Gender, Power and Identity in the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau

Gender, Power and Identity in the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2016-08-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317129903

How do gender and power relationships affect the expression of family, House and dynastic identities? The present study explores this question using a case study of the House of Orange-Nassau, whose extensive visual, material and archival sources from both male and female members enable the authors to trace their complex attempts to express, gain and maintain power: in texts, material culture, and spaces, as well as rituals, acts and practices. The book adopts several innovative approaches to the history of the Orange-Nassau family, and to familial and dynastic studies generally. Firstly, the authors analyse in detail a vast body of previously unexplored sources, including correspondence, artwork, architectural, horticultural and textual commissions, ceremonies, practices and individual actions that have, surprisingly, received little attention to date individually, and consider these as the collective practices of a key early modern dynastic family. They investigate new avenues about the meanings and practices of family and dynasty in the early modern period, extending current research that focuses on dominant men to ask how women and subordinate men understood 'family' and 'dynasty', in what respects such notions were shared among members, and how it might have been fractured and fashioned by individual experiences. Adopting a transnational approach to the Nassau family, the authors explore the family's self-presentation across a range of languages, cultures and historiographical traditions, situating their representation of themselves as an influential House within an international context and offering a new vision of power as a gendered concept.

Natural History in Early Modern France

Natural History in Early Modern France
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2018-08-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004375708

Natural History in Early Modern France offers a longue durée account of recurring poetic structures of the genre through case studies spanning from the Renaissance to the eve of the nineteenth century. These case studies reveal the lasting epistemic importance of bookish knowledge and commonplacing in the natural-historical description from Belon to Buffon. They also highlight the French reception of Baconianism. Natural History in Early Modern France makes a case for the literary status of the genre by attending to the permanence of its 'Plinian' features, such as wonders. Natural history was not only concerned with increasingly rational modes of ordering natural particulars: this book reveals its enduring social, affective, spiritual, and aesthetic underpinnings. Contributors are: Peter Anstey, Susan Broomhall, Isabelle Charmantier, Arlette Fruet, Raphaële Garrod, Paul Gibbard, Dana Jalobeanu, Myriam Marrache-Gouraud, Stéphane Schmitt, Paul J. Smith, and Stéphane Van Damme.

Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe

Unexpected Heirs in Early Modern Europe
Author: Valerie Schutte
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 3319552945

There were many surprising accessions in the early modern period, including Mary I of England, Henry III of France, Anne Stuart, and others, but this is the first book dedicated solely to evaluating their lives and the repercussions of their reigns. By comparing a variety of such unexpected heirs, this engaging history offers a richer portrait of early modern monarchy. It shows that the need for heirs and the acquisition and preparation of heirs had a critical impact on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and politics, from the appropriation of culture to the influence of language, to trade and political alliances. It also shows that securing a dynasty relied on more than just political agreements and giving birth to legitimate sons, examining how relationships between women could and did forge alliances and dynastic continuities.

Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800

Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800
Author: James Daybell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134883986

Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe investigates the gendered nature of political culture across early modern Europe by exploring the relationship between gender, power, and political authority and influence. This collection offers a rethinking of what constituted ‘politics’ and a reconsideration of how men and women operated as part of political culture. It demonstrates how underlying structures could enable or constrain political action, and how political power and influence could be exercised through social and cultural practices. The book is divided into four parts - diplomacy, gifts and the politics of exchange; socio-economic structures; gendered politics at court; and voting and political representations – each of which looks at a series of interrelated themes exploring the ways in which political culture is inflected by questions of gender. In addition to examples drawn from across Europe, including Austria, the Dutch Republic, the Italian States and Scandinavia, the volume also takes a transnational comparative approach, crossing national borders, while the concluding chapter, by Merry Wiesner-Hanks, offers a global perspective on the field and encourages comparative analysis both chronologically and geographically. As the first collection to draw together early modern gender and political culture, this book is the perfect starting point for students exploring this fascinating topic.

