Mary Stuart, portrait by François Clouet (1558-1560), Royal Collection (public domain).
“Mary, Queen of Scots in the Querelle about women’s education”
Mary Stuart has been the subject of much controversy among historians since the sixteenthcentury. These debates can be explained in part by the religious or national standpoints of the authors involved, which have been discussed at length. This has not necessarily been the case of their gender biases, i.e. the way in which they consider the difference between the sexes. And yet those prejudices play a decisive role in the reconstruction of the character of the Queen of Scots and her history. The aim of this talk will be to show how discourses on the difference/inequality of the sexes, which form the querelle des femmes, can enrich our understanding, if not of this queen and her actions, then at least of how they are narrated. To do so, it will focus on one specific topic of discussion: women’s access to education. It will clarify the terms of the debate on women’s education as they were formulated in early Renaissance before turning to Mary Stuart’s contribution to the debate in her exercise book and her self-fashioning as a learned lady. Finally, it will recreate the debate on Mary’s scholarly achievements between the philogynist Brantôme and the misogynist John Knox.
Biography: Armel Dubois-Nayt is an associate professor of English at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin/Paris-Saclay. She specializes in cultural history in early modern Scotland, England and France with special emphasis on the gender controversy. She has just finished a monograph on “Mary Queen of Scots in the querelle des femmes” after co-editing several volumes on this gargantuan controversy in Europe.
Since 2020, she has been running the AVISA project which aims at writing the history of sexual harassment before #metoo with Pr. Réjane Hamus-Vallée (UEVE). Together, they have just published Écrire l’histoire du harcèlement sexuel sur la longue durée – Nommer, dénoncer, représenter, mettre en image ou en musique, Paris, L’harmattan, (in the “des idées et des femmes” series edited by Guyonne Leduc), 2025.
This conference will take place over Zoom. The link can be obtained by sending an email to parisearlymodernseminar2023@gmail.com