A study of women's utopian spatial imagination in the 17th and 18th centuries, this book explores the correlation between identity and social space. The investigation is driven by conceptual questions, and seeks to link theoretical debates about space, gender and utopianism to historiographic debates about the social production of space.
The first full-length study of women's utopian spatial imagination in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book explores the sophisticated correlation between identity and social space. The investigation is driven by conceptual questions and thus seeks to link theoretical debates about space, gender and utopianism to historiographic debates about the (gendered) social production of space. Specific attention is given to spaces that feature widely in contemporary utopian imagination: Arcadia, the palace, the convent, the harem and the country house.
'Women, Space, and Utopia, 1600-1800 is a superbly researched, compelling account of the ways ideas about architecture, planning, and geography simultaneously influenced the construction of gender and stimulated the utopian imagination in a period engrossed with social norms and reforms. A fascinating, ambitious, and original study.' Alessa Johns, Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis and author of Women's Utopias of the Eighteenth Century 'The book takes a fresh and innovative approach to a well-traversed topic... the book is an original and stimulating reading of a hitherto-ignored generic aspect of women's writing.' Renaissance Quarterly
