Description
Book SynopsisWomen Telling Nations highlights how, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, European women, as readers and writers, contributed to the construction of national identities. The book, which presents twenty countries, is divided into four parts. First, we examine how women belonged to nations: they represented territories and political or religious communities in their own style. Second, we deal with the ways in which women wrote the nation: the network of relationships in which they were involved that were not necessarily national or territorial. The legitimation that women writers succeeded in finding is emphasised in the third section, while in the fourth we analyse how and why women were open to the outside world, beyond the country’s borders. Women Telling Nations underlines the quantitative importance of the circulation of these women’s writings and demonstrates the extent as well as the impact of the international cross-fertilisation of nations, especially by and for women: focusing on routes rather than roots.
Table of ContentsAmelia Sanz and Suzan van Dijk: Introduction Part I. Women Belonging to Nations Madeleine Jeay: Medieval Women Networking before the Appearance of Nations Inês de Ornellas e Castro: Latine loquor: Women Acquiring Auctoritas (Portugal 1500-1800) Nieves Baranda: Beyond Political Boundaries: Religion as Nation in Early Modern Spain María Jesús Pando-Canteli: Expatriates. Women’s Communities, Mobility and Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe: English and Spanish Nuns in Flanders Henriette Goldwyn: Strange Language and Practices of Disorder: The Prophetic Crisis in France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 Part II. Women Writing the Nation Biljana Dojčinović and Ivana Pantelić: Early Modern Women Intellectuals in 19th-Century Serbia: Milica Stojadinović, Draga Dejanović and Milica Tomić Alejandro Hermida de Blas: The Role of Božena Němcová in the Construction of Czech and Slovak Cultural Identity Nadezhda Alexandrova: A Queen of Many Kingdoms: The Autobiography of Rayna Knyaginya Katja Mihurko Poniž: The Representations of Slavic Nations in the Writings of Josipina Turnograiska Ileana Mihailă: Dora d’Istria and the Springtime of the Peoples in South-Eastern European Nations Kati Launis: The Vision of an Equal Nation: Russian-Finnish Author and Feminist Marie Linder (1840-1870) Jenny Bergenmar: Selma Lagerlöf, Fredrika Bremer and Women as Nation Builders Viola Parente-Čapková: Decadent Women Telling Nations Differently: The Finnish Writer L. Onerva and Her Motherless Dilettante Upstarts Part III. Women in Networks Hilde Hoogenboom: The Community of Letters and the Nation State: Bio-Bibliographic Compilations as a Transnational Genre around 1700 Rotraud Von Kulessa: Anthologies of Female Italian Authors and the Emergence of a National Identity in 19th Century Italy Maarit Leskelä-Kärki: Histories of Women, Histories of Nation: Biographical Writing as Women’s Tradition in Finland, 1880-1920s Sirmula Alexandridou: Early Women’s Press (Three Female Magazines): A Challenge for the 19th Century East and Greece Henriette Partzsch: Connecting People, Inventing Communities in Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s Magazine La Violeta (Madrid, 1862-1866) Part IV. Women Looking Elsewhere Joanna Partyka: Overpassing State and Cultural Borders: A Polish Female Doctor in 18th-Century Constantinople Elena Gretchanaia: Between National Myth and Trans-national Ideal: The Representation of Nations in the French-Language Writings of Russian Women (1770-1819) Begoña Lasa Alvarez: Regina Maria Roche and Ireland: A Problematic Relationship Carmen Beatrice Dutu: Amor Vincit (R)Om(A)Nia: Reshaping Identities in Romanian mid-19th-Century Culture Senem Timuroglu: Women’s Nations from Ottoman to the New Republic in Fatma Aliye and Halide Edip Adivar’s Writing Notes on Contributors Index
