Articoli di riviste sul tema "Virgin heroine"

The article reveals the meaning and mythological subtext of the female names Marianna, Fekla, Snandulia, which create a special cultural halo of the text; the connection of naming with the artistic whole of the novel is proved, in which each heroine embodies different ways of development of Russia. Another female name - Valentina - deepens the characterization of the «cute egoist», but does not highlight the narrative mythological plan.

The paper’s subject is about the interaction between the cult of the goddess Artemis and the cult of St Thecla of Iconium throughout the Eastern Mediterranean in the initial four centuries of Christianity in particular. The phenomenon is investigated regarding the literature, the cities, social groups and personalities mostly associated with the cultural meeting of the free-spirited but fearsome goddess protector of the wilderness, virginity and childhood with the virgin heroine of the Cross and alleged apostolic companion of Paul for spreading the Logos of life to the nations.

‭The Mexican Museum in San Francisco commissioned Delilah Montoya to produce a contemporary codex for the 1992 exhibition “The Chicano Codices: Encountering Art of the Americas,” which sought to critique Quincentennial observances erasing indigenous presence. The artist created a seven-page book, Codex Delilah, Six-Deer: Journey from Mexicatl to Chicana, that depicted the consequences of the initial American-European encounter, and she used the heroine Six-Deer to visually record women’s contributions to this 500-year history. In the codex’s fourth panel, Six-Deer comes across Adora-la-Conquistadora, the artist’s revisioning of the New Mexican Catholic icon of Our Lady of the Rosary, La Conquistadora, the oldest figure of Marian devotion in the United States. Six-Deer contests the designs of the Virgin, who intends to forcefully convert the native peoples of New Mexico. Rather than capitulate, Six-Deer refuses to participate in New Mexico’s Reconquista of 1692. Although Montoya appropriated La Conquistadora’s traditional sartorial splendor, she proposed an alternate reading of this Conquering Virgin. This article reads Montoya’s depiction within the dimensions of La Conquistadora’s historical, religious, cultural, and iconographic contexts.‬

The article polemically comprehends the practice of considering the manor topos as a genre-defining feature of Turgenev's novel, since this strategy ignores the plot logic, the content of the main characters, the essence of their relationships and the final meanings of the works. In addition, this approach inevitably destroys the aesthetic unity of Turgenev's work, because “Smoke” and “Virgin Soil” do not fit into the “manor” genre paradigm, even at the level of formal criteria. In this article, based on the material of Turgenev's novels - mainly those in which there is a “Turgenev’s girl” (“Rudin”, “A Nest of Gentlefolk”, “On the Eve”, “Virgin Soil”), - it is shown that the vector of the heroine's fate is directed from the manor world to the big world of search and struggle. The thirst for active good lies at the heart of the choice of the heroine: her chosen one, in contrast to the usual environment, is a spokesman of the spirit of the time, a hero of time, which opens up new horizons of life for her. The plot logic of Turgenev's novel is due not to the chamber circumstances of the life of a noble estate, but to the pathos of the ideas proclaimed by the hero and the thirst for self-realization of the characters in a socially significant field. This determines the genre specificity of Turgenev's novel as an ideological novel.

Writing of Terence's Andria (‘The Girl from Andros’) in 1952, Duckworth said: ‘In the Andria the second love affair is unusual; Charinus’ love for a respectable girl whose virtue is still intact has been considered an anticipation of a more modern attitude towards love and sex. More frequently in Plautus and Terence the heroine, if of respectable parentage, has been violated before the opening of the drama (Aulularia, Adelphoe), or she is a foreigner, a courtesan, or a slave girl' (Duckworth (1952), p. 158). Perhaps in 1993 it does not seem quite so ‘modern’ that Charinus is not only in love with a respectable virgin but wishes to marry her.

The article discusses the figurative and semantic paradigms of the sophiological myth in the story by V.P. Astafyev “The Shepherd and the Cowgirl”. The image of the main character of the story Lucy is endowed with a number of symbolic connotations and has a complex archetypal structure. The Sophian archetype is represented here in its two invariants: the Christian and the Gnostic; the keys to understand the heroine are also the Theotokos archetype, the archetypes of the Virgin, the Beloved, the Mistress, Psyche, and the Kabbalistic archetype Shekhinah, which is closely related to the original image of Sophia. The Sophian model of a feminine principle is reflected both in the personality-psychological, spiritual and moral characteristics of the heroine, and in the logic of the image of her fate. The study leads to the conclusion that the mythologeme of Sophia in its different modes (Sophia the Wisdom of God, Sophia the Gnostic, Eternal Femininity) in the paradigm of Lucy's image is one of the semantic dominants; in addition, in the mythopoetic sign system of the work, the Sophian archetype, along with the archetypes of Theotokos and Shekhinah, can be considered the cultural representative of the “feminine” archetype - the archetype of a Woman in its specific gender-existential aspect.

Abstract Aphra Behn, a Restoration playwright of unprecedented success, lived by her pen and therefore was obliged to conform to the other literary production of that time (written mostly by men): comedies featuring libertines, coarse morals, debauchery and fortune-hunting protagonists. Behn wrote in this manner, yet adding a satirical spin to her work, by presenting the character of Angellica Bianca, a prostitute (actually a very ladylike companion to older wealthy men). Paradoxically, Angellica is presented as the most upright and generous person among the cast; lamentably, she believes in oaths, of which Wilmore, the double-dealing eponymous rover of the play, cures her mercilessly and swiftly, as soon as he meets a virgin, who comes with a large fortune attached. By this, Behn introduces a dark undercurrent to an ostensibly comic play. This paper pays homage to the elaborate ways Aphra Behn employed to present a prostitute as the most intriguing character of the play.

The major source of knowledge of French miracle plays is the Cangé manuscript, which features forty Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. All the plays in the manuscript are arranged in chronological order from 1339 to 1382. They were written and produced for the St. Eloy chapter of the gold and silversmiths guild of Paris and performed at the guild’s annual assembly on or around St. Eloy’s Day (December 1). This address analyses a cluster of seven plays composed for performance between 1368 and 1379. All seven plays place the conflict between saints and sinners on the medieval stage by juxtaposing a falsely accused heroine with an antagonist whose deeds reveal the Seven Deadly Sins. Central to each of the plays is the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary, to whom the innocent woman prays for deliverance from her tormentors. Mary’s descent and presence on stage dramatically demonstrate her role as intercessor in the struggle between good and evil.

Abstract This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides' Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation of women was intimately connected with the social and political life of the polis. In a discussion of iconography, the theater industry and audience I argue that female characters became one of the means by which different groups promoted partisan interests based on class and social status. In Part III, I show how the Maiden solicits the competing interests of the theater audience. After discussing the centrality (as a heroine from an aristocratic family) and marginality (as a woman and associated with other marginal social groups) of the Maiden's character, I draw upon the funeral oration as a comparative model with which to understand the quite different role of self-sacrifice in tragedy. In addition to representing and mystifying the interests of elite, lower class and marginal groups, the play glorifies a subordinate character whose contradictory social status (both subordinate and elite) embodies the social position of other ““marginal”” members of Athenian society. The play stages a model for taking political action to transform the social system and for commemorating the tragic costs of such undertakings.

By all indications, the public persona of the late Restoration actress Anne Bracegirdle was built on the speculative foundation of maidenhead. A leading ingénue of multiple talents, Bracegirdle played significant roles in comedy, tragedy, and music-drama from her debut in 1688 to her retirement in 1707. In comedy, Bracegirdle specialized in marriageable young women of rank, wit, and fortune. In serious drama, Bracegirdle often played the pathetic heroine, a virtuous woman stalked by a predatory man. Though primarily an actress, Bracegirdle also called upon her impressive soprano voice in many entr'actes and the occasional musical part. A first-rank player and hardworking company member from very early in her career, Bracegirdle played some eighty roles over a nineteen-year span that kept her consistently before the public eye. Despite Bracegirdle's constant appearances on the stages of Drury Lane, Dorset Garden, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, few extant sources identify the qualities that typified her playing; commentators rarely discuss her acting as a discrete set of practices, aptitudes, or characterizations. Rather, prodigious evidence attests to the public's obsession with Bracegirdle's reputation for virginity. Called the “Romantick Virgin,” the actress was thought to be chaste, and many writers focused attention on her sexual virtue. Indeed, Bracegirdle's chastity seems to have been the cornerstone of her fame. As Colley Cibber wrote, her star status rose in conjunction with her reputation for purity:

The article deals with the history of forming the local cult of Joan of Arc in her native village of Domremy (Lorraine). In modern historiography under the “local cult” usually mean the veneration of Joan of Arc in Orleans, whose inhabitants since the second half of the 15th century perceived the girl not only as a savior of their city from the English siege of 1428–1429, but also as a saint. However, the other most important place of veneration of the Virgin, her native village of Domremy in Lorraine, for long remained without much attention of historians. Based on the material of written and visual sources, the author analyzes the features of the veneration of the heroine of the Hundred Years’ War in Modern times and identifies two main periods of the formation of a specific “place of memory” in Domremy – the era of the Restoration of the monarchy in the early 19th century and the years following the Franco-Prussian War. The author comes to the conclusion that the main distinction of the local cult was its secular orientation. Unlike Orleans, where already in the 15th century the veneration of Joan of Arc was purely religious in nature, the “construction” of the cult in Domremy initially became the work of the state, starting with King Louis XVIII and ending with the local municipality. The difference was especially pronounced during the so–called dispute between the two Frances – republican and monarchical.

