Premium
Women's Literacies and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern England
Author(s) -
Ferguson Margaret W.,
Suzuki Mihoko
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12281
Subject(s) - literacy , functional illiteracy , reading (process) , psychology , set (abstract data type) , sign (mathematics) , expansive , dyad , hierarchy , sociology , linguistics , social psychology , pedagogy , computer science , political science , mathematical analysis , philosophy , compressive strength , materials science , mathematics , law , composite material , programming language
This article argues for a historically contextualized investigation of literacy that attends to early modern literacies in different and mixed media and to literacy as a complex set of practices and theories. Early modern literacy, for example, does not necessarily include both reading and writing: the criterion of measuring literacy by the signature is biased against women of various ranks as well as against poor men. Therefore, literacy rates of women should not be measured solely by means of their ability to sign their names but also by evidence provided by books dedicated to noblewomen or addressed to women of different ranks. A more expansive conception of authorship that includes anonymously, pseudonymously, and collectively written documents, as well as translations, can give a more accurate idea of the literacy of women of different social groups. Future research on literacy will be advanced by the discovery of hitherto unknown writings, and scholars will need to work on cultural documents of many kinds to gather evidence on the so‐called “unlettered women,” and thereby to focus our attention on the negatively charged side of the literacy/illiteracy dyad.