Authority and Authorship in Medieval and Seventeenth Century Women's Visionary Writings

Authority and Authorship in Medieval and Seventeenth Century Women's Visionary Writings
Author: Deborah Frick
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2021-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3839456894

In medieval and early modern times, female visionary writers used the mode of prophecy to voice their concerns and ideas, against the backdrop of cultural restrictions and negative stereotypes. In this book, Deborah Frick analyses medieval visionary writings by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in comparison to seventeenth-century visionary writings by authors such as Anna Trapnel, Mary Carey, Anne Wentworth and Katherine Chidley, in order to investigate how these women authorised themselves in their writings and what topoi they use to find a voice and place of their own. This comparison, furthermore, and the strikingly similar topoi that are used by the female visionaries not only allows to question and examine topics such as authority, authorship, images of voice and body; it also breaks down preconceived and artificial boundaries and definitions.

Authority Matters

Authority Matters
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2015-06-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9401206465

In this wide ranging collection of essays, eleven literary scholars and creative writers examine authorship and authority in relation to the production and reception of cultural texts. Ranging in time from the Renaissance to the era of digital publishing, the essays invite us to reconsider the influential theories of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu for our understanding of writers such as Philip Sidney, Thomas Hardy, Laura Riding, W.B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, and J.M. Coetzee. Shedding new light on authority’s complex role in the generation of cultural meaning, the essays will be of interest to students and teachers of literary history and critical theory alike.

Rethinking ‘Authority’ in Late Antiquity

Rethinking ‘Authority’ in Late Antiquity
Author: A.J. Berkovitz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-06-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351063405

The historian’s task involves unmasking the systems of power that underlie our sources. A historian must not only analyze the content and context of ancient sources, but also the structures of power, authority, and political contingency that account for their transmission, preservation, and survival. But as a tool for interpreting antiquity, "authority" has a history of its own. As authority gained pride of place in the historiographical order of knowledge, other types of contingency have faded into the background. This book’s introduction traces the genesis and growth of the category, describing the lacuna that scholars seek to fill by framing texts through its lens. The subsequent chapters comprise case studies from late ancient Christian and Jewish sources, asking what lies "beyond authority" as a primary tool of analysis. Each uncovers facets of textual and social history that have been obscured by overreliance on authority as historical explanation. While chapters focus on late ancient topics, the methodological intervention speaks to the discipline of history as a whole. Scholars of classical antiquity and the early medieval world will find immediately analogous cases and applications. Furthermore, the critique of the place of authority as used by historians will find wider resonance across the academic study of history.

Authorship and Authority

Authorship and Authority
Author: Jane Rickard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719087790

James VI of Scotland and I of England participated in the burgeoning literary culture of the Renaissance, not only as a monarch and patron, but as an author in his own right, publishing extensively in a number of different genres over four decades. As the first monograph devoted to James as an author, this book offers a fresh perspective on his reigns in Scotland and England, and also on the inter-relationship of authorship and authority, literature and politics in the Renaissance.Beginning with the poetry he wrote in Scotland in the 1580s, it moves through a wide range of his writings in other genres, including scriptural exegeses, political, social and theological treatises and printed speeches, concluding with his manuscript poetry of the early 1620s. The book combines extensive primary research into the preparation, material form and circulation of these varied writings, with theoretically informed consideration of the relationship between authors, texts and readers. The discussion thus explores James’s responses to, and interventions in, a range of literary, political and religious debates, and reveals the development of his aims and concerns as an author.Rickard argues that, despite the King’s best efforts to the contrary, his writings expose the tensions and contradictions between authorship and authority. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of the reign of James VI and I, the literary and political cultures of late sixteenth-century Scotland and early seventeenth-century England, the development of notions of authorship and the relationship between literature and politics.

Authority and Female Authorship in Colonial America

Authority and Female Authorship in Colonial America
Author: William J. Scheick
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813185130

Should women concern themselves with reading other than the Bible? Should women attempt to write at all? Did these activities violate the hierarchy of the universe and men's and women's places in it? Colonial American women relied on the same authorities and traditions as did colonial men, but they encountered special difficulties validating themselves in writing. William Scheick explores logonomic conflict in the works of northeastern colonial women, whose writings often register anxiety not typical of their male contemporaries. This study features the poetry of Mary English and Anne Bradstreet, the letter-journals of Esther Edwards Burr and Sarah Prince, the autobiographical prose of Elizabeth Hanson and Elizabeth Ashbridge, and the political verse of Phyllis Wheatley. These works, along with the writings of other colonial women, provide especially noteworthy instances of bifurcations emanating from American colonial women's conflicted confiscation of male authority. Scheick reveals subtle authorial uneasiness and subtextual tensions caused by the attempt to draw legitimacy from male authorities and traditions.

