Margaret Cavendish

An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Lisa Walters, Brandie R. Siegfried

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781108490368
• eBook ISBN: 9781108801669
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Margaret Cavendish's prolific and wide-ranging contributions to seventeenth-century intellectual culture are impossible to contain within the discrete confines of modern academic disciplines. Paying attention to the innovative uses of genre through which she enhanced and complicated her writings both within literature and beyond, this collection addresses her oeuvre and offers the most comprehensive and multidisciplinary resource on Cavendish's works to date. The astonishing breadth of her varied intellectual achievements is reflected through elegantly arranged sections on History of Science, Philosophy, Literature, Politics and Reception, and New Directions, together with an Afterword by award-winning novelist Siri Hustvedt. The first book to cover nearly all of Cavendish's major works in a single volume, this collection brings together a variety of expert perspectives to illuminate the remarkable ideas and achievements of one of the most fascinating and prolific figures of the early modern period.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• In Memoriam
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Intellectual Span of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
• Part I History of Science
• Part II Philosophy
• Part III Literature
• Part IV Politics
• Part V New Directions
• Afterword: Margaret Cavendish: A Grandmother for Twenty-First Century Philosophy of Science
• Chronology of Works by Margaret Cavendish
• Select Bibliography
• Index