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Moderata Fonte
What did it mean to be a woman in sixteenth-century Venice? How did women impact the everyday life of this brilliant, festive, but essentially patriarchal city? How did an educated, sensitive, and intelligent woman writer of the Venetian citizen class treat the question of gender relationships and of women's place in society? These questions are at the center of this volume, which explores the role of Venetian women in sixteenth-century culture as well as the contribution of the writer Moderata Fonte to the centuries-old war of the sexes.
The Worth of Women
Gender equality and the responsibility of husbands and fathers: issues that loom large today had currency in Renaissance Venice as well, as evidenced by the publication in 1600 of The Worth of Women by Moderata Fonte. Moderata Fonte was the pseudonym of Modesta Pozzo (1555–92), a Venetian woman who was something of an anomaly. Neither cloistered in a convent nor as liberated from prevailing codes of decorum as a courtesan might be, Pozzo was a respectable, married mother who produced literature in genres that were commonly considered "masculine"—the chivalric romance and the literary dialogue. This work takes the form of the latter, with Fonte creating a conversation among seven Venetian...
Floridoro
The first original chivalric poem written by an Italian woman, Floridoro imbues a strong feminist ethos into a hypermasculine genre. Dotted with the usual characteristics—dark forests, illusory palaces, enchanted islands, seductive sorceresses—Floridoro is the story of the two greatest knights of a bygone age: the handsome Floridoro, who risks everything for love, and the beautiful Risamante, who helps women in distress while on a quest for her inheritance. Throughout, Moderata Fonte (1555–92) vehemently defends women’s capacity to rival male prowess in traditionally male-dominated spheres. And her open criticism of women’s lack of education is echoed in the plights of various female characters who must depend on unreliable men. First published in 1581, Floridoro remains a vivacious and inventive narrative by a singular poet.
Daughters of Alchemy
The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men. Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza’s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for “books of...
Italian Women and the City
Studies of the city, and of women's experiences of the city, have focused primarily on modern times, especially as modernism was defined in large part by urban life. Italy, however, has a long history of urban-centered culture, and women have been a vocal part of that culture since the Renaissance. This volume, therefore, looks at the art and literature of both earlier and more modern periods to investigate the meanings of the city for Italian women, the intensely gendered meanings (for both sexes) of those city spaces that excluded women, and the conditions that permitted a limited permeability of gendered boundaries. Two aspects to the combination of "women" and "city" are salient to these...
The Merits of Women
“Among the great classics of early feminist thought . . . challenging, witty . . . a sometimes startlingly original discussion of women’s status.” —Literary Hub You would as well look for blood in a corpse as for the least shred of decency in a man . . . Without help from their wives, men are just like unlit lamps . . . Just think of them as an unreliable clock that tells you it’s ten o’clock when it’s in fact barely two . . . These are but a small selection of the quips bandied about at this lively gathering of women. Yet this dialogue unfolds not among ironically misandrist millennials venting at their local dive bar, but rather among sixteenth-century women—variously marri...
Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World
While the relationships between parents and children have long been a staple of critical inquiry, bonds between siblings have received far less attention among early modern scholars. Indeed, until now, no single volume has focused specifically on relations between brothers and sisters during the early modern period, nor do many essays or monographs address the topic. The essays in Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World focus attention on this neglected area, exploring the sibling dynamics that shaped family relations from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Using an array of feminist and cultural studies approaches, prominent scholars consider sibling ties from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including art history, musicology, literary studies, and social history. By articulating some of the underlying paradigms according to which sibling relations were constructed, the collection seeks to stimulate further scholarly research and critical inquiry into this fruitful area of early modern cultural studies.
Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A-J
Publisher description
Flori, a Pastoral Drama
One of the first pastoral dramas published by an Italian woman, Flori is Maddalena Campiglia's most substantial surviving literary work and one of the earliest known examples of secular dramatic writing by a woman in Europe. Although acclaimed in her day, Campiglia (1553-95) has not benefited from the recent wave of scholarship that has done much to enhance the visibility and reputation of contemporaries such as Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and Veronica Franco. As this bilingual, first-ever critical edition of Flori illustrates, this neglect is decidedly unwarranted. Flori is a work of great literary and cultural interest, noteworthy in particular for the intensity of its focus on the experiences and perceptions of its female protagonists and their ideals of female autonomy. Flori will be read by those involved in the study of early modern literature and drama, women's studies, and the study of gender and sexuality in this period.
Joining the Conversation
Avoiding the male-authored model of competing orations, French and Italian women of the Renaissance framed their dialogues as informal conversations, as letters with friends that in turn became epistles to a wider audience, and even sometimes as dramas. No other study to date has provided thorough, comparative view of these works across French, Italian, and Latin. Smarr's comprehensive treatment relates these writings to classical, medieval, and Renaissance forms of dialogue, and to other genres including drama, lyric exchange, and humanist invective -- as well as to the real conversations in women's lives -- in order to show how women adapted existing models to their own needs and purposes. Janet Levarie Smarr is Professor of Theatre and Italian Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
