Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France

Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France
Author: Katherine Kong
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1843842319

Each chapter focuses on a particular epistolary exchange in its intellectual and cultural context, from Baudri of Bourgueil and Constance of Angers, through Heloise and Abelard, Christine de Pizan's participation in the querelle du Roman de la rose, Marguerite de Navarre and Guillaume Briconnet, to Michel de Montaigne and Etienne de la Boetie, emphasizing the importance of letter writing in pre-modern French culture and tracing a selective yet significant history of the letter, contributing to our understanding of the development of the epistolary genre, and the pre-modern self --Book Jacket.

Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Destroying Order, Structuring Disorder

Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Destroying Order, Structuring Disorder
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317130685

States of emotion were vital as a foundation to society in the premodern period, employed as a force of order to structure diplomatic transactions, shape dynastic and familial relationships, and align religious beliefs, practices and communities. At the same time, societies understood that affective states had the potential to destroy order, creating undesirable disorder and instability that had both individual and communal consequences. These had to be actively managed, through social mechanisms such as children's education, acculturation, and training, and also through religious, intellectual, and textual practices that were both socio-cultural and individual. Presenting the latest research from an international team of scholars, this volume argues that the ways in which emotions created states of order and disorder in medieval and early modern Europe were deeply informed by contemporary gender ideologies. Together, the essays reveal the critical roles that gender ideologies and lived, structured, and desired emotional states played in producing both stability and instability.

Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France

Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France
Author: Lewis C. Seifert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317097505

Today the friendships that grab people’s imaginations are those that reach across inequalities of class and race. The friendships that seem to have exerted an analogous level of fascination in early modern France were those that defied the assumption, inherited from Aristotle and patristic sources, that friendships between men and women were impossible. Together, the essays in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France tell the story of the declining intelligibility of classical models of (male) friendship and of the rising prominence of women as potential friends. The revival of Plato’s friendship texts in the sixteenth century challenged Aristotle’s rigid ideal of perfect friendship between men. In the seventeenth century, a new imperative of heterosociality opened a space for the cultivation of cross-gender friendships, while the spiritual friendships of the Catholic Reformation modeled relationships that transcended the gendered dynamics of galanterie. Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France argues that the imaginative experimentation in friendships between men and women was a distinctive feature of early modern French culture. The ten essays in this volume address friend-making as a process that is creative of self and responsive to changing social and political circumstances. Contributors reveal how men and women fashioned gendered selves, and also circumvented gender norms through concrete friendship practices. By showing that the benefits and the risks of friendship are magnified when gender roles and relations are unsettled, the essays in this volume highlight the relevance of early modern friend-making to friendship in the contemporary world.

Anne de Graville and Women's Literary Networks in Early Modern France

Anne de Graville and Women's Literary Networks in Early Modern France
Author: Elizabeth L'Estrange
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2023-04-11
Genre:
ISBN: 1843846861

First detailed reconstruction of Anne de Graville's library, establishing her as one of the most well-read and erudite poets of the period. In the 1520s, the French noblewoman Anne de Graville composed two poetic works, based on older, canonical, male-authored texts: Giovanni Boccaccio's Teseida and Alain Chartier's Belle dame sans mercy. The first, the Beau roman, she offered to Claude, queen of France and wife of Francis I, and the second, the Rondeaux, to the king's mother, Louise of Savoy. With the pro-feminine spin of her rewritings, Anne developed the legacy of another woman writer from 100 years earlier, Christine de Pizan, by entering the on-going debate known as the querelle des femmes. Like Christine, Anne sought to redress the negative view of women found in much contemporary popular literature and to offer role models for both men and women at the contemporary court. This book is the first detailed reconstruction and interpretation of Anne's library and her collecting practice, showing how they relate to her own writings and her literary milieu. It also teases out her links to other women writers of the time interested in the querelle, such as Catherine d'Amboise and Margaret of Navarre. Paying close attention to literary, manuscript, and artistic sources, it establishes Anne's reputation as one of the most erudite poets of the period, and one keenly attuned to the position of women in society as well as to the political sensitivities of the French court.

Mysticism in the French Tradition

Mysticism in the French Tradition
Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317090918

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.

Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song

Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song
Author: Rachel May Golden
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813057922

This volume brings together literary and musical compositions of medieval France, including the Occitanian region, identifying the use of voice in these works as a way of articulating gendered identities. The contributors to this volume argue that because medieval texts were often read or sung aloud, voice is central for understanding the performance, transmission, and reception of work from the period across a wide variety of genres. These essays offer close readings of narrative and lyric poetry, chivalric romance, sermons, letters, political writing, motets, troubadour and trouvère lyric, crusade songs, love songs, and debate songs. Through literary, musical, and historiographical analyses, contributors highlight the voicing of gendered perspectives, expressions of sexuality, and power dynamics. The volume includes feminist readings, investigations of masculinity, queer theory, and intersectional approaches. The contributors interpret literary or musical works by Chrétien de Troyes, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Hue de la Ferté, the Chastelain de Couci, Jacques de Vitry, Christine de Pizan, Anne de Graville, Alain Chartier, and Giovanni Boccaccio, among others. Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song offers a valuable interdisciplinary approach and contributes to the history of women’s voices in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. It illuminates the critical role of voice in negotiating culture, celebrating and innovating traditions, advancing personal and political projects, and defining the literary and musical developments that shaped medieval France. Contributors: Lisa Colton | Emily J Hutchinson | Daisy Delogu | Tamara Bentley Caudill | Katherine Kong | Meghan Quinlan | Lydia M Walker | Rachel May Golden | Anna Kathryn Grau | Anne Adele Levitsky

Representing the Dead

Representing the Dead
Author: Helen J. Swift
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2016
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1843844362

An examination of how the dead were memorialised in late medieval French literature.

Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern France

Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern France
Author: Jonathan Dewald
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271067462

In Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern France, Jonathan Dewald explores European aristocratic society by looking closely at one of its most prominent families. The Rohan were rich, powerful, and respected, but Dewald shows that there were also weaknesses in their apparently secure position near the top of French society. Family finances were unstable, and competing interests among family members generated conflicts and scandals; political ambitions led to other troubles, partly because aristocrats like the Rohan intensely valued individual achievement, even if it came at the expense of the family’s needs. Dewald argues that aristocratic power in the Old Regime reflected ongoing processes of negotiation and refashioning, in which both men and women played important roles. So did figures from outside the family—government officials, middle-class intellectuals and businesspeople, and many others. Dewald describes how the Old Regime’s ruling class maintained its power and the obstacles it encountered in doing so.

Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song

Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song
Author: Rachel May Golden
Publisher:
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2021
Genre: LITERARY CRITICISM
ISBN: 9780813069036

This volume brings together literary and musical compositions of medieval France, identifying the use of voice in these works as a way of articulating gendered identities.

Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought

Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought
Author: Cary J. Nederman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2024-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1800373805

This insightful Handbook reviews the key frameworks guiding political scientists and historians of political thought. Comprehensive in scope, it covers historical methodology, traditions, epochs, and classic authors and texts, spanning from ancient Greece until the nineteenth century.