Women and Learning in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

On Sor Juana

A chronology of Sor Juana's life from the superb Dartmouth Web site devoted to her life and works; the materials included will be of most use to those with a good command of Spanish.
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An annotated chronology, from an Oregon State University course site on Western philosophy.
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For readers of Spanish, another rich site on Sor Juana.
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This selection describes life in Sor Juana's convent.
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A short biography of Sor Juana, with a good bibliography for further searching.
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Other Views of Independent Women in Medieval and Early Modern Texts

A Petition of Catalina de Erauso, the transvestite warrior.
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A scholarly introduction to a medieval English poem, "Why I Can't be a Nun," that demonstrates the way convents were depicted as places of debauchery rather than learning in the fifteenth century.
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From a course site at the University of Georgia , a student essay that explores the issues of cross-dressing and women's roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
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Learned Women of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe

An annotated timeline of the life of Queen Christina of Sweden , who was brought up like a boy and deeply immersed herself in the intellectual issues of her day, making the court of Sweden a salon of the highest order.
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The French salons

A two-part article on the history of the literary salon, noting the centrality of female intellectuals in seventeenth-century France , from the irreverent online magazine called Salon .
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A biography of Madame de Sable, one of the most accomplished writers of the French salons.
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From the same site, a collection of the maxims of Madame de Sable, with comparisons to those of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
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A brief biography of the Marquise de Rambouillet, whose blue room was the site of the first gathering of intellectuals and wits of seventeenth-century France .
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A course site from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute that outlines the rise of French preciosite and compares it to the later, related English phenomenon known as "Dandyism."
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The English tradition

The chronology of Mary Astell's life, from an Oregon State University course site.
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The Aphra Behn home page, with links to various sites.
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A short history of the term "bluestocking," with an explanation of the distinction between French and English literary salons.
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More on the historical antecedents of the bluestockings.
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A chronology of Mary Wollstonecraft's life and works.
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A rich site of Wollstonecraft texts and bibliographies maintained by Harriet Devine Jump.
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Learning and Women in the Chinese Tradition

The Story of the Stone

A twentieth-century artist's conception of Dai-yu, with a good character sketch.
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An imagined rendering of Lin Dai-yu's chamber.
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Popular comic-book versions of great Chinese literary and dramatic texts are available on this site; the page chosen here depicts the feverish Dai-yu writing on the handkerchiefs Bao-yu has sent her, in a continuation of the scene on p. 259 of the Anthology .
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A brief plot summary of The Romance of the Western Chamber , the play so admired by Bao-yu and Dai-yu, with a nineteenth-century illustration.
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Another illustrated description of The Romance of the Western Chamber . Note that the lovers, separated by a wall, communicate by reciting poems to each other.
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Developments in the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties

A comprehensive reading list for the study of women in Chinese history, prepared by a teacher at Washington State University for an undergraduate seminar.
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A valuable account of research undertaken by two scholars at the Radcliffe Institute into women's writing in imperial China .
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An illustrated page describing Paul S. Ropp's interest in the woman writer Wang Yun. One of her poems, discussed in Ropp's article, "'Now cease painting eyebrows, don a scholar's cap and pin': The Frustrated Ambition of Wang Yun, Gentry Woman Poet and Dramatist," Ming Studies , vol. 40, pp. 86-110 (which can be accessed from this link), may be found in Texts and Contexts.
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Women in Chinese drama and legend

A description of the fabled heroine Hua Mulan.
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A short essay comparing "social fairness" and the role of women in Terence's comedies and The Romance of the Western Chamber .
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A brief survey of the development of Chinese theatre.
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