"Original scholarship and critical sophistication combine in this book to reveal links between the complex legal and economic workings of sixteenth-century culture and the representation of women in the literature of this period." "The book focuses on the importance of the humanist redefinition of male friendship in terms of textuality. Covering a wide range of classical and continental as well as English texts, The Usurer's Daughter reveals the crucial centrality of women's representation to the project of sixteenth-century humanism."--Jacket.