Applying Feminism in the 17th Century Studies

How feminism altered the map of seventeenth century studies? The only sector of literary criticism achieved the admirable height in the seventeenth century studies is feminism. Feminism contained varieties and combinations of the new theoretical options.

Though some of the contents shared features of psychoanalysis, Marxism or new historicisms but it does not always need to search lineage with others rather feminism itself is sufficient to establish its canonization.

Recent feminist scholars have rescued the poems, diaries domestic treaties, and religious writings of renaissance women, which were ignored by previous generations of scholars. The recent feminist scholars have found and mapped new genres and they have demonstrated the negative and biased altitudes of masculine authors towards the feminine authors. They have revealed mere facts to be potential areas of inquiry. Linda Woodbridge’s, Women, and the English Renaissance is an important collection of feminist contributions to old-fashioned historical knowledge.

William Kerrigan claims that there is no single version of book produced by a structuralist, post modernist or new historicist to justify the claims of revolutionary success in seventeenth century studies. In this regard too, feminism is more revolutionary; it is at least searching the potential areas of inquiry.