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The objective of this article is to determine if the work of full-time professors in Canada varies depending on the type of universities in which they are employed. A nonparametric comparison of multivariate samples based on data from the Academic Profession in the Knowledge Society (APIKS) survey was used to examine faculty perceptions of their academic work. The results show statistically significant, albeit minimal, differences between primarily undergraduate, comprehensive, and research-intensive institutions. This article confirms that, to a small extent, institutional diversity in Canada is mirrored in academic work, and argues that both vertical and horizontal forms of diversity may exist simultaneously depending on the relative value granted to specific academic activities.

Keywords: Diversité institutionnelle, Institutional diversity, diversité horizontale, Horizontal diversity, diversité verticale, Vertical diversity, professorat canadien, Canadian professoriate, travail universitaire, Maclean's ranking, classement du Maclean’s, U15, U15, Academic work

The aim of this paper is to develop the notions of particularism and generalism in argumentation theory. Generalism is the claim that to argue we need general rules that specify which data support which conclusions, while particularism denies it. The problem is that it is not always clear what these rules consist of, and in what sense argumentation depend on them. To clarify this, I will first introduce the discussion in moral philosophy and show how it has been adapted to argumentation theory. Then I will distinguish some ways of understanding rules and contend that their alleged necessity might be supported in at least three ways. This will allow me to identify some variants of generalism and, on this basis, to outline what I consider to be the most promising reading of particularism.

Keywords: atomism, argumentative rules, generalism, holism of reasons, particularism

This article explores youthful subjectivity in both dramatic and non-dramatic verse, considering representations of female youth in Shakespeare’s late romance Pericles alongside the work of poet and polemicist Rachel Speght. The complex, unstable category of youth contributes both to Shakespeare’s rendering of his fourteen-year-old female character in his play and to Speght’s portrayal of herself in her poetry. Shakespeare’s Marina narrates her own tale and reconstitutes narratives spun about her, creating space for youthful self-fashioning. Nineteen-year-old Speght undertakes a similar project of self-making in her prose treatises and particularly in her two published poems, “A Dreame” and Mortalities Memorandum. This article compares self-fashioning in the work of a young female writer to the construction of the young female self by a contemporary male writer, suggesting that youthful subjectivity inheres for both girls in principles of authorship and narrative authority.

Keywords: Rachel Speght, William Shakespeare, Youth, Adolescence, Girls, Subjectivity, Narrative

Claude Boudan was a Celestine monk of significant stature, who held several offices within the Order. He was also a prolific and talented author of Latin verse. Among his numerous works still in manuscript, the long poem in dactylic hexameters, titled De mutua hugonostici belli et catholicae pacis collatione carmen heroicum, is unique insofar as it offers his perspective on the contemporaneous events of the Wars of Religion in France. Written in an energetic, and at times eve polemical tone, the poem describes several violent incidents that occurred during the period beginning in the early 1560S and preceding the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre of 1572, adopting a resolutely partisan point of view. In this, it resembles much of the polemical poetry written during the period, by authors as diverse as Ronsard, d’Aubigné, Jean Dorat, and Léger Du Chesne.

Keywords: Poésie polémique, Guerres de Religion, Célestins, Rayonnement culturel monastique, littérature engagée

After the Edict of Nantes is revoked, Protestantism is declared illegal in France, but Protestants gather for private or public clandestine worship services, creating a resistance movement. As the century of repression progresses, the resistance becomes more organized: from 1718 onwards, pastors are trained in Switzerland and sent back to France to oversee the clandestine churches. This study explores the objects used by the resistance, some allowing it to continue its illegal activities, others to hide its existence and protect the faithful. First of all, books enable Protestants to worship privately, within their homes. Secondly, as pastors begin overseeing public worship services, Protestants use liturgical objects, some of which are ingenuously hidden in their everyday life. Finally, Protestant houses are adapted to accommodate and hide clandestine activities.

Keywords: Mouvement de resistance, Religion, Protestantisme, Objets

This article studies the positions of two great female writers of the medieval period in the construction of a cultural vocabulary destined to become that of the “Querelle des Femmes”—the ceaseless debate on the place of women in society which grew out of the writings of medieval moralists and preachers. In the historical context of a generalized misogyny that both prescribed and justified the exclusion of women—considered to be naturally inferior to men—from the world of literature, Marie de France and Christine de Pizan affirm their intellectual authority and demonstrate the beauty, both perfect and paradoxical, of women’s writing.

