Differentia: Review of Italian Thought

Number 8 Combined Issue 8-9 Spring/Autumn Article 48

1999

The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto. by Valeria Finucci

Susan Zimmerman

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Recommended Citation Zimmerman, Susan (1999) "The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto. by Valeria Finucci," Differentia: Review of Italian Thought: Vol. 8 , Article 48. Available at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia/vol8/iss1/48

This document is brought to you for free and open access by Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Differentia: Review of Italian Thought by an authorized editor of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 386 DIFFERENT/A thought, I would say to you: no, the prin­ The Lady Vanishes: ciple of female freedom is of a symbolic Subjectivity and Repre­ nature. It is not an actual behavior, how­ ever valid and precious such a behavior sentation in Castiglione may be toward the empowering of and Ariosto. women in society. by Valeria Finucci. Stanford: Stanford University Press, Finally, de Lauretis notes that the 1992. theory of social-symbolic practice espoused by the MWBC "makes little Finucci's book is concerned with space for differences and divisions modes by which the depiction of between-and especially within­ women-- or more precisely, of female women, and so tends to construct a subjectivities-- in canonical works of view of the female subject that is still the Italian Renaissance is shaped by too closely modeled on the "mon­ male writers and through the gaze of strous" subject of philosophy and male characters. Contesting a strong History" (18). But, she concludes, if critical tradition stemming from the project of this feminist philoso­ Burckhardt which locates protofemi­ phy can be rightly criticized for its nist attitudes in Castiglione's II libro unquestioning acceptance of the clas­ de/ cortigiano and Ariosto's Orlando sic, unified subject of philosophy, furioso, Finucci argues that in both nevertheless the notion of essential these works the representations of and originary difference represents a women actually legitimize patriar­ point of consensus and a new starting chal constructions of the female. point for feminist thought in Even militantly aggressive female fig­ " (19). ures are ultimately recuperated into the patriarchal economy and thereby MAURIZIO VIANO serve to define that economy and the Wellesley College males within it. Thus there are no "female" subjectivities in Castiglione 'For example, Lucia Chiavola-Birnbaum, and Ariosto at all, only representa­ Liberazione della donna: in Italy, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, tions which function reflexively to 1986), and Italian Feminist Thought. A validate male fantasies of their own Reader, ed. Paola Bono and Sandra Kemp, sexual identity. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991). Finucci's discussion, rooted in 'Italian Feminist Thought: A Reader, op. cit. Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalyt­ ical theory, proceeds from the post­ structuralist assumption that subjec­ tivity is the product of discourse. Although at time Finucci implies that it is language itself that denies the female any possiblity of independent identity within the symbolic order, her real interest lies in specific discur­ sive strategies to be found in Castiglione and Ariosto for contain- reviews 387 ing the female. She brings a formida­ Finucci illustrates several modes by ble erudition to this task. which the icon of the female courtier Buttressing psychoanalytical theo­ serves to reinforce homosocial bonds ry with analytical models drawn in the Cortigiano. from semiotics and film criticism, Especially interesting in this con­ Finucci establishes a sophisticated nection is her treatment of the jokes framework for textual interpretation. told by the courtiers at the conclusion But she is equally adept at position­ of Part I. In an original and arresting ing her analysis synchronistically. connection, Finucci demonstrates She finds corroborating evidence for how Freud's analysis of the tripartite her views in a variety of classical and structure of the dirty joke has impor­ Renaissance texts, both literary and tant affinities with Todorov's descrip­ visual, and she also takes into tion of the triangularity of discourse: account contemporary political fac­ in both joke and discourse, tors which influence literary design can be seen as the excluded third and narrative voice. term that is nonetheless necessary to Finucci devotes three chapters to make these phenomena happen. Castiglione's treatise. In the first of Thus the jokes of