Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies & Courtesans [Paperback]

Laura Anna Stortoni (Editor), Mary Prentice Lillie (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2008

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, Isabella Andreini, Vittoria Colonna, Tullia d'Aragona, Lucia Bertani Dell'Oro, Leonora Ravira Falletti, Moderata Fonte, Veronica Franco, Veronica Gàmbara, Olimpia Malipiera, Chiara Matraini, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici, Isabella di Morra, Aurelia Petrucci, Antonia Giannotti Pulci, Camilla Scarampa, Gaspara Stampa, Laura Bacio Terracina, Barbara Bentivoglio Strozzi Torelli. Dual-language poetry. Introduction, biographies, notes, bibliographies, first-line index.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Stortoni and Lillie have succeeded marvelously in reproducing the individual style of each poet in fluent and unforced iambic pentameters. An excellent introduction to this important body of literature. [Recommended for] all collections." -- Choice, March 1998, vol. 35, no. 7

"This volume is destined to become a focus of discussion and a precise point of reference for English translations from now on." -- America Oggi, March 22, 1998

"a comprehensive anthology. [these poets] react with a kind of instinctive feminism to the Petrarchan model, which they shift so as to redress the balance of power between the sexes." -- London Times Literary Supplement, May 16, 1997

Language Notes

Text: English, Italian (translation)
Original Language: Italian

Product Details

• Paperback: 302 pages
• Publisher: Italica Press (September 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934977437
• ISBN-13: 978-0934977432
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #763,239 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Diverse Collection of Poetry by Italian Renaissance Women Writers, August 26, 2005

By 

Doreen Mace "cafecupp" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies & Courtesans (Paperback)

It is really good to find an excellent translation on women poets of the Italian Renaissance, as well as to have an edition that has facing Italian and English poems. The translators have also preserved the spelling and diacritical marks of the original text. The brief biography on each woman writer offers important background information on her life and her literary style. At the end of the book, there is an additional section written about the political and social situation in Italy from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. There is an added bonus of a map that shows the Italian city-states around 1559. The bibliography shows the amount of painstaking effort to research material for this book. Finally, there is an index of first-lines that makes reference very easy. Therefore, this book is an excellent book to use either in a classroom or for purely recreational enjoyment.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, Virginia, There Were Women Poets..., April 23, 2009

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies & Courtesans (Paperback)

... and more than just a few, in Renaissance Italy. This exciting collection contains selections from the works of nineteen Italian poetesses, whose social status ranged from a reigning princess (Leonora Falletti) to the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman (Laura Ammannati), to convent girls, wives of middle class merchants, professional singers, and practitioners of "the oldest profession." Each selection is matched with a brief biography of the authoress, and together these capsule biographies amount to a very cogent history of the incipient feminism of the Renaissance.

The themes of these poems range from fervent mysticism to fervid eroticism, with a surprising number of patriotic exhortations, including prescient calls for Italian unification. Some were published in the poetess's lifetime, but many have survived incorporated in letters; those of the women of highest social rank tend to be unpublished, just as the poems of music of male aristocrats would have been. The forms are the tightly-packed, elliptical, allusive sonnets and madrigals of the era. Many of them must have been intended for musical setting and, indeed, their passionate rhetoric is hard for modern ears to capture without the support of a singing voice. The best known of the nineteen is Gaspara Stampa, widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Italian Renaissance, in a class with Petrarch and Ariosto. The most fascinating, for modern readers I suspect, will be Veronica Franca, a Venetian 'courtesan' who mixed freely with the most rarified circles of humanists and painters, who was hired by the Republic to 'entertain' the young Henry of Valois on his way to his coronation as King of France, who was accused of witchcraft by the Inquisition and 'beat the rap,' and who founded a shelter for abandoned and abused women and aging prostitutes, thus becoming one of Italy's earliest 'social workers.'

The anthology is bilingual. I warn you that most of the beauty of the poetry is lost in English translation. That is true, of course, of poems by men as well. For an English reader, I think, the interest of the book will be more historical and social than aesthetic. But if you can read even a little Italian, it will be the kind of book you'll take out once in a while just for a jolt of passionate refinement.