Gender Matters

“Gender Matters is a fascinating piece of reading, and, although the scope of scholarship presented seems too wide initially, the thematic chapters offer novel approaches to early modern studies. The main strength of the volume is its heterogeneity; it tackles interdisciplinary subjects and, more importantly, it introduces a broad perspective that points beyond the European framework in early modern studies and includes such rarely addressed issues in early modern art and culture in Japan. […] the volume fulfills its main goal and presents a holistic view of the early modern period that helps with the understanding of this era more fully, and similar endeavors would be greatly welcomed in future early modern studies.” - Zita Turi, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, in: Sixteenth Century Journal 46.1 (2015), pp. 197-199“A major strength of this collection is its transnational focus. Readers seeking a global perspective on early modern culture will find this text particularly fulfilling. […] Another strength of this collection is that the essays are widely interdisciplinary. Unlike many similar essay collections, the variety in this text demonstrates the pervasiveness of gendered violence — and it shows how easily scholars can arrive at similar conclusions about the systems of power in society while using different toolsets. […] Scholars specifically focused on violence or gender will easily find plenty to love here, of course, and the interdisciplinary focus might provide some necessary breadth to such research.” - Matt Carter, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in: Renaissance Quarterly 68.3, pp. 1105-1106

• Mara R. Wade: Introduction Gender Matters: Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the ArtsWomen Warriors, Fact and FictionJudith P. Aikin: The Militant Countesses of Rudolstadt: When an unruly army stops by on its way through, it’s time to call on a woman for help.Elizabeth Oyler: The Woman Warrior Tomoe in Medieval and Early Modern Japanese Nō PlaysViolent Women, Violated MenHelmut Puff: Violence, Victimhood, Artistry: Albrecht Dürer’s The Death of OrpheusHelen Watanabe-O’Kelly: The Eroticization of Judith in Early Modern German ArtJulie Singer: For Palle and Patrie: Re-gendering Violence from Benedetto Varchi to Marguerite de NavarreMarcus Keller: Framing Men: Violent Women in Marguerite de Navarre’s HeptameronViolence and the Gendered Body PoliticCatharine Gray: Tears of the Muses: 1649 and the Lost Political Bodies of Royalist War ElegyBrian Sandberg: Calm Possessor of his Wife, but Not of her Château: Gendered Religious Violence in the French Wars of ReligionLori Humphrey Newcomb: The Law Against Lovers: Dramatizing Civil Union in Restoration EnglandGender in PrintElizabeth Black: One Gender in the Legal System? An Examination of Gender in a Trio of Emblems from Pierre Coustau’s Pegme (1560)Tara L. Lyons: Prayer Books and Illicit Female Desires on the Early Modern English StageGerhild Scholz Williams: Romancing the News: History and Romance in Eberhard Happel’s Deß Teutschen Carls (1690) and Deß Engelländischen Eduards (1691)Gender and Violence on the StageSusan Parisi: Transforming a Classical Myth in Seventeenth-Century Opera: the Story of Cybele and Atys in the Libretti of Francesco Rasi and Philippe QuinaultCurtis Perry: Gismond of Salern and the Elizabethan Politics of Senecan DramaElizabeth Zeman Kolkovich: “Drabs of State vext”: Violent Female Masquers in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware WomenVirtue and ViolenceCarmen Ripollés: Death, Femininity, and the Art of Painting in Frans Francken’s The Painter’s StudioLisa Rosenthal: Masculine Virtue in the Kunstkamer: Pictura, Lucre, and LuxuryAnne J. Cruz: The Walled-In Woman in Medieval and Early Modern SpainCarl Niekerk: Violence, Gender, and the Construction of the Other in the Story of Inkle and YaricoNotes on Contributors