The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print Counterbalancing the Canon

Many distinctive features of the English Renaissance -- its lateness relative to the Renaissance in southern Europe, its adaptations to the wide swings of the Tudor and Stuart political, economic, cultural, and religious programs, its generally sober, religious tone, its governance for a stretch of approximately fifty years by a woman -- are widely recognized. But the consequences of these peculiarities for English women are less familiar. The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print attempts to investigate these consequences by examining cultural products of Tudor and Stuart England. Focusing chiefly on literary texts, the essays in this collection correlate writings by men that have traditionally been contained within the literary canon with writings by women that have traditionally been marginalized. The essays in this collection treat cultural documents in ways that necessarily raise and address questions about English Renaissance politics, religion, and economics. Many of the gendered assumptions of the English Renaissance are highlighted by this counterbalancing of representations of Renaissance women by contemporary men with writings (on related topics) by Renaissance women.