Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
On the Excellence and Nobility of Women: A Defense of Women (1582-1583) for the Women of Belgica. a Bilingual Edition Volume 115

On the Excellence and Nobility of Women: A Defense of Women (1582-1583) for the Women of Belgica. a Bilingual Edition Volume 115

Baptista Houwaert, Jehan
Govers, Marie-José
Govers, Marie-José

Paperback

Series: Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto

Fiction AnthologiesGeneral World History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1649591403
ISBN13: 9781649591401
Publisher: Iter Press
Published: Dec 20 2025
Pages: 332
Weight: 1.17
Height: 0.83 Width: 6.14 Depth: 8.94
Language: English
The first published defense of women by a Netherlandish author.

Jehan Baptista Houwaert's Excellence and Nobility of Women constitutes the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses, or The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women (1582-1583), an immense conduct book for women in rhymed verse based on the many querelle texts of the French and Burgundian tradition but especially, in its French translation, on the pathbreaking Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529) by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.

Like its model, Houwaert's work asserts not merely the equality but the superiority of women. It is unique in that it is addressed not to a wealthy noblewoman or princess, as were most such defenses, but more democratically to the girls, unmarried women, wives, and widows of Belgica--all of them!

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