Early Modern Women Research Papers (original) (raw)

- by Sara Nalle
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- History of Literacy, Early Modern Women, Conversos

On the evolution and ultimate fate of the rich vein of early modern Spanish women's authorship of spiritual autobiographies.

Where have all the women gone? It can be difficult, sometimes, to find evidence of female participation in the arts and culture of the early modern period. This short essay explores how we can locate women and their participation by... more

The sermon Thomas Gataker gave at the wedding of Brilliana Conway and Sir Robert Harley in 1623, was published under the title “A Wife in Deed” (1623). Gataker defines marriage as an affective contract between two agents with responsibilities to one another, and offers practical and generic precepts for conduct. The dedication to Robert Harley honouring Brilliana Harley as a ‘mirror’ of the ideal wife, links those ideals, rhetorically at least, to the Harleys. Harley’s extensive extant correspondence (1625-44), allows us to consider the practical day-to-day significance of the sermon’s teachings. The essay reviews letters Harley wrote to her husband in the 1620s, early in the marriage; and in the 1640s, later in the marriage. Throughout she employs a deferential tone. During the 1640s, when civil war raged and her husband was absent, Harley governed the household, sheltered a godly community, and withstood a royalist siege justifying her position in terms of natural law. Gataker’s sermon provides a fresh lens upon the disjunction between the submissive rhetoric of Harley’s marital letters, and the stridency of her defence of Brampton Bryan.

In 1663 Mary Beale recorded her thoughts on how to paint apricots. Beale’s statement, ‘Observations by MB in her painting of Apricots in August 1663’, is the first known text in English about the act of painting written by a female artist. It is all the more remarkable for having been written at a time when convention expected married gentlewomen to be deferential, modest and virtually silent. This monogrammed manifesto is anything but modest: it is an authoritative exemplar for others to follow, and it represents Mary’s implicit acceptance of her place in a shared artistic inheritance and a stake in her own legacy for the future. Observations - here taken together with Beale’s other texts and with self-portraits spanning the years 1659 to 1681 - forms part of an oblique autobiography and is read as an statement of intent encoded in what appears to be innocuous technical information.

- by Helen Draper
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- History, Cultural History, Art History, Self and Identity

The fall of Queen Katherine Howard in 1541-1542 is a well-known event: the young woman with allegedly loose morals who captured the heart of the King and then proceeded to break it by continuing to arrange sexual liaisons with another man has long captured the public imagination. Unlike her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katherine's fall has not engendered much historical debate. We know, unequivocally, that she was guilty of the crimes with which she was charged, and we know this because the documentation surrounding her trial-the questions asked and depositions given-is exceptionally full. It has not, however, been fully exploited. The descriptions given by witnesses to Katherine's pre-and post-marital liaisons contain an enormous amount of incidental information about the spaces and places in which they occurred, and can therefore be used to inform our understanding of the practical use of, and conceptualisation of, domestic space during this period. This article compares and contrasts Katherine's spatial behaviour and others' reactions to it 'at home' with her grandmother before her marriage, and in royal palaces and lodgings on royal progress after it.

- by Nicola Clark
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- Women's History, Early Modern History, Early Modern Women

In early modern Europe, the nature of the female sex was perceived as inferior, in nearly every way, to that of an adult male’s, whose nature was par excellence. The history of philosophy, i.e., history in general, has necessarily accepted negative views of women, as women are not believed to be essential components to the Philosophical Canon. The philosophical canon, rather than questioning the male saturated authorship in early modern Europe, primarily embraced the established sexist infrastructure; and the majority of scholars have ignored this problem, making themselves necessary elements to this problem.

- by Dwight K . Lewis Jr.
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- Women's Studies, Women's History, Early Modern History, Early Modern Europe

En application du Code de la propriété intellectuelle, il est interdit de reproduire intégralement ou partiellement, par photocopie ou tout autre moyen, le présent ouvrage sans autorisation du Centre français d'exploitation du droit de... more

- by Antoine Roullet
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- European History, Gender Studies, Violence, Early Modern History

Review in French Studies, XLVI-2 (1992), pp. 204-5

- by Chava Turniansky
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- Gender Studies, Jewish Studies, Women's Studies, Feminist Theory
- by Pamela M Jones
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- Art Theory, Early Modern History, Italian Studies, Popular Culture

Combining an extensive introduction on the life and works of the 17th century opera singer and prolific writer Marhgerita Costa, this facing-pages translation introduces English audiences to the first comedy published by a woman in Italy, a burlesque work satirizing the Medici grand ducal court through a story of marital woes set against a cast of buffoons, hunchbacks, and dwarfs.

