Picturing Women in Urania by Mary Wroth and Clelie by Madeleine De Scudery
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Picturing Women in Urania by Mary Wroth and Clelie by Madeleine de Scudery Severine Nathalie Genieys (11i.A, D. E. A) PhD University of Glasgow Faculty of Arts February 2003 Picturing Women in Urania by Mary Wroth and Clelie by Madeleine de Scudery ý .. "=ý ý"t "ý" rý ... ý. ý Abstract My parallel reading of two seventeenth-century romances by two women, one English, one French, aims to illumine the early modern mapping of womanhood from a female perspective. Part one examines the discourse of virtuous women in the patriarchal societies of Urania and Clelie. Adopting an approach based on close stylistic analysis, I explore, on the one hand, the extent to which the marriage topos endows or does not endow these women with speech and power, and on the other the extent to which the marriage topos enables the utterance of a protofeminist discourse. While the marriage topos initially allows us to visualise these women as daughters, sisters, mothers and wives, it gradually unveils women not only as the apologists of true love, but also as androgynous heroines in the male-authored domain of politics. Having discussed the discourse (mostly oral) of Uranian and Scuderian heroines in the context of a society functioning on the basis of political alliances, I move on to analyse `The loci of the feminine', i. e. the configuration of female spaces in the two texts. This analysis is developed in parts two and three of the thesis. The first part begins by examining the cultural milieux of Mary Wroth and Madeleine de Scudery, and explores some of the evidence regarding the possible existence of an early modem English equivalent of French `salons'. This chapter measures the extent to which Urania and Clelie might be construed as illustrations of the highly intense activities of Wroth's and Scudery's literary circles. The next chapter focusses on the Uranian and Scuderian fictionalisation of a predominantly female community. Part three assessesthe ways in which these texts seem to inscribe themselves within a protofeminist project of re-evaluating female legacy and authorship in the realm of letters, and proceeds to explore more specifically the representation of literary creativity in Urania's and Clelie's female retreats. My final part examines the subject of the thesis in its literal sense, by analysing Wroth's and Scudery's representations of the female body, and images in Urania Clelie relates - where appropriate - of women and to those found in the visual arts of the early modem period, such as emblems, engravings, paintings and masques. It first considers Wroth's and Scudery's handling of negative images of womanhood. Early modem discourse on women is fraught with ambiguities, and oscillates from one extreme to another, depending on whether it addressesfemale vice or virtue. What is unacceptable for an anti-heroine may on the contrary be perfectly becoming in a heroine. The next chapter goes on to illustrate this paradox by focussing on Wroth's and Scudery's pictorial representations of female exemplarity. In this last section, I draw particular attention to the relationship between these images of female exemplarity and those by two early seventeenth-century female painters, Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi. Although limited to Wroth's Urania and Scudery's Clelie, this study seeks to envision these works not merely as the masked autobiographies of their authors, but as a literary corpus of topoi, themes and techniques that are in some sense characteristic of aristocratic women's writing in early modem Europe. Contents List Illustrations of ........................................................................... Acknowledgments ............................................................................. Abbreviations ................................................................................... General Introduction ....................................................................... 11 Part One: The expression of female virtue in the fictive societies 40 of Urania and Clelie ............................................. Chapter One: Urania ..............................Clelie family bonds 41 and as mirrors of ................. I. The in 42 marriage topos the two works ....................................................... H. Women daughters 49 as ............................................................................... III. The Uranian Scuderian heroine 58 paradox of the and ........................ Chapter Two: Female discourse the for true love 72 as apology ................ heart's in Urania Clelie: female design 72 IV. The pilgrimage and a ................ V. The female in debate inconstancy 85 voice the over man's ......................... VI. The defence love its imagery 90 of true and poetic .................................... VII. The female for love: discourse? 97 apology true a protofeminist .............. Chapter Three: Women in Urania Clelie 111 as rulers and .......................... VIII. In Uranian Scuderian female 113 the and temple of excellences................ IX. Women Amazons 116 as .............................................................................. X. Women legislators 121 as ............................................................................... XI. Women 125 as mediators .............................................................................. Part Two: The loci of the feminine (1): society 132 Chapter Four: The literary milieux of Mary Wroth and Madeleine de Scudery 135 ........................................................................................................ , I. Redefining the `salon 135 concept of culture' ................................................. H. The backgrounds Mary Wroth Madeleine de Scudery 138 cultural of and ..... III. A 148 cultural sisterhood of art ..................................................... IV. Fictionalisation of a sisterhood of art in two contemporary texts........... 153 Chapter Five: Feminocentric spaces and their inner dynamics in Urania Clelie 158 and ....................................................................................... V. A far-reaching 158 tradition ........................................................................... VI. Women as landowners, architects and garden designers in Urania and Clelie 162 ............................................................................................................ VII. The concept of `galanterie.................................................................... 173 VIII. Uranian and Scuderian gardens as the theatres of a `societd galante'.. 178 IX. The fictionalisation of female friendship in Urania and Clelie........... 185 Part Three: The loci the feminine (2): 203 of creativity ........................ Chapter Six: Female in Urania Clelie 205 authorship and ............................ I. Public recognition of female authorship in the early modern period......... 205 II. Public recognition of female poetic creativity in Urania and Clelie...... 211 III. Implicit recognition of female literary genius in Urania and Clelie...... 219 IV. Limitations of female authorship (1): Theoretical views in the `Story Sappho' 226 of ..................................................................................................... V. Limitations of female authorship (2): the practice of self-censorship...... 230 Chapter Seven: Female literary creativity in Urania and Clelie............ 240 loci femaleliterary 240 VI. Gardensand rooms as the of creativity.................... VII. Baroque aesthetics and the inner tragedy of the Uranian poetess......... 249 VIII. Classical aesthetics and the inner tragedy of the Scuderian poetess..... 264 Part Four: Pictorial representations of women in Urania and Clelie 282 .................................................................................................... Chapter Eight: Negative representations of womanhood in Urania Clelie 284 and ............................................................................. I. Contradictions in 284 early modem representations of women .................. II. Women 288 as monsters................................................................................. III. Negative female beauty 297 representations of ............................................. IV. Pictorial folly in Urania 309 representations of and vanity ......................... Chapter Nine: Pictorial representations of virtuous women in Urania Clelie 322 and .................................................................................................... V. Petrarchan ideal female beauty 323 representations of the of ........................ VI. Portraits in Urania 331 of virtuous women .................................................. VII. Portraits of virtuous women in Clelie: a seventeenth-century French 337 genre?........................................................................................................... VIII. Portraits of women `identified as essentialised sites of spectacle'....... 346 IX. The theatricality Uranian Scuderian in black 356 of and women .................. X. The male character as Actaeon in the female spaces of Urania and Clelie 360 ............................................................................................................ XI. Aesthetic female body in Urania Clelie 370 pleasure and the and ............... XII. Heroinism the female body in Urania Clelie 382 and and ........................... Conclusion 395 ............................................................................................