Babel 2022

Babel Volume XXI

Babel

Volume XXI: 2022 Early Modern Studies Student Society University of King’s College

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Babel Volume XXI

Babel 2022 Editors-in-Chief Sophie Lawall Bronwyn Turnquist Editors Caroline Belbin Neyve Egger Emma Martel Elsy Rytter Lara Van de Venter Layout Editor Sophie Lawall Emma Martel

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We must recognize that all of the work and scholarship at King’s, including Babel, takes place on K’jipuktuk, in the third district of the Mi’kma’ki, which is Eskikekwa’kik. This is the unceded and ancestral territory of the Mi’kmaq people. Additionally, we work in English, a language of colonialism and oppression. The Peace and Friendship Treaties struck in the early modern period between the Mi’kmaq and British Nations are unique in that they grant uninhibited use of land resources to First Nations, rather than outlining a surrender of land. Canada, however, continues to violate the spirit -peace and friendship- and the letter -Mi’kmaq access to land and resources- of these treaties.

For more information on these treaties visit www.migmawei.ca/ negotiations/migmaqtreatyrights/ Cover art: St. Jerome in his Study, by Albrecht Dürer. 1514. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden Printed by Atlantic Digital Reproductions, Dartmouth, NS.

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Table of Contents Foreword Bronwyn Turnquist .............................................................. 6 A Cell of Her Own: Female Identity, Community, and ProtoFeminist Thought in the Autobiographies of Early Modern Women Religious Lucy Boyd ............................................................................. 8 Temperance, Industrialization, and Working Class Recreation in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century England Emily MacPherson............................................................. 22 Power and Representation: The Self-Portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola Grace Day ......................................................................... 30 The Manipulation of Human Nature in Machiavelli’s The Prince Leah Chambers.................................................................. 36 The Navigation of Private and Public: Anna Maria van Schurman and Female Scholarship in Seventeenth Century Europe Megan Osler ...................................................................... 42 “When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?”: Montaigne, the Animals, and the Planets in Early Modern Europe Charlie Friesen .................................................................. 53 Invasive Intertext: Classical Allusions as Mechanisms of Oppression in the Letters of Poliziano Angus Wilson .................................................................... 59 The Virgin Queen: An Examination of Elizabeth I’s Maidenhood as a Means to Power Caroline Jones .................................................................... 68 Indigenous Versus Inquisitors: Relation between the Mexican Inquisition and Pre-colonial Communities Ireland Wright ................................................................... 75 Poetic Rebellion: Divine Imagery and Social Justice in Schiller's The Robbers Maggie Fyfe ....................................................................... 86 Afterword Sophie Lawall ................................................................... 91

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Foreword This is the third volume of Babel to be published during the COVID-19 pandemic; this journal continues to be a testament to the perseverance and intelligence of Kings students.

Babel this year, as in many years, has papers from across the student body, from FYP papers to graduating students. As I read the submissions for Babel each year I am amazed at the wide breadth of topics that interest my peers. No two publications are ever the same, which always makes working on Babel so fun for all of us in the Early Modern Studies Society. As you peruse this journal I hope you take the time to engage with and enjoy these papers. Each of these works had a lot of time and effort put into them and it shows.

I know it is a bit atypical to have thank yous in the foreword, but I have never been one to not gush about those around me so I will do it anyways. Reading the submissions this year I was blown away, each of the papers we selected and could not select was fantastic and thought-provoking. I would like to thank everyone who submitted for the courage it takes to share your work. I would also like to thank our authors. Without you, there is no journal - and if we don’t publish a journal the presidents get a pie in the face, and I really don't like getting pied - so thank you for trusting us with your work. A thank you must also be extended to the faculty and staff of the EMSP who inspire us both in our academic and non-academic pursuits. I would also like to thank the other members of the EMSS executive who selected, edited and did other behind-the-scenes work to make this journal happen. I would also like to thank my Co-President Sophie. So-

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phie graduates shortly after the publication of this journal, and while I am sad to see her go, I could not be more proud of her.

Sophie’s creativity, perseverance, intelligence and heart have kept this society - and me - running during a global pandemic. I couldn’t be more thankful. Finally, I would like to thank you, the reader for picking up this journal. I hope you enjoy this year’s Babel. I also hope you consider submitting, or even picking up, next year’s volume too.

Bronwyn Turnquist, Co-President of the Early Modern Students’ Society, 2021-2022

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A Cell of Her Own: Female Identity, Community, and ProtoFeminist Thought in the Autobiographies of Early Modern Women Religious Lucy Boyd Living and working in a time of profound social and political change, Catholic nuns in the 16th and 17th centuries found themselves at the intersection of several pressing questions. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation––a movement that advocated for the closure of convents––their traditional way of life was under threat. Furthermore, the ongoing querelle des femmes debate, sparked by Christine de Pisan centuries earlier, foregrounded questions surrounding the proper role of women in society.1 As one of the only female-centred environments at this time, convents provided a unique vantage point from which its inhabitants could interrogate these challenges and consider the political and personal roles of women. Many of these “women religious” took advantage of the nunnery’s unusual environment to write texts that provide valuable insights into the complexities of their lived realities. Carole Slade notes that, in this era, “women […] were most often represented by men.”2 Yet in convents, many nuns defied this standard and wrote of their personal lived experiences, both as cloistered and embodied women, in acts of remarkable self-representation. This essay will examine the autobiographical output of three nuns––St. Teresa of Avila, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Arcangela Tarabotti––and the ways in which their cloistered environment influenced their perceptions of female identity and their place in the world.

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While critics disagree on the extent to which St. Teresa may be upheld as a proto-feminist icon, her historical and ecclesiastical impact cannot be denied. Born in Àvila, Spain, in 1515 to a family of conversos, Teresa was an unlikely champion of Catholicism.3 As her own writing confesses, she was initially reluctant to enter the convent: “I could not have been pursuing these vanities for more than three months when [my father and brother] took me to a convent in the city where I lived, in which girls like myself were educated, though there were none there so depraved as I.”4 Her “depravity,” as she terms it, stems from a taste for “frivolities”5 including finery and gossip, and especially from her friendship with a woman of whom her parents disapproved. Staying at a local Augustinian convent for a year and a half as a laywoman, she first “suffered greatly, but more from the suspicion that [her] frivolities were known than from [her] being in a convent.”6 While she continued to struggle with her affinity for worldly things, she notes with fondness her first taste of the communal monastic experience: “All the sisters were very pleased with me […] I was made much of, and though I was then bitterly averse to taking the habit […] I was delighted to see nuns who were so good.”7 While she left the convent a happier woman–– and with a close friendship with one of the cloistered women–– she was still “most anxious not to be a nun.”8 In November 1536, however, Teresa bowed to overwhelming family pressure and took holy vows at the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation just outside Àvila.9 This move displeased her father, as the convent’s vast property holdings and relatively relaxed rules made it popular in the town (Monastery of La Encarnación). Despite the convent’s worldlier bent, Teresa became fixated on the humiliation of the flesh: “When I took the habit, the Lord immediately showed me how He favours those who do violence to themselves in order to serve Him.”10 It was also around this time that she began to experience fainting fits and a host of other ailments that scholars to-

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10 Babel Volume XXI day speculate was temporal lobe epilepsy.11 Desperately seeking a cure, Teresa began to turn towards books and prayer.12 Yet even as Teresa turned increasingly inwards, she still struggled with the “vanities of the world.”13 She laments in her Life that a “convent of unenclosed nuns” (as was the case for the sisters of the Convent of the Incarnation) was “a place of great peril, and more like a road to Hell.”14 Still, she praises her “virtuous” sisters and worries for their spiritual well-being.15 It is this love and concern for the women with whom she lived that ultimately motivates Teresa’s literary projects: indeed, the inscription indicates that she wrote the Life of St. Teresa “at the command of her confessor.”16 The Dominican friar, Garcia de Toledo, requested an account of her life, convincing her that an account of her personal sin, experiences with prayer and ecstatic rapture, and views on monastic life, would be a great asset to the women in her care.17 The Life of St. Teresa, completed in 1565, was her first and most richly autobiographical work: she would go on to compose several subsequent texts on mental prayer.18 While much of the first half of the Life recounts the age-old struggle between spirit and flesh, the earthly and the divine, Teresa also argues that accessing the divine requires both prayer and, importantly, spiritual friendship: I would counsel those who practice prayer to seek, at least in the beginning, friendship and association with other persons having the same interest […] I don’t know why it is not permitted that a person beginning truly to love and to serve God talk with some others about his joys and trials, which all who practice prayer undergo.19 Friendship is a key aspect of convent life, and nuns are ostensibly gathered to seek a common purpose. Yet, as Teresa herself makes amply clear, convents were not always separate from worldly concerns. Carole Slade observes that Teresa’s autobiography is comprised of three key sections: her struggles with sin, her mystical experiences and observations on mental prayer, and her reform

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activities within the convent and the Catholic faith.20 In this final section, driven by a motivation to protect her sisters, she addresses her hopes and concerns for monastic life.

On the Convent of the Incarnation, she writes that while there are “many servants of God,” the Order did not “observe the Rule in its original strictness” and it “seemed to [her that nuns] enjoyed excessive comfort.”21 Instead, she desired to follow the stricter practices of the Barefoot (Discalced) Orders and received a vision from God that encouraged her to found a new convent.22 This was initially met with great opposition, both from church hierarchs and the nuns themselves.23 After some years of struggle, a new Discalced convent––the Convent of St. Joseph–– was founded in 1562 with the blessing of the Bishop of Àvila.24 The convent aimed to provide an environment in which nuns could “withdraw more completely from activities and fulfill [their] profession and vocation more perfectly under conditions of greater enclosure.”25 Yet Teresa recounts a “struggle with the devil” that soon followed her great success: “[He asked me] would the sisters be happy, living under so strict a rule, whether they might not go short of food, indeed, whether the whole venture was not ridiculous––for who had made it my business, seeing as I was in a convent already?”26 While Teresa’s account of her struggle has an obvious spiritual purpose, it also foregrounds rhetorical humility at a time when female agency and authority were greatly questioned in ecclesiastical matters and beyond. Teresa recounts how she drew on prayer––and, once again, love for God and her sisters––to steel herself.27 Still, opposition to her reforms remained great, and male political and ecclesiastical opponents refused to sanction the new convent and threatened a lawsuit.28 Against these challenges, however, Teresa’s convent would prevail.29 In the final eight chapters of the Life, Teresa finally achieves “the balance between outer and inner events” that so plagued her at the beginning of the work.30 The autobiography ends in her fiftieth year: she would go on to found another six-

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12 Babel Volume XXI teen convents and write several other works, including, most famously, the Interior Castle, a guide to mental prayer and spiritual perfection.31 St. Teresa––an intellectual heavyweight of the Catholic Reformation, and the first woman to be named Doctor of the Church––was, without doubt, one of the most influential women of the 16th century.32 Yet, the interpretation of her works has vexed feminist scholars for decades. As her Life reveals, she was a champion of the convent, which motivated her written and reform work, and she challenged male authority in her pursuit of an enclosed space for female spirituality. At the same time, however, the Life (as with Teresa’s other works) is steeped in references to “female frailty” and weakness. Some scholars have argued that this “rhetoric of humility” was a necessary device for her survival in a patriarchal context, while others contend it is an accurate articulation of her beliefs.33 Others question whether feminism can meaningfully exist within a Catholic context; as Margaret Dorgan writes, “Teresa’s primary focus on inner spiritual freedom makes her a questionable candidate for posthumous glory as a social liberator.”34 Yet Dorgan notes that the richness of her spiritual project is like “a still-flowing fountain where anyone can come to drink,”35 an image Teresa herself harnesses in the Life.

Indeed, some of the limitations of Teresa’s project may be underscored through an analysis of the work of another literary woman religious: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramirez de Santillana, the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish captain and a Criolla woman, Juana lived in Colonial Mexico at the apex of Catholic intensification, almost a century after Teresa’s reforms in Spain.26 Juana was a profoundly gifted child prodigy who could read and write at the age of three; by adolescence, she was fluent in Latin, Ancient Greek, Spanish, and the Aztec language Nahuatl.37 Most impressively, she was an autodidact––a necessity for scholarly women at the time, as women were barred from receiving a formal education.38 Educational av-

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enues for women were few during the 17th century: Juana was advised to enter a convent, where she was told she would have the time and space to study, free of the obligations of family and marriage.39 In August 1667, she chose to join the Discalced Carmelite monastery of San José in Mexico City––a Mexican settlement of Teresa’s reformed order.40 In Juana’s own words: “I entered the convent although I knew certain characteristics (I speak of secondary qualities, not formal ones) incompatible with my character, but considering the total antipathy I had towards matrimony, the convent was the least disproportionate and most honourable decision I could make.”41 However, she was miserable in the strict environment and left after three months.42 In the same year, she entered a new order: the more relaxed Hieronymite Convent of Santa Paula.43 While she is now revered as the “Tenth Muse” in Mexico, her time in the convent was fraught––it was far from the scholarly utopia she longed for, as her writing amply demonstrates.

As Elizabeth Teresa Howe notes, unlike Teresa, Sor Juana never composed a “straightforward” autobiography, focusing on profane topics––such as love––rather than the mysticism that characterized her predecessor’s work.44 Instead, Howe observes that “the story of [Juana’s] life is a thread running through a tapestry of literary forms that encompass the many genres in which she wrote.”45 This essay will consider one of Sor Juana’s most direct accounts of life within the walls of Santa Paula––and her foremost proto-feminist piece––the Response to Sor Filotea.

The Response was composed at a particularly difficult moment in Sor Juana’s life. A well-known author whose work had been celebrated by the previous Viceroy and Vicereine, Sor Juana lost her patrons when they returned to Spain in 1686.46 The void of aristocratic support left her vulnerable, and a public scandal arose in November 1690 when the Bishop of Puebla published without her knowledge her critique of a sermon by a Portuguese

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14 Babel Volume XXI Jesuit preacher.47 Writing under the pseudonym “Sor Filotea,” the Bishop attached a letter addressed to Sor Juana that advised her to focus on religious matters instead of secular study.48 Forced to defend both herself and her studies, the Response is at once a sad account of the limitations placed upon her within the convent and a powerful defence of women’s right to education.

Despite Sor Juana’s initial vision, the convent ultimately provided many challenges to her intellectual goals. She hints at the “obligatory occupations” that “limit[ed] the freedom of [her] studies” and the “noise of [the] community that […] interfered with the tranquil silence of [her] books.”49 Even when she managed to find time to study alone, learning was a gruelling task to undertake alone: “I learned how difficult it is to study those soulless characters without the living voice and explanations of a teacher; yet I gladly endured all this work for the sake of my love of letters.”50 There is a cruel irony in Sor Juana’s dilemma: the convent provides her with neither the solitude for study nor the community in which learning thrives.

The more serious challenge that she faced, however, was not a physical obstacle to study, but rather the confrontation her work represented in a theological context. In order to preserve her right to secular letters, Sor Juana was forced to adopt a rhetoric of humility and defend her work on religious terms. She writes that to know the “Queen of Sciences”––theology––the student must first know “her handmaidens.”51 “How,” Sor Juana writes, without great erudition [can one] approach so many matters of profane history mentioned in Holy Scripture, so many Gentile customs, so many rites, so many ways of speaking? How, without many rules and much reading of the Holy Fathers, can one grasp the obscure expression of the prophets?52 As Amanda Powell observes, Juana undercuts her own authority by citing an incapacity to study scripture––even as she demonstrates a mastery of the subject.53 After defending each secular

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field on a scriptural basis, Sor Juana moves on to a larger project: the defence of education not merely for herself, but all women.

