Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series – serie

At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female letterate proved their parity as they lectured in prominent scientific and literary academies and published in respected journals. During the Italian Enlightenment, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini, and Aretafila Savini de Rossi were afforded unprecedented deference in academic debates and epitomized the increasing ability of women to influence public discourse. The Contest for Knowledge reveals how these four women used the methods and themes of their male counterparts to add their voices to the vigorous and prolific debate over the education of women during the eighteenth century. In the texts gathered here, the women discuss the issues they themselves thought most urgent for the equality of women in Italian society specifically and in European culture more broadly. Their thoughts on this important subject reveal how crucial the eighteenth century was in the long history of debates about women in the academy.

At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female letterate proved their parity as they lectured in prominent scientific and literary academies and published in respected journals. During the Italian Enlightenment, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini, and Aretafila Savini de Rossi were afforded unprecedented deference in academic debates and epitomized the increasing ability of women to influence public discourse. The Contest for Knowledge reveals how these four women used the methods and themes of their male counterparts to add their voices to the vigorous and prolific debate over the education of women during the eighteenth century. In the texts gathered here, the women discuss the issues they themselves thought most urgent for the equality of women in Italian society specifically and in European culture more broadly. Their thoughts on this important subject reveal how crucial the eighteenth century was in the long history of debates about women in the academy.

Originally published in 1529, this work argues that women are more than equal to men in all things that really matter, including the public spheres from which they have long been excluded. Rather than directly refuting prevailing wisdom, Agrippa uses women's superiority as a rhetorical device and overturns the misogynistic interpretations of the female body in Greek medicine, the Bible, Roman and canon law, theology, moral philosophy and politics. He raised the question of why women were excluded and provided answers based not on sex but on social conditioning, education and the prejudices of their more powerful oppressors. His declamation, disseminated through the printing press, illustrated the power of that new medium, soon to be used to generate a larger reformation of religion.

Originally published in 1529, this work argues that women are more than equal to men in all things that really matter, including the public spheres from which they have long been excluded. Rather than directly refuting prevailing wisdom, Agrippa uses women's superiority as a rhetorical device and overturns the misogynistic interpretations of the female body in Greek medicine, the Bible, Roman and canon law, theology, moral philosophy and politics. He raised the question of why women were excluded and provided answers based not on sex but on social conditioning, education and the prejudices of their more powerful oppressors. His declamation, disseminated through the printing press, illustrated the power of that new medium, soon to be used to generate a larger reformation of religion.

Internationally known during her lifetime, Laura Battiferra (1523-89) was a gifted and prolife poet in Renaissance Florence. The author of nearly 400 sonnets, Battiferra, who was married to the prominent sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati, traversed an elite literary and artistic network, circulating her verse in a complex and intellectually fecund exchange with some of the most illustrious figures in Italian history. In this anthology Victoria Kirkham gathers Battiferra's most essential writing, including newly discovered poems, to provide modern readers with a valuable social chronicle of sixteenth-century Italy and the courtly culture of the Counter-Reformation.

Presented for the first time in a critical English edition, Urania: A Romance provides modern readers with a rare glimpse into the novel and novella forms at a time when narrative genres were not only being invented but, in the hands of women like Giulia Bigolina (1518?-1569?), used as vehicles for literary experimentation.The first known prose romance written by a woman in Italian, Bigolina's Urania centers on the monomaniacal love of a female character falling into melancholy when her beloved leaves her for a more beautiful woman. A tale that includes many of the conventions that would later become standards of the genre—cross-dressing, travel, epic skirmishes, and daring deeds—Urania also contains the earliest treatise on the worth of women.Also included in this volume, the novella Giulia Camposampiero is the only extant part of a probable longer narrative written in the style of the Decameron. While employing some of those same gender and role reversals as Urania, including the privileging of heroic constancy in both men and women, it chronicles the tribulations that a couple undergoes until their secret marriage is publicly recognized.

