The essays in this exciting and important volume move away both from the notion that women are excluded victims, and from the more recent over-compensation for that position. Instead, it steadies the pendulum and takes its impetus from the recognition that the energy of feminism now resides in its full integration into and with other knowledge.

New feminist interpretations of the role of early modern women in culture

List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction; D.Callaghan PART I: THEORIES Cleopatran Affinities: Hélène Cixous, Margaret Cavendish and the Writing of Dialogic Matter; J.Gil Harris Confessing Mothers: The Maternal Penitent in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy; H.Hirschfeld Feminist Criticism and the New Formalism: Early Modern Women and Literary Engagement; S.Roberts Ophelia's Sisters; R.S.White PART II: WOMEN Sex and the Early Modern City: Staging the Bawdy Houses of London; J.Howard Women, Gender, and the Politics of Location; K.Chedgzoy 'The 'diffrence . . . in degree': Social Rank and Gendered Expression'; K.A.Coles A New Fable of the Belly: Vulgar Curiosity and the Persian Lady's Loose Bodies; P.Allen Brown Construing Gender: Mastering Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew; P.Parker PART III: HISTORIES Hermione's Ghost: Catholicism, the Feminine, and the Undead; F.E.Dolan No Man's Elizabeth: Frances Yates and the History of History; D.Williams Women's Informal Commerce and theAll-Male Stage; N.Korda Why did Widows Remarry? Remarriage, Male Authority, and Feminist Criticism; J.Panek 'I desire to be helde in your memory': Reading Penelope Rich Through Her Letters; G.Ioppolo Hormonal Conclusions; G.Kern Paster Index