Margaret Cavendish and the exiles of the mind

Description:

Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), led a dramatic life that brought her into contact with kings, queens, and the leading thinkers of her day. The English civil wars forced her into exile, accompanying Queen Henrietta and her court to Paris. From this vantage point, she began writing voluminously, responding to the events and major intellectual movements of the mid-seventeenth century. Cavendish published twenty-three volumes in her lifetime, including plays, romances, poetry, letters, biography, and natural philosophy. While previous biographers of Cavendish have focused almost exclusively on her eccentric public behavior, Anna Battigelli is the first to explore in depth her intellectual life. She dismisses the myth of Cavendish as an isolated and lonely thinker, arguing instead that the role of exile was a rhetorical stance, one that allowed Cavendish to address and even criticize her world.

subjects: History,  Knowledge and learning,  Exiles,  Women and literature,  Intellectual life,  Royalists,  British,  Renaissance,  Exiles in literature,  Newcastle, margaret cavendish, duchess of, 1624?-1674,  Great britain, intellectual life,  British, europe,  Renaissance, england,  Study and teaching

People: Margaret Cavendish Newcastle Duchess of (1624?-1674)

Places: Europe,  Great Britain,  England

Times: 17th century