Introduction -- 1. Bound by an English eye: ancient cultures, imperialist contexts, and literary representations of Egyptian women -- 2. Acting as "the right hand ... of God": Christianized Egyptian women and religious devotion as emancipation in Florence Nightingale's fictionalized treatises -- 3. "[T]o give new elements ... as vivid as ... long familiar types": heroic Jewish men, dangerous Egyptian women, and equivocal emancipation in George Eliot's novels -- 4. "[W]e had never chosen a Byzantine subject ... or one from Alexandria": emancipation through desire and the Eastern limits of beauty in Michael Field's verse dramas -- 5. The "sweetness of the serpent of old Nile": revisionist Cleopatra and spiritual union as emancipation in Elinor Glyn's cross-cultural romances -- 6. "My ancestor, my sister": ancient heritage imagery and modern Egyptian women writers -- Afterword.
Summary:
"Focusing on British women writers' knowledge of ancient Egypt, Molly Youngkin shows how British women writers' encounters with textual and visual representations of ancient Egyptian women such as Hathor, Isis, and Cleopatra influenced how British women represented their own desired emancipation in novels, poetry, drama, romances, and fictional treatises"-- Provided by publisher.
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