Chapter 5: Women and the Creation of Culture
For Further Reading
Several good surveys of women and art that include consideration of the early modern period are the following: Eleanor Tufts, Our Hidden Heritage: Five Centuries of Women
Artists (New York, Paddington Press, 1974); Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin,
Women Artists: 1550–1950 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976); Germaine Greer, The
Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work (New York, Farrar,
Strauss, Giroux, 1979); Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women,
Art and Ideology (New York, Pantheon Books, 1981); Wendy Slatkin, Women Artists in
History from Antiquity to the 20th Century, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall,
1990); Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (London, Thames and Hudson,
1990); Nancy G. Heller and Nancy Grubb (eds.), Women Artists: An Illustrated History
(New York, Abbeville Press, 1997); Liana De Girolami Cheney et al. (eds.), Self
Portraits by Women Painters (London, Gower Technical, 1999).
Fredrika H. Jacobs, Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa: Women Artists and the Language
of Art History and Criticism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997) provides a
longer discussion of the ways in which ideas about gender shaped perceptions of art and
the artist in Renaissance Italy. Insightful analyses of the situation of women artists and
gendered ideas of creativity in the eighteenth century can be found in Mary Sheriff, The
1 Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1996) and her Moved by Love: Inspired Artists and Deviant
Women in Eighteenth-Century France (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004).
There are now several excellent collections of articles: Geraldine A. Johnson and Sara F.
Matthews Grieco (eds.), Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997); Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian
Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation and Identity (Manchester, Manchester
University Press, 1997); Jane L. Carroll and Alison G. Stewart (eds.), Saints, Sinners, and
Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Burlington,
VT, Ashgate, 2003); Melissa Hyde and Jennifer Milam (eds.), Women, Art and the
Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2003).
Individual women artists are receiving increasing attention. On Sofonisba Anguissola, see
Frederika H. Jacobs, “Woman’s Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba
Anguissola,” Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994), 74–101; Mary D. Garrard, “Here’s
Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist,”
Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994), 556–621. On Lavinia Fontana, see Katherine A.
McIver, “Lavinia Fontana’s Self-Portrait Making Music,” Woman’s Art Journal 19
(1998), 3–8. On Judith Leyster, see Frima Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman
Painter in Holland’s Golden Age (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1989); James A. Welu and Pieter
Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World (Zwolle, the Netherlands,
Waanders; Worcester, MA, Worcester Art Museum, 1993). On Artemisia Gentileschi,
see Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian
Baroque Art (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1989); R. Ward Bissel, Artemisia
2 Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonne
(University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); Elizabeth S. Cohen, “The
Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History,” Sixteenth Century Journal (2000);
Mieke Bal, (ed.), The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other
Thinking People (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000). On Elisabeth Vigée Le
Brun, see Angela Rosenthal, “Infant Academies and the Childhood of Art: Elisabeth
Vigee-Lebrun's Julie with a Mirror,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 4 (Summer
2004), 605–28; Gita May, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of
Revolution (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2005). Natalie Davis includes study of the illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian in Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-
Century Lives (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1995).
Along with studies of women artists, there are many analyses of visual depictions of women and gender relationships. These include Yael Even, “The Loggia dei Lanzi: a
Showcase of Female Subjugation,” in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (eds.),
Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (New York, HarperCollins, 1992), 127–
37; Cristelle Baskins, Cassone Painting, Humanism and Gender in Early Modern Italy
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), and “Gender Trouble in Italian
Renaissance Art History: Two Case Studies,” Studies in Iconography 16 (1994), 1–36;
Melissa Hyde, “Confounding Conventions: Gender Ambiguity and Francois Boucher’s
Painted Pastorals,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 1 (Fall 1996), 25–57; Letitia
Panizza (ed.), Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society (Oxford, European
Humanities Research Center, 1997); Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary:
Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, Zone Books, 1998);
3 David Allen Brown (ed.), Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci and
Renaissance Portraits of Women (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2001);
Laura Auricchio, “The Laws of Bienseance and the Gendering of Emulation in
Eighteenth-Century French Art Education,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 2 (Winter
2003), 231–40; Cindy McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late
Eighteenth-Century England (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004); Shelley King,
“Amelia Opie’s ‘Maid of Corinth’ and the Origins of Art,” Eighteenth-Century Studies
37, no. 4 (Summer 2004), 629–51; Jayne Elizabeth Lewis, “‘No colour of language’:
Ann Radcliffe’s Aesthetic Unbound,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 3 (Spring
2006), 377–90. Anne Schutte, “Irene di Spilimbergo: The Image of a Creative Woman in
Late Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991), 42–61, discusses the way in which humanists paid tribute to a talented painter who died very young, and Victoria
Kirkham, “Creative Partners: The Marriage of Laura Battiferra and Bartolomeo
Ammannati,” Renaissance Quarterly 55, no. 2 (Summer 2002), 498–558, traces the long
marriage of painter and poet each highly acclaimed in their time. Susan Shifrin (ed.),
Women as Sites of Culture: Women’s Roles in Cultural Formation from the Renaissance
to the Twentieth Century (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2002), explores the ways in which
women have formed and defined expressions of culture in a range of geographical,
political, and historical settings. Patricia Phillippy, Painting Women: Cosmetics,
Canvases and Early Modern Culture (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006),
examines the ways in which the debate about cosmetics shaped the way women artists
portrayed themselves.
4 Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine
(London, The Woman’s Press, 1984), places women’s embroidery over many centuries within its ideological and social context, and Lisa M. Klein, “Your Humble Handmaid:
Elizabethan Gifts of Needlework,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (Summer 1997),
459–93, and Anna Lena Lindberg, “Through the Needle’s Eye: Embroidered Pictures on the threshold of modernity,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, no. 4 (Summer 1998), 503–
10, take more focused looks at needlework.
Women’s role in music is not as well studied as their role in art or literature, but more research is appearing every year. Good collections of articles include Jane Bowers and
Judith Tick (eds.), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950
(Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986); Thomasin LaMay (ed.), Musical Voices of
Early Modern Women: Many Headed Melodies (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2005). Carol
Neuls-Bates, Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York, Harper & Row, 1982), has some interesting original sources.
Craig Monson (ed.), The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion and the Arts in Early Modern
Europe (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1992), and Ann Matter and John
Coakley, Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), contains several essays on the composition and performance of music in Italian convents. The music of Italian nuns has received further study in Robert Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Italy
(Oxford, Clarendon, 1996); Jane Baldauf-Berdes, Women Musicians of Venice: Musical
Foundations, 1525–1855 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993) and “The Women
5 Musicians of Venice,” in Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch (eds.), Eighteenth-
Century Women and the Arts (New York, Greenwood, 1988), pp. 153–62; Craig Monson,
“Elena Malvezzi’s Keyboard Manuscript: A New Sixteenth-Century Source,” Early
Music History 9 (1989), 73–128, and Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an
Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995); Barbara
Garvey Jackson, “Oratorios by Command of the Emperor: The Music of Camilla de
Rossi,” Current Musicology 42 (1986), 7–19. For women and music outside of Italy, see
Richard D. Leppert, “Men, Women and Music at Home: The Influence of Cultural
Values on Musical Life in 18th-century England,” Imago Musical: International
Yearbook of Musical Iconography 3 (1985), 51–133; Carla Zecher, “The Gendering of the Lute in Sixteenth-Century French Love Poetry,” Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 3
(Autumn 2000), 769–91; Mary Jane Haemig, “Elisabeth Cruciger (1500?–1535): The
Case of the Disappearing Hymn Writer,” Sixteenth Century Journal 32, no. 1 (Spring
2001), 21–44; Kate van Orden, “Female ‘Complaintes’: Laments of Venus, Queens, and
City Women in Late Sixteenth-Century France,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 3
(Autumn 2001), 801–45. For actresses and women’s stage roles, see Elizabeth Howe, The
First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660–1700 (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1992); Viviana Comensoli and Anne Russell (eds.), Enacting Gender
on the Renaissance Stage (Champaign/Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1999; Pamela
Allen Brown and Peter Parolin (eds.), Women Players in England: Beyond the All-Male
Stage (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2005); M. A. Katritzky, Women, Medicine and Itinerant
Theatre, 1550–1750: Gendering Quacks (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2007).
