Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies is a volume of essays by leading scholars in the field of early modern studies on the history, present state, and future possibilities of feminist criticism and theory. It responds to current anxieties that feminist criticism is in a state of decline by attending to debates and differences that have emerged in light of ongoing scholarly discussions of race, affect, sexuality, and transnationalism-work that compels us continually to reassess our definitions of women and gender. Rethinking Feminism demonstrates how studies of early modern...

Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici explores Catherine de Medici's 'flying squadron', the legendary ladies-in-waiting of the sixteenth-century French queen mother who were alleged to have been ordered to seduce politically influential men for their mistress's own Machiavellian purposes. Branded a 'cabal of cuckoldry' by a contemporary critic, these women were involved in scandals that have encouraged a perception, which continues in much academic literature, of the late Valois court as debauched and corrupt.

Rather than trying to establish the guilt or innocence...

Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450 1690 "is the first collection to examine the gendered nature of women s letter-writing in England and Ireland from the late-fifteenth century through to the Restoration. The essays collected here represent an important body of new work by a group of international scholars who together look to reorient the study of women s letters in the contexts of early modern culture. The volume builds upon recent approaches to the letter, both rhetorical and material, that have the power to transform the ways in which we understand, study and...