Pretext and Subversion: Lucrezia Marinella's Essortationi Alle Donne (1645)

Pretext and Subversion: Lucrezia Marinella’s Essortationi alle donne (1645)

Amy Ellen Sinclair

ORCID: 0000-0003-2268-5904

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 2018

School of Languages and Linguistics The University of Melbourne

Abstract

Seventeenth-century Venetian writer Lucrezia Marinella (c. 1579-1653) is a pivotal figure in the history of women’s writing in Italy, and in the history of women’s use of the pen to defend their sex. Her provocative and erudite treatise, La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne co’ diffetti et mancamenti de gli uomini (1601) broke new ground in its cogent and forthright critique of misogynistic literary authorities and traditions. Almost half a century later, as an accomplished writer, Marinella published her second explicit contribution to the querelle des femmes, a book of apparently traditionalist exhortations entitled: Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri se a loro saranno a grado (1645). Relative to La nobiltà, the Essortationi has received significantly less critical attention. This complex, erudite, and elusive work, which has perplexed and divided modern scholars, is the subject of this thesis.

The Essortationi appears at first glance to advocate highly traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct: an apparent volte face on the feminist principles of La nobiltà. Yet

Marinella’s exhortations defy straightforward interpretation. As this thesis shows, close textual analysis reveals a persistent undertow of critique and subversion which problematises a reading of the text as a conservative recantation.

The aim of this thesis is to argue through both close textual analysis of the Essortationi and evaluation of the contemporary cultural and literary context that Marinella’s posture of traditionalism in the text is best understood as an authorial alibi. Through a show of conformity to traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct, Marinella makes a claim of being ‘elsewhere’ to mitigate her accountability for the challenges posed in her writing to dominant discourses, authorities, and ideologies on womanhood. The alibi of traditionalism functions in this way as an exercise in strategic authorial self-representation; a way of negotiating authority and decorum to increase the likelihood of publication without backlash

in a literary and cultural landscape that was increasingly antagonistic to the woman writer and particularly to feminist rhetoric.

As well as offering a new interpretation of Marinella’s Essortationi, this study aims to show through comparative analysis the way in which the author intervenes in and disrupts a patriarchal tradition of defining and circumscribing women’s identity in Renaissance conduct and querelle des femmes literature. More broadly, and with insights from modern theories on discourse, identity, and gender, this study offers a theoretical and analytical framework to understand better how early modern women writers negotiated, in and through written discourse, historically contested subject positions of female authorship, authority, and defiance.

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Declaration

This is to certify that:

(i) The 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 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps,

bibliographies, and appendices.

Amy Sinclair

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank my supervisors Andrea Rizzi and Stephen Kolsky for their enduring enthusiasm, encouragement, generosity, and intellectual rigour. I am forever grateful for all that they have taught me over the years. I would also like to thank Stephen for his undergraduate courses which initiated and inspired my journey to Marinella and her

Essortationi alle donne. To my friend and colleague, Julie Robarts, thank you for our chats, which always made everything seem more manageable. I would also like to thank Catherine

Kovesi for her support throughout my candidature and for her careful reading and helpful comments on drafts of this thesis. Eva Del Soldato also provided helpful feedback on a draft, for which I am very grateful. I would also like to thank Virginia Cox for the opportunity to discuss my project with her. Finally, I am grateful to the two assessors of this thesis for their careful readings, thoughtful and highly constructive comments.

Several scholarships have provided financial support during my candidature. A

Cassamarca Scholarship and an Emma Grollo Memorial Scholarship provided the financial support to conduct two research trips to Venice and Florence in 2012 and 2017. The

Renaissance Society of America (RSA) provided a travel grant to enable me to present my research at the 2017 RSA conference in Chicago. Throughout my candidature, I have also benefited from the financial support of an Australian Government Research Training Program

Scholarship.

Finally, to my mother Amanda, my partner Shawn, and children Felix and Phoebe, thank you for everything. This thesis simply would not have been possible without your encouragement, understanding, and support.

