Convent Paradise

Meredith K. Ray is Professor of Italian at the University of Delaware. She is co-editor with Lynn Lara Westwater of Arcangela Tarabotti’s Letters Familiar and Formal (2012) in The Other Voice Series.Lynn Lara Westwater is Associate Professor of Italian at The George Washington University. For The Other Voice Series she is co-editor with Meredith K. Ray of Arcangela Tarabotti’s Letters Familiar and Formal (2012) and with Diana Robin of Ippolita Sforza, Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations (2017).

• Illustrations xviiAbbreviations xixAcknowledgments xxiIntroduction 1The Other Voice 1Convent Paradise and Convent Life in Seventeenth-Century Venice 2The Convent of Sant’Anna 9The Contours of Monastic Life 16Composing from the Convent 31Tarabotti’s Literary Works 31Publishing Convent Paradise: Context and Paratext 34Reading Convent Paradise 44In Dialogue with Saint Augustine 44Style and Rhetoric in Convent Paradise 47Sources for Convent Paradise 50Reception and Afterlife 52Editors’ Note 60Convent Paradise 65Paratext: Dedication, Letters, and Poems 67Soliloquy to God 81Arcangela Tarabotti to the Reader 111Book One 115Book Two 163Book Three 201“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 245Bibliography 259Index 277

Meredith Ray and Lynn Westwater have done an excellent job reworking Tarabotti’s labyrinthine, often page-long sentences, skillfully breaking them into readable, truly eloquent English equivalents. The notes supporting the translation are very thoroughly researched, extensive and insightful. The introduction is an indispensable guide to Tarabotti’s account of convent life.—Elissa Weaver, Professor Emerita of Italian Literature, University of Chicago