The Book of the City of Ladies and Other Writings

The Book of the City of Ladies and Other Writings
Author: Christine De Pizan
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1624667317

"Fresh, accurate, and engaging, this new translation of the Book of the City of Ladies helps us to understand what made Christine de Pizan so popular with her fifteenth-century contemporaries. The editors provide a rich historical and philosophical context that will be very useful to both students and scholars of the history of political ideas. The translations themselves gracefully navigate the fine line between accuracy and readability with considerable charm. Rounding out this portrait of the turmoil of fifteenth-century France, the volume is enriched by excerpts from other works, Christine's Vision, the Book of the Body Politic, and the Lamentation on France’s Ills." —Kate Forhan, Emeritus, Siena College CONTENTS:IntroductionA Note on Translating the Book of the City of LadiesChristine de Pizan: Her works, Her TimesSuggestions for Further ReadingFrom Christine's Vision (1405)The Book of the City of Ladies (1404–1405)From The Book of the Body Politic (1404–1407)From Lamentation on France's Ills (1410)Index

The Book of the City of Ladies

The Book of the City of Ladies
Author: Christine Pizan
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1999-06-09
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0141907584

Christine de Pizan (c.1364-1430) was France's first professional woman of letters. Her pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine has a dreamlike vision where three virtues - Reason, Rectitude and Justice - appear to correct this view. They instruct her to build an allegorical city in which womankind can be defended against slander, its walls and towers constructed from examples of female achievement both from her own day and the past: ranging from warriors, inventors and scholars to prophetesses, artists and saints. Christine de Pizan's spirited defence of her sex was unique for its direct confrontation of the misogyny of her day, and offers a telling insight into the position of women in medieval culture. THE CITY OF LADIES provides positive images of women, ranging from warriors and inventors, scholars to prophetesses, and artists to saints. The book also offers a fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture.

Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle

Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle
Author: Anna Maria van Schurman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226850005

Advocate and exemplar of women's education, female of aristocratic birth and modest demeanor, Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) was one of Reformation Europe's most renowned writers defending women's intelligence. From her early teens, Schurman garnered recognition and admiration for her accomplishments in languages, philosophy, poetry, and painting. As an adult she actively engaged in written correspondence and debate with Europe's leading intellectuals. Nevertheless, Schurman refused to regard herself as an anomaly among women. A supporter of the female sex, she argues that the same rigorous education that shaped her should be made available to all Christian daughters of the aristocracy. Gathered here in meticulous translation are Anna Maria van Schurman's defense of women's education, her letters to other learned women, and her own account of her early life, as well as responses to her work from male contemporaries, and rare writings by Schurman's mentor, Voetius. This volume will interest the general reader as well as students of women's, religious, and social history.

Autobiography and Other Writings

Autobiography and Other Writings
Author: Ana de San Bartolomé
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2008-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226143732

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.

Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works

Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works
Author: Marie le Jars de Gournay
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226305260

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.

A Rule for Children and Other Writings

A Rule for Children and Other Writings
Author: Jacqueline Pascal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226648346

Jacqueline Pascal (1625-1661) was the sister of Blaise Pascal and a nun at the Jansenist Port-Royal convent in France. She was also a prolific writer who argued for the spiritual rights of women and the right of conscientious objection to royal, ecclesiastic, and family authority. This book presents selections from the whole of Pascal's career as a writer, including her witty adolescent poetry and her pioneering treatise on the education of women, A Rule for Children, which drew on her experiences as schoolmistress at Port-Royal. Readers will also find Pascal's devotional treatise, which matched each moment in Christ's Passion with a corresponding virtue that his female disciples should cultivate; a transcript of her interrogation by church authorities, in which she defended the controversial theological doctrines taught at Port-Royal; a biographical sketch of her abbess, which presented Pascal's conception of the ideal nun; and a selection of letters offering spirited defenses of Pascal's right to practice her vocation, regardless of patriarchal objections.

The Mary We Forgot

The Mary We Forgot
Author: Jennifer Powell McNutt
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493446436

Mary Magdalene's life was transformed when she was healed by Christ and joined his ministry from Galilee to Jerusalem. The Gospels teach that she was also a witness at the cross and the first one sent by Christ to preach his resurrection. Yet her story is often confused, scandalized, and undervalued by the church. In The Mary We Forgot, award-winning church historian and theologian Jennifer Powell McNutt unpacks Scripture and history to reveal the real Mary Magdalene: the first apostle of the good news and a model of discipleship for both men and women today. McNutt also invites readers along on her journey through southern France, tracing the path remembered by some church traditions as where Mary Magdalene spread the gospel. Christians will learn from the disciple known as the "apostle to the apostles" how to embrace Jesus's calling to "go and tell" with faith and courage. They'll also be encouraged by the reminder that God calls ordinary, imperfect, and unexpected people to share the good news of Jesus Christ. The hope of remembering Mary Magdalene is ultimately to better know the one to whom she pointed, the risen Christ.

Thinking Woman

Thinking Woman
Author: Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2016-08-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0718844556

What does it mean to be a woman? Do women have a unique nature and a unique vocation? Should feminists work to help women specifically or to support all people? Thinking Woman examines the lives and ideas of women in the history of philosophy who wished to understand and advocate for themselves as women. Some, like Hildegard of Bingen and Edith Stein, found women to be a unique creature designed by God, necessary for good stewardship of creation. Others, such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Sojourner Truth, found women to be identical to men in all but biology and thus identical before the law. Still others, from Simone de Beauvoir to Judith Butler, found the very question troubling as they tried to sort out cultural ideas from biological rules. These women and their views form a canon on the question of women, a canon that can help guide the conversation for thinkers and activists today who want both to understand women and to advocate for justice for all people.

Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition

Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition
Author: Hilda L. Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 1998-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521585095

This collection of essays includes studies of women's political writings from Christine de Pizan to Mary Wollstonecraft and explores in depth the political ideas of the writers in their historical and intellectual context. The volume illuminates the limitations placed on women's political writings and their broader political role by the social and scholarly institutions of early modern Europe. In so doing, the authors probe legal and political restraints, distinct national and state organisation, and assumptions concerning women's proper intellectual interests. In this endeavour, the volume explores questions and subjects traditionally ignored by historians of political thought and little considered even by current feminist theorists, groups who give slight attention to women's political ideas or place women's writings within the social and intellectual structures from which they emerged and which they helped to shape.