ABOUT THIS BOOK

This excellent collection of essays and texts surveys the culture and intellectual context of early modern Italy in order to render more intelligible the writing of Italian women. The role of women in society and the persistent misogyny even of the most pro-woman texts are explored in the essays, and the recent critical debates are examined. The translations make available in English a selection of male-authored texts which directly or indirectly elicited the spirited responses of women, for which the volume is aptly entitled “In Dialogue.” A valuable classroom resource, the volume is an important addition to The Other Voice: Toronto series.
—Elissa Weaver
Professor of Italian, Emerita, University of Chicago

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Julie D. Campbell is professor of English at Eastern Illinois University. She is the author of Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2006). She has edited and translated Isabella Andreini's La Mirtilla (MRTS, 2002). With Anne R. Larsen, she has coedited Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters (Ashgate, 2009). Maria Galli Stampino is associate professor of Italian and French at the University of Miami. She is the author of Staging the Pastoral: Tasso's Aminta and the Emergence of Modern Western Theater (MRTS, 2005). She has edited and translated for The Other Voice: Chicago series Lucrezia Marinella's Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered: A Heroic Poem (University of Chicago Press), 2009.

REVIEWS

"This excellent collection of essays and texts surveys the culture and intellectual context of early modern Italy in order to render more intelligible the writing of Italian women. The role of women in society and the persistent misogyny even of the most pro–woman texts are explored in the essays, and the recent critical debates are examined. The translations make available in English a selection of male–authored texts which directly or indirectly elicited the spirited responses of women, for which the volume is aptly entitled 'In Dialogue.' A valuable classroom resource, the volume is an important addition to The Other Voice: Toronto series."

— Elissa Weaver, University of Chicago

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino 1
Part 1: Contexts and the Canon
1. Contexts and Canonical Authors
Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino 17
2. Christian Feminine Virtue in Silvio Antoniano’s Three Books on the Christian Education of Children
Julie D. Campbell 59
3. Stefano Guazzo’s Civil conversatione and the querelle des femmes
Julie D. Campbell 73
4. Alessandro Piccolomini’s Raffaella: A Parody of Women’s Behavior and Men’s Dialogues
Maria Galli Stampino 89
Part 2: Cases
5. Torquato Tasso: Discourse on Feminine and Womanly Virtue
Lori J. Ultsch 115
6. Giuseppe Passi’s Attacks on Women in The Defects of Women
Suzanne Magnanini with David Lamari 143
7. Love as Centaur: Rational Man, Animal Woman in Sperone Speroni’s Dialogue on Love
Janet L. Smarr 195
8. Francesco Andreini: “On Taking a Wife”
Julie D. Campbell 265
9. Dishonoring Courtesans in Early Modern Italy: The poesia puttanesca of Anton Francesco Grazzini, Nicolò Franco, and Maffio Venier
Patrizia Bettella 289
10. Giulia Bigolina and Pietro Aretino’s Letters
Christopher Nissen 313
11. Centrality and Liminality in Bernardino Ochino’s “Sermon Preached… on the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalen”
Maria Galli Stampino 325
Bibliography
Select List of Male-Authored Texts in Translation 349
Primary Sources 357
Secondary Sources 365
Notes on Contributors 376
Index 379