Reviews for Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader

The average rating for Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-12-24 00:00:00 Robert Armstrong Margaret Cavendish - "Mad Madge" - was a scenester in the late eighteenth century. She grew up pretty wealthy but became a socialite when marrying the Duke of Newcastle, William Cavendish (who, among other gifts, was an expert horseman). She was the maid of honour to Henrietta Maria. Her full life is reflected by her interests (unusual but not unique for a woman in the period): science, politics, poems, rhetoric, philosophy, drama. Samuel Pepys made fun of her then, and Virginia Woolf made fun of her later. Everyone else was polite because of her husband Only recently have critics come to see her not just as eccentric who wrote, but as one of the more interesting conduits for the shaping of modernity. Her plays are compelling if not in the top tier of Restoration comedy; her feminist spirit doesn't go far enough. Her poems are okay. But her science writings are brilliant, weird, troubling, and ahead of their time. BLAZING WORLDS, in particular, anticipates the Phillip Pullman trilogy: Cavendish sends a shipwrecked maiden outside the North-pole, where she discovers walking, talking animals who like her so much they make her the empress of their society. Her fantasy of a woman at the top of intellectual hierarchy is a compelling critique of experimental philosophy - the origins of modern science. There's also a war on the other world, after which the Empress learns a lesson from the real Cavendish, and the fictional and factual fold in on each other. Cavendish challenges political, scientific, and gender categories in what might be the origin of "science fiction" as a genre. Worth checking out for all who study the period; Cavendish is indispensible.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-14 00:00:00 Michael Nawrocki I referenced this book in one of my senior essays on Cavendish! So, so useful.