0 Universidade do Porto / University of Porto Univerzita Karlova / Charles University Faculdade de Letras / Faculty of Arts (Porto) Filozofická fakulta / Faculty of Arts (Prague) Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies [CETAPS] (Porto) Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur / Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (Prague) Text and Event in Early Modern Europe (TEEME) An Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Ph.D. Dissertation DEFENCE FROM THE MARGIN Women Authors and Paratext between the Two Shores of the Adriatic Three Case Studies from the Sixteenth Century Jelena Bakić Supervisors: Dr. Zulmira da Conceição Trigo Gomes Marques Coelho Santos (University of Porto) PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc. (Charles University Prague) 2017 1 Declarations of Academic Integrity For Charles University, Prague: I declare that the following PhD thesis is my own work for which I used only the sources and literature mentioned in the text and that this thesis has not been used in the course of other university studies or in order to acquire the same or another type of diploma. Prohlašuji, že jsem dizertační práci napsala samostatně s využitím pouze uvedených a řádně citovaných pramenů a literatury a že práce nebyla využita v rámci jiného vysokoškolského studia či k získání jiného nebo stejného titulu. In Porto, January 26, 2017 Jelena Bakić 2 Acknowledgements There are many people by whom I was supported and inspired during three and a half years of the Teeme-time, so this peritext of my thesis will be longer than usual. My gratitude goes to my two supervisors, Soňa Nováková and Zulmira Santos, for providing useful comments and for guiding me, especially in the last stage, before the submission of this thesis. To Donna Landry, my Kent adviser, I owe special gratitude for helping me find the right direction, for encouragement, for very useful advice which she provided from the very beginning until the last and the most important stage. Thanks especially to Maria Francesca Gabrielli from the University of Zagreb, for having shared her recent work on Speranza di Bona with me, and for much useful advice. From Belgrade University, my deep gratitude goes to Bojan Đorđević, who proposed many useful readings. I am deeply grateful to Renzo Peppi from Biblioteca degli Intronati in Siena, for providing me with the copy of the book by Speranza di Bona, and for making those few days in Siena so beautiful. I hope I can repay him one day. Zoran Perović from The Historical Archive in Dubrovnik helped me with his advice, and made me feel so welcomed there. I use this occasion to thank him. Maria Terzoli in our email conversation supported my work, and Gabriella Zarri recommended the work by Cherchi; to both is addressed my sincere gratitude. When I contacted Axel Erdmann to ask him where I can buy his book My Gracious Silence, he just asked my address and sent his book to me. To him I owe the special gratitude. I would like to thank to all TEEME members, especially to professor Rui Carvalho Homem for his support and understanding. I would like to thank to Rui Pereira for welcoming me in Casa da Musica, for all concerts, and for making possible work on Giordano Bruno which also influenced my work on Camilla Herculiana within this thesis. 3 This period of my life was not only marked by constant intellectual growth and my progressing as a researcher, but also it was a period of true friendship and solidariety. With my TEEME friends I shared beautiful and inspiring moments, and became proud on our friendship: Djamila, YiChun, Natacha, Diviya, Somnath, David, Tiago, Kate, Annemie and Phebe, Liam, Renu, Haifa, Maryam, and Johan. I am more than thankfull to my dear friend Magali Jelia who provided me with the text from Herculiana’s trial from FnF in Paris. For all love and beauty, laugh and dance, ‘art of living’ and ‘art of cooking’, books, movies, patience, for constant support and encouragement, and much much more, I need to thank Shabo. To my parents I am grateful for everything, for their support and love, from whom, among plenty other things, I learnt how beautiful and rewarding is honest and devoted work. Dašo and Ivo, Tereza and Anto are always there when I need them. From Belgrade University Prof. Mirka Zogović inspired me more than she can imagine. Also from Belgrade University, my professor and friend Biljana Dojcinović believed in me much more than I did and inspired me in many ways. Finally, my true friend and unique aunt, Sonja Drljević supported me when most needed, influenced me and showed me that a different life is possible. To her, I dedicate this thesis. 