6 Whereas women’s music has only recently begun to be studied, women’s writings have
received a great deal of attention. This is particularly the case for English women writers
during this period, for whom there are hundreds of analyses and text editions. The
following is thus just a sample; for further references, see Betty S. Travitsky and
Josephine A. Roberts, English Women Writers, 1500–1640: A Reference Guide (1750–
1996) (New York, G. K. Hall, 1997). For the Tudor period, see Margaret Hannay, Silent
But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works
(Kent, OH, Kent State University Press, 1985); Elaine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women
Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987); Anne
M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky, Renaissance Englishwomen in Print:
Counterbalancing the Canon (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1989); Tina
Krontiris, Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the
English Renaissance (London, Routledge, 1992); Louise Schleiner, Tudor and Stuart
Women Writers (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994); Helen Wilcox (ed.),
Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1996); and Maureen Quilligan, Incest and Agency in Elizabeth’s England (Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Fidelis Morgan, The Female Wits:
Women Playwrights on the London Stage 1660–1720 (London, Virago, 1981); Jane
Spencer, The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen (Oxford,
Basil Blackwell, 1986); Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, Fettered or Free:
British Women Novelists 1670–1815 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1986); Sara Heller
7 Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies (London, Harvester Press,
1987); Elaine Hobby, Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649–88 (Ann
Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1988); several of the essays in “Women in the
Renaissance: An Interdisciplinary Forum (MLA 1989)” Women’s Studies 19 (1991).;
Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman (eds.), Women, Writing, History: 1640–1740 (Athens,
University of Georgia Press, 1992); Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Writing Women in
Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993); Anita Pacheco
(ed.), Early Women Writers: 1600–1720 (London, Longman, 1996); Jonathan Goldberg,
Desiring Women Writing: English Renaissance Examples (Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press, 1997); Kate Chedgzoy et al. (eds.), Voicing Women: Gender and
Sexuality in Early Modern Writing (Keele, UK, Keele University Press, 1996); Margarete
Rubik, Early Women Dramatists, 1550–1800 (Boston, Bedford, 1998); Susan P.
Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (eds.), Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama
(London, Routledge, 1998); Gwynne Kennedy, Just Anger: Representing Women’s Anger in Early Modern England (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 2000);
Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (eds.), ‘This Double Voice’: Gendered Writing in
Early Modern England Early Modern Literature in History (New York, Palgrave
Macmillan 2000); Pamela S. Hammons, Poetic Resistance: English Women Writers and the Early Modern Lyric (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2002); Ina Habermann, Staging
Slander and Gender in Early Modern England (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2003); Pamela
Allen Brown, Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in
Early Modern England (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2003); Nicole Pohl and Brenda
8 Tooley, eds., Gender and Utopia in the Eighteenth Century: Essays in English and
French Utopian Writing (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2007).
Studies that address the issue of women’s authorship include Wendy Wall, The Imprint of
Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY, Cornell
University Press, 1993); Laura J. Rosenthal, Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early
Modern England: Gender, Authorship, Literary Property (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University
Press, 1996); Susan Frye, “Materializing Authorship in Esther Inglis’s Books,” Journal of
Medieval & Early Modern Studies 32, no. 3 (Fall 2002), 469–91; Sarah Prescott,
“Provincial Networks, Dissenting Connections, and Noble Friends: Elizabeth Singer
Rowe and Female Authorship in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth-Century
Life 25, no. 1 (Winter 2001), 29–42; Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (eds.), Early
Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2004); Susan Staves, A
Literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660–1789 (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2007)
For studies of English writers that contain long selections from their works, see Moira
Ferguson (ed.), First Feminists: British Women Writers, 1578–1799 (Bloomington,
Indiana University Press, 1985); Germaine Greer, Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, and
Melinda Sansone (eds.), Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women’s
Verse (New York, The Noonday Press, 1988); Barbara McGovern, Ann Finch and Her
9 Poetry: A Critical Biography (Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1992); Margaret
Hannay (ed.), The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Vols. I and II (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1996); Susan Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies,
Renaissance Drama by Women (London, Routledge, 1996); James Fitzmaurice et al.
(eds.), Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England (Ann Arbor, University of
Michigan Press, 1996); Randall Martin (ed.), Women Writers in Renaissance England
(London, Longman, 1997); Marion Wynne-Davies, Women Poets of the Renaissance
(London, Routledge, 1999); Danielle Clarke (ed.), Renaissance Women Poets: Isabella
Whitney, Mary Sidney, and Aemilia Lanyer (New York, Penguin Classic, 2001). An
invaluable resource for any study of seventeenth-century writers is Hilda L. Smith and
Susan Cardinale, Women and the Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New York,
Greenwood, 1990), a 300-page annotated bibliography of all the books by, for, and about
women published in English throughout the world 1641–1700. Margaret Hannay and
Susanne Woods (eds.), Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (New York, Modern
Language Association, 2000), provides useful approaches to a number of different authors.
Certain authors have received enormous amounts of attention. One of these is Aphra
Behn. Mary Ann O’Donnell (ed.), Aphra Behn: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2004), contains a bibliography of
Behn’s publications, of those edited or translated by her, of publications that included her works, and of writings ascribed to her, along with an annotated bibliography of more than
1,600 works about her from 1671 to 2001, including online sources. A sample of recent articles are the following: Alison Margaret Conway, “The Protestant Cause and a
10 Protestant Whore: Aphra Behn’s Love-Letters,” Eighteenth-Century Life 25, no. 3 (Fall
2001), 1–19; Adam R. Beach, “Carnival Politics, Generous Satire, and Nationalist
Spectacle in Behn’s The Rover,” Eighteenth-Century Life 28, no. 3 (Fall 2004), 1–19.
The influential and controversial Margaret Cavendish is also finally receiving the attention she deserves as an author of poetry, drama, prose fictions, orations, and natural philosophy. See Margaret Cavendish, New Blazing World and Other Writings, ed. and notes by Kate Lilley (New York, New York University Press, 1992); Lisa T. Sarasohn,
“A Science Turned Upside Down: Feminism and the Natural Philosophy of Margaret
Cavendish,” Huntington Library Quarterly 47 (1994), 299–307; Victoria Kahn,
“Margaret Cavendish and the Romance of Contract,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2
(Summer 1997), 526–66; special issue of Women’s Writing, edited by Emma L. E. Rees
4, no. 3 (1997); Anna Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exile of the Mind
(Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 1998); Elizabeth A. Spiller, “Reading through
Galileo’s Telescope: Margaret Cavendish and the Experience of Reading,” Renaissance
Quarterly 53, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 192–221; Randall Ingram, “First Words and Second
Thoughts: Margaret Cavendish, Humphrey Moseley, and ‘The Book’,” Journal of
Medieval & Early Modern Studies 30, no. 1 (Winter 2000), 101–24; Stephen Clucas
(ed.), A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
(Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2003); G. Gabrielle Starr, “Cavendish, Aesthetics, and the
Anti-Platonic Line,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 3 (Spring 2006), 295–308;
Deborah Boyle, “Fame, Virtue, and Government: Margaret Cavendish on Ethics and
Politics,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 2 (April 2006), 251–89. An excellent
11 and up-to-date bibliography on Margaret Cavendish can be found at
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/˜jbf/CavBiblio.html. Information on the International Margaret
Cavendish Society can be found at http://www.marcav.org.uk/
Along with analyses of the writings of Englishwomen, there are now three series devoted
to the reprinting or electronic dissemination of their works: The Early Modern
Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, published by Ashgate and
edited by Betty S. Travitsky and Patrick Cullen; Women Writers in English 1350–1850,
published by Oxford University Press and edited by Susanne Woords and Elizabeth H.
Hageman; the Brown University Women Writers Project, which offers more than 200
texts from 1450–1830, and is available online (with some parts free and some by license)
at www.wwp.brown.edu.
Writings by English women which were not strictly literary have been collected and analyzed in Marilyn L. Williamson, Raising Their Voice: British Women Writers, 1650–
1750 (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1990); Charlotte Otten, English Women’s
Voices: 1540–1700 (Miami, Florida International University, 1992); Valerie Frith (ed.),
Women and History: Voices from Early Modern England (London, Coach House, 1995);
Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (eds.), Women, Texts and Histories 1575–1760 (London,
Routledge, 1992); Sylvia Brown, Women’s Writing in Stuart England: The Mother’s
Legacies of Elizabeth Joscelin, Elizabeth Richardson and Dorothy Leigh (London,
12 Sutton, 1999); Jane Donawerth, Rhetorical Theory by Women before 1900: An Anthology
(Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Rebecca Connor, Women, Accounting and
Narrative: Keeping Books in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, Routledge, 2004).
