Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture write by Mita Choudhury. This book was released on 2018-07-05. Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Representations of convents and nuns assumed power and urgency within the volatile political culture of eighteenth-century France. Drawing from a range of literary, cultural, and legal material, Mita Choudhury analyzes how, between 1730 and 1789, lawyers, religious pamphleteers, and men of letters repeatedly asked, "Who should control the female convent and women religious?" These sources chronicled the conflicts between nuns and the male clergy, among nuns themselves, and between nuns and their families, conflicts that were presented to the public in the context of potent issues such as despotism, citizenship, female education, and sexuality.The cloister operated as a symbol of despotism, the equivalent of the Sultan's seraglio or the King's Bastille. Before 1770, lawyers and magistrates praised nuns as the personification of virtuous Christian women, often victims vulnerable to those who would use them to further their own political ends. After 1770, men of letters evaluated nuns according to more secular norms, and concluded that the convent had no purpose in society, except as a reminder of the problems inherent in the Old Regime. Choudhury elaborates on how nuns were not always passive entities, mere objects to be shaped by the political needs of others. But because they relied on men in order to make their voices heard, the place of women religious in the public sphere was a complex one based on negotiations between female action and male subjectivity. During the French Revolution, whatever support they had enjoyed was lost as republicans and moderates began to see nuns as potentially disruptive to the social order, family life, and revolutionary values.
Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture
Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture write by Tonya J. Moutray. This book was released on 2016-03-22. Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In eighteenth-century literature, negative representations of Catholic nuns and convents were pervasive. Yet, during the politico-religious crises initiated by the French Revolution, a striking literary shift took place as British writers championed the cause of nuns, lauded their socially relevant work, and addressed the attraction of the convent for British women. Interactions with Catholic religious, including priests and nuns, Tonya J Moutray argues, motivated writers, including Hester Thrale Piozzi, Helen Maria Williams, and Charlotte Smith, to revaluate the historical and contemporary utility of religious refugees. Beyond an analysis of literary texts, Moutray's study also examines nuns’ personal and collective narratives, as well as news coverage of their arrival to England, enabling a nuanced investigation of a range of issues, including nuns' displacement and imprisonment in France, their rhetorical and practical strategies to resist authorities, representations of refugee migration to and resettlement in England, relationships with benefactors and locals, and the legal status of "English" nuns and convents in England, including their work in recruitment and education. Moutray shows how writers and the media negotiated the multivalent figure of the nun during the 1790s, shaping British perceptions of nuns and convents during a time critical to their survival.
School of Virtue, School of Vice
School of Virtue, School of Vice - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook School of Virtue, School of Vice write by Sumita Choudhury. This book was released on 1997. School of Virtue, School of Vice available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This dissertation explores how between 1740 and 1794, a variety of writers, ranging from lawyers to Enlightenment philosophes, used the female convent to criticize Bourbon absolutism and to articulate a new vision of French society based on male equality and gendered spheres. By examining sources ranging from political pamphlets to social treatises, from legal briefs to novels, from debates on education to works of pornography, this study synthesizes the social history of women religious with the symbolic, discursive construction of the convent. The image eighteenth-century readers had of the female cloister resulted from the efforts of writers to negotiate between their own polemical needs and the attempts of nuns to assert themselves and maintain a certain autonomy. The result was a dualistic representation, one in which nuns were both victims of authoritarian forces and villains acting against social order. During the French Revolution, the uneasy co-existence of such depictions of nuns and their independent actions collapsed as a majority of female religious refused to comply with the wishes of revolutionaries, therefore rendering the manichaean framework prerevolutionary lawyers and men of letters had crafted, untenable. This dissertation argues that an examination of this framework sheds light on a significant transition in the critique of the Old Regime: the shift from attacks on despotic individuals, attacks that were nonetheless consistent with the traditional paradigm of patriarchal authority, to an overarching assault on the paradigm itself. For the convent, this meant nothing less than its destruction during the French Revolution, a destruction hastened by the counterrevolutionary resistance of women religious.
Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture
Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture write by Tonya J. Moutray. This book was released on 2016-03-22. Refugee Nuns, the French Revolution, and British Literature and Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In eighteenth-century literature, negative representations of Catholic nuns and convents were pervasive. Yet, during the politico-religious crises initiated by the French Revolution, a striking literary shift took place as British writers championed the cause of nuns, lauded their socially relevant work, and addressed the attraction of the convent for British women. Interactions with Catholic religious, including priests and nuns, Tonya J Moutray argues, motivated writers, including Hester Thrale Piozzi, Helen Maria Williams, and Charlotte Smith, to revaluate the historical and contemporary utility of religious refugees. Beyond an analysis of literary texts, Moutray's study also examines nuns’ personal and collective narratives, as well as news coverage of their arrival to England, enabling a nuanced investigation of a range of issues, including nuns' displacement and imprisonment in France, their rhetorical and practical strategies to resist authorities, representations of refugee migration to and resettlement in England, relationships with benefactors and locals, and the legal status of "English" nuns and convents in England, including their work in recruitment and education. Moutray shows how writers and the media negotiated the multivalent figure of the nun during the 1790s, shaping British perceptions of nuns and convents during a time critical to their survival.
Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe
Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe write by C. Walker. This book was released on 2002-11-05. Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This timely study analyses the seventeenth-century revival of monasticism by English women who founded convents in France and the Low Countries. Examining the nuns' membership of both the English Catholic community and the continental Catholic Church, it argues that despite strict monastic enclosure and exile, they nevertheless engaged actively in the spiritual and political controversies of their day. The book will add much to our understanding of women's power in early modern Europe, and offer an insight into a previously ignored section of English society.