In doing so, Sor Juana cites famous learned women––both from the Bible and classical history––and argues that “danger is averted”54 when women are taught. “For what disadvantage can there be,” she asks, “in having an older woman learned in letters, whose conversation and customs are holy, directing the education of young girls?”55 She alludes to the threat that male teachers pose to younger female pupils in her defence of both female education and the right to teach.56 According to Amanda Powell, Sor Juana makes an important distinction at the heart of her argument: “the prohibitions against women’s learning or writing are man-made, based on precedent and social custom, rather than on actual law, whether divine, human, or natural.”57 Over the course of the Response, Sor Juana repeatedly argues that it is this custom, rather than an innate lack of female intellect, that holds women back: If I turn to my ability, so often criticized, to make verses–– which is so natural in me that I even have to force myself not to write this letter in verse––seeing it condemned and incriminated so often by many, I have searched very diligently for what may be the harm in it and have not found it.58 Most strikingly, Sor Juana demonstrates that even if she is barred from her books, she can never be truly separated from learning; she moves to study “all the things God created.”59 She recounts learning through cooking and through her observations of, for example, two young girls playing with a spinning top and the arches in the ceiling.60 Elizabeth Teresa Howe writes that Sor Juana gives herself three distinct narrative voices in her examination of women’s learning: “the humble nun, the rhetorician and logician, and, finally, the divinely inspired writer.”61 Collectively, these separate voices––while partly motivated by necessity–– speak to the complexity of women’s situation in the 17th century

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16 Babel Volume XXI and allow Sor Juana to address the querelle through a “polyphony” of dissenting voices.62 While Sor Juana’s story is a tragic account of a scholarly woman limited by circumstance––both within the convent and in light of the broader repressive social conditions of her time–– other women faced graver challenges still. The convent was commonly used as a dumping ground for women deemed “undesirable”––whether they lacked dowries or had physical or mental disabilities.63 Such was the case for Arcangela Tarrabotti– –a young Venetian woman living at the beginning of the 17th century. Born with a leg deformity (that scholars speculate was clubfoot), Arcangela was initially sent in 1617 at the age of eleven to the Benedictine convent of Sant’Anna as a boarder.64 The double standard in the treatment of her disability is striking: her father was born with a similar ailment, yet was able to marry and have a successful career.65 Arcangela would take her first set of vows in 1620 at the same convent, from which she would not be permitted to leave or resign.66 She was a poor fit for monastic life, refusing to wear her habit or cut off her hair, as was the custom for the Benedictines.67 Yet at the same time, the strictly enclosed and regulated convent offered Arcangela the space to begin her literary career and provided her with source material for much of her work.

While she wrote several works in her lifetime, the most famous––and autobiographical––is Paternal Tyranny, which was published two years after her death in 1654.68 On the one hand, the work is a moving and disturbing portrait of life for a young disabled woman in Early Modern Europe; on the other, Arcangela is quick to move beyond her individual circumstances to level a broader critique at patriarchy and the social, ecclesiastical, and political structures that served to impede women. As such, the work is a stunning demonstration of how the personal is made political––and a testament to the proto-feminist impact of autobiography.

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Paternal Tyranny is composed of three sections. In the first, Arcangela examines theology, particularly the notorious story of Adam and Eve. She frames Adam as a coward who refuses to take accountability for his actions––and who is, she argues, a greater sinner as a result.69 In the second section, she turns to the Venetian social and political structures that oppress women. She is particularly attentive to women’s inability to take part in higher education and public office and examines the role of the convent.70 In the third and final section, Arcangela revisits the Bible and offers a feminist reading of the New Testament, arguing that gender equality is a fundamental Christian doctrine.71 Arcangela’s portrait of her life in Sant’Anna is sobering.

She often compares the convent to a “tomb”––a reference to the Benedictine rule of “stability,” under which veiled women were barred from leaving the convent––and frequently harnesses the language of incarceration to drive her point home.72 Most strikingly, she calls the convent a “living hell” for “those without [true] vocation” and the “enforced slaves of Christ.”73 She even draws a parallel between Sant’Anna and Dante’s Inferno: “Over the gate of Hell, Dante says, are inscribed the words Abandon every hope, who enter here. The same could be inscribed over the portals of convents.”74 While this depiction of Arcangela’s cloistered life is unquestionably grim, her work draws important distinctions between willing and unwilling nuns. She extols the merits of a “freely chosen religious life” and “reveres” pious women such as St. Teresa and St. Euphrosina.75 When she paints the convent in a negative light, she draws upon the experiences of forcibly enclosed women––who, she asserts, make up to a third of her convent.76 These women, she writes, are not true nuns but rather “laywomen,” a title she also gives to herself.77 For Arcangela, religious vocation is noble but the convent is at the same time a corrupted place co-opted to serve patriarchal ends. This “paternal tyranny” defiles not only the Church but also perverts the very

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18 Babel Volume XXI structure of the Christian faith––a faith that, she argues, was initially founded on equality between the sexes.78 The experiences of Teresa, Sor Juana, and Arcangela of convent life were diverse and varied. For Teresa, the convent was a freeing entity––one that offered her the space to lead a rigorous devotional life and care for her sisters. This spirit is reflected in her autobiographical and religious writings, which were produced in this same spirit of devotion: both to God and the cloistered community. While her legacy as a feminist is hotly contested, her writing championed a revolutionary approach to female learning and piety. In contrast, Sor Juana took the veil primarily to escape the distractions of the earthly world in pursuit of knowledge and learning. Ultimately, however, these distractions would follow her into the convent, where she would struggle against both patriarchal and ecclesiastical structures. Her Response to Sor Filotea reveals the ways in which she suffered as a result while articulating her proto-feminist views. Finally, Arcangela Tarabotti’s Paternal Tyranny is at once a powerful invective against women’s repression, and more specifically the ways in which men co-opt religious structures to further their own ends. Inspired by Arcangela’s own unhappy experiences as a young disabled woman forced into a convent against her will, it condemns the treatment of “undesirable” women like herself. Taken together, these autobiographical accounts of the Church are important sites of early feminist thought. For all its failings and limitations, the early modern convent provided a uniquely female-dominated environment that allowed these women—through bracing acts of authorial selfrepresentation—to interrogate wider issues of gender and power.

Notes Amanda Powell, “Revisiting the ‘Querelle’ in Maria de San José Salazar and Juana Inés de la Cruz: Inciting Disturbances of the Patriarchy,” Letras Femeninas 35, no. 1 (2009): 211-212.

2 Carole Slade, St. Teresa of Àvila: Author of a Heroic Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 1.

3 J.M. Cohen, introduction to The Life of Teresa of Àvila by Herself, by Saint Tere1

Babel Volume XXI sa of Àvila (London: Penguin Classics, 1957), 1.

4 Saint Teresa of Àvila, The Life of Teresa of Àvila by Herself, trans. J.M. Cohen (London: Penguin Classics, 1957), 28.

5 Àvila 27.

6 Àvila 29.

7 Àvila 29.

8 Àvila 30.

9 Àvila 33.

10 Àvila 33.

11 Àvila 35.

12 Àvila 35-36.

13 Àvila 51.

14 Àvila 51.

15 Àvila 54-55.

16 Àvila 21.

17 Elizabeth Teresa Howe, Autobiographical Writing by Early Modern Hispanic Women (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2015), 65.

18 Slade 2-3.

19 Àvila 66.

20 Slade 2-3.

21 Àvila 236.

22 Àvila 236-37.

23 Àvila 239-41.

24 Àvila 266.

25 Àvila 266.

26 Àvila 267.

27 Àvila 268-70.

28 Àvila 270.

29 Àvila 275-76.

30 Cohen 13.

31 Cohen 13.

32 Cohen 2.

33 Margaret Dorgan, “St. Teresa of Àvila: Woman and Waverer,” CrossCurrents 32, no. 2, (1982): 1-2.

34 Dorgan 1-2.

35 Dorgan 1.

36 Howe 195-96.

37 Howe 195.

38 Howe 196.

39 Howe 195-96.

40 Howe 197.

41 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Selected Works, ed. and trans. Edith Grossman (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2014). 163.

42 Howe 197-98.

43 Howe 196.

44 Howe 195.

45 Howe 195.

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20 Babel Volume XXI Howe 203.

Howe 206-07.

48 Fernandez, Bishop Don Manuel de Fernandez, “A Letter From Sor Filotea, to the Eminent Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz,” in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works, ed. and trans. Edith Grossman (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2014), 143-49.

49 Cruz 163-64.

50 Cruz 164.

51 Cruz 165.

52 Cruz 166.

53 Powell 217.

54 Cruz 193.

55 Cruz 194.

56 Cruz 195-96.

57 Powell 221.

58 Cruz 201.

59 Cruz 182.

60 Cruz 184-85.

61 Howe 221.

62 Powell 218.

63 Letizia Panizza, introduction to Paternal Tyranny, by Arcangela Tarabotti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 1.

64 Sabrina Ebbersmyer, “There Remains Nothing to Lose for the One Who Has Lost Liberty: Liberty and Free Will in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Radical Criticism of the Patriarchy,” Intellectual History Review 32, no. 1 (2021).

65 Panizza 2-3.

66 Ebbersmyer.

67 Panizza 3-4.

68 Ebbersmyer.

69 Arcangela Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, trans. Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 51-54.

70 Tarabotti 85-122.

71 Tarabotti 123-53.

72 Panizza 4.

73 Tarabotti 65.

74 Tarabotti 65.

75 Tarabotti 64.

76 Tarabotti 72.

77 Tarabotti 65.

78 Tarabotti 119-21.

46 47

Bibliography Àvila, Saint Teresa of. The Life of Teresa of Àvila by Herself. Translated and with an introduction by J.M. Cohen. London: Penguin Classics, 1957.

Cohen, J.M. Introduction to The Life of Teresa of Àvila by Herself. By Saint Teresa of Àvila. London: Penguin Classics, 1957.

Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la. Selected Works. Edited and translated by Edith

Babel Volume XXI Grossman. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2014.

Dorgan, Margaret. “St. Teresa of Àvila: Woman and Waverer.” CrossCurrents 32, no. 2 (1982): 155-166. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/24458494. Accessed 13 Feb. 2021.

Ebbersmyer, Sabrina. “There Remains Nothing to Lose for the One Who Has Lost Liberty: Liberty and Free Will in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Radical Criticism of the Patriarchy.” Intellectual History Review 32, no. 1 (2021).

Taylor & Francis Online. doi-10.1080/17496977.2020.1855948. Accessed 18 Feb. 2021.

Fernandez, Bishop Don Manuel de. “A Letter From Sor Filotea, to the Eminent Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz.” In Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works. Edited and Translated by Edith Grossman. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2014.

Howe, Elizabeth Teresa. Autobiographical Writing by Early Modern Hispanic Women. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2015. E-Book.

“Monastery of La Encarnacion.” City of Àvila, 2021. Accessed 23 Feb. 2021. <https://www.avilaturismo.com/en/what-to-see/item/411monastery-of-la-encarnación> Panizza, Letizia. Introduction to Paternal Tyranny. By Arcangela Tarabotti. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Powell, Amanda. “Revisiting the ‘Querelle’ in Maria de San José Salazar and Juana Inés de la Cruz: Inciting Disturbances of the Patriarchy.” Letras Femeninas 35, no. 1 (2009): 211-232. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/23023069. Accessed 15 Feb. 2021.

Slade, Carole. St. Teresa of Àvila: Author of a Heroic Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. E-Book.

Tarabotti, Arcangela. Paternal Tyranny. Translated and with an introduction by Letizia Panizza. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

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Temperance, Industrialization, and Working Class Recreation in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century England Emily MacPherson As described in Lovett’s The Life and Struggles of William Lovett, drinking in the pre-industrial workplace was compatible with work, functioning both as currency and a key aspect of community. However, the nineteenth century industrialization of the workplace made drinking incompatible with work by requiring workers to be efficient and accurate instruments of production, a change which is reflected in temperance ideas of the time. Drinking was condemned as a vice of the working class due to its interference with production and profit, while the conception of the worker created by the factory setting was reflected in the moral arguments against drink. The influence of the industrialized workplace on moral perceptions of drink is evident in the temperance effort to provide alternative recreation for the working classes and middle class ideas of working men’s complicitness in their own circumstances. This moral approach also features heavily in temperance drama, which blamed the poor for their own weakness to drink and ignored the systemic issues that encouraged drunkenness. The difference between this type of view and the working class perspective is brought out by comparing Lovett’s temperance remarks to those in Henry Fielding’s An Enquiry. Their contrasting arguments for the temperance movement are developed from very different experiences and highlight different perspectives on the problem of working class drinking in

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an industrialized society. In contrast to Fielding and other temperance writers, Lovett recognizes that a number of different social and economic issues affected working class drinking, rather than blaming the weakness of working class morality for drunkenness.

Prior to widespread industrialization, drinking was an integral part of daily work and recreation, especially for craftsmen, as shown by Lovett’s descriptions of his time as a cabinet-maker in the early nineteenth century. In The Life and Struggles of William Lovett he states that according to custom he was required to provide alcohol in order to call a shop meeting,1 as well as for “being shown the manner of doing any particular kind of work.”1 Drink functioned as a form of currency so that communal drinking, and therefore recreation, were intertwined with workplace affairs.

This intertwining allowed for the existence of a drink-based exchange within the workplace in which Lovett was able to trade physical enjoyment for physical expertise, both cementing his place in the communal work environment and improving at his trade. In Drink and the Victorians, Harrison notes that prior to industrialization this type of exchange also existed between employers and employees, with drink aiding in strenuous work and providing a useful incentive, as “drunkenness and selfimprovement did not then necessarily conflict.”3 As seen in Lovett’s account, drinking in the workplace was not at odds with being a respectable member of a trade and due to the communal nature of the workplace it fostered improvement in that trade through the sharing of knowledge. Even if possessed of drunken habits a pre-industrial craftsman could hone his skills with time, establish himself within his trade, and earn a living. This work environment which was compatible with drinking and leisure was starkly different from that introduced with industrialization, which clashed with drunkenness rather than coexisting with it.

In the industrialized workplace, as opposed to the preindustrialized workplace, employees needed to be accurate and

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24 Babel Volume XXI efficient on the clock, meaning that drinking was no longer compatible with work. This incompatibility contributed to the moral protest against working class drinking, which would come to reflect the ideology of the factory system. The mechanical workplace devalued physical knowledge as “complex and costly machinery placed the employee’s precise and continuous labour at a higher premium than . . . his crude physical energy.”4 The employee was no longer an individual using their own experience and skill to create a product but part of a wider system of production, governed by its demands and relying on mechanical devices to meet them. In “Reworking the Mechanical Value of Heat” Sibum emphasizes that the “‘companion of the bench’” became the representative of “absolute truth,”5 highlighting that workers were no longer self-reliant and confident in the truth of their own judgement, but dependent on “Instruments of precision”6 to correct their human weaknesses. This new work environment valuing precision was therefore incompatible with drinking, and as noted by Mason in “‘The Sovereign People Are in a Beastly State’”, following the Beer Act of 1830 “one work day in six was reportedly being lost to drunken-ness (v)”7 and losses were “estimated at little short of fifty millions sterling per annum (vi).”8 These kinds of financial losses doubtlessly played a part in the growth of protest against drinking, which became “a prominent symbol of working-class degeneracy.”9 Workers lost much of their agency in the workplace because they now relied upon outside sources of knowledge to overcome their failings, and drinking interfered with this new kind of work and its demands.

Both of these changes come to be reflected in the temperance condemnation of working class drinking.

The temperance movement’s campaign to provide rational and virtuous alternatives to recreational drinking and the views temperance activists expressed about the poor reflect the ideology of the factory system. Harrison points out that “The nineteenth-century temperance debate was really an argument about

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how leisure time should be spent,”10 highlighting that, despite the “excessive toil and misery”11 working men were subject to, it was their recreational activities which were most scrutinized by temperance activists. Lovett was among those who believed that making rational recreation accessible to the working class could save them from the moral corruption of drink and petitioned to have museums and other facilities open on Sundays12 to “divert and inform the mind.”13 While Lovett would form more nuanced temperance arguments later in life this view exemplifies middle class reform efforts of the time, in which the primary goal was to provide more wholesome distractions for the working class rather than addressing the systemic issues which caused the need for drink as a form of escape. This approach reflects the perception of the poor working class man as inherently unreliable and flawed and relying on more rational powers to correct him and allow him to perform his designated role. In the factory machinery guided and corrected the employee, and temperance workers seemed to believe his immorality and susceptibility to temptation could be similarly corrected through experiencing the virtue and reason of middle class activities.

The idea that drinking was a result of poor moral fortitude which could be remedied with proper examples of virtue and reason is also found in temperance drama, which almost always blamed the poor for their own circumstances while failing to take systemic issues into account. In “The Drunkard’s Progress”, Booth states that in typical temperance dramas the working man is encouraged to drink by “the inevitable melodramatic villain with designs on wife and property,”14 while temperance propaganda promoted “happy pictures of the teetotal factory worker and the home of sobriety.”15 The creation of a fictional character with clear, unsavory motives allowed drunkenness to be portrayed as an indisputably immoral and selfish choice which jeopardized an otherwise happy career and home. Hard monotonous work and the fact that the working man’s home was “often cold,

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26 Babel Volume XXI uncomfortable and noisy”16 are omitted as potential causes of drunkenness. In one temperance drama an innkeeper offers “the ‘wholesome, pure, refreshing draught from nature's crystal spring’”17 rather than alcohol, although beer was in fact “safer than the cholera-infested water of many communities”18 and Lovett observed that “The water at the public house we lodged at . . . had all kinds of impurities in it.”19 By ignoring these types of issues temperance drama presented sobriety as a simple and moral choice in which the drunkard is saved by “a symbol of high seriousness and the virtuous life”20 rather than any kind of social change. Temperance drama echoes the idea of the weak and morally corrupt working class being rescued by rational middle class recreation. Furthermore, it supports the factory system by emphasizing the economic duty of men to their families, and suggesting that a contented and comfortable life is possible for the diligent and sober employee, which was often untrue.

