Linda L. Dove, assistant professor of English at Hope College, is co-editor of a book published this month by Syracuse University Press.
"Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture
in Tudor and Stuart Britain" is a collection of 14 essays
which explore ways that women writers in England from 1560
to 1630 were not only shaped by their culture but also
helped to shape and reproduce culture through their writing.
The volume breaks new ground as the only collection of early
modern British women's writing to draw primarily on feminist
cultural studies.
Dove also contributed an essay to the volume,
"Mary Wroth and the Politics of the Household in 'Pamphilia
to Amphilanthus.'" The essay examines how Wroth adapted to
her literary and political purposes the genre of the sonnet
sequence, more commonly used by male writers. Wroth's poems
challenge King James's absolute authority by creating a
vision of an idealized love match--Cupid and the female
speaker in the poems joined in marriage and reigning in a
happy partnership--which works simultaneously as a model of
good government, as the right relationship between ruler and
people.
A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Dove earned
her graduate degrees at the University of Maryland at
College Park and is currently in her third year as a faculty
member at Hope. She is the author of several scholarly
articles on the literature the English Renaissance period
and has delivered papers or chaired sessions at a dozen
scholarly conferences.
Dove has nearly completed work on another book,
"Women at Variance: Sonnet Sequences and Social Commentary
in Early Modern England," and has begun research on a book-
length study tentatively titled "Riddling the Renaissance:
Visual Verses and Poetic Puzzles in Early Modern England."