When historians mention European Renaissance literature, there are several names that get tossed into conversation without a second thought: Shakespeare, Petrarch, Castiglione, More, Celtic, Donne, Erasmus. This ‘elite’ club of, you guessed it, Dead White Men, easily pass historians' tests of true and legendary work. Making their way into the literary canon without question, this restrictive club has posed such a large problem that even gender historians have questioned whether women had a hand in early modern European culture.
No historian’s argument is quite as famous as Joan Kelly’s 1977 essay, “Did Women have a Renaissance?” Kelly, one of the pioneering forces in gender history, argues that European women did not have a cultural Renaissance. Kelly posits the structures of Renaissance society initiated a more organised and centralised patriarchal government and culture that kept women more constrained to the home than ever before, consequently making it impossible for women to develop a public voice. But the Renaissance was a long period, stretching from the fourteenth-seventeenth century, some 400 years of incredible cultural production. It would be rewriting history (something men have always done quite well) to deny that across this stretch of time no women wrote or published. And indeed, the list of women writing during this period could form a canon of its own. To say nothing of the women who funded and supported the production of the books’ historians pour over in archives today, or the women whose homes, courts, and letters supported the work of the great corpus of Dead White Men, an oversight that ignores the material support individuals provided that allowed book production to occur. This article looks to recover the work of literary women during the Renaissance, putting to rest Kelly’s thesis and showing the force of women in Renaissance literary culture.
Women who Wrote
Despite the overwhelming focus on the Dead White Men’s Club in Renaissance scholarship, a substantial number of women wrote during the Renaissance period. The list is long enough to form its own elite club: Theresa D’Avilla, Caritas Pirckheimer, Christine de Pizan, Maria de Zayas e Sotomayor, Margaret Cavendish, Marguerite de Navarre, Dona Valentina de Pinelo, and Louise Labé, just to name a few. It is important to note that this group of women were elite in their own right. Literacy was still restricted to those who could afford to pay the immense costs of education, meaning most men and women who worked as labourers, journeymen, and peasants could not read or write. Restrictions on literacy were even more intense for women, and the authors of the period were nearly all of wealthy or noble backgrounds. It is this privilege, alongside their literary capabilities, that allowed their names to grace title pages.
Kelly’s work does acknowledge some of these women, but she immediately discounts their work as simply parroting the styles and ideas of male authors. Kelly argues that women could only be considered as having their own Renaissance if they used literature to assert a cohesive feminine viewpoint and voice that differentiated from male writers. Throughout the 1970s when Kelly wrote, the existence of some universal feminine viewpoint was already being problematised within feminist movements. Arguments like Kelly’s, proposing that women shared universal concerns, often saw the experiences of women with the most power in a society, namely white, cis, straight, middle-class women, dominate discussions of the problems facing all women. Thus, the specific issues faced by women of colour, queer women, poor women, disabled women, etc. were disregarded as legitimate feminist concerns. If a universal feminine viewpoint does not exist today, how can we expect one to have existed during the Renaissance? Like women writing today, the women of the Renaissance wrote for numerous different reasons and from varied social positions. Thus, the topic and concerns they addressed in their writings equally varied. We cannot expect the writings of someone like Marguerite de Navarre, a princess and sister to the King of France, to echo the concerns of the daughter of a German lawyer, nun and poet Caritas Pirckheimer. So, it makes sense that reading across the writings of Renaissance women, a range of feminine voices emerge, each with differing concerns and focuses.
Comparing the literary careers of Christine de Pizan and Margaret Cavendish gives us insight into the variety of women's writing that existed across the Renaissance period. Christine de Pizan was born in Venice in 1364, but as a child her family relocated to France when her father took a position as the French king Charles V’s physician. As a young teenager, Christine’s Father married her to a French nobleman, and she soon started a family of her own. But her husband died shortly after, leaving Christine in tough financial straits. Most women in her position would have remarried to secure financial stability, but Christine had another idea. Christine’s position in society granted her the good fortune of receiving a rigorous Italian humanist education as well as access to well-connected patrons within the French royal court. She soon set herself up as a court writer, securing the patronage of powerful men such as the Duke of Burgundy. This patronage was central to her success. An author’s career in this period was reliant on their ability to continually secure patronage from powerful men and women who could fund their work. In fact, Christine was one of the first women in the Renaissance to make a living off her writing, which was something even male authors struggled to successfully accomplish.
