Introduction: The intellectual span of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle / Brandie R. Siegfried and Lisa Walters -- Margaret Cavendish : Natural philosopher and feminist / Carolyn Merchant -- Margaret Cavendish thinks about sex / Lisa T. Sarasohn -- Margaret Cavendish and the rhetoric and aesthetics of the microscopic image in seventeenth-century England / Stephen Clucas -- Margaret Cavendish and the nature of infinity / Sara Mendelson -- Cavendish's philosophy of the passions : theory and practice / Jacqueline Broad and Maks Sipowicz -- Cavendish, philosophical letters, and the plenum / David Cunning -- Cavendish's philosophical genres in philosophical and physical opinions and the question of hierarchy / Karen Detlefsen -- Of webs and wonder : the atomic vitalism of Margaret Cavendish's Poems and Fancies / Brandie R. Siegfried -- The blazing world : literary history, genre, and the inner world / Mary Baine Campbel -- Margaret Cavendish's prudence or, preservation and transformation in Playes (1662) and Plays never before printed (1668) / Lara Dodds -- Lady Newcastle's 'Unsoiled petticoats' and the literary reputation of Margaret Cavendish, 1652-1985 / James Fitzmaurice -- The politics of the English civil wars in Natures pictures / Mihoko Suzuki -- Cavendish : the nexus among orations, power, and women intellectuals / Hilda L. Smith -- Margaret Cavendish's sociable letter #16 : women's political obligation and independence / Joanne H. Wright -- Close reading (and) textual bibliography : how many parts does Margaret Cavendish's Blazing world have? / Liza Blake -- Companions, competitors, contexts : Margaret Cavendish in women writers online / Sarah Connell -- Cavendish studies and the digital turn / Jacob Tootalian and Shawn Moore -- Afterword: Margaret Cavendish : a grandmother for twenty-first century philosophy of science / Siri Hustvedt.
Summary:
"Margaret Cavendish's prolific and wide-ranging contributions to seventeenth-century intellectual culture are impossible to contain within the discrete confines of modern academic disciplines. Paying attention to the innovative uses of genre through which she enhanced and complicated her writings both within literature and beyond, this collection addresses each of her major works and offers the most comprehensive and multidisciplinary resource on Cavendish's oeuvre to date. The astonishing breadth of her varied intellectual achievements is reflected through elegantly-arranged sections on History of Science, Philosophy, Literature, Politics, and New Directions, together with an Afterword by award-winning novelist Siri Hustvedt. The first book to cover all of Cavendish's major works in a single volume, this collection brings together a variety of expert perspectives to illuminate the remarkable ideas and achievements of one of the most fascinating and prolific figures of the early modern period"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.