Description
Book SynopsisRepresentations of convents and nuns assumed power and urgency within the volatile political culture of eighteenth-century France. Drawing from a range of literary, cultural, and legal material, Mita Choudhury analyzes how, between 1730 and 1789, lawyers, religious pamphleteers, and men of letters repeatedly asked, Who should control the female convent and women religious? These sources chronicled the conflicts between nuns and the male clergy, among nuns themselves, and between nuns and their families, conflicts that were presented to the public in the context of potent issues such as despotism, citizenship, female education, and sexuality.
The cloister operated as a symbol of despotism, the equivalent of the Sultan''s seraglio or the King''s Bastille. Before 1770, lawyers and magistrates praised nuns as the personification of virtuous Christian women, often victims vulnerable to those who would use them to further their own political ends. After 1770, men of letters evaluate
Trade Review
"Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture offers stimulating new insights into debates over women's roles in eighteenth-century France, the place of women in the Catholic Church, and the significance of gender in the political thought of that period." -- Jeremy Popkin, University of Kentucky
"I wonder why no one else has explored this subject in this way and I thank Mita Choudhury for having done so. Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture deserves high marks for originality and readability." -- Jeffrey W. Merrick, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
