The authors examine the political rhetoric of a number of powerful women of the Renaissance, male responses to this rhetoric, drama and fiction by both male and female authors considering women and political context, and how historians—then and now—have evaluated powerful women.

A multi-disciplinary collection, the book includes an essay about Christine de Pizan and her fifteenth-century look at powerful women, an examination of seventeeth-century rhetoricians and how they viewed and reshaped the Renaissance in terms of giving power to women, and examples of English and French women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The afterword contextualizes these examples and raises questions about modern issues. The book provides a greater understanding of gender and power in the Renaissance as well as insights into the contemporary age.