Men and women making friends in early modern France / edited by Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Seifert, Lewis Carl, editor.

Wilkin, Rebecca May, editor.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Women and gender in the early modern world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Friendship--France--History.

Friendship.

Interpersonal relations--France--History.

Interpersonal relations.

Man-woman relationships--France--History.

Man-woman relationships.

History.

France.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 305 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Farnham, Surrey, England : Ashgate Publishing Limited, [2015]

Summary:

"Today the friendships that grab people's imaginations are those that reach across inequalities of class and race. The friendships that seem to have exerted an analogous level of fascination in early modern France were those that defied the assumption, inherited from Aristotle and patristic sources, that friendships between men and women were impossible. Together, the essays in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France tell the story of the declining intelligibility of classical models of (male) friendship and of the rising prominence of women as potential friends. The revival of Plato's friendship texts in the sixteenth century challenged Aristotle's rigid ideal of perfect friendship between men. In the seventeenth century, a new imperative of heterosociality opened a space for the cultivation of cross-gender friendships, while the spiritual friendships of the Catholic Reformation modeled relationships that transcended the gendered dynamics of galanterie. Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France argues that the imaginative experimentation in friendships between men and women was a distinctive feature of early modern French culture. The ten essays in this volume address friend-making as a process that is creative of self and responsive to changing social and political circumstances. Contributors reveal how men and women fashioned gendered selves, and also circumvented gender norms through concrete friendship practices. By showing that the benefits and the risks of friendship are magnified when gender roles and relations are unsettled, the essays in this volume highlight the relevance of early modern friend-making to friendship in the contemporary world" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction / Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin

Was Montaigne a good friend? / George Hoffmann

The power to correct: beating men in service friendships / Michele Miller

Redressing Ficino, redeeming desire: Symphorien Champier's La nef des dames / Todd Reeser

Translating friendship in the circle of Marguerite de Navarre: Plato's Lysis and Lucian's Toxaris / Marc Schachter

From reception to assassination: French negotiations of "platonic love" / Katherine Crawford

Friends of friends: intellectual and literary sociability in the age of Richelieu / Robert Schneider

Making friends, practicing equality: the correspondence of René Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia / Rebecca M. Wilkin

The gendered self and friendship in action among the Port-Royal nuns / Daniella Kostroun

The Marquise de Sablé and her friends: men and women between the convent and the world / Lewis C. Seifert

From my lips to yours: friendship, confidentiality, and gender in early modern France / Peter Shoemaker.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781472454096

147245409X

OCLC:

904335061