Description
Book SynopsisA seventeenth-century play showing the reality of life for women. Valeria Miani’s
Amorous Hope is a play of remarkable richness, subtlety, and verve. It presents a scathing exposure of society’s double-standards and it champions women’s dramatic agency by centering on the bleak reality they often faced, a reality that attempted to harm and silence its victims. The play’s salient episodes reflect realities modern women still face today.
Miani’s literary achievements attest to her emergence as a cultural protagonist alongside Europe’s most talented women writers, such as Isabella Andreini, and she challenged the premodern notion that a woman’s eloquence is an indication of her sexual promiscuity.
Trade Review“Joining recent publications of other drama by Italian women around 1600, Miani’s
Amorous Hope is a work of considerable interest by a playwright only recently becoming better known after long neglect. Coller’s introduction, which makes use of excellent and up-to-date scholarship, persuasively presents Miani’s participation within a network of literati and academia members and pursues this topic of interconnections through a detailed account of her poems published in anthologies alongside the verses of others. Its discussion of the play focuses on Miani’s treatment of the main issue: male injustices to women, and the corrections or penalties delivered by the two leading female characters. As Coller points out, the lessons given by female characters are also the lessons to the audience by the playwright herself.” -- Janet L. Smarr, University of California San Diego
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Illustrations
Introduction
The Other Voice
Life, Works, and Afterlife of Valeria Miani
The Ricovrati of Padua
The Ricovrati on the Education of Women
Miani among the “Illustrious and Famous Poets of Italy”: Contributions to Polinnia (1609) and
the Gareggiamento poetico (1611)
Miani’s Madrigal in Paolo Bozi’s Vita, attioni, miracoli (1614)
Miani’s Amorosa speranza and Female-Authored Pastoral Drama
Amorosa speranza: Structure and Themes
Note on the Italian Text
Note on the Transcription
Note on the Translation
Amorosa speranza / Amorous Hope
Notes to the Italian Text
Notes to the English Translation
Appendix
Selections from Polinnia
Selections from Gareggiamento poetico, Le Lodi (Part Four)
Bibliography
Index
