A woman's lot. Women's participation in the public sphere in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries (1450-1650) by means of lottery-rhymes.

"A Woman's Lot" investigates what women said in public and what was said about women in public in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries (1450-1650). It will analyse public statements by both women and men to see if this is truly a time in which women were pushed out of the public into the private domain, as many scholars maintain, and if perceptions of women changed during the time period. By using lottery-rhymes, short verses submitted by buyers of both genders from many different social groups that were read out on stage during lottery-draws, this project will avoid the pitfalls of earlier research on women in the public sphere, which mostly focused on: 1) women writers, who represent only women from the highest social groups; 2) subversive speech, instead of a wider range of topics; 3) women as the only category, without comparing them to men. The PhD-project will analyse the rhymes using a combination of distant and close reading in order to: 1) identify different types of female public statements and public statements about women and link these statements to gender, regional and income variables; 2) lay bare processes of stereotyping and self-definition; 3) examine the way in which these statements are linked with other texts; 4) verify whether these topics were subject to change throughout the period. Lastly, it aims to explain changes and/or constants over time, as well as differences along gender lines, region and income levels.

Keywords:EARLY MODERN HISTORY, WOMENS HISTORY, LOW COUNTRIES

Disciplines:Early modern history, Medieval history, Gender studies