‘Thus, not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did. Your father, who was a great scientist and philosopher, did not believe that women were worth less by knowing science; rather, as you know, he took great pleasure from seeing your inclination to learning’…And Christine, replied to all of this, ‘Indeed, my lady, what you say is as true as the Lord's Prayer.’” (Book of the City of Ladies)
This is perhaps even more impressive when considering the time in which Christine was writing. Christine was living through a period of political upheaval in France, writing towards the end of the Hundred Year War with England. This required her to play a careful political game to ensure continuing support for her literary endeavours while French court politics were in near constant upheaval. Nevertheless, she wrote prolifically and in a variety of genres – from the love poetry popular at the time to moral and historic works, even gaining a commission to write the official history of the reign of Charles V after his death. However, Christine’s most famous work amongst historians is her Book of the City of Ladies where she detailed women from history and religion who refuted the stereotypes of unvirtuous women. This work's specific focus on and defense of women has fascinated historians and stands to challenge Kelly’s thesis that female authors were not voicing feminine concerns, even if these concerns were not universal or do not mirror our feminist concerns today.
Margaret Cavendish, on the other hand, had quite a different literary career. Born around 1623 in Colchester, England to a wealthy gentleman, Margaret spent her early life splitting time between the countryside and London. Eventually, her family secured her a place as a maid of honour in the court of the Queen of England, Henrietta Maria. Shortly after her appointment, she followed the Queen into exile in Paris at the start of the English Civil War. It was there that she would meet the widowed William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, another royal supporter. The two would marry in 1645, having to fight for their love as the Queen and key courtiers opposed the match. They settled in Antwerp until the end of the Civil War and the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, at which point the pair moved back to England. There, they settled in London for a short time before retiring to the countryside. Margaret wrote extensively throughout her married life, publishing poems, plays, biographies, including her own autobiography, and academic treatises. She wrote the first known utopian novel written by a woman, published her own atomic scientific theories, and produced astute political analysis of the English Civil War in her biographical work. Her utopian novel, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World is particularly interesting as it sees a female heroine travel to and become the ruler of a Utopian world. Her heroine was intelligent, learned, and respected to the point of reverence by the ‘men’ of this new world - a utopian vision for the time indeed!
No sooner was the Lady brought before the Emperor, but he conceived her to be some goddess, and offered to worship her; which she refused, telling him, (for by that time she had pretty well learned their language) that although she came out of another world, yet was she but a mortal; at which the Emperor rejoicing, made her his wife, and gave her an absolute power to rule and govern all that world as she pleased. But her subjects, who could hardly be persuaded to believe her mortal, tendered her all the veneration and worship due to a deity. (The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World)
Her husband was equally literary, writing plays and biographies of his own. Many of these works are now believed to have been co-authored by Margaret. By all accounts, the two had quite a pleasant marriage bonded by their intellectual and literary pursuits with Cavendish granting Margaret the freedom to live quite an eccentric lifestyle. She was known for cross-dressing, wearing men’s vests and pants rather than elaborate gowns, though she had a penchant for beautiful dresses as well. She managed her own jointure, the land and money granted to her by her family on her marriage, and was nearly always financially secure throughout her life. The incredible privilege into which Margaret was born gave her a freedom to read and write at her leisure that was not available to the majority of European women in this period. Her status, wealth, and position gave her a unique freedom in her literary pursuits, and the range of work she left behind, often in contradiction to major theories of the time, reflects this.
Both Christine and Margaret’s works were shaped by the circumstances of their life and times. They were influenced by the outcomes of their marriages, their positions within political and social structures, the wars that dominated their lives, their religious leanings, and their financial situations. Both authors were subject to the popular tropes and topics that dominated the intellectual worlds they existed within, as were most authors who were searching for success. Margaret had more freedom in her work than Christine, being less reliant on patronage and having more protection under her well-connected and doting husband. The voices that emerge in their works are differentiated by some 300 years between their publications, their different places in the world, and the different concerns that dominated their lives. Regardless, both women clearly left their mark on the literary, intellectual, and political worlds in which they existed, and to write them out of the Renaissance for not speaking in one voice is an oversight that cannot be repeated any longer.
