The Impossible Salon

The Early Royal Society with Felicity Henderson

In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with the project’s Senior Research Fellow, Felicity Henderson, about the early days of the Royal Society of London. We discuss the role women played as informal sources, guests, and inquirers in the Royal Society, from which they were officially excluded until 1945. Encountering 17th-century women with particular interests ranging from salmon to shiny cliffs, we consider the possibilities of excavating these women’s voices from the male narratives in which they are embedded.    This episode contains brief discussions of miscarriage and suicidal ideation.  This episode was recorded in April 2025.    Guest: Felicity Henderson  Host: Helene von Tabouillot  Music: Leonora Duarte: Simfonia no. 7. Conducted and performed by Korneel Bernolet. Thanks to Bernolet for the kind permission to use his rendition.  Francesca Caccini: Maria dolce Maria. Performed by Capella di Santa Maria degli Angiolini. Thanks to Brilliant Classics for the kind permission to use this rendition.  Graphic design (logo): Nynne Oline B. Bennicke.  Painting (logo): Anna Maria van Schurman, self-portrait as Pudicitia (1633), used with the kind permission of Museum Martena, Franeker, The Netherlands.   This podcast is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].    Suggested reading:  Henderson, Felicity, 2024. Robert Hooke’s Experimental Philosophy. Reaktion Books.  Henderson, Felicity, 2024. ‘Scientific Transactions’. In The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714. Oxford University Press.  Hunter, Lynette and Sarah Hutton (eds). 1997. Women, science and medicine, 1500-1700: mothers and sisters of the Royal Society. Sutton Publishing Ltd.  Schiebinger, Londa. 1989. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Harvard University Press.  Tyson, Sarah. 2018. ‘From Exclusion to Reclamation’. In Where Are the Women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes the Philosophy Better. Colombia University Press.  Project Website: culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk [https://culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk/]

Marie de Gournay with Helena Taylor

In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with the project’s PI, Helena Taylor, about the French professional writer and salon hostess, Marie de Gournay (1565-1645). As a young woman in the late 16th century, Gournay met the famed essayist Montaigne, who adopted her as a protégée. She successfully built a career as an editor of his works, a translator of Roman classics, and an essayist. We discuss the constant slander Gournay dealt with throughout her career – and how it helped shape some of her best writing.  This episode was recorded in April 2025.  Guest: Helena Taylor  Host: Helene von Tabouillot  Music:  Leonora Duarte: Simfonia no. 7. Conducted and performed by Korneel Bernolet. Thanks to Bernolet for the kind permission to use his rendition.   Francesca Caccini: Maria dolce Maria. Performed by Capella di Santa Maria degli Angiolini. Thanks to Brilliant Classics for the kind permission to use this rendition.  Graphic design (logo): Nynne Oline B. Bennicke.  Painting (logo): Anna Maria van Schurman, self-portrait as Pudicitia (1633), used with the kind permission of Museum Martena, Franeker, The Netherlands.   This podcast is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].   Suggested reading:  Gournay, Marie le Jars de. 2002. Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works. Translated by Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel. The University of Chicago Press.  Bauschatz, Cathleen M. 2009. ‘To Choose Ink and Pen: French Renaissance Women’s Writing’. In A History of Women’s Writing in France, edited by Sonya Stephens. Cambridge University Press.  Butterworth, Emily. 2011. ‘Women Writers in the Sixteenth Century’. In The Cambridge History of French Literature, edited by William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond, and Emma Wilson. Cambridge University Press.  Heitsch, Dorothea. 2010. ‘Cats on a Windowsill: An Alchemical Study of Marie de Gournay’. In Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture. Routledge.  Larsen, Anne R. 2008. ‘A Women’s Republic of Letters: Anna Maria van Schurman, Marie de Gournay, and Female Self-Representation in Relation to the Public Sphere’. Early Modern Women. 3: 105–26.  Pal, Carol. 2012. Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press.   Taylor, Helena. 2024. Women Writing Antiquity. Gender and Learning in Early Modern France. Oxford University Press.  Project Website: culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk [https://culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk/]

Camilla Bonfiglio with Carlotta Moro

In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with Carlotta Moro, postdoc on the Cultures of Philosophy project, about the 17th-century Sicilian writer, Camilla Bonfiglio, and her treatise, Book in Praise of Women and on the Cruelty of Men. We discuss the arguments and imagery employed by Bonfiglio, through which she suggests that women are superior to men in a myriad of ways, as well as the intellectual milieu in which Bonfiglio was situated.  Camilla Bonfiglio’s Book in Praise of Women and on the Cruelty of Men (ca.1602-1619), edited and translated by Carlotta Moro, is forthcoming within the series “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe” published by Iter Press (pending peer review).  This episode was recorded in October 2025.  This podcast is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].   Guest: Carlotta Moro  Host: Helene von Tabouillot  Music: Leonora Duarte: Simfonia no. 7. Conducted and performed by Korneel Bernolet. Thanks to Bernolet for the kind permission to use his rendition.  Francesca Caccini: Maria dolce Maria. Performed by Capella di Santa Maria degli Angiolini. Thanks to Brilliant Classics for the kind permission to use this rendition.  Graphic design (logo): Nynne Oline B. Bennicke.  Painting (logo): Anna Maria van Schurman, self-portrait as Pudicitia (1633), used with the kind permission of Museum Martena, Franeker, The Netherlands.  Suggested reading:  -Cox, Virginia. 2011. The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Johns Hopkins University Press.  -Cox, Virginia. 2016. ‘Members, Muses, Mascots: Women and Italian Academies’. In The Italian Academies 1525-1700, edited by Jane E. Everson, Denis Reidy, and Lisa Sampson. Routledge.  -Fonte, Moderata. 1997. The Worth of Women. Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men. Translated by Virginia Cox. The University of Chicago Press.  -Marinella, Lucrezia. 1999. The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men. Edited and translated by Letizia Panizza and Anne Dunhill. The University of Chicago Press.  -McClure, George W. 2013. ‘The Birth of the Assicurate: Italy’s First Female Academy (1654-1704)’. In Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy. University of Toronto Press.  -Tarabotti, Arcangela. 2004. Paternal Tyranny. Edited and translated by Letizia Panizza. The University of Chicago Press.  Project Website: culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk [https://culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk/]