Wings for Our Courage Gender, Erudition, and Republican Thought [Paperback]

On January 6, 1537, Lorenzino de Medici murdered Alessandro de Medici, the duke of Florence. This episode is significant in literature and drama, in Florentine history, and in the history of republican thought, because Lorenzino, a classical scholar, fashioned himself after Brutus as a republican tyrant-slayer.Wings for Our Courageoffers an epistemological critique of this republican politics, its invisible oppressions, and its power by reorganizing the meaning of Lorenzinos assassination around issues of gender, the body, and political subjectivity. Stephanie H. Jed brings into brilliant conversation figures including the Venetian nun and political theorist Archangela Tarabotti, the French feminist writer Hortense Allart, and others in a study that closely examines the material basesmanuscripts, letters, books, archives, and bodiesof writing as generators of social relations that organize and conserve knowledge in particular political arrangements. In her highly original study Jed reorganizes republicanism in history, providing a new theoretical framework for understanding the work of the scholar and the social structures of archives, libraries, and erudition in which she is inscribed.

Stephanie H. Jedis Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, and the author ofChaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism.

A thought provoking discussion about research practices . . . and the ways in which the organization and transmission of knowledge relate to social and political organizations and arrangements.

Ingenious. . . . The whole book is deeply researched. It is extraordinarily well planned and executed. . . . [Jed] is to be warmly congratulated.