For other studies of English women’s political and social writings, see Hilda L. Smith,
(ed.), Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998); Jacqueline LeBlanc, “Politics and Commercial
Sensibility in Helen Maria Williams’ Letters from France,” Eighteenth-Century Life 21,
no. 1 (February 1997), 26–44; Mitzi Myers, “War Correspondence: Maria Edgeworth and
the En-Gendering of Revolution, Rebellion, and Union,” Eighteenth-Century Life 22, no.
3 (November 1998), 74–91; Rachel Carnell, “It’s Not Easy Being Green: Gender and
Friendship in Eliza Haywood’s Political Periodicals,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no.
2 (Winter 1998–99), 199–214; Daniel E. White, “The ‘Joineriana’: Anna Barbauld, the
Aikin family circle, and the dissenting public sphere,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no.
4 (Summer 1999), 511–33; Scheuermann, “Hannah More and the English Poor,”
Eighteenth-Century Life 25, no. 2 (Spring 2001), 237–51; Mary A. Waters, “‘The first of
a new genus’: Mary Wollstonecraft as A Literary Critic and Mentor to Mary Hays,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 3 (Spring 2004), 415–434; Sarah Prescott, “The
Cambrian Muse: Welsh Identity and Hanoverian Loyalty in the Poems of Jane Brereton
(1685–1740),” Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 4 (Summer 2005), 587–603.
English women’s writings, along with those from women living in other parts of Europe, are also contained in three collections edited by Katharina M. Wilson, Medieval Women
13 Writers, Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, Women Writers of the
Seventeenth Century (Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1984, 1987, 1989). These contain selections from the work and discussions of the writings and lives of about twenty women each, providing some of the few translations easily available in English of the works of not only French, German, Spanish, and Italian women, but also several from
Hungary, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. If the reader is seeking to gain a broad overview of women’s writings over the centuries, these three books are the best place to start. Another good series that reprints women’s writings from the period and provides parallel texts of the original language and English is Domna Stanton (ed.), The Defiant
Muse: French Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present; Beverly Allen,
Muriel Kittel, and Keale Jane Jewell (eds.), The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present; Susan L. Cocalis (ed.), The Defiant Muse: German
Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present; Angel Flores and Kate Flores
(eds.), The Defiant Muse: Hispanic Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present
(New York, Feminist Press, 1986). A large microfilm series, Women Advising Women,
Part 5: Women’s Writing and Advice, 1450–1700, produced by Adam Matthew
Publications, includes English and French sources from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and is available at some research libraries.
Excellent translations of the works of Continental women writers, especially Italian and
French, can be found in the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, edited by
Margaret King and Albert Rabil, Jr., and published by the University of Chicago Press.
These include Tullia d’Aragona, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, ed. and trans.
14 Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry (1997); Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici, Sacred
Narratives, ed. and trans. Jane Tylus (2001).
For further translations and analyses of the works of French women writers, see Ann
Rosalind Jones, “Surprising Fame: Renaissance Gender Ideologies and Women’s Lyric,” in Nancy Miller, The Poetics of Gender (New York, Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 74–95; François Rigolot, “Gender vs. Sex Difference in Louise Labé’s Grammar of
Love,” and Ann Rosalind Jones, “City Women and Their Audiences: Louise Labé and
Veronica Franco,” both in Margaret Ferguson et al. (eds.), Rewriting the Renaissance:
The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 287–98, 299–316; Elissa Weaver, “Spiritual Fun: A Study of
Sixteenth-Century Tuscan Convent Theater,” and Tilde Sankovitch, “Inventing Authority of Origin: The Difficult Enterprise” (on the Mesdames des Roches), both in Mary Beth
Rose, Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical
Perspectives (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 173–206, 227–44;
Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe 1540–1620
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990); Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies:
Women and the Origin of the Novel in France (New York, Columbia University Press,
1991); Sara F. Matthews Grieco, “Georgette de Montenay: A Different Voice in
Sixteenth-Century Emblematics,” Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994), 793–871; Anne R.
Larsen, “Paradox and the Praise of Women: From Ortensio Lando and Charles Estienne to Marie de Romieu,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997), 759–74.
15 In terms of sixteenth-century French women writers, Marguerite de Navarre has been the
most studied. An excellent edition of her major work, The Heptameron, is the translation
by P. A. Chilton (New York, Penguin Classics, 1984). Analyses of her writings include:
Barbara Hochstetler Meyer, “Marguerite de Navarre and the androgynous portrait of
François Ier,” Renaissance Quarterly 48, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 287–325; Susan Snyder,
“Guilty Sisters: Marguerite de Navarre, Elizabeth of England, and the Miroir de l’âme
Pécheresse,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (Summer 1997), 443–58; Timothy
Hampton, “Examples, Stories, and Subjects in Don Quixote and the Heptameron,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 59, no. 4 (October 1998), 597–611; Marc-André
Wiesmann, “Rolandine’s lict de resul: An Arachnological Reading of a Tale by
Marguerite de Navarre,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31, no. 2 (Summer 2000), 433–52;
Leah Middlebrook, “‘Tout mon office’: Body Politics and Family Dynamics in the Verse
Epîtres of Marguerite de Navarre,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4, Part 1 (Winter
2001), 1108–41.
On Italian women writers, see Elissa Weaver, “The Convent Wall in Tuscan Convent
Drama,” E. Ann Matter, “The Personal and the Paradigm: The Book of Maria Domitilla
Galluzzi,” and Anne Jacobsen Schutte, “Inquisition and Female Autobiography: The
Case of Cecilia Ferrazzi,” all in Monson, Crannied Wall, cited earlier; Margaret
Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth
Century Venice (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992); several of the essays in
16 Maria Ornella Marotti, Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present
(University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996); Irma B. Jaffe, Shining
Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets (Bronx,
Fordham University Press, 2002).
For women writing in Latin, see Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005), and L. Churchill (ed.) Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to
Early Modern Europe, 3 vols., with Vol. 3 covering the early modern era (London,
Routledge, 2006).
The works of German and Dutch women authors have been analyzed in Barbara Becker-
Cantarino, “‘Outsiders’: Women in German Literary Culture of Absolutism,” Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 16, no. 2 (1982), 147–57; Jeannine Blackwell and
Susanne Zantop, Bitter Healing: German Women Writers 1700–1840 (Lincoln,
University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Ute Brandes, “Baroque Women Writers and the
Public Sphere,” Women in German Yearbook 7 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press,
1991); Katherine R. Goodman and Edith Waldstein (eds.), In the Shadow of Olympus:
German Women Writers around 1800 (Albany, State University of New York Press,
1992); Anna Cardus, “Consolation Arguments and Maternal Grief in Seventeenth-
Century Verse: The Example of Margarethe Susanna von Kuntsch, German Life and
Letters 47 (1994), 135–51; Lynne Tatlock and Christine Bohnert (eds.), The Graph of Sex and the German Text: Gendered Culture in Early Modern Germany 1500–1700, Chloe:
Beihefte zum Daphnis, 19 (Amsterdam, Rodolpi, 1994); Hermina Joldersma, “Anna
17 Bijns” in K. P. Aercke (ed.), Women Writing in Dutch (New York, Garland, 1994), pp.
93–146; Florence Koorn, “A Life of Pain and Struggle: The Autobiography of Elizabeth
Strouven (1600–1661),” in Magdalene Heuser (ed.), Autobiographien von Frauen:
Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte (Tübingen, Max Miemeyer, 1996), pp. 13–24; Merry
Wiesner-Hanks, “Kinder, Kirche, Landeskinder: Women Defend Their Publishing in
Early Modern Germany,” in Robin B. Barnes, Robert A. Kolb, and Paula L. Presley
(eds.), Books Have Their Own Destiny (Kirksville, MO, Sixteenth Century Journal,
1998), pp. 143–52; Susanne T. Kord, Little Detours: Letters and Plays by Louise
Gottsched (1713–1762) (Columbia, SC, Camden House, 2000); Anne-Laure van
Bruaene, “Brotherhood and Sisterhood in the Chambers of Rhetoric in the Southern Low
Countries,” Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 1 (Spring 2005), 11–36. Joy Wiltenburg
(ed. and trans.), Women in Early Modern Germany: An Anthology of Popular Texts
(Tempe, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), includes translations of texts about women on a range of themes: marriage, love and sex, heroines, anti-heroines, work, and household. One of the few works that looks at writing from eastern Europe (although the author was actually German) is Lurana Donnels O’Malley,
The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great: Theatre and Politics in Eighteenth-Century
Russia (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2006).
