World-Making Renaissance Women

This collection affirms the shaping authority of early modern women in literature and culture, evident well beyond their own moment.

The sixteen women discussed in this collection were world-makers whose craft influenced cultural practice so incisively that their shaping authority can be traced far beyond their moment. For scholars and students of English literature, this volume shows why Renaissance culture cannot be rightly understood when women writers are ignored.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.