Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe examines the lives of women whose gender impeded the exercise of their personal, political, and religious agency, with an emphasis on the conflict that occurred when they crossed the edges society placed on their gender. Many of the women featured in this collection have only been afforded cursory scholarly focus, or the focus has been isolated to a specific, (in)famous event. This collection redresses this imbalance by providing comprehensive discussions of the women’s lives, placing the matter that makes them known to history within the context of their entire life. Focusing on women from different backgrounds“such as Marie Meurdrac, the French chemist; Anna Trapnel, the Fifth Monarchist and prophetess; and Cecilia of Sweden, princess, margravine, countess, and regent“this collection brings together a wide range of scholars from a variety of disciplines to bring attention to these previously overlooked women.
- Cover
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Introduction: Early Modern European Women and the Edge
- Aidan Norrie and Lisa Hopkins
- Section I. Life on the Edge
- 2. ‘At the mercy of a strange woman’
- Plague Nurses, Marginality, and Fear during the Great Plague of 1665
- 3. Chemistry, Medicine, and Beauty on the Edge: Marie Meurdrac
- 4. Anna Stanislawska’s Orphan Girl of 1685
- Autobiography of a Divorce
- Section II. Witchcraft and the Edge
- 5. Touching on the Margins
- Elizabeth Sawyer’s Body in Performance and Print
- 6. Anna Trapnel: Prophet or Witch?
- Section III. Courtly Women on the Edge
- 7. Wife, Widow, Exiled Queen
- Beatrice d’Aragona (1457–1508) and Kinship in Early Modern Europe
- 8. On the Edge of the S(h)elf: Arbella Stuart
- 9. Cecilia of Sweden: Princess, Margravine, Countess, Regent
- 10. ‘Elizabeth the Forgotten’
- The Life of Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635–1650)
- Epilogue. The Early Modern Edge in the Twenty-first Century
- 11. Catalina de Erauso—‘the Lieutenant Nun’—at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
- Index
- List of Figures
- Figure 3.1
- Figure 3.2
- Figure 4.1
- Figure 4.2
- Figure 6.1
- Figure 6.2
- Figure 9.1
- Figure 9.2
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