Pens and needles : women's textualities in early modern England / Susan Frye.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frye, Susan, 1952-

Series:

Material texts.

Material texts

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arts, English--16th century.

Arts, English.

Arts, English--17th century.

Material culture--Social aspects--England.

Material culture.

Women--England--Social conditions.

Women.

Art and society--England--History--16th century.

Art and society.

Art and society--England--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (323 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Renaissance woman, whether privileged or of the artisan or the middle class, was trained in the expressive arts of needlework and painting, which were often given precedence over writing. Pens and Needles is the first book to examine all these forms as interrelated products of self-fashioning and communication. Because early modern people saw verbal and visual texts as closely related, Susan Frye discusses the connections between the many forms of women's textualities, including notes in samplers, alphabets both stitched and penned, initials, ciphers, and extensive texts like needlework pictures, self-portraits, poetry, and pamphlets, as well as commissioned artwork, architecture, and interior design. She examines works on paper and cloth by such famous figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bess of Hardwick, as well as the output of journeywomen needle workers and miniaturists Levina Teerlinc and Esther Inglis, and their lesser-known sisters in the English colonies of the New World. Frye shows how traditional women's work was a way for women to communicate with one another and to shape their own identities within familial, intellectual, religious, and historical traditions. Pens and Needles offers insights into women's lives and into such literary texts as Shakespeare's Othello and Cymbeline and Mary Sidney Wroth's Urania.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Note on Spelling

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One. Political Designs: Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, and Bess of Hardwick

Chapter Two. Miniatures and Manuscripts: Levina Teerlinc, Jane Segar, and Esther Inglis as Professional Artisans

Chapter Three. Sewing Connections: Narratives of Agency in Women's Domestic Needlework

Chapter Four. Staging Women's Relations to Textiles in Shakespeare's Othello and Cymbeline

Chapter Five. Mary Sidney Wroth: Clothing Romance

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-290) and index.

ISBN:

9781283897204

1283897202

9780812206982

0812206983

OCLC:

794700708