I knew Cornelius Agrippa only as a Renaissance magus. Discovering the title page of Female pre-eminence was a surprise.
Modern feminist scholarship has found Agrippa one of the most interesting authors of the sixteenth century, for his little treatise De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus declamatio / On the Nobility and Superiority of the Female Sex surpasses in radicalism most treatments of women written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Usually such treatises were collections of biographical sketches of famous women. Such books generally praised their subjects for possession of traditionally feminine traits even as they achieved the deeds that made them famous. Like most books published in his time, Agrippa’s De praecellentia was written in part to attract a patron: it was originally composed in 1509 to win favor from Margaret of Austria, regent of the Habsburg Netherlands, but not presented to her until 1529, when Agrippa had become official historiographer of the Netherlands, which Margaret still administered as regent for her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. Agrippa included De praecellentia in his first published book, a collection of short tracts and orations printed at Antwerp in 1529 (it was later included in his Opera, 2: 518–42). Whatever favor he may have gained was short-lived, however, since Margaret turned hostile in 1530 when theologians at Louvain condemned his recently published De vanitate as impious and heretical.
Nevertheless, his treatise in praise of women had considerable literary success. There were several reprints in Latin (the first in 1532), and translations into many vernaculars: French (1530), German (1540), English (1542), Italian (1544), Polish (1575), and Dutch (1611). There were at least two versified adaptations (into French and English), and a frequently reprinted Italian adaptation, La nobiltà delle donne (1549) by Lodovico Domenichi. Agrippa’s book became a major influence on popular discussions of the nature and status of women, though since it maintained what the chauvinist mentality of the age regarded as the absurd proposition that women are inherently equal, or even superior, to men, it was usually interpreted as a paradox written to amuse but not to be taken seriously.
Literary scholars of recent times have tended to adopt the same interpretation, though perhaps not for quite the same reasons. …
For the rest scroll down to The Praise of Women: Paradox or Feminist Tract?.
The text is online for your reading pleasure: Female pre-eminence, or, The dignity and excellency of that sex above the male: an ingenious discourse.
Originally posted 2014-06-22 02:49:59.
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