A Note on the Text

In my quotations from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian sources, I have adopted a conservative approach. I have modernised the Italian by including accents but have retained the original punctuation and spelling.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Declaration ...... iv Acknowledgements ...... v A Note on the Text ...... vi Table of Contents ...... vii Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1 1.1 The Essortationi alle donne (1645) ...... 3 1.2 Authorial Alibi ...... 12 1.3 New approaches to early modern women’s writing ...... 15 1.4 Fashioning and dissembling authorial identities in the early modern period ...... 20 1.5 Discourse, identity, and gender ...... 30 1.6 Methodology ...... 37 Chapter 2: Marinella rewriting womanhood and tradition in Seicento Venice ...... 47 2.1 Lucrezia Marinella (c. 1579-1653), her oeuvre and the querelle des femmes ...... 47 2.2 A changing climate for women’s writing and the Accademia degli Incogniti ...... 56 2.3 The Essortationi and the conduct literature tradition ...... 68 Chapter 3: Domesticity and Learning ...... 77 3.1 Repurposing discourses on women’s seclusion ...... 79 3.2 Silent because ignorant because secluded? Parodying patriarchal reasoning ...... 92 3.3 The futility of women’s learning – critique through apparent acquiescence ...... 96 3.4 Celebrating and interrogating the “verità” of women’s “proprie arte”...... 106 3.5 Conclusion ...... 118 Chapter 4: Modesty and beauty ...... 120 4.1 A repurposed exhortation to modesty ...... 121 4.2 Exhorting virtue, rejecting beauty and its tyranny ...... 147 4.3 Conclusion ...... 164 Chapter 5: Prudence and authority ...... 166 5.1 Re-reading Aristotle with Prudenza donnesca ...... 167 5.2 Interrogating the authorities on marital harmony ...... 184 5.3 Enacting prudential deliberation and authority – raising children and princes...... 195 5.4 Conclusion ...... 199

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Chapter 6: The Essortationi as a ‘refunctioned’ conduct book ...... 200 6.1 The irony of the Essortationi ...... 201 6.2 Literary and gender parody ...... 205 6.3 Parodying the voice of patriarchal exhortation in the Essortationi ...... 208 6.4 Gender, parody and a ‘refunctioned’ conduct book ...... 224 Conclusion ...... 228 Bibliography ...... 237

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Chapter 1: Introduction

“landmark in the history of women’s contribution to the querelle des femmes”.3 Almost half a century later, as an accomplished writer, Marinella published her second explicit contribution to the querelle des femmes, a book of apparently traditionalist exhortations entitled:

Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri, se a loro saranno a grado (1645). 4 Relative to La nobiltà,

1 Lucrezia Marinella, La nobiltà, et l'eccellenza delle donne, co' diffetti, et mancamenti de gli huomini. (Venice: Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1601). La nobiltà was first printed in 1600 under a slightly different title: Le nobiltà, et eccellenze delle donne: et i diffetti, e mancamenti de gli huomini. (Venice: Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1600). The significantly augmented edition, to which most modern scholarship refers, was printed in 1601 and reprinted 1621 – testament to its popularity and the author’s renown. All quotations in this chapter are from the 1601 edition. For a partial English translation and introduction see: The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men, ed. and trans. Anne Dunhill, introduction by Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

2 Virginia Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 1400-1650 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 174.

3 Ibid. Scholarship on the querelle des femmes is extensive. For a recent analysis of its origins, with information on key studies, and editions of querelle texts see: Julie D. Campbell, "The Querelle Des Femmes," in The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allyson M. Poska, Jane Couchman, and Katherine A. McIver (London: Routledge, 2016). See also amongst others: Pamela Joseph Benson, The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992); Adriana Chemello, "La donna, il modello, l'immaginario: Moderata Fonte e Lucrezia Marinella," in Nel cerchio della luna: figure di donna in alcuni testi del XVI secolo ed. Marina Zancan (Venice: Marsilio, 1983); Francine Daenens, "Superiore perchè inferiore: il paradosso della superiorità delle donne in alcuni trattati italiani del Cinquecento," in Transgressione tragica e norma domestica: esemplari di tipologie femminili dalla letteratura europea, ed. Vanna Gentili (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1983).

4 Lucrezia Marinella, Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri, se a loro saranno a grado, parte prima (Venice: Francesco Valvasense, 1645). Although the title suggests the existence of a second part, it appears it was either never written or published, or has not yet been located. All references to the text in this thesis refer to this Italian edition. A modern English translation of the text with an Introduction and extensive

the Essortationi has received significantly less critical attention. This complex, erudite and elusive work, which “puzzles twenty-first-century readers”5 is the subject of this thesis.

The Essortationi appears at first glance to advocate highly traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct: an apparent volte face on the feminist principles of La nobiltà. Yet

Essortationi between traditionalism and subversion, and the resistance of the work and the author’s stance to straightforward identification, have challenged and divided modern scholars.

The aim of this thesis is to argue through both close textual analysis of the Essortationi and evaluation of the contemporary cultural and literary context that Marinella’s posture of traditionalism in the text is best understood as an authorial alibi. Through a show of conformity to traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct,6 Marinella makes a claim of being ‘elsewhere’ to mitigate her accountability for the challenges posed in her writing to dominant discourses, authorities, and ideologies on womanhood. The alibi of traditionalism functions in this way as an exercise in strategic authorial self-representation; a way of negotiating authority and decorum to increase the likelihood of publication without backlash

notes is Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please, ed. and trans. Laura Benedetti (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012).

5 Maria Galli Stampino, "A Singular Venetian Epic Poem," in Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered: A Heroic Poem, ed. and trans. Maria Galli Stampino (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 9.

