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  3. Gender and Power in the Premodern World

Gender and Power in the Premodern World showcases cutting-edge research into issues of gender and power, broadly defined, in global premodernity. The series offers a forum for innovative work examining women’s roles and agency, the construction of gender, and the performance of masculinities. The exercise of 'power' is understood to encompass not only rulers and elites in positions of political or religious authority but also others - including members of subaltern groups - who exerted power in social, economic, cultural, sexual, spiritual, or symbolic contexts.

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6 results in Gender and Power in the Premodern World

Christine de Pizan
  • Empowering Women in Text and Image
  • Charlotte Cooper-Davis
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    20 February 2024
    Print publication:
    31 October 2023
  • It is well known that in several of her works, Christine de Pizan actively sought to valorize and empower women; she notably made the case for women's education, argued for the protection of widows, and famously attacked the misogyny of the all-pervasive Roman de la Rose. Whilst numerous examinations have shown that Christine sought to empower women through her texts, this book demonstrates that the visual programmes of her works offer further evidence of Christine's championing women in their role as educators and activists, whilst challenging some assumptions made about gender in Christine's works. It also examines the conduits and structures by which power is conferred upon women within them. When read together, the text and image across Christine's œuvre reveal a consistent picture: one in which women educate and empower one another.

Evangelizing Korean Women and Gender in the Early Modern World
  • The Power of Body and Text
  • Susan Broomhall
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    18 February 2024
    Print publication:
    30 September 2023
  • This monograph examines how Korean women and men came to engage with Catholic missions during Europe's late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a profoundly volatile period in East Asian history during which political, cultural, and social disruption created opportunities for new interactions in the region. It analyzes the nature of that engagement, as women and men became both subjects for, and agents of, catechizing practices. As their evangelization, experience of faith, proselytizing, and suffering were recorded in mission archives, the monograph explores contact between Catholic Christianity and Korean women in particular. Broomhall demonstrates how gender ideologies shaped interactions between missionary men and Korean women, and how women's experiences would come to be narrated, circulated, and memorialized.

Lordship and Governance by the Inheriting Countesses of Boulogne, 1160-1260
  • Heather J. Tanner
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    13 February 2024
    Print publication:
    30 June 2023
  • Traditional scholarship argues that the changes fostered by the growth of royal power and feudalism in Western Europe directly impacted women's public power and authority in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Focusing on the inheriting countesses of Boulogne (1160-1260) and their neighbours in northern France, this monograph investigates the influence of the rise of centralized government on elite women's power. This chronological and comparative analysis highlights successive countesses' governance of inherited lands, the roles they played in their spouses' lands and in political affairs outside their inherited lands, along with crucial assessments of the social identity and status of the family. It challenges the established interpretation and shows that the establishment of feudalism and the elaboration of bureaucracy did not curtail elite women's access to or exercise of lordship to any significant degree.

Elizabeth I and the Old Testament
  • Biblical Analogies and Providential Rule
  • Aidan Norrie
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    16 November 2023
    Print publication:
    28 February 2023
  • Throughout her reign, Elizabeth I and her supporters used biblical analogies to perpetuate the Queen's claim to be England's providential Protestant monarch. While Elizabeth's parallels with various biblical figures - including Deborah, Esther, Judith, David, Solomon, and Daniel - have all received varying levels of attention in the scholarship, this is the first analysis of how biblical analogy functioned as a religio-political tool for Elizabeth across her reign. Taking both a chronological and thematic approach, this book addresses this gap by analyzing Elizabeth and her supporters' use of the Old Testament to provide justification for decisions (or the lack thereof), to offer counsel to the Queen, and to vindicate both female kingship and the royal supremacy. It argues that biblical analogies were a vital component of Elizabethan royal iconography, and that their widespread use demonstrates their potency as a tool for legitimizing and sustaining her power.

Agnès Sorel and the French Monarchy
  • History, Gallantry, and National Identity
  • Tracy Adams
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    24 November 2022
    Print publication:
    31 July 2022
  • Agnès Sorel (1428-1450), beautiful favourite of Charles VII of France and first in the long genealogy of French royal mistresses, was mysteriously poisoned in the prime of life. Agnès, part of a network of royal 'favourites', is equally interesting for her political activity. And yet, no scholarly study in English of her exists. This study brings her story to an English-speaking audience, examining her in her historical context, that is, the factional struggle for power waged against Charles VII by the dauphin Louis and the king’s final routing of the English. It then traces Agnès’s afterlife, exploring her roles as founding mother of the tradition of the French royal mistress and foil for the less popular holders of the 'office'; as erotic fantasy figure for nineteenth-century historians 're-inventing' the Middle Ages; and, most recently, as poignant victim for fans of the true crime genre.

Elite Women as Diplomatic Agents in Italy and Hungary, 1470-1510
  • Kinship and the Aragonese Dynastic Network
  • Jessica O'Leary
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    02 March 2022
    Print publication:
    28 February 2022
  • This book explores the diplomatic role of women in early modern European dynastic networks through the study of Aragonese marriage alliances in late-fifteenth-century Italy and Hungary. It challenges the frequent erasure of dynastic wives from diplomatic and political narratives to show how elite women were diplomatically active agents for two dynasties.

    Chapters analyze the lives of Eleonora (1450–1493) and Beatrice d'Aragona (1457–1508), daughters of King Ferrante of Naples (1423–1494), and how they negotiated their natal and marital relationships to achieve diplomatic outcomes. While Ferrante expected his daughters to follow paternal imperatives and to remain engaged in collective dynastic strategy, the extent of his kinswomen's continued participation in familial projects was dependent on the nature of their marital relationships. The book traces the access to these relationships that enabled courtly women to re-enter the diplomatic space after marriage, not as objects, but as agents, with their own strategies, politics, and schemes.