Description

Book Synopsis
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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Beyond the Wall: Gender as Nexus
in Renaissance Italy
Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater

Part I Gendering Genre

1 Widows, Lament, and Ottoman Anxieties in Renaissance Florence
Anna Wainwright

2 Unhappily Ever After: Moderata Fonte’s Fairy Tale
Suzanne Magnanini

3 Amerigo Vespucci and African Amazons: Reinventing Italian
Exploration in Baroque Epic Poetry
Nathalie Hester

Part II Gendering Identities

4 The Princess Nun: The Familiar Letters of Suor Eleonora d’Este
(1515–1575), Daughter of Lucrezia Borgia
Gabriella Zarri (translated by Giuseppe Bruno-Chomin)

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

6 Maestre Pie Venerini and Filippini: Instituting Public Education
for Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Lazio
Jennifer Haraguchi

Part III Gendering Sanctity

7 The State of Grace in the Libro del Cortegiano
Michael Sherberg

8 Singing Women, Saint Cecilia, and Self-Fashioning
in Seventeenth-Century Rome
Courtney Quaintance

9 “Polemics That Might Seem Spiteful in Heaven”: Female
Spiritual Authority in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Paradiso Monacale
Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater

Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Gendering the Renaissance: Text and Context in

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    A Hardback by Meredith K. Ray, Lynn Lara Westwater, Anna Wainwright

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      Publisher: University of Delaware Press
      Publication Date: 14/04/2023
      ISBN13: 9781644533055, 978-1644533055
      ISBN10: 1644533057
      Also in:
      Literary studies: ancient, classical Gender studies, gender groups

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      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.

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction: Beyond the Wall: Gender as Nexus
      in Renaissance Italy
      Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater

      Part I Gendering Genre

      1 Widows, Lament, and Ottoman Anxieties in Renaissance Florence
      Anna Wainwright

      2 Unhappily Ever After: Moderata Fonte’s Fairy Tale
      Suzanne Magnanini

      3 Amerigo Vespucci and African Amazons: Reinventing Italian
      Exploration in Baroque Epic Poetry
      Nathalie Hester

      Part II Gendering Identities

      4 The Princess Nun: The Familiar Letters of Suor Eleonora d’Este
      (1515–1575), Daughter of Lucrezia Borgia
      Gabriella Zarri (translated by Giuseppe Bruno-Chomin)

      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

      6 Maestre Pie Venerini and Filippini: Instituting Public Education
      for Women in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Lazio
      Jennifer Haraguchi

      Part III Gendering Sanctity

      7 The State of Grace in the Libro del Cortegiano
      Michael Sherberg

      8 Singing Women, Saint Cecilia, and Self-Fashioning
      in Seventeenth-Century Rome
      Courtney Quaintance

      9 “Polemics That Might Seem Spiteful in Heaven”: Female
      Spiritual Authority in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Paradiso Monacale
      Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater

      Bibliography
      Contributors
      Index

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