The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Writings by and about Women, 1400-1700

FAIN: RQ-50607-12

Albert Rabil, Jr
Unaffiliated independent scholar

The preparation for print and e-book publication of nine early modern English, Spanish, and Portuguese manuscripts by or about women. (24 months)

The project, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (website http://www.othervoiceineme.com) seeks support for nine (9) manuscripts to be published in the series by Iter/CRRS at the University of Toronto. These projects span the entire early modern period (ca. 1400-1700) and were composed variously by women and men. The projects fall into several categories: (1) the querelle des femmes (debate about women), 4 texts by men (2 volumes); (2) medical texts, 7 by men, 1 by a woman (3 volumes); (3) political and religious texts by women in English written between 1650 and 1700--Commonwealth and Restoration (3 volumes); and (4) literary texts composed by a Portuguese nun writing variously in Portuguese and Spanish in the late seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries, unknown until now in English (1 volume, expandable into 2 if feasible). Taken together these projects illustrate the progressive irruption of women as subjects, actors, and writers in European culture between 1400 and 1700.

Associated Products

Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers (Book)
Title: Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers
Author: Juan de Flores
Author: Pere Torrellas
Editor: Emily C. Francomano
Abstract: The querelle, or “debate about women” was an important genre from before 1400 until after 1650. Many writers both praised and vilified women, using biblical and classical sources to support their arguments. These two male-authored texts, early in the debate, written in Spanish, are both anti-woman and pro-woman, and were especially influential in spreading the “debate about women” to other countries. In the latter decades of the 15th century, Pere Torrellas (ca. 1420–ca.1475) wrote two short works, the poem, Slander Against Women and the prose Defense of Women Against Slanderers, in which he is alternately anti- and pro-woman, a tendency that for long has raised questions about whether authors who followed this format were serious or only showcasing their dialectical skills. But whatever the answer to that question, these texts certainly were consciousness-raising for some women and men. Juan de Flores (d. ca. 1503) wrote the romance, Grisel and Mirabella (ca. 1480), translated in the 16th c. into Italian, French, English, and Polish, and in the 17th c. into German. It was perhaps the most widely disseminated work of fiction in the 16th-c. pan-European querelle. Pere Torrellas appears as a character in the romance in which he is killed by an angry mob of women. The text eventually became the basis for the anonymous Jacobean play Swetnam the Woman Hater (ca. 1620), important in the historical debate on women in England, which also began among men but in that case brought women writers into the fray as well. This bilingual edition of the Three Spanish Querelle Texts is for specialists and non-specialists alike, providing the first modern, readable English translations of texts that enjoyed European-wide celebrity in the early sixteenth century. The introduction summarizes knowledge about Torrellas’ two texts and Flores’ Grisel y Mirabella, works that expressed the perceptions of their times.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/three-spanish-querelle-texts-grisel-and-mirabella-the-slander-against-women-and-the-defense-of-ladies-against-slanderers-a-bilingual-edition-and-study/oclc/829421813&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://crrs.ca/publications/ov21/
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's website
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Iter, Inc Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780772721341
Translator: Emily C. Francomano
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (581-1625), in The Other Voce in Early Modern Europe, the Toronto Series (Book)
Title: Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (581-1625), in The Other Voce in Early Modern Europe, the Toronto Series
Author: Louis de Serres
Author: François Rousset
Author: Jean Liebault
Author: Jacques Guillemeau
Author: Jacques Duval
Editor: Albert Rabil, Jr., Series Editor
Editor: Margaret L. King, Series Editor
Editor: Valerie Worth-Stylianou, Volume Editor
Abstract: These texts were written in the vernacular for a readership of physicians and surgeons but also of midwives and lay women. So they present important evidence that, contrary to stereotypes, women were the recipients of medical texts written specifically for them. More generally, these texts demonstrate a strong interest in women’s health, indicating that early modern physicians and surgeons had a new interest in the specificity of female anatomy and women’s diseases. The texts selected and translated in this volume allow the reader to access an important group of primary sources on issues related to women’s health, including childbirth and caesarean section, sterility, miscarriage, breastfeeding, etc. The selection of texts is well organized and coherent, the translation is accurate and fluent, and the texts are adequately annotated, so the book will be easily used by scholars and students, including undergraduates. It provides evidence of a new concern and attention for women’s health needs, which, most interestingly, often went hand-in-hand with the rejection of misogynist stereotypes and the challenging of conventional views of female subordination and inferiority
