| This study examines the intersection of women's domestic and literary practices in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England. Through close readings of surviving embroidered furnishing textiles made by Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury, I demonstrate how needlework functioned for women as a material writing practice that granted them access to prohibited intellectual domains and legitimized scholarly endeavors that might otherwise have appeared transgressive or masculine. This was true in terms of content, as the printed texts that inspired the embroideries under focus ranged from emblem books and devotional works, to scientific studies of plants and animals, as well as humanist compendia of ancient history and moralizing sententiae. But it also manifested in the representational styles involved, which encompassed conventional scriptile forms and iconographic methods that paralleled contemporary uses of "image texts" in scientific, religious, and humanist pedagogical practices - including the ancient art of memory, an intellectual technique that spanned all of these fields. This project therefore questions common assumptions that Renaissance women were increasingly relegated to "decorative" domestic tasks and closed off from public discourse during a period of radical scientific, religious, and cultural transformation. |
