In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with the project’s PI, Helena Taylor, about the French professional writer and salon hostess, Marie de Gournay (1565-1645). As a young woman in the late 16th century, Gournay met the famed essayist Montaigne, who adopted her as a protégée. She successfully built a career as an editor of his works, a translator of Roman classics, and an essayist. We discuss the constant slander Gournay dealt with throughout her career – and how it helped shape some of her best writing.
This episode was recorded in April 2025.
Guest: Helena Taylor
Host: Helene von Tabouillot
Music: Leonora Duarte: Simfonia no. 7. Conducted and performed by Korneel Bernolet. Thanks to Bernolet for the kind permission to use his rendition.
Francesca Caccini: Maria dolce Maria. Performed by Capella di Santa Maria degli Angiolini. Thanks to Brilliant Classics for the kind permission to use this rendition.
Graphic design (logo): Nynne Oline B. Bennicke.
Painting (logo): Anna Maria van Schurman, self-portrait as Pudicitia (1633), used with the kind permission of Museum Martena, Franeker, The Netherlands.
This podcast is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].
Suggested reading:
Gournay, Marie le Jars de. 2002. Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works. Translated by Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel. The University of Chicago Press.
Bauschatz, Cathleen M. 2009. ‘To Choose Ink and Pen: French Renaissance Women’s Writing’. In A History of Women’s Writing in France, edited by Sonya Stephens. Cambridge University Press.
Butterworth, Emily. 2011. ‘Women Writers in the Sixteenth Century’. In The Cambridge History of French Literature, edited by William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond, and Emma Wilson. Cambridge University Press.
Heitsch, Dorothea. 2010. ‘Cats on a Windowsill: An Alchemical Study of Marie de Gournay’. In Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture. Routledge.
Larsen, Anne R. 2008. ‘A Women’s Republic of Letters: Anna Maria van Schurman, Marie de Gournay, and Female Self-Representation in Relation to the Public Sphere’. Early Modern Women. 3: 105–26.
Pal, Carol. 2012. Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Helena. 2024. Women Writing Antiquity. Gender and Learning in Early Modern France. Oxford University Press.
Project Website: culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk