Project MUSE®: Early Modern Women - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Early Modern Women.daily12026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 10 (2015) - vol. 15 (2021)Latest Articles: Early Modern WomenTWOProject MUSE®Early Modern Women2378-47761933-0065Latest articles in Early Modern Women. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Shakespeare's Foreign Queens: Drama, Politics, and the Enemy Within by Sandra Logan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787993
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Shakespeare's Foreign Queens, published as part of Palgrave's Queenship and Power series edited by Charles Beem and Carole Levin, forwards an inherently interesting argument about the political theology driving the playwright's representations of royal wives, whose simultaneous status as strangers to England and central actors within the English court grants them a unique position from which to critique sovereign absolutism. In Henry VIII, The Winter's Tale, Titus Andronicus, Henry VI 1, 2, and 3, and Richard III, the foreign wife is a political touchstone exposing the potential conditions of oppression that subtend sovereign authority. In all these plays, the stranger queen embodies a liminal subject position that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallShakespeare's Foreign Queens: Drama, Politics, and the Enemy Within by Sandra Logan (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USShakespeare's Foreign Queens: Drama, Politics, and the Enemy Within by Sandra Logan (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®128872026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Women's Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799 ed. by Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787994
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The essays in Women's Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799, edited by Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, provide a fresh view of how women's voices emerge (directly and indirectly) in the historical record of colonial Latin America. The editors have curated a volume that "not only seeks to recover women's voices and actions, but also the mechanisms through which women authorized themselves and participated in the creation of texts and documents found in archives" (1). The volume is successful on both counts. Addressing several communities from the Hispanophone and Lusophone Latin American world, with a notable focus on women of indigenous and African descent, the critical works collected
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallWomen's Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799 ed. by Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USWomen's Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799 ed. by Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®118082026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16The Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages by Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787995
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It is a simple but invaluable desideratum that titles should be explicit. Another is that they should not promise more than they can deliver or hide what they are delivering. Unfortunately, many titles do not abide by these considerations and the current book—which in many ways is an excellent study—is a case in point. Leaving aside the ambiguous main title, The Care of Nuns, with its play on cura monialium, this book is not about "The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages." Instead it is a perceptive analysis of some known manuscripts, narratives, and records from a small collection of Benedictine nunneries in the south of England that demonstrate the varying ways in which some
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallThe Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages by Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USThe Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages by Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®122822026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Editing Early Modern Women ed. by Sarah C. E. Ross and Paul Salzman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787996
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The writings of early modern women have been anthologized and edited in significant ways over the last several decades, with Betty Travitsky's The Paradise of Women (1981) being followed by editions including Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-century Verse, edited by Germaine Greer, Susan Hastings, Jeslyn Medoff, and Melinda Sansone (1988), and Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Women, edited by Elspeth Graham, Elaine Hobby, and Hilary Hind (1989). The editors of Editing Early Modern Women point out that it is also twenty-five years since W. Speed Hill's provocative claim that "the recovery and editing of early modern women's writings was at odds with prevailing editorial
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallEditing Early Modern Women ed. by Sarah C. E. Ross and Paul Salzman (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USEditing Early Modern Women ed. by Sarah C. E. Ross and Paul Salzman (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®99362026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil: Atrocity and Theodicy by Jill Graper Hernandez (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787997
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The philosophical contributions of women from the early modern period are receiving renewed, even if overdue, attention. This follows a sustained effort on the part of a number of philosophers during the past quarter of a century to excavate and examine these contributions in a serious manner. An early and influential example is Margaret Atherton's Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (1994). Ongoing efforts include philosopher-run projects such as Ruth Hagengruber with the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists (Paderborn University), Andrew Janiak with Project Vox (Duke University), Christia Mercer with the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy (Columbia University), and Lisa Shapiro with New
