City Women

On Thursday, we'll spend some time getting our bearings in seventeenth-century London--learning what the city looked and sounded like, who lived and/or worked where, and so on. As you read through Epicoene, pay attention to where the play's action takes place -- which parts of the city do these characters move through and talk about? Try to get a feel for Jonson's London. It's as much a character in this play as Truewit, Morose, or Mistress Otter.

For further reading (if you have time), you might want to turn to Karen Newman's "City Talk: Women and Commodification in Jonson's Epicoene," ELH 56 (1989): 503-18. The article is available through JSTOR, which you can access via the library's website here.

On an unrelated note: K, I found a collection of scholarly essays on chick-lit edited by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young. We have a copy here at Frost (PS374.W6 C48 2006). I haven't looked at it yet, but it may provide useful fodder for thinking through the connections you drew last week between Shakespearean comedy, chick-lit, and generic expectations.