Lyric Poetry By Women Of The Italian Renaissance

Bilingual, annotated edition of more than 200 poems by Italian Renaissance women, many of which have never before been published in English. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance is the first modern anthology of verse by Italian women of this period to give a full representation of the richness and diversity of their output. Although familiar authors such as Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Gambara are well represented, half of the fifty-four poets featured are unknown even to many specialists. Especially noteworthy is an extensive selection of verse from the period following 1560, which has received little or no critical attention. This later, strikingly experimental, proto-Baroque tradition of verse is reconstructed here for the first time. Virginia Cox creates both a scholarly teaching resource and a collection of poetry accessible to general readers with no previous knowledge of the Italian poetic tradition. Each poem is presented in its original language, accompanied by a translation and commentary. An introduction traces the history of Italian lyric poetry from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Cox also provides a guide to meter, rhythm, and rhyme, as well as a glossary of rhetorical terms and a biographical dictionary of authors. Organized thematically, this book offers poems about love, religion, and politics; verse addressed to patrons, friends, family, and places; and polemical and correspondence verse. Four languages are represented: Greek, Latin, literary Tuscan of various levels of standardization, and the stylized rustic dialect of pavan. The volume contains more than 200 poems, of which about a quarter have never before been published in a modern edition and more than a third have not previously been available in English translation. "Exhaustive and insightful . . . 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

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

This dual-language collection presents the rich flowering of women's poetry during the Italian Renaissance: from the love lyrics of famous courtly ladies of Venice and Rome to the deeply moral and spiritual poets of the age. It includes biographies of 19 poets and over 80 selected poems in the original Italian with facing English verse translation. Poets include: Laura Battiferri Ammannati, Chiara Matraini, Isabella Andreini, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici, Vittoria Colonna, Isabella di Morra, Tullia d'Aragona, Aurelia Petrucci, Lucia Bertani Dell'Oro, Antonia Giannotti Pulci, Leonora Ravira Falletti, Camilla Scarampa, Moderata Fonte, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, Laura Bacio Terracina, Veronica Gmbara, Barbara Bentivoglio Strozzi Torelli, Olimpia Malipiera. Dual-language poetry. Introduction, biographies, notes, bibliographies, first-line index.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--University of Leeds, England, 1990).

This dual-language collection presents the rich flowering of women's poetry during the Italian Renaissance: from the love lyrics of famous courtly ladies of Venice and Rome to the deeply moral and spiritual poets of the age. It includes biographies of 19 poets and over 80 selected poems in the original Italian with facing English verse translation. Poets include: Laura Battiferri Ammannati, Chiara Matraini, Isabella Andreini, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici, Vittoria Colonna, Isabella di Morra, Tullia d'Aragona, Aurelia Petrucci, Lucia Bertani Dell'Oro, Antonia Giannotti Pulci, Leonora Ravira Falletti, Camilla Scarampa, Moderata Fonte, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, Laura Bacio Terracina, Veronica Gàmbara, Barbara Bentivoglio Strozzi Torelli, Olimpia Malipiera. Dual-language poetry. Introduction, biographies, notes, bibliographies, first-line index.

Leonora Bernardi (1559-1616), a gentlewoman of Lucca, was a highly regarded poet, dramatist and singer. She was active in the brilliant courts of Ferrara and Florence at a time when creative women enjoyed exceptional visibility in Italy. Like many such figures, she has since suffered historical neglect. Drama, Poetry and Music in Late-Renaissance Italy presents the first ever study of Bernardi’s life, and modern edition of her recently discovered literary corpus, which mostly exists in manuscript. Her writings appear in the original Italian with new English translations, scholarly notes, critical essays and contributions by Eric Nicholson, Eugenio Refini and Davide Daolmi. Based on new archival research, the substantial opening section reconstructs Bernardi’s unusually colourful life. Bernardi’s works reveal her connections with some of the most pioneering poets, dramatists and musicians of the day, including her mentor Angelo Grillo and the first opera librettist Ottavio Rinuccini. The second major section presents her pastoral tragicomedy Clorilli, one of the earliest secular dramatic works by a woman. It was apparently performed in the early 1590s at a Medici villa near Florence, before Grandduke Ferdinando I de’ Medici, and his consort Christine of Lorraine, but now exists in an enigmatic Venetian manuscript. The third section presents Bernardi’s secular and religious verse, which engaged with new trends in lyric and poetry for music, and was set by various key composers across Italy.

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