Les Femmes Des Lettres, 7 pp. manuscript.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Autograph manuscript study of 'Les Femmes des Lettres'. [Touraine?: n.d., circa 1746-1751].
Twelve pages of manuscript on six sheets; 10 x 7 5/8”; written on the right half of both sides of
each sheet; some ink corrections within the text and a few marginal notes in the hand of the author; in French, from Roman to modern times. Chemised and housed in a half morocco portfolio.
Written by Rousseau (1712-1778) as a study (or outline) for a projected book on the history of women through history. It begins with:
P[lusieu]rs f[emmes] chez les Romaines se sont adornées aux Lettres et quelques unes et ont laissé des monuments. Cornificia sous le règne d'Auguste fut fameuse par le poësie. Proba Falconia qui a vecu entre le 3e et le 4e siècle entreprit d'écrire toutte l'histoire Ste avec les seuls vers de Virgile sans y changer un mot, mais seulement en les transposant, les coupant, it les rapportant avec tant d'art, que sans rien altérer à la mesure ni à l'harmonie, elle fit server l'ouvrage de ce Poëte à un ouvrage sacré. On prétend qu'elle en fit autant d'Homére; cet ouvrage se trouve dans la bibliotheque des Pères.
Rousseau continues with commentaries on Paula Agentaria, Hyppatia d'Alexandrie, Angela Nogarole, Genevre Gambara and Laure and Isotte (“furent touttes trois Savantes. La derniére fut illustre par son grand Savoir et par son élequence. Elle écrivit entre autre ouvrages un Dialogue de la question de savoir lequel avoit le plus péché d'Adam ou d'Eve”). He continues with the Florentines Lucréce Tonaboni, Laura Ceretta and Alexandra Scala; Olympia Morato of Ferrara; Cassandra of Venice; the Neapolitans Constance Carretto and Damigella Trivulci; in Spain Beatrix Gallindo of Salamanca, Catherine of Badajoz, Catherine Trillo, Elizabeth of Joye, and Elizabeth Losa.
In the seventeenth-century; Tarquinie Molsa of Modena, the Venetian Modesta Pozza de'Zorzi (“elle prétend montrer l'égalité de merite dans les deux sexes”), Helené Lucrèce Cornara of Padua, the Roman Marguarite Costa, the theologian Cornélie Piscopia who received her Doctorate at Padua in 1678, and Laura Bassa of Bologna, whose entry concludes before the end of the last page indicating that this portion of the study is over and complete in itself.
This early treatise on female writers and intellectuals is thought to have been prepared between 1746 and 1751 as part of a projected full length work on the history of women that Rousseau began at the urging of his employer Madam Dupin.
While most feminist critiques of Rousseau's work have focused on the social contract's claim that only men could be true citizens and women's place was in the home, an alternative perspective has developed that considers the feminist ideas and potential in his work. This analysis tends to break down between Rousseau's political writing and his fiction. Within the context of his political writing, Rousseau claims that there is no "fixed" identity in nature and that it is only through law and the social contract that this identity is created. Therefore, women's abilities and place in society cannot be predetermined; they are controlled by the culture one lives in. There is also a fear that runs through Rousseau's writing that women possess qualities that threaten to "unman" men if they were equals. This fear is seen as proof that Rousseau believed women were of equal value and potential to men, and that his call for their subordination comes more from his fear that men would lose their power if women were allowed to fully express themselves. Feminist writers have looked to Rousseau's fiction, however, to show that he believed women had their own subjective experience that wasn't simply a "mirror" of men's identities. If he did not see women as having subjective identities then the reader would not feel anything for the female characters, they would simply be objects in the male gaze. Rousseau's stories also convey the message that "femini
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