Whitney A. Trettien

“Cut/Copy/Paste” examines the Little Gidding Harmonies, a set of biblical concordances produced in the 1630s and 1640s. Women composed these books by cutting up printed bibles and engravings, then pasting them into elaborate collages. Drawing on neglected source texts and innovative digital methods, this project brings the Little Gidding Harmonies into the canon of early modern women’s writing and media production, both text and textile. For when the notion of writing expands to include a network of language-oriented practices, the long-standing question of where to locate female agency within masculine poetic traditions gives way to an affirmative validation of the many ways women participated in a highly material writing culture.