Description
Book SynopsisSince the late twentieth century, the Venetian courtesan Veronica Franco has been viewed as a triumphant proto-feminist icon: a woman who celebrated her sexuality, an outspoken champion of women and their worth, and an important intellectual and cultural presence in sixteenth-century Venice.
In Veronica Franco in Dialogue, Marilyn Migiel provides a nuanced account of Franco’s rhetorical strategies through a close analysis of her literary work. Focusing on the first fourteen poems in the Terze rime, a collection of Franco’s poems published in 1575, Migiel looks specifically at back-and-forth exchanges between Franco and an unknown male author. Migiel argues that in order to better understand what Franco is doing in the poetic collection, it is essential to understand how she constructs her identity as author, lover, and sex worker in relation to this unknown male author.
Veronica Franco in Dialogue accounts for the moments of ambivalen
Trade Review
"Marilyn Migiel’s Veronica Franco in Dialogue is an extended study of the fourteen dialogic poems that Franco published in 1575, in each of which a female voice (Franco’s) interacts and contrasts with a male voice (left anonymous). Migiel’s powerful close readings and probing literary analyses reveal for the first time Franco’s full identity as a poet. While earlier works have presented her as above all an iconic woman and protofeminist figure, Migiel’s work shows how Franco’s consistent and subtle use of important model writers in Latin and Italian makes the poet a highly significant Renaissance author figure. Migiel’s analysis will have a substantial impact on the canonical interpretation of Franco and on future analyses of early modern women writers." -- MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies Committee
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Note on the Text and Translations of Veronica Franco’s Terze Rime Introduction: What Do We See in Veronica Franco? 1. Gendered Strategies of Persuasion: Terze Rime 1 and 2 2. Poetic Identity and Community: Terze Rime 3 and 4 3. Repenting as a Courtesan: Terze Rime 5 and 6 4. Complaining and Cognitive Reframing: Terze Rime 7 and 8 5. Seductive Insinuation and Obliquely Frank Refusal: Terze Rime 9 and 10 6. Verona, Venezia, Veronica: Terze Rime 11 and 12 7. Attacks and Concessions under Erasure: Terze Rime 13 and 14 Conclusion
