Although the prostitute became a fairly common figure in eighteenth-century prose fiction, there were already narrative texts dealing with that type of character in Restoration England, although most of them have been largely disregarded. This article will focus on three of those texts: 1) The Crafty Whore (1658), an anonymous dialogue between two courtesans that is framed between a preface that presents it as a cautionary text, and an epilogue entitled "Dehortation from Lust"; 2) Richard Head's The Miss Display' d (1675), a narrative in the picaresque mode introduced by an admonitory preface and told by an intrusive third-person narrator that is often critical of prostitutes and women in general; and 3) the anonymous The London Jilt (1683), another picaresque novel presented as a cautionary tale to warn readers against the deceit and corruption of prostitutes, but with an autodiegetic narrator who interlaces the relation with social and moral comments. In these texts the female agency and voice are often curbed by a male authorial voice that uses a misogynistic discourse in an alleged attempt to expose the crafty contrivances of prostitutes in order to ensnare men.
In spite of her criticism against farce in the paratexts of The Emperor of the Moon (1687), Aphra Behn makes an extensive use of farcical elements not only in that play and The False Count (1681), which are actually described as farces in their title pages, but also in Sir Patient Fancy (1678), The Feign’d Curtizans (1679), and The Second Part of The Rover (1681). This article contends that Behn adapts French farce and Italian commedia dell’arte to the English Restoration stage mostly resorting to deception farce in order to trick old husbands or fathers, or else foolish, hypocritical coxcombs, and displaying an impressive, skilful use of disguise and impersonation. Behn also turns widely to physical comedy, which is described in detail in stage directions. She appropriates farce in an attempt to please the audience, but also in the service of her own interests as a Tory woman writer.
This is a bibliography of prose fiction written by Englishwomen in the seventeenth century. It includes sections on general bibliographies, studies and anthologies, and on the various writers involved (Mary Wroth, Anna Weamys, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Catherine Trotter, Mary Pix, and Delarivier Manley), each divided into primary and secondary sources.In the last twenty years there has been a revisión of literary history thanks to feminism, new historicism, cultural materialism and related critical trends. Consequently, a large number of texts and writers that had been ignored and even despised have been recovered and reassessedby means of new editions and critical studies. A good example of this is the long-forgotten tradition of female writing that has been reclaimed by feminist scholars over the last two decades.
This article describes the challenges the Restoration Comedy Project team have had to face regarding the creation and applicability of genre labels in their online database and printed catalogues of the comedies produced between 1660 and 1682. Those challenges have had largely to do with the intrinsic difficulty of classifying literary works by genres and, even more, by subgenres; and also with the lack of previous scholarly consent about the taxonomy of types of comedy. They have to deal as well with the general tendency that Restoration playwrights had to blend elements from different comedic traditions and practices in search of a variety that could win the audience's attention and provide entertainment. In spite of such generic mixture in many plays, the structure of the database and of the catalogue introduction made it convenient to pigeonhole each play into only one of a few types of comedy, that which seemed most dominant, focusing mainly on the plots, characters, themes, purpose, tone, and sometimes also setting and sources. No doubt, the result is questionable in some cases but, in general, it is practical, suited to the aims of the project, and satisfactory.
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