MACMILLAN English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood (The New Middle Ages)

English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood uncovers a tradition of women’s utopianism that extends back to medieval women’s monasticism, overturning accounts of utopia that trace its origins solely to Thomas More. As enclosed spaces in which women wielded authority that was unavailable to them in the outside world, medieval and early modern convents were self-consciously engaged in reworking pre-existing cultural heritage to project desired proto-feminist futures. The utopianism developed within the English convent percolated outwards to unenclosed women's spiritual communities such as Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin and the Ferrar family at Little Gidding. Convent-based utopianism further acted as an unrecognized influence on the first English women’s literary utopias by authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell. Collectively, these female communities forged a mode of utopia that drew on the past to imagine new possibilities for themselves as well as for their larger religious and political communities. Tracking utopianism from the convent to the literary page over a period of 300 years, New Kingdoms writes a new history of medieval and early modern women’s intellectual work and expands the concept of utopia itself. Review “English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700 deftly unites feminist, theological, material, and utopian theoretical approaches to the study of English women’s lives and literature within and beyond medieval and early modern convents. Verini successfully argues for a ‘rhizomatic rather than linear genealogical’ approach to understanding convents as ‘space[s] of utopian possibility’ for their inhabitants, and clearly demonstrates how these institutions and their writing influenced secular women's writing and creation of all-female communities.” (Victoria Van Hyning, University of Maryland)“In New Kingdoms of Womanhood Alexandra Verini brings feminist theory to the study of utopianism, charting a wholly new trajectory of utopian thought from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century.  Her book boldly argues for a new archive of utopian texts, and she boldly argues for the centrality of women and gender thinking to the history of utopian thought. Her book alters not only the history of utopianism as it is currently  conceived, but if charts exciting new directions for future study―directions that install a consideration of women and gender at their center.” (Karma Lochrie, Indiana University) From the Back Cover English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhood uncovers a tradition of women’s utopianism that extends back to medieval women’s monasticism, overturning accounts of utopia that trace its origins solely to Thomas More. As enclosed spaces in which women wielded authority that was unavailable to them in the outside world, medieval and early modern convents were self-consciously engaged in reworking pre-existing cultural heritage to project desired proto-feminist futures. The utopianism developed within the English convent percolated outwards to unenclosed women's spiritual communities such as Mary Ward's Institute of the Blessed Virgin and the Ferrar family at Little Gidding. Convent-based utopianism further acted as an unrecognized influence on the first English women’s literary utopias by authors such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell. Collectively, these female communities forged a mode of utopia that drew on the past to imagine new possibilities for themselves as well as for their larger religious and political communities. Tracking utopianism from the convent to the literary page over a period of 300 years, New Kingdoms writes a new history of medieval and early modern women’s intellectual work and expands the concept of utopia itself. About the Author Alexandra Verini is Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University. She has published articles in leading jo