Out of her place: Early modern exploration and female authorship (Anne, Queen of Denmark, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Hutchinson, Mary Rowlandson)

This project begins with the premise that two modes of exploration, scientific and colonial, had enormous bearing on the early modern world-view. and their potential and on the concrete level of discoveries in science and colonialism—impacted cultural production and contributed to the proliferation of female authorship in the seventeenth century. Despite the period's well-known misogynistic trends—the persecution of women as witches, for instance—the 1600s were exceptionally good years for female access to voice and print. By the end of the century, women had made extraordinary forays into the influential arenas of public authorship and the public stage. I look at the contexts for this development, focusing on the relationship between female authorship and a burgeoning seventeenth-century commitment to exploration that made the notions of space and place more crucial than ever before.; One primary space that emerged as full of symbolic meaning in the early modern age was the natural world. Seen in a new light because of advances in science, which I look at in the work of Sir Francis Bacon, and an increasing ability to accurately map recently “discovered” lands, the physical environment weighed heavily on the early modern imagination. I consider how Queen Anne of Denmark, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Hutchinson, and Mary Rowlandson play out their drama of authorship—literally dramatic in that it enacts a culturally taboo and therefore highly visible overstepping of accepted norms—on the actual or imaginary stage of the natural world, a setting both threatening and inspiring. Further, the colonial and scientific discourses of the day locate women's bodies and voices in the expanding early modern landscape by attempting to contain and ultimately silence them in traditionally bounded roles. The poetry and prose of John Donne help elucidate such articulations of the feminine as bound by silence. Women authors have to react against this positioning by taking on an identity of self-(dis)placement that I argue comes to characterize female voice in the period.