Gendered lights of reason

Cultural and educational perspectives

Antonella Cagnolati

• Publisher: tab edizioni
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9788892958173
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

The aim of this volume is to shed light on severalfemale figures who, in the era in which they lived, spoke out against the penalizing misogynistictheories that forced women into silence andsubmission. The various essays collected here analysetheir journey to emancipation through their writing, highlighting a sort of proto-feminist empowermentthat makes them even more relevant and interesting.Broadening our temporal and spatial horizons, itbecomes clear that reason, in the sense of logos, fromAristotle onwards considered the exclusive preserveof men, was also the prerogative of women. Thosewho were able to make use of it effectively translatedtheoretical assertions into concrete pragmatism. Inthe present day, the words that these female writershave handed down to us resound more loudly thanever. The light of reason shines brightly, regardless ofeither gender or time.

Table of contents

• Copertina
• Biblioteca di Sofia
• Frontespizio
• Colophon
• Table of contents
• As a preface
• Writing the silence
• “Native and natural”
• Gender equality in puritanical North America in the late 18th Century
• Women, travel and… instruction?
• Madame Helvétius and Sophie de Grouchy’s radical Enlightenment
• “Much still remained to be said”
• Jacobin women and political speech in the Gran Circolo Costituzionale of Bologna
• Dialogical differences in “enlightened” Romanticism
• “To have been born a Jewess”
• Authors
• La collana
• Credits