The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women's Writing

by Edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers

• ISBN13: 9780521712422
• ISBN10: 0521712424
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Featuring the most frequently taught female writers and texts of the early modern period, this Companion introduces the reader to the range, complexity, historical importance, and aesthetic merit of women's writing in Britain from 15001700. Presenting key textual, historical, and methodological information, the volume exemplifies new and diverse approaches to the study of women's writing. The book is clearly divided into three sections, covering: how women learnt to write and how their work was circulated or published; how and what women wrote in the places and spaces in which they lived, worked, and worshipped; and the different kinds of writing women produced, from poetry and fiction to letters, diaries, and political prose. This structure makes the volume readily adaptable to course usage. The Companion is enhanced by an introduction that lays out crucial framework and critical issues, and by chronologies that situate women's writings alongside political and cultural events.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
List of contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Chronologies	p. xiii
Introduction: critical framework and issues	p. 1
Material Matters
Women's handwriting	p. 21
Reading women	p. 40
Manuscript miscellanies	p. 54
Women, the material book and early printing	p. 68
Sites Of Production
Women in educational spaces	p. 85
Women in the household	p. 97
Women in church and in devotional spaces	p. 110
Women in the royal courts	p. 124
Women in the law courts	p. 140
Women in healing spaces	p. 153
Genres And Modes
Translation	p. 167
Letters	p. 181
Autobiography	p. 194
Lyric Poetry	p. 208
Narrative Poetry	p. 222
Prophecy and religious polemic	p. 235
Private drama	p. 247
Public drama	p. 260
Prose fiction	p. 272
Index	p. 287
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