6 As explained in Section 1.5 of this Chapter, I use the terms “traditionalism” and “traditionalist” to broadly characterise the aspects of Marinella’s writing across the Essortationi that position the author in alignment with a conservative, traditional, view on women’s conduct. My analysis of the individual exhortations defines more precisely the traditions with which she is engaging.

in a literary and cultural landscape that was increasingly antagonistic to the woman writer and particularly to feminist rhetoric.

In this Introduction, I first present Marinella’s Essortationi, and review existing scholarship on the text. I explain my use of the metaphor of an authorial alibi for Marinella’s posture of traditionalism in the Essortationi, before reviewing the key developments in the study of early modern women’s writing, and authorial self-fashioning and dissimulation, that have informed my approach to analysing the text. I discuss the modern theories on the discursive production of identities and gender that provide the framework for my analysis of the Essortationi and Marinella’s discursive construction of an authorial alibi. In the final section

I explain the methodology for this study.

1.1 The Essortationi alle donne (1645)

The Essortationi alle donne was published in Venice in 1645 by Francesco Valvasense.

At face value, the work conforms to the structural, thematic, and ideological conventions of conduct literature of the period, with a series of nine chapters devoted to different areas of women’s conduct and role. The first three exhortations concern women’s seclusion within the home, their rejection of learning and literature, and their pursuit of the domestic arts. The

fourth exhortation addresses the benefits of taciturnity, premeditated speech, and reasoning, whilst the fifth exhortation concerns modesty in dress and ornamentation. The subsequent chapter stands alone in the work. Entitled “Prudenza donnesca”, this chapter occurs almost exactly at the midway point of the Essortationi, and rather than an exhortation it is presented as a declaration of women’s capacity for prudence. The subsequent exhortations (the sixth and seventh in the series) address respectively marital harmony and the raising of children. The final exhortation recommends women’s pursuit of virtue over corporeal beauty.

The Essortationi has presented a conundrum for modern scholars in its apparent endorsement of the patriarchal feminine ideal – silent, submissive, and confined to domestic duties – that La nobiltà so cogently undermines. The central question that dominates scholarship on the Essortationi is the degree to which Marinella’s traditionalist exhortations and her apparent volte face should be interpreted literally. Some scholars advocate a literal interpretation of the exhortations, as genuine advice to mid-Seicento women from another who is at the end of her life and exhorts with the authority of experience.7 Others suggest that such an interpretation is problematised by the contradictions and ambiguities of the text, and

Marinella’s writing of the Essortationi which itself exercises resistance to the modes of conduct

7 Alongside Laura Benedetti, whose position is explained below, see also more recently Adriana Chemello arguing that, rather than a palinode, the work can be understood as “una specie di cammino a ritroso quello compiuto da Lucrezia Marinelli, uno sguardo retrospettivo sulla propria vita che non vuole esaurirsi in una inutile autoreferenzialità, bensì auspica una ricaduta pragmatica sulle proprie simili attraverso la condivisione della sua esperienza.” Adriana Chemello, "Letteratura di condotta e vita delle donne nelle opere di Moderata Fonte e Lucrezia Marinelli," in Conduct Literature for and About Women in Italy 1470-1900: Prescribing and Describing Life, ed. Helena Sanson and Francesco Lucioli (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), 157. See also Letizia Panizza who notes that Marinella’s Essortationi is “out of character with her bold polemics of The Nobility and Excellence of Women and all her female figures” but suggests that the author’s traditionalist turn may be read as a reflection of Marinella’s increasing age and consequent inclination towards spiritual rather than secular values. Letizia Panizza, "Introduction to the Translation," in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men by Lucrezia Marinella, ed. Anne Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 15.

– most notably silence and sole devotion to domesticity – that she ostensibly advocates for women.8

Marinella’s modern editor and translator Laura Benedetti argues that Marinella’s

Essortationi constitutes an attempt by the author to distance herself from the ideology expressed in La nobiltà.9 According to Benedetti, in contrast to the utopian tone of the earlier text, the Essortationi is grounded in reality and pragmatic in its aim of instructing the reader on how to live in a world which had become increasingly less supportive of women’s right to knowledge and letters.10 Because the Essortationi were written by Marinella towards the end of her life, and perhaps a literary career marked by unrealised ambitions, Benedetti advocates a literal interpretation of the text.11 For her, the Essortationi are a record of the difficulties and opposition the letterata experienced during her pursuit of learning and a literary career. In this interpretation Marinella’s Essortationi encourages other women to avoid such a fate by withdrawing to the domestic sphere. Benedetti also expresses her concerns about multilayered readings of the Essortationi such as those of Paola Malpezzi Price and Christine

8 See for example the positions of Kolsky, Cox, Ross, Westwater, and Price and Ristaino explained below.

9 For Benedetti the notable omission of La nobiltà in the list of works cited in the letter to the reader at the beginning of the Essortationi, suggests that Marinella does not want to be remembered as author of La nobiltà, and that: “Il lavoro sottinteso alle Essortationi… e proprio La nobiltà, i cui concetti vengono ripresi per essere sistematicamente rovesciati.” Laura Benedetti, " Le Essortationi di Lucrezia Marinella: L'ultimo messaggio di una misteriosa veneziana," Italica 85, no. 4 (2008): 384. For Benedetti’s position, see also the introduction to her translation and more recently: "Tradurre Marinella in America: Opportunità e pericoli di una nuova frontiera," in Conflitti culturali a Venezia dalla prima età moderna ad oggi, ed. Rotraud von Kulessa, Daria Perocco, and Sabine Meine (Firenze: Franco Cesati, 2014).

