ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with a detailed examination of men's and women's documents from 1536 to 1632. It offers a counter-narrative offered by Juan Luis Vives's Instruction, Henry Smith's A Preparative to Marriage, and Robert Greene's Penelope's Web, by the common law on coverture, and theories on divine right and patriarchal absolutism. The book focuses on the rhetorical work of women's defences that reject men's stories by occupying a position of simultaneous action and honour. It discuses the social interest in, even obsession with, slander as an actionable crime with real damage to the one slandered becomes a backdrop to structures of accusation and defense. The book traces a trajectory of the performative, "you are a whore", and the shifting circumstances that prompt women's critiques and revisions.
