Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories

Published simultaneously with Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women in the "Feminist Readings of Shakespeare" series, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories is the first full-length feminist study of Shakespeare's historical plays.

Authors Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin bring both a feminist perspective to their analyses of each of Shakespeare's historical plays, and also include extensive references to the "afterlife" of these plays. They examine the place of gender in differing representations of nationhood in early modern England, and argue that the transition from monarchy to modern nationhood was dependent upon a shift in popular understandings of gender, and of male/female societal roles.