Contextualizing Canonical Inclusion: The Case of Early Modern English Female-Authored Non-Canonical Verse

Abstract

The Early Modern English female-authored text is recently (to be specific since 2000s) introduced to the English literary canons as supplementary material to anthologized literary lists such as the Norton Anthology of English Literature. This recent shift in their inclusion is argued as insufficient to the abundantly abandoned English female-authored publications printed between 1450s until the early 1700s. The process of their inclusion in the literary anthologies of the English Renaissance is seen as integral towards building an equitable representation of this age. Offering an equitable inclusion of women’s literature in this era is the aim of this study. This paper will first offer an in-depth contextualization to the canonization of female-authored texts with focus mainly on their exclusion from literary canons. Then, the study offers methodized canonized inclusions of Early Modern female-authored texts. In conclusion, the paper provides a detailed sample of a course plan that aims at the inclusion of female-authors during this era in a general mandatory course (for undergraduate students at the School of Foreign Languages at the University of Jordan) titled “English Literature from the Beginning until 1660s.” This course plan has been prepared and revised by the researchers from the years 2019-2023 to ensure sampling the inclusion of female-authored texts in this survey course.