Margaret Cavendish

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Margaret Cavendish, 1665, painting by Peter Lely

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (born Margaret Lucas ; * 1623 ; † 1673 ), was an English noblewoman, writer, philosopher and scientist.

Life

Cavendish was the youngest sister of the famous royalists Sir John Lucas and Sir Charles Lucas . She was a lady-in-waiting of Queen Henrietta Maria of France and accompanied her into exile in France , where she spent some time at the court of the young Louis XIV . In France, she became the second wife of William Cavendish in 1645 , and through the elevation of her husband in 1660 during the English Restoration to Duchess ( Duchess ).

From 1651, the year she returned to England, Cavendish worked as a poet , philosopher , essayist and playwright . At a time when most women were publishing anonymously, Cavendish was publishing her work under her own name. Her publications dealt with a wide variety of topics, including gender, power and behavior. Further publications were devoted to the then absolutely male dominated field of natural philosophy . Cavendish has been repeatedly recognized and criticized as an author who was a decisive influence on the work of other women who followed her. Samuel Pepys called them "crazy, conceited and ridiculous."

As a natural philosopher, Cavendish rejected the mechanistic philosophy of the seventeenth century as well as the prevailing opinion in the philosophy of her day that could be traced back to Aristotle . She developed a counter-model to the prevailing philosophy, according to which nature is too complex a system to be explained by mechanical laws alone. She referred to Epicurus in her understanding of the universe made up of immortal matter and empty space . Matter consists of the smallest, indivisible particles, the atoms, which through contact with one another form the objects of the sensually perceptible world. According to Cavendish, matter can always be reassembled, and so the world process is eternal. She also described the formation of animated matter, which can shape and create objects on its own, without the intervention of a god. Her philosophy means a rejection of the history of creation and brought her the then serious accusation of atheism .

Cavendish criticized the theories of important members of the Royal Society and dealt with them as well as with the natural philosophers Thomas Hobbes , René Descartes and Robert Boyle . Today she is considered the first of a whole series of " scientific ladies " who made scientific contributions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Through her novel The Blazing World , in which an unnamed narrator comes across the North Pole into a strange world, she is considered the first female science fiction author.

Works

Cavendish wrote around fifteen scientific books on various subjects between 1653 and 1671.

  • Poems and Fancies (1653)
  • Philosophical Fancies (1653)
  • World's Olio (1655)
  • The Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655)
  • Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life ( 1656 )
  • A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656)
  • Orations (1662)
  • Plays (1662)
  • Sociable Letters (1662)
  • Philosophical Letters (1662)
  • Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666)
  • The Blazing World (1666)
  • Life, a biography of William Cavendish (1667)
  • Plays Never Before Published (1668)
  • Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668)
  • The Convent of Pleasure (1668)

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Books

  • George Ballard : Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain, who have been celebrated for their writings, or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences . Oxford 1752.
  • Bowerbank, Sylvia and Sara Mendelson (Eds.), Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader , Peterborough: Broadview, 2000.
  • Cavendish, Margaret. The glittering world . Translated and with an afterword by Virginia Richter. Munich: Scaneg Verlag, 2001.
  • Cavendish, Margaret. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy . ed. Eileen O'Neill. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001.
  • Cottegnies, Line, and Nancy Weitz, (Eds.), Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish. Cranbury, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.
  • Lara A. Dodds: The Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendish. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 2013.
  • Whitaker, Katie. Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by Her Pen . New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Others

  • Paloma, Dolores. Margaret Cavendish: Defining the female self. Women's Studies 1980 7.

Web links

Commons : Margaret Cavendish  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the paragraph: Philosophers and women in philosophy. www.dorner-verlag.at. Retrieved July 15, 2011.
  2. ^ Adam Roberts: The History of Science Fiction. Palgrave & Macmillan, Houndmills 2006, ISBN 1403911967 , p. 47 f.
personal data
SURNAME Cavendish, Margaret
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lucas, Margaret (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English nobleman and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1623
DATE OF DEATH 1673