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Plenary I: Theorizing Early
Modern Masculinity and Maleness Workshop 9. Subverters and Self-Fashioners: Making Worlds of Their Own Organizers: Andrea Sununu (English), Anne Harris (Art History), Sharon Seelig (English) Abstract: Using a 1535 self-portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola as our point of departure-"Bernadino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola" now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale de Siena, Italy-we will bring together biographical, autobiographical, and literary texts that raise questions about relationships between men and women: between teacher and pupil, mentor and translator, conqueror and prisoner, husband and wife, figurative Pygmalion and his or her statue. In Anguissola's self-portrait her former teacher seems in charge as he paints her portrait, but the controller of the painting is ultimately Anguissola herself. The means through which Anguissola makes her viewer aware of the radical difference, even contradiction, between reality and representation will launch our broader discussion of literary and autobiographical texts. We will consider how the games of agency implicit in Anguissola's sixteenth-century Italian painting parallel questions posed by seventeenth-century literary and autobiographical texts. For example, who owes what to whom in paint and word? Who is the painter and who the subject? What are we to make of strategies that seem to owe much to tradition and convention (postures of obedience, expressions of subordination and obligation) even as pen and brush are wielded with such authority and effectiveness? Are the parallels useful or illuminating, or simply accidental? Can we (and our students) determine the degree of self-awareness or intentionality involved in such representations? Readings: Part 1: Sofonisba Anguissola (1530-1625) [for links see below]
Part 2: Lucy Hutchinson (1620-81) [view PDF]
Part 3: Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) [view PDF]
Part 4: Katherine Philips (1632-64) [view PDF]
Additional Information: The parallels to Anguissola are perhaps most striking in Lucy Hutchinson's Life of Colonel Hutchinson (c. 1665-71), in which she describes "her honour and her virtue . . . (like Pygmalion's) [as] images of his own making." Although giving her husband full credit, it is Lucy who draws the image of Pygmalion; like Anguissola, she is the author who depicts both herself and the supposedly dominant male figure, maintaining control even while appearing to cede agency to her subject. Margaret Cavendish similarly describes herself as "such a Wife as [her husband] might bring to his own humours, and not such an one as was wedded to self conceit." Yet she articulates her ambition-to write, to be remembered-repeatedly in A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656). Like Hutchinson, Cavendish wrote a life of her husband, an act that might be seen as self-subordinating but that gives her control of his image; and she prefaces The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World (1666) with a poem by the Duke of Newcastle congratulating her on creating a world in effect ex nihilo, "of Nothing, but pure Wit"; in "To the Reader" she declares herself "as Ambitious as ever any of my Sex was," endeavoring "to be Margaret the First" in a world of her own creation. Katherine Philips represents her translation as an act of obedience to the Earl of Orrery, but Pompey, her version of Corneille's play, depicts an extraordinarily strong and self-possessed woman: Cornelia asserts her identity not only as Scipio's daughter and widow to two great Romans, but also as a woman in her own right, concluding: "Remember this, I am Cornelia still." Later, when Caesar thanks her for saving his life, she tells him that she has spared him only to have him properly killed. Each of these texts presents images of female strength, cloaked to varying degrees in attitudes of subordination or passivity. After a brief general orientation, we plan to begin by focusing on Anguissola's self-portrait (with some attention to the implications of "The Chess Game"), and then move to a discussion of Hutchinson, Cavendish, and Philips, perhaps dividing into smaller groups to allow for more intensive discussion. We invite each participant to come to the session with a page of reflections on one (or more) of the visual or verbal texts to share with other members of the group.
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