Between Women: Archival and Theoretical Methods in Early Modern Women’s Writing

Document Type

Theories, Methods, and Cases

Authors

Christopher ShirleyFollow

Abstract

This article proposes that combining deep archival inquiry and rigorous theoretical analysis generates one potential methodological future for the field of early modern women’s writing. By investigating the manuscript circulation of Katherine Philips’s poetry within her close-knit coterie through the lens of queer theory, it demonstrates that this combination can both further deep archival research into women’s writing and precipitate the refinement of theoretical models. In particular, it notes that men’s interactions with women’s writing in Philips’s Society, especially, in one case, as the scribe of one of its signal manuscript collections, reveals a consensual form of female homosocial triangulation that is distinct from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s model of repressive male homosocial triangulation. In the method the article thus sketches, theory calibrates archival inquiry while the historical details recovered by archival inquiry provoke rearticulation of theoretical models. This dialogical procedure traces one potential path forward for the study of early modern women’s writing.

Recommended Citation

Shirley, Christopher (2021) "Between Women: Archival and Theoretical Methods in Early Modern Women’s Writing," Criticism: Vol. 63: Iss. 1, Article 10.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol63/iss1/10