Title
Prefacing Texts, Authorizing Authors, and Constructing Selves: the Preface as Autobiographical Space
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2016
Publication Title
Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England
Abstract
The preface is a unique textual space, one that demands very particular kind of rhetoric because of its generic constraints and yet allows ample room for an author's manipulation and creativity. Perhaps the best articulation of the prefaces paradoxical nature appears in Barbara Johnson's playful response to Jacques Derrida's Dissemination. The autobiographical details summarized here paradoxically depict Speght as the heroic defender of all people and, simultaneously, a woman who clearly knows her place. In her work on French Renaissance women writers, Anne R. Larsen reveals the value of this kind of study: Early women writers exploited the prefaces marginality and epistolarity. Early modern women writers were similarly able to capitalize on the prefaces traditional epistolarity, for prefatory texts are always addressed to a reader whether known or unknown, general or specific, singular or plural and sometimes actually take the form of an epistolary dedication. The advent of the female writer in English literary history is complicated, based on numerous interconnected factors.
Publisher
Routledge
City
London
ISBN
9781317129370
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315584324
Recommended Citation
Eckerle, Julie A. "Prefacing Texts, Authorizing Authors, and Constructing Selves: the Preface as Autobiographical Space." In Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 2016.
Primo Type
Book Chapter
Comments
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England in 2016, available online: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317129370