10 "Le Essortationi di Lucrezia Marinella," 389.

11 Ibid., 390. Lavocat also sees the biographical aspect of the Essortationi as central to our interpretation of the text and its palinodic nature. Noting the highly personal, bitter tone of particularly the second chapter on the vanity of learning and literature, Lavocat suggests that it reveals “indirettamente, ma in un modo inaspettato e chiarificatore nello stesso tempo, la vita di Lucrezia Marinella. La predilezione per il ritiro, notato e lodato da tutti i contemporanei, sembra più dettata dalla disillusione e dal risentimento che dalla devozione.” Françoise Lavocat, "Introduzione," in Arcadia felice. Lucrezia Marinella (Firenze: Olschki, 1998), xxii-xxiii.

Ristaino (discussed below). She queries efforts to uncover the author’s “true feelings,” particularly when such a reading conflicts with a literal interpretation of the text.12

Conversely, Stephen Kolsky and Virginia Cox have questioned the validity of a literal interpretation, highlighting the incongruence between the exhortations Marinella makes to her women readers and the example she makes of herself through her writing. Kolsky notes the irony in the letterata’s extensive use of classical exempla and authorities given the text’s ostensible message to reject such learning.13 Cox suggests that the Essortationi are voiced by a woman “intent on ignoring her own advice” because Marinella’s second exhortation advocating women’s withdrawal from learning and literature is followed by a further six erudite exhortations.14 Cox warns against interpreting Marinella’s Essortationi “in simple terms, as a traditionalist retrenchment on the part of a former firebrand now retreating into an embittered old age.” She suggests that “There are certainly more agendas at play in the text”.15

Emilia Biga suggests the possibility that Marinella might have written the Essortationi in keeping with the ambiguity characteristic of contemporary treatises in which it is often

12 Laura Benedetti, "Introduction," in Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 34.

13 Kolsky posits that “It is this disjunction between the message of the Essortationi and the way it is conveyed to the reader through learned citation that is a sign of an underlying uncertainty, a confusion brought about by an incomplete recantation.” Stephen Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi: An Early Seventeenth-Century Feminist Controversy," The Modern Language Review 96, no. 4 (2001): 984.

14 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224.

15 Cox highlights other peculiarities of the text such as her choice of a male rather than female dedicatee and the pervasive use of untranslated Latin in a work ostensibly addressed to a female audience. Ibid., 225. Cox suggests as an alternative agenda an effort by Marinella to distance herself from Arcangela Tarabotti whose literary career was developing in the years leading up to the publication of the Essortationi. This possibility is explored in Chapter 4 of this thesis. Later, Cox describes the Essortationi as a reflection of Marinella’s “late-life miserabilism” but also notes the difficulty of gauging Marinella’s position in the highly ambiguous text. The Prodigious Muse: Women's Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2011), 251, 370 n. 3.

difficult to locate the author’s “real” opinion, even if it is overtly expressed.16 Sarah Gwyneth

Ross also points to the relevance of the publication context and contemporary literary trends to our reading of the Essortationi. She suggests that the publication of the text by Francesco

Valvasense – one of the preferred printers of the libertine Accademia degli Incogniti – should at least make us wary of literal interpretations and assumptions of sincerity, given his reputation for printing controversial, multilayered texts and using tactics to avoid censorship.17

Building on Price and Ristaino’s reading (discussed below), Ross posits that the work harbours a hidden message beneath layers of paradox and rhetorical trickery: that women should follow

Marinella’s lead rather than her conservative exhortations by engaging in the sort of philosophical inquiry that she enacts in the Essortationi.18

For these scholars, a literal reading of Marinella’s Essortationi as a palinode to La nobiltà written by a disillusioned writer at the end of her career is problematised by the paradoxes and ambiguities of the text. Yet there have been few comprehensive analyses of

16 Emilia Biga proposes two other possible explanations for Marinella’s apparent volte face: that the author’s age and maturity might have led her to tone down the polemical approach of her youth, and that the work represents a qualification rather than a retraction of the overt feminism of the earlier treatise. Biga suggests that the argument for the excellence of the female sex is not entirely repudiated in the Essortationi, rather: “è messa al servizio dell’assetto sociale, nella sua rigida suddivisione in ruoli maschili e femminili, affinché le donne ricoprano di buon grado il posto che in esso è a loro riservato.” Emilia Biga, Una polemica antifemminista del Seicento: La "Maschera Scoperta" di Angelico Aprosio (Ventimiglia: Civica Biblioteca Aprosiana, 1989), 39-40.

