ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the full range of tales and rhetorical methods employed by the fictional storytelling women. It describes the basic formula according to which autobiographical embedded narratives work in romance. The chapter examines female-narrated tales in particular and explains what female readers may have found in these tales. The fact of the fictional female storyteller's narration of her own life story held a power that cannot be underestimated. The chapter focuses on how often they become mini-versions of autobiography and thus can inform us about the autobiographical act as it was understood in early modern England, although romances embedded narratives are occasionally about others or about completely fictive events. The chapter focuses on one female reader: Dorothy Osborne. In addition to the comic, playful, and heartfelt, Osborne uses romance discourse as a means of communicating with Temple about a common topic, including the specific romance texts that they shared with one another.
