Internationally known during her lifetime, Laura Battiferra (1523-89) was a gifted and prolific poet in Renaissance Florence. The author of nearly 400 sonnets remarkable for their subtlety, intricate narrative structure, and learned allusions, Battiferra, who was married to the prominent sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati, traversed an elite literary and artistic network, circulating her verse in a complex and intellectually fecund exchange with some of the most illustrious figures in Italian history. In this bilingual anthology, Victoria Kirkham gathers Battiferra's most essential...

The most published and lauded woman writer of early sixteenth-century Italy, Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547) in effect defined what was the "acceptable" face of female authorship for her time. Hailed by the generation's leading male "literati" as an equal, she was praised both for her impeccable command of Petrarchan style and for the unimpeachable chastity and piety of the persona she promoted through her literary works.
This book presents for the very first time a body of Colonna's verse that reveals much about her poetic aims and outlook, while also casting new light on one of the most...

Madeleine de l'Aubespine (1546-1596), the toast of courtly and literary circles in sixteenth-century Paris, penned beautiful love poems to famous women of her day. The well-connected daughter and wife of prominent French secretaries of state, l'Aubespine was celebrated by her male peers for her erotic lyricism and scathingly original voice.
Rather than adopt the conventional self-effacement that defined female poets of the time, l'Aubespine's speakers are sexual, dominant, and defiant; and her subjects are women who are able to manipulate, rebuke, and even humiliate men.
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Inspired by a series of visions, Francisca de los Apostoles (1539-after 1578) and her sister Isabella attempted in 1573 to organize a "beaterio," a lay community of pious women devoted to the religious life, to offer prayers and penance for the reparation of human sin, especially those of corrupt clerics. But their efforts to minister to the poor of Toledo and to call for general ecclesiastical reform were met with resistance, first from local religious officials and, later, from the Spanish Inquisition. By early 1575, the Inquisitional tribunal in Toledo had received several statements...

Marguerite de Navarre (1492 1549) was the sister and wife to kings and a pivotal influence in sixteenth-century France. An astute politician and diligent humanist, she was a champion of gender equality and the evangelical reform movement, which recognized that the clergy was more concerned with maintaining the church s power than ministering to the faithful. As the years passed and the glitter of life at court waned, however, Marguerite came to realize her true vocation: writing.
"Selected Writings"brings together a representative sampling of Marguerite s varied writings, most of it never...

Ana de San Bartolome (1549 1626), a contemporary and close associate of St. Teresa of Avila, typifies the curious blend of religious activism and spiritual forcefulness that characterized the first generation of Discalced, or reformed Carmelites. Known for their austerity and ethics, their convents quickly spread throughout Spain and, under Ana s guidance, also to France and the Low Countries. Constantly embroiled in disputes with her male superiors, Ana quickly became the most vocal and visible of these mystical women and the most fearless of the guardians of the Carmelite Constitution,...

Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) was the most popular novelist in her time, read in French in volume installments all over Europe and translated into English, German, Italian, and even Arabic. But she was also a charismatic figure in French salon culture, a woman who supported herself through her writing and defended women's education. She was the first woman to be honored by the French Academy, and she earned a pension from Louis XIV for her writing. Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues is a careful selection of Scudery's shorter writings, emphasizing her abilities as a...

By the end of the fifteenth century, Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558), a learned middle-class woman of Venice, was arguably the most famous woman writer and scholar in Europe. A cultural icon in her own time, she regularly corresponded with the king of France, lords of Milan and Naples, the Borgia pope Alexander VI, and even maintained a ten-year epistolary exchange with Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain that resulted in an invitation for her to join their court. Fedele's letters reveal the central, mediating role she occupied in a community of scholars otherwise inaccessible to women....

The first original chivalric poem written by an Italian woman, "Floridoro" imbues a strong feminist ethos into a hypermasculine genre. Dotted with the usual characteristics-dark forests, illusory palaces, enchanted islands, seductive sorceresses"-Floridoro" is the story of the two greatest knights of a bygone age: the handsome Floridoro, who risks everything for love, and the beautiful Risamante, who helps women in distress while on a quest for her inheritance. Throughout, Moderata Fonte (1555-92) vehemently defends women's capacity to rival male prowess in traditionally male-dominated...