The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0514 Thursday, 15 October 2009
[1] From: Michele Marrapodi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 08:39:21 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
[2] From: Claire Bowditch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 09:38:56 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
[3] From: Maurizio Calbi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 12:45:03 +0200
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Michele Marrapodi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 08:39:21 +0100
Subject: 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
Unhae Langis says:
>I would like to solicit your help for an article that I need to
>revise. Here is the excerpt that needs revision:
>
>Because women were considered less capable of exercising self-
>control because through their "loose, soft and tender" flesh, they
>were humorally "subject to all passions and perturbations" (274, 273)
>in the words of the Dutch physician, Levinus Lemnius (1658).
>
>Can anyone direct me to an early modern source that presents this
>same idea but from the late 1500s/early 1600s rather than mid-1600s?
One of the most influential early modern sources is surely Castiglione's
_Il libro del Cortegiano_. I quote a relevant excerpt from my chapter
"Shakespeare's Romantic Italy: Novelistic, Theatrical, and Cultural
Transactions in the Comedies" included in _Italian Culture in the Drama
of Shakespeare & his Contemporaries_ (Ashgate, 2007). I skip the
original text and quote from Hoby's translation:
"The dispute between the count Gasparo Pallavicino and the Magnifico
Juliano on the construction of the ideal _donna di palazzo_ in the third
book of the _Cortegiano_ offers significant cues to detect the kind of
male fantasy at work in early modern discourses on the nature of women.
As a defendant of the woman's part, Juliano provides an ideal of
femininity whose language of sexuality responds to the male's erotic
desire without losing the virtues of grace and honour. In so doing, he
fashions a representation of female values as opposed to manly strength
and valour:
'But principally in her fashions, manners, wordes, gestures, and
conversation (me thinke) the woman ought to be much unlike the man. For
right as it is seemely for him to shew a certaine manliness full and
steadie, so doth it well in a woman to have a tendernesse, soft and
milde, with a kinde of womanlye sweetenesse in every gesture of hers,
that in going, standing, and speaking what ever she lusteth, may always
make her appear a woman without anye likenesse of man.'
Gasparo explains his antifeminism with the old philosophical principle
of the imperfection of women with respect to men ('when a woman is
borne, it is a slackenesse or default of nature, and contrarie to that
she would doe'), whereas Juliano easily rebuts this accusation, leading
his defence to the sexual superiority of women:
'In the man overmuch heate doth soone bring the naturall warmth to the
last degree, the which wanting nourishment, consumeth away: and
therefore, because men in generation sooner waxe drye than women, it
happeneth oftentimes that they are of a shorter life. Wherefore this
perfection may also be given to women, that living longer than men they
accomplish it, that is the entent of nature more than men.'" (pp. 63-64).
The rise of the new gentlewoman, affirming herself as a new dramatic
subject in both novelistic literature and drama, can be explained -- in
fact -- by the influence of female _corteziania_, the (male)
construction of the perfect lady deriving from the _Cortegiano_'s
representation of the double power of sexuality and chastity of the
_donna di palazzo_ and from other misogynist attitudes taken up in other
Italian conduct books and pamphlets of manners. (The parodic and
subversive response by Aretino's _La Cortegiana_ is yet another aspect
of the same topic).
For an extended treatment of the social and political gynaephobia "of
gender and sex" in early modern England, see Harry Berger Jr., _The
Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy
Books_ (Stanford UP, 2000).
Best wishes,
Michele Marrapodi,
University of Palermo.
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Claire Bowditch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 09:38:56 +0100
Subject: 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
Hi, Unhae,
I'm not sure whether it's early-modern Dutch or European medical culture
that you're working on, but if it's the European(/English?) treatises
that you're looking at, you're sure to find some stuff of this sort in
Helkiah Crooke's 'Mikrokosmographia' (extant copies from 1615, 1616, and
1632 are available on EEBO). There is, though, something that you might
like to look at along these lines: Thomas Raynalde's 'The Birth of
Mankind' (in print from 1540-1645). You might find (as I did) that it
radically -- and gloriously -- disrupts the kinds of things that you
might've seen in sources such as those that you quote below. As the
introduction to the recent critical edition of 'The Birth of Mankind'
says, the publication was originally German ('Der swangern Frauwen und
hebammen Rosegarten'), and was translated into Dutch ('Den Rosegaert'),
so hopefully it'll tie in somewhere for you!
The publication details are: Thomas Raynalde, The Birth of Mankind,
Otherwise Named The Woman's Book, ed. by Elaine Hobby (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2009)
Best wishes,
Claire Bowditch
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Maurizio Calbi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009 12:45:03 +0200
Subject: 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0508 Women, Passion, and Lack of Self-Control
I'm sure you'll find many earlier references than this in Gail Kern
Paster's *The Body Embarassed*.
Maurizio Calbi
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