Writing, Gender and State in Early Modern England
Identity Formation and the Female Subject

Explores the role of gender and statehood in the developing construction of early modern identity.

Megan Matchinske (Author)

9780521622547, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 May 1998

264 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2 cm, 0.497 kg

'… succeed[s] in emphasising the variety of early modern women's writing.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

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 discursive shift from mid-sixteenth-century notions of an individually generated, spiritually motivated sense of identity, to Civil War perceptions of the self as inscribed by the state and inflected according to gender, a site of civil and sexual invigilation and control. Each centres on the work of an early modern woman writer in the act of self-definition and authorization, in relation to external powers such as the Church and the monarchy. Megan Matchinske's study illustrates the evolving relationships between public and private selves and the increasing role of gender in determining different identities for men and women. The conjunction of gender and statehood in Matchinske's analysis represents an original contribution to the study of early modern identity.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Resistance, Reformation, and the remaining narratives
2. Framing recusant identity in counter-Reformation England
3. Legislating morality in the marriage market
4. Gender formation in English apocalyptic writing
5. Connections, qualifications, and agendas
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]