210 EMWJ Vol. 9, No. 1 • Fall 2014 Book Reviews

Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Virginia Cox . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013 . 472 pp . $29 95. . ISBN 978-1-4214-0888-0 .

This dual-language anthology of lyric poetry is the third installment in Virginia Cox’s project on women’s writing in Renaissance Italy. In her first two monographs, Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) and The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), Cox presented a broad literary history of Italian Renaissance women’s poetry and prose, often challenging long-held tenets about women’s writing. What has been most unusual about these two books is that, until now, many of the authors she discussed were unknown and unavailable to her read- ers. Virginia Cox’s present volume, Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance, is thus a monumental work both in purpose and design. Not only does it anthologize 211 poems by fifty-five women authors (both familiar and obscure), it presents a corpus of literature that, while known to be vast, had no singular entry point for study. The risk of anthologiz- ing texts is of course that a book might inadvertently create a canon that excludes other works. I would argue that Cox succeeds in presenting a different sort of text, one that encourages future scholarship to expand beyond these selections rather than be limited to them. This anthology is generative precisely due to the impetus for the volume, to “reconstruct a lyric tradition — or, more precisely a subtradition within Italian lyric” (45) rather than privilege certain texts over others. Lyric Poetry begins with a nearly seventy-page introduction that pro- vides an overview of women’s literary production in the Italian Renaissance, a literary history of Petrarchism, and finally, a most unexpected and useful guide to terms of meter, rhyme, and rhythm. Following this introduction is the collection of poems in English and the Italian original (with a few selec- tions in Latin and Greek) and their accompanying notes. The book then concludes with appendices that provide short biographical entries on each poet as well as other tools for cross-referencing the poems, along with a glos- sary of poetic terminology. This support apparatus makes for an excellent teaching text. With clear explanations on the difference between metered Book Reviews 211 divisions such as the sonetto continuo and the sonetto ritornellato, as well as concise definitions of rhetorical terms such as “polyptoton” and “polysyn- deton,” these pages are useful for any study of Italian Renaissance lyric. The Introduction synthesizes many of the arguments laid out in Cox’s two aforementioned volumes on Italian women’s writing: elite women writers were more likely to limit their production to manuscripts rather than print; the advent of print witnessed the inclusion of middle- born literary women, if not low-born professional women writers; and finally, Cox’s most salient point, the Council of Trent did not mark a decline in female literary production. It is this last topic that is closest to the author’s heart and it is here where she pushes into new territory. Cox convincingly argues that when we consider the disappearance of women from poetry, we should look not at the Counter Reformation but rather at the “demise of Petrarchism” (36). It is a declaration that she can make with some assurance after detailing the relationship between the development of Petrarchism and the tradition of women’s writing within and against its norms. The most refreshing aspect of her analysis is her meticulous atten- tion to theme and style and how both were implicated in the trends that were employed by men. For example, Cox demonstrates how the “gravity” of style and theme that characterized Giovanni Della Casa’s poetry (e.g. new rhyme schemes, hypotactic syntax, universal topics such as jealousy or time) was employed by post Della Casa authors such as Laura Battiferri and Maddalena Salvetti (27). This approach sets Cox’s study apart from scholarship that has often situated a female writer within Petrarchism as if it were an unchanging and ahistorical tradition. As an example of the ways in which this global approach might change our understanding of individual writers, Cox argues that instead of taking the standard view that Veronica Franco is an “anti-Petrarchist,” we should see Franco as somewhat representative of the sort of “socialized” Petrarchism that one would find in the post-1560 context (34). This reassessment of Franco is just one of many bold claims that Cox makes in the Introduction and is one of the many moments that will undoubtedly spur future academic dialogue. Of course, the highlight of this anthology is the poems themselves. The book is divided thematically (amorous verse, religious verse, political verse, correspondence verse, poems on friendship and family love, etc.), 212 EMWJ Vol. 9, No. 1 • Fall 2014 Book Reviews with each subsection organized chronologically. The structure avoids organizing texts solely by author and thus successfully divests the texts of strictly biographical readings that tend to loom large in criticism of women’s literature. One drawback to this division, however, is that a reader might view each section as if it were a significantly cohesive unit. Although “amorous verse” is the largest category, to take from this anthology that women primarily wrote poems of love might be misleading. Consider for example that “amorous verse” has as its seventh entry Vittoria Colonna’s capitolo written on the capture of her husband and father in war. This poem could easily be placed in the category of “polemical verse” or even “political verse.” The poem is surely more scathing than affectionate, and rather than reading as a poem of love, it complains of men’s tendency to seek honor in war. On the other hand, there is a positive aspect to such an unexpected categorization. Cox’s decision to display such breadth of poetry in thematic categories will serve to show that Renaissance women’s verse, particularly amorous verse, is not trite or clichéd. As many of these texts are not available in any modern edition, it is important to note that Cox has been precise in her transcriptions. She has documented where there are significant discrepancies in source texts, and she has explained her technique of using a “lightly modern- ized” orthography (90). The translations themselves are in prose and are useful aids to understanding the Italian. Although Cox claims that the translations are not meant to be stand-alone artistic creations, many of them are quite vibrant and literary. There are, at times, seemingly unusual translation choices, such as when the author opts for poetic over literal meaning (translating “sen” as “womb” [345]) or uses British over American English (such as “brand” instead of “torch” for “la face”), but these are the prerogatives of the translator and certainly do not detract from the poems. The author’s meticulous attention to the Italian text as well as the precise and fluid English translations set this volume apart from previous dual- language anthologies, particularly the admirable but flawed Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans, ed. Laura Anna Stortoni and trans. Mary Prentice Lilli (New York: Italica Press, 1997). As one last comment on the poems, I believe that Cox’s footnotes to the poems merit special mention. Accompanying each poem, Cox provides a note that Book Reviews 213 includes a light interpretive aid as well as some biographical information. One outstanding note, for example, follows Poem 193, “Con quel caldo desio che nascer suole” by Veronica Gambara. In a note of approximately one full page, Cox not only provides the usual meter, rhyme, and source information for the poem, she then continues to explain the importance of this poem to the poet’s work, the Classical allusions to Virgil and Catullus, the genealogy of the poet, and the publication history of this poem. Any scholar will find such notes useful for their own citation and research. In sum, Lyric Poetry is a valuable book for both student and scholar. The introductory essay synthesizes the past decades of women’s literary history. The support apparatus provides glossaries of Italian poetic terms in easily accessible pages, and the poems themselves are splendid texts that are truly worthy of historical recuperation, at times poignant, comic, inspiring, and spiritual. We can only await a similar anthology of Italian Renaissance prose. Gerry Milligan College of Staten Island- CUNY

Pregnancy and Childbirth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) . Ed . and trans . Valerie Worth- Stylianou . Toronto: Iter and Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013 . 412pp . $37 00. . ISBN 978-0-7727-2138-9 . This book appears in the series “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe”. It offers introductions to and translations of “substantial sections” (xxi) of five treatises by men — four physicians and one surgeon — pub- lished between 1581 and 1625. They are: François Rousset, Traitte nou- veau de l’Hysterotomotokie, ou Enfantement Caesarien (New Treatise on Hysterotomotoky, or Childbirth by Caesarean [1581]); Jean Liebault, Trois Livres Appartenant aux Infirmitez et Maladies des femmes (Three Books Dealing with the Infirmities and Illnesses of Women [1582]); Jacques Guillemeau, De l’Heureux Accouchement des femmes (On the Safe Delivery of Women [1609]); Jacques Duval, Des Hermaphrodits, Accouchemens des Femmes, et Traitement qui est requis pour les relever en santé, et bien