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Includes translations from French into English of selections from Scudâery's Clâelie, and two "harangues" selected from her Femmes illustres ou les harangues heroèiques (1642), and Discours de la gloire (1671).

Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the little-known author of Beauty and the Beast, was a successful novelist and fairytale writer in mid eighteenth-century France. While her novels are rarely read today, her compelling fairytale has become universally recognized. This edition is the first integral English translation of Villeneuve's original tale. The introduction seeks to illuminate the publication of Beauty and the Beast in its historical and literary context, and brings to life the dynamic female characters that first populated this enchanting tale: the courageous Beauty, the Fairy Queen, the Amazon Queen, the Lady Fairy, and the powerful, but mischievous elderly fairy. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series volume 74

"A bilingual edition of 31 dialogues by the famous sixteenth-century Italian actress and author Isabella Andreini, composed to serve as modules to be developed by performers in extemporaneous commedia dell'arte productions"--

Includes translations based on Vaux's1494 manuscript that was housed at the convent of the Poor Clares in Amiens, now in the archives at Amiens, and Baume's known as Manuscript 2 in the Monasterium "Bethlehem" of the Zusters Clarissen-Coletienen in Ghent, and a copy made in 1494 from the original.

In Giovan Francesco Straparola's The Pleasant Nights, a group of men and women gather together in a villa on the Venetian island of Murano during Carnival to sing songs, tell tales, and solve riddles. A sixteenth-century bestseller, The Pleasant Nights is today a fundamental text for European folk and fairy tale studies, for alongside triumphal and tragic love stories, comical tales of practical jokes, and accounts of witty retorts, Straparola (1480? - 1557?) placed some of the first fairy tales printed in Europe. Straparola's eloquent female narrators and the fairy tales they recount became a model for a generation of French women writers in Parisian salons, who used the fairy tale to interrogate the gender norms of their day. This book presents the first new and complete English translation of Straparola's tales and riddles to be published since the nineteenth century.

Maria de San Jose Salazar took the veil as a discalced (barefoot) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa de Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform. This work is a defense of the practice of setting aside hours of the day for conversation, music and plays.

Read by Protestants and Catholics alike, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-94) was the foremost German woman poet and writer in the seventeenth-century German-speaking world. This volume translates excerpts from the first two sets of thirty-six meditations.

Chiara Matraini was a member of the great flowering of poetic imitators and innovators in the Italian literary heritage begun by Petrarch. She excelled in a number of literary genres - poetry, religious meditation, discourse, and dialogue. This book is a collection of her erotic love poetry and poems on spiritual salvation.

For women of the Italian Renaissance, the Virgin Mary was one of the most important role models. This book testifies to the emotional and spiritual relationships that women had with the figure of Mary, whom they were required to emulate as the epitome of femininity.

"Christine de Pizan's Body Politic (1406-1407) is the first political treatise to have been written not just by a woman, but by a woman capable of holding her own in a normally male domain. It advises not just the prince, as was traditional, but also nobles, knights, and the common people, promoting the ideals of interdependence and social responsibility. Rooted in the mind-set of medieval Christendom, it heralds the humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting classical culture and Roman civic virtues. The Body Politic resounds still today, urging the need for probity in public life and the importance of responsibilities as well as rights"--

"Born in the early 1620s to parents of Scottish descent who were servants in Charles I's household, Anne, Lady Halkett (nâee Murray), grew up on fringes of the English court during a period of increasing political tension. From 1644 to 1699, Halkett recorded her personal and political experiences in both England and Scotland in a series of manuscript meditations and an autobiographical narrative (A True Account of My Life). Royalism, romance, and contemporary religious debates are central to Halkett's vivid portrayal of her life as a single woman, wife, mother, and widow: collectively, the materials edited here offer the opportunity to explore how Halkett's meditational practice informed her life writing in the only version of her writings to date available in a fully modernized edition"--

The memoirs of Hortense (1646-99) and Marie (1639-1715) Mancini, members of court of Louis XIV, represent earliest examples in France of memoirs published by women under their own names during their lifetimes. This title chronicles the beginnings of women's rights within the confines of an otherwise circumscribed early modern aristocratic society.

Katharina Schutz Zell (1498 - 1562) was an outspoken religious reformer in sixteenth-century Germany who campaigned for the right of clergy to marry. This book contains the translations of her publications, aiming to offer modern readers an opportunity to understand the important work of women in the formation of the early Protestant church.

Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653) is, by all accounts, a phenomenon in early modernity: a woman who wrote and published in many genres, whose fame shone brightly within and outside her native Venice, and whose voice is original and reflective of her time and culture. This book tells the story of the conquest of Byzantium in the Fourth Crusade.

At the height of Maria de Zayas' popularity in the mid-eighteenth century, the number of editions in print of her work was exceeded only by the novels of Cervantes. This book gathers a representative sample of seven stories, featuring Zayas' signature topics - gender equality and domestic violence.

In 1401, Christine de Pizan wrote a letter to the provost of Lille criticizing the highly popular and widely read "Romance of the Rose" for its blatant and unwarranted misogynistic depictions of women. As a result a debate ensued. This book collects the letters, sermons, and excerpts from other works of Pizan - that give context to this debate.

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was the sister and wife to kings and a pivotal influence in sixteenth-century France. This book contains sampling of Marguerite's varied works: from verse letters and fables to mythological-pastoral tales, from spiritual songs to a selection of novellas.

Though most historians remember her as the mistress of Voltaire, Emilie Du Chatelet (1706-49) was an accomplished writer in her own right, who published multiple editions of her scientific writings during her lifetime. This book features a selection of key sections from Du Chatelet's works.

Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-80) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650) exchanged fifty-eight letters - thirty-two from Descartes and twenty-six from Elisabeth. These letters are suitable for those interested in Descartes' philosophy, in particular his account of the human being as a union of mind and body.

Veronica Franco was a 16th-century Venetian beauty, poet, and protofeminist. This collection presents the eroticism and eloquence that set her apart from the chaste, silent woman prescribed by Renaissance gender ideology.