An Approach to Teaching Early Modern Women s Non-Canonical Writing

Over the past twenty years or so, the study of early modern literature has paid sustained attention to women’s wide-ranging literary practice by bringing into focus lesser-known women writers and their works. The growing availability of women’s non-canonical and miscellaneous texts retrieved from print and manuscript sources has significantly enlarged the range of interpretation of women’s contribution to early modern British literature. Despite this increasing critical interest, however, the texts of lesser-known women writers have not been fully incorporated into teaching canons. One of the reasons is that such texts are less familiar to both teachers and students and do not seem to easily submit to traditional literary study. The overarching goal of this essay is to offer an engaging discussion of the problems and values of teaching lesser-known women’s works with a practical focus on how women’s writing offers insights into not only women’s literary practice but also the development of early modern literature. With a historically informed analysis of the poems of two lesser-known women poets, Anne Vaughan Lock and Elizabeth Melville, this essay illuminates the extent to which early modern women’s texts mediate broader cultural registers in the Reformation era. In so doing, this essay addresses the implications of early modern women’s non-canonical writing for the practice of teaching and research.