Marconville, Jean de (1520-1580) De la Bonté et Mauvaistie des Femmes.
Paris: Pour Jean Dallier, 1566.
Second edition, octavo, printer's woodcut device to title, some damp staining, bound in contemporary limp parchment, lacking ties, covers wrinkled, 6 x 4 1/4 in.
Marconville was an active participant in the Renaissance querelle des femmes, wherein the relative worth and potential human rights of women were weighed against men in a series of philosophical works that drew on everything from Christian teachings, observations of other cultures, and practices of the ancients. "The querelle des femmes is usually traced back to Jean de Meung's Roman de la Rose (1398-1402), which insisted on the inferiority of women. The relationship between men and women continued to be a staple of French literature, enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the 1530s. Among the more prominent texts in this round were Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Declaration de la Noblesse et Preexcellence du Sexe Feminin, [...] which attached inequality by gender; and Jean de Marconville, focused on women as sexually insatiable and generally inferior." (Quoted from Katherine Crawford's The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 2010, note 54, page 124.)
