The Renaissance Women's Canon, Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Abstract: Despite significant contributions to Renaissance literary studies in general by a host of twentieth-century women scholars, the discipline showed scant interest in the writings of Renaissance women until the women's movement of the 1960s was well underway. Since then, the works of Renaissance women have garnered sound editions, biographies, and intensive volumes of criticism. Women are well represented in undergraduate as well as graduate curricula, with a wide selection of readily available authors and texts. It is at last possible, indeed advisable, that we discriminate in the works of these writers that we choose to introduce to our students at different stages in their careers.