17 Sarah Gwyneth Ross, The Birth of Feminism : Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 296. These tactics weren’t always successful – Valvasense was tried and punished by the authorities in 1648 (three years after the publication of the Essortationi). See: Benedetti, "Introduction," 34-35. On Valvasense and the trial see also: Mario Infelise, "Books and Politics in Arcangela Tarabotti's Venice," in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006), 67-72; Monica Miato, L'accademia degli Incogniti di Giovan Francesco Loredan Venezia (1630-1661) (Firenze: Leo S. Olshki, 1998), 121-66; Arcangela Tarabotti, L'inferno Monacale di Arcangela Tarabotti, ed. Francesca Medioli (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990), 161; Mario Infelise, I padroni dei libri: Il controllo sulla stampa nella prima età moderna (Roma: Gius. Laterza & Figlia Spa, 2014).

18 Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 297. Ross also suggests that the letter to the reader, with its emphasis on the author’s experience and expertise in depicting military strategies for deceiving the enemy, alludes to the underlying purpose of the Essortationi as a literary and rhetorical exercise in deceiving enemies of women. Ibid., 298.

this elusive text. Exceptions are Benedetti’s research, outlined above, Lynn Lara Westwater’s chapter on the Essortationi in her PhD dissertation The Disquieting Voice, and Price and

Ristaino’s chapter on Marinella’s work in their monograph of the author and her oeuvre.19

Price and Ristaino see the paradoxes of the Essortationi as part of a complex rhetorical strategy.20 The scholars argue that the significant presence in the text of the fifth century sophist and famed paradoxist Gorgias of Leontini functions as an important interpretive clue.

They suggest that Gorgias is evoked in the text both explicitly through citations and references, and implicitly through Marinella’s use of a similar narrative style to the orator involving paradox, repetition and a ludic tone.21 Price and Ristaino argue that, like Gorgias’ The

Encomium of Helen, Marinella’s Essortationi should be classified as a paignion, “a playful exercise, in which what is presented as an affirmative statement should be taken seriously and not seriously at the same time.”22 Ultimately, the scholars suggest that Marinella’s traditionalist conduct book for women “masks her true feelings, preserving the ritual in which she participates but pointing instead to its opposite.”23

Price and Ristaino suggest that Marinella’s use of paradox in the Essortationi was one of necessity. The movement by public presses towards a preference for conservative or religious texts as a consequence of censorship associated with the Roman Inquisition resulted

19 Lynn Lara Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice: Women's Writing and Antifeminism in Seventeenth- Century Venice" (Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 2003); Paola Malpezzi Price and Christine Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes" in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008).

20 Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 120-155.

21 Ibid., 131.

22 Ibid., 132. Price and Ristaino suggest that “Marinella uses paradoxical and antithetical statements, with the consequence that often “the message refutes itself,” and the relative truth and uncertainty of the message assert themselves.” Ibid., 154. Price and Ristaino quote here and draw from: Robert Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and Their Successors (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 24.

23 Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 155.

in writers of nonconformist literature (including Marinella) adopting allusive and multilayered modes of writing.24

Westwater’s thesis also analyses the contradictions and paradoxes of the Essortationi, which, she suggests, reflect the author’s grappling with contradictions in contemporary notions of womanhood.25 She suggests that Marinella resolves these contradictions through her development of a “new system of values” which seeks to redefine societal attitudes towards women and the feminine. Westwater argues that rather than proving women’s worth by demonstrating their capacity to possess and demonstrate masculine virtues and qualities and thereby adhere to a patriarchal value system (as in La nobiltà), in the Essortationi

Marinella “ascribes value to the qualities that society associates with the feminine… The masculine and the feminine are seen as two poles in the human experience, rather than the feminine being a sub-category of the masculine.”26 Westwater suggests that Marinella uses philosophy and authority traditionally used against women to create “a new system of value where the feminine assumes a positive valence.”27 In this regard, she posits that the

Essortationi constitutes a reformulation, rather than a retraction, of Marinella’s argument for

24 Ibid., 126. On Counter-Reformation censorship in Venice: Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540-1605 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).

25 Westwater writes that the paradoxes in the text reflect the “paradoxes that surrounded women’s position in society, and they bring into relief Marinella’s struggle with these contradictory notions and her attempt to create a new system of values to overcome them.” Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 112. Westwater’s work has been important for my reappraisal of Marinella’s Essortationi.

