Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World
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Published by: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: July 15, 2021
Pages: 300
ISBN13: 978-1108844215
OVERVIEW
This groundbreaking study of girlhood and cognition argues that early moderns depicted female puberty as a transformative event that activated girls' brains in dynamic ways. Mining a variety of genres from Shakespearean plays and medical texts to autobiographical writings, Caroline Bicks shows how 'the change of fourteen years' seemed to gift girls with the ability to invent, judge, and remember what others could or would not. Bicks challenges the presumption that early moderns viewed all female cognition as passive or pathological, demonstrating instead that girls' changing adolescent brains were lightning rods for some of the period's most vital debates about the body and soul, faith and salvation, science and nature, and the place and agency of human perception in the midst of it all.
Add on GoodreadsPRAISE
“Caroline Bicks offers a pioneering study of early modern girls, specifically their minds and mental processes. … [N]otable for its cohesiveness and elegant connections . . . the book makes a compelling argument that girlhood, especially between age fourteen and marriage, opened up a space for ‘a stage of relative cognitive liberty’ ”(5)
—Dr. Jennifer Higginbotham, Ohio State University
“Bicks’s insights reshape our understanding of puberty as she prompts readers to reexamine how cognition intersects with gender identity and social constructs . . . . Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World distinguishes itself through its trailblazing emphasis on the cognitive development of young female characters. It is an indispensable contribution to feminist literary scholarship.”
—Md. Ziaul Haque, Christ University, Bangalore
“The striking discovery of this book is the marvelous, if grievously temporary, space of freedom and agency granted to girls within the rigid Protestant teleology of female development from maid to mother. . . Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World is a compelling and important book, a useful resource in the classroom and the study, and one which raises new questions about girls and early modern constructions of girlhood. Its thinking about how Shakespeare’s world imagined girls’ brains is relevant to how we think today, and how what it means to think like a girl matters to our own future.”
—Bernice Mittertreiner Neal, York University
“Cognition and Girlhood has started a conversation that deserves to be continued.”
—Dr. Ursula A. Potter, University of Sydney