front cover of Arms and the Woman
Arms and the Woman
Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance
Francesca D'Alessandro Behr
The Ohio State University Press, 2018

Arms and the Woman: Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance by Francesca D’Alessandro Behr focuses on the classical reception in the works of female authors active in Venice during the Early Modern Age. Even in this relatively liberal city, women had restricted access to education and were subject to deep-seated cultural prejudices, but those who read and wrote were able, in part, to overcome those limitations.
 
In this study, Behr explores the work of Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella and demonstrates how they used knowledge of texts by Virgil, Ovid, and Aristotle to systematically reanalyze the biased patterns apparent both in the romance epic genre and contemporary society. Whereas these classical texts were normally used to bolster the belief in female inferiority and the status quo, Fonte and Marinella used them to envision societies structured according to new, egalitarian ethics. Reflecting on the humanist representation of virtue, Fonte and Marinella insisted on the importance of peace, mercy, and education for women. These authors took up the theme of the equality of genders and participated in the Renaissance querelle des femmes, promoting women’s capabilities and nature.
 
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Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered
A Heroic Poem
Lucrezia Marinella
University of Chicago Press, 2009

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. 

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Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please
Lucrezia Marinella
Iter Press, 2012
With this translation of Marinella’s Exhortations to Women and to Others if They Please we can now read another crucial text from her extensive body of work, one that signals a radical ideological shift from her best known text, The Nobility and Excellence of Women; we can thus enjoy a fuller picture of the author and her opinions. Only three copies of Exhortations have been located in any library, and in the absence of a critical edition this translation will prove to be a point of reference for scholars and students alike. Benedetti’s thorough introduction situates Marinella and her works within early seventeenth-century Venetian culture and the Counter-Reformation more broadly, in a way that is profoundly influenced by philology and is also theoretically sound.
—Maria Galli Stampino
Associate Professor of French and Italian
University of Miami
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front cover of Love Enamored and Driven Mad
Love Enamored and Driven Mad
Lucrezia Marinella
Iter Press, 2020
With Love Enamored and Driven Mad, Lucrezia Marinella puts her mark on classical mythology and literary antecedents. She transforms Cupid from all-powerful god to wayward adolescent who falls to his own haughtiness while having female characters (such as Venus) take on distinctly positive roles. From the literary standpoint, she demonstrates her deep knowledge of classical and vernacular authors, from Ovid to Apuleius and Prudentius, and from Dante to Tasso, with numerous forays into Petrarchan poetics.

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe - The Toronto Series, volume 72
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front cover of The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men
The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men
Lucrezia Marinella
University of Chicago Press, 1999
A gifted poet, a women's rights activist, and an expert on moral and natural philosophy, Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653) was known throughout Italy as the leading female intellectual of her age. Born into a family of Venetian physicians, she was encouraged to study, and, fortunately, she did not share the fate of many of her female contemporaries, who were forced to join convents or were pressured to marry early. Marinella enjoyed a long literary career, writing mainly religious, epic, and pastoral poetry, and biographies of famous women in both verse and prose.

Marinella's masterpiece, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men was first published in 1600, composed at a furious pace in answer to Giusepe Passi's diatribe about women's alleged defects. This polemic displays Marinella's vast knowledge of the Italian poetic tradition and demonstrates her ability to argue against authors of the misogynist tradition from Boccaccio to Torquato Tasso. Trying to effect real social change, Marinella argued that morally, intellectually, and in many other ways, women are superior to men.


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Who Is Mary?
Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary
Vittoria Colonna, Chiara Matraini, and Lucrezia Marinella
University of Chicago Press, 2009
For women of the Italian Renaissance, the Virgin Mary was one of the most important role models. Who Is Mary? presents devotional works written by three women better known for their secular writings: Vittoria Colonna, famed for her Petrarchan lyric verse; Chiara Matraini, one of the most original poets of her generation; and the wide-ranging, intellectually ambitious polemicist Lucrezia Marinella. At a time when the cult of the Virgin was undergoing a substantial process of redefinition, these texts cast fascinating light on the beliefs  of Catholic women in the Renaissance, and also, in the cases of Matraini and Marinella, on contemporaneous women’s social behavior, prescribed for them by male writers in books on female decorum.  
            Who Is Mary? testifies to the emotional and spiritual relationships that women had with the figure of Mary, whom they were required to emulate as the epitome of femininity. Now available for the first time in English-language translation, these writings suggest new possibilities for women in both religious and civil culture and provide a window to women’s spirituality, concerning the most important icon set before them, as wives, mothers, and Christians.
 
 
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