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallEarly Modern Women and the Problem of Evil: Atrocity and Theodicy by Jill Graper Hernandez (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USEarly Modern Women and the Problem of Evil: Atrocity and Theodicy by Jill Graper Hernandez (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®122142026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Arms and the Woman: Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance by Francesca D'Alessandro Behr (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787998
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The society of Venice in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries presented extreme constraints yet manifest possibilities for women with intellectual aspirations. On one hand, their lives were strictly circumscribed by marriage or the convent, opportunities to cultivate a humanist education were vanishingly rare, and virtue—understood literally as "vir-tus" or "manliness" (4)—came to be defined in the female sphere primarily through the passive qualities of chastity and obedience. On the other hand, the comparatively tolerant political and cultural setting of the city, animated by vernacular print, religious debate, and lively academies, created limited openings for women writers and scholars to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallArms and the Woman: Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance by Francesca D'Alessandro Behr (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USArms and the Woman: Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance by Francesca D'Alessandro Behr (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®139202026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Anna, Duchess of Cleves: The King's "Beloved Sister." by Heather R. Darsie (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/787999
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At first glance, by the title, this appears to be a revisionist biography of Anne of Cleves (1515–1557), even though it was published with a commercial press only nine years after Elizabeth Norton published her biography of Anne, also with Amberley. Apart from Retha Warnicke's study of Anne of Cleves (The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, Cambridge University Press, 2000), Darsie's is the longest work on Anne, at 288 pages. With the paucity of information on Anne, however, this means that Darsie has loaded the biography with contextual information.In her two-page introduction, Darsie describes how she came to write the biography, claiming that in 2012 her interest in the six wives of Henry VIII was "awakened," but gives
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallAnna, Duchess of Cleves: The King's "Beloved Sister." by Heather R. Darsie (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USAnna, Duchess of Cleves: The King's "Beloved Sister." by Heather R. Darsie (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®83742026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16El muerto disimulado / Presumed Dead by Ângela de Azevedo (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788000
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Ângela de Azevedo's El muerto disimulado (1682?) is a comic play with a highly complex plot in which cases of misunderstanding, mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and feigned death ultimately lead to marriage. Valerie Hegstrom and Catherine Larson have collaborated to produce a new Spanish language edition and English translation with extensive introductory and supporting materials. This comprehensive edition is designed to meet the needs of academic and theatrical readers at all levels. The introductory materials contextualize Azevedo's play for actors and students in English and Spanish language classes ranging from global literature to theater history to gender studies. The bilingual presentation provides a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallEl muerto disimulado / Presumed Dead by Ângela de Azevedo (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USEl muerto disimulado / Presumed Dead by Ângela de Azevedo (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®81252026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Fictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200–1600 by Alison More (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788001
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This book aims to correct the historical record regarding lay women who led religious lives collectively without taking traditional monastic vows. In the thirteenth century, when their numbers started to grow, canonists struggled to fit them into conventional categories: were they "religious" (i.e., did they observe a monastic or canonical rule?), or "lay"? Beguines, penitents, and others devoted to religious life without solemn vows explored new avenues of thought and action, but their liminal status also drew criticism. Alison More argues that pressure to conform to monastic norms generated artificial associations between the women and religious orders, associations which she calls "fictive orders." The Third
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallFictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200–1600 by Alison More (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USFictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200–1600 by Alison More (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®122302026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Women's Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation ed. by Leah Knight et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788002
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This edited collection is justly described in an afterword by Margaret Ezell as a "landmark" in scholarship on early modern women's writing in Britain (275). Its exceptional quality lies in the originality and scope offered by its organizing category of the bookscape, as defined in its introduction by two of the volume's editors, Leah Knight and Micheline White. The bookscape is a flexible concept, akin to landscape, that allows a reconsideration of multiple aspects of women's book use and production, from case studies of individual readers and writers through communities and networks of book exchange to the possibilities offered by recent digital approaches to early modern women as writers and readers. The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallWomen's Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation ed. by Leah Knight et al. (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USWomen's Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation ed. by Leah Knight et al. (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®88722026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788003