4 Abstract This doctoral thesis, entitled Defence from the Margin, contributes to two fields considered marginal by previous scholarship, women’s authorship during the early modern period and recent scholarship on the paratext, by introducing new knowledge about three women writers who wrote in Italian and lived on the two shores of the Adriatic in the second half of the sixteenth century. Moreover, this study provides the first comprehensive study of paratextual writing in defence of women by two women writers connected with the early modern city-state of Ragusa, positioning them in the literary, cultural and historical context of the early modern Italian environment. The thesis is structured in four chapters: the first can be read both as an independent survey of the contexts in which the texts being analysed appeared, as well as an introduction to the next three chapters, each of which is based on one of three case studies: women authors and their texts, Maria Gondola (1584) and Speranza di Bona (1569) connected with the Ragusan environment, and Camilla Herculiana (1584), who lived in Padua. Apart from the fact that their work was written in Italian and appeared almost at the same historical moment, in a post-Tridentine context, and until recently remained forgotten, it is the voice of defence in relation to their female existence in the paratextual elements of their discursive secular prose that connects these three authors. Their discursive prose includes dedicatory epistles, dedicatory sonnets, errata corrige, trial testimony and letters. Employing methodology that draws on close reading and translation of primary texts from Italian into English, and relying on paratextual theory mainly based in the works of Genette (1987) and Dunn (1994), as well as on theory which comes from the fields of micro-history and New Historicism, this thesis argues that the women authors 5 presented in this study wrote from the social margin and used the marginal part of the book as a way not only to enter the text and legitimize their authorship, but also to enter the debate of the querelle des femmes. Finally, by pointing out that the importance of these female-authored paratexts should be reconsidered, this thesis contributes to the historical recovery of early modern women`s work. 6 Abstrakt Tato dizertační práce, nazvaná Defence from the Margin (Obhajoba z okrajů), se věnuje dvěma oblastem dosud literární vědou zanedbávaným, a to ženskému psaní doby raného novověku a paratextovému materiálu literárních děl. Předkládá nové poznatky o třech spisovatelkách, které tvořily v italském jazyce a působily na dvou pobřežích Jaderského moře v 2. polovině 16. století. Tato práce také přináší první obsáhlejší studii paratextů dvou raně novověkých spisovatelek z městského státu Ragusa, které se zabývaly obhajobou žen, přičemž tyto autorky jsou vnímány v širším rámci literárního, kulturního a historického kontextu prostředí raně novověké Itálie. Práce je rozdělena do čtyř kapitol: první lze chápat jako přehled kontextů, do kterých rozebírané texty vstupovaly, a zároveň jako úvod k dalším třem kapitolám zpracovávajícím případové studie věnované životu i dílu jednotlivých autorek, kterými jsou Maria Gondola (1584) a Speranza di Bona (1569), spojené s prostředím Ragusy, a Camilla Herculiana (1584), která žila v italské Padově. Kromě toho, že díla všech tří jsou napsána v italštině a objevila se téměř současně v kontextu post-tridentské éry, aby posléze až donedávna zůstala zapomenuta, spojuje tyto autorky zejména hlas obhajoby ozývající se v jejich ženské existenci v paratextových prvcích jejich diskurzívní sekulární prózy. Tento typ prózy zde představují dedikační epištoly a sonety, opravné listy, soudní výpovědi a dopisy. Metodologicky práce vychází z techniky podrobného čtení a překladu původních textů z italštiny do angličtiny, přičemž aplikuje teorii paratextů založenou zejména na pracích Genetta (1987) a Dunna (1994) a teorie pocházející z oblasti mikrohistorie a nového historismu, a dochází k závěru, že uvedené spisovatelky nejen psaly z okraje společnosti a zároveň využívaly okrajové části svých publikací k uvedení následného 7 textu a obhajoby svého vlastního autorství, ale rovněž vstupovaly do debat v rámci querelle des femmes, tj. sporu o ženu. A konečně, zdůrazňováním nutnosti přehodnocení ženami psaných paratextů přispívá tato dizertace k historickému znovuobjevování ženské raně novověké tvorby. 8 Resumo Esta tese, intitulada «Defence from the Margin», pretende contribuir para dois campos, entendidos como marginais por estudos anteriores, ao problematizar, simultaneamente, a questão da autoria feminina na Época Moderna e ao centrar-se na análise do «aparato textual», introduzindo novos conhecimentos sobre três mulheres que escreveram em italiano, nas margens do Adriático, na segunda metade do século XVI. Para além desta importante dimensão, este estudo fornece uma abordagem integrada de escritos paratextuais, em defesa das mulheres, da autoria de duas escritoras ligadas, de várias formas, à cidade de Ragusa, posicionando-as no contexto literário, histórico e cultural do «espaço» italiano, na segunda metade de Quinhentos. A tese organiza-se em quatro capítulos, podendo o primeiro ser lido simultaneamente como a apresentação do «estado da questão», que enquadra esta produção discursiva, mas também como uma introdução aos três capítulos seguintes, que analisam e problematizam cada um dos três «case studies»: mulheres escritoras e os seus textos - Maria Gondola (1584) e Speranza di Bona (1569), ligadas ao ambiente e espaço de Ragusa, e Camilla Herculiana (1584), que viveu em Pádua.