The Birth of Feminism: Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England

by Ross, Sarah Gwyneth

• ISBN13: 9780674034549
• ISBN10: 0674034546
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In this illuminating work, surveying 300 years and two nations, Sarah Gwyneth Ross demonstrates how the expanding ranks of learned women in the Renaissance era presented the first significant challenge to the traditional definition of "woman" in the West.An experiment in collective biography and intellectual history, The Birth of Feminism focuses on nineteen learned women from the middle ranks of society who rose to prominence in the world of Italian and English letters between 1400 and 1680. Drawing both on archival material-wills, letters, and manuscript compositions, some presented here for the first time-and on printed writings, Ross gives us an unprecedented sense of educated early modern womenrs"s lives.Sponsored and often educated by their learned fathers and other male relatives within a model that Ross terms "the intellectual family," female authors publicized their works within the safety of family networks. These women, including Christine de Pizan, Laura Cereta, Margaret More Roper, Lucrezia Marinella, and Bathsua Makin, did not argue for womenrs"s political equality, but they represented and often advocated womenrs"s intellectual equality. Ross demonstrates that because of their education, these women had a renaissance during the Renaissance, and that in so doing they laid the foundation for the emancipation of womankind.

Table of Contents

Note on the Texts	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Household Academy, 1400-1580	p. 17
Her Father's Daughter	p. 19
Household Academies in Venice and London	p. 53
The Biographical Tradition	p. 95
Models of Feminist Argument	p. 131
The Household Salon, 1580-1680	p. 191
Learned Wives and Mothers in Italy	p. 193
Collaborative Marriages in Britain	p. 235
Discourses of Equality and Rights	p. 276
Conclusion	p. 313
Abbreviations	p. 320
Notes	p. 321
Bibliography	p. 375
Acknowledgments	p. 394
Index	p. 397
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