Einleitung: Gewohnheit, Erfahrung und die ‚schreibende Frau‘

Abstract This introduction summarizes some of the main hypotheses that underly the contributions of this thematic issue of ARTES which is dedicated to the role of habit/custom and experience in the writing of some Early Modern women authors. One hypothesis is that references to habit and experience may have supported Early Modern women writers in their efforts to legitimize their arguments, knowledge and writing, the reason for this being that – due to various social restrictions and expectations – women were often denied access to other fields of knowledge, especially that of so-called book knowledge. Hence, the question arises to what extent the references to habit/custom and experience are connected to the question of female education and female strategies of (self-)empowerment. I will illustrate this using the prominent example of the medieval writer Christine de Pizan. Since the specific nature of female claims can only be assessed against the background of male writing practices, I will also make some introductory remarks on habit/custom and experience with reference to Early Modern male authors.