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The Excellence and Nobility of Women
A Defense of Women (1582–1583) for the Women of Belgica. A Bilingual Edition
Brief Description
The first published defence of women by a Netherlandish author. Jehan Baptista Houwaert's The Excellence and Nobility of Women constitutes the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses, or The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women (1582–1583). This is an immense conduct book for women...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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The Excellence and Nobility of Women
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Description
The first published defence of women by a Netherlandish author.
Jehan Baptista Houwaert's The Excellence and Nobility of Women constitutes the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses, or The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women (1582–1583). This is an immense conduct book for women in rhymed verse based on the many querelle texts of the French and Burgundian tradition. It draws especially, in its French translation, on the pathbreaking Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529) by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.
Like its model, Houwaert's work asserts not merely the equality but the superiority of women. It is unique in that it is addressed not to a wealthy noblewoman or princess, as were most such defences, but more democratically to the "girls, unmarried women, wives, and widows of Belgica"—all of them!
Series: The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781649591401
Publisher: Iter Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 20 December 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: Iter Press
Illustration: 8 color plates
DIMENSIONS
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 454g
Pages: 324
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.
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