The tenth poem of Propertius Book 4 is the most remarkable in a collection full of surprises for its readers, and appears to mark a significant departure from his previous work. If Propertius had never written his final book of poetry, we might characterize him on the basis of his earlier books as the quintessential Latin love elegist: he rejects not only a military career, but even the less demanding task of celebrating Augustus' victories, in favour of the love elegist's self-indulgent life of leisure: cf. e.g. Prop. 2.1.39–46. In the first poem of Book 4, however, Propertius announces what appears to be a wholly different poetic programme; in place of the erotic elegies of the previous books is a new ‘serious’ purpose: Propertius will sing about national, religious and antiquarian themes, as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ (Propertius 4.1a.63–4). However, as soon as the next poem, Propertius is commanded to return to his usual theme of obsessive elegiac love for one woman, a topic described as haec tua castra (‘this is your sphere of operations’, 4.1b.135). The poems which follow in Propertius 4 tend to strike a balance between antiquarian seriousness and elegiac frivolity. For example, in 4.4, Propertius relates the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia's betrayal of Rome, connecting several contemporary urban landmarks with the poem's heroine, but he remains true to his earlier colours by presenting Tarpeia as an elegiac lover who falls in love at first sight and betrays her city out of passion.

The theme of tyranny, so central (as we have seen in two recent issues of Moreana) to the writings and the experience of Thomas More, is hardly less central to the plays and the memory of William Shakespeare. This centrality appears not so much in the plays of his Elizabethan period as in those of the subsequent Jacobean period, especially in the final romances by way of warming up to his presentation of the historical romance of Henry VIII. There, however, the tyranny of the king, though notably emphasized by Sir Walter Raleigh in his contemporaneous History of the World, is strangely muted, as also is his un-Shakespearian character, but it comes out strongly in the two preceding romances of The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline, once we read them, as they require us to read them, as “topical allegories”. Then, to the characters of the jealous Leontes and the wrathful Cymbeline, we may add the threatening personality of Antiochus at the beginning of Pericles, as yet another figure (based on a widespread rumour) of the quintessential tyranny of Henry VIII. At the same time, this figure of the victimizer calls to be qualified by the complementary figure of the victim, the heroine in these romances, not only Hermione and Perdita, Thaisa and Marina, and Imogen, but even or especially in Desdemona as victimized by her jealous husband Othello. Then, in the above mentioned “topical allegory” of these Jacobean plays, she stands as well for the ideal of the Virgin Mary as for the memory of Catholic England at the heart of the dramatist.

The article analyzes the central work of fiction by the famous Soviet science fiction writer of the second half of the 20th century, whose work was almost not considered in scientific works, and the problem of anthroponymy was not considered at all. The science fiction novel by S. Snegov “People as gods” served as the material for the study. Using contextual, mythological, structural-semantic and intertextual methods, an analysis was made of the proper names of the key characters in this work in order to better understand the author's intention. The protagonist's name, Eli, has an obvious connection with the biblical name El, which is found as a common and generic designation for God in various languages ​​and dialects of the Middle East. In addition, it is a direct reference to the title of the work, which contains the central question in the artistic system of the novel about man as a god-like being. The name of the protagonist's wife – Mary – is the English form of the Russian name Maria, which contains a high meaning, well understood by the Christian consciousness. In the complete absence of any external or internal similarity between the heroine of Snegov and the Virgin Mary, there is an associative connection between them: as a biologist, Mary is looking for ways to spread life on uninhabited planets. In addition, she is the mother of a boy named Astre, who in the novel is associated with the Person of the Gospel Savior. The semantics of the names of other characters also connects the ideological space of the work with the foundations of the Christian worldview. Thus, consideration of the names of the central characters gives the author the opportunity to show that the onomastic field in terms of anthroponyms is semantically connected with biblical motifs and plots. System analysis leads the author to the conclusion that anthroponyms in the novel create a special semantic space that contributes to a deep understanding of the author's intentions.

Nahum Tate and Henry Purcell’s early modern opera Dido and Aeneas has been popular since the early nineteenth century. Librettist Nahum Tate inherited and adapted topoi representing fate, destiny, love, death, grief and piety among others from Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan and seventeenth-century literary sources. This article reconsiders Dido’s traditional representation as a heroic victim reappraising her legacy. It argues that rather than simple reproducing the meeting between Dido and Aeneas in Virgil, Tate combined Ovid’s heroine, Tertullian’s ‘monument to chastity’ and other characterisations in Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19 BCE); Ovid’s Heroides (c. 5 BCE–8 CE); Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women (14--); Douglas’ Eneados (1513); Howard’s Virgiles Æneis (1557); Phaer and Twynne’s AEneidos (1573); Stanyhurst’s Aeneis (1582); Marlowe’s The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage (1594); Tertullian’s Ad Nationes (published 1625) and Dryden’s Aeneis (1697) transmogrifying Dido’s portrayal. The list itself demonstrates the transmission of Dido’s story from antiquity to the Early Modern era. ‘When I am laid in earth’ is part of Britain’s national consciousness performed in an arrangement for brass band on Remembrance Sunday every year since the 1930s. Why does this piece of music still have so much significance? The article calls for Dido’s re-evaluation as a phoenix rising again every year on the second Sunday in November — today’s erstwhile symbol of remembrance.

Interpersonal theory developed by Joiner (2005) is based on the assumption that people die by suicide because they can-acquired capability-and because they want to- desire of suicide. Desire to die arises from two specific psychological states: perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness. The obtained ability of committing suicidal thoughts referred to the second segment of the approach consists of some specific factors, i.e., the person must be capable of doing some lethal activities courageously to put an end to the life; therefore, they present a fearless attitude towards death. Another factor is endurance to face self-injuries pain acquired from the long painful experiences or probably stimulating and motivating situations. In this paper, the researchers intended to present a Joinerian reading of Sylvia Plath’s only novel, the Bell Jar, and one of Jeffrey Eugenides’ prominent works, the Virgin Suicides. In fact, this qualitative study would analyze the two selected novels (i.e., the Bell Jar and the Virgin Suicides) by the use of the acquired capability for suicide to find out why one takes his/her life by his/her own hands. Based on the findings, Loneliness, social isolation, and thwarted effectiveness can be the mental states that have inflicted an acute pain on the heroines, a pain that makes them ready to die by suicides. Suicidal ideation and witnessing other’s suicidal behaviors, habituates the heroines to the concept of death and suicide.

This paper explores the depiction of female characters as New Women in a comparative analysis of two selected short stories by two seemingly anti-feminist authors; D. H. Lawrence in England and Hanna Mina in Syria. I argue that these short stories signal the need for a new perspective, analyzing how these two authors challenged the conventional fictional treatment of womanhood and created complex female heroines struggling against restrictive social roles and values. Examining these selected narratives, “The Virgin and the Gypsy” by D. H. Lawrence and in “The Tragedy of Demetrio” by Hanna Mina, sets forth an unexpected area of comparison between English and Arabic literature with a specific interest in the construction of New Woman identity at the turn of the century, namely the fragmented and complex presentations of the heroines’ inner struggle between the traditional female roles and their aspirations for a freer, more fluid identity. A close reading will, therefore, bring out certain similarities in terms of themes and style that call for a Bakhtinian insight into dialogism to account for the fragmented character of the New Woman in both texts.

In "Cousin Phillis" Elizabeth Gaskell shows Phillis Holman's love experience to be inseparable from her education. Gaskell's male narrator naively supposes that having a male education makes Phillis "more a like man than a woman"; however, the male supervision of her studies and the lessons of her readings in classical and foreign literature confirm instead the constraints of Victorian womanhood. Gaskell's allusion to the Phillises of Virgil, Ovid, and the Renaissance pastoral tradition implies demeaning and self-destructive models for her heroine and, more broadly, a critique of the representation of women in literary texts. Phillis Holman's abandonment and collapse repeat the patterns of her classical namesakes, but ultimately she eludes their reductive definitions of womanhood and establishes her individuality in the will to live.

The virgin land campaign of 1954–1964 became a bright page in the national history and an example of the labor heroism of Soviet citizens. Its results were contradictory. On the one hand, in the difficult post-war years, the state managed to temporarily relieve food tension; on the other hand, plowing of large land plots in the east of the country resulted in an environmental disaster, which subsequently caused a new food crisis in the USSR, which led to grain purchases abroad. The lessons of the virgin epic are relevant today. In today’s rapidly changing world, the state must provide its citizens with food security, besides, Russia has a great agricultural potential. One of the main tasks of the Soviet state at the time of the new lands development was the task of providing qualified workers to the developed areas in order to get crops in a short time. Many regions of the country, under the draft of the Communist Party, were to send volunteers to empty lands. Residents of Kostroma region and other regions of the Soviet Union took an active part in the virgin land campaign and contributed to the development of the country’s agricultural sector. The study of archival materials, memoirs of campaign participants, periodicals makes it possible to establish what role the residents of Kostroma region played in implementing the virgin land campaign. The article contains excerpts from the participants’ memoirs about the course of the campaign, the working process and examines the results of the work carried out by Kostroma people on the virgin land. This information throws new light on the problem under study and gives us an opportunity to look at the events of the past years from another aspect.

The object of this article is the image of "new woman" in Russian and Chinese literature. The subject of the study is the correlation between the characters of two heroines, Zijun and Marianna, who are the bearers of a new female identity, in the story "Mourning the Dead" by Lu Xun and the novel "Virgin Soil" by I. S. Turgenev. The aim of the study is to identify the main factors that determined different outcomes of the storyline of these characters, despite the similarity of their fates. In order to achieve the set goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) to reveal the personality of the two characters by analyzing their life path, as well as the beginning and end of their respective love; 2) to analyze the author's intention based on the socio-historical context of the period of creation of these two works. The following methods were used during the study: comparative method, method of holistic analysis of a literary work, as well as cultural-historical method. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the article is the first attempt to compare Lu Xun's short story "Mourning the Dead" with I. S. Turgenev's novel " Virgin Soil ", with special attention paid to the opposite denouement of the stories of Zijun and Marianna. Based on the analysis, it is concluded that the outcome of the fates of these heroines is directly related to their perceptions of their own lives and love, which are conditioned, in turn, by the different intentions of the authors regarding the logic of the development of their characters. The scientific significance of the study lies in the fact that the data obtained not only reveal the ideas about the image of the "new woman" in general, but also contribute to a deep comparative understanding of the analyzed books, which can contribute to the field of comparative literary studies between Russia and China.

