Figuring Modesty in Feminist Discourse Across the Americas, 1633-1700

Inventive in its approach, this study offers fresh readings of the arguments and practices of four seventeenth-century Euro-American women: Anne Bradstreet, Anne Hutchinson, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Marie de l'Incarnation. Tamara Harvey offers a new way to think of corporeality as a device in literary and religious expressions of modesty by women, and explores how these women engaged in ongoing religious, political, scientific and social debates of the time.