Gender and Faith in the Works of Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella and Arcangela Tarabotti
Lead Research Organisation:
University of St Andrews
Department Name: Sch of Modern Languages
Abstract
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Max 4000 characters
A heated debate on female nature took centre stage in the literature of the Italian Renaissance. Theological doctrine was a significant battleground of such diatribes, as scriptural authority was regularly employed to justify the oppression of women. The belief that sex roles were determined by the divine order was fiercely combated by Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella and Arcangela Tarabotti. From their interpretations of theology along gendered lines to their summoning of biblical figures as models of female value, these early modern Venetian authors appropriated the sacred sphere to promote philogynous attitudes. However, the subversive nature of their religious writings has not been fully appreciated. Hence, with my doctoral dissertation I will uncover the continuous dialogue these letterate entertained with Scriptures, in order to achieve a more nuanced understanding of their political, theological and artistic projects.
My research is driven by the conviction that we will not grasp the intellectual genealogy of contemporary feminism until we appreciate the significant role played by devotional literature in the Renaissance enterprise of valorising women. As evidenced by Adriana Cavarero's and Franco Restaino's Le Filosofie Femministe or by Paola Bono's and Sandra Kemp's Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader, Italian feminists often locate the genesis of our pro-woman tradition in eighteenth-century England with Mary Wollstonecraft, or even later with Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas (1938). Examining the writings by Fonte, Marinella and Tarabotti as one of the earliest configurations of modern Western feminism, my thesis will demonstrate that both the theoretical and historical roots of our pro-woman thought are less secular and more ancient than commonly conceded.
In doing so, my thesis will also question the historiographical commonplace by which a profane and "feminist" Renaissance was succeeded by a religious and misogynistic Counter-Reformation, proposing a significant revision of traditional chronologies of early modern women's writings and a rethinking of the Italian experience of Reformation.
Max 4000 characters
A heated debate on female nature took centre stage in the literature of the Italian Renaissance. Theological doctrine was a significant battleground of such diatribes, as scriptural authority was regularly employed to justify the oppression of women. The belief that sex roles were determined by the divine order was fiercely combated by Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella and Arcangela Tarabotti. From their interpretations of theology along gendered lines to their summoning of biblical figures as models of female value, these early modern Venetian authors appropriated the sacred sphere to promote philogynous attitudes. However, the subversive nature of their religious writings has not been fully appreciated. Hence, with my doctoral dissertation I will uncover the continuous dialogue these letterate entertained with Scriptures, in order to achieve a more nuanced understanding of their political, theological and artistic projects.
My research is driven by the conviction that we will not grasp the intellectual genealogy of contemporary feminism until we appreciate the significant role played by devotional literature in the Renaissance enterprise of valorising women. As evidenced by Adriana Cavarero's and Franco Restaino's Le Filosofie Femministe or by Paola Bono's and Sandra Kemp's Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader, Italian feminists often locate the genesis of our pro-woman tradition in eighteenth-century England with Mary Wollstonecraft, or even later with Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas (1938). Examining the writings by Fonte, Marinella and Tarabotti as one of the earliest configurations of modern Western feminism, my thesis will demonstrate that both the theoretical and historical roots of our pro-woman thought are less secular and more ancient than commonly conceded.
In doing so, my thesis will also question the historiographical commonplace by which a profane and "feminist" Renaissance was succeeded by a religious and misogynistic Counter-Reformation, proposing a significant revision of traditional chronologies of early modern women's writings and a rethinking of the Italian experience of Reformation.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Carlotta Moro (Student) |