Martine Watson Brownley – författare

Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form is the first major evaluation from a literary point of view of the writings of Edward Hyde, the first Earl of Clarendon and the most important English historiographer of the seventeenth century.As an early reformer in the Long Parliament, as an adviser to Charles I and Charles II, as the major architect of the Restoration on the Royalist side, and as Lord Chancellor of England from 1660 to 1667, Clarendon played a crucial role in determining the course of English history during and after the tumultuous years of the civil wars. As a historian and a literary stylist, he produced the History of the Rebellion, generally regarded as the greatest historical work written in England during the seventeenth century.Martine Watson Brownley evaluates Clarendon's literary abilities and achievements, focusing on his prose style, narrative form, and thematic structure on biographical influences on his writing; and on his literary background and associations. She also places Clarendon in the context of the development of English literary historiography during the seventeenth century.Various political and literary changes-for example, the antiquarian movement, the civil wars, and alterations in English prose and narrative styles-made the seventeenth century a particularly crucial era in the evolution of an English historiography that would lead to historical works which were also classics of literature.Brownley demonstrates that, through his experiments in style and structure in the History of the Rebellion, and particularly through the imaginative overview which he evolved for and in his work, Clarendon made the most significant advances in English literary historiography before the late eighteenth-century triumvirate of Gibbon, Robertson, and Hume.Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form will be valuable to scholars interested in historiography, prose and narrative style, and seventeenth-century literature and history.

Autobiography, as evidenced by best-seller lists, is one of the most popular literary genres. However, because critics have long dismissed it as subpar literature, little attention has been paid to autobiography, particularly accounts by women. Women and Autobiography, edited by Martine Watson Brownley and Allison B. Kimmich, offers an insightful perspective on this often overlooked field. This text gives a compact, comprehensive overview of women's autobiography, providing historical back-ground and contemporary criticism along with selections from a range of autobiographies by women. Developed primarily for undergraduates, Women and Autobiography combines theory and practice by pairing autobiographical selections and criticism. This book is a useful tool for courses in autobiography, literature by women, and women's studies.