Erasmus on Women

Erasmus on Women PDF Author: Erasmus av Rotterdam
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802078087
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In his writings Erasmus was more interested in arguing than in settling a case. However the equivocation we find in his writings is more than a literary game or a technical expedient. It is the corollary of his scepticism. One can hardly expect unequivocal statements on complex issues such as the role of women in society from a man who holds that `human affairs take so many shapes that definite answers cannot be provided for them all.' But as Erika Rummel demonstrates, the difficulties of interpreting Erasmus' texts do not invalidate their use as sources of social history; they only prevent us from ascribing the views expressed specifically to Erasmus. What emerges from the text is a composite picture of women's role in society, reflecting a spectrum of views held in Erasmus' time rather than a coherent set of views advocated by him personally. Erasmus on Women offers selections from Erasmus' manuals on marriage and widowhood, his rhetorical treatises, and the Colloquies. The texts deal with the courtship, marriage, child-rearing, and widowhood. Selections treating particular topics, such as prostitution, scholarship, and activism, are placed within the context in which they are discussed by Erasmus. Erasmus' dialogues present a lively cast of virgins and mothers, housewives and harlots, shrews and activists. The fifteen texts and excerpts offered here represent a mixture of traditional and progressive thought. Along the traditional lines, he commends women for their role as caregivers and for their service to God and society. In contrast, he holds progressive views (by the standards of his time) on the education of women and breaks with tradition by challenging the idea that celibacy is superior to the married state. Erasmus' views were radical for his time and frequently involved him in controversy. Lavishly praised by some, his writings were bitterly denounced by others. Yet the wide dissemination of his writings makes him an important commentator and influence on the social thought of the sixteenth century.

Erasmus on Women

Erasmus on Women PDF Author: Erasmus av Rotterdam
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802078087
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In his writings Erasmus was more interested in arguing than in settling a case. However the equivocation we find in his writings is more than a literary game or a technical expedient. It is the corollary of his scepticism. One can hardly expect unequivocal statements on complex issues such as the role of women in society from a man who holds that `human affairs take so many shapes that definite answers cannot be provided for them all.' But as Erika Rummel demonstrates, the difficulties of interpreting Erasmus' texts do not invalidate their use as sources of social history; they only prevent us from ascribing the views expressed specifically to Erasmus. What emerges from the text is a composite picture of women's role in society, reflecting a spectrum of views held in Erasmus' time rather than a coherent set of views advocated by him personally. Erasmus on Women offers selections from Erasmus' manuals on marriage and widowhood, his rhetorical treatises, and the Colloquies. The texts deal with the courtship, marriage, child-rearing, and widowhood. Selections treating particular topics, such as prostitution, scholarship, and activism, are placed within the context in which they are discussed by Erasmus. Erasmus' dialogues present a lively cast of virgins and mothers, housewives and harlots, shrews and activists. The fifteen texts and excerpts offered here represent a mixture of traditional and progressive thought. Along the traditional lines, he commends women for their role as caregivers and for their service to God and society. In contrast, he holds progressive views (by the standards of his time) on the education of women and breaks with tradition by challenging the idea that celibacy is superior to the married state. Erasmus' views were radical for his time and frequently involved him in controversy. Lavishly praised by some, his writings were bitterly denounced by others. Yet the wide dissemination of his writings makes him an important commentator and influence on the social thought of the sixteenth century.

Women, Gender and Enlightenment

Women, Gender and Enlightenment PDF Author: B. Taylor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230554806
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 769

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Book Description
Did women have an Enlightenment? This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the controversial, innovative role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.

Humanism, Venice, and Women

Humanism, Venice, and Women PDF Author: Margaret L. King
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000943003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Originally published between 1975 and 2003, the essays included in Humanism, Venice, and Women reflect Margaret L. King's distinct but interlocking scholarly interests: humanism and Venice; women and humanism; and women of the Italian Renaissance. The first part focuses on defining the key characteristics of Venetian as opposed to other Italian humanisms, with an analysis of Gramscian theory about the historical role of intellectuals as an aid to understanding humanism in Venice, followed by essays on three Venetian humanists who wrote about family relationships (or the need to avoid them). The third section introduces the major Renaissance women humanists and analyzes the relation of their work to that of male humanists, along with an essay on Renaissance mothers of sons, in Italy and beyond. Crossing boundaries of region and gender, and the subdisciplines of intellectual and social history, these essays are provocative in themselves while demonstrating how shifting historiographical contexts encourage scholars to view the historical record in new and fruitful ways.

