Gender, power and the body : some figurations of femininity in Milton and seventeenth-century women's writing

This thesis deals with gender, the body and political power in the seventeenth century through readings of selected nonliterary texts set against readings of the writings of Milton and seventeenth-century women. Milton's poems and even his prose have most often been contextualized with reference to the higher reaches of literary history; here they are placed in more unfamiliar contexts: certain seventeenth-century women's writings, the emerging discourses of feminine conduct, and the discourses of 'news' produced in and around the Civil War. I show how both Milton and women writers struggle to come to terms with the implications of the new and powerful ideological formulations which result from the explosion of print culture which produces these texts. [Please consult .pdf for the complete abstract]