Friendship's Shadows: Women's Friendship and the Politics of Betrayal in England, 1640-1705

Download or read book Friendship's Shadows: Women's Friendship and the Politics of Betrayal in England, 1640-1705 written by Penelope Anderson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Penelope Anderson's original study changes our understanding both of the masculine Renaissance friendship tradition and of the private forms of women's friendship of the eighteenth century and after. It uncovers the latent threat of betrayal lurking within politicized classical and humanist friendship, showing its surprising resilience as a model for political obligation undone and remade. Incorporating authors from Cicero to Abraham Cowley and Margaret Cavendish to Mary Astell, the book focuses on two extraordinary women writers, the royalist Katherine Philips and the republican Lucy Hutchinson. And it explores the ways in which they appropriate the friendship tradition in order to address problems of conflicting allegiances in the English Civil Wars and Restoration. As Penelope Anderson suggests, their writings on friendship provide a new account of women's relation to public life, organized through textual exchange rather than bodily reproduction.