- by Jessica Goethals and +1
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- Italian Literature, Early Modern Women, Early Modern theatre studies, Commedia dell'arte

This volume presents the first collection of essays dedicated to women as producers of visual and material culture in the Early Modern European courts, offering fresh insights into the careers of, among others, Caterina van Hemessen, Sofonisba Anguissola, Luisa Roldán, and Diana Mantuana. Also considered are groups of female makers, such as ladies-in-waiting at the seventeenth-century Medici court. Chapters address works by women who occupied a range of social and economic positions within and around the courts and across media, including paintings, sculpture, prints, and textiles. Both individually and collectively, the texts deepen understanding of the individual artists and courts highlighted and, more broadly, consider the variety of experiences of female makers across traditional geographic and chronological distinctions. The book is also accompanied by the Global Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts digital humanities project (www.globalmakers.ua.edu), extending and expanding the work begun here.

- by Tanja Jones and +1
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- Women's Studies, Digital Humanities, Courts, Renaissance Art

Essay developed from keynote address at conference on Artemisia Gentileschi, Florence, Medici Archive Project, May 2015.

Maddalena Casulana dedicated her First Book of Madrigals for Four Voices (1568) to Isabella de Medici “to show to the world… the foolish error of men, who so greatly believe themselves to be masters of high intellectual gifts which cannot, it seems to them, be equally common among women.” This collection includes a madrigal titled “Morir non può il mio core,” a piece later reset by Giovanni Maria Nanino, Felice Anerio, Antonio Cifra, Alfonso Fontanelli, Luzzascho Luzzaschi, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and Ludovico Viadana. “Morir non può il mio core” possesses a gender-neutral text, obscuring the gender of the persona. This text is also anonymously authored: Anthony Newcomb doubts prior assumptions that the poem was written by Benedetto Pannini, compiler of Il Desiderio (1566), an earlier manuscript that contains four madrigals by Casulana, including “Morir non può il mio core” and its likely correspondent, “Sculpio ne l’alm’ Amore” (also anonymous, but with a male persona). Newcomb suggests that these two texts may have originally existed as verses of one longer sonnet. I contest this conclusion, but do argue for their relationship. My study adopts classical musical-rhetorical terminology employed by Dietrich Bartel and Joachim Burmeister, as well as Susan McClary’s modern perspectives on gender and musical rhetoric, in an analysis of: (1) Casulana’s “Morir non può il mio core” and “Sculpio ne l’alm’ Amore” and (2) re-settings of “Morir non può il mio core” by Nanino, Luzzaschi, and Fontanelli. I demonstrate how Casulana’s madrigals correspond to distinguish between female and male love, while male composers highlighted only the masculine perspective. My research does not just seek to emphasize Casulana’s presence within a male-dominated genre; rather, I explore Casulana’s compositional style to discover the extent to which the argument she posed in her dedication resonates in the sounds of her compositions.

- by Marylin Winkle
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- Gender Studies, Rhetoric, Early Modern Women, Historical Musicology

It has often been noted that Margaret Cavendish discusses God in her writings on natural philosophy far more than one might think she ought to given her explicit claim that a study of God belongs to theology which is to be kept strictly separate from studies in natural philosophy. In this article, I examine one way in which God enters substantially into her natural philosophy, namely the role he plays in her particular version of teleology. I conclude that the way Cavendish relies upon God in this context in not inconsistent with her broader philosophy.

- by Karen Detlefsen
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- Early Modern Women, Teleology, Margaret Cavendish

RicaRd BellveseR (cooRd.) d. BohleR · d. de couRcelles · a. coRtijo · e. lacaRRa t. MaRtínez · v. MaRtines · X. coMpany · R. Ríos · M. siMó j. Butinyà · i. GRifoll · a. annicchiaRico · j. M. fuRió a. i. peiRats · M. pieRa · v. j. escaRtí · M. RodRiGo · M. codeRch M. GóMez · M. a. coRonel · j. coRtés · Mª l. MandinGoRRa e. MiRa · a. feRRando · R. aRcheR · p. M. oRts

- by Marion Coderch
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- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Medieval Women, Early Modern Women

Although we are frequently confronted with an image of early modern Dutch women as existing primarily, if not exclusively, within the realm of household management, the reality was far more nuanced. A case study of Agnes Block (1629-1704) shows that by focusing on relationships, she succeeded in participating in the creation and dissemination of knowledge of botany in the public sphere and achieved recognition in that sphere, notwithstanding the institutional limits imposed upon her due to her gender. By adapting our methodological and analytical frameworks, in this case by looking to social networks and the power of print media, we can recover the stories of early modern women that are otherwise obscured in the archives and write them into history.

