On the Excellence and Nobility of Women

About the Author

Jehan [Johan] Baptista Houwaert (1533–1599) was a Brussels-born humanist and poet of patrician rank, official of the Habsburg-ruled duchy of Brabant amid the religious wars of the Reformation era. Aside from Plain of the Nine Muses, Houwaert is the author of plays, orations, and prose works. Marie-José Govers is an independent scholar whose research focuses on the historical and literary portrayal of women from the thirteenth century until modern times, from the mystic Hadewijch to Ingeborg Bachmann. She received master’s degrees in Historical Netherlandish Literature and Language, Comparative Literature and Theoretical Literature, and Women’s Studies (now Gender Studies) from the Catholic University of Nijmegen, now Radboud University, and hopes to defend her dissertation on Houwaert and his Pegasides Pleyn, ende den Lust-Hof der Maeghden (Plain of the Muses, or, The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women) at the University of Antwerp in 2026.