COPERNICUS OR CHEESECAKE? FAULTLINES AND UNJUST DES(S)ERTS: NOTES TOWARDS THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE VIRTUOSA

Authors

  • David A. Alton

Keywords:

Virtuoso/a, experimental science, satire, feminism, cultural materialism, containment theory, post-structuralism, simulacrum

Abstract

In this paper I propose to offer a general interpretation of the cultural significance of the “virtuosa”, a satirical female comic type which appeared in post-Restauration British literature. In order to achieve this I shall use (appropriate) Bandrillard’s notion of the simulacrum, some aspects of feminism. Althusser, Greenblatt’s containment theory and cultural materialism to argne that the virtuosa may serve as a useful post-structuralist allegory for the way in which stereotyping processes mythologize women. This relates to the way in which patriarchal power structures may be expressed in literary forms that is, how misogyny rejuvenates itself. The suggestion here is that in the satirical image of the experimental virtuosa misogyny undergoes a significant literary transformation: which the aid of contemporary science, the mythologizing of women as an intellectually inferior domestic being reaches a new level of perfection

Author Biography

David A. Alton

Departamento de Filologia Inglesa Facultad de Letras Universidad de Murcia

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Section

Artículos