William Lovett and Henry Fielding express similar opinions on the extreme moral degradation of the poor due to drink, though they end up coming to very different conclusions about the necessity of temperance. In An Enquiry Fielding is concerned that the damage done to the poor by alcohol will disrupt England’s military and economic stability, because “the infant conceived in Gin”21 will result in a future generation unable to fulfill its designated roles, and the poor are “the most useful part”22 of the people. As a magistrate he wishes to stop the gin crisis by using legal authority to prevent it from being sold.23 His response to the problems created by drunkenness focuses on punishment and regulation, and he does not take into consideration the myriad other factors which might cause people to turn to alcohol.

Lovett, having a working class background, argues that temperance is necessary because drinking prevents the poor from progressing and advocating social change, and he proposes excluding drunkards from Working Men’s Associations.24 In contrast to Fielding and other temperance writers, he discusses drinking as a

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consequence of the economic and legal system of the time. He emphasizes that the large amounts of money being spent on war could be used to increase wages and improve the lives of the poor,25 and points out that it is the current laws which cause women to be trapped in poverty and suffering if they are married to a drunkard.26 Rather than ensuring the usefulness of the poor, Lovett critiques the laws and economic actions of his country in the hopes of creating real improvement in their lives. Fielding condemns drink for its damage to the pre-existing economic and political structures of society, while Lovett explores how these structures propagate the evils of drink. He acknowledges the complexity of working class drinking and the various economic, social, and political systems which contributed to it, which sets him apart from other temperance advocates of his time.

In conclusion, the industrialization of the workplace affected perceptions of working class drinking by limiting the agency of workers and causing them to be seen as inherently weak and reliant on higher powers of rationality to correct their flaws. The factory setting was no longer compatible with drink, and while drinking had once been an accepted part of the workplace and the interpersonal relations within it, it came to be perceived as a vice caused by the immorality and weakness of the working class. Both of these altered perceptions are reflected in temperance ideas of the time, with the middle class believing that allowing the working class to experience virtuous and rational middle class recreation could correct the moral failings which led to drinking. Temperance drama also demonstrates this perception of the working class by portraying the helpless drunkard as being saved by an exaggerated symbol of virtue and reason and idealizing the life of the sober factory worker in an unrealistic manner.

In both of these approaches, as well as Fielding’s attack on gin, the causes behind drinking are not properly examined, and solutions offered do not address the systemic issues the working class faced. Lovett, informed by his own experience as a member of

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28 Babel Volume XXI the working class, acknowledges that various economic, social, and political systems affect working class drinking, unlike many other temperance activists of his time. He explores these issues with the goal of not only preventing working class drinking, but of improving the lives of the poor in meaningful ways.

Notes William Lovett, The Life and Struggles of William Lovett (London: Trubner & co., 1876), 31.

2 Lovett 31.

3 Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: the Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872 (Keele: Keele University Press, 1994), 40.

4 Harrison 41.

5 Heinz Sibum, “Reworking the Mechanical Value of Heat: Instruments of Precision and Gestures of Accuracy in Early Victorian England,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26, no. 1 (1994): 95.

6 Sibum 92.

7 Nicholas Mason, “‘The Sovereign People Are in a Beastly State’: The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness,” Victorian Literature and Culture 29, no. 1 (2001): 118.

8 Mason 118.

9 Mason 112.

10 Harrison 34.

11 Lovett 95.

12 Lovett 57.

13 Lovett 58.

14 Booth, Michael R. “The Drunkard’s Progress: Nineteenth Century Temperance Drama.” The Dalhousie Review 44, no. 2 (1964): 206.

15 Booth 206.

16 Harrison 46.

17 Booth 211.

18 Mason 112.

19 Lovett 25.

20 Booth 210.

21 Henry Fielding, An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1818), 30.

22 Fielding 31.

23 Fielding 33.

24 Lovett 92-95.

25 Lovett 418-19.

26 Lovett 430.

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Bibliography Booth, Michael R. “The Drunkard’s Progress: Nineteenth Century Temperance Drama.” The Dalhousie Review 44, no. 2 (1964): 205-12.

Babel Volume XXI Fielding, Henry. An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1818.

Harrison, Brian. Drink and the Victorians: the Temperance Question in England, 1815 -1872. Keele: Keele University Press, 1994.

Lovett, William. The Life and Struggles of William Lovett. London: Trubner & co., 1876.

Mason, Nicholas. “‘The Sovereign People Are in a Beastly State’: The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness.”

Victorian Literature and Culture 29, no. 1 (2001): 109–127. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25058542. Accessed 16 July 2021.

Sibum, Heinz. “Reworking the Mechanical Value of Heat: Instruments of Precision and Gestures of Accuracy in Early Victorian England.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26, no. 1 (1994): 73-106.

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Power and Representation: The Self-Portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola Grace Day

Though most “master” painters in the Early Modern art canon are men, there are some exceptions and I believe that Sofonisba Anguissola is one of them. Her skills matched and even exceeded those of other celebrated Renaissance painters, and the lack of recognition she has received until more recent scholarship shows the prejudice that women artists faced in the Early Modern Period. To combat this prejudice, Sofonisba presents herself as an artist in her self-portraits in order to establish her authority and identity as a painter. Sofonisba adjusts her appearance in her self-portraits in order to critique unfair biases against women artists and the oppressive beauty standards that they were expected to uphold. Sofonisba’s self-portraits serve to establish herself as a serious artist while uplifting other early modern women.

Portraits present the sitter in the way they wanted to be seen publicly, and were used to establish one’s power and status.

Artists could manipulate the sitter’s appearance, and often did to maintain societal beauty standards. During the Renaissance, beauty ideals were largely derived from the works of the Roman poet, Petrarch. Petrarch described the ideal woman with characteristics such as fair skin, light hair and rosy cheeks. Most portraits of Early Modern women adhere to the Petrarchan ideals, and as an accomplished portrait artist, Sofonisba was well aware of these

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standards.

In this first portrait entitled Self-portrait at the Easel1 (see fig.1) Sofonisba strays from Petrarchan beauty standards in order to represent her authority as an artist. The artist is dressed modestly and her brown hair is pulled back out of her face. Sofonisba seems reserved but still elegant. Traditional Petrarchan characteristics such as a long neck and rosy cheeks are not present in this self-portrait, this portrayal is more masculine, as the artist wants to seem more like her male contemporaries in order to establish her own authority alongside them. The prejudicial view that women are less intelligent and skilled than men was an obstacle that women artists had to deal with, and in an attempt to overcome this sexist idea Sofonisba depicts herself in a way that reflects modesty and intelligence. Sofonisba’s gaze meets the viewer’s which was more typical of portraits of men. Sofonisba’s assertive gaze is another way in which the artist portrays herself as more masculine. By depicting herself as more masculine she is asserting herself as a skilled artist who is worthy of the same recognition that her male contemporaries received.

By presenting herself in the act of painting, Sofonisba is establishing herself as a talented artist with a command of the brush. For her patrons, Sofonisba’s skill was evident, but it was difficult for women artists to receive the recognition they deserved. Sofonisba’s body faces the easel, and her head turns to look at the viewer as if she has just been interrupted while working. This shows the viewer that she is engaged in her work and takes it seriously. By holding the brush to the canvas, Sofonisba is taking ownership of her work and is proving to the viewer that she is capable of making masterpieces. The inclusion of a devotional image reflects Sofonisba’s piety, but also shows that she is an artist capable of depicting such an important genre. Paintings that depicted religious or historical scenes were the highest genres of art that master painters worked in. Sofonisba draws a connection between herself and her more famous male contemporaries

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32 Babel Volume XXI through this devotional image, as she shows that she is capable of creating fine art. This self-portrait serves as proof of her own skills and talent, and she depicts herself as more masculine in order to align herself with master painters.

Sofonisba establishes her artistic authority in a more nuanced way in her painting entitled, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola2 (see fig.2). This double portrait was painted by Sofonisba in 1559, long after her mentorship with local artist, Bernardino Campi. Sofonisba presents Campi in a similar fashion to how she presents herself in the previous portrait. Campi is engaged in the act of painting and glances over his shoulder at the viewer as if he has been interrupted while working. Again, by showing Campi at work Sofonisba is presenting him as the artist, and he holds the paintbrush directly to the canvas to emphasize that it is his work. Though Campi is an important aspect of this painting, Sofonisba does not want him to be the focus. Sofonisba uses a solid, black background and dresses Campi in dark clothes as to not distract the viewer from Sofonisba’s portrait. By portraying a respected artist in the process of painting his student, Sofonisba is asserting her own authority as an artist by affiliating herself with her former master.

Moving onto the focal point of this painting, Sofonisba presents herself as much more feminine by using the Petrarchan beauty standard to depict herself. Because this portrait is being created by Campi, Sofonisba adjusts her appearance to suit the Petrarchan standard. In her article entitled “Here’s Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist,” Mary D. Garrard points out the oppression that beauty standards cause for women. Garrard writes, Women artists were brought under theoretical control by (1) explaining them as exceptional to the natural order of things, marvels of nature, and (2) defining them in terms that reinforced their likeness to other women rather than men, specifically by emphasizing their beauty and their vir-

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tue.3 Beauty standards form expectations that women are supposed to adhere to in order to seem desirable, but men do not have these same standards. By portraying herself as the work of a male artist, Sofonisba is commenting on these beauty standards and how women are forced to conform to what society expects from them. Sofonisba appears more feminine in this painting, as she has incorporated Petrarchan characteristics such as fair skin, an elongated neck and rosy lips and cheeks. Her hair also appears to be lighter than in the previous self-portrait, as blonde hair is another characteristic of Petrarchan beauty. These features were not exaggerated in the previous self-portrait, which shows that she is adjusting her appearance. Sofonisba’s clothing is much more extravagant in this painting, and this costume expresses vanity, wealth and femininity. She objectifies herself for the viewer, as she is the true work of art. One strange feature of this double portrait is Sofonisba’s third hand, something that could be easily overlooked at first glance. One hand meets Campi’s while another bizarrely extends from beneath it and rests on her skirt. She appears to reach out to take the brush from Campi and take control of the artistic process. While Sofonisba may be establishing her own artistic prowess in this way, I propose that she is playing a trick on the viewer to see if they are able to notice the extra hand. It breaks the realism of her self-portrait, perhaps because her self-portrait is not realistic at all, as it is embellished to suit the gaze of a male viewer. Sofonisba sees that society uses women’s physical appearance to determine their worth, and Sofonisba expresses this inequality in this painting by depicting herself according to Petrarchan beauty standards.

In conclusion, Sofonisba’s primary goal with these selfportraits was to establish her authority as a woman artist, while commenting on the ways in which women were oppressed and deprived of their own unique identities. These different representations show that Sofonisba was aware of the biases against wom-

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34 Babel Volume XXI en artists, as she felt that she had to change the way in which she depicted herself in order to portray herself as an artist in her own right. She adheres to Petrarchan beauty standards when she wants to critique them, and rejects them when aligning herself with her male contemporaries. These self-portraits reflect Sofonisba’s need to assert herself as an artist worthy of recognition and respect, and her issues with the sexist prejudice that existed in the Early Modern art world.

Figures

Fig. 1. Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-portrait at the Easel, 1556, Oil on Canvas, 66 x 57 cm, Lancut Castle, Lancut.

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Fig. 2. Sofonisba Anguissola, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola. 1559, Oil on canvas, 111 x 110 cm, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.

Notes Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-portrait at the Easel, 1556, Oil on Canvas, 66 x 57 cm, Lancut Castle, Lancut.

2 Sofonisba Anguissola, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola. 1559, Oil on canvas, 111 x 110 cm, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.

3 Mary D. Garrard, “Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist,” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 556-622.

1

Bibliography Anguissola, Sofonisba. Self-portrait at the Easel, 1556, Oil on Canvas, 66 x 57 cm, Lancut Castle, Lancut.

Anguissola, Sofonisba. Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola. 1559, Oil on canvas, 111 x 110 cm, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.

Garrard, Mary D. “Here's Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist.” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 556622. Accessed March 29, 2021. doi:10.2307/2863021.

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The Manipulation of Human Nature in Machiavelli’s The Prince Leah Chambers

A successful prince must pretend to be someone he is not to deceive his subjects and, by extension, nature. In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli considers what it means to be an ideal prince and the role of fortuna, virtù, and human nature in an ideal prince.

He uses history as a guidebook for how princes of the present and future should act. Joseph Falvo’s article “Nature and Art in Machiavelli’s Prince” considers the forces that a prince must manipulate to succeed. He looks at the prince as an artist of his moral characteristics, deceiving his subjects into believing he is something that he is not. For Machiavelli, human nature is not a static phenomenon because it can be manipulated by individuals for their benefit. According to Machiavelli, a prince must manipulate the nature of beasts and humans to his advantage, which demonstrates that nature is a malleable tool for political gain.

For Machiavelli, the nature of beasts and the nature of humans are two separate innate ways of acting, one natural to animals and the other to humans. In Chapter XVIII of The Prince, Machiavelli describes these two natures saying, “there are two modes of fighting: one in accordance with the laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts.”1 He believes that humans are naturally inclined to use and understand laws, contracts, and agreements in their method of fighting, while animals are naturally inclined to violence through physical force.

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He traces this dual nature to Antiquity when the greatest warriors were trained to use both natures in war. In his article, Falvo describes the prince as “imitating the character traits of these great men, so as to have at least a hint of their virtù.”2 By learning to imitate the traits of Greek warriors, who used both their innate human nature and the nature of beasts, a prince begins to combine these natures in his actions. The nature of beasts is not natural to man, and the prince adds it to his nature through the imitation of animals. Nature, for Machiavelli, is something that develops through practice, study, and action. Machiavelli’s ideal prince uses historical figures and animals to provide a framework for his action, hoping to emulate, or go beyond their greatness by imitating them to receive, a small portion of their skill and ingenuity or virtù.

A prince must learn how to manipulate the nature of beasts and humans through education and practice because he is not born with the innate ability to manipulate successfully. A prince must do so by emulating, and Machiavelli proposes that the fox and the lion are the best beasts to imitate. He says, “it is therefore necessary to be a fox, in order to recognize the traps, and a lion in order to frighten the wolves: those who base their behaviour only on the lion do not understand things.”3 According to Machiavelli, not only should the prince learn how to use the nature of humans and beasts to his advantage, but he should also use the various qualities of different animals to support his endeavours. In certain scenarios, a good prince needs to be the cunning fox, but at other times he must be brave and aggressive like the lion. The prince must learn to use the nature of his humanity and the nature of different species of beasts based on what the situation calls for. This manipulation of different characteristics and natures can be challenging because it requires the prince to emulate a multiplicity of moral characteristics.

The qualities of human nature that the prince must also learn how to use to his advantage are related to the notion of virtù

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38 Babel Volume XXI and fortuna that run throughout The Prince. Machiavelli’s virtù is hard to translate, and translator Peter Bondanella says it “is a decidedly masculine quality, denoting ingenuity, skill, and ability.”4 According to this definition, virtù is not a moral characteristic attributed to the prince’s character. On the other hand, although fortuna is ascribed to the personification of a feminine figure, it can simply mean good or bad luck. As described by Dr. Simon Kow in his lecture the most common downfall of a prince is when he relies too much on the ever-moving wheel of fortune to rise up the ranks of power but is inevitably crushed by the wheel he clings to as it moves down.5 Fortuna and virtù are related to the malleability of human nature because they are two of the driving forces behind a prince’s actions. In The Prince, Machiavelli argues that human nature is a malleable force that a prince can learn to manipulate. The prince who knows when to manipulate the nature of humans and beasts must also know when “it is necessary that he should have a mind ready to turn itself according to the winds of Fortune and the changing circumstances [that] command him.”6 A prince can try to tame fortuna through his deeds and actions but will not succeed because it is out of human control. If he wants to rule successfully, he will turn to human nature because it can be controlled. Human nature is malleable because it is a trait of humans, which the prince can control through the imitation and manipulation of his own moral characteristics.

