Boccaccio's Heroines
Boccaccio's Heroines

Author: Margaret Franklin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1351955152

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In contrast to earlier scholars who have seen Boccaccio's Famous Women as incoherent and fractured, Franklin argues that the text offers a remarkably consistent, coherent and comprehensible treatise concerning the appropriate functioning of women in society. In this cross disciplinary study of a seminal work of literature and its broader cultural impact on Renaissance society, Franklin shows that, through both literature and the visual arts, Famous Women was used to promote social ideologies in both Renaissance Tuscany and the dynastic courts of northern Italy. Speaking equally to scholars in medieval and early modern literature, history, and art history, Franklin brings needed clarification to the text by demonstrating that the moral criteria Boccaccio used to judge the lives of legendary women - heroines and miscreants alike - were employed consistently to tackle the challenge that politically powerful women represented for the prevailing social order. Further, the author brings to light the significant influence of Boccaccio's text on the representation of classical heroines in Renaissance art. By examining several paintings created in the republics and principalities of Renaissance Italy, Franklin demonstrates that Famous Women was employed as a conceptual guide by patrons and artists to draw the teeth from the challenge of unconventionally powerful women by co-opting their stories into the service of contemporary Italian standards and mores.

Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850
Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850

Author: Dianne Dugaw

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1996-01-15

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780226169163

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Masquerading as a man, seeking adventure, going to war or to sea for love and glory, the transvestite heroine flourished in all kinds of literature, especially ballads, from the Renaissance to the Victorian age. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850 identifies this heroine and her significance as a figure in folklore, and as a representative of popular culture, prompting important reevaluations of gender and sexuality. Dugaw has uncovered a fascination with women cross-dressers in the popular literature of early modern Europe and America. Surveying a wide range of Anglo-American texts from popular ballads and chapbook life histories to the comedies and tragedies of aristocratic literature, she demonstrates the extent to which gender and sexuality are enacted as constructs of history.

Miserabile Et Glorioso Lodovic
Miserabile Et Glorioso Lodovic

Author: Ronnie H. Terpening

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780802041593

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Terpening shows that not only did Dolce make interesting contributions to Italian literature, but he also played a decisive role in the formation and diffusion of late Cinquecento culture.

Renaissance Transactions
Renaissance Transactions

Author: Valeria Finucci

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780822322955

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Edited collection discusses the first historically important debate on what constitutes modern literature, which focused on two 16th century works: ORLANDO FURIOSO and GERUSALEMME LIBERATA.

My Secret is Mine
My Secret is Mine

Author: Hildegard Elisabeth Keller

Publisher: Peeters Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9789042908710

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Erotic, sexual and marital images belong to the fundamental stock of human symbols for commitment and union as well as for the endangering of such a union. Their inexhaustible potential has shaped religious and cultural history, giving rise to rich artistic creations during the Christian Middle Ages. Such pictorial and textual sources - here drawn mainly from German secular and religious literature between the 12th and the 17th centuries - form a veritable archive of gender history. What from a Christian point of view had been presented as a principal purpose of human existence - being 'God's free daughter, His Son's bride' - took on an increasingly sexual character and became the particular domain of religious women. Beginning with this eroticized concept of God, this book examines its multiple implications: for the texts themselves as well as their authors and readers, for the relationship with a transcendent partner, and for the secular experience of marriage. After the initial theoretical groundwork, a general survey exemplifying brides of God precedes a detailed study of prominent individuals. My Secret is Mine thus invites very diverse literary brides and their beloveds to shed some light on their experience of that inexpressible, and yet immensely productive, promise of union with love itself.

Gendering the Renaissance
Gendering the Renaissance

Author: Meredith K. Ray

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2023-04-14

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1644533065

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The essays in this volume revisit the Italian Renaissance to rethink spaces thought to be defined and certain: from the social spaces of convent, court, or home, to the literary spaces of established genres such as religious plays or epic poetry. Repopulating these spaces with the women who occupied them but have often been elided in the historical record, the essays also remind us to ask what might obscure our view of texts and archives, what has remained marginal in the texts and contexts of early modern Italy and why. The contributors, suggesting new ways of interrogating gendered discourses of genre, identities, and sanctity, offer a complex picture of gender in early modern Italian literature and culture. Read in dialogue with one another, their pieces provide a fascinating survey of currents in gender studies and early modern Italian studies and point to exciting future directions in these fields.

Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe

Author: Margaret C. Schaus

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-09-20

Total Pages: 985

ISBN-13: 1135459606

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From women's medicine and the writings of Christine de Pizan to the lives of market and tradeswomen and the idealization of virginity, gender and social status dictated all aspects of women's lives during the middle ages. A cross-disciplinary resource, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe examines the daily reality of medieval women from all walks of life in Europe between 450 CE and 1500 CE, i.e., from the fall of the Roman Empire to the discovery of the Americas. Moving beyond biographies of famous noble women of the middles ages, the scope of this important reference work is vast and provides a comprehensive understanding of medieval women's lives and experiences. Masculinity in the middle ages is also addressed to provide important context for understanding women's roles. Entries that range from 250 words to 4,500 words in length thoroughly explore topics in the following areas: · Art and Architecture · Countries, Realms, and Regions · Daily Life · Documentary Sources · Economics · Education and Learning · Gender and Sexuality · Historiography · Law · Literature · Medicine and Science · Music and Dance · Persons · Philosophy · Politics · Political Figures · Religion and Theology · Religious Figures · Social Organization and Status Written by renowned international scholars, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe is the latest in the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages. Easily accessible in an A-to-Z format, students, researchers, and scholars will find this outstanding reference work to be an invaluable resource on women in Medieval Europe.