King Henry VI, Part 1 | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 46 pages of analysis & critique of King Henry VI, Part 1.

King Henry VI, Part 1 | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 46 pages of analysis & critique of King Henry VI, Part 1.
This section contains 12,711 words
(approx. 43 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Kathryn Schwarz

SOURCE: “Fearful Simile: Stealing the Breech in Shakespeare's Chronicle Plays,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 2, Summer, 1998, pp. 140-67.

In the excerpt below, Schwarz studies the complex portrayal of women in Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3, focusing on the depiction of Joan as an outsider and as a contradictory embodiment of extremes. Schwarz also analyzes the portrayal of Margaret as both a conventional object of desire and a disruptive role-player.

To Be

Henry VI, Part 1 defines Joan with relentless thoroughness as an outsider. Opposed to an English male aristocratic ideal, she is a woman, a peasant, a virgin, a whore, a saint, a witch, an Amazon, and French. Her threatened invasion, while it challenges English idealizations of heroic significance and physical space, could consolidate those ideals; if the English, at the end of 1 Henry VI, return to a smaller England, they bring with them a clarified sense of what Englishness...

(read more)

This section contains 12,711 words
(approx. 43 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Kathryn Schwarz
Copyrights
Gale
Critical Essay by Kathryn Schwarz from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.