26 Ibid., 127-28.

27 Ibid., 128.

the superiority of women.28 Westwater also suggests that a climate of antifeminism in

Seicento Venice might have prompted this more oblique approach.29

This review of existing scholarship reveals the extent to which the Essortationi evades straightforward interpretation. In this thesis, I argue that the difficulties in defining the author’s position with certainty result from Marinella’s shifts between rhetorical postures of compliance and defiance in relation to dominant paradigms of womanhood. My close analysis of these apparent contradictions builds on those of Westwater, and Price and Ristaino. Like

Price and Ristaino, I suggest that the contradictions and ambiguities of the Essortationi are strategic rather than inadvertent or a reflection of the author’s internal ambivalences. I also see this mode of writing as dictated by Marinella’s socio-cultural context. However, rather than the threat of Counter-Reformation censorship,30 I suggest, like Westwater, that the more significant impetus was the threat of vilification by an intellectual community which, as explained in Chapter 2, increasingly viewed the female authorial voice with antagonism, particularly when it gave voice to feminist rhetoric. A treacherous mid-Seicento climate for women writers profoundly informed Marinella’s composition, but rather than an admission of defeat in the face of hostility, I argue that Marinella’s Essortationi represents an attempt to negotiate a circumspectly political authorial voice in this challenging climate.

28 Ibid., 119. See also Westwater, "Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653)," in Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England, ed. Diana Maury Robin, Anne Larsen, and Carol Levin (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2007), 237.

29 Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 155, n.149.

30 Scholars have noted that whilst by no means exempt, 1630s and 1640s Venice enjoyed relative freedom from Counter-Reformation censorship. Infelise suggests that “it was possible to publish works previously unthinkable”. The highly licentious, misogynistic and irreligious nature of much of the Accademia degli Incogniti’s publications is indicative of this relative freedom, Infelise, "Books and Politics," 60. See also: Wendy Beth Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women's Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (California: University of California Press, 2003), 51.

Finally, it is important to emphasise that the focus of my analysis is not locating and defining Marinella’s “true” self and “true” beliefs beneath and behind the Essortationi. Rather, the focus is the impression of the author that is constructed through the discourse choices made by Marinella in the writing of the text. Put simply, I am interested in her strategic performance of authorial identity in the writing rather than any essentialist notion of

Marinella’s “true self” and “true beliefs”.

Like Price and Ristaino, I read the Essortationi as multilayered, with more to the text than its apparent conservatism suggests. Yet I suggest that rather than a “mask,” Marinella’s conservatism can be better understood through the metaphor of the authorial alibi. This metaphor supports my analytical focus on the multiplicity, dynamism, and strategy of

Marinella’s authorial self-positioning, without connotations of a static dual identity of “false” mask and “true” self behind. It avoids the conceptual and theoretical framework of interior/exterior, true/false that is problematic when analysing the literary representation of an authorial self. It also reflects my argument that critique and subversion are interwoven into the traditionalist exhortations, rather than wholly concealed by them, as by a mask. Rather than entirely masking her “true” beliefs, I suggest that Marinella’s traditionalist alibi functions as an authoritative pretext and line of defence in the face of potential detractors as she simultaneously challenges prevailing authorities, paradigms, and discourses. I argue moreover, that it is only through close analysis of the work as a whole that we can apprehend the systematicity of Marinella’s circumspect approach to critique and subversion as she engages with the gamut of prescriptions for women’s conduct.

1.2 Authorial Alibi

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “alibi” as, “a claim or piece of evidence that one was elsewhere when an act, typically a criminal one, is alleged to have taken place.”31 Deriving from the Latin adverb for “elsewhere”, alibi has evolved over the last two centuries into its current usage as a noun that can have both a legal sense and a more colloquial meaning as “an excuse or pretext”.32 The alibi metaphor is apt for my analysis of Marinella’s posture of traditionalism in the Essortationi, firstly because the term, particularly in its Latin and legal sense, conveys a sense of positioning or location: an alibi positions an individual as

“elsewhere” in relation to the location of an alleged act. My analysis of the Essortationi focuses on how Marinella’s use of discourse positions the author at a localised level; how her invocation of traditionalist discourses locates an authoritative standpoint or “location” from which to engage critically with prevailing ideas about womanhood.

The term alibi also implies an impetus of self-defence against accusations of misconduct. A legal alibi positions an individual elsewhere when an alleged illegality occurred, thereby precluding them from being held accountable. This sense of the term helps convey the notion that Marinella’s traditionalist posture serves as her alibi to deflect personal accountability for challenges to tradition that are embedded and interwoven into her writing.

The more colloquial meaning of alibi as “an excuse” or “pretext” is also metaphorically apt: at a broader level, Marinella’s overarching alibi of traditionalist exhortation functions as an

31 See the entry for “alibi” in Angus Stevenson, ed. Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010). http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/view/10.1093/acref/9780199571123.001.000 1/m_en_gb0018890. Date Accessed: 18 February 2018.

