Presented for the first time in a critical English edition, "Urania: A Romance" provides modern readers with a rare glimpse into the novel and novella forms at a time when narrative genres were not only being invented but, in the hands of women like Giulia Bigolina (1518?-1569?), used as vehicles for literary experimentation.
The first known prose romance written by a woman in Italian, Bigolina's "Urania" centers on the monomaniacal love of a female character falling into melancholy when her beloved leaves her for a more beautiful woman. A tale that includes many of the conventions that...