Keywords: Moyen Âge, Écriture, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Genre

As champions and the detractors of the female cause confronted one another repeatedly in writing from the fifteenth century onward, their arguments made their way into many handbooks and etiquette books addressed to men and women of the European élite. The French versions of these Renaissance texts were widely published and read during the sixteenth century. This study focuses in particular on the echoes and dramatizations of debates concerning the excellence and dignity of women in the most popular French versions of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Vivès’ De institutione feminae christianae, and Guevera’s Dial of Princes, as well as Boaistuau’s Institution des princes chrétiens. Fear of losing power, examples of strong women, misogynist denial, dissenting voices—all have their place in these texts and lend an element of paradox to the their exhortations to female perfection, made in the context of a reinforced gender roles and an explosion of contradictory discourses on the subject of female nature.

Keywords: Querelle des femmes, Institutions des élites, Traductions françaises imprimées, Castiglione, Vivès, Guevara, Boaistuau

In her memoirs, the Comtesse de Murat replies to the long list of misogynist accusations made in Abbé de Villiers’s Mémoires de la vie du comte D*** avant sa retraite (1696) by criticizing gender inequalities and by emphasizing female virtue. This article focuses on Murat’s positive representation of female friendship, whereby she denounces Villiers’s allegation that women’s affection is guided by greed. While Murat’s protagonist proves the contrary through her devoted comradeship with Mademoiselle Laval, not all female relationships in Murat’s memoirs are portrayed in a favourable light. The protagonist’s femme de chambre, for example, confirms Villiers’s critique of female covetousness and disloyalty. Even the relationship between the protagonist and Mademoiselle Laval is tarnished by sapphic allusions that are, however, outwardly denied. This article analyzes Murat’s paradoxical representation of women that builds on pro-feminist arguments by François Poullain de la Barre and Gabrielle Suchon. Yet, this paradox is lessened in Murat through the attribution of immoral acts to both sexes. Furthermore, the intimate connection between Mademoiselle Laval and the protagonist lends itself to a double entendre that advocates for homoeroticism and a preference for female-centred communities over heterosexual relationships.

Keywords: Querelle des Femmes, Comtesse de Murat, Female Friendship, Lesbianism

Machiavelli shared with Renaissance society the ideal of a cultural and civil renovatio, of a new conception of life and freedom. Even if the misogynistic element in his work prevails over the philogynous, Machiavelli was keenly aware of the contradictions of his time and conceived of extraordinary female figures showing all the paradoxes of a society intent on the pursuit of perfection in the “mutation” between “right measure,” “grace,” and bon giudicio. Starting from a study of the gender and critical interest in Machiavelli’s representation of women, this article, through a new reading of Machiavelli’s theatrical texts, tries to demonstrate this paradox and to suggest what we might call its “moral reason.” Through the comic element generated by the reversal of perspective, Machiavelli reflected on the immoral, or amoral, values of a private and public life, created according to ancient norms that regarded women, despite their worth and their education, as objects of the scenic perfection of life in society, from which they could escape only by relying on their own intelligence.

Keywords: Machiavel, Machiavelli, The women question, Querelle des femmes, La mandragore, The Mandrake, Clizia, Clizia

“She did make defect perfection” (Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.242): by this formula, Enobarbus sums up the essence of Cleopatra’s inimitable charm. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra is a study of women and women: in other words, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra is less fiction than an investigation of the other sex. “Was will das Weib?” asked Freud (if we are to believe Marie Bonaparte’s testimony), thus admitting that the great question psychoanalysis has been unable to answer is the enigma of feminine desire. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra represents this enigma, which takes the form of a perfection resulting from a series of paradoxes: beauty and maturity, cunning and folly, fidelity and betrayal, jealousy and indifference, majesty and debauchery, expense and economy, audacity and fragility, truth and lies. Cleopatra’s perfection is the sum of all possible paradoxes. What is the point of this dizzying interplay of paradoxes? What is the resulting perfection?

Keywords: Antoine et Cléopâtre, Antony and Cleopatra, Querelle des Femmes, Querelle des Femmes, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Lacan, Lacan, Freud, Freud, Phallus, Phallus, Feminine jouissance, Jouissance féminine, Pucelle venimeuse, Pucelle venimeuse