Women writing history in early modern England / Megan Matchinske.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Matchinske, Megan.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English literature--Women authors.

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

History in literature.

Literature and history--England.

Literature and history--England--17th century.

Literature and history.

England.

Physical Description:

ix, 240 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Summary:

In 1603 an English gentlewoman, Elizabeth Grymeston, composed for her young son a series of meditations - meditations that would offer posthumous advice and reflection on everything from the nature of sin to the limits of royal authority. Six months later, Grymeston was dead and her words memorialized not just for a small boy but also for an English audience eager for moral edification and enlightenment. As one of the first writers of the mother's legacy to appear in England, Grymeston looked to history to find her answers. Using life experience as her witness, she drew immediate and powerful connections between yesterday's actions and tomorrow's possibilities. She was not alone - throughout the seventeenth century, scores of Englishwomen did likewise, exploring in their own "histories" the shifting relationships between past and future. This book focuses on this dynamic exchange, asking us to look seriously to and at the ends of history.

Contents:

1. Strategies for survival : gender, ethics and history

2. Truth in the telling : moral, method and history in Anne Dowriche's The French historie

3. Gendering Catholic conformity : equivocal history and cultural context in Elizabeth Grymeston's Miscelanea

4. From here to 'henceforth' : history, gender and identity in the diary writings of Lady Anne Clifford

5. Receptive readers : dissimulation and historical truth in Mary Carleton's bigamy trials

6. The 'dying-tale' : history and the ethics of action.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-236) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780521508674

0521508673

OCLC:

286432469