Subjectivity and Women's Poetry in Early Modern England
Subjectivity and Women's Poetry in Early Modern England

Author: Lynnette McGrath

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1351726811

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This title was first published in 2002: Combining the approaches of historic scholarship and post-structural, feminist psychoanalytic theory to late 16th- and early 17th-century poetry by women, this book aims to make a unique contribution to the field of the study of early modern women's writings. One of the first to concentrate exclusively on early modern women's poetry, the full-length critical study to applies post-Lacanian French psychoanalytic theory to the genre. The strength of this study is that it merges analysis of socio-political constructions affecting early modern women poets writing in England with the psychoanalytic insights, specific to women as subjects, of post-Lacanian theorists Luce Irigaray, Helen Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Rosi Braidotti.

'Bethinke Thy Selfe' in Early Modern England
'Bethinke Thy Selfe' in Early Modern England

Author: Ulrike Tancke

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9042028084

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Studying a variety of literary forms - autobiographical writings, diaries, mothers' advice books, poetry and drama - this book approaches early modern women's strategies of identity formation. The author argues for an interpretation of these texts as attempts to establish a coherent, stable and convincing subjectivity, in spite of the constraints the authors encountered as women. Drawing on social and cultural history, feminist theory, psychoanalysis and the study of discourses, she makes close reading of the women's texts and other sources. She questions interpretations of early modern women's writing as voices from the margin or as a counter-discourse to patriarchy.

Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England
Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England

Author: Michelle M. Dowd

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1317129377

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By taking account of the ways in which early modern women made use of formal and generic structures to constitute themselves in writing, the essays collected here interrogate the discursive contours of gendered identity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The contributors explore how generic choice, mixture, and revision influence narrative constructions of the female self in early modern England. Collectively they situate women's life writings within the broader textual culture of early modern England while maintaining a focus on the particular rhetorical devices and narrative structures that comprise individual texts. Reconsidering women's life writing in light of recent critical trends-most notably historical formalism-this volume produces both new readings of early modern texts (such as Margaret Cavendish's autobiography and the diary of Anne Clifford) and a new understanding of the complex relationships between literary forms and early modern women's 'selves'. This volume engages with new critical methods to make innovative connections between canonical and non-canonical writing; in so doing, it helps to shape the future of scholarship on early modern women.

Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700
Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700

Author: Victoria Brownlee

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2016-05-16

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1526110628

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At once pervasive and marginal, appealing and repellent, exemplary and atypical, the women of the Bible provoke an assortment of readings across early modern literature. Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550–1700 draws attention to the complex ways in which biblical women’s narratives could be reimagined for a variety of rhetorical and religious purposes. Considering a confessionally diverse range of writers, working across a variety of genres, this volume reveals how women from the Old and New Testaments exhibit an ideological power that frequently exceeds, both in scope and substance, their associated scriptural records. The essays explore how the Bible’s women are fluidly negotiated and diversely redeployed to offer (conflicting) comment on issues including female authority, speech and sexuality, and in discussions of doctrine, confessional politics, exploration and grief. As it explores the rich ideological currency of the Bible’s women in early modern culture, this volume demonstrates that the Bible’s women are persistently difficult to evade.

A Companion to Renaissance Poetry
A Companion to Renaissance Poetry

Author: Catherine Bates

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-02-20

Total Pages: 671

ISBN-13: 1118585194

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The most comprehensive collection of essays on Renaissance poetry on the market Covering the period 1520–1680, A Companion to Renaissance Poetry offers 46 essays which present an in-depth account of the context, production, and interpretation of early modern British poetry. It provides students with a deep appreciation for, and sensitivity toward, the ways in which poets of the period understood and fashioned a distinctly vernacular voice, while engaging them with some of the debates and departures that are currently animating the discipline. A Companion to Renaissance Poetry analyzes the historical, cultural, political, and religious background of the time, addressing issues such as education, translation, the Reformation, theorizations of poetry, and more. The book immerses readers in non-dramatic poetry from Wyatt to Milton, focusing on the key poetic genres—epic, lyric, complaint, elegy, epistle, pastoral, satire, and religious poetry. It also offers an inclusive account of the poetic production of the period by canonical and less canonical writers, female and male. Finally, it offers examples of current developments in the interpretation of Renaissance poetry, including economic, ecological, scientific, materialist, and formalist approaches. • Covers a wide selection of authors and texts • Features contributions from notable authors, scholars, and critics across the globe • Offers a substantial section on recent and developing approaches to reading Renaissance poetry A Companion to Renaissance Poetry is an ideal resource for all students and scholars of the literature and culture of the Renaissance period.

Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England
Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England

Author: Sarah E. Johnson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1317050649

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Though the gender-coded soul-body dynamic lies at the root of many negative and disempowering depictions of women, Sarah Johnson here argues that it also functions as an effective tool for redefining gender expectations. Building on past criticism that has concentrated on the debilitating cultural association of women with the body, she investigates dramatic uses of the soul-body dynamic that challenge the patriarchal subordination of women. Focusing on two tragedies, two comedies, and a small selection of masques, from approximately 1592-1614, Johnson develops a case for the importance of drama to scholarly considerations of the soul-body dynamic, which habitually turn to devotional works, sermons, and philosophical and religious treatises to elucidate this relationship. Johnson structures her discussion around four theatrical relationships, each of which is a gendered relationship analogous to the central soul-body dynamic: puppeteer and puppet, tamer and tamed, ghost and haunted, and observer and spectacle. Through its thorough and nuanced readings, this study redefines one of the period’s most pervasive analogies for conceptualizing women and their relations to men as more complex and shifting than criticism has previously assumed. It also opens a new interpretive framework for reading representations of women, adding to the ongoing feminist re-evaluation of the kinds of power women might actually wield despite the patriarchal strictures of their culture.

The History of British Women's Writing, 1610-1690
The History of British Women's Writing, 1610-1690

Author: M. Suzuki

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-01-19

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0230305504

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During the seventeenth century, in response to political and social upheavals such as the English Civil Wars, women produced writings in both manuscript and print. This volume represents recent scholarship that has uncovered new texts as well as introduced new paradigms to further our understanding of women's literary history during this period.

Selected Poems and Translations
Selected Poems and Translations

Author: Madeleine de l'Aubespine

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 0226141950

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Madeleine de l’Aubespine (1546–1596), the toast of courtly and literary circles in sixteenth-century Paris, penned beautiful love poems to famous women of her day. The well-connected daughter and wife of prominent French secretaries of state, l’Aubespine was celebrated by her male peers for her erotic lyricism and scathingly original voice. Rather than adopt the conventional self-effacement that defined female poets of the time, l’Aubespine’s speakers are sexual, dominant, and defiant; and her subjects are women who are able to manipulate, rebuke, and even humiliate men. Unavailable in English until now and only recently identified from scattered and sometimes misattributed sources, l’Aubespine’s poems and literary works are presented here in Anna Klosowska’s vibrant translation. This collection, which features one of the first French lesbian sonnets as well as reproductions of l’Aubespine’s poetic translations of Ovid and Ariosto, will be heralded by students and scholars in literature, history, and women’s studies as an important addition to the Renaissance canon.

Desire and Gender in the Sonnet Tradition
Desire and Gender in the Sonnet Tradition

Author: N. Distiller

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2008-02-21

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0230583830

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This new study explores the poetic tradition of the love sonnet sequence in English as written by women from 1621-1931. It connects this tradition to ways of speaking desire in public in operation today, and to the development of theories of subjectivity in Western culture.