My original course on early modern women was designed to introduce students to English women writers in the context of sixteenth and seventeenth century debates in England on feminine identity. It contains primary readings that form the basis of the traditional querelles des femmes as well as responses particular to English political and religious controversies. Exposure to Italian and French women writers in the course of the 2001 NEH Institute on Renaissance Women Writers suggests that the full implications of the debate on feminine identity can best be grasped in a Continental context. Comparisons of English and Continental texts in every genre and on almost every topic dramatize the extent to which men and women writers engage in the dominant and emergent discourses on female identity and the ways in which, despite geographic boundaries, a female tradition of writing emerges in the common themes and strategies used by female writers. Select Spanish texts also offer interesting correlations and contrasts to the study. Therefore I have revised my syllabus to encourage students to compare reasoning, rhetoric, and imagery across the Continent as they too engage in the debate on feminine identity and the role of women in the literary history of the period.