This volume offers 18 essays on women as writers or as objects of representation in the English Renaissance. By analyzing the ways in which women are treated both in the traditional canon and in writings hitherto excluded, the book establishes a broader context for the interpretation of these writings. At the same time, the essays treat texts as cultural documents that raise questions about English politics, religion, economics and power relations. Together, the pieces reveal much about the gender system operating in Renaissance England and the range of women's experience during this period. The book explores the interrelated subject of women's visibility/invisibility, empowerment/suppression and voice/silencing and also documents the efforts of individual women who engaged, not necessarily consciously, in the creation and recreation of a female cultural presence and discusses differences and similarities between male and female representations of women's experience. The book is arranged in five sections. Part 1 explores women's voices in three literary genres. Part 2 examines portrayals of female empowerment, suppression and resistance in Renaissance drama. In part 3, the authors look at the woman ruler, discussing both her authority and her limitations. Part 4 treats the repression of women in the private sphere and part 5 addresses the voices and silences of women in texts by male and female writers of the Sidney family. The final chapter is an annotated bibliography covering women writers from 1500 to 1640. It establishes the current parameters of scholarship in this area and suggests directions for future research and publishing.
