Allegory of Grammar (1650)
Allegory of Grammar (1650). Laurent de La Hyre - Walters Art Museum. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Under workshopen diskuterar vi nya historiska perspektiv på skrivande kvinnor som överskrider och underminerar dominerande konventioner och normer för kvinnlig subjektivitet under den tidigmoderna perioden.

Keynote online

Keynote-föreläsningen av Nancy Frelick, Matilda Amundsen Bergströms föreläsning, och Ellen Söderblom Saarelas föreläsning, sänds via E-mötesverktyget Zoom.

Länk till föreläsningen, välkommen att logga in från kl. 10:

https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/66225003112

Om evenemanget på engelska

This one-day workshop addresses the history of subjectivity through an exploration of female freethinking in European literature 1500–1700. The purpose is to discuss the diversity of early modern subjectivity by giving due attention to female writers that in unconventional ways responded to the period’s dominating subjectivation of bodies, thinking and desires in various senses and genres, such as novels, maxims, drama, poetry, letters, fairy tales. By this focus the workshop wants to give new historical insight on other forms of subjectivity than the ones usually related to a humanist narrative based on the idea of human sovereignty that was first articulated during the renaissance and that later on became established as the rational and autonomous modern subject.

The workshop brings together international and national senior scholars and postdoctoral researchers in early modern literary studies interested in a revaluation of the humanist tradition and its relevance today.

Please register

The event is free, but capacity is limited. Register by 11 September at the latest at carin.franzen@littvet.su.se.

Welcome!
Carin Franzén and Nan Gerdes

Programme

10:00

Coffee 

10:15

Welcome by Carin Franzén and Nan Gerdes

10:30

Keynote lecture, Nancy Frelick

Invoking Echo: Representing Female Subjectivity in the Works of Early Modern Women

This presentation focuses on appropriations of the Ovidian figure of Echo in creative and critical discourses that explore female subjectivity in Renaissance poetry. While Echo has been used by both male and female authors – to evoke the sorry state of the desiring subject or poetic persona, regardless of gender, or even to denote poetry itself – some readers relate this mythological figure to the situation of women in the early modern period, not least with respect to sanctions on speech, sexuality, and other forms of self-expression, which were generally reserved for men. So, we may ask: do female writers simply echo or mimic Petrarchan models and forms created by male predecessors, as some critics suggest? Or do their poetic responses constitute – like Echo’s – repetitions with a difference, creating spaces for the expression of uniquely feminine forms of subjectivity, as other scholars affirm? Our exploration of such issues will lead us to consider examples from a range of poets and to reflect on various critical approaches and theoretical questions related to gender and representation.

11:30–12:00

Karine Durin

Feminine Heroism in the Age of Prudence – The Influence of the Moral and Political Works of Baltasar Gracián on Women’s Literary Production in 17th Century Europe

12:00

Lunch

13:15–13:45

Matilda Amundsen Bergström

“When heroes tumble in a common heap” – Heroick women and visions of virtue in Katherine Philips’ royalist poetry

13:45–14:15

Johanna Vernqvist

Body and Soul: Epicurean Traces in the works by Tullia d’Aragona 

14:15–14:45

Ellen Söderblom Saarela

Responding to Tradition: the Female Body in Ana Caro’s Comedies

14:45–15:15

Anna Carlstedt

Queen Christina and the role of Astrology in her Discourse of Self-Glorification

15:15

Coffee

15:30–16:00

Nan Gerdes

Responsive selves? Subject formation in Hélisenne de Crenne

16:00–16:30

Carin Franzén

Queen Christina – in Response to Early Modern Subjectivation of Bodies and Desires

16:30-16:45

Concluding Discussion