The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy

Description

This major study looks at the heritage and literary transformation of Giovanni Boccaccio's 'De mulieribus claris' in late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth-century Italy. The monograph is the first full-length study of the new elaborations of women's role and potential that were being developed in the north Italian courts in this period. 'The Ghost of Boccaccio' presents a sustained textual analysis of a selection of male-authored texts. It treats these texts as highly specific events in the development of the 'querelle des femmes', or 'the woman question', providing an important and often neglected Italian context for this question. By analysing these texts together in one volume, this study places them firmly on the scholarly map. They represent an extraordinary variety of voices seeking to be heard about the status of women in Renaissance Italy, ranging from the most conservative to the truly radical. They provide vital perspectives on constructions of women in the Renaissance. A number of these texts also represent a crucial moment in the development of intellectual strategies to challenge the dominant gender ideologies of Renaissance and early modern Europe. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Renaissance history and culture, Italian studies, neo-Latin studies, and gender studies. Acknowledgements ix Note to the Reader xi Illustrations xiii Introduction: Boccaccio’s 'De mulieribus claris' and the Emergence of a Tradition 1 Chapter 1: Vespasiano da Bisticci and His Model Women 23 The Uses of Biography 23 Famous Men and Women: The 'Vite' (1480–98) and the 'Libro delle lodi' (c. 1479–86) 28 The Writer as Reformer of Women: The 'Libro delle lodi' 37 Chapter 2: Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti and the Paradoxical Place of Women 63 The Triumph of Chastity 63 The Maligned Widow: The 'Trattato della pudicizia' (c. 1487) 67 A New Set of Famous Women: 'The Gynevera de le clare donne' (c. 1489–90; 1492) 80 Bologna and Spain: The 'Elogio di Isabella' (c. 1493) 99 Chapter 3: The Debate on Women in Renaissance Ferrara and Mantua: Jacopo Foresti, Mario Equicola, and Agostino Strozzi 111 Models of Female Power in the North Italian Courts 111 The Containment of Court Women: The 'De plurimis claris selectisque mulieribus' (1497 and 1521) 117 The Case for Women: Equicola’s 'De mulieribus' (c. 1501) 148 Ambiguity as an Art: Strozzi’s 'Defensio mulierum' (c. 1501) 159 Chapter 4: Arguing the Superiority of Women in Ferrara and Beyond: Bartolomeo Goggio, Galeazzo Flavio Capra, and Henricus Cornelius Agrippa 171 A Stimulus to Discourse on an International Scale 171 A Model from the Court of Ferrara: Goggio’s 'De laudibus mulierum' (c. 1487) 175 He Praises Too Much: Capra’s 'Della eccellenza e dignità delle donne' (published 1525 and 1526; 1533) 190 Beyond Italy: Agrippa’s 'De nobilitate et praecellentia foemini sexus' (published 1529) 207 Conclusion: Transformations of Content and Context 225 Appendix: Sabadino degli Arienti’s 'Gynevera de le clare donne' and Citations from Boccaccio’s 'De mulieribus claris' 231 Bibliography 233 Index 243