Although a prince should possess the qualities of the two natures, it is sufficient for him only to appear to possess them.

According to Machiavelli, “it is not necessary for a prince to possess all of the above-mentioned qualities, but it is very necessary for him to appear to possess them.”7 For Machiavelli, appearance plays a large role in his argument that a prince must use the nature of beasts and humans to his advantage because he does not believe that a prince can always possess the qualities needed to be a successful ruler. Machiavelli sums up the issue of possessing the qualities of a good leader by saying of an unnamed prince that “if

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he had observed both peace and faith, he would have had either his reputation or his state taken away from him many times over.”8 A prince who is all good cannot rule well because he will allow himself to be overthrown by his enemies through violent actions or words. Instead, the prince must appear to be just, peaceful, and faithful while he “act[s] against his faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion.”9 The manipulation of the prince’s human nature is done through the manipulation of the outward appearance of his moral characteristics, through the emulation of positive moral characteristics.

Falvo supports the argument that a prince must appear to have certain characteristics that he does not possess. For Falvo, this appearance of the two natures is a theatrical performance that the prince, as an artist, must perform. He says, “what we see reproduced then, by way of precepts, in the formation and development of a ‘fictive’ image of virtue, is a theatrical conception of human existence whereby men become or pretend to become what they are not.”10 In the theatrical performance that a good prince puts on, he is both the actor and the artist behind the stage deciding what move the actor should make next. The prince is both the manipulator and the object of manipulation. The virtue, or moral characteristics, of a prince, are malleable in appearance because they are not what they seem. People observe the ideal prince and assume that he is faithful, humane, and religious when in reality he is working against these ideals.

The art of pretending to have qualities and moral characteristics that a prince does not have demonstrates that he uses nature as a malleable tool for political gain. For Machiavelli, “the princes who have accomplished great deeds are those who have thought little about keeping faith and who have known to cunningly manipulate men’s minds.”11 This quotation underlines that the human nature of others can be manipulated through a prince’s actions. The tactics that a prince uses to manipulate others have been described above and include using the nature of

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40 Babel Volume XXI beasts and humans to his advantage, emulating the characteristics of different animals according to circumstance, and appearing to possess qualities that he does not have. These actions manipulate the minds of ordinary people. This is because “ordinary people are always taken in by appearances.”12 According to Machiavelli, most people walk around unable to differentiate between fact and fiction. The prince should use this credulity to his advantage and create out of himself the ideal imitation of a ruler.

Falvo sees the prince’s manipulation of nature as the work of an artist, who is the prince. He uses Felix Gilbert’s “The Humanist Concept of the Prince and The Prince of Machiavelli” to support his statement: Machiavelli views his ideal prince from a similar aesthetic perspective, which recalls the humanist notion of the ‘state’ as pliable ‘raw material’ to be molded at will. The ‘artist’ or homo faber, is clearly ‘the role in which Machiavelli is forever casting his hero.’13 For Falvo, the state is the malleable material that a prince must manipulate by imitating virtues, or moral characteristics. To add to this argument, Machiavelli’s view of manipulation can also be extended to other parts of nature that the prince manipulates.

The prince is not only the artist that creates the state, but he also creates his own nature and the nature of his subjects. The prince artistically manipulates himself to appear to be the ideal ruler of a state. The prince is an artist, not only of the state as Falvo says but also of his appearance, which extends to the minds of the citizens he rules over.

If a prince can make himself appear peaceful and faithful while committing acts of violence, fraud and heresy, the bounds of humanity are vastly increased. The prince accomplishes this through the imitation of the positive moral characteristics.

Through the imitation of traits that he does not have a prince can manipulate both himself and other people. He manipulates others by carefully choosing what is the best trait to imitate in each sce-

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nario, which makes their reactions based on a false appearance.

This mastery of imitation opens possibilities that were once thought to be impossible. Machiavelli’s prince is a skilled manipulator of himself, the state, and the people around him, for his own benefit. At a time of religious, political, and cultural change Machiavelli asserts that even human nature, once believed to be a static phenomenon, can be manipulated by individuals for their benefit.

Notes Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Peter Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 60.

2 Joseph D. Falvo, “Nature and Art in Machiavelli’s Prince,” Italica 66, no. 3 (1989): 324.

3 Machiavelli 60.

4 Peter Bondanella, explanatory Notes to The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 93.

5 Simon Kow, “Renaissance Politics: Machiavelli” (lecture, Foundation Year Program, University of King’s College, Halifax, NS, 17 November 2021).

6 Machiavelli 61.

7 Machiavelli 61.

8 Machiavelli 62.

9 Machiavelli 61.

10 Falvo 327.

11 Machiavelli 60.

12 Machiavelli 62.

13 Falvo 325.

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Bibliography Bondanella, Peter. Explanatory Notes to The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Falvo, Joseph D. “Nature and Art in Machiavelli’s Prince.” Italica 66, no. 3 (1989): 323-32. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/479044. Accessed 5 December 2021.

Kow, Simon. “Renaissance Politics: Machiavelli.” Lecture, Foundation Year Program, University of King’s College, Halifax, NS, 17 November 2021.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Edited and translated by Peter Bondanella.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

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The Navigation of Private and Public: Anna Maria van Schurman and Female Scholarship in Seventeenth Century Europe Megan Osler Anna Maria van Schurman, the Star of Utrecht, was a seventeenth century female scholar, poet and polyglot. Hers was a critical voice in the intellectual debate surrounding the value and education of women. In her formal Dissertatio, Why the Study of Letters is Fitting to a Christian Woman, she defends and justifies the education of women. As well as her published works, van Schurman contributed to both male and female knowledge-sharing networks, specifically the Republic of Letters and its subset, the Republic of Women. Both of these long-distance intellectual communities were established in the seventeenth century. In her formal texts, van Schurman argues for the education of women within the context of the private sphere insofar as their accomplishments are hidden and individual. However, her own works and engagement with the Republic of Letters and Republic of Women contradict this; not only did she publicly engage with the intellectual movement of the time, she also fostered relationships and acted as a mentor and model of behaviour for young female scholars who wished to emulate her. Her legacy is further complicated by her late-life conversion to the Labadist movement and her retreat from the intellectual community of the 17th century.

Therefore, we can observe that Anna Maria van Schurman’s understanding of the role of women in the private and public spheres was simultaneously conventional and transgressive. This

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essay will work with Martine van Elk’s two definitions of the private and public spheres in this era. Van Elk describes this dichotomy as both “what is hidden or withdrawn versus what is open, revealed, or accessible,” and as “what is individual, or pertains only to an individual, versus what is collective, or affects the interests of a collectivity of individuals.”1 These two conceptions do not necessarily overlap fully, since what is good for the common good can be done privately and what is good for the individual can be done publicly. These semantic connections between the public and private will allow us to explore how Van Schurman navigated these spaces as a woman in the seventeenth century.

In van Schurman’s Why the Study of Letter is Fitting for a Christian Woman, she relegates female education to the private sphere and creates a non-inclusive model of learning which reasserts the primacy of the domestic role of women. She argues that learning can be an effective pastime for women insofar as it is both individual and secluded. She does not challenge the conventional circumscription of women to the household. Instead, she works within this paternalistic tradition to argue that secluded women are a perfect candidate for learning as “the study of letters if appropriate for anyone who needs to follow a pastime at home by oneself rather than outside among others.”2 She further asserts that women “long greatly for solid and enduring occupation” especially if they have “an abundance of leisure.”3 The classification of learning as a ‘pastime,’ trivializes the importance of education as Martine van Elk argues, insofar as it is “private, in the sense of having only limited significance.”4 Van Elk notes that female pastimes were associated with the “intimacy of the household and circles of friends, but not with the public good or learning in general.”5 Learning, in the sense that van Schurman is advocating for, thus becomes an “adornment and pastime” for elite women, failing to extend beyond the physically and individually private.6 Furthermore, van Schurman restricts which women

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44 Babel Volume XXI are able to meet the qualifications for learning. Along with being Christian, those fitting to the study of letters must be “unmarried, and sufficiently wealthy,”7 so that time away from the “duties of the household” is possible.8 Learning comes second to the duties of being a good Christian wife and mother and is therefore not an appropriate pastime for all Christian women. Van Elk notes that this non-subversive defense of women may be an effort to make the argument palatable for men in the scholastic community into which van Schurman was attempting to gain access but there is no way to substantiate these claims. Van Schurman is therefore not attempting to argue for the transgression of women’s place in the private, and public spheres, and reasserts the primacy of the domestic role of women over learning.

This conventional attitude towards the place of women in seventeenth-century society is contradicted by her emphasis on the study of politics, the scholastic form of the text, as well as her epistolary contradictions to the Dissertatio. Van Schurman seems to simultaneously argue for private restrictions of female study, while also arguing that women should have access to understanding of the public sphere. She asserts that “we do not by any means concede that women should be excluded from scholastic… or theoretical knowledge of things, least of all from knowledge of the most noble discipline of politics.”9 David Norbrook identifies that in the seventeenth century politics was “essential for public life, and hence as inappropriate for women.”10 This admittance to the study of politics, as van Elk argues, would make them “proper citizens of the Republic,”11 prepared to engage in the public sphere. Furthermore, van Schurman consciously presents her argument as a formal logical exercise, taken from Medieval university scholasticism, as well as writing in the traditional intellectual language of Latin. Why the Study of Letters is Fitting to Christian Women is in itself an argument and proof for the abilities of learned women and demonstrative of the capacity of van Schurman insofar as she is able to utilize the tools which de-

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fine institutional education. Apart from her use of the scholastic tradition, van Schurman’s emphasis on women in the domestic and private sphere is later retraced in her letters to the English female scholar and educator Bathsua Makin, a widower who supported herself and her children through her writing and teaching.

She writes in praise to Makin: I enjoyed your letter immensely, for it shows that you have attained no superficial level of Greek eloquence. This is all the more admirable, since, while you are prevented by many domestic cares from devoting almost any time to philosophy, your muse has in no way become silent.12 Her praise of Makin’s intellectual abilities and domestic role demonstrates van Schurman’s tension between gendered expectations of women (i.e., domestic duties) and scholarly pursuits.

Thus, perceptions of the public and private role of women in her Dissertatio are complicated by her emphasis on the political education of women, her use of the formal logical exercise and her epistolary exchange with Bathsua Makin.

Moreover, Anna Maria Van Schurman’s activity in the seventeenth-century intellectual community, in both the public engagement of publishing and the semi-public Republic of Letters demonstrates an orientation towards the public sphere in contradiction to her arguments of the Dissertatio. Scholar David Norbrook sees van Schurman as an example of the resistance of some women to the patriarchal attempt of the seventeenth century to “push women into a private realm,”13 insofar as she, Anna Maria van Schurman, participated in the intellectual community even though it was traditionally masculine. The publication of works was a “complicated and circuitous process for early modern female scholars,” and van Schurman’s texts were even more subversive as few other women “ventured into the realm of philosophy, theology, learned languages, or mathematics.”14 Furthermore, van Schurman’s activity within the Republic of Letters— the male-dominated, transnational, intellectual network—

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46 Babel Volume XXI demonstrated personal engagement with the seventeenth century public sphere. The Republic of Letters, although based upon private correspondence, viewed itself as semi-public. The intent of these letters, although addressed to particular individuals was “for them to be copied and circulated among the members of a scribal community, in order to nourish and articulate a corporate ideology.”15 Van Schurman, through her correspondences with many male scholars, contributed to this communal generation of knowledge with the understanding that her letters were not simply private. Van Schurman did have to shape her public persona insofar as she wished to be accepted by the intellectual community as a female writer. Both van Schurman and her mentor, the French intellectual Marie de Gournay, attempted to legitimize women’s writing and education, but their orientations to the intellectual community and self-fashioning impacted how successful they each were. Van Schurman’s academic education as well as her knowledge of languages such as Latin put her at an advantage to her scholarly counterparts, owing to her facility of communication within the Republic of Letters.16 Moreover, van Schurman’s palatable feminism, and reputation of modesty and virginity made her less of a threat to her contemporary male scholars. As scholar Larsen asserts “her adept use of the humility trope… played a central role in making her more acceptable as a woman intellectual.”17 Her reputation for humility meant that she embodied traditional female virtues, as noted by French scholar Madame de Motteville, her “knowledge…did not take away the modesty and the gentleness that befits our sex,” thus her reputation of virtue meant that her learnedness was not threatening insofar as still was perceived as a traditional woman.18 In Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting to a Christian Woman, she argues that education must not act to the “detriment to reputation or modesty” of a woman, a concept she carries into her own carefully crafted public persona.19 Furthermore, Van Schurman’s cautious defense of women in her Dissertatio also aided her success in male-dominated circles. Her

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emphasis on the “more private and personal goals of women’s learning was consonant with the strategy of a social conformity,” although it lay in contradiction to her personal engagement in the public sphere.20 Van Schurman’s self-fashioning was in contrast to de Gournay’s radical emphasis on the equality of sexes and lack of formal education. De Gournay promoted herself as an “independent woman and professional writer,” which was much more socially transgressive than van Schurman’s retiring personality and academic background.21 De Gournay’s reputation created “unbridgeable social—even financial—difficulties.”22 Van Schurman was thus more successful than de Gournay, who was deemed eccentric, because she created a persona of public femininity which was acceptable to the male domain. Van Schurman’s acceptance into and engagement with the masculine public sphere demonstrates how her lived experiences were in contradiction to her formal written works.

Some scholars posit that the discrepancy in van Schurman’s thought is a result of her own, and the intellectual community’s, conception of her as an exemplary woman, but her treatment of her female peers and her engagement with the Republic of Women contradicts this theory. Van Elk argues that van Schurman was able to engage in the male-dominated public sphere because she was viewed by her contemporaries as a manifestation of “female power,” being located in “in exceptional, virtuous, individual women.”23 In this argument, the public sphere should not be accessible to women, but because van Schurman was perceived as an exception of her gender she is able to engage in the male-dominated intellectual community. Van Schurman’s own engagement in the Republic of Women does not support the argument that she believed herself to be a singularity to her gender. The imitation, emulation, mentorship, and commonality within the women of this intellectual community demonstrates her profound respect for other female scholars which contradicts this thesis. While van Schurman’s status as an ‘exemplar’ of wom-

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48 Babel Volume XXI en was a common practice within the Republic of Letters, early modern female scholars within the Republic of Women saw their contemporaries as “models of good women applicable to everyday life.”24 This peer-praise can be observed in van Schurman’s poem in celebration of Marie de Gournay. Here, van Schurman compares the French scholar to the classical goddess of wisdom, Pallas, and lauds her for “turn[ing] against guilty men their own weapons,” by engaging in the public sphere or writing in order to “affirm the cause of our innocent sex.”25 Van Schurman asserts that she and her fellow female scholars will take up Gournay’s cause and “follow [her] standards,” the double meaning being that they will both follow her standards in the military context into battle but also recognizes her as a model of the expectations of women.26 Thus we can see evidence of early modern female scholars claiming each other as “models in the fashioning of their lives as writer.”27 This model of emulation was also reciprocally beneficial and van Schurman acted as a mentor and formed relationships of intellectual kinship with many younger women— most famously with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Marie de Moulin. In her correspondences with the Princess of Bohemia we can observe van Schurman acting essentially as a tutor, outlining classical authors she should read and noting how she should focus her studies.28 Van Schurman also created a famille d’alliance, an intellectual family which formed from relationships of mutual admiration. She writes to her fille d’alliance, Marie de Moulin as her “dear… and very affectionate sister,” demonstrating the depths of these bonds of intellectual kinship.29 But these relationships were not simply “practical and instrumental,” exchanges of mentor and mentee, they were also mutually beneficial “resources to be consulted during the process of conducting a life of learning.”30 In a letter to the English scholar Dorothy Moor she writes “let us join together to trade and to acquire wisdom and understanding,” demonstrating the reciprocity of these interchanges and how they were intellectually generative.31 The Republic of

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Women thus acted as a community of encouragement, selfmodeling, and knowledge sharing. Van Schurman’s relationships to the female scholars she corresponded with demonstrate her belief that she was not an exception to her gender, rather her female peers were equals and should also be engaging publicly in scholarly pursuits.