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Anyone who has used a textbook should know that writing a good one is a significant intellectual challenge. Since the publication of the first edition in 1993, Merry Wiesner-Hanks's Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe has been the most authoritative survey of the history of women and gender in the period. The fourth edition demonstrates why that continues to be the case, as well as showcases the growing quantity and range of research in the field. It is clearly written, and Wiesner-Hanks both presents the substance of women's experience and directs readers to historiographical debates. This edition has the same structure as the third edition: an initial chapter on "Ideas and Laws"; thematic sections on "Body,"
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallWomen and Gender in Early Modern Europe by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USWomen and Gender in Early Modern Europe by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®90932026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Renaissance Italy by Sharon T. Strocchia (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788004
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In this richly detailed and wide-ranging monograph, Sharon Strocchia examines the broad variety of female healers in early modern Italy. She opens by noting that numerous scholars—Alisha Rankin, Monica Green, Susan Broomhall, and Mary Fissell, to name only a few of the most prominent authors whom she cites—have established that women were the primary health providers for much of the early modern period. Strocchia adds to this debate on the role of women in early modern healthcare by turning the focus to Italy where, she notes, the scholarship "has been dominated by developments in academic medicine—anatomy, dissection, and humanistic debates" and so women's fundamental roles have been neglected (4). Strocchia's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallForgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Renaissance Italy by Sharon T. Strocchia (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USForgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Renaissance Italy by Sharon T. Strocchia (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®104532026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Lady Fanshawe's Receipt Book: An Englishwoman's Life During the Civil War by Lucy Moore (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788005
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Despite its title, which might lead the reader to expect an edition of Lady Ann Fanshawe's collection of "receipts" or recipes, both medical and culinary, this volume is instead an account of Fanshawe's life from 1643 to 1660 and a cultural history of her time: in this instance the subtitle is a much more accurate description of the contents.Lucy Moore begins by explaining the term receipts, in the seventeenth century used to refer to "medicinal remedies as well as culinary recipes," and argues for such a collection as "the indispensable handbook for every woman who commanded a household, compiled by her from receipts given to her by friends and relations, her guide and manual as she traveled through life, wherever
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallLady Fanshawe's Receipt Book: An Englishwoman's Life During the Civil War by Lucy Moore (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USLady Fanshawe's Receipt Book: An Englishwoman's Life During the Civil War by Lucy Moore (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®119222026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens ed. by Estelle Paranque et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788006
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Is it possible to write a global history of early modern women? The volume Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens vividly demonstrates that such an attempt is not only conceivable but also rewarding for the historical discipline as a whole. Nate Probasco, Estelle Paranque, and Claire Jowitt, editors of the book under review, aim "to more fully understand how prominent women wielded authority in colonization, piracy, and trade, three pursuits traditionally seen and celebrated as masculine spheres of activity" (3).Colonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens investigates the sometimes unexpected ways women
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallColonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens ed. by Estelle Paranque et al. (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USColonization, Piracy, and Trade in Early Modern Europe: The Roles of Powerful Women and Queens ed. by Estelle Paranque et al. (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®92182026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Women Warriors in Early Modern Spain: A Tribute to Bárbara Mujica ed. by Susan L. Fischer and Frederick A. De Armas (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788007
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Women Warriors in Early Modern Spain gathers fourteen essays to honor Dr. Bárbara Mujica, Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, whose work has centered on early modern Spanish theater and early modern women. Mujica's extensive scholarly work includes the books A New Anthology of Early Modern Spanish Theater (2014), Shakespeare and the Spanish Comedia (2013), Teresa de Avila, Lettered Woman (2009), and Women Writers of Early Modern Spain (2004). Professor Mujica also has published original creative work (novels and short fiction), most notable in the context of this volume is her novel Sister Teresa (2007). Given the scope of Mujica's scholarly and creative publications, it is fitting that a volume
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallWomen Warriors in Early Modern Spain: A Tribute to Bárbara Mujica ed. by Susan L. Fischer and Frederick A. De Armas (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USWomen Warriors in Early Modern Spain: A Tribute to Bárbara Mujica ed. by Susan L. Fischer and Frederick A. De Armas (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®129372026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450–1550 by Barbara J. Harris (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788008
