ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three major themes: power, the body, and the relationship between public and private. It provides a brief survey of the historiography relating to each of those themes. Many historians would now concur that gender categories have been built in terms of power relations. In exploring the nature of power and power relations, some feminist historians have found Foucauldian theories valuable, whereby a juridical theory of power is rejected in favour of the theory of a disciplinary society informed by new knowledges that in turn bring forth new modes of surveillance and regulation. The Reformation can also be read as a paradigm of a process of crisis, upheaval and restabilization in gender relations that is echoed at other moments in German history. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
