A first approach to “An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex” (1696): its authorship, its argumentative structure, and its rhetorical strategies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1517-0128.v1i38p54-68Keywords:
Judith Drake, Mary Astell, Nature, History, FeminismAbstract
The article offers a preliminary and partial approach to the English feminist pamphlet “An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex” (1696). After a brief introduction aimed at contextualizing the work and providing an outline of its general structure, we proceed to a more detailed analysis of its first half, reconstructing the arguments on which the defense of the female sex is based, and showing how its most relevant philosophical conclusions articulate with a sequence of rhetorical speeches specifically designed for a female audience. The article claims the emergence of a nature-history dichotomy that allows the author, on the one hand, to unmask a situation of male dominance (that we can today critically recognize as a direct antecedent of contemporary feminist discussions) and, on the other, to offer a rhetorical pathway for the conformation and reconfiguration of a feminine ethos and pathos.
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References
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