Refiguring the Coquette

Essays on Culture and Coquetry

Shelley King and Yaël Schlick (Eds.)

2008
228 pages
ISBN 9781611483062
Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture

This is a collection of nine original essays selected and edited with a twofold aim: to establish the parameters of coquetry as it was defined and represented in the long eighteenth century, and to reconsider this traditional figure in light of recent work in cultural and gender studies. The essays provide analyses of lesser-known works, examine the depiction of the coquette in popular culture, explore the importance of coquetry as a contemporary term applicable to men as well as women, and amplify current theorization of the coquette. By bringing together the diverse contexts and genres in which the figure of the coquette is articulated - drama, art, fiction, life-writing - Refiguring the Coquette offers alternative perspectives on this central figure in eighteenth-century culture.

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Reviews
"...King and Schlick's essay collection provides intriguing food for thought regarding not only the appropriation of terms, but also the reclamation of a generally maligned and frequently overlooked category of woman."
--Kathryn Strong Hansen, ECCB: The Eighteenth-Century Current Bibliography 34 (2013): 466.

"Many of the essays in Refiguring the Coquette...are about performativity, privilege, and abuses that masquerade as kinds of power. The essays discuss in various ways the coquette as a site for moral commentary, for understanding emerging consumer culture, and for gender constructs. They demonstrate that the term was used in different ways and the people who practiced or represented coquetry had a variety of motives; regardless of the differences, they agree that the coquette was a powerful gendering force for both sexes."
--Backscheider, Paula R. "Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century." Studies in English Literature 2009: 739.

"Refiguring the Coquette succeeds in complicating the figure of the coquette as a topic of discussion and concern and also as an easy target for historically specific normative and gendered critique."--Ann Shteir ECF, 25: 2.

About the editors:

Shelley King is Associate Professor of English at Queen's University (Kingston, Canada), where she teaches courses in nineteenth-century British Literature and children's literature. Her primary research focuses on Amelia Alderson Opie, and her publications include editions of Opie's Adeline Mowbray (1998) and The Father and Daughter (2003), as well as essays in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Children's Literature, and other journals. Dr. King is currently completing an edition of The Collected Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie (co-edited with John B. Pierce).

Yaël Schlick is Associate Adjunct Professor at Queen's University (Kingston, Canada), where she researches and teaches courses on travel writing, autobiography, feminist theory, and contemporary poetry. She has published articles in Nineteenth Century Studies, European Romantic Review, The Australian Journal of French Studies, and Comparative Literature Studies. Dr. Schlick's translation and critical edition of Victor Segalen's Essay on Exoticism was published in 2002.

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