32 See the entry for “alibi” in: Jeremy Butterfield, ed. Fowler’s Concise Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford University Press, 2016). http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/view/10.1093/acref/9780199666317.001.000 1/acref-9780199666317-e-128. Date Accessed: 18 February 2018.

unassuming excuse or pretext for the author to conduct a sustained, intellectually rigorous, and comprehensive interrogation of the tradition of prescribing women’s conduct, which undermines both in practice and in discourse the masculinist biases and fallibilities of the tradition.

It is important to note that my analysis is not directed towards determining the sincerity of Marinella’s alibi: the degree to which she is personally committed to the traditionalist ideas about women that she espouses. My focus is rather on the rhetorical mechanism of the alibi: its function in terms of what it enables the author to get away with; or how it works to obfuscate Marinella’s accountability for unravelling prevailing ideas about womanhood. Further, the alibi in the Essortationi is specifically “authorial”. It is conjured discursively in writing.

Patricia Pender applies the metaphor of an authorial alibi to early modern English women writers’ expressions of modesty and disavowals of authorship. Pender argues that rather than reflections of the authors’ internalisation of the norms and restrictions mandated by a patriarchal literary culture, such expressions are better understood as sophisticated rhetorical and strategic self-fashioning. The scholar suggests that this rhetoric of modesty functioned as an “authorial alibi” to circumvent opposition to women’s authorship.33 That is, the woman authors she studied “circumvented the charges of impropriety or indecency entailed in assuming the mantle of authorship by denying that they were authors at all.”34

My analysis of Marinella’s Essortationi extends Pender’s concept of modesty rhetoric as an early modern authorial alibi. Because the Essortationi is a work about women and

33 Patricia Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 3.

34 Ibid.

women’s conduct, Marinella’s alibi is constructed not only through expressions of her own authorial modesty,35 but through her expressions of deference to a range of traditional ideas about womanhood. Further, her alibi not only functions to circumvent general opposition to women’s authorship, but also to allow the author to circumvent potential censure for the challenges that her writing poses to prevailing ideas and authorities.

In my use of the alibi metaphor, I have also drawn on Stephen Hinds’ theory of the use of a hermeneutic alibi by Ovid to explain the openness of his poetry to both acquiescent and subversive readings in relation to Augustus.36 Hinds suggests that this openness is strategic, and that Ovid relies on the possibility of a reading of his stance as straightforwardly panegyric and acquiescent. This is his alibi – his line of defence against accusations of subversion.37 In my analysis of Marinella’s Essortationi I similarly emphasise the openness of the text to both subversive and acquiescent readings. Marinella cultivates a posture of traditionalism and relies on the credibility of this posture because it functions as a line of defence - a ‘plea of innocence’ that mitigates her accountability as prevailing paradigms of womanhood are subjected to critical scrutiny.

Finally, Marinella’s authorial alibi might be understood in terms of classical rhetoric as an exercise in insinuatio – a dissimulatory mode of captatio benevolentiae. Such an appeal is recommended in instances in which an author or orator recognises the potential for the audience’s hostility to the arguments presented and is directed towards establishing from the

35 See especially Marinella’s dedicatory letter: “Non isdegnerà la picciolezza del dono; ma scuserà con la benignità, e bontà dello’nvitto animo suo il mio poco sapere, & la temerità mia, avendo voluto nobilitare col la honorevolezza del nome suo la roza rusticità di pargoletto volume” (6-7) Pender suggests that descriptions of one’s work in diminutive terms as “little” is particularly common in early modern modesty rhetoric. Ibid., 23.

36 Stephen Hinds, "Generalizing About Ovid," in Oxford Readings in Ovid, ed. Peter E. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. 45.

37 Ibid.

outset common moral ground to ingratiate the audience and assuage resistance before preconceived ideas are challenged and polemical arguments are insinuated.38

1.3 New approaches to early modern women’s writing

My reading of Marinella’s discursive construction of an authorial alibi in the

Essortationi is informed by important developments in the study of early modern women’s writing.

First, scholars have questioned the notion that early modern women writers were categorically oppressed and marginalised by their communities.39 In its initial stages, the process of recovering the significant (and still growing) body of female-authored manuscripts and publications was driven largely by feminist scholars and a campaign to question and rectify the erasure of women writers from literary history. The validity of criticism of the masculinist tendencies of literary history is unquestionable. However, recent scholarship has warned against the uncritical extension of this sort of attitude to the contemporary societies and literary cultures of the early modern woman writer.40

38 In Cicero De inventione 1.20, insinuatio is defined as “oratio quadam dissimulatione et circumitione obscure subiens auditoris animum.” On insinuatio see Cox who describes it as “the art of winning round a hostile or restive audience”. Virginia Cox, “Ciceronian Rhetoric in Late Medieval Italy: The Latin and Vernacular Traditions,” in The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. Virginia Cox and John O. Ward (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 119. See also the Appendix in the volume at p. 430. I explore the notion of Marinella’s alibi as a form of insinuatio in a forthcoming article.

