Writing, Gender and State in Early Modern England: Identity Formation and the Female Subject (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Series Number 26)

ISBN: 052103521X

Author: Matchinske, Megan

Condition: New

The period from the Reformation to the English Civil War saw an evolving understanding of social identity in England. This book uses four illuminating case studies to chart a shift from mid-sixteenth-century notions of an individually generated, spiritually motivated self, to civil war perceptions of the self as a site of civil control. Each centers on the work of an early modern woman writer in the act of self-definition and authorization, illustrating the evolving relationships between public and private selves and the increasing role of gender in determining different identities for men and women.