The Swetnam Controversy

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Deirdre Boleyn (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence 1615-1619

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

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The Swetnam Controversy is a name given to four related pamphlets and a play written in the second decade of James I and VI’s reign which attack and defend women. The Controversy is named after Joseph Swetnam, whose 1615 attack on women

The Araignment of Women

was replied to by three defences of women published in 1617, the first was Rachel Speght’s

A Movzell for Melastomvs

, followed by two pseudonymous pamphlets, Ester Sowernam’s

Ester Hath Hang’d Haman

, and Constantia Munda’s

The Worming of a mad Dogge

Swetnam, the Woman-hater

, a play whose themes drew in part on questions raised in the four pamphlets, and in which Joseph Swetnam appears as “Misogynos”, cemented his status as a seventeenth-century by-word for misogyny after it was performed at the Red Bull theatre by the…

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2968 words

Citation: Boleyn, Deirdre. "The Swetnam Controversy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 February 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1651, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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