Download or read book Floridoro written by Moderata Fonte and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 spheres. And her open criticism of women’s lack of education is echoed in the plights of various female characters who must depend on unreliable men. First published in 1581, Floridoro remains a vivacious and inventive narrative by a singular poet.
Download or read book Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic written by Jo Ann Cavallo and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Italian romance epic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with its multitude of characters, complex plots, and roots in medieval Carolingian epic and Arthurian chivalric romance, was a form popular with courtly and urban audiences. In the hands of writers such as Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, works of remarkable sophistication that combined high seriousness and low comedy were created. Their works went on to influence Cervantes, Milton, Ronsard, Shakespeare, and Spenser. In this volume instructors will find ideas for teaching the Italian Renaissance romance epic along with its adaptations in film, theater, visual art, and music. An extensive resources section locates primary texts online and lists critical studies, anthologies, and reference works.
Download or read book Daughters of Alchemy written by Meredith K. Ray and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men. Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza’s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for “books of secrets”; and looks at narratives of science in works by Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella. It concludes with Camilla Erculiani’s letters on natural philosophy and, finally, Margherita Sarrocchi’s defense of Galileo’s “Medicean” stars. Combining literary and cultural analysis, Daughters of Alchemy contributes to the emerging scholarship on the variegated nature of scientific practice in the early modern era. Drawing on a range of under-studied material including new analyses of the Sarrocchi–Galileo correspondence and a previously unavailable manuscript of Sforza’s Experimenti, Ray’s book rethinks early modern science, properly reintroducing the integral and essential work of women.
Download or read book The Worth of Women written by Moderata Fonte and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender equality and the responsibility of husbands and fathers: issues that loom large today had currency in Renaissance Venice as well, as evidenced by the publication in 1600 of The Worth of Women by Moderata Fonte. Moderata Fonte was the pseudonym of Modesta Pozzo (1555–92), a Venetian woman who was something of an anomaly. Neither cloistered in a convent nor as liberated from prevailing codes of decorum as a courtesan might be, Pozzo was a respectable, married mother who produced literature in genres that were commonly considered "masculine"—the chivalric romance and the literary dialogue. This work takes the form of the latter, with Fonte creating a conversation among seven Venetian noblewomen. The dialogue explores nearly every aspect of women's experience in both theoretical and practical terms. These women, who differ in age and experience, take as their broad theme men's curious hostility toward women and possible cures for it. Through this witty and ambitious work, Fonte seeks to elevate women's status to that of men, arguing that women have the same innate abilities as men and, when similarly educated, prove their equals. Through this dialogue, Fonte provides a picture of the private and public lives of Renaissance women, ruminating on their roles in the home, in society, and in the arts. A fine example of Renaissance vernacular literature, this book is also a testament to the enduring issues that women face, including the attempt to reconcile femininity with ambition.
Download or read book The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Ren Descartes written by Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–80) and René Descartes (1596–1650) exchanged fifty-eight letters—thirty-two from Descartes and twenty-six from Elisabeth. Their correspondence contains the only known extant philosophical writings by Elisabeth, revealing her mastery of metaphysics, analytic geometry, and moral philosophy, as well as her keen interest in natural philosophy. The letters are essential reading for anyone interested in Descartes’s philosophy, in particular his account of the human being as a union of mind and body, as well as his ethics. They also provide a unique insight into the character of their authors and the way ideas develop through intellectual collaboration. Philosophers have long been familiar with Descartes’s side of the correspondence. Now Elisabeth’s letters—never before available in translation in their entirety—emerge this volume, adding much-needed context and depth both to Descartes’s ideas and the legacy of the princess. Lisa Shapiro’s annotated edition—which also includes Elisabeth’s correspondence with the Quakers William Penn and Robert Barclay—will be heralded by students of philosophy, feminist theorists, and historians of the early modern period.
Download or read book Memoirs written by Marie Mancini and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoirs of Hortense (1646–1699) and of Marie (1639–1715) Mancini, nieces of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin and members of the court of Louis XIV, represent the earliest examples in France of memoirs published by women under their own names during their lifetimes. Both unhappily married—Marie had also fled the aftermath of her failed affair with the king—the sisters chose to leave their husbands for life on the road, a life quite rare for women of their day. Through their writings, the Mancinis sought to rehabilitate their reputations and reclaim the right to define their public images themselves, rather than leave the stories of their lives to the intrigues of the court—and to their disgruntled ex-husbands. First translated in 1676 and 1678 and credited largely to male redactors, the two memoirs reemerge here in an accessible English translation that chronicles the beginnings of women’s rights to personal independence within the confines of an otherwise circumscribed early modern aristocratic society.
