Academic Books by valerie worth
The Culture of Celebration in Early Modern Europe, 2024
Early modern celebrations-whether of public or private events, marked locally or fêted internatio... more Early modern celebrations-whether of public or private events, marked locally or fêted internationally-are also celebrations of early modern culture, or of the artistic invention and technological innovation that figure so prominently in early modern festivities. Yet what are the politics behind such festive displays? And what reactions might the spectacle of celebration, in performance or in print, provoke? The essays in this volume collectively examine the relationship between the festive artist and the audience or readership of celebratory display, as festivities move between tradition and innovation, in live performance and in its written record. With its focus upon a range of art forms-music, dance, performance, poetry, sculpture, decoration-in examples from France, Italy and beyond, this volume celebrates the early modern culture of celebration while also highlighting and questioning the purposes to which that celebratory culture could be put. The authors of these collected essays include leading specialists in early modern French, Italian and festive studies. The essays are written in tribute to Richard Cooper, and they celebrate many of the subjects and methods-Franco-Italian relations; Rabelais; royal entries; printing; archival research-that distinguish his work.
ACMRS, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies Volume 561 French Renaissance Texts in Translation, 2020
This is the first complete English translation of D’Aubigné’s epic poem (published 1616). It reco... more This is the first complete English translation of D’Aubigné’s epic poem (published 1616). It records the Huguenots’ perspective on the French Wars of Religion, movingly combining depictions of a devastated country, vivid tableaux of the worst atrocities of the Wars, and satirical attacks on leading political and religious figures. It also offers insights into the wider European Reformations and some events in the Americas.
I have accompanied the translation with a full introduction to the work and its literary and historical context, and the translation is comprehensively annotated.
I hope it will interest scholars and students of early modern political, social and religious history and of comparative literatures, as well as all readers looking to understand how literature seeks to mediate the pain of partisan struggles.
Details of 2013 volume on Pregnancy and Birth in early modern France (edition and translation of ... more Details of 2013 volume on Pregnancy and Birth in early modern France (edition and translation of works by Rosset, Liebault, Guillemeau, Duval and de Serres).
Published by Droz (Geneva), 2007, 496pp.
Study and critical bibliography of 70 editions in French... more Published by Droz (Geneva), 2007, 496pp.
Study and critical bibliography of 70 editions in French of works on pregnancy and childbirth, published between 1536-1627. Available from http://www.droz.org/france/en/
Published in the series Travaux du Grand Siècle XII, Geneva, Droz, 1999, 248 pp.
Available from... more Published in the series Travaux du Grand Siècle XII, Geneva, Droz, 1999, 248 pp.
Available from http://www.droz.org/world/en/.
How was the ubiquitous figure of the confident used in French tragic drama between 1635 and 1677? How did the Querelle du confident shape the dramaturgical ideas of Racine as an upcoming playwright? I argue that Racine's use of the confident is unusually varied and experimental, as shown by comparisons with other playwrights of the period, and marked out by his acute awareness of the dramatic power of both speaking and listening. 'La parole est moitié à celui qui écoute' (to cite Montaigne).
An overview and discussion of major works of literature in French 1500-1610, treating: 1. Quests ... more An overview and discussion of major works of literature in French 1500-1610, treating: 1. Quests for Truth (prose writings before 1560); 2. Renewed Traditions and New Visions (poetry and poetics); 3. Shifting Perspectives on a World in Turmoil (the Baroque)
An overview and discussion of literature in French 1610-1715, including: 1. Freedom and Rules (po... more An overview and discussion of literature in French 1610-1715, including: 1. Freedom and Rules (poetry and prose 1610-1660); 2. the Theatre Comes of Age (1610-1715); Classical tastes and Dissident Voices (poetry and prose 1660-1715)
My introduction, as editor of Cassell Guide to Literature in French, to the volume's conception o... more My introduction, as editor of Cassell Guide to Literature in French, to the volume's conception of literature and literary history, with discussion of reviewing canons. Includes chronological table of main events and literary works c. 800-1993, and index of authors and themes treated.
French language textbooks by valerie worth
French: a handbook of grammar, current usage and word power, 1993
Details of the handbook of French grammar and usage for advanced (anglophone) students of French.... more Details of the handbook of French grammar and usage for advanced (anglophone) students of French. As the work has been out of print since 2000, I provide a link to (free) downloadable PDFs of it, for the use of students and teachers. the work has four sections:
- full reference grammar
- guide to current usage and functional language
- word power and vocabulary building
- exercises on the grammar sections , with key
Articles, Chapters, Papers by valerie worth
Studi Francesi, 2024
This article provides an annotated translation into English and discussion of four poems from Agr... more This article provides an annotated translation into English and discussion of four poems from Agrippa d'Aubigné's Le Printemps that deserve to feature in a comparative literature course on early modern love poetry.