One of the first pastoral dramas published by an Italian woman, Flori is Maddalena Campiglia's most substantial surviving literary work and one of the earliest known examples of secular dramatic writing by a woman in Europe. Although acclaimed in her day, Campiglia (1553-95) has not benefited from the recent wave of scholarship that has done much to enhance the visibility and reputation of contemporaries such as Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and Veronica Franco. As this bilingual, first-ever critical edition of Flori illustrates, this neglect is decidedly unwarranted. Flori is a work of great literary and cultural interest, noteworthy in particular for the intensity of its focus on the experiences and perceptions of its female protagonists and their ideals of female autonomy. Flori will be read by those involved in the study of early modern literature and drama, women's studies, and gender and sexuality in this period.

This is a collection of the letters of Laura Cereta (1469-1499), which present feminist issues in a predominantly male environment. Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy, and in them she explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. Cereta argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues which have occupied women of later centuries. The letters also furnish a detailed portrait of an early modern woman's private experience, for Cereta addressed many letters to a close circle of family and friends, discussing highly personal concerns, such as her difficult relationships with her mother and husband. The letters provide a testament to an individual woman and to enduring feminist concerns.

This is a collection of the letters of Laura Cereta (1469-1499), which present feminist issues in a predominantly male environment. Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy, and in them she explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. Cereta argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues which have occupied women of later centuries. The letters also furnish a detailed portrait of an early modern woman's private experience, for Cereta addressed many letters to a close circle of family and friends, discussing highly personal concerns, such as her difficult relationships with her mother and husband. The letters provide a testament to an individual woman and to enduring feminist concerns.

First published in Venice in 1547, this work casts a woman rather than a man as the main disputant on the ethics of love. Tullia d'Aragona argued that the only moral form of love between a woman and a man is one that recognizes both the sensual and the spiritual needs of humankind. Declaring sexual drives to be fundamentally irrepressible and blameless, she sought to challenge the Platonic and religious orthodoxy of her time, which condemed all forms of sensual experience, denied the rationality of women, and relegated femininity to the realm of physicality and sin. Human beings, the book asserts, consist of body and soul, sense and intellect, and honourable love must be based on this real nature. Aragona vindicates all women, proposing a morality of love that restores them to intellectual and sexual parity with men.

Born into a wealthy family in Toulouse, Gabrielle de Coignard (ca. 1550-86) married a prominent statesman in 1570. Widowed three years later, with two young daughters to raise, Coignard turned to writing devotional verse to help her cope with her practical and spiritual struggles.Spiritual Sonnets presents the first English translation of 129 of Coignard's highly autobiographical poems, giving us a startlingly intimate view into the life and mind of this Renaissance woman. The sonnets are all written "in the shadow of the Cross" and include elegies, penitential lyrics, Biblical meditations, and more. Rich with emotion, Coignard's poems reveal anguished moments of loneliness and grief as well as ecstatic experiences of mystical union. They also reveal her mastery of sixteenth-century literary conventions and spiritual traditions. This edition, printed in bilingual format with Melanie E. Gregg's translations facing the French originals, will be welcomed by teachers and students of poetry, French literature, women's studies, and religious and Renaissance studies.

During a pivotal period in Spanish history, aristocrat Maria de Guevara (?-1683) produced two extraordinary essays that appealed for strong leadership, protested political corruption, and demanded the inclusion of women in the court's decision making. "Treaty" gave Philip IV practical suggestions for fighting the war against Portugal and "Disenchantments" counseled the king-to-be, Charles II, on strategies to raise the country's status in Europe. This annotated bilingual edition, featuring Nieves Romero-Diaz's adroit translations, reproduces Guevara's polemics for the first time. Guevara's provocative writings call on Spanish women to bear the responsibility equally with men for restoring Spain's power in Europe and elsewhere. The collection also includes examples of Guevara's shorter writings that exemplify her ability to speak on matters of state, network with dignitaries, and govern family affairs. Witty, ironic, and rhetorically sophisticated, Guevara's essays provide a fresh perspective on the possibilities for women in the public sphere in seventeenth-century Spain.

