English Women Religion and Textual Production 1500-1625

Contributing to the growing interest in early modern women and religion this essay collection advances scholarship by introducing readers to recently recovered or little-studied texts and by offering new paradigms for the analysis of women's religious literary activities. Contributors underscore the fact that women had complex multi-dimensional relationships to the religio-political order acting as activists for specific causes but also departing from confessional norms in creative ways and engaging in intra-as well as extra-confessional conflict. The volume thus includes essays that reflect on the complex dynamics of religious culture itself and that illuminate the importance of women's engagement with Catholicism throughout the period. The collection also highlights the vitality of neglected intertextual genres such as prayers meditations and translations and it focuses attention on diverse forms of textual production such as literary writing patronage epistolary exchanges public reading and epitaphs. Collectively English Women Religion and Textual Production 1500-1625 offers a comprehensive treatment of the historical literary and methodological issues preoccupying scholars of women and religious writing.