Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance

Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance
Author: Mary Spongberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2017-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230203078

The complaint of Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, that history has 'hardly any women at all' is not an uncommon one. Yet there is evidence to suggest that women have engaged in historical writing since ancient times. This study traces the history of women's historical writing, reclaiming the lives of individual women historians, recovering women's historical writings from the past and focusing on how gender has shaped the genre of history. Mary Spongberg brings together for the first time an extensive survey of the progress of women's historical writing from the Renaissance to the present, demonstrating the continuities between women's historical writings in the past and the development of a distinctly woman-centred historiography. Writing Women's History since the Renaissance also examines the relationship between women's history and the development of feminist consciousness, suggesting that the study of history has alerted women to their unequal status and enabled them to use history to achieve women's rights. Whether feminist or anti-feminist, women who have had their historical writings published have served as role models for women seeking a voice in the public sphere and have been instrumental in encouraging the growth of a feminist discourse.

Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance

Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance
Author: Meredith K. Ray
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0802097049

During the Italian Renaissance, dozens of early modern writers published collections of private correspondence, using them as vehicles for self-presentation, self-promotion, social critique, and religious dissent. Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance examines the letter collections of women writers, arguing that these works were a studied performance of pervasive ideas about gender as well as genre, a form of self-fashioning that variously reflected, manipulated, and subverted cultural and literary conventions regarding femininity and masculinity. Meredith K. Ray presents letter collections from authors of diverse backgrounds, including a noblewoman, a courtesan, an actress, a nun, and a male writer who composed letters under female pseudonyms. Ray's study includes extensive new archival research and highlights a widespread interest in women's letter collections during the Italian Renaissance that suggests a deep curiosity about the female experience and a surprising openness to women's participation in this kind of literary production.

Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance

Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance
Author: Mary Spongberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2017-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350317500

The complaint of Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, that history has 'hardly any women at all' is not an uncommon one. Yet there is evidence to suggest that women have engaged in historical writing since ancient times. This study traces the history of women's historical writing, reclaiming the lives of individual women historians, recovering women's historical writings from the past and focusing on how gender has shaped the genre of history. Mary Spongberg brings together for the first time an extensive survey of the progress of women's historical writing from the Renaissance to the present, demonstrating the continuities between women's historical writings in the past and the development of a distinctly woman-centred historiography. Writing Women's History since the Renaissance also examines the relationship between women's history and the development of feminist consciousness, suggesting that the study of history has alerted women to their unequal status and enabled them to use history to achieve women's rights. Whether feminist or anti-feminist, women who have had their historical writings published have served as role models for women seeking a voice in the public sphere and have been instrumental in encouraging the growth of a feminist discourse.

Companion to Women's Historical Writing

Companion to Women's Historical Writing
Author: M. Spongberg
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 729
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1349724688

This A-Z reference work provides the first comprehensive reference guide to the wide range of historical writing with which women have been involved, particularly since the Renaissance. The Companion covers biographical writing, travelogue and historical fictions, broadening the concept of history to include the forms of writing with which women have historically engaged. The focus is on women writing in English internationally, but historical and historiographical traditions from beyond the English-speaking world are also examined. Brief biographies of individual writers are included.

A History of Women's Writing in France

A History of Women's Writing in France
Author: Sonya Stephens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2000-05-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521581677

This volume was the first historical introduction to women's writing in France from the sixth century to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading scholars provide an introduction in English to the wealth and diversity of French women writers, offering fascinating readings and perspectives. The volume as a whole offers a cohesive history of women's writing which has sometimes been obscured by the canonisation of a small feminine elite. Each chapter focuses on a given period and a range of writers, taking account of prevailing sexual ideologies and women's activities in, or their relation to, the social, political, economic and cultural surroundings. Complemented by an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works and a biographical guide to more than one hundred and fifty women writers, it represents an invaluable resource for those wishing to discover or extend their knowledge of French literature written by women.

Writing Women's Literary History

Writing Women's Literary History
Author: Margaret J. M. Ezell
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1996-11-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780801855085

Ezell critically examines these successful women's literary histories and applies to them the same self-conscious feminism that critics have applied to more traditional methods. Drawing both on French feminisms and on recent historicist scholarship, Ezell points us to new possibilities for the recovery of early modern women's literary history. By championing the recovery of "lost" women writers and insisting on reevaluating the past, women's studies and feminist theory have effected dramatic changes in the ways English literary history is written and taught. In Writing Women's Literary History, Margaret Ezell critically examines these successful women's literary histories and applies to them the same self-conscious feminism that critics have applied to more traditional methods. According to Ezell, by relying not only on past male scholarship but also on inherited notions of "tradition," some feminist historicists replicate the evolutionary, narrative model of history that originally marginalized women who wrote before 1700. Drawing both on French feminisms and on recent historicist scholarship, Ezell points us to new possibilities for the recovery of early modern women's literary history.

A History of Women's Writing in Italy

A History of Women's Writing in Italy
Author: Letizia Panizza
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2000
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521578134

This volume offers a comprehensive account of writing by women in Italy.

Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present

Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present
Author: Maria Marotti
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2004-03-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780271024875

Contents: Introduction Revising the Canon: Italian Women Writers/Maria O. Marotti Part I: Canon Formation/Canon Revision Women Writers and the Canon in Contemporary Italy/JoAnn Cannon From One Closet to Another? Feminism, Literary Archaeology, and the Canon/Beverly Allen Italian "Difference Theory" A New Canon?/Renate Holub Part II: Renaissance Women: Rethinking the Canon Renaissance Women Defending Women: Arguments Against Patriarchy/Constance Jordan Selling the Self, or the Epistolary Production of Renaissance Courtesans/Fiora A. Bassanese Part III: At the Turn of the Century: Women Writers at the Margins of the Canon Double Marginality: Matilde Serao and the Politics of Ambiguity/Nancy Harrowitz The Diaries of Sibilla Aleramo: Constructing Female Subjectivity/Bernadette Luciano Narrative Voice and the Regional Experience: Redefining Female Images in the Works of Maria Messina/Elise Magistro Part IV: Contemporary Women Writers: Toward a New Canon Brushing Benjamin Against the Grain: Elsa Morante and the "Jetzeit" of Marginal History/Maurizia Boscagli From Genealogy to Gynealogy and Beyond: Fausta Cialente's Le Quattro Ragazze Wieselberger/Graziella Parati Ethnic Matriarchy: Fabrizia Ramondino's Neapolitan World/Maria Ornella Marotti Mythic Revisionism: Women Poets and Philosophers in Italy Today/Lucia Re Part V: Women as Filmmakers: Images of Women/Images by Women/Images for Women Monica Vitti: The Image and the Word/Marga Cottino-Jones Signifying the Holocaust: Liliana Cavani's Portiere di notte/Marguerite Waller Maria Ornella Marotti is a lecturer in Italian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of The Duplicating Imagination: Twain and the Twain Papers (Penn State, 1990).