English Women's Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700

English Women's Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700: New Kingdoms of Womanhooduncovers a tradition of women's utopianism that extends back to medieval women's monasticism, overturningaccounts 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 furtheracted 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 fromthe convent to the literary page over a period of 300 years,New Kingdomswrites a new history of medieval and early modern women's intellectual work and expands theconcept of utopia itself.