The Colloquies of Erasmus; Volume I

The Colloquies of Erasmus; Volume I PDF Author: Desiderius Erasmus
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781016908764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Education of a Christian Woman

The Education of a Christian Woman PDF Author: Juan Luis Vives
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226858162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
"From meetings and conversation with men, love affairs arise. In the midst of pleasures, banquets, dances, laughter, and self-indulgence, Venus and her son Cupid reign supreme. . . . Poor young girl, if you emerge from these encounters a captive prey! How much better it would have been to remain at home or to have broken a leg of the body rather than of the mind!" So wrote the sixteenth-century Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives in a famous work dedicated to Henry VIII's daughter, Princess Mary, but intended for a wider audience interested in the education of women. Praised by Erasmus and Thomas More, Vives advocated education for all women, regardless of social class and ability. From childhood through adolescence to marriage and widowhood, this manual offers practical advice as well as philosophical meditation and was recognized soon after publication in 1524 as the most authoritative pronouncement on the universal education of women. Arguing that women were intellectually equal if not superior to men, Vives stressed intellectual companionship in marriage over procreation, and moved beyond the private sphere to show how women's progress was essential for the good of society and state.

Erasmus

Erasmus PDF Author: Nathan Ron
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030798607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
This book is a sequel to Nathan Ron's Erasmus and the “Other.” Should we consider Erasmus an involved or public intellectual alongside figures such as Machiavelli, Milton, Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu? Was Erasmus really an independent intellectual? In Ron's estimation, Erasmus did not fully live up to his professed principles of Christian peace. Despite the anti-war preaching so eminent in his writings, he made no stand against the warlike and expansionist foreign policies of specific European kings of his era, and even praised the glory won by Francis I on the battlefield of Marignano (1515). Furthermore, in the face of Henry VIII’s execution of his beloved Thomas More and John Fisher, and the atrocities committed by the Spanish against indigenous peoples in the New World, Erasmus preferred self-censorship to expressions of protest or criticism and did not step forward to reproach kings of their misdeeds or crimes.

A History of Early Modern Women's Writing

A History of Early Modern Women's Writing PDF Author: Patricia Phillippy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108576281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A History of Early Modern Women's Writing is essential reading for students and scholars working in the field of early modern British literature and history. This collaborative book of twenty-two chapters offers an expansive, multifaceted narrative of British women's literary and textual production in the period stretching from the English Reformation to the Restoration. Chapters work together to trace the contours of a diverse body of early modern women's writing, aligning women's texts with the major literary, political, and cultural currents with which they engage. Contributors examine and take account of developments in critical theory, feminism, and gender studies that have influenced the reception, reading, and interpretation of early modern women's writing. This book explicates and interrogates significant methodological and critical developments in the past four decades, guiding and testing scholarship in this period of intense activity in the recovery, dissemination, and interpretation of women's writing.

The Praise of Folly

The Praise of Folly PDF Author: Desiderius Erasmus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description


Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England

Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England PDF Author: James Daybell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192566687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England represents one of the most comprehensive study of women's letters and letter-writing during the early modern period to be undertaken, and acts as an important corrective to traditional ways of reading and discussing letters as private, elite, male, and non-political. Based on over 3,000 manuscript letters, it shows that letter-writing was a larger and more socially diversified area of female activity than has been hitherto assumed. In that letters constitute the largest body of extant sixteenth-century women's writing, the book initiates a reassessment of women's education and literacy in the period. As indicators of literacy, letters yield physical evidence of rudimentary writing activity and abilities, document 'higher' forms of female literacy, and highlight women's mastery of formal rhetorical and epistolary conventions. Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England also stresses that letters are unparalleled as intimate and immediate records of family relationships, and as media for personal and self-reflective forms of female expression. Read as documents that inscribe social and gender relations, letters shed light on the complex range of women's personal relationships, as female power and authority fluctuated, negotiated on an individual basis. Furthermore, correspondence highlights the important political roles played by early modern women. Female letter-writers were integral in cultivating and maintaining patronage and kinship networks; they were active as suitors for crown favour, and operated as political intermediaries and patrons in their own right, using letters to elicit influence. Letters thus help to locate differing forms of female power within the family, locality and occasionally on the wider political stage, and offer invaluable primary evidence from which to reconstruct the lives of early modern women.

Women, Freedom, and Calvin

Women, Freedom, and Calvin PDF Author: E. Jane Dempsey Douglass
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664246631
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Analyzes John Calvin's doctrine of Christian freedom, describes his teachings about women's public role, and examines its pertinence to women's ordination