Woman and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy: A Study of King Lear, Othello, the Duchess of Malfi and the White Devil

Drawing on recent developments in critical and psychoanalytic theory, this feminist study offers a radical reading of gender in Renaissance tragedy by looking at constructions of the category "woman" through language, ideology and subjectivity, thereby challenging the notion that key heroines of 16th- and 17th-century drama can be seen as representations of Renaissance womankind.