Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgements
- 1 The Labyrinthine Baroque
- 2 The Female Baroque
- 3 Catholic Female Baroque
- 4 Protestant Baroque
- 5 The Female Baroque in Court and Country
- 6 Lady Mary Wroth: The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
- 7 From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn
- Postscript
- About the Author
- Index
7 - From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction and Acknowledgements
- 1 The Labyrinthine Baroque
- 2 The Female Baroque
- 3 Catholic Female Baroque
- 4 Protestant Baroque
- 5 The Female Baroque in Court and Country
- 6 Lady Mary Wroth: The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
- 7 From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn
- Postscript
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Here I consider two women writers whose work marks a transition from the Baroque to Enlightenment. Margaret Cavendish figures in two diverging intellectual worlds. There are multiple rich, if often contradictory, Baroque aspects to her life and writings. However, she later developed an ambivalence towards the new empirical science, the dynamics of which point us beyond the Baroque to the Enlightenment. Aphra Behn's groundbreaking writings are frequently described as Baroque but she, too, is moving into a new cultural paradigm: just as, at the beginning of the period, the Baroque spasmodically surfaced in Pembroke and Lanyer, in the late seventeenth century, some Baroque characteristics blazed spectacularly before merging into Enlightenment culture and literary neo-classicism.
Key words: Baroque to Enlightenment; Margaret Cavendish; Aphra Behn and Baroque Hörigkeit; Women and Restoration Libertinism; women in early modern science
Multiple facets, plural transitions …. mobile, playful, reinvented on the go.
‒ Julia Kristeva.Margaret Cavendish's Blazing Baroque World
Of all the women studied here, Margaret Cavendish, second Duchess of Newcastle, is at first sight the most obviously Baroque figure, not only in her writings but also in her personal ambitions and self-presentation. But it has also been argued that Cavendish may be seen specifically as a Baroque writer rather than merely demonstrating a Baroque personality. Her poems bear examples of what Canfield sees as characteristic ‘Metaphysical’ conceits – mixed metaphors that sound like parodies of Crashaw's blending of blood, ice, tears, and dust – and her prose works and plays feature recurring dramatic upsurges of ‘astonishing, bizarre Baroque’ twists of plot or situation. However, the Baroque tendencies in both her life and writings deserve a more serious analysis, as does her distinctive contribution to how we might analyse the Female Baroque, especially given her frequent, though contradictory, comments on women and women's writings.
Unfortunately, there is no modern standard edition of her voluminous writings: modern scholars must make do with a mix of original publications, often confusingly presented and falling far short of modern editorial standards, and a variety of miscellaneous selections by modern scholars and teachers, compiled with different goals (albeit near-indistinguishable titles), and inevitably, given the bulk of her writings, highly selective and rarely complementary. In my analysis, therefore, I have found it necessary to use a mixture of sources: modern editions where available, and ‘original’ versions, including a number of facsimile reprints, when necessary.
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- Information
- Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary CultureFrom Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn, pp. 235 - 276Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020