Andromache, the wife of Hector in Homer's Iliad, is a source of inspiration for ancient writers. Homer presents her as a model woman, full of affection for her husband Hector. However, the latter did not fail to predict the fall of Troy, the slavery of Trojan women and the cruel fate of young Astyanax. Virgil shows Andromache after the Homeric predictions. At the head of a community of Trojans, Andromache, who became the wife of Hélénos, the younger brother of Hector, after falling to Neoptolemus, reconstitutes a small Troy in Buthrote, thus perpetuating the memory of their lost part. The heroine still thinks of her former husband Hector. Helenos, consulted by Aeneas, presents himself as a real diviner advising and revealing to him the obstacles that stand before him for the foundation of his new city.

The main aim of the article was to demonstrate the similarities between Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We and Thea von Harbou’s Metropolis. The analysis reveals that these similarities are primarily evident in the depiction of space, plot, and character development. Regarding plot structure, female characters assume leading roles in both narratives. The antinomic pairs of women created by Zamyatin and Harbou surprisingly bring the two analyzed novels closer together. O-90 and Maria represent the archetype of the ideal mother ready for great sacrifices, embodying the power of creation. Conversely, I-330 and the false Maria are femme fatales, embodying the power of destruction. They become catalysts for social tensions. In their portrayal of these heroines, Zamyatin and Harbou draw upon Christian and mythological symbolism, creating distinctive images of the Virgin Mary and Lilith. Crucially, within these strongly masculinized worlds, women are the ones who actively initiate changes in their respective realities.

In the article it is made an attempt to analyze the variants of Achilles' image interpretation in the Ancient Greek and Roman literature. The author considers a number of works based on the plot of the Trojan War. The author notes the features typical for the given literary epoch, tendencies of representation of an ideal of heroism and courage embodied in the image of an ancient Greek hero, their importance and influence on the conception of the work is revealed. The author considers the tendencies of the image of the ancient hero depending on the requirements of the epoch.

The fifth scene represented on the Shield of Aeneas describes Porsenna's siege of Rome and the resistance of the Romans, with the two classic exempla of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia (Verg. Aen. 8.646–51):nec non Tarquinium eiectum Porsenna iubebataccipere ingentique urbem obsidione premebat;Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant.illum indignanti similem similemque minantiaspiceres, pontem auderet quia uellere Cocles 650et fluuium uinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis.According to Roman mainstream tradition, at the beginning of the Republic, Porsenna, an Etruscan king of Clusium, tried to reinstate the exiled Tarquinius Superbus by besieging Rome, but the heroism of Romans such as Horatius Cocles, C. Mucius Scaevola and Cloelia impressed him so much that he decided to give up the siege and make peace with his enemies. He then sent his army against the Latins and was finally defeated at the battle of Aricia by the joint forces of the Latin League and their allies from Cumae. However, there circulated also less flattering versions of the story: Tacitus (Hist. 3.72, Porsenna dedita urbe) hints at the fact that the Romans had in fact surrendered to Porsenna, and Pliny refers to a humiliating treaty imposed on them by the Etruscan king (HN 34.139).

With an emphasis on the religious figuration of its heroine’s chaste body, the present essay explores the political dynamics of The Rape of Lucrece. The poem draws on Roman religion and Christianity: Lucrece is an emblem of purity, with echoes of the flaminica or Vestal virgins, and her spotlessness anticipates Christ’s. Seeing these qualities allows us to engage the poem’s gender dynamics and its politics, with both of these being centered on issues of property. While The Rape of Lucrece has been enlisted as an artifact of late Elizabethan republican culture, its depiction of the expulsion of the Tarquins need not lead us to that conclusion. It is nonetheless a product of the political anxieties of Elizabeth’s final years.

Modernist writers such as Katherine Anne Porter were preoccupied with primitivism as opposed to the technological achievements of contemporary society. The deep fascination of the modernists with primitivist tendencies relies mainly on the relationship between art and everyday life, as well as on their desire to escape modern civilization and become one with nature. Aesthetic primitivism based on the artistic expression of the Mexican Indians captured Porter’s attention during her literary career. This article explores the idea of primitivism and civilization in the short stories “María Concepción” and “Virgin Violeta” by Porter. It also traces the influence of Mexico on both the author’s artistic development and her comprehension of the concepts of the primitive and the modern. Focusing on two protagonists, María Concepción and Violeta, as the characters who approach the old and the new in different ways, the article argues that the effects that modern civilization exerts on the human mind can be dramatic. Both heroines seek refuge from the problems in their innermost selves, but only María Concepción embraces primitivism as a way of life. Porter’s emphasis on primitivism can be interpreted as either a means of self-distancing from the prescribed standards of behavior or of following natural instincts.

Turkic folk tales have a long tradition in Uzbek literary heritage. Glorified he-roes with super powers and brave characters with extraordinary abilities were in the center of the ancient eposes. Among the Turkic and Farsi-written sources are famous “Shajarai Turk” by Abulgazi Bakhadirxan, “Jome ut-tavoriz” and “Oguznama” by Rashididdin, “The History of the Four Nations” by Mirza Ulugbek, “Abdullanama” by Hafiz Bukhari, “Zafarnoma” by Sharafiddin Ali Yazdiy, “Nusratnoma” by an unknown author, “History of Rashidiy” by Muhammad Haydar Mirza. These are historically significant works produced in the regions of Movaraunnaxr and Xuroson in the pick of the Islamic civilization. In this paper, the author reveals the features of Alanguva, a mythical heroin presented in the mentioned written sources. Thus, the veneration of Holy Alanguva depicted with magnificent attributes, considering her historical background and her popularity as a di-vine feminine energy filled with purity and trustworthiness. Diverse believes and different historical sources portray Alanguva’s deepest potential in her holiness and tenderness. Alanguva’s highly popular innocence and compassion towards the trustworthiness re-vealed in the sources. The image of her is electrified by giving birth to her child by taking the holy spirit’s blessing. Additionally, the mesmerizing Alanguva is compared with the Virgin Mary.

El mito de Hero y Leandro no se relaciona con ningún ciclo heroico concreto sino que, como tantas otras historias, vive independiente del resto. Es posible localizar la leyenda en un entomo geográfico bien delimitado, el Helesponto, entre las ciudades de Sesto, en Ia ribera europea, y Abido, en Ia asiatica, y cuya distancia ya había sido fijada por los antiguos, casi con total unanimidad, en 1295 metros. Museo es el autor que nos relata la fábula con más profundidad y detalle, dedicándole al asunto un poema completo que consta de trescientos cuarenta y tres versos. Leandro es un joven residente en Abido. Hero es una mujer muy bella de Sesto, sacerdotisa de Afrodita que se mantiene virgen, ignorando el matrimonio y viviendo en una torre con Ia única compañía de una sirvienta.

As a poet, Avitus of Vienne is best known for his biblical epic, De spiritalis historiae gestis, but he also wrote a poem of exhortation addressed to his sister, Fuscina, a dedicated virgin. That poem is given the title De virginitate in the influential MGH edition, following one group of manuscripts, but in a second group it is entitled De consolatoria castitatis laude, a title attested in a dedicatory letter Avitus wrote for the poem and adopted by its most recent editor. The title is problematic, however. Why castitas rather than virginitas, and how is the poem consolatory since it refers to no grief experienced by its addressee? The paper addresses these questions by exploring the language of chastity and consolation. It also analyzes the model of womanly virtue that the poet holds up for his sister: one that, through the biblical and saintly examples of Deborah, Susanna, and Eugenia, proposes a kind of heroism, embodied in mental resolve, strength of character, and the maintenance of moral integrity. In more than one passage Avitus contrasts womanly resolve with male irresolution and weakness. Virtus, despite its etymological associations, lies with the women. By comparison, references to males or the manly (viri, virilis) tend to take on ironic or subversive connotations in such contexts.

O presente artigo objetiva analisar a construção de um modelo de santidade feminina atribuído pela Igreja Católica a partir da história de vida, morte e martírio de Albertina Berkenbrock. A menina, assassinada em 1931 após tentativa de estupro no município de Imaruí/SC, ficou conhecida em 1952 quando a Igreja abriu o pedido de sua beatificação. O jornal O Apóstolo atuou substancialmente para a difusão de discursos que colocavam Albertina enquanto exemplo de santidade feminina. Assim, entende-se que os adjetivos empregados a ela contribuíram para legitimar um modelo de santidade na sua personalidade e para a afirmação de que o fato de resistir à violência sexual caracterizaria-se como o seu grande ato heroico, base para o andamento do processo de beatificação.

The paper discusses the issue of identity themes in the work of contemporary Serbian artists in Kosovo and Metohija, until the 1990s. Among Serbian artists were those who nurtured themes related to the Serbian cultural identity of the 1970s and 1980s. The painter Vlada Radovic' expressed this through the works of "The Patriarchate of Peć", "The Forest of Dečani with a view of the Visoki Dečan Monastery and "The Holy Virgin Ljeviška". After him, Sava Rakočevic', in his creative beginnings, also sought and found inspiration in the Kosovo pledge and in Kosovo as a space woven into Serbian cultural identity. His painting "Monument to the Kosovo Heroes" is a representative example. Trajko Stojanovic Kosovac also drew inspiration from Kosovo-pledge inspiration in even more difficult times. His aquatint and graphics cycle is dedicated to Dečani - the treasury of Serbian spirituality and culture. In Trajko Kosovac's studio, Zoran Furunovic had been working on copying murals before enrolling basic studies, where we recognize his interest in topics related to Serbian cultural identity. Initiated by the entire situation in the entire Kosmet area, where everything is directed against the people of Serbian nationality, the painter Petar Đuza with a direct response and through the paint "Heroics of Myth Grows Into Tragic Reality" provides the observer with an overview of unpleasant events. In the 1970s and 1980s, Svetomir Arsić Basara, as the leading Serbian sculptor in the Province, began to show through sculpture the impossibility of reconciling with the threat to Serbian national and cultural identity.

