ABSTRACT
To enter history, one must have access to discourse, whether that access takes the form of being written about or of writing. One's "name" or one's writing must also be preserved, protected, and published. In early modem times, this was usually accomplished through the institutions of patronage and canonization. The "pater" in patronage suggests to us all, in this time of intense speculation about gender difference, that the relation between women and this act or condition of fathering was and is problematic. Women could themselves be patrons, and thus "fathers" to writers and artists. They could also be muses, inspirational amorous figures of absent presence who engendered poetic creation in men, paternal beings - phallocratic women - who enabled a "feminized" male poet to appropriate the creative labour of birth.! Finally, and relatedly, women's names could be preserved for the annals of history as the object of a male poet's love. Here, too, the woman was a figure; her name, extracted from the patrilineal designator that would locate her in history, acted as a sign of the poet's own fame and artistic mastery.2 Thus, while it seems evident in early modem Europe that certain women could indeed be "fathers" to writers, it is not so clear that women could be "fathered" in their tum, except perhaps as silent and obedient daughters. As Linda Nochlin bluntly put it, "Why have there been no great women artists?" (145-78).3
