1st Edition

Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550-1700 Volume 1: Early Tudor Women Writers

Edited By Elaine V. Beilin Copyright 2009

    This volume includes leading scholarship on five writers active in the first half of the sixteenth century: Margaret More Roper, Katherine Parr, Anne Askew, Mildred Cooke Cecil and Anne Cooke Bacon. The essays represent a range of theoretical approaches and provide valuable insights into the religious, social, economic and political contexts essential for understanding these writers' texts. Scholars examine the significance of Margaret More Roper's translations and letters in the contexts of humanism, family relationships and changing cultural forces; the contributions of Katherine Parr and Anne Askew to Reformation discourses and debates; and the material presence of Mildred Cooke Cecil and Anne Cooke Bacon in the intellectual, religious and political life of their time. The introduction surveys the development of the field as an interdisciplinary project involving literature, history, classics, religion and cultural studies.

    Contents: Introduction; Bibliography; Part I Margaret More Roper: Margaret Roper's English version of Erasmus' Precatio Dominica and the apprenticeship behind early Tudor translation, John Archer Gee; Margaret More Roper's translation of Erasmus' Precatio Dominica, Elizabeth McCutcheon; The name and the signature of the author of Margaret Roper's letter to Alice Alington, Nancy E. Wright; Margaret Roper, the Humanist political project, and the problem of agency, Mary Ellen Lamb. Part II Katherine Parr: A Tudor queen finds voice: Katherine Parr's Lamentation of a Sinner, Janel Mueller; Devotion as difference: intertextuality in Queen Katherine Parr's Prayers or Meditations (1545), Janel Mueller; Complications of intertextuality: John Fisher, Katherine Parr, and The Book of the Crucifix, Janel Mueller; Queen Kateryn Parr's Lamentacion of a Synner and the formularies, Frank Howson; 'A supernal lively faith': Katherine Parr and the authoring of devotion, Andrew Hiscock; Katherine Parr, Princess Elizabeth, and the Crucified Christ, Jonathan Gibson. Part III Anne Askew: Anne Askew's dialogue with authority, Elaine V. Beilin; 'Except that they had offended the lawe': gender and jurisprudence in The Examinations of Anne Askew, Paula McQuade; Anne Askewe, John Bale, and Protestant history, Thomas Betteridge; Translating (Anne) Askew: the textual remains of a 16th-century heretic and saint, Theresa D. Kemp; The plural voices of Anne Askew, Joan Pong Linton; The inheritance of Anne Askew, English Protestant martyr, Susannah Brietz Monta; Stepping into the pulpit? Women's preaching in The Book of Margery Kempe and The Examinations of Anne Askew, Genelle Gertz-Robinson; Response to Genelle Gertz-Robinson: Stepping into the pulpit?, David Wallace. Part IV The Cooke Sisters: Anne Cooke Bacon, Mildred Cooke Cecil: The Cooke sisters: attitudes toward learned women in the Renaissance, Mary Ellen Lamb; The library of Mildred Cooke Cecil, Lady Burghley, Caroline Bowden; Mildred Cecil, Lady Burleigh: poetry, politics and Protestantism, Jane Stevenson; Index.

    Biography

    Elaine V. Beilin, Professor of English, Framingham State College, USA

    'Beilin can be commended for bringing together a series of essays that demonstrate the complex social negotiations behind the writings produced by early modern women.' Gender and History