The Culture of Celebration in Early Modern Europe Essays in Honour of Richard Cooper, 2024
‘Or vien doncq en ce monde |Sur tel desir’: Poetic Genres Celebrating Births in Renaissance Franc... more ‘Or vien doncq en ce monde |Sur tel desir’: Poetic Genres Celebrating Births in Renaissance France, c. 1518‒47
The Latin genre of the genethliacum, a poem in celebration of a specific birth, has a distinguished classical heritage, and it is unsurprising that French Renaissance poets looked to it to combine a virtuosic display of poetic skills with flattery of a patron or patroness. Some genethliaca might be written before the birth, in anticipation of a safe delivery, preferably of a male heir; rather more celebrated the birth after the event. Both neo-Latin and French poets of the Renaissance recognized the enduring value
of the form, alongside other pièces de circonstance with classical pedigrees, including epithalamia, poems marking arrivals and departures, and offerings on birthdays and for the New Year. Classical scholars have debated how far poets such as Tibullus or Propertius sought pretexts to play with recurrent motifs or to excel within generic conventions as opposed to responding to biographical events These same questions
arise, but with an additional layer of complexity, as poets writing in the first half of the sixteenth century in France move not only between classical models and contemporary reality, but also between neo-Latin and vernacular models. My investigation of French poems celebrating births leads to a close consideration of the short collection marking the birth, in 1539, of Etienne Dolet’s son and heir- entitled L’Avantnaissance de Claude Dolet.3 I ask how far the French avant-naissance, which has no precise classical counterpart, represents a sub-genre of the classical genethliacum tradition, or whether it is a new genre.
Montaigne Studies, 2024
Comment Montaigne et ses premiers lecteurs comprenaient-ils la génération d'un garçon ou d'une fi... more Comment Montaigne et ses premiers lecteurs comprenaient-ils la génération d'un garçon ou d'une fille ? Ces débats scientifiques laissent-ils des traces dans Les Essais ? Et ce sujet nous apporte-t-il de nouvelles lumières sur la mesure dans laquelle Montaigne remet en question les notions d'un sexe ou d'un genre binaires ?
Molière in Context (CUP, edited by Jan Clarke), 2022
Providing an initial overview of health, medicine and medical practitioners in France at the time... more Providing an initial overview of health, medicine and medical practitioners in France at the time of Molière, the chapter shows that, unsurprisingly, medical treatment and access to trained practitioners depended on social status and geographical location, although life expectancy for adults was not as uneven as we might expect. While humoral medicine continued to dominate medical learning, key advances were accepted over time, and the publication of medical works in the vernacular disseminated knowledge among literate lay persons. The challenge is therefore to recognise what Molière's own audiences would have found credible or risible. His depiction of illness and medicine belong to the theatrical traditions of farce, comédie-ballet and extravagant entertainments, and should not be read as a reflection on his own health or treatment by doctors. Two farces (Le Médecin volant, Le Médecin malgré lui) and a farcical scene in Don Juan derive broad humour from a character grotesquely impersonating a physician. In contrast, three comedies-ballets (L'Amour médecin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Le Malade imaginaire) feature genuine physicians treating patients whom they seek to exploit for financial gain if they are delusional and gullible. Yet music, dance and entertainment are also artfully contrived to restore health, at least in the world of the theatre.
Albineana, no 34, 2022
This article examines the importance of the sense of smell in Aubigné’s poetic depiction of the n... more This article examines the importance of the sense of smell in Aubigné’s poetic depiction of the natural world. Although it is less important than our spiritual understanding of the life to come, in Calvinist teachings, smell is nonetheless essential to the binary conception of this earthly world, since the finest perfumes never exist without the accompanying threat of putrefaction. When Aubigné depicts the delights of the Second Coming, however, smell is the first sense evoked.
. In Portraits and Poses. Female Intellectual Authority, Agency and Authorship in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Beatrijs Vanacker and Lieke van Deinsen (Leuven: Leuven University Press), pp. 137-161, 2022
This chapter compares the published works of three early modern European midwives from different ... more This chapter compares the published works of three early modern European midwives from different countries: the outstandingly successful Observations of Louise Bourgeois (first published, in French, in 1609), The Court Midwife by Justine Siegemund (published in German, in 1690) and Sarah Stone`s A Complete Practice of Midwifery (published in English, in 1737). I examine their various brandings of female authority through publication, and analyse how, as professional women claiming intellectual authority, they sought to establish both their own fame and reputation as practitioners, and to make a wider case for the agency of female authorship.