Jean Ma’s book is more than a scholarly exploration of sound and music in Chinese cinema. Referring to existing studies on sound, music, and voice in cinematic traditions, while paying special attention to the configuration of the role of the songstress in Chinese cinema, her analysis also relates to theories in feminist film studies, effects of sound technology in filmmaking, complexity in the visual and/or vocal performance, and actual practices in Shanghai cinema before 1949 and Hong Kong’s Mandarin cinema after 1949.

- by S. Louisa Wei 魏時煜
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- Sound and Image, Film Music And Sound, Chinese Art, Early Modern Women

In 1525 Catherine of Austria came to Portugal armed with Flemish tapestries, illuminated manuscripts,family jewels, and a lavish wardrobe, the requisite dowry of a Castilian princess destined to be queen. These personal goods that formed the nucleus of her collection evolved into one that later clearly defineed her social and political position, reflecting a particular hierarchy and symbolism. As a foreign-born queen, Catherine used her possessions to create her own identity at the Portuguese court. Shortly after her arrival sometime between 1525 and 1528, Catherine began collecting imported wares, luxury goods, Chinese silk and porcelain, gems, and jewelry from India and the Far East, available to her through agents stationed in Goa, Malacca and Macau. She created a system that allowed her to purchase directly overseas and key hubs of the Portuguese trade network.

What was possible for a woman to achieve at an early modern court? By analysing the experiences of a wide range of women at the court of Sweden, this book demonstrates the opportunities open to women who served at, and interacted with, the court; the complexities of women's agency in a court society; and, ultimately, the precariousness of power. In doing so, it provides an institutional context to women's lives at court, charting the full extent of the rewards that they might obtain, alongside the social and institutional constrictions that they faced. Its longue durée approach, moreover, clarifies how certain periods, such as that of the queens regnant, brought new possibilities. Based on an extensive array of Swedish and international primary sources, including correspondence, financial records and diplomatic reports, it also takes into account the materialities used to create hierarchies and ceremonies, such as physical structures and spaces within the court. Comprehensive in its scope, the book is divided into three parts, which focus respectively on outsiders at court, insiders, and members of the royal family.

Era un contesto storico profondamente turbato quello in cui dovevano inserirsi i singolari percorsi di queste donne, tutte laiche o semilaiche, il cui impegno di vita attiva e di caritatevole presenza nel mondo si intrecciava con istanze politiche di rinnovamento della Chiesa e della società. Questo inedito protagonismo femminile fu uno dei fenomeni più originali e innovativi della religiosità italiana nella difficile transizione dal medioevo alla prima età moderna: l'esemplare esercizio delle virtù, la potenza taumaturgica, l'eccellenza dei carismi attirò su di loro la devozione popolare, ma anche l'attenzione dei principi, di cui sovente divennero apprezzate maestre e consigliere spirituali. La loro memoria, in gran parte, ci è stata conservata da una piccola infrastruttura di frati dell'Osservanza domenicana, che fu direttamente coinvolta nella costruzione di un vero e proprio ciclo agiografico dedica

- by Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli and +1
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- Women's Studies, Hagiography, Women's History, Mysticism

A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies.

- by Erin Griffey
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- History of Dress, Dress and the Body, Early Modern Women, Dress and identity

The study examines typical patterns and individual strategies of urban courts in Hungary in the second half of the 16 th century when dealing with sex crimes. Secular authorities took over control of sexual behaviour and marital problems, previously exercised to a large extent by the church. The councillors had a relatively wide scope of measures and punishments that they could choose from and decided according to the individual circumstances of each case. Most cases involved fornication and adultery; other sex crimes appeared in court more rarely.

