Archipelagic feminism: Anglophone poetry from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

This chapter takes an archipelagic comparative approach to chart the geographical production and spatial networks of women’s poetry across the national and linguistic borders of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the period 1540–1700. Methodologically, the chapter explores the potential of archipelagic approaches for thinking differently about women’s writing, particularly what might be termed the feminist impulse at the heart of devolutionary critical methods. The chapter argues that a devolved attention to the geographically marginal can result not only in a reappraisal of that perceived marginality but also lead to different conclusions as to the status of particular poets and the significance of their oeuvre. It also considers the implications of an archipelagic approach for a reassessment of the ‘canon’ of women’s literary production in this period and the contexts in which it is read. Overall, the chapter asks: can archipelagic literary criticism work as a different form of feminist recovery?