Download or read book The Prodigious Muse written by Virginia Cox and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-08-17 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her award-winning, critically acclaimed Women's Writing in Italy, 1400--1650, Virginia Cox chronicles the history of women writers in early modern Italy -- who they were, what they wrote, where they fit in society, and how their status changed during this period. In this book, Cox examines more closely one particular moment in this history, in many ways the most remarkable for the richness and range of women's literary output. A widespread critical notion sees Italian women's writing as a phenomenon specific to the peculiar literary environment of the mid-sixteenth century, and most scholars assume that a reactionary movement such as the Counter-Reformation was unlikely to spur its development. Cox argues otherwise, showing that women's writing flourished in the period following 1560, reaching beyond the customary "feminine" genres of lyric, poetry, and letters to experiment with pastoral drama, chivalric romance, tragedy, and epic. There were few widely practiced genres in this eclectic phase of Italian literature to which women did not turn their hand. Organized by genre, and including translations of all excerpts from primary texts, this comprehensive and engaging volume provides students and scholars with an invaluable resource as interest in these exceptional writers grows. In addition to familiar, secular works by authors such as Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and Lucrezia Marinella, Cox also discusses important writings that have largely escaped critical interest, including Fonte's and Marinella's vivid religious narratives, an unfinished Amazonian epic by Maddalena Salvetti, and the startlingly fresh autobiographical lyrics of Francesca Turina Bufalini. Juxtaposing religious and secular writings by women and tracing their relationship to the male-authored literature of the period, often surprisingly affirmative in its attitudes toward women, Cox reveals a new and provocative vision of the Italian Counter-Reformation as a period far less uniformly repressive of women than is commonly assumed. Praise for Women's Writing in Italy, 1400--1650 "Exhaustive and insightful... This is an amazing book, a major achievement in the field of women's studies." -- Renaissance Quarterly "This is a definitive study and will surely remain so for many years to come." -- Choice "Virginia Cox has written a magisterial study of the major trends in women's writing in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy... This is indeed an impressive volume and one which deserves to be read and studied. It will change the way we think about women's writing in early modern Italy." -- Modern Language Review

Download or read book The Prodigious Muse written by Virginia Cox and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2012 Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern WomenHonorable Mention, Literature, 2012 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers In her award-winning, critically acclaimed Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650, Virginia Cox chronicles the history of women writers in early modern Italy—who they were, what they wrote, where they fit in society, and how their status changed during this period. In this book, Cox examines more closely one particular moment in this history, in many ways the most remarkable for the richness and range of women’s literary output. A widespread critical notion sees Italian women’s writing as a phenomenon specific to the peculiar literary environment of the mid-sixteenth century, and most scholars assume that a reactionary movement such as the Counter-Reformation was unlikely to spur its development. Cox argues otherwise, showing that women’s writing flourished in the period following 1560, reaching beyond the customary "feminine" genres of lyric, poetry, and letters to experiment with pastoral drama, chivalric romance, tragedy, and epic. There were few widely practiced genres in this eclectic phase of Italian literature to which women did not turn their hand. Organized by genre, and including translations of all excerpts from primary texts, this comprehensive and engaging volume provides students and scholars with an invaluable resource as interest in these exceptional writers grows. In addition to familiar, secular works by authors such as Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and Lucrezia Marinella, Cox also discusses important writings that have largely escaped critical interest, including Fonte’s and Marinella’s vivid religious narratives, an unfinished Amazonian epic by Maddalena Salvetti, and the startlingly fresh autobiographical lyrics of Francesca Turina Bufalini. Juxtaposing religious and secular writings by women and tracing their relationship to the male-authored literature of the period, often surprisingly affirmative in its attitudes toward women, Cox reveals a new and provocative vision of the Italian Counter-Reformation as a period far less uniformly repressive of women than is commonly assumed.

Download or read book Women s Writing in Italy 1400 1650 written by Virginia Cox and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-06-16 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2009 Best Book Award, Society for the Study of Early Modern WomenWinner, 2008 PROSE Award for Best Book in Language, Literature, and Linguistics. Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers 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.

