La Querelle des femmes au cœur de quatre ⟪ Institutions ⟫ de l'élite imprimées et largement diffusées en français dans la seconde moitié du xvi e siècle

As champions and the detractors of the female cause confronted one another repeatedly in writing from the fifteenth century onward, their arguments made their way into many handbooks and etiquette books addressed to men and women of the European & eacute;lite. The French versions of these Renaissance texts were widely published and read during the sixteenth century. This study focuses in particular on the echoes and dramatizations of debates concerning the excellence and dignity of women in the most popular French versions of Castigliones' Book of the Courtier , Viv & egrave;s' De institutione feminae christianae , and Gueveras' Dial of Princes , as well as Boaistuaus' Institution des princes chr & eacute;tiens . Fear of losing power, examples of strong women, misogynist denial, dissenting voices-all have their place in these texts and lend an element of paradox to the their exhortations to female perfection, made in the context of a reinforced gender roles and an explosion of contradictory discourses on the subject of female nature.