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Sexualizing The Body Politic: Narrative The Female Body And The Gender Divide In Secret History, Eileen A. Horansky

ETD Archive

Recent studies of eighteenth-century women writers have focused on the role of women as developers and proponents of the secret history. The secret history, recently defined by scholars such as Rebecca Bullard, Melinda Alliker Rabb, Ros Ballaster, Marta Kvande, and Rachel Carnell, among others, occupies space within several genres, including political satire and historiography. The genre's secretive nature and reliance on gossip and anecdotal evidence creates a new space for women writers that allows them to enter political discourse and offer a distinctly gendered social commentary. As public became private and private became secret, secret historians sought to expose the …