Download or read book Autobiography and Other Writings written by Ana de San Bartolomé and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ana de San Bartolomé (1549–1626), a contemporary and close associate of St. Teresa of Ávila, 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, especially after Teresa’s death. Her autobiography, clearly inseparable from her religious vocation, expresses the tensions and conflicts that often accompanied the lives of women whose relationship to the divine endowed them with an authority at odds with the temporary powers of church and state. Last translated into English in 1916, Ana’s writings give modern readers fascinating insights into the nature of monastic life during the highly charged religious and political climate of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Spain.
Download or read book Selected Poems and Translations written by Madeleine de l'Aubespine and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Unavailable in English until now and only recently identified from scattered and sometimes misattributed sources, l’Aubespine’s poems and literary works are presented here in Anna Klosowska’s vibrant translation. This collection, which features one of the first French lesbian sonnets as well as reproductions of l’Aubespine’s poetic translations of Ovid and Ariosto, will be heralded by students and scholars in literature, history, and women’s studies as an important addition to the Renaissance canon.
Download or read book The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe written by Amanda L. Capern and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe is a comprehensive and ground-breaking survey of the lives of women in early-modern Europe between 1450 and 1750. Covering a period of dramatic political and cultural change, the book challenges the current contours and chronologies of European history by observing them through the lens of female experience. The collaborative research of this book covers four themes: the affective world; practical knowledge for life; politics and religion; arts, science and humanities. These themes are interwoven through the chapters, which encompass all areas of women’s lives: sexuality, emotions, health and wellbeing, educational attainment, litigation and the practical and leisured application of knowledge, skills and artistry from medicine to theology. The intellectual lives of women, through reading and writing, and their spirituality and engagement with the material world, are also explored. So too is the sheer energy of female work, including farming and manufacture, skilled craft and artwork, theatrical work and scientific enquiry. The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe revises the chronological and ideological parameters of early-modern European history by opening the reader’s eyes to an exciting age of female productivity, social engagement and political activism across European and transatlantic boundaries. It is essential reading for students and researchers of early-modern history, the history of women and gender studies.
Download or read book Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain written by María de Guevara and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During a pivotal point in Spanish history, aristocrat María de Guevara (?–1683) produced two extraordinary essays that appealed for strong leadership, protested political corruption, and demanded the inclusion of women in the court’s decision making. “Treaty” gave Philip IV practical suggestions for fighting the war against Portugal and “Disenchantments” counseled the king-to-be, Charles II, on strategies to raise the country’s status in Europe. This annotated bilingual edition, featuring Nieves Romero-Díaz’s adroit translation, reproduces Guevara’s polemics for the first time. Guevara’s provocative writings call on Spanish women to bear the responsibility equally with men for restoring Spain’s power in Europe and elsewhere. The collection also includes examples of Guevara’s shorter writings that exemplify her ability to speak on matters of state, network with dignitaries, and govern family affairs. Witty, ironic, and rhetorically sophisticated, Guevara’s essays provide a fresh perspective on the possibilities for women in the public sphere in seventeenth-century Spain.
Download or read book Selected Poetry and Prose written by Chiara Matraini and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chiara Matraini (1515–1604?) was a member of the great flowering of poetic imitators and innovators in the Italian literary heritage begun by Petrarch, cultivated later by the lyric poet Pietro Bembo, and supplanted by the epic poet Torquato Tasso. Though without formal training, Matraini excelled in a number of literary genres popular at the time—poetry, religious meditation, discourse, and dialogue. In her midlife, she published a collection of erotic love poetry, but later in life her work shifted toward a search for spiritual salvation. Near the end of her life, she published a new poetry retrospective. Mostly available in only a handful of rare book collections, her writings are now adeptly translated here for an English-speaking audience and situated historically in an introduction by noted Matraini expert Giovanna Rabitti. Selected Poetry and Prose allows the poet to finally take her place as one of the seminal authors of the Renaissance, next to her contemporaries Vittoria Colonna and Laura Battiferra, also published in the Other Voice series.
