Research Catalog

Title

"The Muses females are" : Martha Moulsworth and other women writers of the English Renaissance / edited by Robert C. Evans and Anne C. Little.

Publication

West Cornwall, CT : Locust Hill Press, 1995

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Evans, Robert C.
• Little, Anne C.

Description

xxx, 315 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

This volume offers diverse perspectives on the recently published "Memorandum" of Martha Moulsworth, a fascinating woman who in 1632 wrote one of the first autobiographical poems in the English language. Moulsworth's poem, which issues a startlingly early and radical call for educational equality, provides one of our best "inside views" of the life of a Renaissance woman, and the poem is also one of the few writings about widowhood written by an early modern widow. Yet the poem is also highly sophisticated as a work of art, and it has already proven its appeal to a wide variety of readers, including both beginning students and noted scholars and critics. The present book builds on the first edition of Moulsworth's poem - "My Name Was Martha": A Renaissance Woman's Autobiographical Poem (Locust Hill, 1993). The new volume offers extensive additional biographical information about Moulsworth herself, and it also presents readings of the poem as a poem and as a piece of autobiography. The book also considers such broader issues as the myth of the muses, the role of education in the Renaissance, the status of wives and widows, and the ideals and realities of early modern marriage. Moulsworth's poem emerges as an even richer work when viewed from so many different perspectives. Moulsworth, however, is hardly the only Renaissance woman writer examined in this volume. Many essayists use Moulsworth as a touchstone for discussing numerous other authors, including such figures as Roger Ascham, Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish (the Duchess of Newcastle), Lady Anne Clifford, An Collins, Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth Grymston, Lady Elizabeth Langham, Aemilia Lanyer, Bathsua Makin, Elizabeth Melville, Richard Mulcaster, Katherine Philips, Mary Sidney (the Countess of Pembroke), Rachel Speght, Hester Wiat, and Lady Mary Wroth (to name a few).

Series Statement

Locust Hill literary studies ; no. 20

Uniform Title

Locust Hill literary studies ; no. 20.

Alternative Title

Muses females are.

Subject

• Moulsworth, Martha > Criticism and interpretation
• Moulsworth, Martha > Contemporaries
• Geschichte 1500-1640
• 1500-1700
• English literature > Early modern, 1500-1700 > History and criticism
• English literature > Women authors > History and criticism
• Women and literature > England > History > 17th century
• Autobiography > Women authors
• Sex role in literature
• Renaissance > England

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• "Backward springs": the self-invention of Martha Moulsworth / Germaine Greer -- Identity and numbers in Martha Moulsworth's "Memorandum" / Isobel Grundy -- Life and times of Martha Moulsworth / Robert C. Evans -- Martha Moulsworth and the uses of rhetoric: love, mourning, and reciprocity / Anthony Low -- Marginally funny: Martha Moulsworth's puns / Anne Lake Prescott -- Poem as a clock: Martha Moulsworth tells time three ways / Mary Ellen Lamb -- "The Memorandum," sacraments, and Ewelme Church / Matthew Steggle -- "By him I was brought upp": evoking the Father in Moulsworth's "Memorandum" / Anne C. Little -- Martha Moulsworth's "Memorandum": drossing the climacteric / Susie Paul -- Biblical resonance in Moulsworth's "memorandum" / Robert C. Evans and Neil P. Probst.
• "My inward house": women's autobiographical poetry in the early seventeenth century / Josephine A. Roberts -- "My muse is a tell clocke": the paradox of ritual autobiography in Martha Moulsworth's "Memorandum" / Curtis Perry -- Research sources on seventeenth-century women's autobiography / Karen Worley Pirnie -- "The muses females are": Renaissance women and education / John T. Shawcross -- Early modern women and "the muses ffemall" / Frances Teague -- Educating women and the lower orders / Jean R. Brink -- "The widdowes silvar": widowhood in early modern England / Esther S. Cope.

ISBN

0933951639 (library binding : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^95022413^

OCLC

• 32625139
• SCSB-13284712

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library