[Sammelband containing two publications about women, in a contemporary reinforced laced-case vellum binding]

[Sammelband containing two publications about women, in a contemporary reinforced laced-case vellum binding]

[France?], [17th century]

1 volume ; 17 cm

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.

Du Bosc, Jacques, -1660. Honneste femme.
Reine des femmes.

France, -- production place.

272781

From dealer's description: "[DU BOSC, Jacques (d. 1664)]. L’Honneste Femme. Dernière édition, reveuë, corrigée & augmentée par l’Autheur. Rouen: widow Du Bosc [Esther le Danois], 1638. [Bound with:] [MARCASSUS, Pierre de?]. La Reine des femmes. Dédiee a la Reyne. Paris: Jonas Briquegny, 1643. 2 volumes in one, 8vo (165 x 103 mm). I) [52], 344, [8] pp. II) [8], 135, [1] pp. Woodcut title vignettes, headpieces and initials in both. Occasional light foxing, first few leaves of Du Bosc a bit frayed and softened, a couple of marginal tears and a few marginal wormholes, worst at end of second work but not touching text. Contemporary parchment over pasteboards, ms. spine title, speckled edges. Provenance: early coded price notes and two notes on the contents on front pastedown, one commenting on the second work: “très curieux.” $3,900 Two works by men setting out diametrically opposed visions of the ideal woman, the first a guide for and defense of cultivated women, written to complement Nicolas Faret’s influential portrait of the perfect civilized gentleman, L'honeste homme, ou l'art de plaire à la cour (1631), and the second a misogynist retort to the first. I LOCATE NO OTHER COPIES OF EITHER EDITION, AND THE SECOND WORK IS VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN. 1) Du Bosc: A provincial edition, agreeably and correctly printed (by a woman-led press), of a best-selling PROTO-FEMINIST REFLECTION on what makes an honnête woman, by the Cordelier (Minorite priest) Jacques Du Bosc. First published in 1632 (by Pierre Billaine in Paris), it was his most popular work and was frequently reprinted during the next 30 years, with reworkings, reorderings, and different dedications; equally popular in England, it appeared in 3 successive translations, each under a different title (the Compleat / Accomplish’d / Excellent Woman). (The untranslatable French term honnête in its seventeenth-century sense has been the object of volumes of discussion, but honnêteté can be succinctly described as “the art of self-control for the individual in society ... [or] civilizing self-restraint” [Wolfgang and Nell p. 60].) Du Bosc saw few dangers in educating women. Chapter 1 is an encomium of reading. While women of the court are his ostensible subject and audience, Du Bosc’s gentle recommendations are valid, he admits, for both genders, for reading feeds a good mind and improves a weaker one, it teaches morality and clarity of expression. In the chapter, on Conversation, his initial statement that women should use discretion, silence, and modesty (p. 55) leads not to the precepts that one might expect (that women should defer in all to men), but to generally good advice for social exchanges: that one should choose one’s words wisely, refrain from talking non-stop, and intersperse one’s speech, no matter how filled with wisdom or interesting information, with silence, spent listening to one’s interlocutor. The remaining chapters, including on temperaments, reputation, devotion, courage, intellectual or studious women, clothes and ornaments, beauty, curiosity, gossip, jealousy, and love, are marked by calm scorn for those who try to claim women’s inferiority: Du Bosc repeatedly argues for women’s moral and intellectual equality — and occasionally for their superiority — to men. Among his other works, Du Bosc wrote an epistolary model book for women, a sort of practical companion to the present work, and a treatise on “heroic women.” Little is known of his life, but his dedications to high-placed women (and some men) suggest that he made a living as a writer (or tried to) through court patronage. This present Rouen edition, printed by the widow of the printer Jean Du Bosc (probably unrelated to the author, who was also from Normandy), follows the second edition, printed in Paris by Jean Jost in 1633 (and retroactively sometimes called Part 1, as it was followed in 1634 and 1636 by two other parts). Both editions include a long preface, unsigned but attributed to the académicien and translator Perrot d’Ablancourt, containing a defense of the book against its critics (thus not included in the first edition). The text of Du Bosc’s dedication to Madame de Combalet, Richelieu’s favorite niece, differs entirely from that of the first edition, to the same lady (in later editions she is identified by her married title as the Duchesse d’Aiguillon). I locate two copies of a 1639 edition from the same press, possibly a reissue of this edition (BnF and Gerritsen Collection, U. Kansas), but none of this 1638 edition. Cf. Gay-Lemonnyer 2: 613; Barbier 2: 862 (1658 edition); A. Wolfgang and S. D. Nell, “The Theory and Practice of Honnêteté in Jacques Du Bosc’s L’Honnête femme,” Cahiers du Dix-Septième (2011) XIII.2, 56-91 (online). 2) La Reine des femmes: This virtually unknown work is an explicit riposte to Du Bosc’s enlightened and woman-admiring treatise. In his prefatory remarks the anonymous author describes Du Bosc’s lady as “rather the description of someone who is an Idea of Plato or a number of Pythagoras than a real honnête woman,” and promises to “darken the sketch (”charbonner le crayon”) of this “Queen of women,” noting that he, the author, lives far from the Court and is among the worst of all courtiers. The dedication to the Queen is signed P.D.M., identified in the Pichon catalogue as Pierre de Marcassus (1584-1664), professor of humanities and rhetoric, whose works included translations of Horace and Aristotle, a history of Greece, and a commentary on Ronsard. Whoever the author was, his conventionally misogynist depiction of what men supposedly want in women dwells on beauty, hairstyles, fashion, suitable clothing colors for different complexions, jewels, shoes, and so on, reducing women to dolls who are expected to fill traditional roles as compliant supports to men. The contrast between these two late works of the querelle des femmes could hardly be starker. No institutional holdings found. The Baron Jérôme Pichon’s copy (not this one), is described in the sale catalogue of his library, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de feu M. le Baron Jérôme Pichon, part 2 (Paris, 1898), no. 3578.”

Ordered from Musinsky Rare Books D9675, 2023-08-07, Cat. 26 "New Acquisitions from the Seventeenth Century Summer 2023", item #8

272781