The Construction of Authorship

The Construction of Authorship
Author: Martha Woodmansee
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 482
Release: 1994
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780822314127

What is an author? What is a text? At a time when the definition of "text" is expanding and the technology whereby texts are produced and disseminated is changing at an explosive rate, the ways "authorship" is defined and rights conferred upon authors must also be reconsidered. This volume argues that contemporary copyright law, rooted as it is in a nineteenth-century Romantic understanding of the author as a solitary creative genius, may be inapposite to the realities of cultural production. Drawing together distinguished scholars from literature, law, and the social sciences, the volume explores the social and cultural construction of authorship as a step toward redefining notions of authorship and copyright for today's world. These essays, illustrating cultural studies in action, are aggressively interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in topic and approach. Questions of collective and collaborative authorship in both contemporary and early modern contexts are addressed. Other topics include moral theory and authorship; copyright and the balance between competing interests of authors and the public; problems of international copyright; musical sampling and its impact on "fair use" doctrine; cinematic authorship; quotation and libel; alternative views of authorship as exemplified by nineteenth-century women's clubs and by the Renaissance commonplace book; authorship in relation to broadcast media and to the teaching of writing; and the material dimension of authorship as demonstrated by Milton's publishing contract. Contributors. Rosemary J. Coombe, Margreta de Grazia, Marvin D'Lugo, John Feather, N. N. Feltes, Ann Ruggles Gere, Peter Jaszi, Gerhard Joseph, Peter Lindenbaum, Andrea A. Lunsford and Lisa Ede, Jeffrey A. Masten, Thomas Pfau, Monroe E. Price and Malla Pollack, Mark Rose, Marlon B. Ross, David Sanjek, Thomas Streeter, Jim Swan, Max W. Thomas, Martha Woodmansee, Alfred C. Yen

Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England

Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England
Author: Peter Edwards
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004326219

The lives of William Cavendish, first duke of Newcastle, and his family including, centrally, his second wife, Margaret Cavendish, are intimately bound up with the overarching story of seventeenth-century England: the violently negotiated changes in structures of power that constituted the Civil Wars, and the ensuing Commonwealth and Restoration of the monarchy. William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and his Political, Social and Cultural Connections: Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth Century England brings together a series of interrelated essays that present William Cavendish, his family, household and connections as an aristocratic, royalist case study, relating the intellectual and political underpinnings and implications of their beliefs, actions and writings to wider cultural currents in England and mainland Europe.

Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy

Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy
Author: Jenny Bryan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316510042

Offers a collection of essays exploring notions of authority and authorship through ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.

Kierkegaard and the Concept of Religious Authorship

Kierkegaard and the Concept of Religious Authorship
Author: Keith H. Lane
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2010
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9783161501203

Keith H. Lane examines Soren Kierkegaard's concept of religious authorship and argues for Kierkegaard's status as a religious author. He elucidates how such authorship may have similarities to philosophical authorship (particularly philosophy as envisioned by Ludwig Wittgenstein) and wherein the two differ. Starting with Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript and giving special attention to The Point of View and other later writings, Lane investigates aspects of thought and expression that may be unique to religious authorship and explores the particular constraints, challenges, and opportunities for one who writes from within a framework of religious belief and commitment-including such issues as protectionism, apologetics, persuasion, and the tension between certainty and uncertainty that attends religious authorship.

Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy

Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy
Author: Jenny Bryan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-09-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108606024

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is often characterised in terms of competitive individuals debating orally with one another in public arenas. But it also developed over its long history a sense in which philosophers might acknowledge some other particular philosopher or group of philosophers as an authority and offer to that authority explicit intellectual allegiance. This is most obvious in the development after the classical period of the philosophical 'schools' with agreed founders and, most importantly, canonical founding texts. There also developed a tradition of commentary, interpretation, and discussion of texts which itself became a mode of philosophical debate. As time went on, the weight of a growing tradition of reading and appealing to a certain corpus of foundational texts began to shape how later antiquity viewed its philosophical past and also how philosophical debate and inquiry was conducted. In this book leading scholars explore aspects of these important developments.