Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (born Margaret Lucas, * 1623, † 1673 ), was an English aristocrat and writer.
Life
Cavendish was the youngest sister of the famous royalists Sir John Lucas and Sir Charles Lucas. She was an attendant of Queen Henrietta Maria of France and accompanied these into exile in France, where she spent some time at the court of the young Louis XIV. She became the second wife of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and through the collection of her husband in 1660 during the English Restoration to the Duchess.
Cavendish worked as a poet, philosopher, essayist and playwright. At a time when most women published anonymously, Cavendish published her work under her own name. Her publications dealt with a large number of issues, including gender and power issues, and correct behavior. Other publications devoted to the then absolutely dominated by men field of natural philosophy. Cavendish was repeated appreciated and criticized, which had a decisive influence on the work of other downstream women as a female author. Samuel Pepys called her " mad, conceited and ridiculous. "
As Naturphilosophin Cavendish rejected the mechanistic philosophy of the 17th century as well as from the Aristotle attributable to prevailing opinion in the philosophy of their time. She developed a counter-model to the prevailing philosophy, according to which nature is a more complex system than that it could be explained solely by mechanical laws. She was referring to in their understanding of the existing of imperishable matter and empty space universe on Epicurus. The matter consists of tiny, indivisible particles called atoms that would make contact with each other through the objects of the sensible world. The matter was put together again and again and so the world was eternal process after Cavendish. They also described the emergence of animated matter, which could form on their own, without the intervention of a god, items, and create. Their philosophy is a rejection of the creation story, and brought her the time serious charge of atheism.
Cavendish criticized the theories of important members of the Royal Society, and sat as apart as the natural philosopher Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and Robert Boyle with them. Today, it is the first of a series of "scientific ladies" who performed scientific contributions in the 18th century.
Works
Cavendish wrote 1653-1671 fifteen academic books on various topics.
- 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 )
Swell
- 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 glistening world. Übers and with an afterword provided by Virginia Judge. Munich: Scaneg Verlag, 2001.
- Cavendish, Margaret. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. ed Eileen O'Neill. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001.
- Cottegnies, Line, and Nancy Weitz (Ed.), Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish. Cranbury, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.
- 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