ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first published defense of women by a Netherlandish author.

Jehan Baptista Houwaert’s Excellence and Nobility of Women constitutes the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses, or The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women (1582–1583), an immense conduct book for women in rhymed verse based on the many querelle texts of the French and Burgundian tradition but especially, in its French translation, on the pathbreaking Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529) by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.

Like its model, Houwaert’s work asserts not merely the equality but the superiority of women. It is unique in that it is addressed not to a wealthy noblewoman or princess, as were most such defenses, but more democratically to the “girls, unmarried women, wives, and widows of Belgica”—all of them!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jehan [Johan] Baptista Houwaert (1533–1599) was a Brussels-born humanist and poet of patrician rank, official of the Habsburg-ruled duchy of Brabant amid the religious wars of the Reformation era. Aside from Plain of the Nine Muses, Houwaert is the author of plays, orations, and prose works. Marie-José Govers is an independent scholar whose research focuses on the historical and literary portrayal of women from the thirteenth century until modern times, from the mystic Hadewijch to Ingeborg Bachmann. She received master’s degrees in Historical Netherlandish Literature and Language, Comparative Literature and Theoretical Literature, and Women’s Studies (now Gender Studies) from the Catholic University of Nijmegen, now Radboud University, and hopes to defend her dissertation on Houwaert and his Pegasides Pleyn, ende den Lust-Hof der Maeghden (Plain of the Muses, or, The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women) at the University of Antwerp in 2026.

REVIEWS

"As a politician with sympathies for the new religious movements and William of Orange, Brussels nobleman Jan Baptist Houwaert (1533–1599) became involved in the revolt of the Low Countries against the Spanish king Philip II. But Houwaert was, first and foremost, a writer who tried to persuade his contemporaries with his pen. With his treatise On the Excellence and Nobility of Women, the eighth book of his Plain of the Nine Muses (1582–1583), Houwaert was the first Dutch writer to take up the defense of women. Marie-José Govers translates his verse into fluent prose and meticulously traces the sources of the “modern” ideas that he used to build his plea. In an introduction that is both enthralling and erudite, Govers convincingly demonstrates that Houwaert’s work fits perfectly into the tradition of women's praise."

— Hubert Meeus, emeritus professor of early modern Dutch literature, University of Antwerp

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
The Other Voice
The Defense of Women, a Court Genre in the Burgundian Netherlands
Pegasides Pleyn, ende den Lust-Hof der Maeghden: Houwaert’s
Magnum Opus
Life and Works of Jehan Baptista Houwaert
Reading On the Excellence and Nobility of Women
Instructions for the Education of Women in the Netherlands
The Defense of Women: On the Excellence and Nobility of Women
Houwaert’s Auctorial Interventions
Houwaert and Morality
Houwaert and Politics
Houwaert and Religion
Houwaert and Deiphyle
Note on the Text
Pegasides Pleyn, ende den Lust-Hof der Maeghden
Dedication Letter and Poems (excerpt)
Book 7: Die manieren van die gracieuse maeghden (excerpt)
Book 8: D’excellentie van d’edele maeghden
Plain of the Nine Muses, or, The Pleasure Garden of Virtuous Women
Dedication Letter and Poems (excerpt)
Book 7: On the Gracious Behavior of Women (excerpt)
Book 8: On the Excellence and Nobility of Women
Bibliography
Index