Download or read book Enrico or Byzantium Conquered written by Lucrezia Marinella and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653) is, by all accounts, a phenomenon in early modernity: a woman who wrote and published in many genres, whose fame shone brightly within and outside her native Venice, and whose voice is simultaneously original and reflective of her time and culture. In Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered, one of the most ambitious and rewarding of her numerous narrative works, Marinella demonstrates her skill as an epic poet. Now available for the first time in English translation, Enrico retells the story of the conquest of Byzantium in the Fourth Crusade (1202–04). Marinella intersperses historical events in her account of the invasion with numerous invented episodes, drawing on the rich imaginative legacy of the chivalric romance. Fast-moving, colorful, and narrated with the zest that characterizes Marinella’s other works, this poem is a great example of a woman engaging critically with a quintessentially masculine form and subject matter, writing in a genre in which the work of women poets was typically shunned.
Download or read book Byzantium Conquered written by Lucrezia Marinella and published by . This book was released on 2009-08-15 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translation of "L' Enrico overo Bisantio acquistato: poema heroico", an ambitious and rewarding narrative poem by a prolific female Venetian writer who flourished in the early 17th Century, demonstrating her skill as an epic poet when she was already known for her polemical treatise "On the nobility and excellence of Women."
Download or read book The Contest for Knowledge written by Maria Gaetana Agnesi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Ren Descartes written by Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–80) and René 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, revealing 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’s 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’s side of the correspondence. Now Elisabeth’s letters—never before available in translation in their entirety—emerge this volume, adding much-needed context and depth both to Descartes’s 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.
Download or read book Dialogues and Addresses written by Madame de Maintenon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born Françoise d'Aubigné, a criminal's daughter reduced to street begging as a child, Madame de Maintenon (1653-1719) made an improbable rise from impoverished beginnings to the summit of power as the second, secret wife of Louis XIV. An educational reformer, Maintenon founded and directed the celebrated academy for aristocratic women at Saint-Cyr. This volume presents the dialogues and addresses in which Maintenon explains her controversial philosophy of education for women. Denounced by her contemporaries as a political schemer and religious fanatic, Maintenon has long been criticized as an opponent of gender equality. The writings in this volume faithfully reflect Maintenon's respect for social hierarchy and her stoic call for women to accept the duties of their state in life. But the writings also echo Maintenon's more feminist concerns: the need to redefine the virtues in the light of women's experience, the importance of naming the constraints on women's freedom, and the urgent need to remedy the scandalous neglect of the education of women. In her writings as well as in her own model school at Saint-Cyr, Maintenon embodies the demand for educational reform as the key to the empowerment of women at the dawn of modernity.
Download or read book War Communication and the Politics of Culture in Early Modern Venice written by Anastasia Stouraiti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weaving together cultural history and critical imperial studies, this book shows how war and colonial expansion shaped seventeenth-century Venetian culture and society. Anastasia Stouraiti tests conventional assumptions about republicanism, commercial peace and cross-cultural exchange and offers a novel approach to the study of the Republic of Venice. Her extensive research brings the history of communication in dialogue with conquest and empire-building in the Mediterranean to provide an original interpretation of the politics of knowledge in wartime Venice. The book argues that the Venetian-Ottoman War of the Morea (1684-1699) was mediated through a diverse range of cultural mechanisms of patrician elite domination that orchestrated the production of popular consent. It sheds new light on the militarisation of the Venetian public sphere and exposes the connections between bellicose foreign policies and domestic power politics in a state celebrated as the most serene republic of merchants.
Download or read book The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic written by Olympia Morata and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2004 Josephine Roberts Edition Prize from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. A brilliant scholar and one of the finest writers of her day, Olympia Morata (1526-1555) was attacked by some as a "Calvinist Amazon" but praised by others as an inspiration to all learned women. This book publishes, for the first time, all her known writings—orations, dialogues, letters, and poems—in an accessible English translation. Raised in the court of Ferrara in Italy, Morata was educated alongside the daughters of the nobility. As a youth she gave public lectures on Cicero, wrote commentaries on Homer, and composed poems, dialogues, and orations in both Latin and Greek. She also became a prominent Protestant evangelical, studying the Bible extensively and corresponding with many of the leading theologians of the Reformation. After fleeing to Germany in search of religious freedom, Morata tutored students in Greek and composed what many at the time felt were her finest works—a series of translations of the Psalms into Greek hexameters and sapphics. Feminists and historians will welcome these collected writings from one of the most important female humanists of the sixteenth century.
Download or read book Complete Writings written by Isotta Nogarola and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned in her day for her scholarship and eloquence, Isotta Nogarola (1418-66) remained one of the most famous women of the Italian Renaissance for centuries after her death. And because she was one of the first women to carve out a place for herself in the male-dominated republic of letters, Nogarola served as a crucial role model for generations of aspiring female artists and writers. This volume presents English translations of all of Nogarola's extant works and highlights just how daring and original her convictions were. In her letters and orations, Nogarola elegantly synthesized Greco-Roman thought with biblical teachings. And striding across the stage in public, she lectured the Veronese citizenry on everything from history and religion to politics and morality. But the most influential of Nogarola's works was a performance piece, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, in which she discussed the relative sinfulness of Adam and Eve—thereby opening up a centuries-long debate in Europe on gender and the nature of woman and establishing herself as an important figure in Western intellectual history. This book will be a must read for teachers and students of Women's Studies as well as of Renaissance literature and history.