Castiglione's these, she deconstructs Castiglione's courtiers exclude women in a double sleight of hand: on the one hand, sense, and serve an an amblem of the demanding that female courtiers male-controlled discourse of the trea­ "produce discourse and excel in con­ tise itself. versation" (41), and on the other, ren­ Although the prevailing critical dering it impossible for them to do tradition finds in Orlando Furioso so. Despite the injunction embedded "numerous possibilities of self-defini­ in his text, "the possiblity of speaking tion for women, including transgres­ in Castiglione's taken away from sion" (19), Finucci argues that both named and unnamed women, Ariosto, like Castiglione, works to and the duchess and her deputy contain disorder by "reaffirming the intervene only in their role of normal­ need for alignment through normal­ izing and dedramatizing content and ization (marriage) or elimination contest" (36). Since "only the person (death or displacement to mythical manipulating discourse can construe lands) of the different female charac­ himself narratively" (39), it is the ters" (16). Each of Finucci's five chap­ male courtier who assumes the ters on Ariosto's romantic epic thus exegetic function in the Cortigiano. focuses on the way in which a trans­ The female courtier, assimilated to gressive female (Angelica, Olimpia, what is fundamentally an Oedipal Isabella, Fiordispina and Brada­ and homocentric narrative, functions mante) is made ultimately to function iconically: positioned as radically as metaphor for male identity. different and non-representable, she Finucci's superb analysis of the has no choice but to assent "to her myth of Medusa-representating own removal from the process of sig­ man's attraction to and fear of female nification" (42). sexuality and his need to fix it in a In the two succeeding chapters, sanitized symbol beyond desire and 388 DIFFERENT/A worthy of worship-operates as a by her own evidence. For example, leitmotif binding these individual Bradamante, the "unimpeachable narratives. Taken collectively, the female subject" whose military phase chapters trace the trajectory of the ... constitutes only a temporary activi­ Orlando Furioso itself, which moves ty before her public espousal of the from "romance and deviation" joys of domesticity" seems incompati­ (Angelica) to "epic and closure" ble with the Bradamante who under­ (Bradamante) (19). stands that Rodomonte's mausoleum Although as warrior woman, for Isabella "should not replace a Bradamante might seem the most woman, dead or alive, but should disruptive of Ariosto's collection of represent a woman's right to choose a female figures, Finucc i identifies life of her own" (194). Such a contra­ Angelica as his most formidable diction suggests a destablizing crux female . Narcissistically self-enclosed which might work to contravene or and self-contained, uninterested in at least compromise a recuperative suitors and equipped to thwart narrative strategy. But if Finucci would-be ravishers such as Ruggiero, chooses not to foreground such crux­ by becoming invisible, Angelica es in her analysis, it is because her "desires nothing but escape from the main objective--an ambitious one--is desire that creates a place for her in to dismantle an entrenched critical representation" (118). But an tradition which mistakenly attributes Angelica who is "the subject of her protofeminist attitudes to Castiglione own desire" (120) is outside the econ­ and Ariosto. In terms of this task, she omy of the symbolic order. As such, is unquestionably successful. Thus she unmans--or castrates--men who her book represents a keystone study control or possess her (as seen in which will prompt an important shift Orlando's madness), and therefore in critical approaches to major writ­ must be radically degraded in the ers of the Italian Renaissance . narrative. Bradamante, on the other Especially as a first book, it is a hand, although ostensibly threaten­ remarkable accomplishment. ing by of her fiercely male exterior, is never phallically empow­ SUSAN ZIMMERMAN ered: Ariosto's narrative strategy Queens College, CUNY with her is to show "at each opportu­ nity that she is only pretending to be a man" (243). Finucci's examination of both the Cortigiano and Orlandofurioso is extra­ Anti-Semitism, ordinarily rewarding because of the and the Logic of polished way in which she integrates Cultural Difference: theoretical premises with richly Cesare Lombroso and detailed textual exegesis. It is true Matilde Serao that occasionally her insistence on By Nancy A. Harrowitz. narrative strategies of recuperation Lincoln & London: University of flattens out contradictions suggested Nebraska Press, 1994.