Baroque Women Writers and the Public Sphere

The rapid development of a special "women's sphere" of literary activity in the early bourgeois period in Germany has its sociohistorical roots in various mandates for female cultural participation during the preceding Baroque and early Enlightenment eras. This article traces the contributions of seventeenth-century literary women within three specific sociocultural contexts, the official public sphere of the Baroque court and the emerging "private" countercultures of literary society and religious sect. Although not officially recognized after the masculinist reconstruction of the public sphere, the impact of seventeenth-century women's contributions strongly influenced public articulations for societal affirmation or change. (UB)