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This study explores why women in the English Renaissance wrote so few sonnet sequences, in comparison with the traditions of Continental women writers and of English male authors. In this focus on a single genre, Rosalind Smith examines the relationship between gender and genre in the early modern period, and the critical assumptions currently underpinning questions of feminine agency within genre.
List of contents
Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Gender, Genre and Attribution in Early Modern Women's Sonnet Sequences and Collections 'In a mirrour clere': Anne Lock's Miserere mei Deus as Admonitory Protestantism Generating Absence: The Sonnets of Mary Stuart The Politics of Prosopopoeia: The Pandora Sonnets The Politics of Withdrawal: Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and Lindamira's Complaint Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
About the author
ROSALIND SMITH is a Lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has published articles on gender and poetry in the early modern period and is preparing a monograph on Marian textual practice.
Summary
This study explores why women in the English Renaissance wrote so few sonnet sequences, in comparison with the traditions of Continental women writers and of English male authors.
Additional text
'Smith shows that precedents of published women's writing can be as inhibiting as enabling, and therefore disrupts any smoothly progressive model of women's literary history.' - Times Literary Supplement
'Rosalind Smith has produced a well-organized and effective work, with much to recommend it...The strength of the work lies not only in its clearly defined remit but also in Smith's ability to range effortlessly from close textual analysis to a consideration of the wider context for these works, and to dovetail literary criticism with historical insight.' - Lucinda Becker, Modern Language Review
Report
'Smith shows that precedents of published women's writing can be as inhibiting as enabling, and therefore disrupts any smoothly progressive model of women's literary history.' - Times Literary Supplement
'Rosalind Smith has produced a well-organized and effective work, with much to recommend it...The strength of the work lies not only in its clearly defined remit but also in Smith's ability to range effortlessly from close textual analysis to a consideration of the wider context for these works, and to dovetail literary criticism with historical insight.' - Lucinda Becker, Modern Language Review
