Description
Book SynopsisFrom the time Catterina Vizzani, a young Roman woman, began wooing the woman she was attracted to, she did so dressed as a man. Fleeing Rome to avoid a potential trial for sexual misdeeds, she became Giovanni Bordoni, transitioning and becoming a male in spirit, deed, and body, through what was the most complete physical change possible in the eighteenth century.
This volume features Giovanni Bianchi’s 1744 Italian account of Vizzani/Bordoni, published for the first time together with a modern English translation, making available to an English-speaking audience the objective, scientific exploration of gender conducted by Bianchi. John Cleland’s well-known, albeit fanciful, 1751 version of the story has also been reproduced here, shedding light on the divergent sexual politics driving Bianchi’s Italian original and Cleland’s greatly embellished English translation.
Through a close examination of Bianchi’s work as anatomical practitioner and scholar, Clorinda Donato traces the development of his advocacy for tolerance of all sexual orientations. Several chapters address the medical and philosophical inquiry into sexual preference, reproduction, sexual identity, and gender fluidity which Enlightenment anatomists from Holland to Italy engaged with in their research concerning the relationship between the mind and the reproductive organs. Meanwhile, it is the social implications of gender ambiguity which may be analysed in Cleland’s condemnation of women who “pass” as men.
Drawing on the biographies produced by Bianchi and Cleland, the volume reflects on the motivation of each author to tell the story of Vizzani/Bordoni either as a narration of empowerment or a cautionary tale within the European context of evolving sexual opinions, some based on scientific research, others based on social practice and cultural norms.
Trade ReviewReviews Winner of the American Association of Teachers of Italian's 2021 book award in the 1800-Present: Film, Media, & Cultural Studies category.
'The story of Caterina Vizzani/Giovanni Bordoni also inspires an articulate volume by Clorinda Donato. [...] In her study, [she] offers a meticulous analysis of the differences between the Italian and English versions. [...] Even more pressing are the knots linked to our present, especially on the side of statements, in the always delicate relationship between nature and culture. [...] That same thread, according to Clorinda Donato, cost Caterina Vizzani/Giovanni Bordoni her life and continues to threaten LGBTQ+ lives today, keeping them poised between visibility and invisibility, exposing them to multiple forms of discrimination.'
Translated from Italian:
'Oggi la vicenda di Caterina Vizzani/Giovanni Bordoni ispira anche un articolato volume della studiosa americana Clorinda Donato, [...] Clorinda Donato propone, nel suo studio, una minuziosa analisi delle differenze fra la versione italiana e quella inglese. [...] Ancora più stringenti sono i nodi legati al nostro presente, soprattutto sul versante delle enunciazioni, nel sempre delicato rapporto fra natura e cultura.[...] Quello stesso filo, secondo Clorinda Donato, costò la vita a Caterina Vizzani/Giovanni Bordoni e continua a minacciare oggi le vite LGBTQ+, mantenendole in bilico fra visibilità e invisibilità, esponendole a molteplici forme di discriminazione.'
Vincenzo Lagioia & Pasquale Palmieri,
Doppiozero'Drawing from impressive and exhaustive archival research, this highly original and engaging study focuses on the question of sexual identity in early modern Italy and England. [...] This timely study skillfully and persuasively weaves contemporary relevance into the discussion by exploring questions of gender fluidity, sexual politics, and cultural norms.'American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI) from their 2021 book awards.
‘[…] The author Clorinda Donato considers the motivation of Bianchi and Cleland to narrate the life of Vizzani/Bordoni in the European context of the Eighteenth century, with a special attention on scientific research, social practice and cultural norms […] The interesting volume by Clorinda Donato also opens to this possibility of research and interpretation.’
Maria Pia Pagani,
Sinestesie‘Clorinda Donato’s book on the Catterina Vizzani story demonstrates the importance of an informed approach to the biographical treatment of alternative sexualities and constitutes a rich and valuable addition to the historiography of queer sexuality in early modern Europe.’
Sara F. Matthews-Grieco,
Early Modern Women'Donato has not only shed light on... [an] important document for historical inquiry on sexuality and gender; she has also succeeded in constructing a dense, multi-layered narrative, one that does not eschew precision and erudition, but that is at the same time extremely readable and, in fact, quite captivating, even for a non-expert readership.'
