Professor Margaret L. King  king@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Fall 2007 - Tuesday 4:30-6:10 PM

SYLLABUS

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From the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries, women emerged from the silence of the Middle Ages to become eloquent, forceful participants in the mainstream of European civilization.  At first, those authorized by their holiness were the primary participants.  The publication in 1361 of Giovanni Boccaccio’s On Famous Women triggered a stream of works, by both men and women, defending the targets of a misogynistic tradition embedded in the respected disciplines of law, medicine, philosophy, and theology.  By the early 1500s, the availability of the print medium and the maturation of the European vernaculars permitted women authors to explore verse and prose fiction, even as the querelle des femmes (“the debate about women”) soared to its climax in the first half of the seventeenth century.  By this date, writing by women and about women had moved from periphery to center of European culture, and the major issues pertaining to women’s nature and capacity had been addressed. This course helps explain the intellectual currents that precede feminism and underlie modern social movements for the liberation of women.

This course examines a few of the key works, originally in Latin and four European vernaculars, that trace this story.  In addition to reading in common the works listed below, students will prepare a research project (historiographical essay, comparative book review, annotated bibliography, or paper, 15-20 pages in length) on a topic of their choosing, and complete a final essay exam.

Grades are based on –

Syllabus

Week 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6 -- 7 -- 8 -- 9 -- 10 -- 11 -- 12 -- 13 -- 14

 Week 1  8/28

Introduction

Week 2  9/4

Holy women: Hildegard, Heloise, and their heirs (12th-15th centuries

Emilie Zum Brunn & Georgette Epiney-Burgard.  Women Mystics in Medieval Europe..Trans. Sheila Hughes.  St. Paul MN: Paragon House, 1989. Pp. 1-36. 

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Trans. Betty Radice.  Rev. ed.  Penguin, 1974, 2003. Pp. 9-17; 47-55; 63-71; 93-111.

Week 3  9/11

Giovanni Boccaccio, scholar and storyteller, On Famous Women (1361-1375)

Giovanni Boccaccio.  Famous Women. Trans. Virginia Brown.  Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.  Dedication; Preface; lives of Semiramis, Medea, Penthesilea, Helen, Dido, Sappho, Artemisia, Sempronia, Hortensia, Cleopatra, Agrippina (mother of Nero), Proba, Zenobia, Constance

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Week 4  9/25

Christine de Pisan, first feminist, and the City of Ladies (1405)

Christine de Pisan. Book of the City of Ladies. Trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards.  Rev. ed. Persea Books, 1998.  Part One, chapters 1-17, 19-21, 29-30, 32, 42; Part Two, chapters 31, 32, 55-56, 65; Part Three, chapters 3, 10

Week 5  10/2

Joan of Arc and Margery Kempe: women of the people (15^th century)

Regine Pernoud, et al. Joan of Arc: Her Story. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler. Trans. Jeremy duQuesnay Adams.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.  Pp. 103-37, 247-64, and passim.

Book of Margery Kempe.  Trans. Barry Windeatt. Penguin 1986. Proem, Chapters 1-11, and passim.

Week 6  10/9

Francesco Barbaro, Venetian nobleman and statesman, On Marriage (1415)

Francesco Barbaro.  "On Wifely Duties" (book 2 of On Marriage).  In Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.  Pp. 189-228. 

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Week 7  10/16

Women humanists: Isotta Nogarola and Laura Cereta (15^th century)

Isotta Nogarola. Complete Writings. Trans. Margaret L. King and Diana Robin.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.  Pp. 139-158.  

Laura Cereta. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist. Trans. Diana Robin.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.  Pp. 63-86. 

Week 8  10/23

Men defend women: Agrippa, Erasmus, Vives (16^th century)

Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Trans. Albert Rabil, Jr.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.  Pp. 43-62, 94-97.

Desiderius Erasmus, Colloquy: the Abbot and the Learned Woman.  http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Erasmus0096/Colloquies/0046-01_Bk.html#hd_lf046.1.head.177 

Juan Luis Vives. The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual. Trans. Charles Fantazzi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,  2000. Pp. 53-86.  

Week 9  10/30

Women poets and storytellers: Colonna, Franco, Marguerite de Navarre (16^th century)

Vittoria Colonna. Sonnets for Michelangelo. Trans. Abigail Brundin.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. 57-59, 63, 73, 77, 85, 91. 

Veronica Franco. Poems and Selected Letters. Trans. Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.  Pp. 32-41, 197-211. 

Marguerite de Navarre. Heptameron.  Trans. Paul A. Chilton. Penguin, 1984. Intro, novels 2, 5, 18, 32, 46, 55.

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Week 10  11/6

Women and the Reformation: Morata, Dentiere, Zell (16^th century)

Olimpia Morata.  The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic.  Trans. Holt N. Parker.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.  Pp. 106-118, 126-141, 174-177.

Marie Dentiere. Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre, etc.  Trans. Mary B. McKinley.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.  Pp. 51-87.

Katharina Schütz Zell. Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Trans. Elsie McKee.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. 56-82. 

Week 11   11/13

Moderata Fonte asserts Women’s Worth (1601)

 Moderata Fonte. Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men. Trans. Virginia Cox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.  Pp. 43-117.

 Week 12   11/27

Female equality: Gournay, Schurman, Cavendish (17^th century)

 Marie le Jars de Gournay. Apology for the Woman Writing. Trans. Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. 73-95.

 Anna Maria van Schurman. Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated. Trans.  Joyce L. Irwin.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. 25-37.

 Margaret Cavendish. The Blazing World and Other Writings. Ed. Kate Lilley.  Penguin 1994.  Selections.  Alternatively: online excerpt at http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/blaze.htm

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Week 13  12/4

Oroonoko: Aphra Behn, gender, and slavery (1688)

 Aphra Behn. Oroonoko. Online at http://eserver.org/fiction/oroonoko/ ; or click here.

 Week 14   12/11

Mary Wollstonecraft and the rights of woman (1792)

 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: An Authoritative Text, etc.  Ed. Carol H. Poston.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987.  Chapters 1-3.

See also brief texts:

Marquis de Condorcet, Women and Citizenship, at http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/292/

Susannah Wesley, On the Education of My Family, in  The Complete Writings, ed. Charles Wallace, Jr. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 367-376.

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Last update: 8/6/07