"The Double Voice" reassesses the notions of gender which have been used to analyze Renaissance literature. Rather than assuming that men and women write differently because of background, education and culture, it tries to unsettle the connections between the sex of the author and the constructions of gender in texts, and to reconsider the prevalent determinist model of reading which tends to consign women writers to the private, domestic sphere, and to render male negotiations of gender and sexuality invisible and transparent.

DANIELLE CLARKE is Lecturer in English at University College Dublin. She has published articles on gender and writing in the early modern period, and is the editor of Three Renaissance Women Poets.

ELIZABETH CLARKE is Research Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. She is the author of Theory and Theology in George Herbert's Poetry, and of several articles on women's manuscript writing.