ABSTRACT
DID women have a Renaissance?” a recent critic has asked. Her answer to her own question is a definitive no as she examines the social mores of Renaissance Italy, where it all supposedly started.1 Looking at the male-dominated discourse of Renaissance En gland, another scholar, Gary Waller, points to the “marginalization and silence” imposed upon women by the very structure of their language. The books addressed to Englishwomen from 1475 to 1640 directed them to be chaste, silent, and obedient, as a recent title of a list and analysis of these works states succinctly.2
