Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Future of Literary History

“ Is it Any Good? ” – the question that has viciously haunted early modern women ’ s writing for decades – is precisely the question that Lara Dodds and Michelle M. Dowd reject in Early Modern Women ’ s Writing and the Future of Literary History . For them, such inquiries re fl ect the marginalisation of women ’ s writing, long treated as an “ optional rather than required component of Renaissance studies ” (p. 3) and studied primarily in terms of gender rather than literary merit. Dodds and Dowd instead foreground women ’ s writing as central , not ancillary, o ff ering a blueprint for reframing scholarly priorities and reassessing how we theorise and ascribe literary value