ABSTRACT
Englishwomen of the Renaissance and Reformation-two questions sharpened by the difference of gender. We inquire into the differential marked by the very fact of a woman's utterance, how she came to break the silence that bound the vast majority of her female contemporaries. We also ask what the voice is like, what difference it makes that a woman is writing. As we pursue such questions within a domain that lies at a remove of four and a half centuries from our own, however, we need to remind ourselves that these questions are cultural productions of our present era, as are the conceptions of "difference" that quicken our interest in their answers.1 Among the many needs of feminist schol arship is a rhetorical history of women's writing. Such a rhetorical histo ry would chart the intersections of cultural moments in specific localities and circumstances with antecedents and conventions of the genres in which women authors undertook to work. As it came to be filled in, such a history would help us readers to adjust our expectations about expressions of female difference not merely to the available range of pos sibilities but also to their effectual limits in a particular cultural context.