Studies of Spanish women writers in English include Paul Julian Smith, The Body
Hispanic: Gender and Sexuality in Spanish and Spanish American Literature (Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1989); Lou Charnon-Deutsch, “The Sexual Economy in the Narrative of
María de Zayas,” Letras feminas 17 (1991), 15–28; Lou Charnon-Deutsch (ed.), Studies
18 on Hispanic Women Writers in Honor of Georgina Sabat Rivers (Madrid, Castalia,
1992); Ursula K. Heise, “Transvestism and the Stage Controversy in Spain and England,
1580–1680,” Theatre Journal (1992), 357–74; Amy R. Williamsen and Judith A.
Whitenack (eds.), María de Zayas: The Dynamics of Discourse (Teaneck, NJ, Fairleigh
Dickenson University Press, 1995); Valerie Hegstrom and Amy Williamsen,
Engendering the Early Modern Stage: Women Playwrights in the Spanish Empire (New
Orleans, University Press of the South, 1999): Margaret R. Greer, María de Zayas Tells
Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty of Men (University Park, Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2000). Translations include María de Zayas y Sotomayor, The
Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels, trans. H. Patsy Boyer (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1990); Amy Kaminsky (ed.), Water Lilies/Flores del
agua: An Anthology of Spanish Women Writers from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth
Century (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,
The Answer/La respuesta, Including a Selection of Poems, ed. Amanda Powell and Electa
Arenal (New York, Feminist Press, 1994), and Poems, Protest, and a Dream, trans.
Margaret Sayers Peden (London, Penguin, 1997); Elizabeth Franklin Lewis, Women
Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, Women and Gender in
the Early Modern World (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2004); Theresa Ann Smith, “Writing
out of the Margins: Women, Translation, and the Spanish Enlightenment,” Journal of
Women’s History 15, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 116–43.
Women’s autobiographies and memoirs have received special attention. See Mary G.
Mason, “The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers,” in James Olney (ed.),
19 Autobiographies: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1980), pp. 207–35; Estelle C. Jelinek (ed.), Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1980); Estelle C. Jelinek (ed.), The Tradition of
Women’s Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present (Boston, Twayne, 1986); Elsbeth
Graham et al. (eds.), Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century
Englishwomen (London, Routledge, 1989); Kathryn R. King, “Jane Barker and Her Life
(1652–1732): The Documentary Record,” Eighteenth-Century Life 21, no. 3 (November
1997), 16–38; Lesley H. Walker, “Sweet and Consoling Virtue: The Memoirs of Madame
Roland,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34, no. 3 (Spring 2001), 403–19; Sharon Cadman
Seelig, Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women’s Lives,
1600–1800 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006). Two recent editions of
English women’s diaries are D. J. H. Clifford (ed.), The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford
(London, Sutton, 1991), and Joanna Moody (ed.), The Private Life of an Elizabethan
Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605 (London, Sutton, 1998).
Women’s letters have also been the subject of many studies. See Teresa Heffernan,
“Feminism against the East/West Divide: Lady Mary’s Turkish Embassy Letters,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies 33, no. 2 (Winter 2000), 201–15; James Daybell (ed.), Early
Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700 (New York, Palgrave, 2001); Jane
Couchman and Ann Crabb (eds.), Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2005).The letters of two of the most important
20 early modern letter writers have been translated and reprinted: Madame de Sévigné,
Selected Letters, trans. Leonard Tancock (London, Penguin, 1982); Elisabeth Charlotte
Duchesse d’Orléans, A Woman’s Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte
von der Pfalz, 1652–1722, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1984).
Women’s writing of history has been discussed in Natalie Zemon Davis, “Gender and
Genre: Women as Historical Writers, 1400–1820,” in Patricia Labalme (ed.), Beyond
Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York, New York University
Press, 1980), pp. 153–82, and “History’s Two Bodies,” American Historical Review 93
(1988), 1–30; Gianna Pomata, “History, Particular and Universal: On Reading Some
Recent Women’s History Textbooks,” Feminist Studies 19 (1993): 7–50; D. R. Woolf,
“A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre, and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500–1800,”
American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (June 1997), 645–79; Charlotte Woodford,
“Women as Historians: The Case of Early Modern German Convents,” German Life and
Letters 52 (1999), 271–80; Devoney Looser, British Women Writers and the Writing of
History, 1670–1820 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Norma Clarke,
“Elizabeth Elstob (1674–1752): England’s First Professional Woman Historian?” Gender
and History 17, no. 1 (April 2005), 210–230.
Women’s role in print culture and the book trade have been discussed in Elizabeth
Goldsmith and Dena Goodman (eds.), Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early
Modern France (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1995); Deborah Parker, “Women
in the Book Trade in Italy, 1475–1620,” Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 3 (Autumn 1996),
21 509–41; Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the
London Literary Marketplace 1678–1730 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998); Axel
Erdmann, My Gracious Silence: Women in the Mirror of Sixteenth-Century Printing in
Western Europe (Luzerne, Gilhofer and Ranschberg, 1998); Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte
Grant, Clíona Ó. Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton (eds.), Women, Writing, and the Public
Sphere, 1700–1830 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2001); Susan Broomhall,
Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France (Burlington, VT, Ashgate,
2002); Helen Berry, Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England: The
Cultural World of the Athenian Mercury (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2003); Douglas A.
Brooks (ed.), Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Burlington, VT,
Ashgate, 2004).
Women’s activities as scientists and the gendered nature of science have been the subject of several major studies. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York, Harper & Row, 1980), which examines many facets of the change from an organic to a mechanistic view of the world, is extremely thought- provoking, controversial, and essential reading in the field. Londa Schiebinger, The Mind
Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 1989), looks at changes in the organization and definition of “science” that worked to exclude women. Patricia Phillips, The Scientific Lady: A Social History of Women’s
Scientific Interests, 1520–1918 (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), takes a more biographical approach, as does the more general survey, Margaret Alic, Hypatia’s
Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century
22 (Boston, Beacon, 1986). Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton (eds.), Women, Medicine and
Science 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society (London, Sutton, 1998),
looks at the writings and activities of women practicing medicine and science, and
Laurinda Dixon, Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and
Medicine (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1995) at images of women in medical
works. Natalie Davis includes study of the illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian in Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press, 1995). Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (New York, Penguin, 2000), centers on the translated letters of Galileo’s eldest daughter, Marie Celeste, who became a nun; the letters themselves can be found online at
Rice University Galileo Project: http://galileo.rice.edu/fam/daughter.html. Two
interesting articles on women’s role in the debate about animal experimentation are Mary
Ellen Bellanca, “Science, Animal Sympathy and Anna Barbauld’s ‘The Mouse’s
Petition’,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 1 (Fall 2003), 47–67, and Kathryn J.
Ready, “‘What then, poor beastie!’: gender, politics, and animal experimentation in Anna
Barbauld’s ‘The Mouse’s Petition’,” Eighteenth-Century Life 28, no. 1 (Winter 2004),
92–114. Several of the essays in Hypatia 4 (Spring 1989), special issue on the history of women, focus on early modern women.
The works of women philosophers have been reprinted in Margaret Atherton (ed.),
Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1994).
Biographies of women philosophers may be found in Mary Ellen Waithe (ed.), A History of Women Philosophers, vol. III (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991);
23 analyses of their works are found in Linda McAllister (ed.), Hypatia’s Daughters
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995), and John J. Conley, The Suspicion of
Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University
Press, 2002). More specialized studies include Sarah Hutton, “Damaris Cudworth, Lady
Masham: Between Platonism and Enlightenment,” The British Journal for the History of
Philosophy 1 (1993), 29–54; Mary Trouille, “La femme mal mariee: Mme d’Epinay’s
Challenge to Julie and Emile,” Eighteenth-Century Life 20, no. 1 (February 1996), 42–66;
Eileen O’Neill, “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in
History,” in Janet A. Kourany (ed.), Philosophy in a Feminist Voice (Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press, 1998); Andrea Nye, The Princess and the Philosopher (on
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia) (London, Rowman and Littlefield, 1999); Domenico
Bertoloni Meli, “Caroline, Leibniz, and Clarke,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60, no. 3
(July 1999), 469–86 (on Princess Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales); Anne L.