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In English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, Barbara Harris traces the pious donations of Yorkist and Tudor aristocratic women prior to England's break with Rome for what their donations can tell us about their subjectivity. For purposes of this book, Harris identifies aristocratic women as the daughters, wives, and widows of noblemen and knights, a group that included the daughters and wives of London's Lord Mayors and the richest merchants who were also knighted. Subjectivity, she defines as the outward expression of their familial status and wealth identities and the roles and actions they undertook in their communities as a consequence of their status and wealth. While considering letters, marriage
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallEnglish Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450–1550 by Barbara J. Harris (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USEnglish Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450–1550 by Barbara J. Harris (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®92132026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Sofonisba's Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work by Michael W. Cole (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788009
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For the last half-century, two currents of scholarship on Sofonisba Anguissola (ca.1532–1625) have run parallel. A larger traditional one, conducted mostly by European art historians, combines biographical, documentary, stylistic, and technical factors to build a history and an oeuvre. A second approach, taken principally by American art historians informed by feminism, looks at early modern women artists as anomalous in masculine art culture and interprets Sofonisba's art from the perspective of her gender. Much is owed to the oeuvre-builders, yet traditional scholars continue to hold feminist questions and issues at arm's length. And feminists have paid scant attention to Sofonisba's art after her first decade in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallSofonisba's Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work by Michael W. Cole (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USSofonisba's Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work by Michael W. Cole (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®142312026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16English Convents in Catholic Europe, c. 1600–1800 by James E. Kelly (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788010
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In recent years, an astonishing burst of scholarship has appeared on the convents for Englishwomen founded on the Continent during the seventeenth century. In the wake of the pioneering prosopographical database "Who Were the Nuns?," overseen by Caroline Bowden (https://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/), an outpouring of articles, book chapters, edited collections, editions, and monographs has supplied detailed case studies that illuminate the cultural, literary, political, and religious lives of English nuns between 1600 and 1800. Synthesizing this rich body of criticism while also offering fresh insights based on extensive archival work, James Kelly's timely monograph provides an essential snapshot of the current state
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallEnglish Convents in Catholic Europe, c. 1600–1800 by James E. Kelly (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USEnglish Convents in Catholic Europe, c. 1600–1800 by James E. Kelly (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®113282026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women ed. by Erin Griffey (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788011
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This collection includes twelve illustrated essays by writers focused on royal dress worn by women in Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. In her introduction, Erin Griffey explains that the international focus of the essays is called for because the princess or queen in question was typically married and dressed in apparel that marked her previous national identity contemporary at the same time that it displayed her absorption into her husband's realm. Griffey positions her approach to historical gender studies in an interesting argument: the much-studied association of men with public rule and women with the private sphere of marriage radically breaks down when the clothes worn by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallSartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women ed. by Erin Griffey (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USSartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women ed. by Erin Griffey (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®105452026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World ed. by Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788012
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This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary collection brings together essays that enrich our understanding of the history of women's travels within England and far beyond in the early modern period. Familiar texts, such as Shakespeare's Othello and Antony and Cleopatra, and lesser-known sources, such as the narratives of Teresa Sampsonia and Mariam Khan, form the backbone of this cohesive work. Its essays stake out the centrality of girls' and women's mobility to our appreciation of global networks and transnational exchanges in early modernity. Challenging interpretive tendencies that view women's travel as an "absent presence," the volume's introduction insists that women's movement is part of a larger critical turn
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallTravel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World ed. by Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea (review)2021-04-16text/htmlen-USTravel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World ed. by Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea (review)2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®137682026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Alchemical Bodies: Discursive and Material Visions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788013
