Ventriloquized Voices : Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts

Ventriloquized Voices is a fascinating examination of the appropriation of the feminine voice by male authors. In a historical and theoretical study of English texts of the early modern period, Elizabeth D. Harvey looks at the transvestism at work in texts which purport to be by women but which are in fact written by men. The crossing of gender in these ventriloquized works illuminates the discourses of patronage, medicine, madness and eroticism in English Renaissance society, revealing as it does the construction of sexuality, gender identity, and power. The author skillfully juxtaposes such canonical works as John Donne's Anniversaries and Spenser's Faerie Queene with pamphlets on transvestism, midwifery books, and treatises on gynaecology and hysteria. By interrogating the fashioning of gender within a broad range of Renaissance culture, Ventriloquized Voices investigates not only the relationship between men, women and language, but also crucial twentieth-century feminist debates such as essentialism and the female voice.