Feigned Femininity: Theory of Mind and Gender Stereotypes on the Early Modern Stage

“认知文学批评”的新领域--以丽莎·赞辛（Lisa Zunshine）引人注目的《我们为什么读小说》（Why We Read Fiction，2006）为标题--声称小说的功能是鼓励读者猜测人物的心理状态，满足他们实践心理理论的“认知渴望”，或者概念化其他意识的能力。最近，学者们开始优先考虑文本本身中的心灵互动;正如艾伦·帕尔默在《小说中的社会心理》（2010）中指出的那样，叙事围绕着个体相互理解的动力，偶尔的共同意识火花，以及解释失败的后果。将这些想法应用于早期现代戏剧中的女性表现，我的项目将考虑剧作家是否不仅捕捉不可避免的误解，而且质疑文化趋势将女性的复杂性扁平化为规定角色的分类。它将探讨文艺复兴时期英国女性刻板印象的机制，以及女性角色为了自己的目的而接受和利用这些先入之见的意义。突出女主人公试图通过模仿期望来欺骗，这可能会为正在进行的“访问问题”辩论提供一个新的视角：一个人的信仰，情感和意图在多大程度上可以被他人阅读或“访问”？

The new field of 'cognitive literary criticism' - headlined by Lisa Zunshine's compellingly titled Why We Read Fiction (2006) - claims novels function by encouraging readers to guess at characters' mental states, satisfying their 'cognitive cravings' to practice Theory of Mind, or the ability to conceptualise other consciousnesses. More recently, scholars have begun to prioritise the interaction of minds within the text itself; as Alan Palmer notes in Social Minds in the Novel (2010), narratives revolve around individuals' drive to comprehend each other, occasional sparks of shared consciousness, and the consequences of interpretive failure. Applying these ideas to female representation in early modern drama, my project will consider whether playwrights not only capture inevitable misunderstandings, but interrogate the cultural tendency to flatten women's complexity into a taxonomy of prescribed roles. It will explore the mechanics of feminine stereotypes in Renaissance England and the significance of female characters who take up and exploit these preconceptions for their own ends. Spotlighting the heroines' attempts to deceive by aping expectations may offer a new perspective on the ongoing 'access problem' debate: to what extent can an individual's beliefs, emotions and intentions be read, or 'accessed', by others?