English women's voices, 1540-1700 /

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Bibliographic Details
Imprint:	Miami : Florida International University Press, ©1992.
Description:	1 online resource (xv, 421 pages) : illustrations, map
Language:	English
Subject:	English literature -- Women authors. Women -- England -- History -- Renaissance, 1450-1600 -- Sources. Women -- England -- History -- 17th century -- Sources. English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700. Women -- England -- Literary collections. Autobiography -- Women authors. Autobiography -- Women authors. English literature -- Early modern. English literature -- Women authors. Women. Women -- Renaissance. England. History. Literary collections. Sources. Electronic books.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11106853

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:	Otten, Charlotte F.
ISBN:	0813020107 9780813020105 0813010837 0813010993
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index. Print version record.
Summary:	"This collection resurrects an extraordinary array of women's writings from the mid-sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries. The focus of English Women Voices is not on females writing "literature" but on the actual lives of women, as described in their own words. The work is organized around such themes as health care, religion, politics, marriage, and education, an approach that cuts across genre and chronology and shows the significant contributions of women to their culture. Recorded in diaries, letters, sermons, pamphlets, formal petitions, health manuals, trial records, biographies, and autobiographies, the words escape from the past, as vital as current events. The opening section, "Women Testifying to Abuse," candidly describes aspects of female life that even today often remain secret. The final section, which records the voices of women preaching, will touch a nerve in women who still struggle for the right to be heard from the pulpit. Each section begins with an introduction that situates the writing in its historical context; each introduction has a suggested-readings list that opens the subject to further research." "Burdened by what were perceived as the metaphysical, moral, and physiological limitations of women, the authors of these writings were enjoined to silence. Though sometimes published in their own day, the works were subsequently interred in research libraries or on microfilm. Vibrant with personal concerns, these voices will pierce the consciousness of twentieth-century readers and contribute to scholarship in literature and history courses and in all aspects of gender studies."--Jacket.
Other form:	Print version: English women's voices, 1540-1700. Miami : Florida International University Press, ©1992 0813010837

Review by Choice Review

A useful and, at times, exciting collection of primary materials. Women's voices, speaking about lived experience in contrast to those of women in creative literature, are not easy to come by. Otten has culled the materials--many unpublished since the 17th century and a few still in manuscript--to give readers glimpses of informed and sensitive comments on gender, status, and sex. The volume's eight sections deal with abuse, persecution and prison life, political statements, love and marriage, health care, childbirth and death, prayer, and the right to preach. Short introductions explain the selections with each section, and a bibliography of women writers, 1540-1700, is of value. The accounts wherein women describe courtship, joys and pains of requited love, devotion to children and the frequent death of offspring, and their urge to be taken as full members of Christ's flock, are valuable materials, made accessible here to students and teachers. Some excerpts are very powerful; others are somewhat overlong. An occasional omission in chapter bibliographies and the need for more comparisons with male experience are minor flaws. An unusually timely, thoughtful, useful volume. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Review by Choice Review

English women's voices, 1540-1700 /

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