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/pregnancy-and-birth-in-early-modern-france-treatises-by-caring-physicians-and-surgeons-1581-1625-francois-rousset-jean-liebault-jacques-guillemeau-jacques-duval-and-louis-de-serres/oclc/864801606&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://crrs.ca/publications/ov23/
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Iter, Inc and the Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780772721389
Translator: Valerie Worth-Stylianous
Translator: Valerie Worth-Stylianou
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Jacques Du Bosc's L'Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women in The Other Voce in Early Modern Europe, the Toronto Series (Book)
Title: Jacques Du Bosc's L'Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women in The Other Voce in Early Modern Europe, the Toronto Series
Author: Jacques Du Bosc
Editor: Albert Rabil Jr., Series Editor
Editor: Aurora Wolfgang, Volume Editor
Editor: Sharon Diane Nell, Volume Editor
Editor: Margaret L. King, Series Editor
Abstract: This is a translation of two works by the seventeenth-century French Franciscan, Jacques Du Bosc: selected passages from L’Honneste femme (1632-36) and the entirety of Nouveau recueil des lettres de dames de ce temps (1635). Both works articulate the theory and practice of the emerging ideal of honnêteté for women. To Du Bosc’s way of thinking, the honnête or “respectable” woman’s role in society is not only that of mother and wife; she is primarily a member of a social elite who embodies the art of pleasing through her politeness, urbanity, and conversation. Du Bosc’s work aims to justify this new role for women, even as he sets out the rules of moral conduct to guide them. In so doing, he refutes traditional misogynist attitudes while insisting that women follow a Christian moral code of conduct. Like his predecessor François de Sales, Du Bosc treats women as reasoning beings capable of guiding their own conscience. Moreover, Du Bosc promotes equality between the sexes, especially in relation to their moral behavior. In keeping with these beliefs, Du Bosc has women discuss, in the New Collection, a wide range of moral issues, with pros and cons so that women readers may draw their own conclusions. The women correspondents exchange moral, ethical, and esthetic ideas on appropriate or inappropriate behavior; whether women should study; and whether a man should marry an ugly woman. The most interesting letters are those which depict passionate friendships between women. The writers of these letters represent a close social network of women who love, respect, and support one another. While Du Bosc may be demonstrating appropriate kinds of social skills and attitudes of respectable women, he also appears to be advocating a new kind of relationship between women. In both of these texts from the first half of the seventeenth century Du Bosc made important contributions which helped shift public attitudes toward embracing women’s intellectual and moral equality.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/honnete-femme-the-respectable-woman-in-society-and-the-new-collection-of-letters-and-responses-by-contemporary-women/oclc/872944335&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: http://crrs.ca/publications/ov31/
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Iter, Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780772721600
Translator: Aurora Wolfgang
Translator: Sharon Diane Nell
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Women's Speaking Justified and other Pamphlets (Book)
Title: Women's Speaking Justified and other Pamphlets
Author: Margaret Fell
Editor: Rebecca M. Lush
Editor: Jane Donawerth
Abstract: This is book 65 in The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, the Toronto Series. Margaret Fell (1614–1702), one of the co-founders of the Society of Friends and a religious activist, was a prolific writer and distributor of Quaker pamphlets. This volume offers eight texts that span her writing career and represent her range of writing: autobiography, epistle or public letter, examination or record of a trial, letter to the king, and argument for women’s preaching. These selections also document Fell’s contributions to Friends’ theology, exemplify seventeenth-century women’s English-language literacy, illustrate Fell’s theories of biblical reading, and exhibit the common qualities of Quaker rhetoric.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/womens-speaking-justified-and-other-pamphlets/oclc/1032292525&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://itergateway.org/node/44294
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Toronto, Ontario: Iter Press; and Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9780866985956
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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