Women Moralists in Early Modern France [Hardcover]

Julie Candler Hayes explores the contributions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century French women philosophers and intellectuals to moralist writing, a genre focusing on dispassionate observations on the human condition and traditionally viewed through its best-known male writers. This study, the first of its kind, includes both famous thinkers--such as ?milie Du Ch?telet and Germaine de Sta?l--and nearly two dozen of their contemporaries. Hayes demonstrates how, through their critique of institutions and practices, their valorization of introspection and self-expression, and their engagement with philosophical issues, women moralists carved out an important space for the public exercise of their reason.Early modern women writers left their mark in multiple domains--novels, translations, letters, history, and science. Although recent scholarship in literary and cultural studies has enriched our understanding of these accomplishments, less attention has been paid to other forms of women's writing.Women Moralists in Early Modern Franceexplores the contributions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century French women philosophers and intellectuals to moralist writing, the observation of human motives and behavior. This distinctively French genre draws on philosophical and literary traditions extending back to classical antiquity. Moralist short forms such as the maxim, dialogue, character portrait, and essay engage social and political questions, epistemology, moral psychology, and virtue ethics. Although moralist writing was closely associated with the salon culture in which women played a major role, women's contributions to the genre have received scant scholarly attention.Julie Candler Hayes examines major moralist writers such as Madeleine de Scud?ry, Anne-Th?r?se de Lambert, ?milie Du Ch?telet, and Germaine de Sta?l, as well as nearly two dozen of their contemporaries. Their reflections range from traditional topics such as the nature of the self, friendship,l3ƒ