Lectura la feminin. O analiză dinspre societatea românească a secolelor XVII-XVIII
Reading at the Feminine. An Analysis from the Romanian Society of the XVIIth-XVIIIth Centuries

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this study is to analyze the manner in which the relation-ship between book and society has been delineated into premodern Romanian society. Succeeding François Furet, the French historian who turned the researches on the history of the books towards the receiver, we would like to emphases the feminist practices of reading, as they were established at the level of Tara Românească and Moldova's elite. Our analysis is based on a comparative perspective. It emphases some studies of case, as they are resulted after the enquiery of the official papers of the Court, the denotation on the books pages, correspondence, chronicles, travel diaries. We would like to find out which were the reading genres preferences of the feminine elite during the XVIIth and XVHIth centuries, what kind of image the women attracted by reading were able to pass on and if the masculine power, as representing the dominant culture, did really perceived them as „becoming intellectuals” or, on the contrary, they were looked on hostile. We are also interested in the social and familial medium of the women who were able to write and read in the XVIIth and XVIIIth, the importance of blood relations structure, the convergences and frictions with the dominant model of masculine reading. We also have to mention that the subject we have chosen, as a part of both cultural history and of gender studies, might reveal new dimensions about the place of the books and reading inside the Romanian premodern society.

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