Tóm tắt

This book, the first of two volumes, is the first study of its kind devoted to an analysis of the debate concerning government by women in seventeenth-century France. Drawing on a wide range of political and feminist texts, it sets out to demonstrate that the dominant discourse which upholds patriarchy at the time is frequently in conflict with alternative discourses which frame gynaecocracy as a feasible, and laudable reality, and which reconfigure (wittingly or unwittingly) the normative paradigm of male authority. Central to the argument is an analysis of how the discourse which constructs government as a male prerogative quite simply implodes when juxtaposed with the traditional political discourse of virtue ethics. The study draws on the existing work concerning queenship but innovates in its focus on the literary, feminist, and philosophical representations of female governance in France-- Provided by publisher about volume 1The second of two volumes, explores and analyzes the dramatic representations of women in power in seventeenth-century France. Key to the analysis is an examination of the ways in which questions of virtue and sexual differentiation are negotiated and how they contribute to the construction of a nascent paradigm of equality. As we will see, the framing of certain moral and intellectual virtues, particularly prudence, as central to dramatic portrayals of government, allows a way in for the ideologists of women's authority, for whom prudence transcends sexual differentiation. On the other hand, in an argument which exploits sexual differentiation in women's favour, the claim is made that it is precisely the qualities perceived as 'female' that are invaluable in government, namely clemency, mercy, humanity - all frequently connoted collectively in the notion of douceur. What emerges in either case is a notion of government, the quintessential public role, as the ultimate site of androgyny.