ABSTRACT
Many sources attest that the Querelle des femmes was alive and well in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This chapter explores English practices regarding Continental trends pertaining to women, patronage, and literary circle ritual, focusing primarily on the Sidney circle. First, it discusses the background on noblewomen's participation in literary circles in England and the conditions of the querelle there. The chapter examines ways in which querelle issues and national religio-political issues become conflated, causing English writers to deride Continental women and to warn English women against imitating them, while, at the same time, acknowledging a sense of competition between learned noblewomen on the Continent and in England. Finally, regarding texts that engage in querelle debate, it looks at two ways in which closet dramas produced by members of the Sidney circle engage in intertextual debate with plays written for the public stage and popular pamphlets that debate the nature of women.