- by Blanka Szeghy
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- Urban History, Legal History, Criminal Justice History, Reformation History
- by Andrew Spicer
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- Architecture, Early Modern History, History of Religion, British History
- by Erin Allaire-Graham
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- Cultural History, Women's Studies, Women's History, Early Modern History

The inventories of the garden of Mary, Countess of Home, at Moray House in Edinburgh in the middle of the seventeenth century are examined in relation to the contemporary plan of Edinburgh by James Gordon of Rothiemay and to later plans and maps. (See 'Lady Home's inventory of Moray House, Edinburgh, 1631' on academia, below). The house and garden were formed in the context of James VI and I’s desire to create a unified kingdom of Great Britain, in part by marriages between citizens of each country. This document is unique in its detail in Scotland and presents a picture of the form and contents of the garden of a town house in Edinburgh, much of which may be appropriate to gardens in other cities of the period in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain. Marilyn M. Brown and Michael Pearce.

The aim of this study is the analysis of the earliest hagiographic text concerning the Venerable Leonora Ramirez de Montalvo (1602 – 1659). She founded a number of girls’ conservatories, of considerable importance for the history of the Medici Grand Duchy. As a mystic and writer of religious works, she Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi of an overview of the hagiographic text concerning Leonora written by Jesuit Father Cosimo Pazzi. The second part of the study will follow a method of textual analysis developed by Romana Guarnieri. She argues that a series of themes (or topoi) can be identified in hagiographies of European women mystics on a comparative basis. Therefore, the application of this method of textual analysis to Leonora’s hagiography will lead to a partial extension to hagiographies of other female mystics, in both the medieval and early modern ages. The last part will show how the model of female saintliness represented by Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi (1566-1607), which spread throughout Italy during the Counter-Reformation, influenced the hagiographic representation of Leonora.

- by Mattia Zangari
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- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Hagiography, Women's History

(in Alison Weber, ed., Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World, Routledge, 2016)

Mourning dress was one of the most pervasive sartorial symbols at the early modern court. This essay examines Henrietta Maria's adoption of such dress after the execution of Charles I and the political agendas and social ideals that informed it. Analysing portraits of the queen in mourning, this chapter argues that these works were carefully calibrated to showcase her virtuous character and piety while also functioning as public reminders of her husband's 'martyrdom' and her son's claims to the throne. As such, her representation as a widow was tailored both to the expected social and visual conventions of dress and comportment for royal widows, but also as a part of a strategic campaign for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty.

The apartment created for Eleonora di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio properly extended to the floor above the her own quarters. In renovating and adapting space for the duchess’s needs in the former priors’ palace, significant attention appears to have been given to the question of where to house the duchess’s ladies-in-waiting and the allocation of space for their work and pastimes. This paper reconsiders the use of space in the palace by the women of Eleonora’s entourage in an attempt to better understand their daily life there. Special attention is given to the iconography of Vasari and Stradano’s decoration of the Sala di Gualdrada, a room generally presumed to have been reserved for the use of Eleonora’s ladies.

- by Bruce Edelstein
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- Early Modern Women, Court Culture, Giorgio Vasari, Palazzo Vecchio Florence
- by William E . Burns
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- Early Modern Women, Monsters, Hirsutism, History of the Canary Islands

RESUMEN
Este artículo incide en la relación que durante siglo XVI se estableció entre la mujer y la escri- tura epistolar. Concretamente, este estudio tiene por objeto la correspondencia que mantuvo Ana de Dietrichstein —condesa de Villanueva del Cañedo— con su madre, Margarita de Cardona —baronesa de Dietrichstein—, durante los años que sirvió como dama en el Alcázar madrileño. A lo largo de estas páginas el análisis del epistolario descansa, funda- mentalmente, en sus aspectos materiales (grafía, manos que lo componen...) para asi recons- truir esta práctica de escritura (su aprendizaje, los momentos y lugares, periodicidad, fun- ción...).
PALABRAS CLAVE
Historia de la Cultura Escrita, escritura epistolar, carta, mujer, Ana de Dietrichstein, Margarita de Cardona, s. XVL
ABSTRACT
This article deals with the relation established during the sixteenth century between women and epistolary writing. Concretely, it examines the correspondence ofAna de Dietrichstein —countess ofVillanueva del Cañedo— with her mother, Margarita de Cardona, baroness Dietrichstein, during her years of service as lady-in-waiting in Madrid's Royal Palace. Analysis ofthese letters focuses above all on its material aspects (penmanship and the inter- vention ofdifferent hands) in the aim of reconstructing diverse aspects ofthis writingprac- tice, especially how, when and where it was learned, as well as its periodicity and functions.
KEY WORDS
History of written culture, epistolary writing, letter, women, Ana de Dietrichstein, Margarita de Cardona, sixteenth century.