World-Making Renaissance Women

Rethinking Early Modern Women's Place in Literature and Culture

Pamela S. Hammons, Brandie R. Siegfried

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108831154
• eBook ISBN: 9781108912396
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book answers three simple questions. First, what mistaken assumptions do we make about the early modern period when we ignore women's literary contributions? Second, how might we come to recognise women's influence on the history of literature and culture, as well as those instances of outright pathbreaking mastery for which they are so often responsible? Finally, is it possible to see some women writers as world-makers in their own right, individuals whose craft cut into cultural practice so incisively that their shaping authority can be traced well beyond their own moment? The essays in this volume pursue these questions through intense archival investigation, intricate close reading, and painstaking literary-historical tracking, tracing in concrete terms sixteen remarkable women and their world-shaping activities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Literary Contours of Women’s World-Making
• Part I Early Modern Women Framing the Modern World
• Part II Remaking the Literary World
• Part III Connecting the Social Worlds of Religion, Politics, and Philosophy
• Part IV Rethinking Early Modern Types and Stereotypes
• Select Bibliography
• Index