230292 Educating Women and Queens: The Power of Education and Education for Power in Medieval and Renaissance Texts (S) (SoSe 2022)

The lecturer is Dr. María Díez Yáñez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).
This seminary is brought to you by the International Guest Lectureship Programme (IGL) of the University of Bielefeld.

The social, political and religious evolution mirrors a changing understanding of virtues and values in a community and, consequently, of their various practical applications. If history can be understood as «moral history» (McIntyre 2013), focusing on the threshold between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will serve as a beacon for comprehending the history of educational ideas and, more importantly, its application in the moral, political and religious arenas.

In the course, a group of texts pertaining to the category of prince’s regiments will be discussed, insofar as they are a reflection of behavioural models proposed for certain groups of society, referring also to the sources where those works took their particular moral and political ideas. Our main focus will lie on the virtues of queens: What would the ideal queen look like? Are the same virtues demanded of kings as of queens? Does an evolution exist in the consideration of the virtue and the behavior of queens between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance? We will review such virtues as magnanimity, temperance, chastity, piety, clemency and mercy, as they appear in educational discourses directed to queens.

Issues of feminity and masculinity, of private and public connotations of some virtues as well as their Christian interpretation will be treated to define their political interpretations.

Bibliography

Primary sources (examples)
Alonso Martín de Córdoba, Jardín de nobles doncellas (1468-1469)
Francesc Eiximenis, Libro de las donas (15th century)
Diego de Valera, Defensa de las virtuosas mujeres (1444)
Juan Luis Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana (1523)

Bibliography
Allen, RSM, Prudence (1997-2017): The Concept of Woman, 3 vols., Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.
Blamires, Alcuin (ed.) (1992): Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts, Oxford: Clarendon.
Bloch, R. Howard (1991): Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of the Western Romantic Love, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Codet, Cécile (2014): Femmes et éducation en Espagne à l’aube des temps modernes (1454-fin des années 1520), PhD thesis École Normale Supérieure de Lyon.
Díez Yáñez, María (2020): Aristóteles en el siglo XV: Una ética para príncipes - liberalidad, magnificencia y magnanimidad, Oxford et al.: Peter Lang (Court Cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance 7).
Duggan, Anne J. (ed.) (1997): Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference Held at King's College London, April 1995, Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
Earenfight, Theresa (ed.) (2005): Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, Aldershot: Ashgate (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World).
Fradenburg, Louise O. (ed.) (1995): Women and Sovereignty: Conference - Selected Papers, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Green, Karen / Constant J. Mews (eds.) (2011): Virtue Ethics for Women, 1250–1500, Dordrecht et al.: Springer (The New Synthese Historical Library 69).
Guardiola-Griffiths, Cristina (2011): Legitimizing the Queen: Propaganda and Ideology in the Reign of Isabel I of Castile, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. (2013): After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London / New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic (Bloomsbury Revelations).