Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRONWYN REDDAN
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
And Gender

‘I wish to be no other but as he’: Persia, masculinity, and conversion in early-seventeenth-century travel writing and drama

Conversions ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloë Houston
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Early Modern Travel Literature

In classical descriptions, Persians and their rulers are seen as being given to both tyranny and femininity; early modern Europe thus inherited a view of Persia in which the performance of religious identity, political power and gender were inter-connected. Given the complex relationships between Islam, tyranny and gender, early modern European interest in the possible religious conversion of Persia and its people marks a moment at which contemporary anxieties about religious and gender identities converge. This chapter argues that European writers’ interest in the prospect of Persian conversion became tied up with their ideas about the links between Persian effeminacy and tyranny. The prospect of the conversion of Persian Shahs in early modern travel literature and drama gives rise to particular anxieties about masculinity, both in Persian figures and in the Christian European travellers and dramatists who portrayed them. Despite the tradition of viewing Persia as feminised and luxurious, the sources betray an underlying concern that Muslims’ gender and religious identities might in fact be more ‘fixed’ than those of Christian travellers, who experienced their own conversions to Islam and to Persian identities in ways that were troubling to them both as Christians and as men.  

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.

Churchill’s Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-91
Author(s):  
Ian Ward
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Caryl Churchill ◽  
And Gender

This is the first of three chapters which focus, in their different ways, on the writing of history in contemporary theatre. This chapter concentrates on two ‘history’ plays written by Caryl Churchill during the 1970s; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Vinegar Tom. Churchill emerged as one of the most influential voices in radical British theatre during the closing decades of the last century. Both plays were set in the mid-seventeenth-century, but were written to resonate with themes familiar in modern legal and political thought. The title of the first play is taken from a Leveller tract published in the second part of the 1640s. Churchill uses it to explore the state of radical politics in later twentieth-century Britain. The second play, Vinegar Tom, is a contribution to a distinctive sub-genre of ‘witchcraft’ plays, which use the ‘crime’ of witchcraft as a vehicle for revisiting the relation of law and gender in modern society.

A Seventeenth-Century Polyglot Grammar

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Bertil Sundby
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Position ◽  
The Other ◽  
Practical Skill ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Weak Points ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Parallel Texts

Summary Jean Sterpin was a Frenchman who flourished in Copenhagen in the mid-nth century. His claim to recognition rests on his polyglot grammar, Institu-tiones Glotticæ (c. l668). Sterpin was acquainted with the language philosophy of Comenius, whose Janua Linguarum (1631) had set the pattern of the polyglot genre, with the work of Nathanael Duёz (fl. 1640–78), the polyglot lexicographer-grammarian, and with Erik Eriksen Pontoppidan’s Grammatica Danica (1668). The way in which Sterpin tackles the problem of teaching the grammar of three languages (French, English and Danish) and proficiency in four (incl. Latin) is superior to the schemes employed by Beyer (1661), Howell (1662), Smith (1674), and Colsoni (1688). His method of presentation is a skilful combination of typographic variation, Vertical alternation’, and the use of parallel texts. More important still, his description of the three languages involved is effected by interlanguage comparisons. The article touches on the parts of speech, case and gender distinctions, word-order, etc, but the strong and weak points of Sterpin’s contrastive-polyglot approach are best studied in his survey of English speech-sounds. Sterpin is sparing in his use of illustrative examples, the parallels he draws are not free from ambiguity, and his sound descriptions suffer from an imperfect understanding of the organs of speech. On the other hand, he shows practical skill in tongues, and his transliterations and ‘names’ of the letters of the four alphabets are no less ingenious than the contrastive layout as a whole. Especially helpful is a table of ‘diphthongues’ and ‘triphthongues’ on the basis of which it has been possible to assign the English long vowels their relative position in the vowel tract. In addition, there are comments on vowels in weak position and on consonants.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document