DePauw University Faculty
Professor Carrie Klaus Researches Women's participation in 17th-century French politics.
Greencastle, IN (07/17/2018) — Women's participation in 17th-century French politics has relevance in today's world, says Carrie F. Klaus, professor of modern languages (French).
Klaus, a 1993 DePauw graduate, is investigating women's voices during the Fronde, civil wars that took place in France from 1648 to 1653, when courts of law and high-ranking nobles tried to check the expanding reach of royal authority.
Last fall, Klaus spent three months conducting research in Washington D.C. at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which has a rich collection of Mazarinades, political pamphlets produced during that period. Then in spring she visited libraries in Paris, Chantilly and Bordeaux to study more of the pamphlets.
"I'm interested in the real, historical women who contributed to these pamphlets as well as the imagined women - from queens and
princesses to fishwives and prostitutes, even a statue on the banks of the Seine - to whom anonymous writers give voice," she says. Klaus is focusing on women's political authority -- that is, at what moments and in what circumstances women were perceived as having the right to speak out, engage in public life and lead nations.ris, Chantilly and Bordeaux to study more of the pamphlets.
During the Fronde, Queen Anne of Austria served as regent for her son, King Louis XIV, who was still a minor. She bore the brunt of the attacks against the crown, but she ultimately held the state together during some really turbulent years. "Of course," Klaus says, "the recent presidential campaign and election in the United States demonstrated the continuing relevance, and even urgency, of these issues."
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Ken Owen 765-658-4634, kowen@depauw.eduShare this Story
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