
Contents
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
THE QUERELLE, POLITICAL CRITIQUE, AND THE FEMALE VOICE THE QUERELLE, POLITICAL CRITIQUE, AND THE FEMALE VOICE
-
THE QUERELLE AND THE OVERBURY SCANDAL THE QUERELLE AND THE OVERBURY SCANDAL
-
THE OVERBURY SCANDAL, WOMEN WRITERS, AND POLITICAL CRITIQUE THE OVERBURY SCANDAL, WOMEN WRITERS, AND POLITICAL CRITIQUE
-
THE SWETNAM CONTROVERSY, THE FEMALE VOICE, AND POLITICAL CRITIQUE THE SWETNAM CONTROVERSY, THE FEMALE VOICE, AND POLITICAL CRITIQUE
-
FURTHER READING FURTHER READING
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
9 The Querelle des Femmes, the Overbury Scandal, and the Politics of the Swetnam Controversy in Early Modern England
Get accessChristina Luckyj is Professor of English and McCulloch Chair at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she specialises in early modern literature. She is the author of Liberty and The Politics of the Female Voice in Early Stuart England (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and ‘A Moving Rhetoricke’: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England (Manchester University Press, 2002), and editor of The White Devil (New Mermaids, 2008) and The Duchess of Malfi: A Critical Guide (Arden, 2011). She co-edited (with Niamh J. O’Leary) The Politics of Female Alliance in Early Modern England (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which won the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Award for Best Collaborative Project published in 2017. Author of a range of essays on early modern drama and on women writers, including two essays on Rachel Speght in English Literary Renaissance, she also published ‘“A Woman’s Logicke”: Puritan Women Writers and the Rejection of Education’, in The Routledge Companion to Women, Sex and Gender in the Early British Colonial World (2019). Her new Introduction to Othello for the New Cambridge Shakespeare appeared in 2017, and she is section editor (Jacobean period) for The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing in English. She is currently editing The Winter’s Tale for Cambridge Shakespeare Editions, and (with Danielle Clarke and Victoria E. Burke) the works of Anne Southwell for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.
-
Published:19 December 2022
Cite
Abstract
Offering a fresh reading of the texts of the so-called ‘Swetnam controversy’ of 1615–1617, this chapter explores both the history of the querelle des femmes and the historical moment in the early seventeenth century that produced an explosion of querelle texts. The first respondent to answer Joseph Swetnam, Rachel Speght, echoes earlier defences representing the female voice as a model of resistance to monarchical abuse. Mingling serious religio-political critique with a playfulness that anticipates Ester Sowernam and Constantia Munda, Speght never refers explicitly to the Overbury affair but taps into the backlash against its misogynist scapegoating of women. The chapter argues that Sowernam and Munda share Speght’s religious and political allegiances, offering a searing anti-court critique in their turn. The Swetnam controversy texts exploit the gendered discourses surrounding contemporary court scandal to offer thinly veiled criticism of the monarch, building on a tradition of real and imagined women speaking truth to power.
Sign in
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
January 2023 | 3 |
February 2023 | 15 |
March 2023 | 5 |
April 2023 | 3 |
May 2023 | 7 |
June 2023 | 5 |
July 2023 | 5 |
August 2023 | 8 |
September 2023 | 7 |
October 2023 | 4 |
November 2023 | 18 |
December 2023 | 5 |
January 2024 | 34 |
February 2024 | 35 |
March 2024 | 2 |
April 2024 | 16 |
May 2024 | 10 |
June 2024 | 7 |
July 2024 | 11 |
August 2024 | 1 |
September 2024 | 6 |
October 2024 | 45 |
November 2024 | 15 |
December 2024 | 10 |
January 2025 | 3 |
February 2025 | 5 |
March 2025 | 9 |
April 2025 | 6 |
May 2025 | 4 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.