However, this attitude towards women in the public sphere is complicated by her movement away from the intellectual community with her late-life conversion to the protestant sect of Labadists. Joining the commune of Jean de Labadie in 1669, van Schurman withdrew from the theological and scholastic demands of the Republic of Letters and denounced learning as worldly vanity.32 Scholars such as van Elk argue that this was a way to return to the private sphere insofar as in religious seclusion she could “separate speech in the common interest from the idea of visibility,” so that she “could make statements of collective importance while remaining mostly out of the public arena and without endangering [her] reputations for virtuousness.”33 This claim that her reversion to the private sphere was in order to “manage” her reputation diminishes the lifelong piety exhibited by van Schurman.34 Van Schurman spent her entire intellectual career grappling with “how a virtuous Christian woman might reconcile a life of blameless piety with vigorous intellectual pursuits.”35 She initially sought to balance the two by dedicating her learning to the “the glory of God,” and studying theology and Hebrew to better understand the sacred texts.36 She described the Labadist movement as “the purest and most correct way of knowing God that she had ever encountered.”37 Her retreat from the public should be viewed as a genuine spiritual conversion wherein the pious life triumphed over the scholarly one. Religion was the greatest factor in her cloistering rather than a tension between gender and engagement with the public.

Aspects of Van Schurman’s prolific intellectual career contradict each other in regard to her opinion on the place of women

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50 Babel Volume XXI in the public and private spheres. In her Dissertatio, she never claims that women contribute meaningfully to scholarship, but she demonstrates this ability within her own engagement with the seventeenth century intellectual community. It is also difficult to claim that she saw herself as an exception to her gender when she formed meaningful relationships through the Republic of Women with other early modern female scholars whom she respected and benefitted mutually from. Van Schurman’s complicated legacy is best illustrated by her place in the University of Utrecht. While she was invited to attend classes and asked to write the inaugural poem of the institution—as the first woman to attend university in the Netherlands—she was secluded to a small cubicle where she could not be seen but could only observe.38 Although she had already broken into the public sphere through her intellectual contributions, she was still expected to be invisible as not to endanger her modesty and virtue. She simultaneously engaged in the public sphere but was also physically relegated to being private and invisible within that setting as she was expected to conform to traditional female virtues. Anna Maria van Schurman thus embodies the challenges of being an early modern female scholar in her navigation of the public and private spheres.

Notes Martine van Elk, Early Modern Women's Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic. (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017), 167.

2 Anna Maria van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman, 30.

3 van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman, 28, 29.

4 Van Elk, 172.

5 Van Elk, 172.

6 van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman, 26.

7 Van Elk, 181.

8 Van Elk, 181.

9 van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman, 27.

10 David Norbrook, "Women, the Republic of Letters, and the Public Sphere in the Mid-Seventeenth Century," Criticism 46, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 227.

11 van Elk, 182 1

Babel Volume XXI Anna Maria van Schurman to Bathsua Makin, 1645. In Opuscula (1650), 68.

Norbrook 224.

14 Carol Pal, "Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters, 1630– 1680." Order No. 3242602, (Stanford University 2007): 33.

15 Pal 28.

16 Norbrook 228.

17 Anne R. Larsen, “A Women’s Republic of Letters: Anne Maria van Schurman, Marie de Gournay, and Female Self-Representation in Relation to the Public Sphere.” Early Modern Women, no. 3 (2008): 116-117.

18 Larsen 106.

19 van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman, 31.

20 Pal 117.

21 Pal 116 22 Pal 116.

23 Van Elk 168.

24 Larsen 106.

25 Anna Maria van Schurman, “Anna Maria van Schurman congratulates the Great and Dignified Heroine of Gournay for steadfastly defending the cause of our sex.” Translated by Hilary Ilkay, 1637-1638.

26 Anna Maria van Schurman, “Anna Maria van Schurman congratulates the Great and Dignified Heroine of Gournay for steadfastly defending the cause of our sex.”

27 Larsen 106.

28 Anna Maria van Schurman to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, September 7, 1639. In Opuscula (1650).

29 Anna Maria van Schurman to Marie du Moulin, December 8, 1645. In Opuscula (1650).

30 Pal 26.

31 Anna Maria van Schurman to Dorothy Moor. In Opuscula (1650), 60.

32 Van Elk 180.

33 Van Elk 168.

34 Van Elk 168.

35 Pal 7.

36 van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman, 26.

37 Pal 511.

38 Pal 139.

12 13

Bibliography Larsen, Anne R. “A Women’s Republic of Letters: Anne Maria van Schurman, Marie de Gournay, and Female Self-Representation in Relation to the Public Sphere.” Early Modern Women, no. 3 (2008). 105-126.

Norbrook, David. "Women, the Republic of Letters, and the Public Sphere in the Mid-Seventeenth Century." Criticism 46, no. 2 (Spring, 2004): 223240. Accessed December 6, 2020. http://ezproxy.library.dal.ca/login? url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.dal.ca/scholarlyjournals/women-republic-letters-public-sphere-mid/

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52 Babel Volume XXI docview/200447708/se-2?accountid=10406 Pal, Carol. "Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters, 1630– 1680." Order No. 3242602, Stanford University, 2007. Accessed December 6, 2020. http://ezproxy.library.dal.ca/login?url=https://www -proquest-com.ezproxy.library.dal.ca/dissertations-theses/republicwomen-rethinking-letters-1630-1680/docview/304822987/se-2? accountid=10406 Van Elk, Martine. Early Modern Women's Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. “Anna Maria van Schurman congratulates the Great and Dignified Heroine of Gournay for steadfastly defending the cause of our sex.” Translated by Hilary Ilkay, 1637-1638.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Anna Maria van Schurman to Bathusa Makin, 1645. Translated, in Opuscula, 1650.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Anna Maria van Schurman to Dorothy Moor, Translated, in Opuscula, 1650.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Anna Maria van Schurman to Dorothy Moor, Translated, in Opuscula, 1650.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Anna Maria van Schurman to Marie du Moulin, December 8, 1645. Translated, in Opuscula, 1650.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Anna Maria van Schurman to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, September 7, 1639. Translated, in Opuscula, 1650.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman.

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“When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?”: Montaigne, the Animals, and the Planets in Early Modern Europe Charlie Friesen The chapter “Man is not better than the Beasts” in Michel de Montaigne’s Apology to Raymond Sebond does not aim to realign the hierarchy between man and beast, but rather, to question it.

Montaigne does not presume to understand Earth’s natural order.

He merely points to the extent of man’s ignorance and the fallibility of his absolute truths. Montaigne probes into man’s presumed position in earth’s hierarchical order, and thus aligns himself with the natural philosophers working to destabilize the central position of the earth in the cosmos. Both examinations probe into man’s tendency to assume the validity and relevance of preestablished historical knowledge. Throughout this essay I will refer to ‘man’ because Montaigne preoccupies himself with men as a demographic in his writings, although presumably his assertions can be extended more interestingly beyond men to people in general.

Montaigne considers the multiplicity of realms on earth.

He imagines that all animals exist and co-exist in their own spheres of influence, possessing their own languages and forms of understanding. He claims that we can “discover quite plainly that there is full and complete communication between [animals] and that they understand one another, not only within the same

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54 Babel Volume XXI species, but also across different species.”1 This plurality of worlds on earth can be extended to identify Montaigne’s opinion on the Copernican theory of the plurality of worlds beyond earth.

Though they differ in micro and macro examination, both Montaigne and Copernicus question the validity of presumed scientific truths. Through vanity man confines himself to his elevated position in the hierarchy and thus fails to detect and others the sophisticated realms surrounding his human existence. Montaigne indicates the illusory nature of human perception and the limits of scientific examination. He sarcastically combats the arrogance of anti-Copernicism stating “there [man] goes, planting himself in imagination above the circle of the moon and bringing the heavens beneath his feet.”2 Man’s capacity for reason does not always result in a greater understanding of universal truth.

To Montaigne, human understanding is a result of human reason proceeding from man’s examination of the natural world.

He claims a kind of openness of the mind––a faith in possibility– –to be necessary for a greater knowledge of the universe, asking “does [anything] stop existing because we have seen nothing like it?”3 Montaigne does not concede entirely to Copernicus’ assertions but, more significantly, makes space for such theories by challenging man’s prideful unwillingness to question his nuclear position in the cosmos. Just as it is convenient for God to appear in human likeness to man, so it is convenient for the earth to be the centre of the universe. Both these notions reinforce man’s significance to himself.

Like the earth in the heavens, man presumes his position to be central in his own cosmos––for nature to have formed herself around his needs. Yet, as Montaigne highlights, “we see readily enough in most of their works how much superiority the animals have over us and how feeble is our art when it comes to imitating them.”4 Discounting modern mechanics, animals can explore depths of the ocean and levels of the sky beyond what we can see. How then, can it be argued that these parts of the earth

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exist solely for human use?

Montaigne also asserts the existence of a state of equality amongst man and animals, that none has been provided for any more than the rest. There is a commonality in the skins of animals and humans, which are built to protect us from the elements. Though they have talons and horns and tusks, we have been given the dexterity to “arm ourselves with wood and iron.”5 For the most part, we can all understand the implications of certain tones of a voice, body language, and expressions in the eyes.

Though there are advantages and disadvantages, “orders and degrees,” bestowed on all creatures of the earth, “it is all under the aspect of a single nature.”6 Animals and humans alike are all subject to hunger and thirst, famine and disease, and can use reason to seek solutions to these obstructions.

This text is riddled with anecdotes on the commonalities between animals and humans. Montaigne views the empathetic response of animals to human suffering as a form of mutual understanding. He upholds this commonality in our relations, arguing that “they flatter us, threaten us and implore us, and we them.”7 To Montaigne, we do not understand the unique communications between animals just as we do not comprehend a foreign tongue. Though we cannot fully comprehend the organizations of their societies, there is undoubtedly miniature hierarchies in the societies of bees and ants. Man cannot claim beyond a doubt that animals are “beyond religion” or the capacity for mourning, for how can man claim to grasp “what is hidden.”8 or to “know the internal movements and secrets of animals by the effort of his intelligence”?9 Montaigne sees that man’s pride shackles him from the pursuit of knowledge, suggesting that some of what has been hidden in the lives of animals may reveal itself should man be receptive to it.

Montaigne argues that the loyalty and love between animals and humans perhaps even surpasses man’s loyalty to one another. This is an argument which Descartes later contests,

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56 Babel Volume XXI claiming that animals perform loyalty or love mechanically to appeal for food or to avoid pain and suffering. I argue that Descartes’ response to Montaigne’s work is too literal a reaction.

Should Montaigne’s anthropomorphist narrative detract from this work for certain readers – such as Descartes – then “Man is no better than the Beasts” should be read as an allegory on the limits of human reason rather than an argument for the equality of animals. In my view, Montaigne is pointing to a greater concern: that man’s prideful inclination to “condemn everything that seems strange to [him] and that [he] does not understand” abandons him to his own ignorance.10 Montaigne alludes to man’s own ignorance of the self and other human beings. He claims, “there is more difference between one particular man and another than there is between a particular animal and a particular man.”11 The divide between men and beasts is due to man’s prideful unwillingness to dethrone himself from his Genesis-endorsed hierarchy above the animals. To Montaigne, this close-mindedness functions in tandem with man’s reluctance to abandon a geocentric worldview.

Just as heliocentrism was contested as a heretical viewpoint, so asserting an equality between humans and animals could be viewed as conflicting with biblical teachings. In Genesis, God creates the creatures of the sea on the fifth day, and the animals of the earth and humanity on the sixth day. He commands the humans to “rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground,” clearly establishing a hierarchy of humans over animals.12 Montaigne can be spared from heretical accusations in the same way as Copernicus and Galileo – by appealing to the bible’s intentions as parabolic text. I argue that Montaigne is attempting to restrain the presumptuousness of human reason rather than argue for an absolute equality between men and beasts in the eyes of God. John Milton takes up this deliberation, almost a hundred years after Montaigne, in Paradise Lost. In his re-imagining of

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Genesis, Milton stages an imaginative dialogue between Adam and God which precedes the creation of Eve: Thou hast provided all things: but with mee I see not who partakes. In solitude What happiness, who can enjoy alone….

As with a smile more bright’n’d thus repli’d.

What call’st thou solitude, is not the Earth With various living creatures, and the Air Replinisht, and all these at thy command To come and play before thee, know’st thou not Their language and their ways, they also know, And reason not contemptibly…13 With God as his mouthpiece, Milton, like Montaigne, describes animals as capable of reason and of sharing a common language with humans. Regardless of whether Milton read Montaigne, in writing a defense of animals as worthy companions of man Milton demonstrates a changing perception of the ethical distance between man and beast. Though Adam goes on to contest his affiliation to the animals – “among unequals what society can sort” – it is a worthy consideration to wonder whether this common language between man and animals was something Milton imagined to be lost in the Fall and that could perhaps be relearnt.14 Throughout the Apology, Montaigne demonstrates the illusory nature of human intelligence, pointing to presumptuousness as the origin of man’s unwillingness to re-examine the world.

He imagines a multiplicity of earthly realms in which the languages and cultures of animals and humans could meet and frolic together. Montaigne does not concern himself with absolute truths, but merely creates space to reveal the limits – and thus the unlimited possibility – of human knowledge in the terrestrial and the celestial spheres.

1

Notes Michel de Montaigne. “Man is No Better than the Beasts,” in Apology to Ray-

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58 Babel Volume XXI mond Sebond, trans. R. Ariew and M. Crene (1569), 16.

2 Montaigne 15.

3 Montaigne 14.

4 Montaigne 18.

5 Montaigne 21.

6 Montaigne 22.

7 Montaigne 16.

8 Montaigne 30.

9 Montaigne 15.

10 Montaigne 30.

11 Montaigne 28.

12 Genesis 1:28 NIV, my emphasis.

13 John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667 (New York: Signet Classic, 1968), VIII.363374.

14 Milton VIII.383.

Bibliography Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 1667. New York: Signet Classic, 1968.

Montaigne, Michel de. “Man is No Better than the Beasts.” In Apology to Raymond Sebond. Translated by R. Ariew and M. Crene. 1569.

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Invasive Intertext: Classical Allusions as Mechanisms of Oppression in the Letters of Poliziano Angus Wilson The letters of Agnolo “Poliziano” Ambrogini are, in the epistolary tradition of 15th century Florence, extraordinarily wellinformed and laden with Classical allusions. According to theories of intertextuality in Latin literature, such allusions must be taken not as isolated instances of performative erudition, but as integrated and conscious implementations of a literary tradition by the author. With this in mind, through an intertextual reading of Poliziano’s letter to Cassandra Fedele, a contemporary Venetian learned woman, and his diffuse references to female figures of antiquity a consistency of attitude emerges that defines more clearly the mechanisms of disempowerment in which the masculine intelligentsia of the time engaged.

It is important in a treatment of such a diffuse theme as Poliziano’s characterization of ancient women to carefully define the method of intertextuality which is employed. I shall consider this on the basis of Gian Biagio Conte’s theory, via Stephen Hinds:1 the author cites the original source, the modello codice, the ‘true’ source which is taken as representative of the wider work, and produces in their own work a unique use of the original text, the modello esemplare, the model which is constituted by the succession of imitations and allusions. Therefore, significant in each allusion is not only the content it references in the modello codice, but also the circumstances and context that establish the modello

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60 Babel Volume XXI esemplare and constitute the author’s reading of the source text.2 It may be objected that such a reading of Poliziano’s texts is contrary to his intention as the author. However, reading for an unconscious allusion which enters the text by osmosis from the author’s character rather than direct intention (considered as the textual authority) possesses its own verity and validity distinct from conscious authorial intention. Thus, so far as theory is concerned, it may be concluded that throughout Poliziano’s letters, the references to antique women are a frequent modello codice, intentional or otherwise. Implicit in each of Poliziano’s allusions to this corpus are his own readings of those texts, and therefore Poliziano’s modello esemplare can be analyzed as an accumulation of assertions about the modello codice, which is the source text.3 In this accretion of allusions, a trend emerges in Poliziano’s use of ancient feminine figures: his readings of the ancient text in gendered contexts frequently formulate their modello esemplare to reinforce established gendered mechanisms of oppression. This is testament not only to the contrivances of ill-treatment in which the intellectual culture of the period was implicated, but also to the moral weight and responsibility inherent in receiving and interpreting the ancient past.

Furthermore, within the body of Poliziano’s epistolary works we are afforded a single correspondence to a contemporary woman: Cassandra Fedele. This singular occurrence is slightly bolstered by discrete references in other letters, but remains rather slim as a body of evidence. However, treated in conjunction with the aforementioned cases of Poliziano’s references to ancient women, we may understand the letter to Fedele as its own modello esemplare, the iterative result of the author’s thinking on women in antiquity in other works – that is, our modello codice.

References to the women of antiquity in the letters have no distinction between the apparently historical and the pagan syncretized divinities. This seems to have been the early modern tradition of historicizing these figures dating back to Bocaccio.4 Re-

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gardless of historicity, Poliziano’s most prominent references to ancient female figures in his letters are Venus and the Muses.