Madeleine de l'Aubespine (1546-96), the toast of courtly and literary circles in sixteenth-century Paris, penned beautiful love poems to the famous women of her day. The well-connected daughter and wife of prominent French secretaries of state, l'Aubespine was celebrated by her male peers for her erotic lyricism and scathingly original voice. Rather than adopting the conventional self-effacement that defined female poets of the time, l'Aubespine's speakers are sexual, dominant, and defiant, and her subjects are women who are able to manipulate, rebuke, and even humiliate men. Unavailable in English until now and only recently identified from scattered and sometimes misattributed sources, l'Aubespine's poems and literary works are presented here in Anna Klosowska's vibrant translation. This collection, which features one of the first French lesbian sonnets as well as reproductions of l'Aubespine's poetic translations of "Ovid and Ariosto", will be heralded by students and scholars in literature, history, and women's studies as an important addition to the Renaissance canon.

Inspired by a series of visions, Francisca de los Apostoles (1539-after 1578) and her sister Isabella attempted in 1573 to organize a beaterio, a lay community of pious women devoted to the religious life, to offer prayers and penance for the reparation of human sins, especially those of corrupt clerics. But their efforts to minister to the poor of Toledo and to call for general ecclesiastical reform were met with resistance, first from local religious officials and, later, from the Spanish Inquisition. By early 1575, the Inquisitional tribunal in Toledo had received several statements denouncing Francisca from some of the very women she had tried to help, as well as from some of her financial and religious sponsors. Francisca was eventually arrested, imprisoned by the Inquisition, and investigated for religious fraud. This book contains what little is known about Francisca - the several letters she wrote as well as the transcript of her trial - and offers modern readers a perspective on the unique role and status of religious women in sixteenth-century Spain.Chronicling the drama of Francisca's interrogation and her spirited but ultimately unsuccessful defense, The Inquisition of Francisca - transcribed from more than three hundred folios and published for the first time in any language - will be a valuable resource for both specialists and students of the history and religion of Spain in the sixteenth century.

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was the sister and wife to kings and a pivotal influence in sixteenth-century France. An astute politician and diligent humanist, she was a champion of gender equality and the evangelical reform movement, which recognized that the clergy was more concerned with maintaining the church's power than ministering to the faithful. As the years passed and the glitter of life at court waned, however, Marguerite came to realize her true vocation: writing."Selected Writings" brings together a representative sampling of Marguerite's varied works, most of it never before translated into English, enabling Anglophone readers to enjoy the full breadth of her writings for the first time. From verse letters and fables to mythological-pastoral tales, from spiritual songs to a selection of novellas from the Heptameron, the wide range of works included here will reveal Marguerite de Navarre to be one of the most important writers - male or female - of sixteenth-century France.

Born to a noble family in Tournai, Marie Dentiere (1495-1561) left her convent in the 1520s to work for religious reform. She married a former priest and with her husband went to Switzerland, where she was active in the Reformation's takeover of Geneva. Dentiere's Very Useful Epistle (1539) is the first explicit statement of reformed theology by a woman to appear in French. Addressed to Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of the French king Francis I, the Epistle asks the queen to help those persecuted for their religious beliefs. Dentiere offers a stirring defense of women and asserts their right to teach the word of God in public. In the Epistle, she also defends John Calvin against his enemies and attacks the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Her Preface (1561) to one of Calvin's sermons criticizes immodesty and extravagance in clothing and warns the faithful to be vigilant. Undaunted in the face of suppression and ridicule, this outspoken woman persisted as an active voice in the Reformation.

Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular best-sellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish and even Arabic. "The Story of Sapho" makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Scudery's novel "Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus", best known today as the favoured reading material of the would-be "salonnieres" that Moliere satirized in "Les precieuses ridicules". The "Story" tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations, like those that took place in Scudery's own salon, in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing and right conduct. This edition also includes a translation of an oration, or "harangue" of Scudery's in which Sapho extols the talents and abilities of women in order to persuade them to write.

Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) was the most popular novelist in her time, read in French in volume installments all over Europe and translated into English, German, Italian, and even Arabic. But she was also a charismatic figure in French salon culture, a woman who supported herself through her writing and defended women's education. She was the first woman to be honored by the French Academy, and she earned a pension from Louis XIV for her writing. Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues is a careful selection of Scudery's shorter writings, emphasizing her abilities as a rhetorical theorist, orator, essayist, and letter writer. It provides the first English translations of some of Scudery's Amorous Letters, only recently identified as her work, as well as selections from her Famous Women, or Heroic Speeches, and her series of Conversations. The book will be of great interest to scholars of the history of rhetoric, French literature, and women's studies.

