Welcome to Querelle, a website devoted to the works of authors who contributed to the pro-woman side of the querelle des femmes. The querelle was a debate about the nature and worth of women that unfolded in Europe from the medieval to the early modern period. Our research focuses primarily on the 16th and 17th centuries, and on authors in Italy and France — both women and men — who circulated some of the earliest feminist arguments.

This website functions as a hub for collecting and circulating texts by feminist participants in the querelle des femmes between about 1487 (when Goggio wrote De Mulieribus) and 1693 (when Gabrielle Suchon published her Traité de la morale et de la politique). We’ve also included historical information about these participants and teaching materials. The authors presented here wrote in English, French, Italian, and Latin. Our transcriptions, in searchable formats, are public domain, and we encourage their use by researchers, instructors, students, and anyone interested in the history of this debate.

To get a larger sense of the debate and its historical context, you can consult the timeline and the Authors page, which includes biographies and images. Our website is regularly updated with additional texts, contextual information, and the results of our textual and philosophical analyses using digital as well as traditional methods of scholarship.

Please feel free to contact us with questions, suggestions for related texts, or proposed corrections.