Description
Book SynopsisEarly modern women writers left their mark in multiple domains--novels, translations, letters, history, and science. Although recent scholarship in literary and cultural studies has enriched our understanding of these accomplishments, less attention has been paid to other forms of women''s writing. Women Moralists in Early Modern France explores the contributions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century French women philosophers and intellectuals to moralist writing, the observation of human motives and behavior. This distinctively French genre draws on philosophical and literary traditions extending back to classical antiquity. Moralist short forms such as the maxim, dialogue, character portrait, and essay engage social and political questions, epistemology, moral psychology, and virtue ethics. Although moralist writing was closely associated with the salon culture in which women played a major role, women''s contributions to the genre have received scant scholarly attention.Julie Candle
Trade ReviewWomen writers seldom appear in accounts of the early modern response to the intellectual, political, and cultural changes characterizing the period. Hayes offers a persuasive rethinking of these accounts through her insightful analysis of women moralists' writing. Hayes perceptively demonstrates how these writers' wide-ranging exploration of women's experience contributed to women's self-construction and sense of agency, as well as to the philosophical tradition and its understanding of the human condition. This book offers a valuable reference point for understanding the early modern. * Daniel Brewer, Professor of French Emeritus, University of Minnesota *
Women Moralists in Early Modern France is an important book for its breadth of scholarship and the remarkable narrative framework it constructs of philosophical inquiry in 17th and 18th century France. Hayes shows how women authors across generations treat six themes-knowledge of self and others, friendship, happiness, marriage, age and experience, and women's natural capacities-in the distinctive genre of moralist writing that was devalued as moral philosophy took a turn towards systematicity. It will be an essential resource for those of us working to recover the philosophical work of women and tell new histories of European philosophy. * Lisa Shapiro, Professor of Philosophy, McGill University *
Hayes makes an important contribution to one of the great projects of contemporary scholarship: the expansion of the humanities canon to include the voices of hitherto neglected women authors. She provides a unitary interpretation of several early modern French women authors by showing their common roots in the moraliste genre of the period. By doing so, she reveals the philosophical significance of their work. Dealing more specifically with gender, Hayes demonstrates how these treat the issues of friendship, marriage, aging, and women's rational capabilities. Her careful analysis shows how a woman-authored set of texts, often dismissed as light literature, wrestles in depth with perennial philosophical issues. * Rev. John J. Conley, Knott Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University Maryland *
