Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society

An impressive collection of 29 essays by British, American and Italian scholars on important historical, artistic, cultural, social, legal, literary and theatrical aspects of women's contributions to the Italian Renaissance, in its broadest sense.

Panizza, Letizia

Table of Illustrations, Abbreviations, Foreword, PART I. Women and the court, 1. Civility, courtesy and women in the Italian Renaissance, 2. Women as patrons and clients in the courts of Quattrocento Italy, 3. Isabella Sforza: beyond the stereotype, 4. Writing for women rulers in Quattrocento Italy: Antonio Cornazzano, PART II. Women and the Church, 5. Christian good manners: spiritual and monastic rules in the Quattro- and Cinquecento, 6. Benedictine communities in Venetian society: the convent of S. Zaccaria, 7. History writing from within the convent in Cinquecento Italy: the nuns' version, 8. To take or not to take the veil: selected Italian case histories, the Renaissance and after, 9. The Virgin Mary: consoler, protector and social worker in Quattrocento miracle tales, PART III. Legal constraints and ethical precepts, 10. Women and criminal law: the notion of diminished responsibility in Prospero Farinaccio (1544-1618) and other Renaissance jurists, 11. Women between the law and social reality in early Renaissance Lucca, 12. 'Amore maritale': advice on love and marriage in the second half of the Cinquecento, 13. 'Pagare le pompe': why Quattrocento sumptuary laws did not work, 14. Attacking sumptuary laws in Seicento Venice: Arcangela Tarabotti, PART IV. Female models of comportment, 15. Exemplary women in Renaissance Italy: ambivalent models of behaviour?, 16. Womanly virtues in Quattrocento Florentine marriage furnishings, 17. Persuasive pictures: didactic prints and the construction of the social identity of women in sixteenth-century Italy, PART V. Women and the stage, 18. Isabella Andreini and others: women on stage in the late Cinquecento, 19. Gender deceptions: cross-dressing in Italian Renaissance comedy, 20. Attitudes to women in the drama of Venetian Crete, PART VI. Women and letters, 21. Humanism and feminism in Laura Ceretas public letters, 22. Seen but not heard: the role of women speakers in Cinquecento literary dialogue, 23. Transformations of the 'buona Gualdrada' legend from Boccaccio to Vasari: a study in the politics of Florentine narrative, 24. Marrying for love: society in the Quattrocento novella, 25. Women and Italian Cinquecento literary academies, 26. Aretino s Sei giornate: literary parody and social reality, 27. The rhetoric of eulogy in Lucrezia Marinella's La nobiltà et, 28. Vittoria Colonna as role model for Cinquecento women poets, 29. Women and the making of the Italian literary canon, Index of Historical Names