This book explores the development of familial discourse within a chronological frame, commencing with the More family and concluding with the Cavendish group. It explores the way in which the support of family groups enabled women to participate in literary production, whilst closeting them within a form of writing that encompassed style or theme.

Autorentext
MARION WYNNE-DAVIES teaches English Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Dundee, UK. Her publications include Renaissance Women Dramatists: Texts and Documents (with S.P. Cerasano). She has also published on Shakespeare, Jonson and other early modern authors, as well as on women writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Introduction: English Women Writers and Familial Discourse in the Renaissance 'Though a temporall man, yet your very spirituall father': The Roper/Basset Line and the Lives of Thomas More 'Sory coumfortlesse Orphanes': The Rastell/Heywood Line Worthy of their Blood and their Vocation: The More/Cresacre Line Representations of Relations on the Political Stage within the Fitzalan/Lumley Household 'As I, for one, who thus my habits change': Mary Wroth and the Abandonment of the Sidney/Herbert Familial Discourse Sisters and Brothers: Divided Sibling Identity in the Cary Family Desire, Chastity and Rape in the Cavendish Familial Discourse Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index