This is the first comprehensive study of the remarkably rich tradition of women's writing that flourished in Italy between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Virginia Cox documents this tradition and both explains its character and scope and offers a new hypothesis on the reasons for its emergence and decline. Cox combines fresh scholarship with a revisionist argument that overturns existing historical paradigms for the chronology of early modern Italian women's writing and questions the historiographical commonplace that the tradition was brought to an end by the Counter Reformation. Using 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.This is not only an original and substantial contribution to the field of Italian Renaissance Literature, but it will be for years to come the indispensable reference work for anyone working on Italian women writers' contribution to the literary and cultural history of the period.Laura Giannetti, University of Miami
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter One: Origins (14001500)1. The ""Learned Lady"" in Quattrocento Italy: An Emerging Cultural Type2. The ""Learned Lady"" in Theory: Models of Gender Conduct and Their Contexts3. The ""Learned Lady"" as Signifier in Humanistic Culture4. Renaissance Particularism and the ""Learned Lady""Chapter Two: Translation (14901550)1. Women, the Courts, and the Vernacular in the Early Sixteenth Century2. Sappho Surfaces: The First Female Vernacular Poets3. Bembo, Petrarchism, and the Reform of Italian Literature4. ""So Dear to Apollo"": Veronica Gambara and Vittoria Colonna after 15305. Founding Mothers, First Ladies: Gambara and Colonna as Models and IconsChapter 3: Diffusion (1540 1560)1. Manuscript and Print in the ""Age of the Council of Trent""2. Virt+¦ Rewarded: The Contexts of Women's Writing3. Women Writers and Their Uses: Case Studies4. Literary Trajectories: Continuity and Change5. Women Writers and the Paradox of the PedestalChapter Four: Intermezzo (1560-1580)Chapter Five: Affirmation (15801620)1. Women's Writing in the Age of the Counter-Reformation2. Chivalry Undimmed: The Contexts of Women's Writing3. A Literature of Their Own? Writing, Ownership, Assertion4. The Twilight of GallantryChapter 6: Backlash (15901650)1. The Rebirth of Misogyny in Seicento Italy2. Misogyny and the Woman Writer: The Redomestication of Female Virt+¦3. Women's Writing in Seicento Italy: Decline and FallCodaAppendix A: Published Writings by Italian Women, Fifteenth to Seventeenth CenturiesAppendix B: Dedications of Published Works by WomenNotesBibliographyIndex