Schroder, “Going Public against the Academy in 1784: Mme de Genlis Speaks Out on
gender bias,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no. 3 (Spring 1999), 376-82; Vesna C.
Petrovich, “Women and the Paris Academy of Sciences,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32,
no. 3 (Spring 1999), 383–90; Susan Bordo (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of René
Descartes (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); E. Derek Taylor,
“Mary Astell’s Ironic Assault on John Locke’s Theory of Thinking Matter,” Journal of
the History of Ideas 62, no. 3 (July 2001), 505–22; Judith P. Zinsser, “Entrepreneur of the
‘Republic of Letters’: Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet, and Bernard
Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees,” French Historical Studies 25, no. 4 (Fall 2002), 595–
624; Sarah Ellenzweig, “The Love of God and the Radical Enlightenment: Mary Astell’s
24 Brush with Spinoza,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 3 (July 2003), 379–97. Two biographies of major women philosophers are Sarah Hutton, Anne Conway: A Woman
Philosopher (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Judith Zinsser, La
Dame d’Esprit: A Biography of Marquise Du Chatelet (New York, Viking, 2006).
Berenice A. Carroll and Hilda L. Smith, (eds.) Women’s Political & Social Thought: An
Anthology (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001), provides selections of women’s writings from many cultures across history.
Web Sites
Artcyclopedia. A useful guide to art on the Web, with a separate index for women artists.
Includes links to art by nearly fifty women working in Europe before 1800, including
Judith Leyster, whose self-portrait is shown here. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/women.html
25
Art History Resources on the Web. Mega-site with many links, designed and maintained by Dr. Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Professor, Department of Art History, Sweet Briar
College, Virginia http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks2.html
26
Web Gallery of Art. A virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from twelfth to mid-nineteenth centuries, including works by women artists. http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/welcome.html
27
Timeline of Art History The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. Includes numerous special topics sections on nearly every aspect of Renaissance and baroque art, and also on armor, anatomy, book production, musical instruments of all types, clothing, household furnishings, and political and economic developments. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm
28
An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction. Manuals, ca. 1490–1920. A
Library of Congress site on dance instruction manuals, with video clips of dance steps from many eras. A good resource for Renaissance and baroque dance. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/divideos.html
The Word on the Street. Searchable database, with downloadable facsimiles, of nearly
1800 broadsides held National Library of Scotland, printed between 1650 and 1910. http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/
29
Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. The Bodleian Library at Oxford University has
more than 30,000 printed ballads ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The
Broadside Ballads project makes the digitized copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community. Includes some sound files. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm
30
Other Women’s Voices. Introduction to more than 100 pre-eighteenth-century women authors who have been translated into modern English, including excerpts of works and references to print and on line editions. Includes about fifty women from Europe 1450–
1700 who originally wrote in several different languages, including Louise Labé, shown here. http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/
31
Emory Women Writers Resource Project. Collection of poetry, prose and drama by
women writing in English from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Includes edited as well as unedited texts.
http://chaucer.library.emory.edu/wwrp/index.html
Early Modern French Women Writers. A digitized text collection covering the years
1400-1700, concentrating on important French women writers of all genres. In French.
http://etrc.lib.umn.edu/frenwom.htm
Luminarium. Works of many, many English writers, 1350 through 1660. Women writers
include Mary Sidney Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish,
32 Dorothy Osbourne, Katherine Phillips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Mary Astell, and Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu (shown here). http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm
Early Modern Literary Studies. A gathering of links to select electronic texts of fifteenth-,
sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century materials that are on the Web. Includes links to works
by Aphra Behn (shown here), Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth I, Anne Finch, Anne Killigrew,
Aemilia Lanyer, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Katherine Phillips, and Mary Wroth.
http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlsetxt.html
33
Renascence Editions. Provides noncritical editions of many works printed in English between 1477 and 1799, designed for teachers, students, and the general public. Women authors include Aphra Behn, Elizabeth I, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/ren.htm
Eighteenth-Century Studies. This collection includes links to full-text versions of novels, plays, memoirs, treatises, and poems of the period.
34 http://eserver.org/18th/
Eighteenth-Century Resources. Texts and links to other texts from many eighteenth- century authors, included links to several sites with works by women authors. Maintained by Jack Lynch of Rutgers—Newark. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/lit.html
Original Sources
1. Artemisia Gentileschi, Letter to Her Patron Don Antonio Ruffo, 1649
Artemisia Gentileschi (1592º1653) was one of the most prolific female painters of the seventeenth century. She painted many mythological and biblical scenes involving women, including numerous depictions of the Old Testament heroine Judith, who cut off the head of the tyrant Holofernes during his war with the Israelites. In this letter, she writes to one of her patrons.
35
My Most Illustrious Sir,
I prefer not to discuss our business in this letter in case that gentleman [the bearer of this letter] will read it. With regard to your request that I reduce the price of the paintings, I will tell Your Most Illustrious Lordship that I can take a little from the amount that I asked, but the price must not be less than four hundred ducats, and you must send me a deposit as all other gentlemen do. However, I can tell you for certain that the higher the price, the harder I will strive to make a painting that will please Your Most
Illustrious Lordship and that will conform to my taste and yours. With regard to the painting which I have already finished for Your Most Illustrious Lordship, I cannot give it to you for less than I asked, as I have already overextended myself to give the lowest price. I swear, as your servant, that I would not have given it even to my father for the price that I gave you. Don Antonio, my Lord, I beg you, for God’s sake, not to reduce the price because I am sure that when you see it, you will say that I was not presumptuous.
Your nephew, the Duke, thinks that I must have great affection for you to charge you such a price. I only wish to remind you that there are eight [figures], two dogs and landscape and water. Your Most Illustrious Lordship will understand that the expense for models is staggering.
I am going to say no more except what I have in my mind, that I think Your Most
Illustrious Lordship will not suffer any loss with me and that you will find the spirit of
Caesar in the soul of a woman.
And thus I most humbly bow to you.
Your Most Illustrious Lordship’s most humble servant Artemisia
36
2. Marguerite d’Angoulême, Heptameron, 1558
Marguerite Angoulême was the sister of Francis I, king of France, and the wife of Henry
II. She gained an excellent humanist education, learning Latin and Greek, and later
supported humanist writers (including Rabelais) and religious reformers. She wrote
poems and plays and a collection of intertwined short stories, some humorous and some
serious. She originally intended to write 100 stories, as Boccaccio had in the Decameron,
but died before this was completed. After her death, the stories were published as the
Heptameron. This is one of the earlier, shorter stories; the entire Heptameron can be
found at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/navarre/heptameron/heptameron-
1.html#N6
NOVEL VI.
Stratagem by which a woman enabled her gallant to escape, when her husband, who was
blind of an eye, thought to surprise them together.
CHARLES, the last Duke of Alençon, had an old valet-de-chambre who was blind of an
eye, and who was married to a woman much younger than himself. The duke and duchess
liked this valet better than any other domestic of that order in their household, and the consequence was that he could not go and see his wife as often as he could have wished, whilst she, unable to accommodate herself to circumstances, so far forgot her honor and her conscience as to fall in love with a young gentleman of the neighborhood. At last the affair got wind, and there was so much talk about it, that it reached the ears of the husband, who could not believe it, so warm was the affection testified to him by his wife.
