| This dissertation is a critical examination of the theme of female scholarship in drama. In the wake of early modern humanism, and throughout Europe, the question of women's education was a topic of debate. Should women have a right to education? How much and what should they be allowed to learn and practice? To what end? In the midst of this concern, drama flourished in Spain and France, and the first women to write plays and see them performed emerged. Taking a literary historical perspective, this project examines the plays written by men as well as women in order to investigate whether and how they used their works to respond to the inflammatory topic of women's education and scholarship. Because of the popularity of the stage, it is no surprise that both male and female dramatists did in fact use the medium of drama to voice their opinion on this critical issue. In the tradition of the querelle des femmes begun centuries earlier, some playwrights opposed humanism's advocacy of women's education by contributing to the misogynist propaganda of the day, others---among them female playwrights---argued for women's access to scholarship. By examining recently re-discovered works by seventeenth-century female playwrights in a comparative context through the lens of the debate on female scholarship, this study contributes an intellectual and literary historical perspective to the fields of gender studies and theater, broadening our understanding of the socio-historical context of women's education and scholarship in Early Modern Europe. |