I also engage with the texts as material objects, examining in particular – in the cases of Bourgeois and Siegemund – the impressive title pages and inclusion of illustrations. While Bourgeois is more interested in the portrait she paints with her pen (wresting this authority from her male predecessors), Siegemund furnishes some forty anatomical copperplate engravings, using the combination of anatomical portrait and the written word in order to establish her medical and intellectual authority. Finally, although Stone`s volume does not include any illustrations, she still paints in words a portrait of the authority of the ideally competent midwife, especially skilled in difficult deliveries.
The on-line version of Portraits and Poses is freely downloadable from OAPEN Library: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53924
Bulletin de la Société Internationale des Amis de Montaigne : Montaigne outre-Manche, , 2022
This article examines how the Essais of Montaigne directly inspired the approach of the physician... more This article examines how the Essais of Montaigne directly inspired the approach of the physician Louis de Serres's lengthy medical treatise (1625) on the subject of female sterility.
BSIAM, n° 74, 2022 – 1, p. 37-53
La Science prise aux mots. Enquête sur le lexique scientifique de la Renaissance. Sous la direction de Violaine Giacomotto-Charra et Myriam Marrache-Gourraud, 2021
This chapter analyses both the lexis and notion of 'experience' in 16th-century translations into... more This chapter analyses both the lexis and notion of 'experience' in 16th-century translations into French of medical treatises, comparing experience with theory and non-experiential knowledge. The texts selected for close study are the prefaces of: Richard Roussat's (1532) translation of Mondino de Luzzi ; Barthélemy Aneau's (1555) of Conrad Gesner; and Laurent Joubert's (1579) of Guy de Chauliac, a preface notable for Joubert's warm praise of female experience, citing the case of his own mother's practical skills.
Published at www.oxfordbibliographies.com, 2021
An annotated review article of critical studies on Agrippa d'Aubigné's life and writings
Women's Studies, 2020
Article in Women's Studies , 49-3 (2020), 281-295, on the 17th-century French midwife Louise Bour... more Article in Women's Studies , 49-3 (2020), 281-295, on the 17th-century French midwife Louise Bourgeois's advice on female infertility compared with that of male practitioners.
Sodalitas Litteratorum. Etudes à la mémoire de Philip Ford, 2019
A study of sociability (a key form of 'sodalitas') in prefaces to medical works in French in the ... more A study of sociability (a key form of 'sodalitas') in prefaces to medical works in French in the sixteenth century. The chapter examines two specific types of sociability: between physicians and surgeons, and between male and female practitioners (or male practitioners and elite women caring for the sick).
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Academic Books by valerie worth
I have accompanied the translation with a full introduction to the work and its literary and historical context, and the translation is comprehensively annotated.
I hope it will interest scholars and students of early modern political, social and religious history and of comparative literatures, as well as all readers looking to understand how literature seeks to mediate the pain of partisan struggles.
Study and critical bibliography of 70 editions in French of works on pregnancy and childbirth, published between 1536-1627. Available from http://www.droz.org/france/en/
Available from http://www.droz.org/world/en/.
How was the ubiquitous figure of the confident used in French tragic drama between 1635 and 1677? How did the Querelle du confident shape the dramaturgical ideas of Racine as an upcoming playwright? I argue that Racine's use of the confident is unusually varied and experimental, as shown by comparisons with other playwrights of the period, and marked out by his acute awareness of the dramatic power of both speaking and listening. 'La parole est moitié à celui qui écoute' (to cite Montaigne).
French language textbooks by valerie worth
- full reference grammar
- guide to current usage and functional language
- word power and vocabulary building
- exercises on the grammar sections , with key
Articles, Chapters, Papers by valerie worth
The Latin genre of the genethliacum, a poem in celebration of a specific birth, has a distinguished classical heritage, and it is unsurprising that French Renaissance poets looked to it to combine a virtuosic display of poetic skills with flattery of a patron or patroness. Some genethliaca might be written before the birth, in anticipation of a safe delivery, preferably of a male heir; rather more celebrated the birth after the event. Both neo-Latin and French poets of the Renaissance recognized the enduring value
of the form, alongside other pièces de circonstance with classical pedigrees, including epithalamia, poems marking arrivals and departures, and offerings on birthdays and for the New Year. Classical scholars have debated how far poets such as Tibullus or Propertius sought pretexts to play with recurrent motifs or to excel within generic conventions as opposed to responding to biographical events These same questions
arise, but with an additional layer of complexity, as poets writing in the first half of the sixteenth century in France move not only between classical models and contemporary reality, but also between neo-Latin and vernacular models. My investigation of French poems celebrating births leads to a close consideration of the short collection marking the birth, in 1539, of Etienne Dolet’s son and heir- entitled L’Avantnaissance de Claude Dolet.3 I ask how far the French avant-naissance, which has no precise classical counterpart, represents a sub-genre of the classical genethliacum tradition, or whether it is a new genre.
