The Usurer's Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in 16th Century England

The Usurer's Daughterexamines masculinity in the sixteenth century, the fictional representation of women and the uses of rhetoric. Traditional and poststructural approaches to literature from this period have failed to appreciate the cultural impact of humanism, which essentially served totextualizemasculine friendship. InThe Usurer's Daughter, Lorna Hutson argues that this may account for the pervasive articulation and characterization of women in Shakespeare and sixteenth century fiction.