Known as Madame de Villedieu, Marie-Catherine Desjardins (1640-83) was a prolific writer who played an important role in the evolution of the early modern French novel. One of the earliest women to write for a living, she defied cultural convention by becoming an innovator and appealing to popular tastes through fiction, drama, and poetry. Memoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Moliere, a semi-autobiographical novel, portrays an enterprising woman who writes the story of her life, a complex tale that runs counter to social expectations and romantic conventions. A most striking work, the novel skillfully mixes real events from the author's lifetime with entirely fictional adventures. At a time when few women published, Villedieu's Memoirs is a significant achievement in creating a voice for the early modern woman writer. Written while the French novel form was still in its infancy, it should be welcomed by any scholar of women's writing or of the early development of the novel.

Though most historians remember her as the mistress of Voltaire, Emilie Du Chatelet (1706-49) was an accomplished writer in her own right, who published multiple editions of her scientific writings during her lifetime, as well as a translation of Newton's "Principia Mathematica" that is still the standard edition of that work in French. Had she been a man, her reputation as a member of the eighteenth-century French intellectual elite would have been assured. In the 1970s, feminist historians of science began the slow work of recovering Du Chatelet's writings and her contributions to history and philosophy. For this edition, Judith P. Zinsser has selected key sections from Du Chatelet's published and unpublished works, as well as related correspondence, part of her little-known critique of the Old and New Testaments, and a treatise on happiness that is a refreshingly uncensored piece of autobiography - making all of them available for the first time in English. The resulting volume will recover Du Chatelet's place in the pantheon of French letters and culture.

Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-80) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650) exchanged fifty-eight letters - thirty-two from Descartes and twenty-six from Elisabeth. Their correspondence contains the only known extant philosophical writings by Elisabeth and reveals her mastery of metaphysics, analytic geometry, and moral philosophy, as well as her keen interest in natural philosophy. The letters are essential reading for anyone interested in Descartes' philosophy, in particular his account of the human being as a union of mind and body, as well as his ethics. They also provide a unique insight into the character of their authors and the way ideas develop through intellectual collaboration. Philosophers have long been familiar with Descartes' side of the correspondence. Now Elisabeth's letters - never before available in translation in their entirety - emerge in this volume, adding much-needed context and depth both to Descartes' ideas and the legacy of the princess.Lisa Shapiro's annotated edition, which also includes Elisabeth's correspondence with the Quakers William Penn and Robert Barclay, will be heralded by students of philosophy, feminist theorists, and historians of the early modern period.

By the end of the 15th century, Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558), a learned middle-class woman of Venice, was arguably the most famous woman writer and scholar in Europe. A cultural icon in her own time, she regularly corresponded with the king of France, lords of Milan and Naples, the Borgia pope Alexander VI, and even maintained a ten-year epistolary exchange with Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain that resulted in an invitation for her to join their court. Fedele's letters reveal the central, mediating role she occupied in a community of scholars otherwise inaccessible to women. Her unique admittance into this community is also highlighted by her presence as the first independent woman writer in Italy to speak publicly and, more importantly, the first to address philosophical, political and moral issues in her own voice. Her three public orations and almost all of her letters, translated into English, are presented here for the first time.

By the end of the 15th century, Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558), a learned middle-class woman of Venice, was arguably the most famous woman writer and scholar in Europe. A cultural icon in her own time, she regularly corresponded with the king of France, lords of Milan and Naples, the Borgia pope Alexander VI, and even maintained a ten-year epistolary exchange with Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain that resulted in an invitation for her to join their court. Fedele's letters reveal the central, mediating role she occupied in a community of scholars otherwise inaccessible to women. Her unique admittance into this community is also highlighted by her presence as the first independent woman writer in Italy to speak publicly and, more importantly, the first to address philosophical, political and moral issues in her own voice. Her three public orations and almost all of her letters, translated into English, are presented here for the first time.

Charged by the Venetian Inquisition with the conscious and cynical feigning of holiness, Cecelia Ferrazzi (1609-1684) requested and obtained the unprecedented opportunity to defend herself through a presentation of her life story. Ferrazzi's inquisitorial autobiography and the transcripts of her preceding testimony are here transcribed and translated into English, allowing the reader an insight into an unfamiliar sector of the past and to hear "another voice" - that of a Venetian woman who had extraordinary experiences and exhibited exceptional courage.

