Gendering the Renaissance
Description
Reviews / Votes
"Enriches our understanding of the gender dynamics that shaped the Renaissance and early modern era. . . . Essential reading for early modernists. . . . A provocative, well-researched, and highly engaging study that appeals to students, specialists, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of gendered discourses in early modern Italian history, literature, and culture. . . . Ultimately, this book reminds us that understanding gender in its full complexity enhances our knowledge of history and culture." (Modern Philology) "Enriches our understanding of the gender dynamics that shaped the Renaissance and early modern era. . . . Essential reading for early modernists. . . . A provocative, well-researched, and highly engaging study that appeals to students, specialists, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of gendered discourses in early modern Italian history, literature, and culture. . . . Ultimately, this book reminds us that understanding gender in its full complexity enhances our knowledge of history and culture." (Modern Philology)More details
Persons
Lynn Lara Westwater is a professor of Italian at The George Washington University. Her books include Sarra Copia Sulam: A SalonniEre and the Press in Counter-Reformation Venice; with Meredith K. Ray, critical editions of Arcangela Tarabotti's Letters Familiar and Formal and Convent Paradise; and with Diana Robin, a critical edition of Ippolita Sforza's writing titled Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations.
Content
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