British Women Writers and the Reception of Ancient Egypt, 1840-1910

Imperialist Representations of Egyptian Women

Molly Youngkin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137566140
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Focusing on British women writers' knowledge of ancient Egypt, Youngkin shows the oftentimes limited but pervasive representations of ancient Egyptian women in their written and visual works. Images of Hathor, Isis, and Cleopatra influenced how British writers such as George Eliot and Edith Cooper came to represent female emancipation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Bound by an English Eye: Ancient Cultures, Imperialist Contexts, and Literary Representations of Ancient Egyptian Women
• 2 Acting as “the right hand ... of God”: Christianized Egyptian Women and Religious Devotion as Emancipation in Florence Nightingale’s Fictionalized Treatises
• 3 “[T]o give new elements ... as vivid as ... long familiar types”: Heroic Jewish Men, Dangerous Egyptian Women, and Equivocal Emancipation in George Eliot’s Novels
• 4 “[W]e had never chosen a Byzantine subject ... or one from Alexandria”: Emancipation Through Desire and the Eastern Limits of Beauty in Michael Field’s Verse Dramas
• 5 The “sweetness of the serpent of old Nile”: Revisionist Cleopatra and Spiritual Union as Emancipation in Elinor Glyn’s Cross - Cultural Romances
• 6 “My ancestor, my sister”: Ancient Heritage Imagery and Modern Egyptian Women Writers
• Afterword
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index