- Feb 2019
-
static1.squarespace.com static1.squarespace.com
-
Especially helpful to Astell were the arguments of Descartes that extensive classical learning, from which women had been largely excluded. was not necessary to a vibrant intellectual life: All people were innately capable of reason. the key men· tal activity
Aaaaaand here is where de Pizan would probably give her a high-five.
More seriously, Christine de Pizan did something very similar to what I think Astell has done. They both seem to take the philosophical arguments made by famous male philosophers that were used against them/their sex/gender and instead make those philosophical arguments work with and for them/their sex/gender. Astell also seems to do this with religion.
-
-
static1.squarespace.com static1.squarespace.com
-
Silently Wife, than Foolish in Rhetorick.
I assume that's a typographical f that's intended as an s (Wise as opposed to Wife, Wise to counter Foolish)?
Parallels again to Pizan, who urged women to use both manners and silence with rhetorical precision, as well as to Ratcliffe and Glenn's Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts
-
twenty-one.
This synopsis of Cavendish's accolades sounds similar in many ways to Christine de Pizan's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_de_Pizan
Putting into play another sort of story, a la Le Guin
-