Download or read book Humanities written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Works of Italo Calvino written by Franco Ricci and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the range of his writing, teaching Calvino can seem a daunting task. This volume aims to help instructors develop creative and engaging classroom strategies. Part 1, "Materials," presents an overview of Calvino's writings, nearly all of which are available in English translation, as well as critical works and online resources. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," focus on general themes and cultural contexts, address theoretical issues, and provide practical classroom applications. Contributors describe strategies for teaching Calvino that are as varied as his writings, whether having students study narrative theory through If on a winter's night a traveler, explore literary genre with Cosmicomics, improve their writing using Six Memos for the Next Millennium, or read Mr. Palomar in a general education humanities course.
Download or read book Enrico or Byzantium Conquered written by Lucrezia Marinella and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653) is, by all accounts, a phenomenon in early modernity: a woman who wrote and published in many genres, whose fame shone brightly within and outside her native Venice, and whose voice is simultaneously original and reflective of her time and culture. In Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered, one of the most ambitious and rewarding of her numerous narrative works, Marinella demonstrates her skill as an epic poet. Now available for the first time in English translation, Enrico retells the story of the conquest of Byzantium in the Fourth Crusade (1202–04). Marinella intersperses historical events in her account of the invasion with numerous invented episodes, drawing on the rich imaginative legacy of the chivalric romance. Fast-moving, colorful, and narrated with the zest that characterizes Marinella’s other works, this poem is a great example of a woman engaging critically with a quintessentially masculine form and subject matter, writing in a genre in which the work of women poets was typically shunned.
Download or read book Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings written by Emilie Du Châtelet and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though most historians remember her as the mistress of Voltaire, Emilie Du Châtelet (1706–49) was an accomplished writer in her own right, who published multiple editions of her scientific writings during her lifetime, as well as a translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica that is still the standard edition of that work in French. Had she been a man, her reputation as a member of the eighteenth-century French intellectual elite would have been assured. In the 1970s, feminist historians of science began the slow work of recovering Du Châtelet’s writings and her contributions to history and philosophy. For this edition, Judith P. Zinsser has selected key sections from Du Châtelet’s published and unpublished works, as well as related correspondence, part of her little-known critique of the Old and New Testaments, and a treatise on happiness that is a refreshingly uncensored piece of autobiography—making all of them available for the first time in English. The resulting volume will recover Châtelet’s place in the pantheon of French letters and culture.
Download or read book A Woman Who Defends All the Persons of Her Sex written by Gabrielle Suchon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the oppressive reign of Louis XIV, Gabrielle Suchon (1632–1703) was the most forceful female voice in France, advocating women’s freedom and self-determination, access to knowledge, and assertion of authority. This volume collects Suchon’s writing from two works—Treatise on Ethics and Politics (1693) and On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen; or, Life without Commitments (1700)—and demonstrates her to be an original philosophical and moral thinker and writer. Suchon argues that both women and men have inherently similar intellectual, corporeal, and spiritual capacities, which entitle them equally to essentially human prerogatives, and she displays her breadth of knowledge as she harnesses evidence from biblical, classical, patristic, and contemporary secular sources to bolster her claim. Forgotten over the centuries, these writings have been gaining increasing attention from feminist historians, students of philosophy, and scholars of seventeenth-century French literature and culture. This translation, from Domna C. Stanton and Rebecca M. Wilkin, marks the first time these works will appear in English.
Download or read book The Complete Poems written by Gaspara Stampa and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaspara Stampa (1523?-1554) is one of the finest female poets ever to write in Italian. Although she was lauded for her singing during her lifetime, her success and critical reputation as a poet emerged only after her verse was republished in the early eighteenth century. Her poetry runs the gamut of human emotion, ranging from ecstasy over a consummated love affair to despair at its end. While these tormented works and their multiple male addressees have led to speculation that Stampa may have been one of Venice’s famous courtesans, they can also be read as a rebuttal of typical assumptions about women’s roles. Championed by Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, she has more recently been celebrated by feminist scholars for her distinctive and original voice and her challenge to convention. The first complete translation of Stampa into English, this volume collects all of her passionate and lyrical verse. It is also the first modern critical edition of her poems, and in restoring the original sequence of the 1554 text, it allows readers the opportunity to encounter Stampa as she intended. Jane Tylus renders Stampa’s verse in precise and graceful English translations, allowing a new generation of students and scholars of poetry, Renaissance literature, and music history to rediscover this incipiently modern Italian poet.
