 pages
Weaving a complex tapestry out of intellectual history and literary analysis, Lena Cowen Orlin examines how the private issues of contentious marital relations and household governance became public - through conduct manuals, sermons, political tracts, and philosophical treatises, as well as domestic tragedies - in the culture of post-Reformation England. Orlin first draws on rich archival evidence in telling the story of the Ardens. Although Arden of Feversham fulfilled the conservative project of confirming patriarchal authority in the home at a time of social upheaval, Orlin finds that later domestic tragedies such as A Woman Killed with Kindness and Othello were less predictable in their aims.

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Contents

Chapter One The Place of the Private
15
Coda One Alyce Arderns Rapes
79
Chapter Two Patriarchalism and Its Discontents
85
Copyright

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