Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works Series III, Part Two – serie

Misogyny and its opposite, philogyny, have been perennial topics in Western literature from its earliest days to the present day, but only at certain historic periods have pro-woman authors challenged fundamental negative assumptions about women by engaging in formal debate with misogynists and juxtaposing these two attitudes toward women in pairs or series of texts devoted exclusively to discussing womankind. This dialectic of attack on and defence of the female sex, known as the querelle des femmes (debate about women), was especially popular among authors and readers during the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries in England. At least 36 texts exclusively devoted to attacking and/or defending women were published in the hundred years between 1540 and 1640. The works included in these two volumes exemplify the content and the methods of debate in England during those two centuries. Volume one includes texts from 1521 through to 1615.

Misogyny and its opposite, philogyny, have been perennial topics in Western literature from its earliest days to the present day, but only at certain historic periods have pro-woman authors challenged fundamental negative assumptions about women by engaging in formal debate with misogynists and juxtaposing these two attitudes toward women in pairs or series of texts devoted exclusively to discussing womankind. This dialectic of attack on and defence of the female sex, known as the querelle des femmes (debate about women), was especially popular among authors and readers during the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries in England. At least 36 texts exclusively devoted to attacking and/or defending women were published in the hundred years between 1540 and 1640. The works included in these two volumes exemplify the content and the methods of debate in England during those two centuries. Volume two includes texts from 1616 through to 1640.

By turns witty and inane, crude and learned, scurrilous and moralistic, jestbooks offer an important and often overlooked viewpoint on the lives of women in early modern England. This volume reproduces seven jestbooks with connections to early modern Englishwomen as well as showing something of the broad genre itself. Four have a direct connection to women through their jests and framing (Wyddow Edyth, VVestward for Smelts, Long Meg of VVestminster, and Pasqvils Iests), excerpts from two books specifically focus on women in some sections (The Schoolemaster and Wits Fittes and Fancies) and the volume also includes the extremely popular, general jestbook (A C. Mery Talys).

The querelle des femmes was a debate over the condition of women in society lasting four centuries and characteristically involved charges against female vice, folly, corruption, incontinence and lasciviousness, countered by pro-women defences and lists of exemplary women. The texts in these two volumes range from broadside parliamentary petitions to verse satire, from sermons to philosophical essays, from political diatribes to marital advice. The defences all respond to attacks on women, and although none argues for women's citizenship or social equality, many claim an original or spiritual equality, and blame custom and male corruption for female subjection. The volumes are arranged into five sections covering Politics, Preaching and Silence, Sexuality, Marriage and Two Contrapuntal Defences.

Misogyny and its opposite, philogyny, have been perennial topics in Western literature from its earliest days to the present day, but only at certain historic periods have pro-woman authors challenged fundamental negative assumptions about women by engaging in formal debate with misogynists and juxtaposing these two attitudes toward women in pairs or series of texts devoted exclusively to discussing womankind. This dialectic of attack on and defence of the female sex, known as the querelle des femmes (debate about women), was especially popular among authors and readers during the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries in England. At least 36 texts exclusively devoted to attacking and/or defending women were published in the hundred years between 1540 and 1640. The works included in these two volumes exemplify the content and the methods of debate in England during those two centuries. Volume one includes texts from 1521 through to 1615.

The querelle des femmes was a debate over the condition of women in society lasting four centuries and characteristically involved charges against female vice, folly, corruption, incontinence and lasciviousness, countered by pro-women defences and lists of exemplary women. The texts in these two volumes range from broadside parliamentary petitions to verse satire, from sermons to philosophical essays, from political diatribes to marital advice. The defences all respond to attacks on women, and although none argues for women's citizenship or social equality, many claim an original or spiritual equality, and blame custom and male corruption for female subjection. The volumes are arranged into five sections covering Politics, Preaching and Silence, Sexuality, Marriage and Two Contrapuntal Defences.