Early modern women's writing & the future of literary history Lara Dodds, Michelle M. Dowd

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dodds, Lara, author.

Dowd, Michelle M., 1975- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

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

Feminist literary criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Oxford Oxford University Press 2025

Summary:

Early Modern Women's Writing and the Future of Literary History demonstrates that a full accounting of early modern women's literary and creative activities is necessary to the future of literary studies writ large. Despite benefiting from a rich body of scholarship and diverse critical practices, early modern women's writing is still treated as an optional or secondary component of Renaissance literary studies as a whole. In this book, Dodds and Dowd offer a state-of-the-field assessment of the critical and theoretical debates that have resulted in this state of affairs in order to advance specific visions for the future. Dodds and Dowd examine how perennial questions about authorship, canon, and literary value have historically influenced scholarship on early modern women's writing and its place within literary studies. Early modern women's writing has been perceived as belated, out of sync with dominant critical trends. Dodds and Dowd show the belatedness of early modern women's writing to be a "happy accident" that positions women's writing as a resource for the renewal of literary history. In both the classroom and in scholarship, early modern women's writing shows the way forward for the field, whether in the revitalization of formalist approaches to literature through an alliance with feminism or in the integration of newer critical methodologies such as premodern critical race studies. This book demonstrates that a feminist literary history that places women's writing at its center is essential to the future of English Renaissance literary studies. There is, in other words, no history of English Renaissance literature without women writers

Contents:

Introduction : Undead authors and happy accidents

What is women’s writing?

Are we postcanonical yet?

Is it any good?

Premodern critical race studies and women’s writing

Early modern women’s writing and the case for feminist formalism

Early modern women in the classroom : Pedagogy, innovation, and the future of literary history

Coda : The future we need now

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed December 5, 2025)

Other Format:

Print version Dodds, Lara Early modern women's writing & the future of literary history

ISBN:

9780198941316

0198941315

9780198941309

0198941307

OCLC:

1450713839

Publisher Number:

CIPO000166780

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license