Este artigo objetiva analisar a construção de um modelo de santidade feminina atribuído pela Igreja a partir da história de vida, morte e martírio de Albertina Berkenbrock. Para isso, parte-se das publicações do jornal católico O Apóstolo, que atuou substancialmente para a construção e difusão de discursos que colocavam Albertina como modelo exemplar. Ao identificar os adjetivos empregados em relação a ela, observou-se que as publicações contribuíram para legitimar um modelo de santidade em sua personalidade e para a afirmação de que resistir à violência sexual caracterizar-se-ia como o seu grande ato heroico, base para o andamento do processo de beatificação. Assim, a análise dos discursos da imprensa periódica se atentou especialmente para questões que envolvem relações de gênero, corpo e sexualidade.

AbstractEuthymos was a real person, an Olympic victor from Locri Epizephyrii in the first half of the fifth century BC. Various sources attribute to him extraordinary achievements: he received cult in his own lifetime; he fought with and overcame the ‘Hero of Temesa’, a daimon who in ritual deflowered a virgin in the Italian city of Temesa every year; and he vanished into a local river instead of dying (extant iconography from Locri shows him as a river god receiving cult a century after his death). By taking an integrative approach to Euthymos' legend and cult iconography, this article proposes a new interpretation of the complex. It is argued that Euthymos received cult already in his lifetime in consequence of his victory over the Hero and that he took over, in a modified form, the Hero's cult. Various considerations, including the role of river gods as the recipients of brides' virginity in prenuptial rites, point to an identification of the Hero as a river deity. In this light it is suggested that the contest between Euthymos and the Hero was conceived as a deliberate emulation of Herakles' fight with Acheloos. The case of Euthymos at Locri, for all its peculiarities, draws our attention to some important aspects of the heroization of historical persons in the Classical period. First, the earliest attested cult of a living person in Greece is to be placed around the middle of the fifth century. Second, heroized persons in the Classical period were not always passive in the process of their heroization, but could actively promote it. And third, a common pattern in the heroization of contemporaries in the Classical period was to accommodate them into existing cults.

This paper is devoted to the gender aspect of ethno-national representations in political cartoons. The content of the study is formed by the materials of the political cartoon presented on the pages of the satirical magazines of Austria-Hungary during the Great Eastern (Balkan) crisis of the 1870 s. (Die Bombe, Der Floh, and Kikeriki). An attempt is made to systematize the feminine images of the Austrian political caricature during the Balkan crisis. Among them stand out: images of the Virgin Martyr (feminine passive-suffering personifications of the Balkan peoples and states along with the Ottoman Empire); feminine images of Austria (national representations of the country in the image of the Mother and heroized personifications of the Holy Roman Empire); images that are the personification of the theme of female deceit / “seduction” in politics and various variations of the harem theme in relation to the Ottoman Empire; feminine personifications of the infernal distortion of the Woman’s essence (war in the guise of the Gorgon Medusa, etc.). Such problems are considered as the formation of characteristic preferences of the Austrian political caricature in the distribution of variations of feminine images in relation to the image of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian empires and the Balkan peoples and states; ways of opposing feminine and masculine symbols of the countries participating in the main events of the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878. The methodology of the research is based on “deciphering” the figurative and metaphorical way of constructing feminine ethno-national representations based on references to mythology and national history within the framework of imagology approaches, along with identifying the historical context of the international politics of the “great powers” in the Balkan region in the 1870s.

Insofar as we can know, Medea has always been multiple, existing in many different versions simultaneously. She is never simply a literary construction, a stratified intertextual ensemble made up of all the other literary Medeas that came before her, but a product of the values and fears of each culture that imagines her, recreates her, and uses her to represent meaning. The Middle Ages were no different: Medea could figure as an alchemist's guide, as in the Pretiosa Margarita Novella (the New Pearl of Great Price); as an allegory of God fighting the Antichrist in the Ovide Moralisé; as wronged wife in Geoffrey Chaucer's Legend of Good Women; or as a nightmare figure that appears like Grendel in Beowulf to destroy Jason's wedding feast in Raoul Lefèvre's History of Jason. The flexibility of the medieval myth of Medea is staggering—even more staggering than that of the Roman period—stretched as it was across a continent of warring kingdoms, with different authors and audiences pressing classical texts to generate new and culturally relevant and acceptable meanings. However, appropriately enough for a volume titled ‘Roman Medea’, there is one multiple of Medea that drops out of the equation as a direct influence: the Greek Medea, the Medea of Euripides and Apollonius. The loss of the Greek tradition did not impede medieval authors, who found more than enough in Latin texts to inspire them. The basic Latin materials upon which the Middle Ages built their Medeas were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides, along with scattered references in other popular authors like Statius, presentations of irrational women in love like Dido in Virgil, descriptions of child murderers such as Procne also taken from the Metamorphoses, and terrifying witches such as Lucan's Erictho. However, some Latin texts which we might have expected to be influential, such as Seneca's Medea, were marginal to the medieval tradition.

Student unrest of 1956 in Soviet universities is examined based on the example of the Ural State University and the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk. Student attitudes are analyzed in terms of social and critical thinking, and the reaction of authorities — in light of the policy towards the intelligentsia. The theoretical and methodological frame of analysis is constructivism, with emphasis put on aspects of bilateral, reciprocal design and temporality. The empirical base consists of documents from the collections of the Documentation Centre of the Social Institutions of Sverdlovsk Region, the University Museum, as well as materials from local and national press. The mid 1950’s were marked by a radical revision of the limits of acceptable criticism, which was unfolding until the end of 1956. Unorthodox activity was not regarded as seditious up until a point. The gap, interval between the original action and the resulting stigmatizing mark shows how such a notion crystallized. At some point it seemed as if you could criticize everyone and everything. It is shown that the most crucial effect was produced not by the theme of student statements but rather by a mismatch in the magnitude of the subjects and objects of public criticism. The position of authorities was to depoliticize student activity, while using such a relatively new course as pathologizing objectification: the younger generation was treated as a bearer of specific problems requiring special attention. “Labor education” with emphasis on hard physical labor was used as the universal lifesaver. Sundays at construction sites, hedgehog-fit visits to farms, as well as sending expelled students to factories inform the phenomenon of organic intellectuals “on the contrary” (in the words of A. Gramsci and N. Savelyeva). At the same time, the pragmatic benefits of resolving to admit to universities only those who had sufficient work experience was not reduced to disposing of students’ “unhealthy moods”, but rather “postponement” of higher education was to attract the youngsters to the virgin lands and construction sites. Students themselves insisted on the political connotations of their actions. The desire of the young generation to “catch the winds of history in their sails” was gradually accumulated in the concept of romance, which had yet to displace the patriotism and heroism that prevailed within the ideological orientations and the official rhetoric of the 50’s.

The article identifies the types of contexts in which the idea of the eternal return in the small prose symbolists functions. The first type of contexts includes works based on pretext. F. Sologub transposes evangelical plots into modernity and, relying on the Nietzschean idea of eternal return, emphasizes their importance for the present. In the novel "Lohengrin" Sologub transposes R. Wagner's legendary mythological plot, borrowed from medieval German legends and tales, into the modern bourgeois world, revealing the correspondences between the past and the present. Appeal to allusions and reminiscences in characterizing the characters helps the author to show their difference from the characters of Wagner's opera. The second type of contexts is formed by novels in which writers create their own myths. This is “Princess Zara” by N. Gumilyov, “Inventions (Evening story)” by Z. Gippius and “The Marble Head” by V. Bryusov. In “Princess Zara”, author offers an elegant myth about the immaculate beauty of the Light Virgin of the forests, which periodically changes the outer shell. His myth Gumilyov interweaves in a picturesque view, rich in African exotic and actualizing the sight, hearing, touch and smell of the reader. In the novel "Fiction" Gippius creates a paradoxical situation where the heroine, on the threshold of adulthood, learns about it in every detail, which allows the writer to raise the question of whether a person needs or does not need to know her future and if it is possible to vary and comprehend own life. “The Marble Head” of Bryusov is a complex “text-myth”, written in the form of rondo, which is artistically organized by symbolist ideas about the role of Beauty / Art in human life and about contrasting Beauty with the gray prose of life. "Marble head" can be viewed as a novel of the insight conflict, revealing the moral and psychological crisis of hero. The development of the novel internal conflict is plotted by Bryusov in a form that is based on the representation of V. Solovyov on the triadic nature of world development: thesis – antithesis – synthesis.