Download or read book Innovation in the Italian Counter Reformation written by Shannon McHugh and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-09-18 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enduring "black legend" of the Italian Counter-Reformation, which has held sway in both scholarly and popular culture, maintains that the Council of Trent ushered in a cultural dark age in Italy, snuffing out the spectacular creative production of the Renaissance. As a result, the decades following Trent have been mostly overlooked in Italian literary studies, in particular. The thirteen essays of Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation present a radical reconsideration of literary production in post-Tridentine Italy. With particular attention to the much-maligned tradition of spiritual literature, the volume’s contributors weave literary analysis together with religion, theater, art, music, science, and gender to demonstrate that the literature of this period not only merits study but is positively innovative. Contributors include such renowned critics as Virginia Cox and Amadeo Quondam, two of the leading scholars on the Italian Counter-Reformation. Distributed for UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE PRESS

Download or read book Beloved Lady written by John C. Farrell and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1967. Jane Addams was one of the most creative thinkers and activists in the history of American social reform. She pioneered the settlement house movement. She was a leader in the attempt to relate education to the new urban environment for millions of Americans in the early twentieth century. She was a vocal advocate of the Progressive movement and active in the drive for women's rights. She was also an outstanding spokesman for international understanding and world peace. Although Jane Addams is well known as one of the originators of social work in the United States, as an early advocate of a "War on Poverty," and as the proponent of ideas that led to the creation of the modern welfare state, the convictions that motivated her prodigious energy had not, prior to Dr. Farrell's investigation, been carefully examined. He traces the relation between her philanthropic principles and her Progressive politics, her feminism, and her efforts to achieve world peace. He shows how her association with John Dewey and her acceptance of pragmatism changed her thinking and also how her later pacifism alienated her from many progressives of various persuasions. Before his sudden and untimely death at the age of thirty-two, John C. Farrell had just completed this study, based on his examination of virtually every important writing by and about Jane Addams. It is not a full-fledged biography but rather an intellectual history that seeks to explain the origins and relevance of Jane Addams' ideas and activities to the first half of the twentieth century. The manuscript for this book, complete but unrevised, was edited for publication by two of Farrell's colleagues who prefer to remain unidentified. Charles C. Barker, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, wrote an introduction that places Beloved Lady in the context of scholarly literature on Jane Addams.

Download or read book Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance written by Virginia Cox and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an amazing book, a major achievement in the field of women's studies.--Renaissance Quarterly, reviewing Women's Writing in Italy, 1400-1650

Download or read book Women Rhetoric and Drama in Early Modern Italy written by Alexandra Coller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteenth-century Italy witnessed the rebirth of comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy in the pastoral mode. Traditionally, we think of comedy and tragedy as remakes? of ancient models, and tragicomedy alone as the invention of the moderns. Women, Rhetoric, and Drama in Early Modern Italy suggests that all three genres were, in fact, remarkably new, if dramatists’ intriguingly sympathetic portrayals of and sustained investment in women as vibrant and dynamic characters of the early modern stage are taken into account. This study examines the role of rhetoric and gender in early modern Italian drama, in itself and in order to explore its complex interrelationship with the rise of women writers and the role women played in Italian culture and society, while at the same time demonstrating just how closely intertwined history, culture, and dramatic writing are. Author Alexandra Coller focuses on the scripted/erudite plays of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, which, she argues, are indispensable for a balanced view of the history of drama and its place within contemporary literary and women’s studies. As this book reveals, the ascendancy of comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy in the vernacular seems to have been not only inextricably linked to but also dependent on the rise of women as prominent stage characters and, eventually, as authors in their own right.

Download or read book Margherita Costa Diva of the Baroque Court written by Jessica Goethals and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-10-02 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman singer, courtesan, and writer Margherita Costa won prominence and fame across the courts of Italy and France during the mid-seventeenth century. She secured a steady stream of elite patrons – including popes, queens, grand dukes, and influential cardinals – while male poets and librettists wrote celebratory poetry on her behalf. In addition to her appearances as a soprano on the opera stage, Costa published a remarkable fourteen full-length texts across an expanse of genres: burlesque comedy, drama, equestrian ballet, pastoral opera, amorous letters, lyric poetry, and history. Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court brings together close textual readings of Costa’s numerous publications with archival materials detailing her performance itinerary and social-cultural networks. The book progresses chronologically through her life, geographically along the routes she travelled, and thematically via the genres in which she experimented. Jessica Goethals illuminates how Costa was unafraid to leap over the boundaries of decorum that delimited what women should and did write about. More than merely a literary biography, this book is also a portrait of seventeenth-century courts, their concerns, and their entertainments.

Download or read book The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy written by Serena Laiena and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were the first celebrity couples? How was their success forged? Which forces influenced their self-fashioning and marketing strategies? These questions are at the core of this study, which looks at the birth of a phenomenon, that of the couple in show business, with a focus on the promotional strategies devised by two professional performers: Giovan Battista Andreini (1576–1654) and Virginia Ramponi (1583–ca.1631). This book examines their artistic path – a deliberately crafted and mutually beneficial joint career – and links it to the historical, social, and cultural context of post-Tridentine Italy. Rooted in a broad research field, encompassing theatre history, Italian studies, celebrity studies, gender studies, and performance studies, The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy revises the conventional view of the Italian diva, investigates the deployment of Catholic devotion as a marketing tool, and argues for the importance of the couple system in the history of Commedia dell’Arte, a system that continues to shape celebrity today.