37 One day, however, he made up his mind to know the truth of the matter, and to revenge
himself if he could on the person who put this affront upon him. With this view he
pretended to go for two or three days to a place at some little distance; and no sooner had
he taken his departure, than his wife sent for her gallant. They had hardly been half an
hour together when the husband came and knocked loudly at the door. The wife knowing
but too well who it was, told her lover, who was so astounded that he could have wished
he was still in his mother’s womb. But while he was swearing and confounding her and
the intrigue which had brought him into such a perilous scrape, she told him not to be
uneasy, for she would get him off without its costing him anything; and that all he had to
do was to dress himself as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile the husband kept knocking and calling to his wife as loud as he could
bawl, but she pretended not to know him. “Why don’t you get up,” she cried to the people
of the house, “and go and silence those who are making such a noise at the door? Is this a
proper time to come to honest people’s houses? If my husband was here he would make
you know better.” The husband, hearing her voice, shouted louder than ever. “Let me in,
wife; do you mean to keep me at the door till daylight?” At last, when she saw that her
lover was ready to slip out, “Oh, is that you, husband?” she said; “I am so glad you are
come! I was full of a dream I had that gave me the greatest pleasure I ever felt in my life.
I thought you had recovered the sight of your eye.” Here she opened the door, and catching her husband round the neck, kissed him, clapped one hand on his sound eye, and asked him if he did not see better than usual. Whilst the husband was thus blindfolded the gallant made his escape. The husband guessed how it was, but said “I will watch you no more, wife. I thought to deceive you, but it is I who have been the dupe, and you have put
38 the cunningest trick upon me that ever was invented. God mend you! for it passes the act of man to bring back a wicked woman from her evil ways by any means short of putting her to death. But since the regard I have had for you has not availed to make you behave better, perhaps the contempt with which I shall henceforth look upon you will touch you more, and have a more wholesome effect.” Therefore he went away, leaving her in great confusion. At last, however, he was prevailed upon by the solicitations of relations and friends, and by the tears and excuses of his wife, to cohabit with her again.
You see from this example, ladies, with what adroitness a woman can get herself out of a scrape. If she is prompt at finding an expedient to conceal a bad deed, I believe she would be still more prompt and ingenious in discovering means to hinder herself from doing a good one; for, as I have heard say, good wit is always the stronger.
3. Sonnets of Louise Labé
Louise Labé (1524–1566) lived in Lyons in France, where she wrote a variety of works, including twenty-four sonnets, all on the theme of passionate love. Translations of all her sonnets by Alice Park are available online athttp://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/LouiseLabeIndex.html. Further information and links can be found at http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/labe.html.
Sonnet I—What If the Hero
What if the hero of the Odyssey
Had been like you, a man that’s fair of face?
Would he have had that easy-mannered grace,
39 Yet be the cause of so much agony?
At any rate, your roving ways are sure
To make me count the weeks we’ve been apart,
And open gaping wounds within my heart,
This ailing heart which you alone can cure.
O ill-starred fate! A scorpion sting
Eats at my heart. I need a remedy
From the malicious beast that poisoned me.
I beg you, dear, just stop my suffering.
Come back to your true love, and let me lie
Clasped in your arms again, or let me die.
Sonnet VIII—I Live, I Die
I live, I die, I burn with fire, I drown.
It matters very little what I feel;
All life is now too real, now too surreal;
Joy comes and endless boredom weighs me down,
And suddenly I laugh and then I cry;
With grief and bliss I’m weeping for the past;
Good feelings go away and yet they last,
And suddenly I bleed and then I sigh.
That’s how it goes. Strange, ever changing love
Has worn me out. I wish I were removed
40 From such a star-crossed fate! I need a truce
With Lady Luck. Again and yet again,
Her wheel is spinning madly to produce
This wanton, wild, intense, exquisite pain.
Sonnet XXIV—Do Not Blame Me, Ladies
Do not blame me, ladies, if I’ve been moved,
If I have felt a thousand fiery flames,
A thousand wincings, and a thousand pangs,
If I’ve been worn out weeping for my love.
Oh, no! Don’t whisper insults at my name.
If I have erred, my sentence is at hand.
And don’t let fly your barbs. But understand
That love does appear in its own sweet time.
Don’t say it is the god of fire who lights
The match. And don’t be finding fault with fair
Adonis, for your plunge into the bright
And lovely passion. Please take care.
And have a bit more sense than I have had.
Then try, dear ladies, not to be so sad.
4. Poetry by Vittoria Colonna
41 Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547) was an Italian noblewoman and poet who established an informal group for the presentation and discussion of written work and published a book of poetry under her own name in 1538, the first solo edition of a woman’s poetry to appear in print. Her group became associated with movements of religious reform, as did a group surrounding Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549), the sister of the French king
Francis I, with whom Colonna regularly corresponded. She developed a friendship with
Michelangelo Buonarroti, which grew through visits and letters; the two sent poetry to each other, and at least one drawing of Colonna is by Michelangelo.
Three of Colonna’s poems are reproduced here, with the translations done by
Ellen Moody, who has put most of Colonna’s poems online at http://www.jimandellen.org/vcpoetry/vctitle.htm. For more information on Colonna and links to other of her writings, seehttp://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/colonna.html.
I write to vent the inward pain my heart
I write to vent the inward pain my heart feeds upon—I seek nothing else—surely no-one can think I mean to add to the splendor this buried gladiator cast.
I am right to obey my urge to mourn; though the thought I damage his fame hurts me,
I am leaving to other pens, wiser heads the task of saving his name from death.
42
May rooted loyalty, love, and a weight of sorrow, this anguish neither reason nor time can lessen—excuse me to each of you.
Bitter crying, a song which is not sweet, bleak sighs, a disquieted voice: I’ll boast not of my style but of my suffering.
That which the human mind can comprehend (to Michelangelo)
43 That which the human mind can comprehend of eternal truths we can teach ourselves, through long study, guided by rare insight,
I believe your soul has comprehended,
so it’s not that I mean to add a prop or light to your massive near unique faith— so obvious to anyone who learns from your work that there is another world—
in offering you this image of Christ offering his heart up to the spear as he hangs on the cross to stream holy life
from His body to you, but because, Sir, a more learned book was never opened— this will give you your immortality.
Like a ravenous bird who sees and hears
44 Like a ravenous bird who sees and hears the whirr of his mother’s sheltering wings as she descends, embraces, and feeds him, who loves the food and her, and is happy
inside the nest, but frets too, consumed by his yearning to follow and fly like her, and so thanks her by singing such songs as seem beyond the tongue’s power to release,
am I when God’s sun strengthens my heart with a warm ray—like the lightning’s flash felt and vanished before we have half-glimpsed it—
the pen moves, pushed by a surge of love from within, and without realizing quite what I’m saying, I write in praise of God.
5. Poetry of Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (1640–89) was the most prolific women writer in England during the seventeenth century. She wrote almost sixty works, nearly one-tenth of the works published by women in England during her lifetime, including at least eighteen plays that appear to have been performed frequently. Her success resulted in vitriolic criticism,
45 accusations of plagiarism, and charges of immodesty and lewdness, particularly because
her plays were the bawdy comic romances popular with contemporary English audiences. She also wrote tender poems, as seen in those featured here. Further information about her and links to many of her works online can be found at the homepage of the Aphra Behn Society: http://www.oldroads.org/behn/home.htm.
Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before
This Little, Silent, Gloomy Monument
Contains all that was sweet and innocent;
The softest pratler that e’er found a Tongue,
His Voice was Musick and his Words a Song ;
Which now each List’ning Angel smiling hears,
Such pretty Harmonies compose the Spheres;
Wanton as unfledg’d Cupids, ere their Charms
Has learn’d the little arts of doing harms ;
Fair as young Cherubins, as soft and kind,
And tho translated could not be refin’d ;
The Seventh dear pledge the Nuptial Joys had given,
Toil’d here on Earth, retir’d to rest in Heaven ;
Where they the shining Host of Angels fill,
Spread their gay wings before the Throne, and smile.
46 Song from Abdelazar
Love in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow’d,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he shew’d;
From thy bright eyes he took his fire,
Which round about in sport he hurl’d;
But ‘twas from mine he took desire
Enough to undo the amorous world.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty;
From me his languishments and fears,
And every killing dart from thee;
Thus thou and I the God have arm’d,
And set him up a Deity;
But my poor heart alone is harm’d,
Whilst thine the victor is, and free.
