Early Modern Women
Abstract:
Georgette de Montenay, Anna Roemers Visscher and other women translating/commenting each other
Inspired by the portrait on the conference poster, I will present the French 16th-century poet Georgette de Montenay, author of religious sonnets, and the “dialogue” in which she was “engaged” with her Dutch 17th-century translator Anna Roemers Visscher. The former has begun to be studied only recently, while the latter is one of the rare women poets rather well known (at least in their own country) and often mentioned in literary histories – although mainly because of her and her sister’s being the daughters of a well known poet.
I consider them as examples of women authors’ being attracted by the writings of other women, creating in this way “networks” of women’s writing and also reading each other. In order to study this phenomenon at a somewhat larger scale and as part of research about women’s place in the European literary field, a database has been developed, which is now central to an international collaboration funded by COST.
Suzan van Dijk, May 2010
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