Women who Read
Authors were not the only women who influenced Renaissance literature. While Kelly’s work on Renaissance literary culture focuses almost solely on the thought produced in writing, the only reason historians today can access that thought is because it was recorded in material books. Book production during the Renaissance period was much more exclusive than today. Authors were not paid for their writing; instead, they made money and sustained their literary careers either by self-funding their work or by securing patrons, as Christine de Pizan did. Patronage was so important as books were still quite expensive to produce during the Renaissance, and most could not afford to pay for production themselves. Further powerful and well-connected patrons could be vital in ensuring the success and popularity of a work by publicly supporting the book. These patrons were essential in ensuring books were produced throughout this period, and they often had a say in shaping the topics and language of the writing. Even when patrons did not directly dictate the substance of literary work, authors often tailored their products to their patron’s taste to ensure their continued support. A point that Kelly fails to acknowledge in her work on the Renaissance is that wealthy women patronised literary work just as wealthy men did. Work by historians like Helen Smith and Laura Lunger Knoppers have countered Kelly by attending to this oversight, unpicking the complexities of Renaissance book production to illustrate wealthy women were equally essential in the publication and production of Renaissance literature.
Additionally, patronesses were much more likely to request works in their native languages such as French or English rather than in Latin, the dominant language used by intellectual and political elites until the end of the Renaissance period. Men saw it as a pointless exercise to teach women Latin because they were not the ones involved in high politics or in the intellectual pursuits within universities. While some wealthy women during this period were taught to read, they were largely only taught their native tongue. During the Renaissance period many translations of Latin texts, originally patronised by men, were commissioned by patronesses. This is so important because one of the major literary developments of the period was the growth of writing in native languages. Wealthy women patronising literary works were a part of this trend and contributed to the expansion of work in English, Italian, French, and German. Without their funding, it is unlikely we would have seen the same expansion of these languages during this period.
One such patroness was Elizabeth Parr, the sister-in-law of Henry VIII’s final queen, Katherine Parr. Katherine’s brother, William Parr started his political career as the Baron Parr and rose to become the Marquess of Northampton. William had a disastrous first marriage to Anne Bourchier in which Anne left William and eloped with another man. Eventually, William started an affair with Elizabeth Brookes, the daughter of the Baron of Cobham, sometime in 1543 shortly before his sister became Queen. The two continued their affair throughout the rest of his sister and Henry’s reign, eventually marrying in secret in 1547, just after William was named the Marquess of Northampton. The protectorate government of King Edward VI recognized the match as legal in 1551, making Elizabeth the official wife of William after much contentious debate. However, Elizabeth had a hard time gaining recognition of her new position from the rest of the court. So, following in the steps of her husband, who was known to be a great patron of the arts, especially in music and an author himself, she started patronising literary work. Such patronage would have helped Elizabeth establish herself as a cultured and serious lady of court despite her scandalous secret marriage. She patronised the first of these works in the same year that her marriage was officially recognized. One was an English translation of a portion of Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier that particularly focused on the good conduct of courtly women. Castiglione’s work was the Renaissance guidebook for proper court behaviour, and an extremely popular text at the time of Parr’s commission. Parr’s patronage was important as it once again aided the expansion of the English language’s literary use and additionally created an extended cultural dialogue around Castiglione’s text. As translations often involved interpretation and commentary on the part of the author, Elizabeth Parr’s patronage illustrates clearly that women were impacting Renaissance culture, expanding native languages, and creating extended discussions in their commissioning and patronage of translations.
Women who Renaissanced
One of the defining features of literary and scholarly communities during the Renaissance were literary circles and discussion groups which were vital to literary production. Women often participated in and even spearheaded this process throughout the period. Work written in the form of conversation between multiple parties, known as dialogic literature, was exceedingly popular during the Renaissance, and historians have started to understand that this genre reflected the world of intellectual and literary thought happening at the time. The majority of Renaissance literature was not developed alone, but was written or discussed in literary circles, either in person or through letters. Indeed, communal authorship was quite common in the period, such as the manuscripts of love poetry that circulated around the court of Henry VIII with different courtiers adding their sonnets and rhymes to the book before passing it along for others to respond or add to their work. Equally, authors often interacted in court circles hosted by both male and female courtiers and rulers, and, by the end of the period, salons or special gatherings for discussing intellectual thought became popular, especially in France. These salons were almost universally run and operated by women. The first known salon in Paris was overseen by Madame Rambouillet in the late 17th century. While Kelly overlooks the role of discussion and communal authorship to Renaissance literature, a focus on this type of production makes it evident that women were involved in and even organised the communities producing literary work during the Renaissance.