Abstract Even a cursory reading of the eleventh chapter of Judges suggests obvious parallels between the Jephthah story and Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion; however, Blake’s six illustrations of Judges (including two of Jephthah and his daughter) irrefutably document his appropriation of the story. No critic has connected the Jephthah story of virgin sacrifice to Oothoon’s fate, nor have Blake’s illustrations of the Judges narrative received much attention. My argument is that Blake’s contrary reading of the book of Judges should inform our critical reading of Visions. This intertextual analysis emphasizes the poem’s representation of the female body as a site of sacrifice and how both Blake’s illustrations and the poem position readers for this spectacle of virginity and violence. Reading Blake’s illustrations of the Jephthah narrative—visual revelations of issues of sexual power—amplifies the poem’s cultural power, its iconic representation of a patriarchal obsession with virginity, demonstrable in late eighteenth-century British culture but with ties to biblical, Hebraic representations of virginity and violence. Blake’s culturally-targeted revision of Jephthah’s daughter defies eighteenth-century British cultural strictures about female purity and marital customs by transforming the daughter virgin’s lament at not being able to marry into Oothoon’s redefinition of sexual purity. Further, my reading refutes the widespread critical opinion that in the ending of the poem, the heroine Oothoon offers free love that is, in Mellor’s words, a “male fantasy,” serving the interests of the “male libertine, ”and underscores the poem’s critique of mandated female virginity and culturally-endorsed violence. Finally, Finally, the illustrations and the poem document Blake’s engagement with this biblical book where Israel’s destiny unfolds through accounts of judges who again and again misjudge, who enact sexual violence and fail to see its connection with their own violent ends. Blake’s Visions begins and ends with a chorus of daughters—in between it chronicles the horrors of exploitation, rape, slavery, cultural imperialism and links those to individual sexual repression, like Theotormon’s troubled image of Oothoon, like Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter, truly a “sick man’s dream.”

Abstract This article explores the allusive strategy of the late second-century cento-tragedy Medea attributed to Hosidius Geta, which recounts Medea's revenge against Jason using verses from the works of Virgil. It argues that the text's author recognized a consistent strand of characterization in earlier treatments of the Medea myth, whereby the heroine's filicide is presented as a corrupted sacrifice. Geta selectively uses verses from thematically significant episodes in the Aeneid—the lying tale of Sinon and the death of Laocoön; the murder of Priam; the suicide of Dido—at key points to foreground the theme of pseudo-sacrificial violence. Geta's use of Virgil evinces a keen appreciation both of the symbolism of the broader mythic tradition in which his text is situated and of the original narrative contexts of the verses he recycles. The article's findings contribute to a growing recognition of the creative potential afforded by the cento technique.

Article deals with the attempt to describe the semantic �apacity of Fielding`s last novel �Amelia� that became the notable event in writer�s biography and remains the object of discussion among the researches starting from its first publication. Fielding was at the height of his fame as the magistrate for Westminster and Middlesex and as a celebrated novelist who was an opponent of Samuel Richardson. His novel �Tom Jones� (1749) despite some harsh criticism had been generally acclaimed. According to the title �Amelia� obviously differs from Fielding�s early novels: �Joseph Andrews�, �Jonathan Wild� and �Tom Jones�. With his central heroine Fielding has entered the territory associated with Richardson, whose distressed female characters, Pamela and Clarissa, had captured the attention of the reading public. It is well-known that Amelia Booth was modelled on Fielding�s first wife, Charlotte Craddock, while his hero, Captain Booth, was inspired be the author himself as well as his father, Lieutenant General Edmund Fielding. Trying to defend �Amelia� Fielding in the Covent-Garden Journal insists that he has followed the rules for the epic of Homer and Virgil, saying that the �learned reader will see that the latter was the noble model�. Like the �Aeneid�, �Amelia� consists of twelve books, and the opening section of the novel, set in Newgate, is a parallel to Virgil. The author being in the heyday of his glory brought before the public his new, experimental text, giving up the form of comic epic poem in prose that was immortalized in �The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling�. Denying the technique that was deeply rooted in the English prose due to the narrative skill and the omniscient author (who acted as theorist of the novel), theatrically performing the game with the reader through metanarrative, Fielding in �Amelia� prefers restrained position of the narrator using the recourses of dramatical art. Choosing the plain plot about the everyday difficulties, poverty and humiliations of a young married couple that is peculiar for European sentimentalism, Fielding � due to the thematic tightness of the novel, its allusive fullness, the ambiguity of characters, the poetics of concealment � the narrative about the life of a libertine in a family (W. Scott) presents not so much as the moral lesson for the protagonist that is guided by passions but as ethical transformation that comes with the experience of the �art of life�. In recent decades �Amelia� has been the subject of many investigations, its experimental qualities made it attractive to critics of both the development of the 18th century novel and Fielding�s career. Modern readers however, have shown less interest for the work. Critical hostility to �Amelia� often seems to imply disappointment that it is not like �Tom Jones�. �Amelia� is often called a sequel to his masterpiece �Tom Jones� (Walter Scott) but Fielding adopted a new form of verisimilitude and changed his narrative technique, setting and tone. Historians agree that �Tom Jones� is loosely an epic, with a plot drawn from romance, while �Amelia� is modelled on a classical epic � Virgil�s �Aeneid� � and effects to eschew romance (Martin Battestin, Claude Rawson, Peter Sabor, Ronald Paulson, Simon Varey). The instability of reputation of Fielding�s �Amelia� demonstrates that the novel was traditionally estimated as writer�s failure but nowadays it is viewed as complicated literary form addressed to the highbrow reader. According to Peter Sabor, �Amelia� might never become the �favourite Child� of Fielding�s readers, as it was of Fielding himself, but what remains convincing about his last and most problematic novel is its harsh, world-weary picture of a venal society. Fielding�s darkened view of the people�s community influenced the later samples of the genre and reached successful treatment of the similar themes in the English novel of the 19th century. All the more it is the universal experience of the renewal of genre poetics and the reading of �Amelia� represents Fielding�s original conception of the novel. According to the declared problem the author of the present article uses historical and literary, sociocultural and hermeneutic approaches in the synthesis with the technique of close reading.

At the heart of theAeneidthe hero descends to the world of the dead and in its innermost recess is reunited with his father. Anchises, Aeneas’s link to his destroyed Trojan past, reveals to his son the future of his race in the form of a procession of the souls of Roman heroes as yet unborn. In this place where time past, present, and future is held together, theAeneidalso comes to a heightened consciousness of its own literary genealogy, as literary memory is overlaid on family and racial memory. The whole of the Underworld episode is modelled on Odysseus’ visit to the land of the dead inOdyssey11: Aeneas’ meeting with his father reworks Odysseus’ meeting with his mother Anticleia (Od.11.152–224), which is immediately followed by the Catalogue of Heroines (Od.11.225–332), the formal model for Virgil’s very masculine Parade of Heroes. But the tears and words with which Anchises greets his son (6.684–9) allude to the Roman epic of Ennius and specifically to the scene at the opening of theAnnalsin which Ennius established his own place within the epic tradition, by narrating a dream in which the phantom of Homer explained to the sleeping poet how, through a Pythagorean metempsychosis, the true soul of Homer was reincarnated in the breast of Ennius himself. In restaging this scene of succession in the dreamlike setting of the Underworld Virgil hints at his own relationship to the dead epic poets to whose company he seeks admittance. The encounter of Aeneas and Anchises occurs within a set-piece of Homeric imitation; Anchises’ running commentary on the Parade of Heroes functions as a summary of the matter of Ennius’ historical epic, which it ‘completes’ by extending the story to Augustus’ achievement of world-empire and restoration of a Golden Age (6.791–800). Ennian historical epic is thus framed in a Homeric mythological episode; in the first part of his speech (6.724–51) Anchises encapsulates another branch of the hexameter tradition, with a philosophico-theological account of the nature of the world and of the soul that is indebted both to Anticleia’s explanation to Odysseus of what happens to humans after death (Od.11.216–24) and to the Ennian Homer’s more philosophical account of these matters, but couched in markedly Lucretian language: a miniature didactic ‘de rerum natura’ to set beside the miniatureAnnalsthat is to follow.

