Synopses & Reviews
Most anthologies of Renaissance writing include only (or predominantly) male writers, whereas those that focus on women include women exclusively. This book is the first to survey both in an integrated fashion. Its texts comprise a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writing including some new and important discoveries.
The anthology arranges recently recovered texts into intriguing patterns... It includes unconventional voices, as in the homoerotic poems by Richard Barnfield or the possibly lesbian poems by Katherine Philips. It makes newly available the voices of English Marrano women (secret Jews) and the Miltonic poetry of Jean Lead.
Review
"Fills an important need for a teaching text that illustrates both the commonalities and disjunctions between women and men's approaches to similar experiences in the early modern period. The selections are of real interest on their own merits and usefully paired. While the book is arranged to offer comparisons on specific topics, it also invites teachers to think of new ways to organize the material, and to involve students in the exciting process of redefining English cultural history." Susanne Woods, Provost and Professor of English, Wheaton College, Massachusetts
Review
"An important contribution to the field, for it brings together in new ways a host of fascinating texts by currently famous and also lesser-known writers." Elizabeth H. Hageman, University of New Hampshire; chair, Brown University Women Writers Project
About the Author
Betty S. Travitsky, archivist at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, is editor of
The Paradise of Women.
Anne Lake Prescott is professor of English at Barnard College and the author of Imagining Rabelais in the English Renaissance.