Download or read book The Hellenizing Muse written by Filippomaria Pontani and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 983 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, the history of Ancient Greek literature ends with Antiquity: after the fall of Rome, the literary works in ancient Greek generally belong to the domain of the Byzantine Empire. However, after the Byzantine refugees restored the knowledge of Ancient Greek in the west during the early humanistic period (15th century), Italian scholars (and later their French, German, Spanish colleagues) started to use Greek, a purely literary language that no one spoke, for their own texts and poems. This habit persisted with various ups and downs throughout the centuries, according to the development of Greek studies in each country. The aim of this anthology - the first one of this kind - is to give a selective overview of this kind of humanistic poetry in Ancient Greek, embracing all major regions of Europe and trying to concentrate on remarkable pieces of important poets. The ultimate goal of the book is to shed light on an important and so far mostly neglected aspect of the European heritage.

Download or read book Italian Academies and their Networks 1525 1700 written by Simone Testa and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian Academies have typically been studied individually or in the context of specific cities, leaving an important lacuna in the scholarship on Italian culture and early modernity. Cutting across various disciplines, this volume traces the relationships of these Academies and explains how they prefigured networks like the République des letters.

Download or read book Margherita Sarrocchi s Letters to Galileo written by Meredith K. Ray and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a pivotal moment in the history of science and women’s place in it. Meredith Ray offers the first in-depth study and complete English translation of the fascinating correspondence between Margherita Sarrocchi (1560-1617), a natural philosopher and author of the epic poem, Scanderbeide (1623), and famed astronomer, Galileo Galilei. Their correspondence, undertaken soon after the publication of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, reveals how Sarrocchi approached Galileo for his help revising her epic poem, offering, in return, her endorsement of his recent telescopic discoveries. Situated against the vibrant and often contentious backdrop of early modern intellectual and academic culture, their letters illustrate, in miniature, that the Scientific Revolution was, in fact, the product of a long evolution with roots in the deep connections between literary and scientific exchanges.

Download or read book Female Friendship written by Slav N. Gratchev and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on the literary and artistic exploration of female friendship in various geographical contexts, spanning the centuries from the medieval period until the present. The essays address the intense female bonding in world literature as a universal human need for intimacy, sense of belonging, and purpose. The main focus is on the reevaluation of friendships between women, which have been traditionally less epitomized than those between men. The authors of this volume demonstrate how the emotional unions of women offer compelling insights to various historical and contemporary societies, helping us understand gender relations, traditions, family life, and community values.

Download or read book The Italian Novella and Shakespeare s Comic Heroines written by Melissa Walter and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a comparative, feminist approach informed by English and Italian literary and theatre studies, this book investigates connections between Shakespearean comedy and the Italian novella tradition. Shakespeare’s comedies adapted the styles of wit, character types, motifs, plots, and other narrative elements of the novella tradition for the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and they investigated social norms and roles through a conversation carried out in narrative and drama. Arguing that Shakespeare’s comedies register the playwright’s reading of the novella tradition within the collaborative playmaking context of the early modern theatre, this book demonstrates how the comic vision of these plays increasingly valued women’s authority and consent in the comic conclusion. The representation of female characters in novella collections is complex and paradoxical, as the stories portray women not only in the roles of witty plotters and storytellers but also through a multifaceted poetics of enclosed spaces – including trunks, chests, caskets, graves, cups, and beds. The relatively open-ended rhetorical situation of early modern English theatre and the dialogic form and narrative material available in the novella tradition combine to help create the complex female characters in Shakespeare’s plays and a new form of English comedy.

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 Italian Academies 1525 1700 written by Jane E. Everson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual societies known as Academies played a vital role in the development of culture, and scholarly debate throughout Italy between 1525-1700. They were fundamental in establishing the intellectual networks later defined as the ‘République des Lettres’, and in the dissemination of ideas in early modern Europe, through print, manuscript, oral debate and performance. This volume surveys the social and cultural role of Academies, challenging received ideas and incorporating recent archival findings on individuals, networks and texts. Ranging over Academies in both major and smaller or peripheral centres, these collected studies explore the interrelationships of Academies with other cultural forums. Individual essays examine the fluid nature of academies and their changing relationships to the political authorities; their role in the promotion of literature, the visual arts and theatre; and the diverse membership recorded for many academies, which included scientists, writers, printers, artists, political and religious thinkers, and, unusually, a number of talented women. Contributions by established international scholars together with studies by younger scholars active in this developing field of research map out new perspectives on the dynamic place of the Academies in early modern Italy. The publication results from the research collaboration ‘The Italian Academies 1525-1700: the first intellectual networks of early modern Europe’ funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is edited by the senior investigators.

Download or read book The Muse s Pocket Companion written by and published by . This book was released on 1785 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: