A Moving Rhetoricke: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England

The complex history of silence provides an important framework for rethinking gender in early modern England and for challenging critical approaches to it. Based on an investigation of a wide range of contemporary sources, from domestic conduct guides to emblem books, this study offers fresh perspectives on both culture and literature. Traditionally a sign of impotence, eloquence or defiance, increasingly associated with the inscrutable private subject, silence was an unstable and contested site of meaning for early modern men and women alike. Masculine silence frequently imitated feminine self-containment, whilst feminine silence, a far from stable element in a triad of virtues (chastity, silence and obedience), slid unmanageably from chastity to desire, obedience to resistance. Research into the fluid and multiple meanings of early modern silence informs discussions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and of works produced by Early Modern women from Anne Askew to Mary Wroth, who appropriated and reshaped the "moving rhetoricke" of silence to their own purposes. This book will be of interest to scholars and senior students of early modern literature and history, cultural and gender studies.