March 2021 – History for Today (2024)


March 2021 – History for Today (1)

Susan Broomhall, Australian Catholic UniversityIn this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

In 1538, a new author burst on to the literary scene in Paris. Published by Denys Janot, four new works appeared within five years by a writer known as Hélisenne de Crenne.

The first was Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours (The Torments of Love), a novel that depicted the disastrous consequences of an adulterous affair.

In 1539 came a collection of letters that explored women’s speech, education, friendship and legal rights among its topics.

In 1540 she published Le Songe (The Dream), a moral and didactic work in which a woman and her lover reflected upon the perils of lust.

Her last known work was a translation into French prose of the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid (1541), dedicated to the king, Francis I.



Read more:
Guide to the Classics: Virgil’s Aeneid

Hélisenne de Crenne was the pen name of Marguerite Briet, the daughter of a legal family from Abbeville. Few details of her life are certain, but we know that she obtained a legal separation from her husband, Philippe Fournel, Lord of Crenne, and moved to Paris, the centre of French literary activities and publishing. There she owned several properties. It appears that her son, Pierre, was a student there in 1548.

Hélisenne was the first living woman of the century to be printed in France and hers was the first autobiographical novel to be published in French. The publication of her works was remarkable in several ways.

March 2021 – History for Today (2)



Read more:
Fornication, fluids and faeces: the intimate life of the French court

Speaking out

Women represented less than 1% of all identifiable published authors in 16th-century France. Female literacy and broader education was not as high as for men at the same social levels.

Women at court were producing sophisticated intellectual and creative works that circulated in manuscript. Print publication provided a more open and visible expression than manuscript circulation, but was limited to a more select few. Even women in powerful social positions acknowledged expectations that women should restrict their speech to the domestic sphere.

Most women writers provided lengthy justifications or apologies for their venture into print. Hélisenne claimed to hesitate to make “mention of immodest love, which according to the opinion of some shy women could be judged more worthy to be conserved in profound silence than to be published for a widespread audience”. Nevertheless, she pressed on.

Rather than locate herself in a line of female authors, Hélisenne identified herself in a tradition of the male canon for her authority to write. The opening phrase of her Le Songe recalled none other than Cicero as her model:

…in imitation of him, the desire arose in me to relate in detail to you a dream worthy of recording.



Read more:
Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author

Small books to carry

Print publication offered a woman without elite networks access to a large pool of readers, and perhaps a way to reach potential patrons at court.

The dedication of her translation to Francis I and her praise of his sister, Marguerite de Navarre (another prolific author whose works appears in print over the course of the century), in her Letters suggests that Hélisenne may have hoped for their patronage.

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The staggered release of her writings seems to have been planned to heighten their impact. Her publisher, Denys Janot, mainly published works in French, targetting a popular market and using on-trend Roman typeface rather than the heavy, old-fashioned Gothic script.

Most of Hélisenne’s works, like those of other female writers, were in small sizes such as octavo, duodecimo and sextodecimo. These were portable and cheap, unlike the larger-sized folio and quarto scholarly and religious works intended to be consulted in libraries as part of a long-lasting record, though her translation of Virgil’s Aeneid was produced as a folio, with extensive woodcut illustrations.

A female perspective

Hélisenne was one of the first women writers who sought publication of her work seemingly as a conscious contribution to contemporary popular literature.

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Her novel, The Torments of Love, involves an unusual structure, retelling the same events from the perspective of three different narrators: Hélisenne, her lover Guénélic, and Guénélic’s best friend, Quézinstra. Each section offers new insights to the overarching narrative, and each has its own distinctive tone and style.

The work’s balancing of elements from chivalric literature and a new emotional sensibility culminates in its conclusion as a battle between Athena and Venus over the book itself.

Her translation of Aeneid was equally radical, creatively embellishing the original from a female perspective with a highly sympathetic presentation of Dido’s plight and women’s loyalty in love.

