Challenging Male Authored Poetry: Margherita Costa's Marinist Lyrics

Challenging Male Authored Poetry: Margherita Costa’s Marinist Lyrics (1638–1639) Julie Louise Robarts ORCID iD 0000-0002-1055-3974 Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2019 School of Languages and Linguistics The University of Melbourne Abstract: Margherita Costa (c.1600–c.1664) authored fourteen books of prose, poetry and theatre that were published between 1630 and 1654. This is the largest printed corpus of texts authored by any woman in early modern Europe. Costa was also a virtuosa singer, performing opera and chamber music in courts and theatres first in Rome, where she was born, and in Florence, Paris, Savoy, Venice, and possibly Brunswick. Her dedicatees and literary patrons were the elite of these courts. This thesis is the first detailed study of Costa as a lyric poet, and of her early works — an enormous production of over 1046 quarto pages of poetry, and 325 pages of love letters, published in four books between 1638 and 1639: La chitarra, Il violino, Lo stipo and Lettere amorose. While archival evidence of Costa’s writing and life is scarce due to her itinerant lifestyle, her published books, and the poetic production of the male literary networks who supported her, provide a rich resource for textual, paratextual and intertextual analysis on which the findings of this study are based. This thesis reveals the role played by Costa in mid-century Marinist poetry and culture. This study identifies the strategies through which Costa opened a space for herself as an author of sensual, comic and grotesque poetry and prose in Marinist and libertine circles in Rome, Florence and Venice. The most striking feature of Costa’s lyric corpus, and the central focus of my analysis, is her production of hundreds of female and male poetic voices in her poetry and love letters. This research project follows from Costa’s unique position as a female author within the Marinist tradition, and interrogates her – ii – use of gendered poetic voices, and the implications to our understandings of authorship, representations of gender relations and baroque poetics. Four main questions will be addressed: What were the opportunities for female cultural production in courts, academies and literary circles, and how did Costa access these opportunities? What challenges to both genre conventions and gender representations are then mounted in Costa’s authorship of gendered poetic voices? What are the rhetorical and ideological implications for female authorship and the representation of gender relations of the Lettere amorose? How does Costa stretch the boundaries of the baroque grotesque through female authorship? Most broadly in this thesis I argue that Costa’s lyric corpus continued and innovated baroque poetic conventions to keep Giambattista Marino (1569– 1625) and Marinism present in literary culture, in defiance of policies of the Church in Rome that sought to censor and silence sensual poetry and prose. Costa’s corpus is shaped to represent Marino’s central works, and Costa is presented as a new Marino. – iii – Declaration (i) This thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD. (ii) Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is fewer than the 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Signed: Julie Robarts Date – iv – Acknowledgments I thank Associate Professor Andrea Rizzi, and Associate Professor Stephen Kolsky for their guidance throughout the project. I thank Andrea, as my principal supervisor, for his unfailing kindness and positivity in all stages of progress, and all challenges, and his impeccable advice on academic style. I thank Dr Catherine Kovesi for her encouragement and warm support. I warmly thank Dr Diana Hiller for her final draft read through, for punctuation and clarity. A number of scholarships provided financial support. From the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, a Helen MacPherson Smith Scholarship. Support for research in Italy was funded by an Emma Grollo Scholarship also from the Faculty of Arts, and a Cassamarca Scholarship from the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies. Travel bursaries to attend conferences were received from the Australian and New Zealand Medieval and Early Modern Society, the Renaissance Society of America, and the University of Western Australia Medieval and Early Modern Group. I have also benefited from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship throughout my candidature. I thank Professor Lorenzo Geri, Università degli Studi “La Sapienza” of Rome, for an encouraging conversation that also brought a vital secondary source to my attention. I am grateful for the kind assistance of librarians in the National Libraries of Rome, Florence, and Venice, the Biblioteca Governativa Lucca, the Biblioteca Giovardiana, Veroli, the Vatican Library, and especially Dr Isabelle de Conihout, formerly of the Mazarin library, who shared her knowledge about the bindings of Costa’s books in that library. I also thank the librarians and administration at the Villa I Tatti, Harvard Centre for the Renaissance, for the use of the library and other facilities generously made available to the scholarly community, for eight weeks in 2017. I thank my family, Stephen Robarts, Annice and Irma for their loving support and patience with my pre-occupation, especially in the last intense months of writing and editing. I thank my mother Susan for all her practical grandmotherly care and love over these years of graduate research. I thank my father Geoff for his enduring enthusiasm for all things Italian. I thank Carol, wonderful musician and dear friend for tempting me back to music with some Monteverdi. I thank my brother, Stephen Braybrook, for taking care of so much in the last two years, that made it possible bring this ship into port. I thank my graduate research peers and friends, Amy, Elizabeth, Josh, Jonathan, Amie, Giuseppe, Ruth, Samira, Joan, Janet, and many others who have offered encouragement, and have supported my family during my absences, throughout my candidature. – v – Table of Contents Abstract:........................................................................................................... ii Declaration ...................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ........................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................... vi A note on the transcription of texts ............................................................... viii Chapter One — Introduction............................................................................... 1 Costa’s early lyric poetry and love letters........................................................ 2 Costa’s literary networks ................................................................................. 7 Venice and the Accademia degli Incogniti .................................................... 12 The female voice in Marinist poetry .............................................................. 15 A new approach to female authorship in the Italian Baroque ........................ 18 Voice ............................................................................................................. 19 Gendered authorship and the poetic subject ................................................ 26 Simulacrum ................................................................................................... 34 Baroque form ................................................................................................ 37 The grotesque ............................................................................................... 40 Approach and Methodology.............................................................................. 42 The limits of the text ...................................................................................... 42 The paratext .................................................................................................. 45 Intertextuality ................................................................................................ 45 The book as a social institution ..................................................................... 48 Reading female textual authority in the pornographic tradition ..................... 50 Literary collaboration: community of interpretation ....................................... 52 Thesis outline ................................................................................................ 53 Chapter Two — New opportunities for female voice in Marinist poetry ............ 56 From female performance to poetry publication ............................................ 57 Opportunities through praise: Costa as a Diva, Muse and Siren .................. 65 Costa’s corpus as a simulacrum of Marino ................................................... 70 Opportunities for pro-woman literature in Florence ....................................... 77 “Dotta beltà,” Adimari’s praise of Costa’s authorship .................................... 88 Making a female Marinist author ................................................................... 92 Chapter Three — Costa’s Bella donna and her challenge to male dominated lyric ..................................................................................................................

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