Elisabetta Gonzaga, the duchess of Urbino, was one woman who had a defining role in Italian literary circles. Elisabetta was born in 1471 to the Duke and Duchess of Mantua where her father funded her extensive education. In 1488, she married Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino. At their court, Elisabetta brought numerous authors and artists together under her patronage, often hosting grand literary and cultural gatherings and discussion circles. Perhaps the most famous author who came to live at her court was Baldassare Castiglione, the aformentioned author of The Book of the Courtier. In this work, Elisabetta is held up as the model Duchess, everything a perfect female courtier should be. Castiglione depicts Elisabetta’s real life literary gatherings in his work, showing her guiding discussions by setting the topics of conversation which illustrated how she not only impacted the Renaissance literary world by drawing great minds together, but by also directing those minds towards certain tasks and topics. Kelly herself acknowledges the role of Elisabetta in inspiring Castiglione’s work, but writes her off immediately as weak and compliant to the patriarchal rules of the time as nothing but an ornament to the court of her husband. She also sees no importance in Elisabetta’s direction of discussion because she supposedly contributed no thought herself. However, no thought would have occurred at all if not for Elisabetta creating a safe and well-funded haven for authors to gather. Further, the thought that was produced was done at Elisabetta’s direction, giving her great authority over the topics that would make their way into Renaissance literature. To write off the role of Elisabetta so easily is to undercut her central role in the world of Italian Renaissance thought and her influence over one of the most popular and influential texts of the period.
By now it may seem silly to pose the question again – did women have a Renaissance? Not only did women have a Renaissance where they produced their own work and thought from a variety of viewpoints, but the Renaissance – and its male canon as it is popularly remembered today — would not exist without the patronage and backing of noble women and female courtiers who funded and supported the intellectual work of famous male authors. Ignoring the role of women in the Renaissance means telling only half the story of some 400 years of history. We need to account for the role women played in shaping, producing, and funding the intellectual thought that came to define the Renaissance as such a unique cultural period in Europe. We need to write women back into the period because women did write, read, and Renaissance.
*It is important to note that there is historical debate over the term Renaissance, the exact period the term covers, and if such periodization even fits with the historical record. Additionally, this period of Renaissance is one that does not unproblematically extend outside of a European context.
Further reading
Adams, Tracy. 2018. "Christine De Pizan." French Studies LXXI (3): 388-400.
Brenesmeyer, Ingo. 2019. "Introduction." In Handbook of English Renaissance Literature, by Ingo Brenesmeyer, 1-24. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Campbell, Julie. 2018. Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe: A Cross-Cultural Approach. Abingdon: Routledge.
n.d. Christine de Pizan and Establishing Female Literary Authority. Accessed July 14, 2023. http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth214_folder/christine.html.
Clarke, Danielle. 2000. "Introduction." In 'This Double Voice': Gendering Writing in Early Modern England, by Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke, 1-15. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire, London, and New York City: St. Martin's Press.
Crawford, Julie. 2014. Mediatrix: Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fitzmaurice, James. 2004. "Cavendish [née Lucas], Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 23. Accessed July 14, 2023. https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-4940?rskey=J2qjNt&result=3.
Heitsch, Dorothea, and Jean-Francois Vallée. 2004. "Foreward." In The Renaissance Culture of Dialogue, by Dorothea Heitsch and Jean-Francois Vallée, ix-xxiii. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
James, Susan E. 2008. "Parr, William, Marquess of Northampton." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. May 24. Accessed July 14, 2023. https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-21405?rskey=lNsdTv&result=5.
Kelly, Joan. 1984. "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" In Women, History & Theory, by Joan Kelly, 19-50. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Robin, Diana. 2013. "Intellectual Women in Early Modern Europe." In The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, by Jane Couchman, Katherine A. McIver and Allyson M. Poska, 381-406. London and New York City: Ashgate.
Smith, Helen. 2012. 'Grossly Material Things': Women and Book Production in Early Modern England. Oxford and New York City: Oxford University Press.
Walters, Lori J. 2005. "Christine de Pizan, France's Memorialist: Persona, Performance, Memory." Journal of European Studies 35 (1): 29-45.