Each of these reveal how the author tends to confront women in positions of authority textually: Poliziano all but excises any sexual and feminine elements generally thought to be inherent to Venus, and refers to her with respect to Platonic male friendship and the love of poetry. Take by way of example 4.7.5 to Antonio Pizzamano: Naturally, just as lovers [amatores]5 carefully preserve the presents each receives from his Venus (for instance, a ring, a chain, a handkerchief, even a violet, sometimes a rose, a floret) so do I not only keep, not at all indifferently, those letters of yours and, likewise, those of Grimani, most welcome pledges of true love [amoris veri]…6 And again, in 1.4.1 to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in response to Mirandola’s request that Poliziano read some of his love poetry: They say that Love all by himself challenged Pan, a god, to the ring and threw him on his back. How do you suppose that I can wrestle with Venus’ whole team [toto Veneris grege]? Nevertheless, you – yes, you, Pico, who can be refused in nothing, no matter what it is, without gross sacrilege [nefas] – insist on this.7 When confronted with Venus as an active force, Poliziano either subjugates her primary nature to the ancient institution of male friendship or to the love of poetry.8 Neither of these sleights of hand actually permit the goddess her traditional power, rather serving to disempower her as an object of reference belonging to some position beyond, or other than, femininity. There is a certain mythologizing of the goddess (working according to her syncretized historicity) which serves to avoid confrontation of the femininity of her character.9 Rather than a goddess whose particular concern is feminine and amorous in antiquity, Venus herself becomes for Poliziano a “not-woman.”10

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62 Babel Volume XXI The task of treating the Muses similarly to this disempowerment of Venus is perhaps even more straightforward, since the character of the Muses in literary tradition was already much less concrete and more conceptual when Poliziano inherited it from antiquity; they are already mythologized to a greater degree.

Nonetheless, they are specifically and determinedly feminine figures, and undergo a similar process in Poliziano’s writings. In lieu of mythologization, they are simply stripped of agency. They become rather faceless, defined not by their own activity in the sphere of poetry and artistic creation, but most defined by the relationship the male artist has to them. Take, for example, letter 1.11.1 to Ermolao Barbaro, in which Poliziano excuses his late reply: What, therefore, could be more improper or inconsiderate [ineptius vel inhumanius] than to make noise and distract someone who is performing the sacred rites of the Muses [sacris Musarum], or to have the bad timing to throw baubles in the path of someone doing something serious [rem seriam]?11 Poliziano characterizes his reply to Barbaro as a distraction from his friend’s artistic endeavours. The Muses are defined by the relationship of Barbaro to them as characterized by Poliziano: figures demanding duty and attention, without which attention creative production does not occur, but who also, conversely, lack any apparent active role in the creative process. Barbaro will produce poetry by his attention to the Muses, not through their active inspiration of him. This is once again present in letter 4.7.6 to Antonio Pizzamano: For my part, I am delighted that Domenico Grimani is discharging the office of his embassy with the greatest distinction. Nevertheless, I hope that you welcome him back safe and sound as soon as possible, lest he vacation too long from the Muses [ne diutius a Musis ferietur], and so that you may congratulate him (not only in your own name, but also

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in mine [sed meo quoque nomine]) upon his return…12 The wording here is not insignificant, and the translation perhaps understates the force of Poliziano’s comment. Ferietur in the passive with the ablative means something closer to “to cheat of something or trick” than “to vacation.”13 This yields something closer to “lest he skive off from the Muses too long.” There is again this notion of failing in the diligence due to the Muses, and that the attention which they ought to receive risks being shorted by some other distraction. But the issue remains the same as that elaborated above: the Muses are defined by their relationship to masculine agency rather than their own inborn capabilities.

Having established something of the modello codice of Poliziano’s reception of ancient female figures, we can turn to the modello esemplare of the correspondence with Cassandra Fedele.

Such learned women of the time were notionally conceived of by their male contemporaries as contiguous with their ancient forebears.14 This came with the same mechanisms of disempowerment and mythologization which they foisted upon those antique figures: “Only if her femaleness is mythologized into the acceptable form of muse or inspiring goddess, apparently, can the woman humanist be celebrated without causing the male humanist professional embarrassment.”15 Fedele, as will be demonstrated, underwent just such a disempowerment by contemporary male humanists by means of their reception of antiquity.

We are presented with, following previous sparse pickings, what seems to be a bounty of textual evidence for Fedele’s relationship with Poliziano. None of Fedele’s own correspondence survives; but Poliziano’s reply to her, as well as a brief vernacular letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici about her, are extant.16 I shall treat the former first, it being the more extensive.

Poliziano’s letter to Fedele begins strongly with a quotation from the Aeneid, adapting the appearance of the virago Camilla in book 11 to Fedele.17 An odd choice, it may seem, given the disjunction between Fedele’s scholarly bent and the extreme vio-

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64 Babel Volume XXI lence for which Camilla is responsible in the Aeneid; but it is likely that the original context of the reference was of little concern to Poliziano. Rather, he seems invested in establishing the exceptionality of Fedele from the letter’s first lines: It staggers the mind that such a letter could have come from a woman. But why am I saying “woman”? A child, rather, and a maiden [virgine]. No longer, therefore, will the ages of antiquity taunt us with its Muses, or its Sibyls, or its Pythian priestesses, nor the Socratics with Diotima or Aspasia.18 As confirmation that antiquity is turned to the service of such disempowerment, Poliziano proceeds to place Fedele alongside numerous famous ancient women. Rather than a laudatory suggestion, Poliziano does to Fedele what he did to Venus and the Muses: where in the latter cases he alienates the subjects from activity in their traditional purviews, in this one he alienates Fedele from her own time and place by pointing out that she is so exceptional that she can find no camaraderie other than with the dead.

Shared in all these cases is this fundamental move of alienation from other women as a group, whether by setting of the person beyond those facets of their character most related to their sex (with Venus and the Muses), or by setting the individual so far above the group that their nature can find no continuity (with Fedele).19 Such an attitude remains apparent in Poliziano’s vernacular correspondence concerning Fedele, to Lorenzo de’ Medici: Yesterday evening I visited that learned Cassandra Fedele, and I greeted her, excellency, on your part. She is a miraculous phenomenon, Lorenzo, whether in the vernacular or in Latin; most modest, and to my eyes even beautiful. I departed stupefied.20 The literally objectifying language at play here is worthy of note; Poliziano writes: “E cosa, Lorenzo, mirabile” – literally, “what an

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amazing thing, Lorenzo;” particularly significant given the emphasis upon physical beauty to which Poliziano refers regularly as well.21 There is some continuity between the mercenary use of the ancient female figures in fashions contrary to or exclusive of their nature and the language of objects and ornamentation applied to Fedele.22 In both cases the language is contingent not upon the nature of the subject but the nature of its perception by a (predominantly male) humanist audience.23 Literary analyses such as this one may often seem disconnected from concrete social realities of the time in question. But the literary treatment of the ancient women, our modello codice, directly corresponds to the material treatment of Cassandra Fedele, our modello esemplare. In fact, the literary disempowerment would have been the very first battleground for the establishment of such attitudes in a highly epistolary society. The reception of antiquity in Poliziano’s letters had very real stakes, and this is evident in the course of Fedele’s life.

The sorts of pressure applied by Poliziano are intrinsically operational as social corrective: they suggest to the individual learned woman that she must accept either at best an isolated life of intellectual alienation, or the more standardly feminine social roles. Initially, and also following her success as a humanist, Fedele was in the latter position, choosing to marry a young doctor.24 However, her husband died early in their marriage, and Fedele also experienced that former and materially lacking lifestyle: although she actively published, she seems also to have been in “an anxious condition of poverty” for the remainder of her long life.25 The reception of antiquity, and what is arguably its weaponization, is inculpated in this by the oppressive nature of that reception. The moral responsibility extends beyond antiquity alone, and into its usage in the present. A love for antiquity, a genuine love which humanists like Poliziano held, has a great power when its position at the foundation (or at least chronologi-

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66 Babel Volume XXI cal beginning) of history and culture is acknowledged. Care must be taken with such power. There is, it is now generally accepted, no wholly coherent way of answering the question “what was antiquity, really?” But between acceptance of the elusiveness of such a perfect model and an utterly mercenary weaponization of the past, there is a balance to be struck where the truth is admitted as necessarily only partial. The sort of reception which twists the truth of antiquity to the convenience of established systems falls rather significantly short. Humanists such as Poliziano were phenomenally well-read, and not performatively erudite; the teachings of antiquity were internalized and developed to a remarkable degree. And yet, where the social position of women comes in contact with antique erudition, the rigour otherwise present is set aside. The degree to which the adoption of ancient women as literary motifs informs and exemplifies the reflexive hostility which a learned woman provoked in the humanist institution is a striking reminder of the moral responsibility inherent to the analysis of history.

Notes Hinds, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 41. Per Conte and Barchiesi, 1989.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 42.

4 Aileen A. Feng, “In Laura’s Shadow: Gendered Dialogues and Humanist Petrarchism in the Fifteenth Century,” in Writing Beloveds (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 93.

5 Latin is quoted with reference to Angelo Poliziano, Omnia Opera Angeli Politiani, ed. Alexander Sartius (Venice: Aldus Romanus, Roma, Bibliopola, 1498), libri epistularum I-XII. 6 Angelo Poliziano, Poliziano: Letters Volume I, trans. Shane Butler (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 267.

7 Ibid., 19.

8 Craig A. Williams, Reading Roman Friendship, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 24. Williams writes: “Ideals of similarity and of friendship ‘between good men’ conspire to locate the idealized form of amicitia firmly amongst men of high social status.”

9 Lisa Jardine, “‘O Decus Italiae Virgo’, or The Myth of the Learned Lady in the Renaissance,” The Historical Journal v. 28 no. 4, (1985): 801.

1 Stephen

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Poliziano, Letters, 35.

12 Ibid., 267-269.

13 Cf. OLD: ferio ~ ire, trans. […] 9. (of conditions, of events) To afflict, fall on; (w. abl.) to afflict (with). b. to trick, cheat.

14 Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, (London: Duckworth, 1986), 36.

15 Jardine, 817.

16 Grafton and Jardine, 46.

17 Aeneid 11.508-509.

18 Poliziano, Letters, 189.

19 Feng, 92.

20 Qtd. in Grafton and Jardine, 47.

21 Feng, 95.

22 Margaret Leah King, “Thwarted Ambitions: Six Learned Women of the Italian Renaissance,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal v. 59 no. 3, (1976): 296.

23 Feng, 74.

24 King, 297.

25 Ibid., 298.

10 11

Bibliography Conte, G.B., and Barchiesi, A. “Imitazione e arte allusive. Modi e funzioni dell’ intertestualita.” Lo spazio letterario di Roma antica, v. 1, (1989): 81-114.

Feng, Aileen A. “In Laura’s Shadow: Gendered Dialogues and Humanist Petrachism in the Fifteenth Century.” In Writing Beloveds, 68-105. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

Grafton, Anthony, and Jardine, Lisa. From Humanism to the Humanities. London: Duckworth, 1986.

Hinds, Stephen. Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Jardine, Lisa. “‘O Decus Italiae Virgo’, or The Myth of the Learned Lady in the Renaissance.” The Historical Journal v. 28 no. 4, (1985): 799-819.

King, Margaret Leah. “Thwarted Ambitions: Six Learned Women of the Italian Renaissance.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal v. 59 no. 3, (1976): 280-304.

Poliziano, Angelo. Opera Omnia. Ed. Alexander Sartius. Venice: Aldus Romanus, Roma, Bibliopola, 1498 (reprinted 1968).

–––––. Poliziano: Letters Volume I. Trans. Shane Butler. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Williams, Craig A. Reading Roman Friendship. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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The Virgin Queen: An Examination of Elizabeth I’s Maidenhood as a Means to Power Caroline Jones Queen Elizabeth I’s reign lasted from 1558 to her death in 1603 and was largely considered to be one of the greatest in English history. She led England into prosperity despite contentions over her claim to power and ability to rule as a queen without a king. Her expertise in writing, oration, and maintaining her public image allowed her to use the parts of her reign that were most criticised to her advantage, especially in relation to her decision never to marry. She manipulated her self-presentation to allow herself to keep all of her sovereignty as a monarch and present herself as a dichotomy of the characteristically feminine devotion to her subjects and the masculine-coded capability to rule them, both of which strengthened the power she already held.

Had Queen Elizabeth I married, whether an English noble or a foreign one, she would have inevitably lost much of her power and become the subservient party in the marriage. In her book, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, Carole Levin cites one of Elizabeth’s reasons for not marrying to be that, “she...did not want to give up her control as monarch, as she surely would if she was married.”1 Levin references Elizabeth’s elder half-sister and predecessor, Mary Tudor, and her marriage to Philip II of Spain. Although Philip was Spanish and rarely in England, he, being male, possessed far greater power than Mary, despite her English birth and bloodline. Mary

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was a monarch with little actual control over the kingdom she ruled. Elizabeth, understandably, did not want to end up like Mary. She did not want to be “perceived as the inferior partner,”2 and, especially if she had married an Englishman, she would not only be inferior to him, but also made a subject to one of her own subjects. To marry a foreigner would be to become—and force England to become—a subject to another country. Either way, not only would her political power be diminished, but her social standing in the world would become that of a subject rather than a ruler. By refusing to marry, she kept both political power over England, and the power she held as second only to God Himself.

Elizabeth was a shrewd and masterful architect of her own reputation, and because of her unusual decision never to marry, she had to be careful to remain a trustworthy ruler in the eyes of her people by building the image of herself as a ruler who was willing to do what was right even if it was not the most obvious or traditional choice, a ruler willing to sacrifice personal pleasure for the sake of her people. Being a woman, it was expected that her natural inclination would be towards marriage, raising children, and other customarily feminine goals. Spanish Ambassador Guzman de Silva spoke on many people’s behalf when he said, “the hatred that this Queen has of marriage is most strange.”3 It was seen as unnatural for a woman not to desire marriage, but whether or not she was sacrificing personal desire and pleasure for the sake of her people, she used the idea of sacrificing her own joy for the sake of England to her advantage. Elizabeth held tight control over all portraits made of her, saying that the only portraits made of her must be those which were “by her allowed”4 or imitations of said portraits. She bedecked each image of herself with imagery and symbolism that would carefully cultivate exactly the image she wanted to present to her people. On multiple occasions, she used images of self-sacrifice to present herself as a monarch willing to do anything for her people. Her

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70 Babel Volume XXI Pelican Portrait shows her displaying a miniature pelican over her chest, a common symbol of self-sacrifice, since pelicans were often thought to pierce themselves to feed their young with their own blood.5 Her Darnley portrait emphasises a wound in her side, exactly where Jesus was thought to have been pierced while on the cross.6 By associating herself with a self-sacrificing bird and the ultimate self-sacrifice in Christian doctrine, Elizabeth paints a clear, striking image of herself as a monarch willing to do anything for the sake of her country, including sacrificing what was thought to be a woman’s greatest goal and joy in life.

Her expert grip over her portrayal also allowed her to tailor how her femininity related to the usually-masculine role she held as monarch of England, as well as to her decision never to marry.

Through her meticulous propagandization, she was able to enhance her public image and thus the power she held over her people. As a woman, it was taken for granted that she would one day marry and that “a king could relieve Elizabeth of the difficulties of rule.”7 Her insistence on not marrying put her in a precarious situation. Pressure to marry was strong for all women, but as a monarch, she was expected to marry well to protect her country and produce an heir to protect her bloodline, so the pressure was even greater. In order to twist England’s expectations to her favour, she crafted a careful image of herself as being “already bound unto an husband, which is the kingdom of England”8 and that her children numbered “as many as are English.”9 The English people expected her to marry and devote herself to a husband, so she did. She wed the kingdom of England and devoted her life to caring for it. They expected her to bear a child and nurture it, and though she bore no children, she nurtured every English subject and saw them as her children. Toward the end of her Golden Speech, Elizabeth emphasises that although the English “have had and may have many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had or shall have any that will be more careful and loving.”10 Might and wisdom are attributes tra-

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ditionally applied to historical men, while women are stereotyped to be inherently more careful and loving. She acknowledges that she is not the paragon of masculine superiority, she brings to the throne feminine attributes that no male ruler can bring to the same degree. By drawing attention to her uniquely feminine qualities and how they lend themselves to her devotion to the wellbeing of the country, she enhances the power she holds. Although her lack of a physical husband and children might have been a hindrance to her reputation, she used the idea of familial devotion as a tool of propaganda to build a reputation of utter devotion to England and its people.

