Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain Literary and Historical Explorations

Presenting a broad spectrum of reflections on the subject of female transgression in early modern Britain, this volume proposes a richly productive dialogue between literary and historical approaches to the topic. The essays presented here cover a range of ?transgressive? women: daughters, witches, prostitutes, thieves; mothers/wives/murderers; violence in NW England; violence in Scotland; single mothers; women as (sexual) partners in crime. Contributions illustrate the dynamic relation between fiction and fact that informs literary and socio-historical analysis alike, exploring female transgression as a process, not of crossing fixed boundaries, but of negotiating the epistemological space between representation and documentation.

Introduction, Richard Hillman, Pauline Ruberry-Blanc; Part I Imag(in)ing Female Transgression and Transgressors; Chapter 1 Criminalizing the Woman’s Incest: Pericles and Its Analogues, Richard Hillman; Chapter 2 Body Crimes: The Witches, Lady Macbeth and the Relics, Diane Purkiss; Chapter 3 The Witch of Edmonton: The Witch Next Door or Faustian Anti-Heroine?, Pauline Ruberry-Blanc; Chapter 4 Fact versus Fiction: The Construction of the Figure of the Prostitute in Early Modern England, Official and Popular Discourses, Frédérique Fouassier-Tate; Chapter 5 Appropriating a Famous Female Offender: Mary Frith (1584?–1659), alias Moll Cutpurse, Pascale Drouet; Part II Reading (into) the Social Picture; Chapter 6 Mothers, Wives and Killers: Marital Status and Homicide in London, 1674–1790, Marisha Caswell; Chapter 7 Women and Violence in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England: Evidence from the Cheshire Court of Great Sessions, James Sharpe; Chapter 8 ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’: Violent Women in Early Modern Scotland, Anne-Marie Kilday; Chapter 9, Jennine Hurl-Eamon; Chapter 10, Krista Kesselring;

Richard Hillman is Professor of English, Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais de Tours/CNRS, France. Pauline Ruberry-Blanc is Senior Lecturer in English, Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais de Tours/CNRS, France.