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The Exegesis of Experience: Typology and Women's Rhetorics in Early Modern England and New England

Cairns, Rhoda F.

Abstract Details

2008, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, English.
This project represents the first major study of the wide-ranging ways in which early modern women used biblical typology as a rhetorical strategy not only to authorize their voices in public discourse, but also to position themselves as influential actors in the public spheres of church and state. Critics often argue that any agency exercised by early modern women is compromised by male mediators and the patriarchal structures of religion and government, a stance challenged by this study of eleven women, representing eight different confessional affiliations, whose rhetorical performances range in time from 1547 to 1682, in both England and New England. Four significant sites of speech acts by women are investigated, moving from the least to the most highly contested spaces. Using texts by a daughter of Elizabeth Cary, Alice Thornton, and Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers to explore domestic sites, Chapter One argues that women erected typological identities on both bed and table, performing typologically-inflected scenarios and tableaux whose significance extended beyond the narrow circle of family and household. Considering Anna Trapnel and Mary Rowlandson, Chapter Two examines their use of typology in the context of the ritual travel genres of pilgrimage and royal progress in order to critique state power. Chapter Three argues that Susannah Parr and Anne Wentworth use typology as a strategy of self-sequestration to establish personal boundaries and resist the claims of local church congregations, while also creating self-liberating typological narratives that establish identity outside the recognized community of faith. Finally, considering the highly conflicted sites of examinations and trials, Chapter Four shows how Anne Askew, Anne Hutchinson, and Elizabeth Cellier deploy typology as a strategy that gives them rhetorical power over their persecutors and authorizes them to critique the motivations that drive the desire of political and religious authorities to suppress and silence. This study establishes the radical way in which women use typological strategies to rewrite and transform spaces that contained them; the narrative power of the typological linking of sacred history and their own lives informs their speech, providing another important way of connecting texts by women to the broader literary and rhetorical histories that are being (re)written.
Katharine Gillespie, PhD (Committee Chair)
Katharine Ronald, PhD (Committee Member)
Frances Dolan, PhD (Committee Member)
P. Renee Baernstein, PhD (Committee Member)
258 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cairns, R. F. (2008). The Exegesis of Experience: Typology and Women's Rhetorics in Early Modern England and New England [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1211998311

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cairns, Rhoda. The Exegesis of Experience: Typology and Women's Rhetorics in Early Modern England and New England. 2008. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1211998311.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cairns, Rhoda. "The Exegesis of Experience: Typology and Women's Rhetorics in Early Modern England and New England." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1211998311

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)