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In the past decade or so, we have come to understand more and more about women involved in alchemy in early modern Europe. Thanks to a number of published and ongoing research projects, we now know that women were patrons, authors, and practitioners, as well as laboratory assistants and managers. We also know that they read, excerpted, and collected alchemical knowledge in household collections of recipes, known as receipt books.1 This important research has contributed to the history of alchemy in general, particularly the project of recovering early modern alchemical activity in all of its variety, ranging from the vernacular to the Latinate, and from the artisanal to the most natural philosophical.2 For scholars
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallAlchemical Bodies: Discursive and Material Visions2021-04-16text/htmlen-USAlchemical Bodies: Discursive and Material Visions2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®544612026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16East of Italy: Women and Alchemy at the "Peripheries" of Early Modern Europe
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788014
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In the Segreti della signora Isabella Cortese (1561), one of the most popular "books of secrets" published in early modern Italy, the author—who presents herself as an itinerant female alchemist, addressing a readership of women—explains that the precious knowledge she shares has been gleaned from her travels along a well-worn route stretching from Italy to Moravia, Poland, and Hungary.1 Cortese's volume, which contains alchemical recipes along with images of laboratory vessels and equipment, offers a literary representation of the female adept that highlights the gendered circulation of knowledge between western and central and eastern Europe. While a number of recent studies have offered important insight into
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallEast of Italy: Women and Alchemy at the "Peripheries" of Early Modern Europe2021-04-16text/htmlen-USEast of Italy: Women and Alchemy at the "Peripheries" of Early Modern Europe2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®548382026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16The Virgin and the Globe: The Cosmography of Sor María de Ágreda
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788015
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In 1616, in a small village in northern Spain, a precociously brilliant teenage girl named María Coronel y Arana composed a text that she titled Tratado sobre la redondez de la tierra y de los habitantes de ella, in which she described the earth and its inhabitants and the ten celestial spheres revolving around the earth. Her stated purpose in writing was to praise God for the wonders of His creation and to inspire others to praise Him as well. The treatise begins: "Wonderful is the Lord as seen in the face of the earth, in having created it and in the providence with which He cares for it … what good reason to praise the Creator of such a structure, the giver of life to the universe!"1 This youthful work would
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallThe Virgin and the Globe: The Cosmography of Sor María de Ágreda2021-04-16text/htmlen-USThe Virgin and the Globe: The Cosmography of Sor María de Ágreda2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®1651812026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16"A veil of obscure mourning": Widow's Attire and Political Authority in Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo and True Relation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788016
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While Margaret Cavendish is at the center of a burgeoning field in early modern literary studies, the sartorial landscape of her works has often been considered simply a product of her unique personality. Labelled "fantastical," "singular," and "roman[tic]" with varying degrees of sympathy or dislike by figures like Dorothy Osborne, Mary Evelyn (wife of John Evelyn), and Samuel Pepys, Cavendish was known in the period for her distinctive choices in dress.1 In one particularly thrilling episode, the young Charles North recounted to his father how Cavendish appeared at the 1667 performance of William Cavendish's The Humorous Lovers with "her breasts all laid out to view in a play house with scarlett trimmed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmall"A veil of obscure mourning": Widow's Attire and Political Authority in Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo and True Relation2021-04-16text/htmlen-US"A veil of obscure mourning": Widow's Attire and Political Authority in Margaret Cavendish's Bell in Campo and True Relation2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®1805552026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Aemilia Lanyer, Edmund Spenser, and the Literary Hymn
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788017
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The most excellent kinds of poetry are hymns and paeans; next rank songs (mele), odes, and scolia, which are sung in the praise of brave men. The epic, in which are both heroes and lesser men, comes third, and then follows tragedy along with comedy. Comedy, however, will receive a fourth place by itself. Thereafter come satires, exodia, interludes, jests, nuptial songs, elegies, monodies, incantations, and epigrams.Hymnes to the gods was the first forme of Poesie and the highest and the stateliest.The chiefe both in antiquitie and excellencie, were they that did imitate the inconceivable excellencies of GOD. Such were, David in his Psalmes[,]…Moses and Debora in theyr Hymnes[,]…[and] Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallAemilia Lanyer, Edmund Spenser, and the Literary Hymn2021-04-16text/htmlen-USAemilia Lanyer, Edmund Spenser, and the Literary Hymn2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®1157642026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Women Alchemists and the Paracelsian Context in France and England, 1560–1616
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788018
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Medicine and theology were accepted concerns of early modern noble and gentlewomen, and also arenas within which Paracelsian alchemy developed. It is therefore not surprising to find that some educated women engaged actively in Paracelsian alchemy in both its spiritual-philosophical and medicinal aspects, although the extent of this engagement is only beginning to be fully explored.1 Debus first highlighted the Paracelsian debate in England and France, describing Paracelsianism as growing out of a fusion of medieval alchemical and neo-Platonic ideas into a renewed tradition in which nature became a vast chemical laboratory, investigable through an alchemy grounded in prayer, imagination, and faith.2 Paracelsian
