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

丽莎·赞希尔在2006年出版的《我们为什么要读小说》一书中，以《认知文学批评》为标题。这一新领域声称，小说的功能在于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”，或对其他意识进行概念化。最近，学者们开始优先考虑文本本身中的思维互动；正如艾伦·帕尔默在小说《社交思维》(2010)中指出的那样，叙事围绕着个人相互理解的动力、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到不可避免的误解，而且询问将女性的复杂性扁平化为指定角色的分类的文化倾向。它将探索文艺复兴时期英国女性刻板印象的机制，以及女性角色为自己的目的接受和利用这些先入为主的观念的意义。关注女主人公试图通过模仿预期进行欺骗的行为，可能会为正在进行的“访问问题”辩论提供一个新的视角：一个人的信念、情感和意图在多大程度上可以被其他人读取或“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?