John Banks's Female Tragic Heroes.

• Superior document: Drama and theatre in early modern Europe ; Volume 9
• Author: Paula de Pando
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, , Boston: : Brill, , 2018.
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe 9.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (202 pages).

In John Banks’s Female Tragic Heroes , Paula de Pando offers the first monograph on Restoration playwright John Banks. De Pando analyses Banks’s civic model of she-tragedy in terms of its successful adaptation of early modern literary traditions and its engagement with contemporary political and cultural debates. Using Tudor queens as tragic heroes and specifically addressing female audiences, patrons and critics, Banks made women rather than men the subject of tragedy, revolutionising drama and influencing depictions of gender, politics, and history in the long eighteenth century.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Banks’s Heroic Dramas -- The Unhappy Favourite and the Reinvention of Tudor England -- From Female Saints to Political Martyrs: Vertue Betray’d, The Innocent Usurper, and the Transformative Power of the Last Dying Words -- Women Take Centre Stage: Lesbian Desire in The Island Queens -- Conclusion: The Legacy of She-Tragedy -- Back Matter -- Bibliography -- Index.