Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women: Virtue and Citizenship

Description

This edited collection showcases the contribution of women to the development of political ideas during the Enlightenment, and presents an alternative to the male-authored canon of philosophy and political thought. Over the course of the eighteenth century increasing numbers of women went into print, and they exploited both new and traditional forms to convey their political ideas: from plays, poems, and novels to essays, journalism, annotated translations, and household manuals, as well as dedicated political tracts. Recently, considerable scholarly attention has been paid to women’s literary writing and their role in salon society, but their participation in political debates is less well studied. This volume offers new perspectives on some better known authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Macaulay, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, as well as neglected figures from the British Isles and continental Europe. The collection advances discussion of how best to understand women’s political contributions during the period, the place of salon sociability in the political development of Europe, and the interaction between discourses on slavery and those on women’s rights. It will interest scholars and researchers working in women’s intellectual history and Enlightenment thought and serve as a useful adjunct to courses in political theory, women’s studies, the history of feminism, and European history. Cover Contents Notes on the Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: Women’s Political Ideas in Continental Europe 1 Emilie Du Châtelet’s Views on the Pillars of French Society: King, Church, and Family 2 Royalist and Radical: Octavie Belot on Rousseau and the Social Order 3 Performing Citizenship: Marie-Madeleine Jodin Enacting Diderot’s and Rousseau’s Dramatic and Ethical Theories 4 Etta Palm d’Aelders and Louise Keralio-Robert: Feminist Controversy during the French Revolution 5 Marie-Armande Gacon-Dufour: A Radical Intellectual at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 6 Legality and Morality in the Political Thought of Elise Reimarus and Immanuel Kant 7 Italian Women Intellectuals and Their Cultural Networks: The Making of a European 'Life of the Mind' 8 Women’s Intellectual Agency in the History of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Salons Part II: Women’s Political Ideas in the British Isles 9 The Right to Resist: Women’s Citizenship in Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s The Revolution of Sweden 10 Catharine Macaulay and Laetitia Barbauld: Two Eighteenth-Century ‘Republicans’ 11 ‘The Manly Virtues’: Macaulay’s Influence, Wollstonecraft’s Legacy 12 Between Enlightenment, Feminism, and Abolitionism: Mary Wollstoncraft's Thoughts on Women and Slavery 13 ‘Doing an Acceptable Service to my Country’: Political Thought in Charlotte Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry Bibliography Index