She was very proud of her publication in the city that was the intellectual and publishing centre of France, saying:

… it is an inestimable pleasure to me to think that my books are on sale in this noble Parisian city, which is inhabited by an innumerable multitude of wonderfully learned people.



Read more:
Hidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals

A commercial success

Hélisenne’s work were a commercial success, going through nine editions in a short, intense period to 1560.

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Torments of Love is Hélisenne’s only work to be dedicated to female readers who she called “all honest ladies”. Elsewhere, she assumed her works would be of interest to everyone, including the king.

A later editor did not agree. Claude Colet explained in the introduction to the 1550 edition of her works that his extensive simplification of her Latinate style for young ladies was “to render the obscure words or those too much like Latin into our own familiar language, so that they will be more intelligible to you”.

The last known evidence of this groundbreaking author is in 1552 but, in her lifetime, she had achieved a remarkable series of literary firsts.March 2021 – History for Today (6)

Susan Broomhall, Director, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

March 2021 – History for Today (2024)

FAQs

What major events happened in March 2021? ›

T
  • Timeline of the Joe Biden presidency (2021 Q1)
  • Killing of Adam Toledo.
  • Tornado outbreak sequence of March 24–28, 2021.
  • Tornado outbreak of March 16–18, 2021.
  • Trial of Derek Chauvin.

What happened to the economy in March 2021? ›

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 916,000 for the month while the unemployment rate fell to 6%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 675,000 and an unemployment rate of 6%. The total was the highest since the 1.58 million added in August 2020.

What 3 major events happened in 2021? ›

Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Kamala Harris becomes the first woman, first Asian American, and first African American to become Vice President of the United States. Donald Trump becomes the first outgoing president to boycott his successor's inauguration since Andrew Johnson in 1869.

What happened in March 15 2021? ›

1. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift set records at women-dominated Grammy Awards. Women performers dominated the 63rd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, with four solo women taking the top four awards for the first time in Grammy history.

What happened to the stock market in March 2021? ›

Major Index Returns: Mixed Bag

Internationally, Developed Markets were up 2.4%, and Emerging Markets lost 1.5%. High yield corporate bonds were flat in March, while the Global Aggregate Bond Index fell another 1.9%, marking its third straight losing month.

How much was inflation in March 2021? ›

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 2.6 percent for the 12 months ending March 2021, the largest over-the-year increase since August 2018.

What happened to the US economy in 2021? ›

Over the four quarters of 2021, real GDP grew 5.5 percent, the fastest pace for any year since 1984. The economy was likely producing around its economic potential in the fourth quarter.

What famous events happened in March? ›

  • 1 March. 1815: Napoleon boldly returns to France. ...
  • 2 March. 537: Belisarius saves Rome from the Goths. ...
  • 3 March. 1913: Women's suffrage takes off in Washington DC. ...
  • 4 March. 1918: The first case of “Spanish flu” is recorded. ...
  • 5 March. 1953: Death of Stalin. ...
  • 6 March. 1836: Rebel settlers take a last stand at the Alamo. ...
  • 7 March. ...
  • 8 March.
Mar 1, 2024

What events is in March? ›

March
  • WORLD HEARING DAY - March 3.
  • WORLD SLEEP DAY | Friday Before Spring Vernal Equinox.
  • INTERNATIONAL TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY - March 31.
  • GLOBAL RECYCLING DAY - March 18.
  • INTERNATIONAL CLIENT'S DAY - March 19.
  • WORLD OBESITY DAY - March 4.

What happened on March 16 in Atlanta? ›

On March 16, 2021, a 21-year-old man named Robert Aaron Long is accused of shooting 9 people at two spas and a massage parlor at Young's Asian Massage near Acworth, Gold Massage Spa and Aromatherapy Spa on Piedmont Road in northeast Atlanta.

What happens in March every year? ›

It's the time when animals awake from hibernation and when people around the world partake in spring celebrations—along with spring cleaning rituals to make their homes feel new. It also heralds the start of a new astrological year, transitioning from Pisces season to Aries season.

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