6. Poetry of Katherine Philips
Katherine Philips (1631–64) was one of the most widely acclaimed female poets in
England. She wrote more than one hundred poems and translated two plays by Pierre
Corneille (1606–84) from the French. One of these was produced in 1663, the first play
47 by a woman to be performed on the London stage. She also founded the Society of
Friendship, a literary circle composed primarily of women. Members wrote pseudonyms taken from classical literature; Philips took the name Orinda, and other members dubbed the her “Matchless Orinda.” Philips dedicated much of her poetry to Anne Owen, known in Philip’s poems as Lucasia; many of these poems, including the first one that follows, express strong emotional and physical attraction. Her poems mourning the death of her infant son also capture powerful emotions. For more information, see http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/philips/.
Friendship’s Mystery, To my Dearest Lucasia
Come, my Lucasia, since we see
That Miracles Mens faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
To the dull angry world let’s prove
There’s a Religion in our Love.
For though we were design’d t’ agree,
That Fate no liberty destroyes,
But our Election is as free
As Angels, who with greedy choice
Are yet determin’d to their joyes.
Our hearts are doubled by the loss,
48 Here Mixture is Addition grown ;
We both diffuse, and both ingross :
And we whose minds are so much one,
Never, yet ever are alone.
We court our own Captivity
Than Thrones more great and innocent :
Twere banishment to be set free,
Since we wear fetters whose intent
Not Bondage is, but Ornament.
Divided joyes are tedious found,
And griefs united easier grow :
We are our selves but by rebound,
And all our Titles shuffled so,
Both Princes, and both Subjects too.
Our Hearts are mutual Victims laid,
While they (such power in Friendship lies)
Are Altars, Priests, and Off’rings made :
And each Heart which thus kindly dies,
Grows deathless by the Sacrifice.
49
Epitaph on her Son H. P. at St. Syth’s Church Wher Her Body Also Lies Interred
What on Earth deserves our trust ?
Youth and Beauty both are dust.
Long we gathering are with pain,
What one moment calls again.
Seven years childless, marriage past,
Son, a son is born at last :
So exactly lim’d and fair.
Full of good Spirits, Meen, and Air,
As a long life promised,
Yet, in less than six weeks dead.
Too promising, too great a mind
In so small room to be confin’d :
Therefore, as fit in Heav’n to dwell,
He quickly broke the Prison shell.
So the subtle Alchimist,
Can’t with Hermes Seal resist
The powerful spirit’s subtler flight,
But t’will bid him long good night.
And so the Sun if it arise
Half so glorious as his Eyes,
Like this Infant, takes a shrowd,
50 Buried in a morning Cloud.
Orinda upon Little Hector Philips
Twice forty months of Wedlock did I stay,
Then had my vows crown’d with a Lovely boy,
And yet in forty days he dropt away,
O swift Visissitude of humane joy.
I did but see him and he dis-appear’d,
I did but pluck the Rose-bud and it fell,
A sorrow unforeseen and scarcely fear’d,
For ill can mortals their afflictions spell.
And now (sweet Babe) what can my trembling heart
Suggest to right my doleful fate or thee,
Tears are my Muse and sorrow all my Art,
So piercing groans must be thy Elogy.
Thus whilst no eye is witness of my mone,
I grieve thy loss ( Ah boy too dear to live)
And let the unconcerned World alone,
Who neither will, nor can refreshment give.
51 An Off’ring too for thy sad Tomb I have,
Too just a tribute to thy early Herse,
Receive these gasping numbers to thy grave,
The last of thy unhappy Mothers Verse.
7. Letter of the Marquise de Sévigné to her daughter, Paris, 1671
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, the Marquise de Sévigné (1626–96), was one of the
preeminent letter writers in early modern Europe; her letters to family and friends were widely circulated and copied, prized for their witty style and for the gossip of Paris they contained. One of the best-known concerns the death of the chef François Vatel, who was the chef of the Prince of Condé, a high-ranking nobleman, at his castle at Chantilly. Vatel is supposed to have invented whipped cream (sometimes called cream Chantilly in his honor) and, in the scene reported by M. Sévigné in this letter, to have taken his devotion to serving a good meal to extremes. Vatel’s story was made into a movie in France in
2000 (titled Vatel), starring Gérard Depardieu and Uma Thurman.
It is Sunday, April 26; this letter won’t leave until Wednesday; but this isn’t a letter, it’s
that which Moreuil has just told me so that I could repeat it to you, about what happened
at Chantilly concerning Vatel. On Friday I wrote to you that he was stabbed: here are the details of the matter.
The King arrived Thursday evening; hunting, lanterns, moonlight, a promenade, the meal in a place carpeted with jonquils, everything that one could wish. Supper was served; there were some tables at which there was no roast, because there were several
52 more guests than were expected. This affected Vatel; he said several times: “I have lost
honor; this is a disgrace which I can’t bear.” He said to Gourville [another cook]: “My
head is spinning, I haven’t slept for twelve nights; help me give orders.” Gourville helped
him as best he could. The roast which had been lacking, not at the King’s table, but at the
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth, kept coming back to his mind. The Prince went to his room
and said to him, “Vatel, everything is going fine, nothing was ever as lovely as the King’s
supper.” Vatel answered, “Sir, your goodness is too much for me; I know that there was
no roast at two tables.” “That’s nothing at all,” said the prince, “don’t fret about it,
everything is going fine.”
Night falls. The fireworks fail, because of a fog over everything; they had cost
sixteen thousand francs. At 4:00 AM Vatel was everywhere, but he found everyone
asleep; he ran into a small purveyor who brought him only two loads of fish; Vatel asked
him, “Is that all?” He answered, “Yes, sir.” He didn’t know that Vatel had sent to all the
ports. Vatel waited a while; the other purveyors didn’t come; his head felt hot, he thought that he would have no other fish; he found Gourville, and said to him: “Sir, I will not survive this disgrace; I have honor and a reputation to lose.” Gourville laughed at him.
Vatel went up to his room, stood his sword against the door, and passed it through his heart; but that was only at the third stab, for the first two weren’t fatal: He fell dead.
However, the fish started coming from all sides; they looked for Vatel to distribute it; they went to his room, they started banging, they broke down the door; they found him drowned in his blood; they ran to the Prince, who was in despair. The Duke cried; he had come from Burgundy only because of Vatel. The Prince said to the King with great
sadness: “They say it was because of his pride”; people praised him greatly, they praised
53 and blamed his courage. The King said that he hadn’t been to Chantilly for five years
because he knew how much strain his visits caused. He told the Prince that he should
only have had two tables, and not paid any attention to the others. He swore that he would not put up with the Prince’s doing things like that any more; but it was too late for poor Vatel.
Gourville tried to make up for the loss of Vatel; it worked: they dined very well, they had their light meals, they supped, the took their walks, they hunted. Everywhere the scent of jonquils, everything was enchanted. Yesterday, which was Saturday, they did the same again; and in the evening the King went to Liancourt, where he ordered a midnight meal like the ones after fasts; he has to stay there today.
That’s what Moreuil told me, so that I should send it to you. I throw my bonnet above the mill, and that’s all I know of the story. [This was a standard ending to French fairy tales and other stories.] M. de Hacqueville, who was there, will no doubt write to you about it, but since my handwriting is more legible than his, I’m writing anyway. I’ve written a lot of details, but since I would want them in your place, I’m sending them to you.
8. Scientific Poems by Margaret Cavendish
Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623–1673), was a poet, essayist, playwright, historian, biographer, prose writer, and scientist. Her novel The Blazing
World is an early example of science fiction. In her scientific works, she gave her opinions on current topics of interest including matter and motion, the vacuum, atoms, sense perception, truth, perfection, and the mind. She based her first works solely on her
54 own perceptions, arguing, like Thomas Hobbes, that one’s own rational capacity was more valuable than outside authority, but by her later works she was also incorporating ideas from Descartes and John Locke. Further information and links to many sites can be
found at http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/cavendish/ and through the Margaret
Cavendish Society: http://www.marcav.org.uk/.
