Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History: From the Middle Ages to the Present

by Akkerman,Tjitske

• ISBN13: 9780415152211
• ISBN10: 0415152216
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-05-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Spanning six centuries of political thought in European history, this book puts the ideas of thinkers from Christine de Pizan to Simone de Beauvoir in the broader contexts of their time. Conventional histories of political thought have sometimes relegated feminist thinking to the footnotes. This text considers how feminism is central to key notions of modern political discourse such as autonomy, liberty and equality, and feminist discussions of morality have been linked to major currents in political thought such as republicanism, civic humanism and romanticism. This collection of essays aims to show that feminism is not a variant of modern radical discourse but is a mode of analyzing the issues of authority, power and virtue that have been at the heart of European political thought from the Middle Ages.

Table of Contents

Introduction: feminism in European history Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman

The languages of late-medieval feminism Miri Rubin

A `learned wave': women of letter and science from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment Brita Rang

L'FgalitF des sexes qui ne se conteste plus en France: feminism in the seventeenth century Siep Stuurman

Reclaiming the European Enlightenment for feminism: or prolegomena to any future history of eighteenth-century Europe Karen Offen

Culture as a gendered battleground: the patronage of Madame de Pompadour Inge E. Boer

A woman's struggle for a language of enlightenment and virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment `feminism' Virginia Sapiro

French utopians: the word and the act Claire G. Moses

Equality and difference: utopian feminism in Britain Ruth Levitas

Liberalism and feminism in late nineteenth-century Britain Tjitske Akkerman

Feminists and sex: how to find lesbians at the turn of the century Martha Vicinus

Beauvoir's philosophy as the hidden paradigm of contemporary feminism Karen Vicinus

Contemporary feminism between individualism and community Jet Bussemaker

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