The sixteenth century was an age of politically powerful women. Queens, acting in their own right, and female regents, acting on behalf of their male relatives, governed much of Western Europe. Yet even as women ruled - and ruled effectively - their right to do so was hotly contested. Men s voices have long dominated this debate, but the recovery of texts by women now allows their voices, long silenced, to be heard once again. Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe is a study of texts and textual production in the construction of gender, society, and politics in the early...

In The Monstrous Regiment of Women, Sharon Jansen explores the case for and against female rule by examining the arguments made by theorists from Sir John Fortescue (1461) through Bishop Bossuet (1680) interweaving their arguments with references to the most well-known early modern queens. The 'story' of early modern European political history looks very different if, instead of focusing on kings and their sons, we see successive generations of powerful women and the shifting political alliances of the period from a very different, and revealing, perspective.

Reading Women's Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing explores a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. These imagined "women's worlds" may be very small, a single room even, or may be more ambitious, such as the dream of an entire country created for and inhabited exclusively by women. Sharon L. Jansen places these texts in conversation with one another, pairing them in ways that reveal the writers' distinctive voices even while they speak of the dream they share.

In this work, Jansen explores a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. These imagined "women's worlds" may be very small, a single room, for example, but many women writers are much more ambitious, fantasizing about cities, even entire countries, created for and inhabited exclusively by women.

In this work, Jansen exploresa recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. These imagined "women's worlds" may be very small, a single room, for example, but many women writers are much more ambitious, fantasizing about cities, even entire countries, created for and inhabited exclusively by women."

The sixteenth century was an age of politically powerful women. Queens, acting in their own right, and female regents, acting on behalf of their male relatives, governed much of Western Europe. Yet even as women ruled - and ruled effectively - their right to do so was hotly contested. Men s voices have long dominated this debate, but the recovery of texts by women now allows their voices, long silenced, to be heard once again. Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe is a study of texts and textual production in the construction of gender, society, and politics in the early...