Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World : Sisters, Brothers and Others

While the relationships between parents and children have long been a staple of critical inquiry, bonds between siblings have received far less attention among early modern scholars. Indeed, until now, no single volume has focused specifically on relations between brothers and sisters during the early modern period, nor do many essays or monographs address the topic. The essays in Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World focus attention on this neglected area, exploring the sibling dynamics that shaped family relations from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Using an array of feminist and cultural studies approaches, prominent scholars consider sibling ties from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including art history, musicology, literary studies, and social history. By articulating some of the underlying paradigms according to which sibling relations were constructed, the collection seeks to stimulate further scholarly research and critical inquiry into this fruitful area of early modern cultural studies. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 List of figures 10 Contributors 12 1 Introduction: Thicker than Water: Evaluating Sibling Relations in the Early Modern Period 18 Divine devotion 32 2 Making a Saint out of a Sibling 32 3 Recusant Sisters: English Catholic Women and the Bonds of Learning 45 4 Families, Convents, Music: The Power of Sisterhood 57 5 ‘Liebe Schwester ...’: Siblings, Convents, and the Reformation 70 Ties that bind 81 6 Resisting Henri IV: Catherine de Bourbon and her Brother 81 7 Sister-Subject/Sister-Queen: Elizabeth I among her Siblings 94 8 Mary Sidney’s Other Brothers 106 Drawing the line 121 9 The Politics of Private Discourse: Familial Relations in Lady May Wroth’s Urania 121 10 When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro 133 11 Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: Musicians and Sororal Relations in Later Sixteenth-Century Venice 146 12 The Shame of Siblings in David and Bethsabe 157 13 Sibling Bonds and Bondage in (and beyond) Shakespeare’s The Tempest 167 Hand in hand 183 14 Playing the Game: Sisterly Relations in Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game 183 15 ‘My Deare Sister’: Sainted Sisterhood in Early Modern England 199 16 Sisterly Feelings in Cavendish and Brackley’s Drama 212 17 ‘Thy Passionately Loving Sister and Faithfull Friend’: Anne Dormer’s Letters to her Sister Lady Trumbull 223 18 Siblings, Publications, and the Transmission of Memory: Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus 233 19 Thicker than Blood: l’oltr’altra 245 Index 248 With a focus on the gender and sibling relations, the essays in this work, explore the sibling dynamics that shaped family relations from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Using an array of feminist and cultural studies approaches, it considers sibling ties from varied perspectives.