Introduction Many people’s knowledge of history is gleaned through popular culture. As a result there is likely a blurring of history with myth. This is one of the criticisms of historical romance novels, which blur historical details with fictional representations. As a result of this the genre is often dismissed from serious academic scholarship. The other reason for its disregard may be that it is largely seen as women’s fiction. As ‘women’s fiction’ it is largely relegated to that of ‘low culture’ and considered to have little literary value. Yet the romance genre remains popular and lucrative. Research by the Romance Writers of America in 2016 found that the genre represents 23% of the US fiction market and generates in excess of US$1 billion per year (Romance Writers of America). Since the onset of COVID-19, sales of romance novels in the US have soared, increasing by 17% between January and May 2020. The most popular genre was the historical romance genre. In total during that period, 16.2 million romance e-books were purchased by consumers (NPD). Yet despite its popularity, romance fiction remains stuck in the pulp fiction bubble. This article draws upon an international survey conducted in June 2020 by the authors. The study aimed to understand how readers of historical romance novels (n=813) engage with historical representations in popular culture, and how they navigate issues of authenticity. Consuming History through Popular Culture: “Historical Romance Novels Bring History to Life” Popular culture presents a tangible way in which audiences can engage with history and historical practices. “The spaces scholars have no idea about – the gaps between verifiable fact – are the territory for the writer of fictional history” (de Groot 217). Historical romance writer Georgette Heyer, for example, was influenced by her father’s conviction that “the historical novel was a worthy medium for learning about the past” (Kloester 102), and readers of historical romance often echo this view. One participant in this study considered the genre a way to “learn about history, the mores and customs, the food and clothing of that particular era … and how it contrasts to modern times”. For another participant, “most historical romances are set in countries other than my own. I like learning about these other countries and cultures”. The historical romance genre, in some instances, was not the reason for reading the novel: it was the historical setting. The romance itself was often incidental: “I am more interested in the history than the romance, but if the romance is done well … [then] the tensions of the romance illustrate and highlight historical divisions”. While a focus on history rather than romance, it posits that authors are including historically accurate details, and this is recognised by readers of the genre. In fact, one contributor to the survey argued that as a member of a writers’ group they were aware of that the “majority of the writers of that genre were voracious researchers, so much so that writers of other genres (male western writers for one) were going to them for information”. While fiction provides entertainment and relaxation, reading historical romance provides an avenue for accessing history without engaging it in a scholarly environment. Participants offered examples of this, saying “I like learning about the past and novels are an easy and relaxing way to do it” and “I enjoy historical facts but don’t necessarily need to read huge historical texts about Elizabeth Woodville when I can read The White Queen.” Social and political aspects of an era were gleaned from historical romance novels that may be less evident in historical texts. For one respondent, “I enjoy the description of the attire … behaviours … the social strata, politics, behaviours toward women and women who were ahead of their time”. Yet at the same time, historical fiction provides a way for readers to learn about historical events and places that spurred them to access more factual historical sources: “when I read a novel that involves actual historic happenings, it drives me to learn if the author is representing them correctly and to learn more about the topics”. For another, the historical romance “makes me want to do some more research”. Hence, historical fiction can provide new ways of seeing the past: “I enjoy seeing the similarities between people of the past and present. Hist[orical] Fic[tion] brings us hope that we can learn and survive our present.” A consciousness of how ancestors “survived and thrived” was evident among many participants. For one, history is best learned through the eyes of the people who lived through the era. School doesn’t teach history in a way that I can grasp, but putting myself into the shoes of the ordinary people who experienced, I have a better understanding of the time. Being able to access different perspectives on history and historical events and make an emotional connection with the past allowed readers to better understand the lived experiences of those from the past. This didn’t mean that readers were ignoring the fictional nature of the genre; rather, readers were clearly aware that the author was often taking liberties with history in order to advance the plot. Yet they still enjoyed the “glimpses of history that is included in the story”, adding that the “fictional details makes the history come alive”. The Past Represents a Different Society For some, historical romances presented a different society, and in some ways a nostalgia for the past. This from one participant: I like the attention to eloquence, to good speech, to manners, to responsibility toward each other, to close personal relationships, to value for education and history, to an older, more leisurely, more thoughtful way of life. A similar view was offered by another participant: “I like the language. I like the slowness, the courtship. I like the olden time social rules of honour and respect. I like worlds in which things like sword fights might occur”. For these respondents, there is a nostalgia where things were better then than now (Davis 18). Readers clearly identified with the different social and moral behaviours that they experienced in the novels they are reading, with one identifying more with the “historical morals, ethics, and way of life than I do modern ones”. Representations of a more respectful past were one aspect that appealed to readers: “people are civil to each other”, they are “generally kinder” and have a “more traditional moral code”. An aspect of escapism is also evident: “I enjoy leaving the present day for a while”. It is a past where readers find “time and manners [that are] now lost to us”. The genre reflects time that “seemed simpler” but “of course it helps if you are in the upper class”. Many historical romance novels are set within the social sphere of the elites of a society. And these readers’ views clearly indicate this: honestly, the characters are either wealthy or will be by the end, which releases from the day to day drudgeries and to the extent possible ensures an economic “happily ever after” as well as a romantic one … . I know the reality of even the elite wasn’t as lovely as portrayed in the books. But they are a charming and sometimes thrilling fantasy to escape inside … It is in the elite social setting that a view emerges in historical romance novels that “things are simpler and you don’t have today’s social issues to deal with”. No one period of history appears to reflect this narrative; rather, it is a theme across historical periods. The intrigue is in how the storyline develops to cope with social mores. “I enjoy reading about characters who wind their way around rules and the obstacles of their society … . Nothing in a historical romance can be fixed with a quick phone call”. The historical setting is actually an advantage because history places constrictions upon a plot: “no mobile phones, no internet, no fast cars. Many a plot would be over before it began if the hero and heroine had a phone”. Hence history and social mores “limit the access of characters and allow for interesting situations”. Yet another perspective is how readers draw parallels to the historic pasts they read about: “I love being swept away into a different era and being able to see how relevant some social issues are today”. There are however aspects that readers are less enamoured with, namely the lack of sex. While wholesome, particularly in the case of Christian authors, other characters are heroines who are virgins until after marriage, but even then may be virgins for “months or years after the wedding”. Similarly, “I deplore the class system and hate the inequalities of the past, yet I love stories where dukes and earls behave astonishingly well and marry interesting women and where all the nastiness is overcome”. The Problem with Authenticity The results of the international historical romance survey that forms the basis of this research indicate that most readers and writers alike were concerned with authenticity. Writers of historical romance novels often go to great lengths to ensure that their stories are imbued with historically accurate details. For readers, this “brings the characters and locales to life”. For readers, “characters can be fictional, but major events and ways of living should be authentic … dress, diet, dances, customs, historic characters”. Portraying historical accuracy is appreciated by readers: “I appreciate the time and effort the author takes to research subjects and people from a particular time period to make their work seem more authentic and believable”. Georgette Heyer, whose works were produced between 1921 and 1974, is considered as the doyenne of regency romance novels (Thurston 37), with a reputation for exacting historical research (Kloester 209). Heyer’s sway is such that 88 (10.8%) of the respondents to the romance survey cited her when asked who their favourite author is, with some also noting that she is a standard for other authors to aspire to. For one participant, I only read one writer of historical romance: Georgette Heyer. Why? Sublime writing skills, characterisation, delicious Wodehousian humour and impeccable accurate and research into the Regency period. Despite this prevailing view, “Heyer’s Regency is a selective one, and much of the broader history of the period is excluded from it” (Kloester 210). Heyer’s approach to history