Gendering the Renaissance: Text and Context in Early Modern Italy

Published by University of Delaware Press 2023

Gendering the Renaissance

Text and Context in Early Modern Italy

Edited by: Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater
With contributions by: Anna Wainwright , Suzanne Magnanini , Nathalie Hester , Gabriella Zarri , Emanuela Zanotti Carney , Jennifer Haraguchi , Michael Sherberg , Courtney Quaintance , Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater

In the series The Early Modern Exchange

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781644533079

Overview
Contents

About this book

The essays in this volume revisit the Italian Renaissance to rethink spaces thought to be defined and certain: from the social spaces of convent, court, or home, to the literary spaces of established genres such as religious plays or epic poetry. Repopulating these spaces with the women who occupied them but have often been elided in the historical record, the essays also remind us to ask what might obscure our view of texts and archives, what has remained marginal in the texts and contexts of early modern Italy and why. The contributors, suggesting new ways of interrogating gendered discourses of genre, identities, and sanctity, offer a complex picture of gender in early modern Italian literature and culture. Read in dialogue with one another, their pieces provide a fascinating survey of currents in gender studies and early modern Italian studies and point to exciting future directions in these fields.

Author / Editor information

Meredith K. Ray is Elias Ahuja Professor of Italian at the University of Delaware. Her books include Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letters to Galileo: Astronomy, Astrology, and Poetics in Seventeenth-Century Italy, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, and Writing Gender in Women’s Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance. Her translations include Machiavelli: Political, Historical, and Literary Writings, co-edited with Mark Jurdjevic and, with Lynn Lara Westwater, Arcangela Tarabotti’s Letters Familiar and Formal and Convent Paradise.

Lynn Lara Westwater is a professor of Italian at The George Washington University. Her books include Sarra Copia Sulam: A Salonnière and the Press in Counter-Reformation Venice; with Meredith K. Ray, critical editions of Arcangela Tarabotti’s Letters Familiar and Formal and Convent Paradise; and with Diana Robin, a critical edition of Ippolita Sforza’s writing titled Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Beyond the Wall: Gender as Nexus in Renaissance Italy Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I Gendering Genre
1 Widows, Lament, and Ottoman Anxieties in Renaissance Florence Anna Wainwright Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2 Unhappily Ever After: Moderata Fonte’s Fairy Tale Suzanne Magnanini Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3 Amerigo Vespucci and African Amazons: Reinventing Italian Exploration in Baroque Epic Poetry Nathalie Hester Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Part II Gendering Identities
4 The Princess Nun: The Familiar Letters of Suor Eleonora d’Este (1515–1575), Daughter of Lucrezia Borgia Gabriella Zarri Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
5 A Christian Romance for Married Women: Marriage, Female Spirituality, and the Pursuit of Saintliness in Antonia Pulci’s Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma Emanuela Zanotti Carney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
6 Maestre Pie Venerini and Filippini: Instituting Public Education for Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Lazio Jennifer Haraguchi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
Part III Gendering Sanctity
7 The State of Grace in the Libro del Cortegiano Michael Sherberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
8 Singing Women, Saint Cecilia, and Self-Fashioning in Seventeenth-Century Rome Courtney Quaintance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
9 “Polemics That Might Seem Spiteful in Heaven”: Female Spiritual Authority in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Paradiso Monacale Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291

Language: English
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 304
Illustrations
- Other: 10 bw, 3 color images
Keywords: Arcangela Tarabotti; Antonia Pulci; women's studies; gender studies; genre studies; literary studies; literary criticism; Italian studies; Renaissance studies; Italian Renaissance; early modern studies; early modern Italy; early modern race; European literature; Italian literature; women's education; women and religion

eBook

Published: April 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781644533079