The Excellence and Nobility of Women
A Defense of Women (1582–1583) for the Women of Belgica. A Bilingual Edition
Jehan Baptista Houwaert author Marie-José Govers translator Marie-José Govers editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Iter Press
Publishing:20th Dec '25
£46.00
This title is due to be published on 20th December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
The first published defense of women by a Netherlandish author.
Jehan Baptista Houwaert’s Excellence and Nobility of Women constitutes the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses, or The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women (1582–1583), an immense conduct book for women in rhymed verse based on the many querelle texts of the French and Burgundian tradition but especially, in its French translation, on the pathbreaking Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529) by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.
Like its model, Houwaert’s work asserts not merely the equality but the superiority of women. It is unique in that it is addressed not to a wealthy noblewoman or princess, as were most such defenses, but more democratically to the “girls, unmarried women, wives, and widows of Belgica”—all of them!
"As a politician with sympathies for the new religious movements and William of Orange, Brussels nobleman Jan Baptist Houwaert (1533–1599) became involved in the revolt of the Low Countries against the Spanish king Philip II. But Houwaert was, first and foremost, a writer who tried to persuade his contemporaries with his pen. With his treatise On the Excellence and Nobility of Women, the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses (1582–1583), Houwaert was the first Dutch writer to take up the defense of women. Marie-José Govers translates his verse into fluent prose and meticulously traces the sources of the “modern” ideas that he used to build his plea. In an introduction that is both enthralling and erudite, Govers convincingly demonstrates that Houwaert’s work fits perfectly into the tradition of women's praise."
* Hubert Meeus, emeritus professor of early modern Dutch literature, University of Antwerp *
ISBN: 9781649591401
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
324 pages