Women's Writing in Italy, 1400–1650

Virginia Cox is a professor of Italian at New York University and author of The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in Its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo and coeditor of The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition. She is also editor and translator of Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men, and coeditor and translator of Maddalena Campiglia, Flori, A Pastoral Drama.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter One: Origins (1400–1500)1. The "Learned Lady" in Quattrocento Italy: An Emerging Cultural Type2. The "Learned Lady" in Theory: Models of Gender Conduct and Their Contexts3. The "Learned Lady" as Signifier in Humanistic Culture4. Renaissance Particularism and the "Learned Lady"Chapter Two: Translation (1490–1550)1. Women, the Courts, and the Vernacular in the Early Sixteenth Century2. Sappho Surfaces: The First Female Vernacular Poets3. Bembo, Petrarchism, and the Reform of Italian Literature4. "So Dear to Apollo": Veronica Gambara and Vittoria Colonna after 15305. Founding Mothers, First Ladies: Gambara and Colonna as Models and IconsChapter 3: Diffusion (1540– 1560)1. Manuscript and Print in the "Age of the Council of Trent"2. Virtù Rewarded: The Contexts of Women's Writing3. Women Writers and Their Uses: Case Studies4. Literary Trajectories: Continuity and Change5. Women Writers and the Paradox of the PedestalChapter Four: Intermezzo (1560-1580)Chapter Five: Affirmation (1580–1620)1. Women's Writing in the Age of the Counter-Reformation2. Chivalry Undimmed: The Contexts of Women's Writing3. A Literature of Their Own? Writing, Ownership, Assertion4. The Twilight of GallantryChapter 6: Backlash (1590–1650)1. The Rebirth of Misogyny in Seicento Italy2. Misogyny and the Woman Writer: The Redomestication of Female Virtù3. Women's Writing in Seicento Italy: Decline and FallCodaAppendix A: Published Writings by Italian Women, Fifteenth to Seventeenth CenturiesAppendix B: Dedications of Published Works by WomenNotesBibliographyIndex

Exhaustive and insightful... This is an amazing book, a major achievement in the field of women's studies. -- Elissa Weaver Renaissance Quarterly 2009 This is a definitive study and will surely remain so for many years to come. Choice 2009 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. -- Stephen Kolsky Modern Language Review 2010