Republic of Women
Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century

Carol Pal reconstructs a forgotten network of female scholars and rewrites the intellectual biography of the seventeenth-century republic of letters.

Carol Pal (Author)

9781108436625, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 October 2017

342 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.51 kg

'Pal's study adds a great deal to our understanding of this Republic. Above all, she demonstrates that these women brought distinct qualities to bear within this community, including a clear sense of collegiality, which found expression in mentoring relationships.' Kenneth Austin, Huguenot Society Journal

Republic of Women recaptures a lost chapter in the narrative of intellectual history. It tells the story of a transnational network of female scholars who were active members of the seventeenth-century republic of letters and demonstrates that this intellectual commonwealth was a much more eclectic and diverse assemblage than has been assumed. These seven scholars - Anna Maria van Schurman, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Marie de Gournay, Marie du Moulin, Dorothy Moore, Bathsua Makin and Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh - were philosophers, schoolteachers, reformers and mathematicians. They hailed from England, Ireland, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and together with their male colleagues - men like Descartes, Huygens, Hartlib and Montaigne - they represented the spectrum of contemporary approaches to science, faith, politics and the advancement of learning. Carol Pal uses their collective biography to reconfigure the intellectual biography of early modern Europe, offering a new, expanded analysis of the seventeenth-century community of ideas.

Prologue
Introduction
1. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia: an ephemeral academy at The Hague in the 1630s
2. Anna Maria van Schurman: the birth of an intellectual network
3. Marie de Gournay, Marie du Moulin, and Anna Maria van Schurman: constructing intellectual kinship
4. Dorothy Moore of Dublin: an expanding network in the 1640s
5. Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh: many networks, one 'incomparable' instrument
6. Bathsua Makin: female scholars and the reformation of learning
7. Endings: the closing of doors
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], History of ideas [JFCX], European history [HBJD]