Authority, gender, and monastic piety: controversies at the English Benedictine convent in Brussels, 1620–1623

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Goodrich
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Convenient Means ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

This essay illuminates a little-known chapter in the history of English Catholicism by examining the controversies among the English Benedictine convent at Brussels between 1620 and 1623. The disputes began as a simple clash of personalities between Abbess Mary Percy and the house’s ordinary confessor Robert Chambers, and they culminated in allegations by pro-Jesuit nuns and confessors that Francis Ward, a second ordinary confessor, was attempting to seduce one of his penitents. These early clashes illustrate the cultural and gender politics of the Continental convents established for Englishwomen during the seventeenth century. By nature a female-oriented institution, the cloister encouraged women to attain monastic versions of stereotypical feminine virtues. Gender consequently provided a convenient means of understanding, evaluating, and politicizing monastic piety. As this paper will show, individuals who held little to no official power at Brussels used gender stereotypes to legitimize their interventions in the convent’s affairs. Nuns, confessors, and anonymous outsiders attempted to diminish the spiritual authority of Percy and Ward by raising the spectre of traditionally feminine vices. Within the woman-centred space of the Brussels convent, gender thus became an essential means of claiming moral authority and addressing larger concerns over monastic order and spiritual direction.1

A Froward Woman Beloved of God

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-230
Author(s):  
Marilyn J. Westerkamp
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Gender Culture ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Social Threats

This chapter argues the importance of gender culture in seventeenth-century spirituality and gender politics in the response of the magistrates to Hutchinson in particular, and strong religious women in general. The chapter begins with a reconsideration of the patriarchal nature of this society and the political and social threats represented by nonconforming women. The chapter returns to witchcraft and midwifery in connection with conversion mysticism: three female identities very similar in themselves and, apparently, equally threatening. Finally, the chapter returns to the beginning point: the growing Puritan concentration upon rational religion in comparison with the experiential, spirit mysticism that characterized the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In its reconstruction of a female religiosity, the argument connects the historically constructed nature of women with the Puritan construction of a masculine God and a feminine soul, and the sexual nature of Puritan spirituality.

As You Like It

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Shaughnessy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Performance History ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sexual Ambiguity ◽  
The Rich ◽  
And Gender

This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare’s best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare’s greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been imagined as a space of dreams. Beginning with the situation of the play in the context of early modern rehearsal and theatre practice, the book’s seven chapters successively examine the rich interplay between performance histories, changing relations with the natural world, and gender politics.

scholarly journals Social Theory and the Principium Unitatis

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
William Orton
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
General View ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
History Of

Complex as is the immediate situation of social theory, a general view reveals some significant continuities, both spatial and temporal. The attitude of the pluralists, whether in theory or in practice, to the sovereign nation-state has more common ground than at first appears with that of the states themselves toward the nascent organs of international government; and the dilemma underlying both controversies is in fact nothing less than a restatement, in modern ideology, of an issue fundamental to the history of the entire Christian era.That issue, stated in the broadest terms, centers about the relation between de facto and de jure sovereignty; or, more broadly still, between political and ethical, secular and spiritual, authority; and its importance may be suggested by the generalization that security in social relations is attainable, and has in fact been attained, only when the de facto, or political, sovereign—whatsoever form it may take—has been substantially integrated with the immediate source of ethical or moral authority. The pre-modern period of history abounds in statements, both factual and doctrinal, of this issue.

The English Secular Clergy and the Counter-Reformation

1983 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
European Language ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
History Of

The century from the calling of the Council of Trent to the conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle stands out as one of the most creative in the pastoral history of Christian Europe. The great number of new apostolic orders, the devotional flowering in France which tamed and domesticated the mysticism of Spain for everyman, the renovation of the parish and the priestly life aspired to by Carlo Borromeo, Pierre Berulle and Vincent de Paul are all aspects of a transformation which is the spiritual face of the baroque. The practice of confession stands somewhere near the centre of this transformation. From an annual social rite concerned essentially with the restoration of peace and the guaranteeing of restitution, it became a monthly or even weekly private rite of reconciliation of the penitent with God. It became, too, the focus for the direction of souls which was now seen, supremely in the work of Francis de Sales, as a central part of the work of the priest. The Salesian tradition was to dominate the flood of devotional manuals published in every European language in the seventeenth century, and in it the practice of confession was developed beyond the juridical and canonical framework of Trent, and turned into a subtle and highly personal instrument of spiritual direction.