is coloured by the various approaches and developments to historiography that occurred throughout the period in which she was writing (Kloester 103). There is little evidence that she approached her sources with a critical eye and it appears that she often accepted her sources as historical fact (Kloester 112). Heyer’s works are devoid of information as to what is based in history and what was drawn from her imagination (Kloester 110). Despite the omissions above, Heyer has a reputation for undertaking meticulous research for her novels. This, however, is problematic in itself, as Alexandra Stirling argues: “in trying to recreate Regency patterns of speech by applying her knowledge of historical colloquialism, she essentially created her own dialect” that has come to “dominate the modern genre” (Stirling). Heyer is also highly criticised for both her racism (particularly anti-Semitism), which is reflected in her characterisation of Regency London as a society of “extreme whiteness”, which served to erase “the reality of Regency London as a cosmopolitan city with people of every skin colour and origin, including among the upper classes” (Duvezin-Caubet 249). Thus Heyer’s Regency London is arguably a fantasy world that has little grounding in truth, despite her passion for historical research. Historical romance author Felicia Grossman argues that this paradox occurs as “mixed in with [Heyer’s] research is a lot of pure fiction done to fit her personal political views” (Grossman), where she deliberately ignores historical facts that do not suit her narrative, such as the sociological implications of the slave trade and the very public debate about it that occurred during the regency. The legacy of these omissions can be found in contemporary romances set in that period. By focussing on, and intensifying, a narrow selection of historical facts, “the authentic is simultaneously inauthentic” (Hackett 38). For one participant, “I don’t really put much stock into “historical accuracy” as a concept, when I read a historical romance, I read it almost in the way that one would read a genre fantasy novel, where each book has its own rules and conventions”. Diversifying the Bubble The intertwining of history and narrative posits how readers separate fact from fiction. Historical romance novels have often been accused by both readers and critics of providing a skewed view on the past. In October 2019 the All about Romance blog asked its readers: “Does Historical Romance have a quality problem?”, leading to a strong debate with many contributors noting how limited the genre had developed, with the lack of diversity being a particular strain of discussion. Just a few weeks later, the peak industry body, the Romance Writers Association of America, became embroiled in a racism controversy. Cultural products such as romance novels are products of a wider white heteronormative paradigm which has been increasingly challenged by movements such as the LGBTQI+, Me Too, and Black Lives Matter, which have sought to address the evident racial imbalance. The lack of racial representation and racial equality in historical novels also provides an opportunity to consider contemporary ideals. Historical romance novels for one participant provided a lens through which to understand the “challenges for women and queers”. Being a genre that is dominated by both female writers and readers (the Romance Writers Association claims that 82% of readers are female), it is perhaps no surprise that many respondents were concerned with female issues. For one reader, the genre provides a way to “appreciate the freedom that women have today”. Yet it remains that the genre is fictional, allowing readers to fantasise about different social and racial circumstances: “I love the modern take on historical novels with fearless heroines living lives (they maybe couldn’t have) in a time period that intrigues me”. Including strong women and people of colour in the genre means those once excluded or marginalised are centralised, suggesting historical romance novels provide a way of fictionally going some way to re-addressing gender and racial imbalances. Coupled with romance’s guarantee of a happy ending, the reader is assured that the heroine has a positive outcome, and can “have it all”, surely a mantra that should appeal to feminists. “Historical romance offers not just escape, but a journey – emotional, physical or character change”; in this view, readers positively respond to a narrative in which plots engage with both the positive and negative sides of history. One participant put it this way: “I love history especially African American history. Even though our history is painful it is still ours and we loved just like we suffered”. Expanding the Bubble Bridgerton (2020–), the popular Netflix show based upon Julia Quinn’s bestselling historical romance series, challenges the whitewashing of history by presenting an alternative history. Choosing a colour-blind cast and an alternate reality where racism was dispelled when the King marries a woman of colour and bestowed honours on citizens of all colours, Bridgerton’s depiction of race has generally been met with positive reviews. The author of the series of books that Bridgerton is adapted from addressed this point: previously, I’ve gotten dinged by the historical accuracy police. So in some ways, I was fearful – if you do that, are you denying real things that happened? But you know what? This is already romantic fantasy, and I think it’s more important to show that as many people as possible deserve this type of happiness and dignity. So I think they made the absolutely right choice, bringing in all this inclusivity (Quinn cited in Flood). Despite the critics, and there have been some, Netflix claims that the show has placed “number one in 83 countries including the US, UK, Brazil, France, India and South Africa”, which they credited partly to audiences who “want to see themselves reflected on the screen” (Howe). There is no claim to accuracy, as Howe argues that the show’s “Regency reimagined isn’t meant to be history. It’s designed to be more lavish, sexier and funnier than the standard period drama”. As with the readers surveyed above, this is a knowing audience who are willing to embrace an alternate vision of the past. Yet there are aspects which need to remain, such as costume, class structure, technology, which serve to signify the past. As one participant remarked, “I love history. I love reading what is essentially a fantasy-realism setting. I read for escapism and it’s certainly that”. “The Dance of History and Fiction” What is evident in this discussion is what Griffiths calls the “dance of history and fiction”, where “history and fiction … are a tag team, sometimes taking turns, sometimes working in tandem, to deepen our understanding and extend our imagination” (Griffiths). He reminds us that “historians and novelists do not constitute inviolable, impermeable categories of writers. Some historians are also novelists and many novelists are also historians. Historians write fiction and novelists write history”. More so, “history doesn’t own truth, and fiction doesn’t own imagination”. Amongst other analysis of the intersections and juxtaposition of history and fiction, Griffiths provides one poignant discussion, that of Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River (2006). According to the author's own Website, The Secret River caused controversy when it first appeared, and become a pawn in the “history wars” that continues to this day. How should a nation tell its foundation story, when that story involves the dispossession of other people? Is there a path between the “black armband” and the “white blindfold” versions of a history like ours? In response to the controversy Grenville made an interesting if confusing argument that she does not make a distinction between “story-telling history” and “the discipline of History”, and between “writing true stories” and “writing History” (Griffiths). The same may be said for romance novelists; however, it is in their pages that they are writing a history. The question is if it is an authentic history, and does that really matter? References Davis, Fred. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. Free Press, 1979. De Groot, Jerome. Consuming History Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. Florence Taylor and Francis, 2009. Duvezin-Caubet, Caroline. "Gaily Ever After: Neo-Victorian M/M Genre Romance for the Twenty-First Century." Neo-Victorian Studies 13.1 (2020). Flood, Alison. "Bridgerton Author Julia Quinn: 'I've Been Dinged by the Accuracy Police – but It's Fantasy!'." The Guardian 12 Jan. 2021. 15 Jan. 2021 <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/12/bridgerton-author-julia-quinn-accuracy-fantasy-feisty-rakish-artistocrats-jane-austen>. Griffiths, Tom. "The Intriguing Dance of History and Fiction." TEXT 28 (2015). Grossman, Felicia. "Guest Post: Georgette Heyer Was an Antisemite and Her Work Is Not Foundational Historical Romance." Romance Daily News 2021 (2020). <https://romancedailynews.medium.com/guest-post-georgette-heyer-was-an-antisemite-and-her-work-is-not-foundational-historical-romance-fc00bfc7c26>. Hackett, Lisa J. "Curves & a-Lines: Why Contemporary Women Choose to Wear Nostalgic 1950s Style Clothing." Sociology. Doctor of Philosophy, University of New England, 2020. 320. Howe, Jinny. "'Bridgerton': How a Bold Bet Turned into Our Biggest Series Ever." Netflix, 27 Jan. 2021. <https://about.netflix.com/en/news/bridgerton-biggest-series-ever>. Kloester, Jennifer V. "Georgette Heyer: Writing the Regency: History in Fiction from Regency Buck to Lady of Quality 1935-1972." 2004. NPD. "Covid-19 Lockdown Gives Romance a Lift, the NPD Group Says." NPD Group, 2020. 2 Feb. 2021 <https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/2020/covid-19-lockdown-gives-romance-a-lift--the-npd-group-says/>. Romance Writers of America. "About the Romance Genre." 2016. 2 Feb. 2021 <https://www.rwa.org/Online/Romance_Genre/About_Romance_Genre.aspx>. Stirling, Alexandra. "Love in the Ton: Georgette Heyer's Legacy in Regency Romance World-Building." Nursing Clio. Ed. Jacqueline Antonovich. 13 Feb. 2020. <https://nursingclio.org/2020/02/13/love-in-the-ton-georgette-heyers-legacy-in-regency-romance-world-building/>. Thurston, Carol. The Romance Revolution : Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

