The Youth of Early Modern Women

Elizabeth Storr Cohen Margaret Louise Reeves Christiane Andersson Jane Couchman Julie A. Eckerle Alessandra Franco Julie Hardwick Jacqueline Holler Eleanor Hubbard Jennifer McNabb

9789462984325

344 pages

Amsterdam University Press

Hardback $148.00

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Overview

Through fifteen essays that work from a rich array of primary sources, this collection makes the novel claim that early modern European women, like men, had a youth. European culture recognised that, between childhood and full adulthood, early modern women experienced distinctive physiological, social, and psychological transformations. Drawing on two mutually shaped layers of inquiry — cultural constructions of youth and lived experiences — these essays exploit a wide variety of sources, including literary and autobiographical works, conduct literature, judicial and asylum records, drawings, and material culture. The geographical and temporal ranges traverse England, Ireland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and Mexico from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. This volume brings fresh attention to representations of female youth, their own life writings, young women’s training for adulthood, courtship, and the emergent sexual lives of young unmarried women.

Author Bio

Elizabeth S. COHEN is Professor emerita of History at York University in Toronto. She is co-author, with Thomas V. Cohen, of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy, 2nd edition (ABC Clio 2019) and co-editor with Margaret Reeves of The Youth of Early Modern Women (Amsterdam University Press 2018). ecohen@yorku.caMargaret Reeves teaches English literature at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She co-edited Shell Games: Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300-1650), co-authored a history of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, and has published essays on literary history as well as early modern women's writing.