Tough Love

“Tough Love is a skillfully crafted and inventive example of current critical practice, with a strong theoretical framework, adroit integration of contemporary writing and a broad range of early modern texts, and discerning readings of the Amazonian canon from Knox to Plutarch. . . . Tough Love provides a buoyant addition to the scholarship on Amazons and a felicitous contribution to an understanding of the reproduction of female eroticism in the Renaissance.” - Skiles Howard, Shakespeare Quarterly

“[A] tightly argued, impressively researched, strongly feminist reading of the subject and works she explores.” - William C. Johnson , Sixteenth Century Journal

“[A] useful survey and analysis of how the Amazon myth functions as an uncanny, mirrorlike ‘double vision’ of early modern identity, gender, and society. . . . Recommended. . . .” - A. DiMatteo , Choice

“Her work will doubtless find an appreciative audience, which will be grateful for her careful analysis of a significant topic. . . . [A] thought-provoking overview. . . . [I]nteresting. . . . [I]lluminating.” - Journal of English and Germanic Philology

“In Tough Love, Kathryn Schwarz offers a sophisticated, theoretically-informed analysis of the early modern English construction of the Amazon. . . .“ - Mary Villeponteaux , Spenser Review

“The story of the warrior women is one of the smaller keys on the chateleine necessary to unlock Renaissance discussions of gender roles and personal identity. It is found importantly in Spenser and Sidney, Shakespeare and Jonson, and elsewhere. This book will make it essential for some long-held and inaccurate beliefs about relations between the sexes, masculinity, misogyny, sexual desire and sexual stereotyping to be seriously revised. It is calmly, clearly, and compellingly argued.” - Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

“If you are content with received views of female constriction under early modern patriarchy, don't read this book! Through the figure of the Amazon, Kathryn Schwarz offers a dazzling, ground-breaking reinterpretation of major canonical authors—Raleigh, Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, Sidney—that is also a celebration of the power and agency of women.” - Leah Marcus, author of Unediting the Renaissance : Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton

“Schwarz’s approach is sophisticated and wide-reaching, as she thinks through the nuanced way in which a single reference or metaphor mediates issues of sexuality/desire, on the one hand, and community formation on the other.” - Wendy Wall, author of The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Gender in the English Renaissance