Review - Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France. Helena Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. ix + 289 pp. $105.
Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
Summer 2026
Abstract
In this study of seventeenth-century French women writers’ use of the ancient world, Helena Taylor offers a capacious view of classical reception, going beyond the usual suspects to consider not only women known for their translations of Greek and Latin but also authors of historical fiction set in antiquity, lyric poetry in the eclogue tradition, and even fairy tales. She avoids an essentializing approach to women, using gender merely as a category of analysis (with a nod to Joan Wallach Scott) as she discusses the challenges many of these writers faced, such as derision of their learning and literary abilities, while underlining the varied ways in which they responded to these challenges. (excerpt)
Recommended Citation
Klaus Carrie F. “Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France. Helena Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. Ix + 289 Pp. $105.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2, June 2026, pp. 702–04, https://doi.org/10.1086/739353.