Identity and Gender Politics in Contemporary Shakespearean Rewriting

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-204
Author(s):  
Özlem Özmen
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Feminist Criticism ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Strong Woman

Abstract Julia Pascal’s The Yiddish Queen Lear, a dramatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, merges racial identity politics with gender politics as the play both traces the history of the Yiddish theatre and offers a feminist criticism of Shakespeare’s text. The use of Lear as a source text for a play about Jews illustrates that contemporary Jewish engagements with Shakespeare are more varied than reinterpretations of The Merchant of Venice. Identity politics are employed in Pascal’s manifestation of the problematic relationship between Lear and his daughters in the form of a conflict between the play’s protagonist Esther, who struggles to preserve the tradition of the Yiddish theatre, and her daughters who prefer the American cabaret. Gender politics are also portrayed with Pascal’s use of a strong woman protagonist, which contributes to the feminist criticism of Lear as well as subverting the stereotypical representation of the domestic Jewish female figure in other dramatic texts.

Fajde, Pyramid Firms, or Ponzi Schemes?

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-63
Author(s):  
Smoki Musaraj
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Market Reform ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Global History ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Local Discourses ◽  
Masculine Discourse

This chapter maps out local discourses of finance and entrepreneurship at the time of the Albanian firms' boom and then bust. The discourse in the chapter is fraught with gendered and ethnicized undertones, such as the highly masculine discourse of entrepreneurship that characterized press coverage and kreditorë's recollections of the firms at the time of their boom and the feminized discourse that centered on the owner of Sude Kadëna that delegitimized the firms as fictive fraudulent entities that was attributed to occult practices and gender stereotypes. It also mentions the discourse that served to legitimize the firms as virile entrepreneurs at the forefront of Albanian capitalism. The chapter explores the changing notions of legitimate or illegitimate finance and entrepreneurship at a time of dramatic free-market reform. It constructs a genealogy of finance in postsocialist Albania in conversation with broader genealogies of finance in the global history of capitalism.

Gender Regimes in Western Societies from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (03) ◽  
pp. 391-399
Author(s):  
Didier Lett
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One

The concept of gender has become such an important subject in international historiography over the last two decades that it might appear odd to devote an entire dossier of the Annales to the topic. However, the relative success of this field of research may also conceal ambiguities in both the intellectual project underlying the term as well as its reception in the social sciences. For certain authors, undertaking a history of gender has meant writing a history of women. Though this form of history now enjoys proper recognition, it is still depreciated in two ways: on the one hand, it is qualified as a militant—and therefore unscholarly—history; and, on the other, it is criticized according to some vague argument claiming that no matter how it is labeled—“gender” or “women”—the inquiry is already dated. Without a doubt, the now canonical expression “history of women and gender” has generated real confusion among those scholars who are not particularly engaged with the field.1

Making a Face

Gamer Trouble ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 66-98
Author(s):  
Amanda Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Motion Capture ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Gender Prejudice ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Many

This chapter argues that centuries-old techniques of racial and gender prejudice underwrite contemporary animation and customization technologies. Focusing on the face, the chapter starts by situating animation practices within techniques of imitation and masking for the sake of “realism,” reading Quantic Dream’s demo “KARA” as an example of the many layers of imitation that occur in motion capture narrative animations. It then gives a brief history of physiognomy, the practice of quantizing faces into numbers, and how its essentialist philosophy provides the basis for the animation techniques of today. Finally, it discusses various techniques of “making faces,” guided by Gloria Anzaldúa’s political practice of haciendo caras, including playful interactions with facial customization software, modding, and other strategies that seek to understand and alter the racial and gender politics embedded in avatar customization systems, using Bethesda Softwork’s Fallout 3 as an example.

Identity and Gender Politics in Contemporary Shakespearean Rewriting

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-204
Author(s):  
Özlem Özmen
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Feminist Criticism ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Strong Woman

Julia Pascal’s The Yiddish Queen Lear, a dramatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, merges racial identity politics with gender politics as the play both traces the history of the Yiddish theatre and offers a feminist criticism of Shakespeare’s text. The use of Lear as a source text for a play about Jews illustrates that contemporary Jewish engagements with Shakespeare are more varied than reinterpretations of The Merchant of Venice. Identity politics are employed in Pascal’s manifestation of the problematic relationship between Lear and his daughters in the form of a conflict between the play’s protagonist Esther, who struggles to preserve the tradition of the Yiddish theatre, and her daughters who prefer the American cabaret. Gender politics are also portrayed with Pascal’s use of a strong woman protagonist, which contributes to the feminist criticism of Lear as well as subverting the stereotypical representation of the domestic Jewish female figure in other dramatic texts.

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