History of Gyneceums. The Construction of a Canon of Women’s History
The genre “gyneceum” has been part of Western historiography since ancient time. It consists of compilations of women’s biographies from history and myth, extensive life stories or just lists of names. The term is derived from the Greek “gynaikon” for the women’s department in a building. The genre was very frequent in the 16th and 17th centuries, during the Querelle des Femmes, a debate on the intellectual and moral capacity of the female gender. Early gyneceums have been studied by other historians. However, a history of the genre with theoretical discussions on biographical women catalogues is lacking (a fact applicable to all sorts of biographical dictionaries). Above all, no studies have followed the gyneceum into modern time. Even today, the genre is very much alive: biographical dictionaries on female authors, physicians or artists are published today, preferably “forgotten” ones, or “pioneers”.
In between 60 to 100 international and universal gyneceums from the period 1700-2000 will be investigated (national and special gyneceums, such as queens or authors, are excluded) and a database will be developed as methodological tool. The contents will be analysed bibliometrically and hermeneutically, in terms of biographical selection, lexical structure and descriptions within the text. The project offers interesting entries for scholars from several disciplines. Vital entries are: the “history of Women’s History” in the long time frame, the process of canon construction and historical, theoretical and methodological aspects on biographical dictionaries.
Hanna Östholm, Avdelningen för vetenskapshistoria, Uppsala University
2008-2010
The starting point of the project was to study of the canon of women's history and its historiographical traditions, using biographical encyclopedias and catalogues of women 1700-2000 as primary sources. The basic method was to catalogue the contents of the texts in an analytical database. Within the project I wanted to study how the genre shapes av canon of women's history, focusing on the selection of biographed persons and how they are presented. I still have the ambition to write a monography of the genre, but within a later project. I am completing three English articles and one in Swedish. Neither one of them has yet been placed.
It turned out to be more complicated than expected to build the database. Due to this, I could not cover such a big material as I had hoped, but all in all the study has worked out. I am still convinced that historical disciplines will benefit from methodological work with databases.
The most important results of the project
1) that women catalogues of the modern age are written within the example tradtions of classic rhetoric
2) that the gyneceum in principal (through the canon of practice) must be perceived as a conservative genre; and
3) that the reasons of gyneceums being written can be both emancipatory and disciplinary.
In the article "The Logic of the Women's Room. Origins and authors' intentions" I discuss:
- The history use of the Gyneceum: The gynecuym, seen as a genre of women's history, utilizes history and more specifically, it utilizes biography as an example. The biograhed persons can on one hand serve as examples/support for the authors thesis, on the other hand serve as examples/models for the reader (according to Lyons and others, the aristotelian and the platonic traditions; John D. Lyons, Exemplum. The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy, 1989).
- The relationship between gyneceums and historiography in general: The scientific and disciplinary development of historical research is closely related to the form and contents of the gyneceum, but it is not possible to peka ut entydig påverkan in either direction. The contents of the gyneceums does follow the historiographical development within biography and history (and also the development within politics and gender ideology), but it is also possible to identify eftersläpning and/or resistance towards the övergripande genres (biographical encyclopedias, history, women's history, biography).
- The logic of the Gyneceum - separation: The gyneceum has obvious separatory functions within the biographical-historical field. With the contents of each gyneceum - the examples or the biographed women and how they have been portrayed - as starting point it can be said that the separation sometimes is made within the aristotelian, sometims the platonic tradition of examples. In the later case, a statement of female ideals often is made. In the former case the gyneceum often describes women's general qualities. The discussion about alternative/corrective or complementary historyography however must continue.
In the article "The Myth of Omitted Women. Collective memory, Collective forgetting" I treat
- The canon of women's history: this canon is shaped and reshaped, through the selection of biographed persons and how they are presented, to a large extent through tradition, in spite of the, especially during later decades, common statements of the (re)discovery of forgotten women. I have chosen to describe the process as the canon of practice, observing how the authors use their predecessors (which they do early on).
- The construction of gender: the gyneceum constructs or organizes gender through cataloguing, describing and stressing of qualities, relationships and achievements in biographies from history, myth and religion. Thus, the gyneceum represents a gender system for defining the characters, norms and capacities of the genders/sexes. In some cases this takes place within the aristotelian tradition of examples, in other cases the examples constistutes models. The influences between the authors' and the general conception of gender is both intersektional (including class, ethnicity and confessionality), and acting in both directions.
In the article "From Worthies to Firsts. The Exempla tradition in the modern Age" I treat the question of why gyneceums are written. The reasons can be on one hand disciplinary: to give models or ideals for women and girls. On the other hand gyneceums can be interpreted as emancipatory, written to formulate collective identities that mostly depends on contemporary ideals etc. - a feminine, feminst or even postmodern identity. I have applied Riceurs terms of collective, identity, memory and forgetting, as well as the rhetorical tradition of exempla (as Lyons explains it). Gyneceums with both diciplinary and emancipatory purpose exist from the beginning of the examined period, but during the 20th century the emancipatory gyneceums become the more common ones.
I got the suggestion to treat Nina Burtons Den nya kvinnostaden (2005). I have written the article "Ett eget rum för kvinnor", where Burtons vitas (or biographed persons) are analyzed in relation to the contents of previously well-known gyneceums, including Christine de Pisans Cité des femmes.