Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500-1700

by C. Malcolmson (Editor), M. Suzuki (Editor)

Overview

This book explores the construction of gender ideology in early modern England through an analysis of the querelle des femmes - the debate about the relationship between the sexes that originated on the continent during the middle ages and the Renaissance and developed in England into the Swetnam controversy, which revolved around the publication of Joseph Swetnam's The arraignment of lewd, forward, and inconstant women and the pamphlets which responded to its misogynist attacks. The volume contextualizes the debate in terms of its continental antecedents and elite manuscript circulation in England, then moves to consider popular culture and printed texts from the Jacobean debate and its effects on women's writing and the developing discourse on gender, and concludes with an examination of the ramifications of the debate during the Civil War and Restoration. Essays focus attention on the implications of the gender debate for women writers and their literary relations, cultural ideology and the family, and political discourse and ideas of nationhood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312294571
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	09/05/2002
Series:	Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500-1700
Edition description:	2002
Pages:	265
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

CHRISTINA MALCOLMSON is Associate Professor of English and former Chair of Women's Studies at Bates College. Her previous books include Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic and Longman Critical Readers: Renaissance Poetry.

MIHOKO SUZUKI is Associate Professor of English and former Director of Women's Studies at the University of Miami. She is the author of Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic and editor of Critical Essays on Edmund Spenser.

Table of Contents

Introduction; C.Malcolmson & M.Suzuki PART I: MANUSCRIPTS AND DEBATES Christine de Pizan's 'City of Ladies' in Early Modern England; C.Malcolmson Anne Southwell and the Pamphlet Debate: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Manuscript; E.Clarke PART II: PRINT, PEDAGOGYAND THE QUESTION OF CLASS Muzzling the Competition: Rachel Speght and the Economics of Print; L.Schnell Women's Popular Culture? Teaching the Swetnam Controversy; M.Gough PART III: WOMEN'S SUBJECTIVITY IN MALE-AUTOHRED TEXTS The Broadside Ballad and the Woman's Voice; S.Clark 'Weele have a Went shall be our Poet': Samuel Rowlands' Gossip Pamphlets; S.O'Malley PART IV: FIGURATIONS OF THE MATERNAL AND THE FAMILY The Matter of Death: The Defense of Eve and the Female Ars Moriendi; P.Phillippy 'Hens Should Be Served First': Prioritizing Maternal Production in the Early Modern Pamphlet Debate; N.Miller Cross-Dressed Women and Natural Mothers: 'Boundary Panic' in Hic Mulier ; R.Trubowitz PART V: POLITICS, STATE AND THE NATION Monstrous Births and the Body Politic: Women's Political Writings and the Strange and Wonderful Travail of 'Mistress Parliament' and Mris Rump; K.Romack Elizabeth, Gender, and the Political Imaginary of Seventeenth-Century England; M.Suzuki Afterword; H.Smith

Editorial Reviews

"...this volume establishes a threshold of excellence that will become the ideal for later scholarship to emulate." - A.C. Labriola, Choice

"This is a rich and unusual collection of essays. The book differs strikingly from most collections of essays because it not only studies past debates focused on questions of gender but also stages - in an intelligent, well-controlled, but refreshingly sharp way - a modern critical activity of debating gender. The editors introduction is superb, as are their strategies for organizing this set of highly original and cogently-argued essays." - Margaret Ferguson, University of California at Davis

From the Publisher

Presents 11 essays exploring the construction of gender ideology in early modern England through an analysis of the <-->a debate about the relationship between the sexes that originated on the continent during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and developed in England into the Swetnam controversy. Essays focus on the implications of the gender debate for women writers and their literary relations, cultural ideology and the family, and political discourse and ideas of nationhood. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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