The following is the preface and one of the poems from her Atomic Poems, published in
1653, for which the entire text can be found at http://chaucer.library.emory.edu/cgi-
bin/sgml2html/wwrp.pl?act=contents&f=%2Fdata%2Fwomen_writers%2Fdata%2Fatomi
c.sgm
To Natural Philosophers
IF any Philosophers have written of these Subjects, as I make no question, or doubt, but they have, of all that Nature hath discover’d, either in meere Thought, and Speculation, or other waies in Observation; yet it is more then I know of: for I never read, nor heard of any English Booke to Instruct me: and truly I understand no other Language; not French, although I was in France five years. Neither do I understand my owne Native Language very well; for there are many words, I know not what they signifie; so as I have onely the
Vulgar part, I meane, that which is most usually spoke. I do not mean that which is us’d to be spoke by Clownes in every Shire, where in some Parts their Language is knowne to none, but those that are bred there. And not onely every Shire hath a severall Language, but every Family, giving Marks for things according to their Fancy. But my Ignorance of the Mother Tongues makes me ignorant of the Opinions, and Discourses in former times; wherefore I may be absurd, and erre grossely. I cannot say, I have not heard of Atomes,
55 and Figures, and Motions and Matter; but not throughly reason’d on: but if I do erre, it is no great matter; for my Discourse of them is not to be accounted Authentick: so if there be any thing worthy of noting, it is a good Chance; if not, there is no harm done, nor time lost. For I had nothing to do when I wrot it, and I suppose those have nothing, or little e’se to do, that read it. And the Reason why I write it in Verse, is, because I thought
Errours might better passe there, then in Prose; since Poets write most Fiction, and
Fiction is not given for Truth, but Pastime; and I feare my Atomes will be as small
Pastime, as themselves: for nothing can be lesse then an Atome. But my desire that they should please the Readers, is as big as the World they make; and my Feares are of the same bulk; yet my Hopes fall to a single Atome agen: and so shall I remaine an unsettled
Atome, or a confus’d heape, till I heare my Censure. If I be prais’d, it fixes them; but if I am condemn’d, I shall be Annihilated to nothing: but my Ambition is such, as I would either be a World, or nothing. I desire all that are not quick in apprehending, or will not trouble themselves with such small things as Atomes, to skip this part of my Book, and view the other, for feare these may seem tedious: yet the Subject is light, and the
Chapters short. Perchance the other may please better; if not the second, the third, if not the third, the fourth; if not the fourth, the fifth: and if they cannot please, for lack of Wit, they may please in Variety, for most Palates are greedy after Change. And though they are not of the choicest Meates, yet there is none dangerous; neither is there so much of particular Meat, as any can feare a Surfet; but the better pleas’d you are, the better
Welcome. I wish heartily my Braine had been Richer, to make you a fine Entertainment: truly I should have spar’d no Cost, neither have I spar’d any Paines: for my Thoughts have been very busily imployed, these eight, or nine Months, when they have not been
56 taken away by Worldly Cares, and Trouble, which I confesse hath been a great
hinderance to this Work. Yet have they sat up late, and risen earely, running about untill they have been in a fiery heat, so as their Service hath not been wanton, nor their Industry
slack. What is amisse, excuse it as a Fault of too much Care; for there may be Faults committed withbeing over-busie, as soon as for want of Diligence. But those that are poore, have nothing but their labour to bestow; and though I cannot serve you on Agget
Tables, and Persian Carpets, with Golden Dishes, and Chrystall Glasses, nor feast you with Ambrosia, and Nectar, yet perchance my Rye Loafe, and new Butter may tast more savoury, then those that are sweet, and delicious. If you dislike, and rise to go away, Pray do not Scoff, and tell what I did say. But if you do, the matter is not great, For tis but foolish words you can repeat. Pray do not censure all you do not know, But let my
Atomes to the Learned go. If you judge, and understand not, you may take For Non-sense that which learning Sense will make. But I may say, as Some have said before, I’m not bound to fetch you Wit from Natures Store.
A World made by Atomes
Small Atomes of themselves a World may make,
As being subtle, and of every shape:
And as they dance about, fit places finde,
Such Formes as best agree, make every kinde.
For when we build a house of Bricke, and Stone,
We lay them even, every one by one:
And when we finde a gap that’s big, or small,
57 We seeke out Stones, to fit that place withall.
For when not fit, too big, or little be,
They fall away, and cannot stay we see.
So Atomes, as they dance, finde places fit,
They there remaine, lye close, and fast will sticke.
Those that unfit, the rest that rove about,
Do never leave, untill they thrust them out.
Thus by their severall Motions, and their Formes,
As severall work-men serve each others turnes.
And thus, by chance, may a New World create:
Or else predestined to worke my Fate.
More of Cavendish’ scientific poems, including the example below, can be found at: http://www.hypatiamaze.org/cavendish/scicav.html
Of the Attraction of the Sun
When all those Atomes which in Rays do spread,
Are ranged long like to a slender thread,
They do not scatter’d fly but joyn in length,
And being joyn’d, though small, add to their strength;
The further forth they stream, the more they waste
Their strength, though to the Sun they’re tied fast:
For all those Rays, which Motion down doth send,
58 Sharp Atomes are, which from the Sun descend;
And as they flow in several Streams and Rays,
They stick their Points in all that stop their ways:
Like Needle points, whereon doth something Stick,
No way they make, having no force to prick,
And being stopt, they straight ways back do run,
Drawing those Bodies with them to the Sun.
9. Letter to Galileo, from his daughter Maria Celeste, 1633
Galileo’s daughter Maria Celeste was a nun and lived in a convent from the age of thirteen. She rarely saw her father but loved him deeply and shared many of his scientific interests. One hundred and twenty-four letters from her to her father survive and form the core of Dava Sobel’s acclaimed book Galileo’s Daughter. All the letters can be found at http://galileo.rice.edu/fam/daughter.html.
5 November 1633
Most Beloved Lord Father
Were you able to fathom my soul and its longing the way you penetrate the Heavens,
Sire, I feel certain you would not complain of me, as you did in your last letter; because
you would see and assure yourself how much I should like, if only it were possible, to
receive your letters every day and also to send you one every day, esteeming this the
greatest satisfaction that I could give to and take from you, until it pleases God that we
59 may once again delight in each other’s presence.
I believe nonetheless that from those few lines I wrote you so hurriedly, Sire, you
could gather that they were written in the most limited time available, as I had none at all
last Saturday when I could render you your proper due; and I do have every good intention (if you will grant me this) of following through with that tribute, because in
these lamentations of yours I descry an excess of affection that motivates them, and I
glory in it. I did try nevertheless to make good during the vigil of All Saints’ Day by
sending you a letter via Signor Geri, and because I believe that one has already reached
you, I will not reply extensively to the questions you pose in this last one, except to say I
have received the packet for Master Ippolito [Francini, another name for Il Tordo the
lens-maker], which you had not sent me previously: and as for Geppo, to tell you that,
after he brought me the boxes, he did not return to San Casciano, because Il Ninci no
longer needed him: he will go back there in any case to see him again one day this
coming week.
Good fortune has attended my ardent wish, enabling me to find the ortolans [small
songbirds that people ate] that you wanted, Sire, and I am just about to consign the box, with flour inside it, to the boy, commissioning him to go and get them at the game preserve, which is in the Boboli Gardens, from a bird-keeper of the Grand Duke named
Berna or Bernino, from whom I bought them as a favor at one lira the pair, but judging by what Geppo tells me after having seen them yesterday, they are quite beautiful and to buy them from the poulterer would cost as much as two giuli: Signor Rondinelli will then graciously do us the favor of packing them in the box, because the boy would not have time to carry them all the way up here and then back down again once more, but will
60 deliver them straight away to Signor Geri. May you enjoy them happily, Sire, and then tell me whether they were to your liking: there will be 20 as you wished.
I am called to the infirmary, wherefore I cannot say another word except that I send you my love together with the usual regards from the others, and especially Suor
Luisa who fares considerably better, God be praised, and may He grant you, Sire, every true consolation.
From San Matteo, the 5th day of November 1633.
Your most affectionate daughter, S. M. Celeste
61
One of the illustrations from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal
10. Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal, 1747–9
Illustrated herbals, guides to uses of native and imported plants prepared by
62 apothecaries or people with less formal training, were an important source of medical knowledge in early modern Europe. Elizabeth Blackwell was a Scottish woman who drew, engraved, and colored illustrations for an herbal of medicinal plants that was wildly praised by physicians and apothecaries. She produced the herbal to raise money to get her husband out of debtors’ prison, a task in which she was successful. Her book can be found at the British Library’s Web site featuring highlights from their collections,
Turning the Pages: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html.
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