Aron Ouwerkerk MA

PhD candidate

Area(s) of interest: Dutch History, Early Modern History, Gender, Languages & Literature, French History

Cohort/Start PhD: 2024-2025

To Be, to Become, or to Be Made Exceptional: Mapping the Literary System of Early Modern Women Latinists of the Low Countries and France (c.1600-1900)

Utrecht University
Supervisors: Prof. dr. E. Stronks, Dr. N. Geerdink, Dr. A. Andeweg
Start project: 1 September 2024

This project studies the discourse of exceptionality surrounding early modern Latinate women of the Low Countries and France by surveying their representation and agency as well as their later reception. Adopting a comparative, longue durée perspective on women’s Latin-language production as well as the social contexts in which their Latinity functioned and was later received, the project offers an innovative approach to the discourse of exceptionality that has decisively marked their (self-)representation. According to what categories were or can these women be regarded as exceptional? And how was the discourse of exceptionality used by themselves, by their contemporaries, and by those who later engaged with their legacy – especially in relation to the first feminist movement?

These questions are systematically addressed through a three-step method, aiming to map and position these Latinate women within their literary system, thereby breaking open the biographical, descriptive, and chronological confines present in existing scholarship. First, a database is created based on existing bio-bibliographical catalogues. Based on the data collected in this database, the literary system of Latinate women will be quantitatively mapped. Second, based on step one, a small number of Latinate women are selected as case studies. The surviving contemporary textual and non-written sources stemming from and engaging with these women are analyzed through discourse analysis, focusing on agency, self-fashioning, and representation by others. Finally, the reception of these few cases is studied by analyzing the sources engaging with the legacy of these specific women, including the posthumous circulation of their texts.