History of Women in the West, Volume III: Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes

Volume III of A History of Women draws a richly detailed picture of women in early modern Europe, considering them in a context of work, marriage, and family. At the heart of this volume is “woman” as she appears in a wealth of representations, from simple woodcuts and popular literature to master paintings; and as the focal point of a debate―sometimes humorous, sometimes acrimonious―conducted in every field: letters, arts, philosophy, the sciences, and medicine. Against oppressive experience, confining laws, and repetitious claims about female “nature,” women took initiative by quiet maneuvers and outright dissidence. In conformity and resistance, in image and reality, women from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries emerge from these pages in remarkable diversity.

Natalie Zemon Davis was a preeminent social and cultural historian of early modern Europe. Her many books include Women on the Margins, Fiction in the Archives, and Trickster Travels. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal, she taught at Brown University, the University of Toronto, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University, where she was Henry Charles Lea Professor of History.

Arlette Farge is Director of Research in Modern History, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.

Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France.

Michelle Perrot is Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de Paris VII.