SCEMS | EMDG | Harald Freidl (University of Vienna)

Sheffield Centre for Early Modern Studies

Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World: Form, Genre, and Meaning

Bartolomé House, Seminar Room BB15a

My doctoral thesis explores the intersections of early modern notions of gender, race, class, and species in Margaret Cavendish’s utopian tale The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666). My interpretation rests on a thorough narratological analysis, which will enable me to elucidate how this text comments on Cavendish’s own philosophical oeuvre and biography, as well as to throw into sharp relief the way it engages with contemporary socio-cultural discourses. I claim that only an analysis paying close attention to narrative form and the structural design of the represented world(s) allows for pinning down the stance of the artistic utterance as a whole – as opposed to diverging views uttered within the text – on topical debates in seventeenth-century philosophy and politics. In my presentation I will detail the findings of my narratological analysis in context of the development of the literary utopia genre. Furthermore, I will adumbrate how this formal analysis will affect my further interpretation of Cavendish’s text.

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SCEMS | EMDG | Harald Freidl (University of Vienna)

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SCEMS | EMDG | Harald Freidl (University of Vienna)

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