Marie-Louise Coolahan - Böcker

This book examines writing in English, Irish, and Spanish by women living in Ireland and by Irish women living on the continent between the years 1574 and 1676. This was a tumultuous period of political, religious, and linguistic contestation that encompassed the key power struggles of early modern Ireland. This study brings to light the ways in which women contributed; they strove to be heard and to make sense of their situations, forging space for their voices in complex ways and engaging with native and new language-traditions. The book investigates the genres in which women wrote: poetry, nuns' writing, petition-letters, depositions, biography and autobiography. It argues for a complex understanding of authorial agency that centres of the act of creating or composing a text, which does not necessarily equate with the physical act of writing. The Irish, English, and European contexts for women's production of texts are identified and assessed. The literary traditions and languages of the different communities living on the island are juxtaposed in order to show how identities were shaped and defined in relation to each other. Marie-Louise Coolahan elucidates the social, political, and economic imperatives for women's writing, examines the ways in which women characterized female composition, and describes an extensive range of cross-cultural, multilingual activity.

Katherine Philips (1632–1664) is widely regarded as a pioneering figure within English-language women’s literary history. Best known as a poet, she was also a skilled translator, letter writer and literary critic whose subjects ranged from friendship and retirement to politics and public life. Her poetry achieved a high reputation among coterie networks in London, Wales and Ireland during her lifetime, and was published to great acclaim after her death. The present volume, drawing on important recent research into her early manuscripts and printed texts, represents a new and innovative phase in Philips's scholarship. Emphasizing her literary responses to other writers as well as the ambition and sophistication of her work, it includes groundbreaking studies of her use of form and genre, her practices as a translator, her engagement with philosophy and political theory, and her experiences in Restoration Dublin. It also examines the posthumous reception of Philips’s poetry and model theoretical and digital humanities approaches to her work. This book was originally published as two special issues of Women’s Writing.

Katherine Philips (1632–1664) is widely regarded as a pioneering figure within English-language women’s literary history. Best known as a poet, she was also a skilled translator, letter writer and literary critic whose subjects ranged from friendship and retirement to politics and public life. Her poetry achieved a high reputation among coterie networks in London, Wales and Ireland during her lifetime, and was published to great acclaim after her death. The present volume, drawing on important recent research into her early manuscripts and printed texts, represents a new and innovative phase in Philips's scholarship. Emphasizing her literary responses to other writers as well as the ambition and sophistication of her work, it includes groundbreaking studies of her use of form and genre, her practices as a translator, her engagement with philosophy and political theory, and her experiences in Restoration Dublin. It also examines the posthumous reception of Philips’s poetry and model theoretical and digital humanities approaches to her work. This book was originally published as two special issues of Women’s Writing.

Anthologies play an essential role in shaping literary history. This anthology reveals women's poetic activity and production across the three nations of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales from 1400 to 1800, overturning the long-standing and widespread bias in favour of English writers that has historically shaped both scholarly and popular understanding of this period's female poetic canon. Prioritising texts that have never before been published or translated, readers are introduced to an extraordinary array of women's voices. From countesses to servant maids, from erotic verse to religious poetry, women's immense poetic output across four centuries, multiple vernaculars, and national traditions is richly demonstrated. Featuring translations and glosses of texts in Irish, Ulster Scots, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh, alongside informative headnotes on each poet, this collection makes the work of women poets available like never before. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.