Through fifteen essays that work from a rich array of primary sources, this collection makes the novel claim that early modern European women, like men, had a youth. European culture recognised that, between childhood and full adulthood, early modern women experienced distinctive physiological, social, and psychological transformations. Drawing on two mutually shaped layers of inquiry - cultural constructions of youth and lived experiences - these essays exploit a wide variety of sources, including literary and autobiographical works, conduct literature, judicial and asylum records, drawings, and material culture. The geographical and temporal ranges traverse England, Ireland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and Mexico from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. This volume brings fresh attention to representations of female youth, their own life writings, young women's training for adulthood, courtship, and the emergent sexual lives of young unmarried women.
Elizabeth S. COHEN is Professor emerita of History at York University in Toronto. She is co-author, with Thomas V. Cohen, of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy, 2nd edition (ABC Clio 2019) and co-editor with Margaret Reeves of The Youth of Early Modern Women (Amsterdam University Press 2018). ecohen@yorku.ca Margaret Reeves teaches English literature at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She co-edited Shell Games: Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300-1650), co-authored a history of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, and has published essays on literary history as well as early modern women's writing.
Title: The Youth of Early Modern Women (Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World)
Author:
ISBN: 9789462984325
Binding:
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication Date: 2018-11-15
Number of Pages: 344
Weight: 0.5992 kg
This engaging collection successfully problematizes and confounds simplistic assumptions regarding the early phases of female existence in early modern Western society. (...) The Youth of Early Modern Women provides a wide range of thought-provoking essays that will, one hopes, inspire similarly creative and innovative research in this field.
- Alison Williams Lewin, Renaissance Quarterly, Volume LXXIII, No. 2