Liberty and the politics of the female voice in early Stuart England / Christina Luckyj.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luckyj, Christina, 1956- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

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

Liberty in literature.

Women in literature.

Religion and politics--England--History--17th century.

Religion and politics.

Religion and literature--England--History--17th century.

Religion and literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 281 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Summary:

The female voice was deployed by male and female authors alike to signal emerging discourses of religious and political liberty in early Stuart England. Christina Luckyj's important new study focuses critical attention on writing in multiple genres to show how, in the coded rhetoric of seventeenth-century religious politics, the wife's conscience in resisting tyranny represents the rights of the subject, and the bride's militant voice in the Song of Songs champions Christ's independent jurisdiction. Revealing this gendered system of representation through close analysis of writings by Elizabeth Cary, Aemilia Lanyer, Rachel Speght, Mary Wroth and Anne Southwell, Luckyj illuminates the dangers of essentializing female voices and restricting them to domestic space. Through their connections with parliament, with factional courtiers, or with dissident religious figures, major women writers occupied a powerful oppositional stance in relation to early Stuart monarchs and crafted a radical new politics of the female voice.

Contents:

Introduction : female voices, women writers, Godly coalitions

The politics of the female voice

Conscience and desire

Elizabeth Cary and the 'publike-good'

'Not sparing kings:' Aemilia Lanyer

Rachel Speght and the 'criticall reader'

Mary Wroth and the politics of liberty

'Yokefellow, or slave:' Anne Southwell

Epilogue : anonymity and 'reasonable libertie'.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 25 Feb 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Luckyj, Christina Liberty and the Politics of the Female Voice in Early Stuart England

ISBN:

1-108-96001-4

1-108-95452-9

1-108-96021-9