Paula Mcquade | DePaul University (original) (raw)

Papers by Paula Mcquade

Review of English Studies, 2022

This essay proposes that we can better understand Lucy Hutchinson's manuscript, 'On the Principle... more This essay proposes that we can better understand Lucy Hutchinson's manuscript, 'On the Principles of the Christian Religion', by considering it in relation to ministerial guides to domestic catechesis. A popular religious genre in seventeenth-century England, guides to catechesis were most often composed by ministers as part of their pastoral duties; they provided explanations of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and were designed for use within godly homes. 'On The Principles' resembles these ministerial guides both thematically and structurally. But Hutchinson elaborates and expands the genre to reflect her own concerns and experience as a catechizing mother, just as she adapts the epic genre in Order and Disorder. By composing a guide to domestic catechesis for her daughter, Hutchinson draws upon the authority accorded to mothers in domestic catechesis while emulating ministerial authority. Hutchinson's adaptation of this ministerial genre reveals her views concerning the role of domestic catechesis within Christian community, as well as her understanding of the relationship between women's teaching and ministerial authority.

Catechisms And Women'S Writing In Seventeenthcentury England

For a stationary random field (X j) j∈Z d and some measure µ on R d , we consider the set-indexed... more For a stationary random field (X j) j∈Z d and some measure µ on R d , we consider the set-indexed weighted sum process Sn(A) = j∈Z d µ(nA ∩ R j) 1 2 X j , where R j is the unit cube with lower corner j. We establish a general invariance principle under a p-stability assumption on the X j 's and an entropy condition on the class of sets A. The limit processes are selfsimilar set-indexed Gaussian processes with continuous sample paths. Using Chentsov's type representations to choose appropriate measures µ and particular sets A, we show that these limits can be Lévy (fractional) Brownian fields or (fractional) Brownian sheets. d i=1 (|t i | + |s i | − |t i − s i |), for all t, s ∈ R d. Contrarily to the Brownian motion, the Brownian sheet does not have stationary increments. The independence property is also lost. A second generalization for d-dimensionally indexed Brownian field was introduced by Lévy [22] as a centered Gaussian random field (W (t)) t∈R d with Cov(W (t), W (s)) = 1 2 (|t| + |s| − |t − s|), for all t, s ∈ R d ,

Criticism, 2021

This special issue began with a simple question: "What does the future hold for the study of earl... more This special issue began with a simple question: "What does the future hold for the study of early modern women writers?" The history of this relatively new subfield can be outlined in short order. Its Ur-text is the tale of Judith Shakespeare, a tragic figure invented by Virginia Woolf for A Room of One's Own (1929) in order to explain her inability to locate any talented female writers who were contemporaries of William Shakespeare. Borne on the tide of second-wave feminism, scholars of the 1970s and 1980s found that early modern women did, indeed, write plays, poetry, and romances meriting scholarly attention and critical editions. This germinal work initiated an ongoing process of canon formation that has altered the broader field of early modern literature. Women's writings once circulated DIY-style via ditto machines, mimeographs, and photocopiers. Today, many of these texts are available in mainstream anthologies used in survey courses, specialized readers intended for upper-level English majors and graduate students, and digital editions aimed at academic and general audiences alike. 1 At the same time, scholars continue to make new discoveries that enrich the canon, most recently by drawing attention to women's use of nonliterary genres such as catechisms, prayers, recipes, and translations. As Margaret J. M. Ezell has noted, the current corpus of women's writings is characterized by its "sparkling multiplicity" rather than "female uniformity," which is evident in even a cursory glance at the pioneering online resources created by the Orlando Project, the Perdita Project, and the Women Writers Project. 2 Thanks to the efforts of the first generation of scholars, the field now boasts several interdisciplinary initiatives that promote research on early modern women: a triennial conference (Attending to Early Modern Women), a biannual journal (Early Modern Women), a scholarly organization (Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender), and a book series (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World, published by University of Nebraska Press). Respected journals and major university presses frequently publish scholarship on women writers, and papers and

English, 2018

Multiple accounts confirm the importance of domestic catechesis to early modern women and men's r... more Multiple accounts confirm the importance of domestic catechesis to early modern women and men's reading and writing practices, but we know far less than we would like about the practice of catechesis within the godly home. This article seeks to recreate, as much as possible, how seventeenth-century laymen and women used print catechisms. It does so first by examining the multiple manuals written by godly ministers designed to help the godly householder with domestic catechesis. These ministerial manuals urged householders to recognize when a child didn't fully understand a doctrine and to elaborate upon it when he did. They taught critical thinking skills to laymen and women, using features such as superscript numbers and letters and italicization to reinforce their instruction. The article compares these ministerial accounts with two manuscript catechisms composed within print catechisms. Likely written by laymen or women, these works suggest that their authors had to some degree internalized ministerial advice, as they rewrite questions or insert elaborate question and answer sequences to extend the instruction of the print text. In one case, a user even interleaved a print catechism with an original manuscript catechism, changing the format of the printed book to serve better domestic religion instruction. These composite catechisms, I argue, provide a textual representation of the dialogic processes of the transmission of knowledge. Far from passive, solitary readers, these users actively remade books as they used them. Catechesis provided laymen and women with the doctrinal knowledge and analytic and textual skills foundational to authorship.

Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England is a study of early modern women's ... more Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England is a study of early modern women's literary use of catechizing. Paula McQuade examines original works composed by women - both in manuscript and print, as well as women's copying and redacting of catechisms - and construction of these materials from other sources. By studying female catechists, McQuade shows how early modern women used the power and authority granted to them as mothers to teach religious doctrine, to demonstrate their linguistic skills, to engage sympathetically with Catholic devotional texts, and to comment on matters of contemporary religious and political import - activities that many scholars have considered the sole prerogative of clergymen. This book addresses the question of women's literary production in early modern England, demonstrating that reading and writing of catechisms were crucial sites of women's literary engagements during this time. (If you clink on the link to Google above it has excerpts from the first three chapters)

Prose Studies, 2010

... Puritans and their opponents in the Church of England “were differences of degree, of theolog... more ... Puritans and their opponents in the Church of England “were differences of degree, of theological temperature so to speak, rather than fundamental principle” (quoted in Sasek 8). See ... Sarah Fiske of Boston composed her own catechism in 1677 at the age of 25 (see Fiske17. ...

Books by Paula Mcquade

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing In English, 2023

Nearly ten years ago, while researching a book on early modern women's writing, I encountered a s... more Nearly ten years ago, while researching a book on early modern women's writing, I encountered a seventeenth-century catechism written by a woman named Dorothy Burch. Early English Books Online (EEBO) made it easy to download a copy of Burch's catechism, which was available in print only at the British Library and the Huntington, to my desktop in Chicago. Figuring out what to do with Burch's catechism was much more difficult. The study of early modern women's writing at that time focused largely upon either aristocratic women who wrote in recognisably literary genres or religious radicals whose works subverted the established religious and political order. Burch was neither. As far as I could tell, she was an ordinary wife and mother who dedicated her text, A Catechism of the Several Heads of the Christian Religion (1646) to her children, whose good, she writes in the preface, 'I must and will desire as my own'. 1 It was the only work Burch ever published. Together with the baptismal records of her children, it provides the only certain textual evidence of her existence. As I puzzled over Burch's text, I became increasingly intrigued by the catechism's title page announcing that it had been written by 'Dorothy Burch, living at Strood in Kent'. Why did the title page deliberately associate the catechism and its author with a specific village? This question emerged in part from my long-standing interest in local history, a branch of history that 'deals with the social, economic, and cultural development of particular localities, often using local records and resources'. 2 What would

Review of English Studies, 2022

This essay proposes that we can better understand Lucy Hutchinson's manuscript, 'On the Principle... more This essay proposes that we can better understand Lucy Hutchinson's manuscript, 'On the Principles of the Christian Religion', by considering it in relation to ministerial guides to domestic catechesis. A popular religious genre in seventeenth-century England, guides to catechesis were most often composed by ministers as part of their pastoral duties; they provided explanations of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and were designed for use within godly homes. 'On The Principles' resembles these ministerial guides both thematically and structurally. But Hutchinson elaborates and expands the genre to reflect her own concerns and experience as a catechizing mother, just as she adapts the epic genre in Order and Disorder. By composing a guide to domestic catechesis for her daughter, Hutchinson draws upon the authority accorded to mothers in domestic catechesis while emulating ministerial authority. Hutchinson's adaptation of this ministerial genre reveals her views concerning the role of domestic catechesis within Christian community, as well as her understanding of the relationship between women's teaching and ministerial authority.

Catechisms And Women'S Writing In Seventeenthcentury England

For a stationary random field (X j) j∈Z d and some measure µ on R d , we consider the set-indexed... more For a stationary random field (X j) j∈Z d and some measure µ on R d , we consider the set-indexed weighted sum process Sn(A) = j∈Z d µ(nA ∩ R j) 1 2 X j , where R j is the unit cube with lower corner j. We establish a general invariance principle under a p-stability assumption on the X j 's and an entropy condition on the class of sets A. The limit processes are selfsimilar set-indexed Gaussian processes with continuous sample paths. Using Chentsov's type representations to choose appropriate measures µ and particular sets A, we show that these limits can be Lévy (fractional) Brownian fields or (fractional) Brownian sheets. d i=1 (|t i | + |s i | − |t i − s i |), for all t, s ∈ R d. Contrarily to the Brownian motion, the Brownian sheet does not have stationary increments. The independence property is also lost. A second generalization for d-dimensionally indexed Brownian field was introduced by Lévy [22] as a centered Gaussian random field (W (t)) t∈R d with Cov(W (t), W (s)) = 1 2 (|t| + |s| − |t − s|), for all t, s ∈ R d ,

