Staging slander and gender in early modern England

Though the historical evidence of slander and defamation increasingly attracts the attention of early modern cultural historians and literary scholars, much of the current critical debate has failed to take into account the diverse signifying structures in which slander is embedded. In this book, Ina Habermann examines oral defamation - the negative fashioning of others - as both a specific mode of communication and a symbolic practice, paying particular attention to the inherent theatricality of the slander triangle, which requires an accuser, a victim and an audience. Presented as an exciting chapter in the history of culture, this study traces slander in language and rhetoric, social interaction and the law, literature and authorship as well as religion, subjectivity and the body.