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This collection affirms the shaping authority of early modern women in literature and culture, evident well beyond their own moment.
List of contents
Introduction; The literary contours of women's world-making Brandie R. Siegfried and Pamela S. Hammons; Part I. Early Modern Women Framing the Modern World: 1. Erotic origins: genesis, the passion, and Aemilia Lanyer's Queer temporality Erin Murphy; 2. Aphra Behn's fiction: transmission, editing, and canonization Paul Salzman; 3. From aisling vision to Irish queen: the reimergence of Gráinne Ní Mháille in Europe's revolutionary period Brandie R. Siegfried; 4. Reframing the picture: screening early modern women for modern audiences Lisa Walters and Naomi Miller; Part II. Remaking the Literary World: 5. Uncloseted: geography and early modern women's dramatic writing Marion Wynne-Davies; 6. Lucy Hutchinson's memoirs as auto-biography Laura DeFurio; 7. Commonplace genres, or women's interventions in non-traditional literary forms: Madame de Sablé, Aphra Behn, and the maxim Victoria E. Burke; 8. Form, formalism, and literary studies: the case of Margaret Cavendish Lara Dodds; Part III. Connecting the Social Worlds of Religion, Politics, and Philosophy: 9. Royalism and resistance: the personal and the political in Anne, Lady Halkett's Meditations, 1660-1699 Suzanne Trill; 10. Hester Pulter's dissolving worlds Marshelle Woodward; 11. The feminist worlds of Margaret Cavendish David Cunning; 12. Augustus reigns, but poets still are low: Aphra Behn's world in the emperor of the moon (1687) Elaine Hobby; Part IV. Rethinking Early Modern Types and Stereotypes: 13. Learning to imitate women: male education and the grammar of female experience Catherine Loomis; 14. Mothers and widows: world-making against stereotypes in early modern English women's manuscript writings Pamela Hammons; 15. Queer virgins: nuns, reproductive futurism, and early modern English culture Jaime Goodrich; 16. Defensor Feminae: Aemilia Lanyer and Rachel Speght Elizabeth Hodgson; 17. Margaret Cavendish's Melancholy identity: gender and the evolution of a Genre Tina Skouen and Henriette Kolle.
Summary
The sixteen women discussed in this collection were world-makers whose craft influenced cultural practice so incisively that their shaping authority can be traced far beyond their moment. For scholars and students of English literature, this volume shows why Renaissance culture cannot be rightly understood when women writers are ignored.
