| CODE | BST5020 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Women in the Baroque Age | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | History of Architecture | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | The term 鈥楤aroque鈥� traditionally conjures up ideas connected with the realms of the visual and performing arts, of architecture and of literary achievement. An interest in strangeness and the bizarre, in scientific experiment and discovery, in creativity, invention and novelty, in intellectual questioning and reform, in a burning desire to impress and astonish, and in spectacular displays of triumph, grandeur and theatricality, are all Baroque notions that lie somewhere between an approximate concept of style and an attempt at a general description of the Baroque age. This study-unit deals with the role and condition of women from the late sixteenth century to the late seventeenth century. It rethinks a number of elements in the traditional typology of the female Baroque figure by examining the role of symbolic figures such as the nun, the witch, the prostitute, the rebel and the philanthropist. Women in the Baroque age seem to have inherited many things from the preceding centuries but one can now identify important differences from the traditional image of the women. Study-unit Aims: The aims of this study-unit are to: i) Examine the roles and relations of women and men in a period of great cultural, political, economic, social, and religious change; ii) Show that gender in the seventeenth century was not a stable system - women and men actively negotiated gender roles; iii) Conceptualise the Baroque age as a period of time when women were not only limited by ideas of modesty and humility, but made them a strength on which they could claim political and religious authority, speak in public, and publish. Lecture Titles 1. Historical perspectives. 2. The Nun, the Witch, the Prostitute, the Rebel and cries for reform. 3. The Female Monastic Institution. 4. Women in Baroque literature and the performing arts. 5. Clothes, Perfumes and Ornament. 6. The feminist profiles of Arcangela Tarabotti, Gliki bas Judah Leib, Marie de L鈥橧ncarnation and Maria Sibylla Merian. 7. Women in Baroque Malta. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: 1. Describe how scenarios changed from the founding phase of the Baroque period to the second half of the seventeenth century; 2. Recognise the Baroque period as a phase of history in which, problems, situations, and even human female types were changing, rather than as a collection of static characteristics; 3. Interpret the seventeenth century tensions as necessary stages for reaching a higher social and political equilibrium and deeper and broader creative female capacities; 4. Integrate a vision of the state, the church, science, and culture with a vision of female social life and of the tendencies and currents that ran through it; 5. Delineate female literary and artistic sensibility, particular or general; 6. Attribute female unique characteristics and a particular way of thinking, acting and feeling to the Baroque period; 7. Summarise the core principles of the female figure of the Baroque age and identify important differences from the traditional image of the women; 8. Examine what is new in the condition of women in Malta in the seventeenth century and in what ways they were anticipations of later developments or authentic expressions of their own times. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: 1. Qualify the general cultural, religious, or political experiences and conditions during the period in European history from roughly the late sixteenth century to the late seventeenth century; 2. Demonstrate an understanding of the history of women in the Baroque Age from different viewpoints; 3. Extend the term 鈥楤aroque鈥� so closely connected to the fields of art and literature to apply to female life and sectors outside the Mediterranean area and the world of the Counter-Reformation; 4. Conceptualise Baroque society as a body, a social organism where women had their own special place and function; 5. Describe certain unique, aspects of some female Baroque person忙; 6. Justify the autonomous treatment of the condition of women in the Baroque Age. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts - Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008). - Helga Mobius, Women of the Baroque Age, (Montclair, NJ, A. Schram Ltd.,1984). - Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, (London, Harvard University Press, 1995). - Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., 1968). - Silvia Evangelisti, Nuns: A History of Convent Life 1450-1700, (Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007). - Christine Muscat, Public Women: Prostitute Entrepreneurs in Valletta 1630-1798,, (Malta, BDL Publishing, 2018). Supplementary Texts - Francesca Balzan, Jewellery in Malta: Treasures from the Island of the Knights (1530-1798), (Malta: Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2009). - Tessa Storey, Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008). - Denis De Lucca, The Baroque Mind, (Malta: University of Malta, 2018). - Rosario Villari (ed.), Baroque Person忙, Lydia G. Cochrane (Trans.), (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1995). |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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