IntroductionTraditionally, the femme fatale has been closely associated with a series of noir films (such as Double Indemnity [1944], The Maltese Falcon [1941], and The Big Heat [1953]) in the 1940s and 50s that necessarily betray male anxieties about independent women in the years during and following World War II. However, the anxieties and historical factors that precipitated the emergence of the noir femme fatale similarly existed in the sixteenth century and, as a result, the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. In this context, to re-imagine is to imagine or conceive of something in a new way. It involves taking a concept or an idea and re-imagining it into something simultaneously similar and new. This article will argue, first, that the noir femme fatale’s emergence coincided with a period of history characterised by suspicion, intolerance and perceived vulnerability and that a similar set of historical factors—namely the presence of a female monarch and changes to marriage laws—precipitated the emergence a femme fatale type figure in the Renaissance period. Second, noir films typically contain a series of narrative tropes that can be similarly identified in a selection of Renaissance plays, which enables the production of a new, re-imagined reading of these plays as tragedies of the feminine desire for autonomy. The femme fatale, according to Rebecca Stott, is not unique to the twentieth century. The femme fatale label can be applied retrospectively to seductive, if noticeably evil women, whose seduction and destruction of men render them amenable to our twenty-first century understanding of the femme fatale (Allen). Mario Praz similarly contends that the femme fatale has always existed; she simply becomes more prolific in times of social and cultural upheaval. The definition of the femme fatale, however, has only recently been added to the dictionary and the burden of all definitions is the same: the femme fatale is a woman who lures men into danger, destruction and even death by means of her overpowering seductive charms. There is a woman on the Renaissance stage who combines adultery, murder, and insubordination and this figure embodies the same characteristics as the twentieth-century femme fatale because she is similarly drawn from an archetypal pattern of male anxieties regarding sexually appetitive/desirous women. The fear that this selection of women elicit arises invariably from their initial defiance of their fathers and/or brothers in marrying without their consent and/or the possibility that these women may marry or seek a union with a man out of sexual lust.The femme fatale of 1940s and 50s noir films is embodied by such women as Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Maltese Falcon), Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity), and Ann Grayle (Murder, My Sweet), while the figure of the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, including The Changeling (1622), Arden of Faversham (1592), and The Maid’s Tragedy (1619). Like the noir femme fatale, there is a female protagonist in each of these plays who uses both cunning and sexual attractiveness to gain her desired independence. By focusing on one noir film and one Renaissance play, this article will explore both the historical factors that precipitate the emergence of these fatal women and the structural tropes that are common to both Double Indemnity and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling. The obvious parallels between the two figures at the centre of these narratives—Phyllis and Beatrice-Joanna respectively—namely an aversion to the institution of marriage and the instigation of murder to attain one’s desires, enable a re-imagined reading of Beatrice-Joanna as a femme fatale. Socio-Cultural AnxietiesThe femme fatale is a component of changing consciousness: she is one of the recurring motifs of the film noir genre and takes her place amongst degeneration anxieties, anxieties about sexuality and race and concerns about cultural virility and fitness (Stott). According to Sylvia Harvey, the emergence of the femme fatale parallels social changes taking place in the 1940s, particularly the increasing entry of women into the labour market. She also notes the apparent frustration of the institution of the family in this era and the boredom and stifling entrapment of marriage and how the femme fatale threatens to destroy traditional family structures. Jans Wager likewise notes that the femme fatale emerged as an expression of the New Woman, whose presence in the public sphere was in opposition to her adherence to traditional societal values, while Virginia Allen argues that the femme fatale came to maturity in the years marked by the first birth control campaigns and female emancipation movement. The Renaissance femme fatale similarly emerged in the wake of historical trigger factors occurring at the time, namely the presence of a female monarch and changes to marriage laws. In 1558, Queen Elizabeth I assumed the throne, which had a profound impact upon relations of gender in English Renaissance society. She occupied a privileged position of power in a society that believed women should have none by virtue of their inferior sex (Montrose). This was compounded by her decision to remain unmarried, which ensured the consolidation of her power that she would have otherwise forfeited to her husband. The presence of a female ruler destabilised established notions of women as passive objects of desire and, as I argue here, contributed to representations of powerful women in Renaissance drama. Men created femme fatales in their work as an expression of what they saw in women who were beginning to declare their sexual and political freedom. In addition, changing conceptions of marriage from arranged practices (unions for social and economic reasons) to romantic idealism (marriage for companionship and affective ties) saw the legitimation of desire outside the holy sacrament. Plays depicting femme fatales, including The Changeling (1622), Arden of Faversham (1592) and The Maid’s Tragedy (1619) to name a few, appear to have fed off the anxieties that resulted from the shift from arranged marriages to individual choice of a spouse. Similarly, in the noir period, “restrictions on women’s rights ensured that married women had comparatively fewer rights than single women, who could at least lay claim to their own property and wages” (Braun 53). As such, the femme fatale represented an alternative to domesticity, one in which a woman could retain her dignity without a man.Re-imagining the Femme Fatale James Damico proposes a model of film noir’s plot structure and character type. The male protagonist is hired for a job associated with a non-innocent woman to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted to. Through his attraction, either because the woman induces him to it or because it is a natural result of their relationship, the man comes to cheat, attempt to or actually murder a second man to whom a woman is unhappily or unwillingly attached (generally her husband or lover). This act invariably leads to the woman’s betrayal of the protagonist and either metaphorically or literally results in the destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attached, and the protagonist himself. In Double Indemnity, Phyllis Dietrichson lures her hapless lover, Walter Neff, into committing murder on her behalf. He puts up minimal resistance to Phyllis’s plan to insure her husband without his knowledge so that he can be killed and she can reap the benefits of the policy. Walter says, “I fought it [the idea of murder], only I guess I didn’t fight it hard enough.” Similarly, in The Changeling, Beatrice-Joanna’s father, Vermandero, arranges her marriage to Alonzo de Piracquo; however, she is in love with Alsemero, who would also be a suitable match if Alonzo were out of the way. She thus employs the use of her servant DeFlores to kill her intended. He does as instructed and brings back her dead fiancée’s finger as proof of the deed, expecting for his services a sexual reward, rather than the gold Beatrice-Joanna offered him: “Never was man / Dearlier rewarded” (2.2.138-140). Renaissance fears regarding women’s desirous subjectivity are justified in this scene, which represent Beatrice-Joanna as willingly succumbing to DeFlore’s advances: she came to “love anon” what she had previously “fear’st and faint’st to venture on” (3.4.171-172). She experienced a “giddy turning in [her]” (1.1.159), which compelled her to seduce DeFlores on the eve of her wedding to Alsemero. Both Phyllis and Beatrice-Joanna localise contemporary fears and fantasies about women, sexuality and marriage (Haber) and, despite the existing literature surrounding the noir femme fatale, a re-imagining of this figure on the Renaissance stage is unique. Furthermore, and in addition to similarities in plot structure, noir films are typically characterised by three narrative tropes (masquerade, the polarisation of the femme fatale with the femme attrappe and the demise of the femme fatale) that are likewise present in The Changeling. 1. Masquerade: Her Sexual Past Is the Central Mystery of the Narrative The femme fatale appropriates the signifiers of femininity (modesty, obedience, silence) that bewitch men and fool them into believing that she embodies everything he desires. According to Luce Irigaray, the femme fatale assumes an unnatural, flaunted facade and, in so doing, she conceals her own subjectivity and disrupts notions of what she is really like. Her sexual past is often the central mystery and so she figuratively embodies the hidden secrets of feminine sexuality while the males battle for control over this knowledge (Lee-Hedgecock). John Caleb-Hopkins characterises Phyllis as a faux housewife because of her rejection of the domestic, her utilisation of the role to further her agency, and her method of deception via gender performance. It is “faux” because she plays the role as a means to achieve her monetary or material desires. When Phyllis first meets Walter she plays up the housewife routine because she immediately recognises his potential utility for her. The house is not a space in which she belongs but a space she can utilise to further her agency and so she devises a plan to dethrone and remove the patriarch from his position within the home. Walter, as the last patriarchal figure in her vicinity to interfere with the pursuit of her desire, must be killed as well. Beatrice-Joanna’s masquerade of femininity (“there was a visor / O’er that cunning face” [5.3.46-7]) and her performance as a chaste virgin to please Alsemero, suggests that she possesses an ineffaceable knowledge that femininity is a construction that women put on for men. Having surrendered her virginity to DeFlores prior to marrying Alsemero, she agonises that he will find out: “Never was bride so fearfully distressed […] There’s no venturing / Into his bed […] Without my shame” (4.1.2-13). Fortunately, she discovers a manuscript (the Book of Experiments) that documents “How to know whether a woman be a maid or not” (4.1.41). Having discovered the book and potions, Beatrice-Joanna persuades her waiting-woman Diaphanta to take the potions so that she can witness its effects and mimic them as necessary. Thus instructed, Beatrice-Joanna is equipped with the ability to feign the symptoms of virginity, which leads us to the notion of female masquerade as a means to evade the male gaze by feigning virtue and thus retaining her status as desirable to men. Her masquerade conceals her sexual experience and hides the truth of female deceitfulness from the men in the play, which makes manifest the theme of women’s unknowability. 2. Femme Fatale versus Femme AttrappeThe original source of the femme fatale is the dark half of the dualistic concept of the Eternal Feminine: the Mary/Eve dichotomy (Allen). In film noir, the female characters fall into one of two categories—the femme fatale or woman as redeemer. Unlike the femme fatale, the femme attrappe is the known, familiar and comfortable other, who is juxtaposed to the unknown, devious and deceptive other. According to Jans Wager both women are trapped by patriarchal authority—the femme fatale by her resistance and the good wife by her acquiescence. These two women invariably appear side-by-side in order to demonstrate acceptable womanhood in the case of the femme attrappe and dangerous and unacceptable displays of femininity in the case of the femme fatale. In Double Indemnity, Phyllis is an obvious example of the latter. She flirts brazenly with Walter while introducing the idea of insuring her husband and when he finally kills her husband, she stares unflinchingly ahead and continues driving, showing very little remorse after the murder. Lola (Phyllis’s step-daughter and the film’s femme attrappe) functions as a foil to Phyllis. “Lola’s narrative purpose is to provide a female character to contrast with Phyllis to further depict her femininity as bad […] The more Lola is emphatically stressed as victim through Walter’s narration, the more vilified Phyllis is” (Caleb-Hopkins). Lola presents a type of femininity that patriarchy approves of and necessitates. Phyllis is the antithesis to this because her sexuality is provocative and open and she uses it to manipulate those around her (Caleb-Hopkins). It is Lola who eventually tells Walter that Phyllis murdered her mother and that her former boyfriend Nino has been spotted at Phyllis’s house most nights. This leads Walter to conclude, logically, that she is arranging for Nino to kill him as well (Maxfield). The Renaissance subplot heroine has been juxtaposed, here, with the deadly woman at the center of the play, thus supporting a common structural trope of the film noir genre in which the femme attrappe and femme fatale exist alongside each other. In The Changeling, Isabella and Beatrice-Joanna occupy these positions respectively. In the play’s subplot, Alibius employs his servant Lollio to watch over his wife Isabella while he is away and, ironically, it is Lollio himself who attempts to seduce Isabella. He offers himself to her as a “most shrewd temptation” (1.2.57); however, unlike Beatrice-Joanna, who engages in a lascivious affair with another man, Isabella remains faithful to her husband. In so doing, Beatrice-Joanna’s status as a femme fatale is exemplified. She is represented as a woman who cannot control her desires and will resort to any and all means necessary to get what she wants. 3. The Femme Fatale’s Demise The femme fatale is characterised by the two-fold possession of desire: desire for autonomy and self-government and the desire for death. Her quest for freedom, which is only available in death, explains the femme fatale’s desire to self-destruct in these plays, which guarantees that she will never deviate from the course she alighted on even if that path leads inevitably to her demise. According to Elizabeth Bronfen, “the choice between freedom and death inevitably requires that one choose death because there you show that you have freedom of choice. She undertakes an act that allows her to choose death as a way of choosing real freedom by turning the inevitability of her fate into her responsibility” (2004).The femme fatale will never show her true intentions to anyone, especially not the hero she has inveigled, even if it entails his and her own death (Bronfen). In Double Indemnity, Phyllis, by choosing not to shoot Walter the second time, performs an act in which she actively accepts her own fallibility: “I never loved you Walter. Not you or anybody else. I’m rotten to the heart. I used you just as you said. That’s all you ever meant to me. Until a minute ago, when I couldn’t fire that second shot.” This is similarly the case with Beatrice-Joanna who, only at the very end, admits to the murder of Alonzo—“Your love has made me / A cruel murd’ress” (5.3.64-5)—in order to get the man she wanted. According to Bronfen, the femme fatale turns what is inevitable into a source of power. She does not contest the murder charge because a guilty verdict and punishment of death will grant her the freedom she has sought unwaveringly since the beginning of the play. Both Beatrice-Joanna and Phyllis apprehend that there is no appropriate outlet for their unabashed independence. Their unions, with Alsemero and Walter respectively, will nevertheless require their subjection in the patriarchal institution of monogamous marriage. The destruction of the sanctity of marriage in Double Indemnity and The Changeling inevitably results in placing the relationship of the lovers under strain, beyond the boundaries of conventional moral law, to the extent that the adulterous relationship becomes an impossibility that invariably results in the mutual destruction of both parties. ConclusionThe plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, like the noir films of the 1940s and 50s, lament a lost past when women accepted their subordination without reproach and anxiously anticipated a future in which women refused submission to men and masculine forms of authority (Born-Lechleitner). While the femme fatale is commonly associated with the noir era, this article has argued that a series of historical factors and socio-cultural anxieties in the Renaissance period allow for a re-imagined reading of the femme fatale on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. In The Changeling, Middleton and Rowley foreground contemporary cultural anxieties by fleshing out the lusty details that confirm Beatrice-Joanna’s status a female villainess. Throughout the play we come to understand the ideologies that dictate the manner of her representation. That is, early modern anxieties regarding the independent, sexually appetitive woman manifested in representations of a female figure on the Renaissance stage who can be re-imagined as a femme fatale.ReferencesAllen, Virginia M. The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon. New York: Whitson Publishing Company, 1983. Born-Lechleitner, Ilse. The Motif of Adultery in Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline Tragedy. New York: Edwin Hellen Press, 1995.Braun, Heather. The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790-1910. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2012. Bronfen, Elizabeth. “Femme Fatale: Negotiations of Tragic Desire.” New Literary History 35.1 (2004): 103–16. Caleb-Hopkins, John. “There’s No Place like Home … Anymore: Domestic Masquerade and Faux-Housewife Femme Fatale in Barbara Stanwyck’s Early 1940s Films.” Masters thesis. Canada: Carleton University, 2014.Damico, James. “Film Noir: A Modest Proposal.” Film Noir Reader. Eds. Alain Silver and James Ursini. New York: Limelight, 1996.Double Indemnity. Billy Wilder. Paramount Pictures, 1944.Haber, Judith. “I(t) Could Not Choose But Follow: Erotic Logic in The Changeling.” Representations 81.18 (2003): 79–98. Harvey, Sylivia. “Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. A. Kaplan. London: British Film Institute, 1978. Irigaray, Luce. The Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985.Lee-Hedgecock, Jennifer. The Sexual Threat and Danger of the Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2005. Montrose, Louis. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.Maxfield, James F. The Fatal Woman: Sources of Male Anxiety in American Film Noir. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1996.Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1951 [1933]. Stott, Rebecca. The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale. London: Macmillan Press, 1992.Wager, Jans B. Dangerous Dames: Women and Representation in the Weimar Street Film and Film Noir. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1999.