In order to characterise herself as solely a woman fulfilling her wifely duties to husband and children was not enough to legitimise her right and capability to rule England; she had to present herself as possessing masculine-coded power in order to convince the world that she was strong and capable enough to rule. She frequently referred to herself as a King, or as possessing kingly traits. Levin references the difficulty Elizabeth faced by refusing to marry, a difficulty that sprang from simultaneously refusing “the most obvious function of being a queen, that of bearing a son.”11 The role of a queen in early modern England was typically to bear children and further the royal bloodline, rather than to rule as a political authority. By refusing to further her own bloodline, she was effectively refusing to be seen as a true queen, in the aforementioned sense of that word. Instead, she built up an image of herself that revolved around her masculine capabilities and presented her as socio-politically a king, even if she was referred to as a queen for biological reasons. In her 1558 speech to her secretary and other lords, Elizabeth acknowledged that she was “but one body naturally considered” but placed emphasis on the fact that despite this, she was also “a body politic to govern.”12 She distances herself from her sex to put emphasis on her skill as a ruler and leader of the people. Later, in her Golden Speech, she claims that England would never have a queen who

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72 Babel Volume XXI “will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety.”13 In a world where fighting was a man’s task, she took it upon herself to take up that task with zeal and immense skill. For forty-five years she reigned beloved and supreme over England, and her emphasis on her governing skills lent itself to a successful and long reign because she held tight to her power and did not let anyone reduce her to her sex. By highlighting her skill and passion for ruling, she presented a masculine image concurrent to the previously established feminine one.

The dichotomous balance between presenting herself as both the paragon of femininity and masculinity seems to be contradictory, but when the line is as well walked as it was by Elizabeth, the apparent contradiction only lent itself to the power she possessed as a queen. In one of her most well-known speeches, her Armada speech to the troops at Tilbury, Elizabeth claimed that although she had “the body but of a weak and feeble woman,” she also had “the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too.”14 The distinction between her body natural— her physical form—and her body politic—the collective of England with her at the head—allowed her to rule despite her female form. Her sex had no bearing on her ability to rule because they were two separate and distinct entities. She delivered the speech while dressed in armour and referred to herself as having masculine core attributes, rather than feminine ones. She had traits any good, male king would also possess, such as the heart to be close to battle, and the stomach to do what was necessary for the sake of England, but she also used her sex to build an image of herself as wife and mother and to emphasise her ability to care for and love her people as only a mother truly could.

Queen Elizabeth I was a master at manipulating circumstances to her liking. Her decision not to marry may have come from any number of places, but no matter why she made that choice, she was able to masterfully bend it to her favour. Not only did it allow her to keep the political power she held, but it gave

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her the opportunity to present herself both as being already married to England, and as being a ruler who did not need to conform to societal expectations because, although she was a biological woman, she made it abundantly clear that her sex had no effect on her ability to wield power and wield it well for the sake of her country. She enhanced her military political power by emphasising her masculine attributes, and enhanced her social political power through the emphasis on her feminine attributes. By garnering such a careful image around herself as an unmarried queen, she was able to enhance her political power far beyond what any male ruler could imagine.

Notes Carole Levin, “The Official Courtships of the Queen,” in The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, 2nd ed, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 46.

2 Levin 65.

3 Levin 39.

4 Elizabeth I Tudor, “Collected Works,” in Foundation Year Program Handbook, Section III, 97-115 (Halifax: University of King’s College, 2021), 115.

5 Nicholas Hilliard, Pelican Portrait, ca. 1573-75, oil on panel, 78.7 cm x 61 cm, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

6 Darnley Portrait, ca. 1575, oil on panel, 1130 mm x 787 mm, National Portrait Gallery, London.

7 Levin 43.

8 Elizabeth I 105.

9 Elizabeth I 105.

10 Elizabeth I 114.

11 Levin 64.

12 Elizabeth I 104.

13 Elizabeth I 113.

14 Elizabeth I 110.

1

Bibliography Darnley Portrait. ca. 1575. Oil on panel, 1130 mm x 787 mm. National Portrait Gallery, London. Accessed 23 November 2021. https:// www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02075/QueenElizabeth-I. Hilliard, Nicholas. Pelican Portrait. ca. 1573-75. Oil on panel, 78.7 cm x 61 cm.

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Accessed 22 May 2020. https:// www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/portrait-of-queen-elizabeth-i.

Levin, Carole. “The Official Courtships of the Queen.” In The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, 2nd ed, 39-65.

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74 Babel Volume XXI Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Elizabeth I Tudor. “Collected Works.” In Foundation Year Program Handbook, Section III, 97-115. Halifax: University of King’s College, 2021.

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Indigenous Versus Inquisitors: Relation between the Mexican Inquisition and Pre-colonial Communities Ireland Wright As Catholicism spread around the world through missionaries, explorers, and immigrants, certain political conditions were required for Europeans to create valuable political and economic alliances.1 In the case of the Americas, specifically central countries like Mexico, the objective of Spanish conquests in the New World was to cultivate the Catholic faith.2 Following the Papal Bull of 1493 which gave the Spanish dominion over territories discovered by Columbus, individuals flocked to the colonies in order to exploit newly found resources, and convert pre-Colonial individuals to Christianity.3 With the arrival of Hernán Cortés, Mexico became subject to colonization at the hands of multiple inquisitions through 1522 to 1601, with the official implementation of the Holy Tribunal being 1559.4 Throughout transitions from inquisition to inquisition, the subject of what should be done about the “Indians” was a prime concern of the early Mexican Church. Indigenous individuals were subjected to the Catholic Reformation era ideals by missionaries, and later inquisitors.

They were required to adapt pre-colonial spiritual and religious beliefs in order to survive; thus some pre-contact practices survived amongst the native people of Mexico.

The Mexican Inquisition only became possible due to previous political conditions. In the early Sixteenth century, Conquistadors took advantage of Indigenous populations in order to

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76 Babel Volume XXI exploit their livelihoods. Hernán Cortés, arguably one of the most famous Conquistadors, manipulated the Tlaxcallan to reject Aztec hegemony, supply troops to his army, and successfully lay waste to the Aztec Capital Tenochtitlan; what is now modern-day Mexico City.5 It is because of native exploitation by Conquistadors that friars of the Fransican, Dominican, and Augustinian varieties were able to begin their Spiritual Conquest of Mesoamerica.6 The Spanish Inquisition extended into all colonies, and the purpose of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in colonial Mexico was to defend Spanish religion and Spanish-Catholic culture.7 As the military conquest of the Aztecs concluded in 1521, both the Spanish government and church sought to demonstrate necessary examples of Christian conduct and principle to Indigneous peoples in Mesoamerica, as to ensure no heretics populated newly acquired land.8 Cooperation between church and state resulted in the involvement of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which sought power over the newly acquired colonies, especially Mexico.

During the first fifty years of Mexican conquest, monastic dignitaries acted as inquisitors. Pope Adrian VI authorized monastic prelates to perform as secular clergy in territory where there was no bishop nearby.9 Once Bishop Juan de Zumarraga received his bulls of consecration in Spain, he was eventually ruled apostolic inquisitor by the Council of the Supreme Inquisition in Spain on June 27, 1535.10 Zumarraga was stripped of his title in 1543 due to his ruling on the famous trials of Indigenous leader Don Carlos Chichimecatecuhtli, and was ultimately burned at the stake for “undermining the Spanish Church and Spanish political power in Mexico”.11 Subsequently, the Episcopal Inquisition commenced, followed by that of Alonso Montufar, Zumarraga’s successor and second archbishop of Mexico.12 Dissatisfaction with the Episcopal Inquisition led Spanish church and state to implement expert prosecutors, creating a tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico in 1559.13 The Holy Office

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absorbed general Episcopal jurisdiction over heresy. However, King Philip II of Spain prevented the tribunal from having jurisdiction over Indigenous individuals who remained the responsibility of bishops.14 Catholic interests in the New World focused on missionary work; an extension of efforts at home to block Protestant advances and reclaim the continent for Catholicism.15 The ultimate goal was cultural hegemony. Issues persisted as friars and missionaries made their way into the new world. Most missionaries, due to language barriers, enforced the practice of orthopraxy over orthodoxy; right action over right belief.16 Missionaries, mostly Fransicans, would arrange catechisms and collections of prayers, as well as scenes of sacred theatre. Dominican Francisco de Vitoria displays the consciousness of the missionary project through his work On the Indians of the New World. He explains in these articles that the Pope has no sovereignty over Indigenous peoples, and they have not resisted Christianity but have instead not been properly informed.17 He notes it is no wonder Indigenous people have rejected Christianity, as the Spanish have committed great atrocities against them. Vitoria explains that Indigenous peoples can only be persuaded to convert through the use of tangible evidence or through an “example of good life”, saying that, “If the Christian faith is proposed to the Indians persuasively, with the provision of forceful and rational arguments - the Indians are required to accept the Christian faith under the penalty of moral sin….”18 However, the imposition of the multiple inquisitions in colonial Mexico which brought concepts of more violent conversions and subordinations. Despite the belief that Indigenous individuals would convert and participate in Catholicism if done out of their own free will, the nature of the Inquisition was to persecute individuals who were deemed heretics and “enemies of the faith”.19 Missionaries, and later the Mexican Inquisition, focused specifically on two concepts; heresy and idolatry. According to Catholic dogma of the period, heresy equals choice, as

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78 Babel Volume XXI it refers to an individual's choice to believe in things other than what is established by a particular religion.20 Idolatry, from the Spanish Catholic perspective, focused on the worship of items, such as statues or art, as a God; for example, the Devil or idols relating to a non-Catholic god.21 Pedro Ciruelo, professor of Theology and teacher of Philip II of Spain explains the relation between the concepts of heresy and idolatry.

With these beliefs came the assumption by the Spanish that Native Indigenous individuals lived in a more primitive state, and that the Spaniards’ civilized nature brought Christinity with it.

Bartolome de las Casas, later bishop of Chiapas, suggested idolatry was natural as humans constantly strived for knowledge of a higher being.22 Therefore it was only natural that supposed primitive individuals would create false gods in their pursuit of a higher being, as they had never been educated on Christianity or the Catholic God. Although conversion was the goal of the Inquisition in Mexico, the Indigenous populations had other ideas. The individuals of most concern to the Inquisition were sorcerers, witches or “curers” who openly defied the religion the Inquisition attempted to force in Indigenous individuals. They established schools and apprenticeships amongst Indigenous youth to promote native spirituality.23 This negative attitude to conversion encouraged the creation of a counter-culture, through performing sacrifices, acts of sorcery, and supporting practices of concubinage and bigamy.24 Seen as a threat to Catholicism and Spanish culture, these individuals were branded as “Dogmatizers” by the Inquisition. It is recognized that Native Mexicans attempted to manipulate the Inquisition's procedures by denouncing Spanish-appointed caciques or “political bosses” of idolatry to deprive them of offices.25 Indigenous individuals would also accuse each other of idolatry and human sacrifice, in order to attack political enemies.26 Conversion, or the denouncement of another was an entry point for non-Catholics to gain access to systems of the Iberian Penin-

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sula, as well as Spanish institutions.27 There are also situations in which women claim to have a special connection with Christ himself, giving them a unique opportunity to advance their societal and economic position. This is due to individuals in their communities coming to them for advice or help, especially wealthy men seeking insight.28 An example of this is Marina de San Miguel, who was tried by the Inquisition in 1599. Well known for trances where she communicated with Christ and other saints, members of her community and even clergy came to seek her counsel.29 However, it was converts and mestizos, individuals of mixed race typically of Spanish and Indigenous descent, who became the objects of suspicion for the Inquisition, even though they had followed appropriate religious doctrine and rules.30 As religious control was established under the Mexican Inquisition, many Indigenous groups and individuals were subject to punishment for crimes against the Catholic faith. The first recorded instance of a trial under the Mexican Inquisition involved Marcos of Acolhuacin, who, in 1522, was accused of the crime of concubinage.31 In 1525, as many as nineteen Indigenous people were accused of religious crimes were tried under Bishop Zumarraga during the period of 1536 to 1543.32 There were also instances where Indigenous individuals accused of conducting rituals were whipped, and those suspected of being “recidivist idolaters” were incarcerated.33 The Mexican Office of the Inquisition used the cárcel secretal in Mexico City, the “secret prison”, where enemies of the faith were placed. Prisoner Alexo de Castro explained that other than Indigenous individuals, his prisonmates included “protestant heretics, blaspheming Angolan slaves, abusive priests, peyote users, mulata sorcerers, errant scholars, false priests, fortune-tellers, two Berber Muslims, and and Irishman who had sought to overthrow the colonial regime and crown himself King of Mexico”.34 The Church and Inquisition prosecuted Native Mexicans, even those who converted to the faith that the colonial office of the Inquisition sought to promote and pro-

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80 Babel Volume XXI tect.

Despite appearing to convert, many Indigenous groups in Mexico held onto pre-colonial beliefs. Momentary leniency by the Spanish Catholic church in Mexico during certain periods of the multiple phases of the Inquisition allowed for the emergence of a “religious baroque” amongst Indigenous communities.35 It is known from research that despite protests of individual clergy, and the prosecution of specific individuals under the Inquisition, writers of the period attest that the Catholic Church in colonial Mexico did accommodate a variety of regional belief.36 The traditions of local religion and “indigenous Christianity”, the combining of different forms of belief or practice, observed the combining of Roman Catholic traditions with pre-colonial practices. The word ‘syncretism’ does not do the situation posed on native Mexicans justice. Syncretism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, describes the term as “Attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, esp. in philosophy or religion.37 Native cosmological beliefs define the earth as interconnected with humans through sacred landscapes, animals and spirits; while caves, hills and water were designated by myths as places of origin.38 All of the sacred space on earth was seen as belonging to gods, who in exchange for devotional acts such as human and animal sacrifice, gave humanity parts of said land.39 It is in these already sacred spaces that religion became “territorialized”; symbols and images deemed important by the Spanish Catholic church were placed in these areas in order to promote Christianity over the Indigenous beliefs.40 Indigenous peoples also absorbed certain Christian figures into their own pre-colonial pantheons. A significant example is the Virgin of Guadalupe. When shown to the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, she was almost instantly associated with the Aztec goddess Tonantzin; also called Coatlicue.41 Both figures are considered mother deities. Indigenous individuals found incorporating Guadalupe easy as she was compatible with already estab-

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lished traditions, like the consumption of the maguey plant in Tonantzin’s honour. In certain Indigenous groups, the Catholic Virgin Guadalupe is still referred to as Tonantzin.42 There has also been a heavy association between Jesus Christ and the mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl.43 Myths surrounding Quetzalcoatl involve his descent into the underworld, where he performs the ultimate sacrifice by providing his blood, to give back life to humanity.44 Legend says Quetzalcoatl “gathered the bones of the dead, sprinkled them with his own blood, and recreated humanity:”45 Further, all myths surrounding his death share a key characteristic; though he was gone, Quetzacoatl was not dead, and he would return - “hasta hoy le esperan”.46 Similarly, Jesus Christ sacrificed himself on the cross, so humanity might be saved from sin. The giving of Jesus’ blood in multiple parables, including the Last Supper and the piercing of his side during the Crucifixion, portrays the important sacrifice of human blood that some Indigenous communities, like the Aztecs and Mayans, uphold. The concepts of sacrifice and resurrection run deeply through both Indigenous spirituality and Christianity, so Jesus’ incorporation into pre-colonial Mexican beliefs was not difficult.

Indigenous communities in Mexico also used Christian celebrations as a way to hide native ritual practice, as well as resist colonial conversion. The celebration of Corpus Christi, the celebration of the transubstantiation of Christ’s body during the Eucharist, incorporated participation of Indigenous peoples.47 Through participation, Indigenous groups incorporated traditional practices with Catholicism. Evidence of this has been shown in artwork. Biombos, two-sided folding screens, had been produced in Mexico’s capital depicting historical scenes of the city and the Spanish conquest.48 A biombo created by Juan Correa displays Indigenous individuals in costume performing traditional dances of Mexico, referred to as mitotes. The use of mitotes during the Eucharist ceremony has been documented throughout the colonial period of Mexico, as they were common during festivals

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82 Babel Volume XXI around Mexican cities, and are identified as being associated with Indigenous people’s “pagan” past.49 This is an example of Indigenous individuals participating in Catholic celebrations in order to appease Mexican church officials and inquisitors, while also asserting their right to conduct pre-colonial ritual practices. The specific training indigenous dancers needed before conducting such ritualized dances connected the individual with past generational knowledge provided by their kin.50 Throughout the colonization and conquest of Mexico throughout the sixteenth century, Indigenous communities like the Aztecs, Mayans, Nahua, and many more saved important spiritual and cultural rituals and practices from the clutches of conversion. Though missionaries and inquisitors attempted to impose Catholic beliefs, indigenous communities saved their pantheon of gods and ritual dances by merging them with Catholicism. Harsh persecution, did not stop native Mexicans from protecting their beliefs.

