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| Cleopatra : Her History, Her Myth
ISBN: 9780300259384
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature; History;
Plutarch, Shakespeare, and other male writers perpetuated the image of Cleopatra as an "Oriental outsider" who ruined Mark Antony and Julius Caesar's marriages and betrayed her citizens, according to this stimulating feminist history. Contending that "it is hard not to notice how profoundly her gender determined the way in which her story has been told," novelist Prose (The Vixen) reveals the racist and sexist undertones of Plutarch's The Life of Antony and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and tracks their influence on modern retellings including the 1963 movie Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ("quite simply a terrible film," Prose writes). To combat the myths, Prose focuses on Cleopatra's accomplishments, noting that she guided Egypt through serious economic hardships, fended off the Roman Empire's "territorial aggressions," expanded the country's borders, rebuilt Alexandria after a devastating civil war, and fought for the safety of her children until she died in captivity in 30 BCE. Throughout, Prose scrutinizes the reliability of historical sources, even bringing in a herpetologist to dispute the legend that Cleopatra killed herself via "poisonous asp bite." Though the history drags in places, it amounts to a lucid and persuasive reinterpretation. Readers won't see Cleopatra the same way again. Agent: Denise Shannon, Denise Shannon Literary. (Nov.)
Francine Prose was born on April 1, 1947. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1988 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991. Francine Prose novel The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007. Prose has served as president of PEN American Center, a New York City based literary society of writers, editors, and translators that works to advance literature in 2007 and 2008. Prose novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. In 2014 her title Lovers at the Chameleon Club - Paris 1932, made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) |