Criticism, 2021

This special issue began with a simple question: "What does the future hold for the study of earl... more This special issue began with a simple question: "What does the future hold for the study of early modern women writers?" The history of this relatively new subfield can be outlined in short order. Its Ur-text is the tale of Judith Shakespeare, a tragic figure invented by Virginia Woolf for A Room of One's Own (1929) in order to explain her inability to locate any talented female writers who were contemporaries of William Shakespeare. Borne on the tide of second-wave feminism, scholars of the 1970s and 1980s found that early modern women did, indeed, write plays, poetry, and romances meriting scholarly attention and critical editions. This germinal work initiated an ongoing process of canon formation that has altered the broader field of early modern literature. Women's writings once circulated DIY-style via ditto machines, mimeographs, and photocopiers. Today, many of these texts are available in mainstream anthologies used in survey courses, specialized readers intended for upper-level English majors and graduate students, and digital editions aimed at academic and general audiences alike. 1 At the same time, scholars continue to make new discoveries that enrich the canon, most recently by drawing attention to women's use of nonliterary genres such as catechisms, prayers, recipes, and translations. As Margaret J. M. Ezell has noted, the current corpus of women's writings is characterized by its "sparkling multiplicity" rather than "female uniformity," which is evident in even a cursory glance at the pioneering online resources created by the Orlando Project, the Perdita Project, and the Women Writers Project. 2 Thanks to the efforts of the first generation of scholars, the field now boasts several interdisciplinary initiatives that promote research on early modern women: a triennial conference (Attending to Early Modern Women), a biannual journal (Early Modern Women), a scholarly organization (Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender), and a book series (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World, published by University of Nebraska Press). Respected journals and major university presses frequently publish scholarship on women writers, and papers and

English, 2018

Multiple accounts confirm the importance of domestic catechesis to early modern women and men's r... more Multiple accounts confirm the importance of domestic catechesis to early modern women and men's reading and writing practices, but we know far less than we would like about the practice of catechesis within the godly home. This article seeks to recreate, as much as possible, how seventeenth-century laymen and women used print catechisms. It does so first by examining the multiple manuals written by godly ministers designed to help the godly householder with domestic catechesis. These ministerial manuals urged householders to recognize when a child didn't fully understand a doctrine and to elaborate upon it when he did. They taught critical thinking skills to laymen and women, using features such as superscript numbers and letters and italicization to reinforce their instruction. The article compares these ministerial accounts with two manuscript catechisms composed within print catechisms. Likely written by laymen or women, these works suggest that their authors had to some degree internalized ministerial advice, as they rewrite questions or insert elaborate question and answer sequences to extend the instruction of the print text. In one case, a user even interleaved a print catechism with an original manuscript catechism, changing the format of the printed book to serve better domestic religion instruction. These composite catechisms, I argue, provide a textual representation of the dialogic processes of the transmission of knowledge. Far from passive, solitary readers, these users actively remade books as they used them. Catechesis provided laymen and women with the doctrinal knowledge and analytic and textual skills foundational to authorship.

Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England is a study of early modern women's ... more Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England is a study of early modern women's literary use of catechizing. Paula McQuade examines original works composed by women - both in manuscript and print, as well as women's copying and redacting of catechisms - and construction of these materials from other sources. By studying female catechists, McQuade shows how early modern women used the power and authority granted to them as mothers to teach religious doctrine, to demonstrate their linguistic skills, to engage sympathetically with Catholic devotional texts, and to comment on matters of contemporary religious and political import - activities that many scholars have considered the sole prerogative of clergymen. This book addresses the question of women's literary production in early modern England, demonstrating that reading and writing of catechisms were crucial sites of women's literary engagements during this time. (If you clink on the link to Google above it has excerpts from the first three chapters)

Prose Studies, 2010

... Puritans and their opponents in the Church of England “were differences of degree, of theolog... more ... Puritans and their opponents in the Church of England “were differences of degree, of theological temperature so to speak, rather than fundamental principle” (quoted in Sasek 8). See ... Sarah Fiske of Boston composed her own catechism in 1677 at the age of 25 (see Fiske17. ...

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing In English, 2023

Nearly ten years ago, while researching a book on early modern women's writing, I encountered a s... more Nearly ten years ago, while researching a book on early modern women's writing, I encountered a seventeenth-century catechism written by a woman named Dorothy Burch. Early English Books Online (EEBO) made it easy to download a copy of Burch's catechism, which was available in print only at the British Library and the Huntington, to my desktop in Chicago. Figuring out what to do with Burch's catechism was much more difficult. The study of early modern women's writing at that time focused largely upon either aristocratic women who wrote in recognisably literary genres or religious radicals whose works subverted the established religious and political order. Burch was neither. As far as I could tell, she was an ordinary wife and mother who dedicated her text, A Catechism of the Several Heads of the Christian Religion (1646) to her children, whose good, she writes in the preface, 'I must and will desire as my own'. 1 It was the only work Burch ever published. Together with the baptismal records of her children, it provides the only certain textual evidence of her existence. As I puzzled over Burch's text, I became increasingly intrigued by the catechism's title page announcing that it had been written by 'Dorothy Burch, living at Strood in Kent'. Why did the title page deliberately associate the catechism and its author with a specific village? This question emerged in part from my long-standing interest in local history, a branch of history that 'deals with the social, economic, and cultural development of particular localities, often using local records and resources'. 2 What would