Description
Book SynopsisCovering a period from the late-fourteenth to mid-sixteenth century, Aileen A. Feng’s engagingly written work identifies and analyzes a Latin humanist precursor to the poetic movement known as Renaissance Petrarchism. Though Petrachism is usually read solely as a vernacular poetic tradition, in Writing Beloveds, Feng recovers the initial political purposes in Latin prose and traces how poetry set the terms for gender, agency, and power in early modern Italy.
By revealing the literary motifs in men’s and women’s writing about gender she maps how certain figures in Petrarch’s writing transmitted gendered ideas of power and reflected a growing anxiety about women as public figures. This work includes nuanced analyses of poetry, linguistic treatises, debates on imitation, representations of gender and epistolary correspondence in Latin and Italian. Writing Beloveds is a landmark study that highlights the new social reality of women write
Trade Review
"In this deeply researched, carefully analyzed, and engagingly written book, Aileen A. Feng explores Petrach’s influence upon Latin humanist prose in Italy’s early Renaissance and upon vernacular poetry and prose in its later Renaissance. " -- William J. Kennedy * Renaissance Quarterly *
"Deeply researched, tightly argued, and elegantly written, Feng’s book makes an intriguing and compelling argument for revising the conventional chronology of Renaissance Petrarchism. This version is bound to exert influence over the field of Renaissance studies." -- Danila Sokolov, University of Iceland * Early Modern Women *
Table of Contents
Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: Intellectual Masculinity and the Female Intellect in Humanist Petrarchism Chapter 1 - Women of Stone: Gender and Politics in the Petrarchan World Chapter 2 - In Laura's Shadow: Gendered Dialogues and Humanist Petrarchis in the Fifteenth Century Chapter 3 - Laura Speaks: Sisterhood, Amicitia, and Marital Love in the Female Latin Petrarchist Writings of the Fifteenth Century PART II: Pietro Bembo and the Legacy of Humanist Petrarchism Chapter 4 - Theorizing Gender: Nation Building and Female Mythology in the Ciceronian Quarrels Chapter 5 - Politicizing Gender: Bembo's Private and Public Petrarchism Afterword Bibliography
