Malay, Jessica L.

Dr. Jessica Malay is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kent and has written several articles on the culture and literature of the Renaissance.

Textual Construction of Space in the Writing of Renaissance Women

2006 0-7734-5789-5
Explores the complex constructions of social space in the texts of four Renaissance women. In the rapidly transforming social space of 16th and early 17th century England, Isabella Whitney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Hoby Russell and Margaret Hoby created alternative spatial narratives that participated in, as well as challenged, the influential forces of their changing environment. This work places the texts examined within a theoretically informed discussion of the social spaces of Renaissance England, both physical and imagined. It challenges many ideas concerning a “woman’s place” offering instead a more complete and complex account of the spaces and places lived and imagined by Renaissance women.