Sabrina Ovan,
Annali d’Italianistica'A detailed analysis'
Vincenzo Lagioia and Pasquale Palmieri,
Doppiozero‘The Life and legend of Catterina Vizzani is an incredibly rich and original study that deepens and nuances our knowledge of ideas and practices of sexuality and gender circulating in Italy and England in the 1700s. A delightful read both for the specialist and general public… an outstanding example of intercultural reading.’ Irene Zanini-Cordi, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century
‘Bringing together histories of the Grand Tour, anatomy and dissection, sexuality and gender, translation studies, and much more, this book weaves together a fascinating narrative about Vizzani/Bordoni, biographer Giovanni Bianchi, and English translator and commentator John Cleland. The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani makes available a new critical text for the growing field of trans eighteenth-century studies, and its discussions of women’s sexuality and bodies make it a valuable addition to women’s history and sexuality studies more broadly.’ Ula E. Lukszo Klein, ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Table of ContentsList of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Giovanni Bianchi, John Cleland and the Breve storia: an overview of Italian and English eighteenth-century sexualities Gender in translation
Synopsis of Giovanni Bianchi’s Breve storia
Synopsis of John Cleland’s translation of the
Breve storia:
[An] His[toric]al and phy[s]ic[al] dissertation on the case of Catherine Vizzani (1751) /
The True history and adventures of Catharine Vizzani (1755)
Female masculinity
Genesis of the project
Anatomical study in Italy and Holland
Reading and writing Vizzani: Cleland’s translation
A preliminary note on translation
Place, space and agency
The
cicisbeo Gender studies, queer studies and the Italian peninsula
Geographies of sexualities: mapping sexuality in Bianchi’s life and the
Breve storia Chapter 1: Situating Giovanni Bianchi: the biography of an anatomist man of letters The geopolitical landscape of Italian science: academies, universities and intellectual life in Rimini and Siena
A contested reputation in Siena: Bianchi’s university career
Chapter 2: An apology for same-sex love: Bianchi’s discourse to the Academy of the Defective Chapter 3: The literature of science and sexuality in eighteenth-century Italy and its fourteenth- to seventeenth-century European precedents Dutch and Italian precursors in the discourse of generation and the practice of autopsy
Religious autopsies, domestic autopsies and science: Bianchi’s parody
A 'chaste' performance of militant gender-crossing in seventeenth-century Rome: Spanish warrior Catalina de Erauso, the
monja alférez The evidence: the materiality of Vizzani’s guilt and exoneration
Chapter 4: Technologies of gender identity in eighteenth- century Italy and England: the story of Catterina Vizzani’s autopsy The structure of the
Breve storia Medicine and autopsy in the
Breve storia Taking 'a freak of this kind into her head': Cleland on dissection, cause and blame
Chapter 5: Novelistic prose in eighteenth-century Italy: Cleland in Italy, Bianchi in England and the cultivation of Boccaccio among men of science and letters Gozzi’s 1764
La Meretrice, the 1810
La Meretrice inglese and the debate over the novel and morality
The novel in eighteenth-century Italy
Narrating anatomy: anatomists and Boccaccio
Bianchi and Boccaccio
Chapter 6: The transgendered familial and working spaces of Catterina Vizzani/Giovanni Bordoni and their narrators Cleland’s reimagined spaces of English domestic transgression
Chapter 7: Translating transgender: Giovanni Bianchi and John Cleland writing queer desire in the eighteenth century Eighteenth-century gender trouble and its textual resonance
Queering eighteenth-century prose
Narrating Catterina/Giovanni’s life
Translation samples comparing Giovanni Bianchi’s text in my translation with John Cleland’s translation
Chapter 8: Cleland’s motivation: Catterina Vizzani as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Chapter 9: The entangled lives and writings of John Cleland and Giovanni Bianchi: biographical synergies and a shared sexual vision Giovanni Bianchi’s doing and undoing
In Lode dell’arte comica (1752)
Appendix: the texts A note to the three Vizzani texts: John Cleland’s translation, my translation and Giovanni Bianchi’s original
John Cleland’s translation:
[An] His[toric]al and phy[s]ic[al] dissertation on the case of Catherine Vizzani, containing the adventures of a young woman, born at Rome, who for eight years passed in the habit of a man, was killed for an amour with a young lady; and being found on dissection, a true virgin, narrowly escaped being treated as a saint by the populace. With some curious and anatomical remarks on the nature and existence of the hymen. By Giovanni Bianchi, Professor of Anatomy at Sienna, the surgeon who dissected her. To which are added certain needful remarks by the English editor Clorinda Donato’s translation:
Brief history of the life of Catterina Vizzani, Roman woman, who for eight years wore a male servant’s clothing, who after various vicissitudes was in the end killed and found to be a virgin during the autopsy of her cadaver Giovanni Bianchi,
Breve storia della vita di Catterina Vizzani Romana che per ott’anni vestì abito da uomo in qualità di Servidore la quale dopo vari Casi essendo in fine stata uccisa fu trovata Pulcella nella sezzione del suo Cadavero Bibliography
Index