Notes Simon Ditchfield, “Catholic Reformation and Renewal,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of The Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 256.

2 Henry Charles, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies (London: The Macmillan Company, 1908), 191.

3 Charles, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, 194.

4 Charles, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, 207.

5 Ditchfield, “Catholic Reformation and Renewal,” 154.

6 Ditchfield, “Catholic Reformation and Renewal,” 158.

7 Richard Greenleaf, “The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources for the Ethnohistorian,” The Americas 34, no. 3 (1978): 7.

8 Richard Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century.

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969), 315.

9 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians”, 315.

10 Richard Greenleaf.

(Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1962).

11 Greenleaf, , 68.

12 Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century, 118.

13 Greenleaf, The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century, 158.

14 McKenna Vonderstrasse, “Testing the Limits: The Inquisition as a Destabilizing Force in Colonial Latin America” (History Undergraduate Publications and Presentations at University of Portland, 2017), 2.

15 Margaret King, Reformation Thought (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hacket Pub1

Babel Volume XXI lishing Company, 2016), 182.

16 Ditchfield, “Catholic Reformation and Renewal,” 161.

17 King, Reformation Though, 186.

18 King, Reformation Thought, 188.

19 King, Reformation Thought, 188.

20 Mina Soormally, “Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire” (Department of Romance Studies Duke University, 2007), 19.

21 Soormally, “Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire,” 26.

22 Soormally, “Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire,” 33.

23 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 319.

24 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 319.

25 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 316.

26 Amanda Summers, “The Insidious Case of Ignacia Gertrudis de Ochoa: Gender, Personal Relationships, Ethnicity, and Diabolism in the late Eighteenth-Century Diocese of Guadalajara” (Graduate School at University of Nevada, 2018), 38.

27 Ryan Crewe, “Transpacific Mestizo: Religion and Caste in the Worlds of a Moluccan Prisoner of the Mexican Inquisition.” Itinerario 39, no. 3 (2015): 465.

28 Jacqueline Holler, “‘More Sins than the Queen of England’: Marina de San Miguel Before the Mexican Inquisition,” in Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 218.

29 Holler, “‘More Sins than the Queen of England,’” 226.

30 Crewe, “Transpacific Mestizo,” 465.

31 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 322.

32 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 322.

33 Kristin Norget, “Hard Habits to Baroque: Catholic Church and PopularIndigenous Religious Dialogue in Oaxaca, Mexico” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 33 (2008): 140.

34 Crewe, “Transpacific Mestizo,” 474.

35 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 316.

36 Greenleaf, “Sources for Ethnohistorians,” 317.

37 Oxford English Dictionary. 2021. “syncretism, n.” OED. 38 Norget, “Hard Habits to Baroque,” 143.

39 Norget, “Hard Habits to Baroque,” 143.

40 Norget, “Hard Habits to Baroque,” 144.

41 William Madsen, The Virgin's Children: Life in an Aztec Village Today. (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1960), 221.

42 Madsen, The Virgin's Children, 221.

43 Judith Elkin, Imaging Idolatry: Missionaries, Indians and Jews (Providence: Tuoro National Heritage Trust, 1992), 25.

44 Steven Hartman, “Quetzalcoatl without Jesus Christ.” (ScholarWorks at University of Montana, 1996), 21.

45 Lesley Wylie, Maria C. Fumagalli, Owen Robinson, and Peter Hulme, Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 94.

46 Hartman, “Quetzalcoatl without Jesus Christ,” 22.

47 Peterson, Anna.“Indigenous Culture and Religion before and since the Con-

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84 Babel Volume XXI quest,” Latin American Research Review 36, no. 2 (2001): 243.

48 Mundy, Barbara, “Moteuczoma Reborn: Biombo Paintings and Collective Memory in Colonial Mexico City” Winterthur Portfolio 45, no. 2/3 (2011): 161.

49 Mundy, “Moteuczoma Reborn.”

50 Mundy, “Moteuczoma Reborn,” 175.

Bibliography Charles, Henry. The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies. London: The Macmillan Company, 1908.

Ciruelo, Pedro. Reprobación de las supersticiones y hechicerías. N.p.: Medina del Campo, 1551.

Crewe, Ryan. “Transpacific Mestizo: Religion and Caste in the Worlds of a Moluccan Prisoner of the Mexican Inquisition.” Itinerario 39, no. 3 (2015): 463-485.

Ditchfield, Simon. “Catholic reformation and Renewal.” In The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation. 152-85. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Elkin, Judith. Imaging Idolatry: Missionaries, Indians and Jews. Providence: Tuoro National Heritage Trust, 1992.

Greenleaf, Richard. , 1536-1543. Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1962.

Greenleaf, Richard. The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969.

Greenleaf, Richard. “The Mexican Inquisition and the Indians: Sources for the Ethnohistorian.” The Americas 34, no. 3 (1978): 315-344.

Hartman, Steven. 1996. “Quetzalcoatl without Jesus Christ.” ScholarWorks at University of Montana, 1996.

Holler, Jacqueline. “‘More Sins than the Queen of England’: Marina de San Miguel Before the Mexican Inquisition.” In Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, 209-228. N.p.: John Hopkins University Press, 1998.

King, Margaret. Reformation Thought. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2016.

Madsen, William. The Virgin's Children: Life in an Aztec Village Today. Texas: University of Texas Press, 1960.

Mundy, Barbara. “Moteuczoma Reborn: Biombo Paintings and Collective Memory in Colonial Mexico City.” Winterthur Portfolio 45, no. 2/3 (2011): 161-176.

Norget, Kristin. “Hard Habits to Baroque: Catholic Church and PopularIndigenous Religious Dialogue in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 33, no. 1 (2008): 131-158.

Oxford English Dictionary. “syncretism, n.” OED. 2021. https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196428? rskey=NDc1Do&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.

Peterson, Anna. 2001. “Indigenous Culture and Religion before and since the Conquest.” Latin American Research Review 36, no. 2 (2001): 237-254.

Soormally, Mina. 2007. “Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Em-

Babel Volume XXI pire.” Department of Romance Studies Duke University, 2007.

Summers, Amanda. “The Insidious Case of Ignacia Gertrudis de Ochoa: Gender, Personal Relationships, Ethnicity, and Diabolism in the late Eighteenth-Century Diocese of Guadalajara.” Graduate School at University of Nevada, 2018.

Vonderstrasse, McKenna. “Testing the Limits: The Inquisition as a Destabilizing Force in Colonial Latin America.” History Undergraduate Publications and Presentations at University of Portland, 2017.

Wylie, Lesley, Maria C. Fumagalli, Owen Robinson, and Peter Hulme, eds.

Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio. Liverpool University Press, 2013.

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Poetic Rebellion: Divine Imagery and Social Justice in Schiller's The Robbers Maggie Fyfe

Schiller's drama The Robbers, published in 1781, chronicles a conflict between two brothers, Karl and Franz. The drama emphasizes the dissent against authoritarian power structures characteristic of Germany's Sturm und Drang period. These oppressive powers manifest themselves in many ways, such as the structure of a patriarchal family, the church, and a tyrannical government.

Karl's band of robbers and Karl's fiancé Amalia grapple in particular with these institutional power structures, and consider how they inform the moral lens through which they view their world.

The moral ambiguity of Schiller’s drama brought about by the subversion of oppressive power structures is framed by a sense of divine judgement represented by paradisal and infernal language.

The juxtaposition between Schiller's imagery of heaven and hell illustrates two parallel and paradoxical narrative tensions within the play. Whereas Karl's band of robbers justify their devilish deeds as an attempt to achieve paradisal liberation from authoritarian power structures, Amalia submits herself to her angelic perception of Karl, confined by a hellish, violent passion imposed by the institution of marriage.

The band of robbers speak in images of hell as they measure the perceived evil of their thievery against the corrupt nature of their world. At the same time, they strive for a kind of Paradise that exists outside of the societal expectations of institutional au-

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thorities. As Spiegelberg first proposes that the group form a brotherhood of thieves, his descriptions of infernal violence are means of justifying liberation from these authoritarian powers: “Do you want to take the King's shilling - if they would trust the looks of you, that's the first question - and do your stint in Purgatory while you are still on earth, at the mercy of a splenetic tyrant of a corporal?”1 Spiegelberg suggests that life under a tyrant's rule may be akin to hell on Earth. As he alludes to Purgatory, he suggests that this way of life produces an eternal yearning for an independent, enlightened Paradise that cannot be realized within corrupt society. This passage establishes the framework for a sense of youthful dissidence that pervades the play, as Spiegelberg then examines the moral implications of the robbers' thievery: What does it matter where your soul goes? When troops of couriers gallop ahead to announce our descent, so that the devils put on their Sunday best, root the soot of millennia out of their eyes, and horned heads in thousands poke from the smoky chimneys of their sulphur-ovens to see our arrival? Comrades! Away! Comrades! Is there anything in the world so glorious, so thrilling? Come, comrades, and away!2 In this passage, the hellish reality of an authoritarian regime is contrasted with the arguably more favourable prospect of being punished in the actual place of the condemned. In this way, Spiegelberg suggests that the sense of social justice he believes to be implied in their thievery counters the moral implications of their wrongdoing. The passage to hell is depicted as a veiled yet vividly illustrated liberation as Spiegelberg suggests their descent will be met by celebration and as he imagines being greeted by devils ironically clad in “their Sunday best.”3 He expresses his perception of their rebellion as “so glorious, so thrilling,”4 evoking a pathos in his comrades who feel alienated from the earthly world.

Later, Roller, another one of the thieves, expands upon this hellish imagery as he explicitly alludes to Dante's Inferno. He exclaims

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88 Babel Volume XXI that the brotherhood of thieves will continue to undermine authoritarian power structures through their robbery, even: “if the nine circles of hell surround us!”5 This infernal image is particularly compelling in its intertextuality. This line places the robber's rebellion into a more widely accessible consideration of the ambiguous morality that presents itself in the subversion of institutional power structures. The robbers engage in brutal violence against innocent people in their youthful defiance. Thus, while their behaviour perpetuates the kind of social injustice that they are attempting to combat, the imagery of their speech offers a kind of poetic justice against the oppressive ideology of institutional power structures. Schiller engages in a kind of literary rebellion, a purgation of emotion that exists through his drama. In this way, his robbers find a kind of paradisal liberation in hellish images that poetically subvert institutional authority Inversely, Amalia is paradoxically confined by her angelic perception of her fiancé, Karl, as her love blinds her from coming to understand his submission to devilish defiance. In the same way that the robbers seek freedom from institutional power structures, Amalia is bound by the institution of marriage. Amalia's seemingly heavenly conception of Karl is illustrated in her lyric poem at the onset of Act III: Fiery hearts around each other furled, Our lips and ears entranced - before our eyes The night - and our two spirits heavenward whirled And his kiss - o taste of Paradise!

As two burning flames will grasp and cling.6 Amalia appears to describe her love for Karl in angelic terms, as she believes that he has brought her a kind of heaven on Earth.

Her speech is infused with a naïve romanticism, as she equates his kiss with the “taste of paradise.”7 She also states that together, their spirits “heavenward whirled,”8 although this entrance into heaven also implies a kind of death. While she initially imagines her betrothed as a paradisal presence, under the surface of her

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speech also lies a contradictory sense of confinement, as she is a servant to her love. Schiller describes the doomed union that characterizes Karl and Amalia's engagement as “fiery hearts around each other furled” and “as two burning flames will grasp and cling.”9 While the equation of their love with fire could characterize burning desire, it also implies a kind of destructive, violent passion. Amalia is blinded by her heavenly conception of Karl. She is entrapped by her passionate belief in Karl's quasidivinity, as she is bound by the patriarchal power structure imposed by the prospect of their marriage. This implies a kind of cosmic convergence of heaven and hell. Later, Amalia's description of Karl's portrait offers insight into her distortedly divine perception of him, “No, no! It is not he. In Heaven's name that is not Karl… these dull colours cannot reflect the divine spirit that shone in his fiery eye.”10 Through the heavenly lens of her love, Amalia asserts that Karl has a “divine spirit.”11 Embedded in her speech lies a hellish, burning image, as she recognizes “his fiery eye.”12 There exists an implied tension in Amalia's descriptions of Karl, between her angelic portrait of him and the presence of a fiery, imprisoning passion. Amalia's infernal love flame most clearly manifests itself in the play's conclusion, as she asks Karl to kill her upon learning that they cannot be together. She exclaims, “then let Dido teach me to die!”13 Like Virgil's Dido, Amalia is consumed by her passion as manifested in her love flame. Once more, Schiller's intertextuality places the moral character of the drama within a cosmic context, as Amalia's love for Karl becomes not a means for a heavenly ascent but rather a hellish end.

Like Dido, this infernal passion strips her not only of female agency distinct from sentimental romance but also of her life.

Schiller weaves images of heaven and hell into his dialogue as a means of implicating a standard of divine moral judgement upon Amalia's love and the robbers' defiance. Angelic and devilish descriptions offer a kind of paradoxical tension between the robber's rebellion as a means of social liberation and Amalia's

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90 Babel Volume XXI love flame as a means of imprisoning, violent passion imposed by patriarchal expectations. In creating this tension, Schiller deftly employs poetic language as a means to consider the moral implications of defying or submitting to institutional authority. In this way, The Robbers exemplifies Sturm und Drang literature, illustrating a kind of poetic rebellion that boldly blends vivid, intertextual images of heaven and hell.

Notes Fredrich Schiller, The Robbers and Wallenstein, trans. F.J. Lamport (London: Penguin Classics, 1979), 44.

2 Schiller 47.

3 Schiller 47.

4 Schiller 47.

5 Schiller 92.

6 Schiller 93.

7 Schiller 93.

8 Schiller 93.

9 Schiller 93.

10 Schiller 63.

11 Schiller 63.

12 Schiller 63.

13 Schiller 158.

1

Bibliography Schiller, Fredrich. The Robbers and Wallenstein. Translated by F.J. Lamport. London: Penguin Classics, 1979.

Babel Volume XXI

Afterword After three years in the EMSS, and two years of copresidency, I am graduating, a few weeks after Babel will launch.

The Early Modern Studies Program has broadened my perspectives immensely, and I would not be where I am today without being part of such an inspiring community of students, and without the support of the program’s wonderful teaching staff.

Like many, I began this school year hopeful for many differences from a completely remote 2020-21 school year: especially for an in-person conference, complete with a dinner and reception, and the chance to connect with more first and second year students new to King’s or to EMSP. In late December, we had to make the call to put the conference online, but it was nevertheless a success. Writing this now, in early March, we are again hopeful for an in-person Babel launch this year, but it is by no means certain. Despite these challenges and disappointments, the Early Modern Studies Society has adapted and persevered for a wonderful year.

There is a long list of people who made this year’s Babel a success, and I would be remiss to omit any of them. Firstly, I need to thank our authors: without your phenomenal papers, there could be no Babel, and it is a pleasure to be able to publish them for you. Secondly, the EMSP faculty: your courses and FYP lectures inspired many of the papers published in this volume, and your enthusiasm for this program is the reason that it produces students willing to put countless hours into creating and promoting Babel. Thirdly, I must thank Dr. Kathryn Morris, the EMSP program director, individually, for all of her help this year, both with Babel and our conference. Fourthly, none of this would have happened without the rest of the EMSS exec: our tirelessly enthusiastic and dedicated core class representatives, Emma Martel, Caroline Belbin, and Lara Van de Venter, our meticulous

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92 Babel Volume XXI communications and social media officer, Elsy Rytter, and our treasurer, Neyve Egger, who again stepped up, in the spirit of friendship and inter-program solidarity, to ensure that the EMSS could run this year. Finally, last but the farthest possible from least, my thanks go to my co-president, Bronwyn Turnquist: this society survived a global pandemic intact and thriving thanks to your dedication, and I survived two years as its co-president thanks to your support and friendship. You are incredibly hardworking, intelligent, and creative, and it has been my absolute pleasure to work with you for the last two years.

I also need to thank the readers of this journal, whether you pick it up at its launch or at some point in the future. Thank you for supporting our work, and I hope you have found something in this volume to interest or inspire you.

Sophie Lawall Early Modern Studies Society Co-President, 2021-22