Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500-1700

This book explores the construction of gender ideology in early modern England through an analysis of the querelle des femmes --the debate about the relationship between the sexes that originated on the continent during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and developed in England into the Swetnam controversy. The volume contextualizes the debate in terms of its continental antecedents and elite manuscript circulation in England, then moves to consider popular culture and printed texts, its effects on women's writing and the developing discourse on gender, and concludes by examining the ramifications of the debate during the Civil War and Restoration. Essays focus on the implications of the gender debate for women writers and their literary relations, cultural ideology and the family, and political discourse and ideas of nationhood.

Cristina Malcolmson is Professor of English at Bates College. Her previous books include Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic and Longman Critical Readers: Renaissance Poetry.

Mihoko Suzuki Professor of English at the University of Miami and the author of Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic and Subordinate Subjects: Gender, the Political Nation, and Literary Form in England, 1588-1688.