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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2016

From Genesitic Curiosity to Dangerous Gynocracy in Sixteenth-Century England

Yan Brailowsky

Résumé

The decade between 1550 and 1560 was a particular period in Western European history: many monarchies in the region were led by women, either as queens (Mary Tudor in England, Mary Stuart in Scotland) or regents (Catherine de’ Medici in France, Joanna of Austria in Spain, Catherine of Austria in Portugal). To this list, one could add other female figures acting as kings, such as Mary of Hungary, also known as Mary of Austria, who was governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1531 to 1555. This situation was unheard of; for some, it was even monstrous, unnatural, contumely to God. To all effects and purposes, gynocracy or gynecocracy, ‘the rule by women’, was as a sixteenth-century ‘curiosity’, an exceptional, singular, odd, novel situation. This may explain why gynocracy gave rise to a heated discussion reaching back to the origins of man- kind, i.e. the Book of Genesis, particularly with Eve’s appetite for knowledge – another meaning of ‘curious’ – which famously led to man’s Fall. As this essay contends, in the eyes of many writers in the sixteenth century, the perils of gynocracy were linked with Genesitic curiosity, women’s power with the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, original sin with death.

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hal-04270748 , version 1 (23-02-2024)

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Yan Brailowsky. From Genesitic Curiosity to Dangerous Gynocracy in Sixteenth-Century England. Cottegnies, Line; Thompson, John; Parageau, Sandrine. Women and Curiosity in Early Modern England and France, Brill, pp.27-40, 2016, Intersections, 9789004311848. ⟨10.1163/9789004311848_003⟩. ⟨hal-04270748⟩
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