ABSTRACT
Disputes over woman, her nature and place in society and in the family, persisted from Antiquity throughout the Middle Ages, were conducted mainly by men. The only exception was Christine de Pisan (1363-1431), a Venetian woman living in medieval France, who wrote a treatise entitled Trésor de la Cité des Dames (1497), demanding that women should be given access to education. At the threshold of the early modern era, humanists raised the issue again, and the dispute flared up with unprecedented force. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period when hundreds of publications appeared on this subject, from learned treatises to popular and gutter literature, the latter frequently vulgar and obscene, its aim being to amuse the reader at any cost in order to boost sales and raise profits.
