Rosengren, Cecilia (Author)
Margaret Cavendish was one of the most prolific female writers of the 17th century. She published thirteen books during her productive life, encompassing natural philosophy, poetry, drama, orations, essays, historical narrations and letters. As an intellectual woman in a time when this was much considered an oxymoron, she needed to justify her intervention in the learned world. One way of doing this was through numerous peritexts, in line with the concept of Gérard Genette. Hence all her books are introduced with explanatory forewords, dedications and authorial remarks. Furthermore she added frontispieces to her publications. Three frontispieces were made by the artist Abraham van Diepenbeek during her and her husband's exile in Antwerpen in the 1650s. These show Cavendish in three different settings, which some scholars want to interpret as her desire to appear either as a lonely genius, or as a happy wife. In the article I want to debate this interpretation, by focusing on the third frontispiece in which Cavendish is portrayed with an arm akimbo and which is the most frequently used in her books. Placing the picture in the context of an early modern pictorial tradition of emblems as well as in the context of the Renaissance concept of man, I try to show that Cavendish was well aware of the controversial in publishing her work, but also how she with a good portion of humour insisted on her right to do so.
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Article
Michaelian, Kourken;
(2009)
Margaret Cavendish's Epistemology
(/isis/citation/CBB001035120/)
Book
Margaret Cavendish;
Anne M. Thell;
(2020-01-27)
Grounds of Natural Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB643466613/)
Chapter
Evans, Meredith;
(2013)
Matrices of Force: Spinozist Monism and Margaret Cavendish's Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World
(/isis/citation/CBB001201711/)
Chapter
Parageau, Sandrine;
(2011)
Auto Didacticism and the Construction of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern England: Margaret Cavendish's and Anne Conway's “Intellectual Bricolage”
(/isis/citation/CBB001221545/)
Chapter
Semler, L. E.;
(2011)
The Magnetic Attraction of Margaret Cavendish and Walter Charleton
(/isis/citation/CBB001250687/)
Article
Thell, Anne M.;
(2015)
“[A]s Lightly as Two Thoughts”: Motion, Materialism, and Cavendish's Blazing World
(/isis/citation/CBB001550674/)
Essay Review
Picciotto, Joanna;
(2014)
Early Modern Facts and Fictions
(/isis/citation/CBB001566300/)
Book
Jorink, Eric;
Ramakers, Bart;
(2011)
Art and Science in the Early Modern Netherlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001201611/)
Book
Anna Marie Roos;
(2019)
Martin Lister and his Remarkable Daughters: The Art of Science in the Seventeenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB667910536/)
Chapter
Etheridge, Kay;
(2011)
Maria Sibylla Merian: The First Ecologist?
(/isis/citation/CBB001221547/)
Book
Zittel, Claus;
(2009)
Theatrum philosophicum: Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft
(/isis/citation/CBB001034179/)
Book
Remmert, Volker R.;
(2011)
Picturing the Scientific Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001221404/)
Book
Martin, David L.;
(2011)
Curious Visions of Modernity: Enchantment, Magic, and the Sacred
(/isis/citation/CBB001251944/)
Book
Fairman, Elisabeth R.;
Art, Yale Center for British;
(2014)
Of Green Leaf, Bird, and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World
(/isis/citation/CBB001500458/)
Article
Melissa Lo;
(2017)
The Picture Multiple: Figuring, Thinking, and Knowing in Descartes's Essais (1637)
(/isis/citation/CBB074990525/)
Article
Kusukawa, Sachiko;
(2011)
Picturing Knowledge in the Early Royal Society: The Examples of Richard Waller and Henry Hunt
(/isis/citation/CBB001220421/)
Article
Christoffer Basse Eriksen;
Xinyi Wen;
(2023)
Colouring flowers: books, art, and experiment in the household of Margery and Henry Power
(/isis/citation/CBB536769149/)
Article
Wilkins, Emma;
(2014)
Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society
(/isis/citation/CBB001421033/)
Book
Brandie R. Siegfried;
Lisa T. Sarasohn;
(2014)
God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish
(/isis/citation/CBB006714368/)
Book
Wallwork, Jo;
Salzman, Paul;
(2011)
Early Modern Englishwomen Testing Ideas
(/isis/citation/CBB001250683/)
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