Feminist Formalism and Early Modern Women's Writing
Readings, Conversations, Pedagogies
Michelle M Dowd editor Lara Dodds editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Nebraska Press
Published:1st May '22
Should be back in stock very soon
Feminist Formalism and Early Modern Women’s Writing reexamines the relationship between gender and form in early modern women’s writing in essays that elaborate the specific literary strategies of women writers, that examine women’s debts to and appropriations of different literary genres, and that offer practical suggestions for the teaching of women’s texts in several different contexts. Contributors explore the possibility of feminist formalism, a methodology that both attends to the structural, rhetorical, and other formal techniques of a given text and takes gender as a central category of analysis. This collection contends that feminist formalism is a useful tool for scholars of the early modern period and for literary studies more broadly because it marries the traditional questions of formalism—including questions of style, genre, and literary history—with the political and cultural concerns of feminist inquiry.
Contributors reposition works by important women writers—such as Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, Mary Wroth, and Katherine Philips—as central to the development of English literary tradition. By examining a variety of texts written by women, including recipes, emblems, exchanges, and poetry, Feminist Formalism and Early Modern Women’s Writing contributes to existing scholarship on early modern women’s writing while extending it in new and important directions.
"Feminist Formalisms and Early Modern Women's Writing marks a coming into its prime for the field of early modern women's literary studies. Indeed, the bibliographies associated with each of the essays across the volume provide an excellent overview of current and central scholarship for a wide range of writers and genres within and outside the standard "early modern women writers" canon and should serve as a welcome reference to anyone embarking upon a new investigation of their own. The essays themselves illuminate the strength and versatility of the methods for which Dodds, Dowd, and the contributors so adeptly advocate."—Karen L. Nelson, Journal of British Studies
“A feminist formalist is exactly what is needed at this moment to integrate the study of early modern women writers into the literary canon. All of the contributions are clearly written and highly readable, and the entire collection is a pleasure to read, without exception. . . . The pedagogy section of this collection offers useful, practical advice. This groundbreaking collection is both brilliant and necessary. It will find a wide audience among researchers, teachers, and students.”—Paula McQuade, author of Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-Century England
“A significant and particularly timely contribution to the field of early modern women’s writing. . . . What is striking here is that most of the contributors to this collection have established reputations in a wide variety of areas in the field, yet their astute and thorough-going investigations of the subject in relation to bodies of women’s writings with which they are intimately familiar are eye-opening. This flexibility and facility speaks both to the deep expertise possessed by the contributors and to the profit to be gained through formalist critique.”—Patricia Phillippy, editor of A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing
ISBN: 9781496220424
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
304 pages