Download or read book Early Modern Habsburg Women written by Anne J. Cruz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the first comprehensive volume devoted entirely to women of both the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg royal dynasties spanning the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, this interdisciplinary collection illuminates their complex and often contradictory political functions and their interrelations across early modern national borders. The essays in this volume investigate the lives of six Habsburg women who, as queens consort and queen regent, duchesses, a vicereine, and a nun, left an indelible mark on the diplomatic and cultural map of early modern Europe. Contributors examine the national and transnational impact of these notable women through their biographies, and explore how they transferred their cultural, religious, and political traditions as the women moved from one court to another. Early Modern Habsburg Women investigates the complex lives of Philip II’s daughter, the Infanta Catalina Micaela (1567-1597); her daughter, Margherita of Savoy, Vicereine of Portugal (1589-1655); and Maria Maddalena of Austria, Grand Duchess of Florence (1589-1631). The second generation of Habsburg women that the volume addresses includes Philip IV’s first wife, Isabel of Borbón (1602-1644), who became a Habsburg by marriage; Rudolph II’s daughter, Sor Ana Dorotea (1611-1694), the only Habsburg nun in the collection; and Philip IV’s second wife, Mariana of Austria (1634-1696), queen regent and mother to the last Spanish Habsburg. Through archival documents, pictorial and historical accounts, literature, and correspondence, as well as cultural artifacts such as paintings, jewelry, and garments, this volume brings to light the impact of Habsburg women in the broader historical, political, and cultural contexts. The essays fill a scholarly need by covering various phases of the lives of early modern royal women, who often struggled to sustain their family loyalty while at the service of a foreign court, even when protecting and preparing their heirs for rule a
Download or read book City Court Academy written by Eva Del Soldato and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on early modern Italy and some of its key multilingual zones: Venice, Florence, and Rome. It offers a novel insight into the interplay and dynamic exchange of languages in the Italian peninsula, from the early fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. In particular, it examines the flexible linguistic practices of both the social and intellectual elite, and the men and women from the street. The point of departure of this project is the realization that most of the early modern speakers and authors demonstrate strong self-awareness as multilingual communicators. From the foul-mouthed gondolier to the learned humanist, language choice and use were carefully performed, and often justified, in order to overcome (or affirm) linguistic and social differences. The urban social spaces, the princely court, and the elite centres of learning such as universities and academies all shared similar concerns about the value, effectiveness, and impact of languages. As the contributions in this book demonstrate, early modern communicators — including gondoliers, preachers, humanists, architects, doctors of medicine, translators, and teachers—made explicit and argued choices about their use of language. The textual and oral performance of languages—and self-aware discussions on languages—consolidated the identity of early modern Italian multilingual communities.
Download or read book Spiritual Sonnets written by Gabrielle de Coignard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin written by Marie Dentière and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born to a noble family in Tournai, Marie Dentière (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. Dentière'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. Dentière offers a stirring defense of women and asserts their right to teach the word of God in public. She 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.
Download or read book Autobiography and Other Writings written by Ana de San Bartolomé and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ana de San Bartolomé (1549–1626), a contemporary and close associate of St. Teresa of Ávila, typifies the curious blend of religious activism and spiritual forcefulness that characterized the first generation of Discalced, or reformed Carmelites. Known for their austerity and ethics, their convents quickly spread throughout Spain and, under Ana’s guidance, also to France and the Low Countries. Constantly embroiled in disputes with her male superiors, Ana quickly became the most vocal and visible of these mystical women and the most fearless of the guardians of the Carmelite Constitution, especially after Teresa’s death. Her autobiography, clearly inseparable from her religious vocation, expresses the tensions and conflicts that often accompanied the lives of women whose relationship to the divine endowed them with an authority at odds with the temporary powers of church and state. Last translated into English in 1916, Ana’s writings give modern readers fascinating insights into the nature of monastic life during the highly charged religious and political climate of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Spain.
Download or read book Debate of the Romance of the Rose written by David F. Hult and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1401, Christine de Pizan (1365a 1430?) wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular 'Romance of the Rose' for its unwarranted misogynistic depictions of women. Here, Hult collects debate documents, letters and excerpts from other works of Pizan, including one from 'City of Ladiesa' her major defense of women.
Download or read book The Court Midwife written by Justine Siegemund and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1690, The Court Midwife made Justine Siegemund (1636-1705) the spokesperson for the art of midwifery at a time when most obstetrical texts were written by men. More than a technical manual, The Court Midwife contains descriptions of obstetric techniques of midwifery and its attendant social pressures. Siegemund's visibility as a writer, midwife, and proponent of an incipient professionalism accorded her a status virtually unknown to German women in the seventeenth century. Translated here into English for the first time, The Court Midwife contains riveting birthing scenes, sworn testimonials by former patients, and a brief autobiography.
Download or read book Scanderbeide written by Margherita Sarrocchi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first historical heroic epic authored by a woman, Scanderbeide recounts the exploits of fifteenth-century Albanian warrior-prince George Scanderbeg and his war of resistance against the Ottoman sultanate. Filled with scenes of intense and suspenseful battles contrasted with romantic episodes, Scanderbeide combines the action and fantasy characteristic of the genre with analysis of its characters’ motivations. In selecting a military campaign as her material and epic poetry as her medium, Margherita Sarrocchi (1560?–1617) not only engages in the masculine subjects of political conflict and warfare but also tackles a genre that was, until that point, the sole purview of men. First published posthumously in 1623, Scanderbeide reemerges here in an adroit English prose translation that maintains the suspense of the original text and gives ample context to its rich cultural implications.
Download or read book Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain written by María de Guevara and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During a pivotal point in Spanish history, aristocrat María 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-Díaz’s adroit translation, 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.
