At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female "letterate" proved their parity as they lectured in prominent scientific and literary academies and published in respected journals. During the Italian Enlightenment, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini, and Aretafila Savini de' Rossi were afforded unprecedented deference in academic debates and epitomized the increasing ability of women to influence public discourse. "The Contest for Knowledge" reveals how these...
At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female "letterate" pro...
At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female "letterate" proved their parity as they lectured in prominent scientific and literary academies and published in respected journals. During the Italian Enlightenment, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini, and Aretafila Savini de' Rossi were afforded unprecedented deference in academic debates and epitomized the increasing ability of women to influence public discourse. "The Contest for Knowledge" reveals how these...
At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female "letterate" pro...
Originally published in 1529, the "Declamation on the Preeminence and Nobility of the Female Sex" argues that women are more than equal to men in all things that really matter, including the public spheres from which they had long been excluded. Rather than directly refuting prevailing wisdom, Agrippa uses women's superiority as a rhetorical device and overturns the misogynistic interpretations of the female body in Greek medicine, in the Bible, in Roman and canon law, in theology and moral philosophy, and in politics. He raised the question of why women were excluded and provided...
Originally published in 1529, the "Declamation on the Preeminence and Nobility of the Female Sex" argues that women are more than equal to men in all ...
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...
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...
One of the first pastoral dramas published by an Italian woman, Flori is Maddalena Campiglia's most substantial surviving literary work and one of the earliest known examples of secular dramatic writing by a woman in Europe. Although acclaimed in her day, Campiglia (1553-95) has not benefited from the recent wave of scholarship that has done much to enhance the visibility and reputation of contemporaries such as Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and Veronica Franco. As this bilingual, first-ever critical edition of Flori illustrates, this neglect is decidedly unwarranted. Flori is a work of...
One of the first pastoral dramas published by an Italian woman, Flori is Maddalena Campiglia's most substantial surviving literary work and one of the...
Renaissance writer Laura Cereta (1469 1499) presents feminist issues in a predominantly male venue the humanist autobiography in the form of personal letters. Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy during the early modern era, but her complete letters have never before been published in English. In her public lectures and essays, Cereta explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. She argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues that have occupied feminist thinkers of...
Renaissance writer Laura Cereta (1469 1499) presents feminist issues in a predominantly male venue the humanist autobiography in the form of personal ...
Celebrated as a courtesan and poet, and as a woman of great intelligence and wit, Tullia d'Aragona (1510-56) entered the debate about the morality of love that engaged the best and most famous male intellects of sixteenth-century Italy. First published in Venice in 1547, but never before published in English, "Dialogue on the Infinity of Love" casts a woman rather than a man as the main disputant on the ethics of love. Sexually liberated and financially independent, Tullia d'Aragona dared to argue that the only moral form of love between woman and man is one that recognizes both the...
Celebrated as a courtesan and poet, and as a woman of great intelligence and wit, Tullia d'Aragona (1510-56) entered the debate about the morality of ...
Born into a wealthy family in Toulouse, Gabrielle de Coignard (ca. 1550-86) married a prominent statesman in 1570. Widowed three years later, with two young daughters to raise, Coignard turned to writing devotional verse to help her cope with her practical and spiritual struggles. "Spiritual Sonnets" presents the first English translation of 129 of Coignard's highly autobiographical poems, giving us a startlingly intimate view into the life and mind of this Renaissance woman. The sonnets are all written "in the shadow of the Cross" and include elegies, penitential lyrics, Biblical...
Born into a wealthy family in Toulouse, Gabrielle de Coignard (ca. 1550-86) married a prominent statesman in 1570. Widowed three years later, with two...
Born to a noble family in Tournai, Marie Dentiere (1495-1561) left her convent in the 1520s to work for religious reform. She married a former priest and with her husband went to Switzerland, where she was active in the Reformation's takeover of Geneva. Dentiere's "Very Useful Epistle" (1539) is the first explicit statement of reformed theology by a woman to appear in French. Addressed to Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of the French king Francis I, the "Epistle" asks the queen to help those persecuted for their religious beliefs. Dentiere offers a stirring defense of women and...
Born to a noble family in Tournai, Marie Dentiere (1495-1561) left her convent in the 1520s to work for religious reform. She married a former priest ...
Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular bestsellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Arabic. "The Story of Sapho" makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Scudery's novel "Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus," best known today as the favored reading material of the would-be "salonnieres" that Moliere satirized in "Les...
Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudery (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly b...