Klein werk: de Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, prosaica et metrica van Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678)

[p. 5]

Summary

Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) was the first female student in the Netherlands and obtained the reputation of the most erudite woman of her time. Van Schurman bequeathed an extensive oeuvre to posterity, but since it was written in languages unknown to all but a handful today, she is less well known today than she deserves.

Firstly, I will discuss the production and publication history, the wide distribution and the reception of her book Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, prosaica et metrica, first published in 1648 and for the last time in 1749.

Subsequently, twenty-five documents in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French (poems as well as (erudite) letters are selected from the Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, prosaica et metrica in which V.S's involvement with especially contemporary female issues is illustrated - for example her study as a woman, her involvement with the foundation of the University of Utrecht in 1636, her virginity, and her relationship with erudite, female contemporary friends in comparison with male contemporaries. Of these documents, the original text is provided in each case, with a Dutch translation and an historical commentary.

The study of the Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, prosaica et metrica, has contributed to a better view of Anna Maria van Schurman, as well as of the (now mostly unknown) women with whom she corresponded. Against the background of the Opuscula, it can be demonstrated that the well-known Respublica Litteraria or the Republic of Letters had a somewhat deviant offshoot, a Women's Republic of Letters, with Van Schurman as influential centre of gravity.

Moreover, this study has contributed to a better and broader understanding of the Renaissance. It has increasingly been realised that limiting literary studies on the Renaissance to works written in the contemporary vernacular could lead to a distorted view of this period. In many countries most works were still published in Latin. That was also the case with Van Schurman. Her central work, the Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, was written in Latin , Greek, Hebrew and French. The extant poems and letters in Dutch were only published posthumously or, in her lifetime, as an addendum to works by men. By also comparing her central work with her (predominantly pietist) unpublished Dutch poems, it could be demonstrated that

[p. 6]

the religious movement to which Van Schurman belonged, the second Reformation, should be interpreted much more within the humanist tradition than has been assumed until recently.

In the coming years an edition of the complete Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica prosaica et metrica will be published by the Constantijn Huygens Institute of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in the Hague, the Netherlands.