Artikel
Renaissance feminism and esoteric theology : the case of Cornelius Agrippa
Verfasst von:
Newman, Barbara
in:
Viator
Berkeley:
1993
,
269 - 286 S.
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Weitere Informationen
| Einrichtung: | Ariadne | Wien |
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| Verfasst von: | Newman, Barbara |
| In: | Viator |
| Jahr: | 1993 |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Beschreibung: | |
| This article examines the proto-feminist declamation "De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus", written by the occultist Agrippa von Nettesheim in 1509 and published twenty years later. Agrippa's treatise, a radical but not altogether serious essay in the Renaissance genre of paradox, has usually been studied in the context of the "querelle des femmes". Newman argues, however, that this youthful work is a kind of thought experiment in which Agrippa used the fashionalbe subject of women to explore some implications of the occult philosophy he had already begun to develop. "De nobilitate" combines esoteric material from several traditions - including cabala, hermeticism, and Neoplatonism - with evangelical feminist exegesis stemming from Agrippa's immersion in humanist biblical studies. These disparate lines of argument illumine the underlying contradictions in the text, which veers between a romantic, essentialist feminism positing the innate superiority of women and a gender-blind, individualist feminism positing euqality of the sexes. The amalgam of esoteric with evangelical sources gives the text much of its flamboyant, outrageous tone and helps to explain its checkered reception as at once a feminist precursor text and a misogynist satire. | |
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