I also engage with the texts as material objects, examining in particular – in the cases of Bourgeois and Siegemund – the impressive title pages and inclusion of illustrations. While Bourgeois is more interested in the portrait she paints with her pen (wresting this authority from her male predecessors), Siegemund furnishes some forty anatomical copperplate engravings, using the combination of anatomical portrait and the written word in order to establish her medical and intellectual authority. Finally, although Stone`s volume does not include any illustrations, she still paints in words a portrait of the authority of the ideally competent midwife, especially skilled in difficult deliveries.
The on-line version of Portraits and Poses is freely downloadable from OAPEN Library: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53924
BSIAM, n° 74, 2022 – 1, p. 37-53
I have accompanied the translation with a full introduction to the work and its literary and historical context, and the translation is comprehensively annotated.
I hope it will interest scholars and students of early modern political, social and religious history and of comparative literatures, as well as all readers looking to understand how literature seeks to mediate the pain of partisan struggles.
Study and critical bibliography of 70 editions in French of works on pregnancy and childbirth, published between 1536-1627. Available from http://www.droz.org/france/en/
Available from http://www.droz.org/world/en/.
How was the ubiquitous figure of the confident used in French tragic drama between 1635 and 1677? How did the Querelle du confident shape the dramaturgical ideas of Racine as an upcoming playwright? I argue that Racine's use of the confident is unusually varied and experimental, as shown by comparisons with other playwrights of the period, and marked out by his acute awareness of the dramatic power of both speaking and listening. 'La parole est moitié à celui qui écoute' (to cite Montaigne).
- full reference grammar
- guide to current usage and functional language
- word power and vocabulary building
- exercises on the grammar sections , with key
The Latin genre of the genethliacum, a poem in celebration of a specific birth, has a distinguished classical heritage, and it is unsurprising that French Renaissance poets looked to it to combine a virtuosic display of poetic skills with flattery of a patron or patroness. Some genethliaca might be written before the birth, in anticipation of a safe delivery, preferably of a male heir; rather more celebrated the birth after the event. Both neo-Latin and French poets of the Renaissance recognized the enduring value
of the form, alongside other pièces de circonstance with classical pedigrees, including epithalamia, poems marking arrivals and departures, and offerings on birthdays and for the New Year. Classical scholars have debated how far poets such as Tibullus or Propertius sought pretexts to play with recurrent motifs or to excel within generic conventions as opposed to responding to biographical events These same questions
arise, but with an additional layer of complexity, as poets writing in the first half of the sixteenth century in France move not only between classical models and contemporary reality, but also between neo-Latin and vernacular models. My investigation of French poems celebrating births leads to a close consideration of the short collection marking the birth, in 1539, of Etienne Dolet’s son and heir- entitled L’Avantnaissance de Claude Dolet.3 I ask how far the French avant-naissance, which has no precise classical counterpart, represents a sub-genre of the classical genethliacum tradition, or whether it is a new genre.
I also engage with the texts as material objects, examining in particular – in the cases of Bourgeois and Siegemund – the impressive title pages and inclusion of illustrations. While Bourgeois is more interested in the portrait she paints with her pen (wresting this authority from her male predecessors), Siegemund furnishes some forty anatomical copperplate engravings, using the combination of anatomical portrait and the written word in order to establish her medical and intellectual authority. Finally, although Stone`s volume does not include any illustrations, she still paints in words a portrait of the authority of the ideally competent midwife, especially skilled in difficult deliveries.
The on-line version of Portraits and Poses is freely downloadable from OAPEN Library: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53924
BSIAM, n° 74, 2022 – 1, p. 37-53
Published at www.oxfordbibliographies.com
An annotated review article of critical studies on midwifery in early modern Europe
(Montaigne Studies (vol. 29), 2017, pp. 131-141.
This article appeared in the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (December 2014).
Louise Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France: Diverse Observations. Edited by Alison Klairmont Lingo. Translated by Stephanie O'Hara. (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, 56; Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 520.) Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017. 452 + xx pp., ill.
An overview of how twin births were managed by midwives and/or surgeons in early modern France, drawing especially on the 1609 publications of Louise Bourgeois and Jacques Guillemeau. With a discussion of early modern biological assumptions about the conception of twins.