부산대학교 도서관

The Adventures of Eovaai (1736) stands out, both within Eliza Haywood’s career and among mid-eighteenth-century novels, for its highly constructed, fantastical narrative. Despite the proliferation of fantasy tropes within the text, many readings of Eovaai focus on its political allegory. This article centres on the fantastical elements, particularly the incorporation of illusory magic, to explore the novel’s contributions to feminist philosophical discourse. In Eovaai, Haywood enters a conversation about gender, truth, and perception begun by Mary Astell. Haywood uses the oft-decried genre of fantasy to probe more accurately the physical and political stakes of Astell’s abstract theories. Reading Eovaai alongside Astell’s philosophical work makes patent Haywood’s investment in theorizing feminist models of perception and authority, an effort continued in her later work. This expansive understanding of Eovaai uncovers Haywood’s often unrecognized connections to rational feminist discourse in the period while demonstrating that her generic invention—widely acknowledged in terms of the amatory—extends to other genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]