Tudor and Stuart Women Writers.

"My recurrent thematic question is how Tudor and Stuart women came to write anything for public or semipublic circulation when they faced so many kinds of obstacles in doing so," Schleiner states in her introductory chapter. Drawing on writers from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign through that of Charles I, she answers this question in well-structured and clearly organized prose. Her eclectic methodology illuminates the work of obscure as well as better-known works by women and men, "putting into play readings of the structures - we might better say systems - that enabled production and reproduction of meaning, both gendered and textual, in early modern England" (xvii).

In several respects, Schleiner contributes to the expanding number of fine books and anthologies devoted to women writers of this period. First, she extends the boundaries of thought about early audiences for creative work in her discussion of reading circles in Tudor great houses and Stuart court circles. These groups include ladies-in-waiting, dependent men, and even major figures. Tudor discussions include Isabella Whitney's poems desiring service, Margaret Tyler's romance translation alluding to a female audience, and Aemilia Lanyer's narration of Christ's passion in Salve Deus for a fictional group summoned by the author. To discuss Stuart coteries, Schleiner emphasizes the development of wit and gossip in allusions to Ben Jonson, John Donne, and Anne Southwell as players of "conceited newes," a game based on sententiae and rhetorical balancing.

A second contribution traces the movement from conformity to controversy within religious movements of each period. Drawing on discourse analysis in which marginalized groups find opportunities for self-expression when group identities dissolve, she traces the evolution of the Cooke sisters and Mary Sidney under Elizabeth and, later, Elizabeth Cary - Lady Falkland - under Charles I. In addition to suggesting informal and religious groupings, Schleiner provides a lucid overview of larger sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on Kristeva, Deleuze, and Guattari, she adds gender to a system of power relationships based on semiotics. Her fullest explanation and application of a model "ideologeme" locates Jacobean women and men authors within a set of correspondences based on James I's Basilicon Doron. This model serves as a useful background for allusions to Shakespeare and Jonson as well as Queen Anne, Mary Wroth, and John Donne. Her most convincing applications of a woman writer's manipulation of the ideologeme and of her genres are to Wroth's masque, Love's Victory, and her pastoral romance, Urania.

Schleiner's larger concepts provide valuable contexts for discussing at least two of the "major" women authors of this era, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland. In Sidney's case the countess presided over a "reading circle" which included men interested in musical and metrical verse. Further, Sidney engaged herself in religious causes, moving from the literal translation of a treatise by Philippe du Mornay, through other "looser" translations, and finally to the independent lyrics of her Psalms. In the case of Elizabeth Cary, Schleiner considers the author's return to writing, first in defending Cardinal du Perron and later in combining narrative and drama in Edward II.

Schleiner's work makes a welcome contribution to Renaissance studies in bringing women writers into larger movements and structures recognizable to more general readers. Her work complements other helpful recent studies by Barbara Lewalski, Tina Krontiris, and Constance Jordan. Her concepts, whether familiar or new to some readers, are clearly defined. She is generous in acknowledging her debts, especially to translators: Connie McQuillen for the Latin poetry and Lynn E. Roller for the Greek. To my knowledge, the selections from classical language material by the Cooke sisters - and especially the considerable original Latin writings of the Catholic exile, Elizabeth Jane Weston - appear in accessible English poetic form for the first time. These additions, along with information about doctrinal treatises to which other women wrote prefaces, add to a comprehensive picture of the whole period, both in England and on the continent.

MARGARET ARNOLD University of Kansas