Description
Book SynopsisUsing a comparative analysis of women's activities as artists, musicians, composers, and actresses, Cox locates women's writing in its broader contexts and considers how gender reflects and reinvents conventional narratives of literary change.
Trade ReviewExhaustive and insightful... This is an amazing book, a major achievement in the field of women's studies. -- Elissa Weaver Renaissance Quarterly 2009 This is a definitive study and will surely remain so for many years to come. Choice 2009 Virginia Cox has written a magisterial study of the major trends in women's writing in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy... This is indeed an impressive volume and one which deserves to be read and studied. It will change the way we think about women's writing in early modern Italy. -- Stephen Kolsky Modern Language Review 2010
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Origins (1400–1500)
1. The "Learned Lady" in Quattrocento Italy: An Emerging Cultural Type
2. The "Learned Lady" in Theory: Models of Gender Conduct and Their Contexts
3. The "Learned Lady" as Signifier in Humanistic Culture
4. Renaissance Particularism and the "Learned Lady"
Chapter Two: Translation (1490–1550)
1. Women, the Courts, and the Vernacular in the Early Sixteenth Century
2. Sappho Surfaces: The First Female Vernacular Poets
3. Bembo, Petrarchism, and the Reform of Italian Literature
4. "So Dear to Apollo": Veronica Gambara and Vittoria Colonna after 1530
5. Founding Mothers, First Ladies: Gambara and Colonna as Models and Icons
Chapter 3: Diffusion (1540– 1560)
1. Manuscript and Print in the "Age of the Council of Trent"
2. Virtù Rewarded: The Contexts of Women's Writing
3. Women Writers and Their Uses: Case Studies
4. Literary Trajectories: Continuity and Change
5. Women Writers and the Paradox of the Pedestal
Chapter Four: Intermezzo (1560-1580)
Chapter Five: Affirmation (1580–1620)
1. Women's Writing in the Age of the Counter-Reformation
2. Chivalry Undimmed: The Contexts of Women's Writing
3. A Literature of Their Own? Writing, Ownership, Assertion
4. The Twilight of Gallantry
Chapter 6: Backlash (1590–1650)
1. The Rebirth of Misogyny in Seicento Italy
2. Misogyny and the Woman Writer: The Redomestication of Female Virtù
3. Women's Writing in Seicento Italy: Decline and Fall
Coda
Appendix A: Published Writings by Italian Women, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Appendix B: Dedications of Published Works by Women
Notes
Bibliography
Index