Early Modern Emotions

Early Modern Emotions
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2016-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315441357

Early Modern Emotions is a student-friendly introduction to the concepts, approaches and sources used to study emotions in early modern Europe, and to the perspectives that analysis of the history of emotions can offer early modern studies more broadly. The volume is divided into four sections that guide students through the key processes and practices employed in current research on the history of emotions. The first explains how key terms and concepts in the study of emotions relate to early modern Europe, while the second focuses on the unique ways in which emotions were conceptualized at the time. The third section introduces a range of sources and methodologies that are used to analyse early modern emotions. The final section includes a wide-ranging selection of thematic topics covering war, religion, family, politics, art, music, literature and the non-human world to show how analysis of emotions may offer new perspectives on the early modern period more broadly. Each section offers bite-sized, accessible commentaries providing students new to the history of emotions with the tools to begin their own investigations. Each entry is supported by annotated further reading recommendations pointing students to the latest research in that area and at the end of the book is a general bibliography, which provides a comprehensive list of current scholarship. This book is the perfect starting point for any student wishing to study emotions in early modern Europe.

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: 282
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317130693

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.

Women and Early Modern Cultures of Translation

Women and Early Modern Cultures of Translation
Author: Hilary Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022-05-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 019265831X

Women and Early Modern Cultures of Translation: Beyond the Female Tradition is a major new intervention in research on early modern translation and will be an essential point of reference for anyone interested in the history of women translators. Research on women translators has often focused on early modern England; the example of early modern England has been taken as the norm for the rest of the continent and has shaped research on gender and translation more generally. This book brings a new European perspective to the field by introducing the case of Germany. It draws attention to forty women who can be identified as translators in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany and shows how their work does not fit easily into traditional narratives about marginalization and subversiveness. The study uses the example of Germany to argue against reading the work of translating women primarily through the lens of gender and to challenge claims about the existence of a female translation tradition which transcends the boundaries of time and place. Broadening our perspective to include Germany provides a more nuanced and informed account of the position of women within European translation cultures and forces us to rethink gender as a category of analysis in translation history. The book makes the case for a new 'woman-interrogated' approach to translation history (to borrow a concept from Carol Maier) and as such it will provide a blueprint for future work in the area.

Dynastic Colonialism

Dynastic Colonialism
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317266374

Dynastic Colonialism analyses how women and men employed objects in particular places across the world during the early modern period in order to achieve the remarkable expansion of the House of Orange-Nassau. Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent explore how the House emerged as a leading force during a period in which the Dutch accrued one of the greatest seaborne empires. Using the concept of dynastic colonialism, they explore strategic behaviours undertaken on behalf of the House of Orange-Nassau, through material culture in a variety of sites of interpretation from palaces and gardens to prints and teapots, in Europe and beyond. Using over 140 carefully selected images, the authors consider a wide range of visual, material and textual sources including portraits, glassware, tiles, letters, architecture and global spaces in order to rethink dynastic power and identity in gendered terms. Through the House of Orange-Nassau, Broomhall and Van Gent demonstrate how dynasties could assert status and power by enacting a range of colonising strategies. Dynastic Colonialism offers an exciting new interpretation of the complex story of the House of Orange-Nassau‘s rise to power in the early modern period through material means that will make fascinating reading for students and scholars of early modern European history, material culture, and gender. This book is highly illustrated throughout. The print edition features the images in black and white, whereas the eBook edition contains the illustrations in colour.

Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe

Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe
Author: Estelle Paranque
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2017-08-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 3319571591

This collection brings together essays examining the international influence of queens, other female rulers, and their representatives from 1450 through 1700, an era of expanding colonial activity and sea trade. As Europe rose in prominence geopolitically, a number of important women—such as Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine de Medici, Caterina Cornaro of Cyprus, and Isabel Clara Eugenia of Austria—exerted influence over foreign affairs. Traditionally male-dominated spheres such as trade, colonization, warfare, and espionage were, sometimes for the first time, under the control of powerful women. This interdisciplinary volume examines how they navigated these activities, and how they are represented in literature. By highlighting the links between female power and foreign affairs, Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe contributes to a fuller understanding of early modern queenship.