The first original chivalric poem written by an Italian woman, Floridoro imbues a strong feminist ethos into a hypermasculine genre. Dotted with the usual characteristics—dark forests, illusory palaces, enchanted islands, seductive sorceresses—Floridoro is the story of the two greatest knights of a bygone age: the handsome Floridoro, who risks everything for love, and the beautiful Risamante, who helps women in distress while on a quest for her inheritance. Throughout, Moderata Fonte (1555–92) vehemently defends women’s capacity to rival male prowess in traditionally male-dominated spheres. And her open criticism of women’s lack of education is echoed in the plights of various female characters who must depend on unreliable men. First published in 1581, Floridoro remains a vivacious and inventive narrative by a singular poet.

The first original chivalric poem written by an Italian woman, Floridoro imbues a strong feminist ethos into a hypermasculine genre. Dotted with the usual characteristics—dark forests, illusory palaces, enchanted islands, seductive sorceresses—Floridoro is the story of the two greatest knights of a bygone age: the handsome Floridoro, who risks everything for love, and the beautiful Risamante, who helps women in distress while on a quest for her inheritance. Throughout, Moderata Fonte (1555–92) vehemently defends women’s capacity to rival male prowess in traditionally male-dominated spheres. And her open criticism of women’s lack of education is echoed in the plights of various female characters who must depend on unreliable men. First published in 1581, Floridoro remains a vivacious and inventive narrative by a singular poet.

Gender equality and the responsibilty of husbands and fathers had currency in Renaissance Venice as evidenced by the publication of this title in 1600. Moderata Fonte was the pseudonym of Modesta Pozzo (1555-92), a Venetian woman who produced literature in genres that were commonly considered "masculine" - the chivalric romance and the literary dialogue. This work takes the form of the latter, with Fonte creating a converation among seven Venetain noblewomen. The dialogue explores nearly every aspect of women's experience in both theoretical and practical terms. These women, who differ in age and experience, take as their broad theme men's curious hostility towards women and the possible cures for it. Fonte seeks to elevate women's status to that of men, arguing that women have the same innate abilities as men and, when singularly educated, prove their equals.

Veronica Franco was a 16th-century Venetian beauty, poet, and protofeminist. This collection presents the eroticism and eloquence that set her apart from the chaste, silent woman prescribed by Renaissance gender ideology. As an "honored courtesan", Franco made her living by arranging to have sexual relations, for a high fee, with the elite of Venice and the many travellers - merchants, ambassadors, even kings - who passed through the city. Courtesans needed to be beautiful, sophisticated in their dress and manners, and elegant, cultivated conversationalists. Exempt from many of the social and educational restrictions placed on women of the Venetian patrician class, Franco used her position to recast "virtue" as "intellectual integrity," offering wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life. Franco became a writer by allying herself with distinguished men at the centre of her city's culture, particularly in the informal meetings of a literary salon at the home of Domenico Venier, the oldest member of a noble family and a former Venetian senator.Through Venier's protection and her own determination, Franco published work in which she defended her fellow courtesans, speaking out against their mistreatment by men and criticizing the subordination of women in general. Venier also provided literary counsel when she responded to insulting attacks written by the male Venetian poet Maffio Venier. Franco's insight into the power conflicts between men and women and her awareness of the threat she posed to her male contemporaries make her life and work pertinent today.

During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645) was celebrated as one of the "seventy most famous women of all time" in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). The adopted daughter of Montaigne, as well as his editor, Gournay was a major literary force and a pioneering feminist voice during a tumultuous period in France. This volume presents translations of four of Gournay's works that address feminist issues. Two of these appear here in English for the first time - The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne and The Apology for the Woman Writing. One of the first modern psychological novels, the best-selling Promenade was also the first to explore female sexual feeling. With the autobiographical Apology, Gournay defended every aspect of her life, from her moral conduct to her household management. The book also includes Gournay's last revisions (1641) of her two best-known feminist treatises, The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Complaint. The editors provide a general overview of Gournay's career, as well as individual introductions and extensive annotations for each work.