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallWomen Alchemists and the Paracelsian Context in France and England, 1560–16162021-04-16text/htmlen-USWomen Alchemists and the Paracelsian Context in France and England, 1560–16162021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®512922026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Scents and Celestinas: Alchemical Women in Early Modern Spain
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788019
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Spanish playwright Lope de Vega depicts the perfumer and traveling vendor Belarda as protagonist of his 1621 play El leal criado [The Loyal Servant], offering for his audiences a popular representation of women as "makers."1 It is significant to note that even in early print editions of the play, Belarda's name is listed alongside her professional title of perfumer. While audiences primarily observe Belarda manufacturing or selling perfumes or other products capable of transforming the buyer and/or wearer as just one of many subplots of the comedia's frame, close study of this character within her historical context allows us to comment more broadly on Spanish women's engagement with "making" as tied to an array of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallScents and Celestinas: Alchemical Women in Early Modern Spain2021-04-16text/htmlen-USScents and Celestinas: Alchemical Women in Early Modern Spain2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®345922026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Introducing Women's Alchemical Cultures
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788020
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Over the last few decades, scholars such as Lynette Hunter, Sarah Hutton, Alisha Rankin, and Meredith Ray have turned to the era of the European scientific revolution—the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—to investigate women's contribution to the history of science. This research is important because it has spotlighted women scientists from the past and demonstrated that scientific inquiry is not simply a male phenomenon.1There is one area in the history of science that has recently started to develop as a burgeoning field of analysis: women's involvement in alchemy. During the Renaissance, alchemy referred to the craft of chemical transmutation, both physical (the transformation of metals, minerals, and plants)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallIntroducing Women's Alchemical Cultures2021-04-16text/htmlen-USIntroducing Women's Alchemical Cultures2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®169552026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Experience, Authority, and the Alchemy of Language: Margaret Cavendish and Marie Meurdrac Respond to the Art
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788021
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By the time Marie Meurdrac published La Chymie Charitable & Facile, en Faveur des Dames (1666) and Margaret Cavendish published the Philosophical Letters: Or, Modest Reflections Upon some Opinions in Natural Philosophy (1664), the controversy surrounding the field of applied chemistry in France—where both lived mid-century—had become primarily an academic one.1 It was not, however, "academic" to Margaret Cavendish and Marie Meurdrac, who would have been excluded from the knowledge communities of universities and natural philosophers who took sides in this debate. They, nevertheless, contributed to arguments on the subject, despite assuming that their contributions would be negatively received. Each begins with a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallExperience, Authority, and the Alchemy of Language: Margaret Cavendish and Marie Meurdrac Respond to the Art2021-04-16text/htmlen-USExperience, Authority, and the Alchemy of Language: Margaret Cavendish and Marie Meurdrac Respond to the Art2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®491282026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Alchemy and Cultures of Knowledge among Early Modern Women
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788022
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In this essay, I consider where alchemy sits in the spectrum of interests that make up women's knowledge in early modern Europe by considering evidence from a group of women whose work is not usually discussed in relation to alchemy: namely, philosophers. I shall examine the writings of Oliva Sabuco (b. 1562), Anne Conway (1631–1679), and Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) to discover what their philosophy reveals about their engagement with alchemy and other branches of knowledge, such as medicine and pharmacology. In so doing, I argue that women not only had practical knowledge in these areas, but also engaged with them at a theoretical level.There are two obvious reasons for alchemy being a useful prism through
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallAlchemy and Cultures of Knowledge among Early Modern Women2021-04-16text/htmlen-USAlchemy and Cultures of Knowledge among Early Modern Women2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®506472026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/788023
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In this issue our authors reveal the creative ways that women engaged with the intellectual and textual traditions of the early modern period. Brice Peterson explores how Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus is a reworking of Spenser's Fowre Hymnes. By composing her title poem as a literary hymn, Lanyer positions herself as the principal heir of the tradition and offers her poem as a new, Protestant model of the genre. Next, Kathleen Crowther analyzes Sor María de Ágreda's Tratado sobre la redondez de la tierra, demonstrating how Sor María read and employed the scientific and geographic knowledge of her time in the creation of her own scientific text. Finally, Katharine Landers unpacks the intersection of widowhood
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-17T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/665/image/coversmallIntroduction2021-04-16text/htmlen-USIntroduction2021-04-162021TWOProject MUSE®32462026-05-17T00:00:00-05:002021-04-16