Tudor and Stuart Women Writers [Paperback]

. . . a nuanced, carefully argued work that reveals how women writers of the Renaissance, whether upper-class aristocrats close to court, daughters of successful merchants, Protestants, or Catholics, are inevitably affected by the gender biases that infuse all levels of Renaissance society and letters. Sixteenth Century Journal

. . . quite effective at developing a critical vocabulary for analyzing the formal traits of early modern women's writing. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

From the perspectives of feminism, Marxism, sociology, and cultural semiotics, Louise Schleiner examines both familiar and obscure Tudor and Stuart women writers in a comprehensive study of those women who managed to go beyond translations or diaries and find a more individual voice in their public texts.

Uses feminism, Marxism, sociology, and cultural semiotics to examine Tudor and Stuart women writers and their culture.

LOUISE SCHLEINER is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University and author of The Living Lyre in English Verse from Elizabeth through the Restoration and Cultural Semiotics and the Elizabethan Captive Woman.

Foreword by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
Acknowledgments
Introduction

I
Women's Household Circles as a Gendered Reading Formation: Whitney, Tyler, and Lanyer

2
Activist Entries into Writing: Lady Elizabeth Hoby/Russell and the Other Cooke Sisters

3
Authorial Identity for a Second-Generation Protestant Aristocrat: The Countess of Pembroke

4
Catholic Squirearchy and Women's Writing: The Countesses of Oxford and Arundel and Elizabeth Weston

5
Parlor Games and Male Self-Imaging as Government: Jonson, Bulstrode, and Ladies Southwell and Worth

6
Factional Identities and Writers' Energies: Wroth, the Countess of Bedford, and Donne

7
Popery and Politics: Lady Falkland's Return to Writing

Epilogue: Theoretical Perspectives