European University Institute Library

Men and women making friends in early modern France, edited by Lewis C. Seifert, Brown University, USA and Rebecca M. Wilkin, Pacific Lutheran University, USA

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-292) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Men and women making friends in early modern France

bibliography

904335061

edited by Lewis C. Seifert, Brown University, USA and Rebecca M. Wilkin, Pacific Lutheran University, USA

Women and gender in the early modern world

"Today the friendships that grab people's imaginations are those that reach across inequalities of class and race. The friendships that seem to have exerted an analogous level of fascination in early modern France were those that defied the assumption, inherited from Aristotle and patristic sources, that friendships between men and women were impossible. Together, the essays in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France tell the story of the declining intelligibility of classical models of (male) friendship and of the rising prominence of women as potential friends. The revival of Plato's friendship texts in the sixteenth century challenged Aristotle's rigid ideal of perfect friendship between men. In the seventeenth century, a new imperative of heterosociality opened a space for the cultivation of cross-gender friendships, while the spiritual friendships of the Catholic Reformation modeled relationships that transcended the gendered dynamics of galanterie. Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France argues that the imaginative experimentation in friendships between men and women was a distinctive feature of early modern French culture. The ten essays in this volume address friend-making as a process that is creative of self and responsive to changing social and political circumstances. Contributors reveal how men and women fashioned gendered selves, and also circumvented gender norms through concrete friendship practices. By showing that the benefits and the risks of friendship are magnified when gender roles and relations are unsettled, the essays in this volume highlight the relevance of early modern friend-making to friendship in the contemporary world"--, Provided by publisher

Introduction / Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin -- Was Montaigne a good friend? / George Hoffmann -- The power to correct: beating men in service friendships / Michele Miller -- Redressing Ficino, redeeming desire: Symphorien Champier's La nef des dames / Todd Reeser -- Translating friendship in the circle of Marguerite de Navarre: Plato's Lysis and Lucian's Toxaris / Marc Schachter -- From reception to assassination: French negotiations of "platonic love" / Katherine Crawford -- Friends of friends: intellectual and literary sociability in the age of Richelieu / Robert Schneider -- Making friends, practicing equality: the correspondence of René Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia / Rebecca M. Wilkin -- The gendered self and friendship in action among the Port-Royal nuns / Daniella Kostroun -- The Marquise de Sablé and her friends: men and women between the convent and the world / Lewis C. Seifert -- From my lips to yours: friendship, confidentiality, and gender in early modern France / Peter Shoemaker