39 See for example Cox, Women's Writing in Italy; The Prodigious Muse; Ross, The Birth of Feminism; Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing; Diana Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Julie D. Campbell and Anne R. Larsen, eds., Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters (Farnham, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009); Julie D. Campbell, Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon, GB: Ashgate, 2013); Carol Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Meredith K. Ray, Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letters to Galileo: Astronomy, Astrology, and Poetics in Seventeenth- Century Italy (New York Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

40 Cox argues that “we do the writers of this period no service by overestimating their struggles to have their voice heard or assuming universal and unmodulated hostility on the part of a male literary

For example, Sarah Gwyneth Ross and Virginia Cox have emphasised the importance of understanding how contemporary attitudes towards women writers and familial and intellectual institutions both hindered and fostered women’s writing. They argue that we need to acknowledge the complexities and modulations of attitudes towards the woman writer and recognise the ways in which women writers successfully negotiated authorship in response.

Ross’ The Birth of Feminism and Cox’s Women’s Writing in Italy and The Prodigious Muse exemplify the importance of re-historicising Renaissance women writers; situating their writing within the dynamic social and cultural contexts which shaped their authorial personas and literary output.41 For, as Cox writes, the early modern woman writer is “in a sense, a figure created and breathed into life by male desires and needs.”42

As explained in Chapter 2, mid-Seicento Venice was a particularly hostile environment for women writers. The Essortationi, especially the second exhortation on women’s pursuit of learning and literature, is detailed and acerbic in its exposition of these difficulties. In Cox’s words, the work is “probably the bitterest, as well as the most cogent and clear-eyed, analysis of the predicament of the seventeenth-century woman writer the century produced.”43 Yet the fact remains that despite this hostile terrain, Marinella did manage to write and publish, and apparently without backlash. Indeed, her Essortationi was included in reputable libraries and

“establishment”.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 229. Ross writes that “our treasury of information now overflows”, but “older interpretive models are proving intractable, especially the argument that early modern women writers were considered “exceptional” and transgressive figures whom society consigned to the margins.” Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 1.

41 See also Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, eds., Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers & Canons in England, France & Italy (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005); Janet Levarie Smarr, Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino, eds., In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women's Writing (Toronto: Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011).

42 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 229.

43 Ibid., 223.

cited favourably by contemporary intellectuals.44 This thesis seeks to shift the focus from reading the Essortationi as a reflection of the waning tradition of women’s writing and the difficulties faced by the woman writer to interrogating the work as an example of the sorts of authorizing and self-defensive strategies one early modern woman writer used to overcome these obstacles.

The second argument in the study of early modern women’s writing that informs my analysis of the Essortationi recognizes the rhetorical role of women’s expressions of adherence to traditional paradigms of femininity.45 Pender questions reading women’s expressions of humility and modesty literally; as evidence of the woman writer’s internalization of patriarchal prescriptions.46 In her view, such literal readings “rob them of their formal particularity and historical specificity”, and the use of modesty rhetoric by early modern women writers is better understood as a reflection of their successful engagement with contemporary literary and rhetorical practice.47 In The Birth of Feminism, Ross argues that the use of domestic rhetoric allowed early modern women writers to locate an authoritative, authorial voice. To mitigate the unconventionality of their foray into public authorship, Ross suggests that women writers emphasised their domesticity and ties within the home.48 Ross therefore cautions that

44 As Benedetti notes, Angelico Aprosio procured a copy for his Biblioteca Civica Aprosiana in Ventimiglia, another was procured for the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris. Benedetti, "Introduction," 36- 37; "Arcangela Tarabotti e Lucrezia Marinella: appunti per un dialogo mancato," MLN 129, no. 3 (2014): S94-S95. References to the Essortationi by contemporary intellectuals are discussed in Chapter 4.

45 For a recent analysis of the gestural and discursive rhetorical strategies used by female characters in early modern dramatic compositions to construct, represent and subvert gender norms: Alexandra Coller, Women, Rhetoric, and Drama in Early Modern Italy (New York and London: Routledge, 2017).

46 Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing, 2-3.

47 Pender writes that “Early modern women’s modesty rhetoric is best understood… not as an acknowledgement of exclusion and a literal assertion of ineptitude, but as the very mark of literariness as it circulates among early modern protocols of textual modesty and authority.” Ibid., 3.

48 Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 7. Ross sees this not as “evidence of female “containment”. Rather, it was a subversive strategy for making the unusual seem acceptable and even praiseworthy.”

such expressions of “deference to social scripts was less evidence of constraint than a considered strategy for making their way into literary society.”49 According to Ross, Marinella’s

La nobiltà is a good example of the tactical use of domestic rhetoric. The dedicatory letter at the beginning of the work shows the author building “her propriety and credibility on a domestic foundation”.50 I posit that the Essortationi likewise exploits the authorising potential of proclamations of compliance with traditionalist conceptions of feminine identity. Pender’s and Ross’ research discourages the reader from accepting women’s proclamations of deference to the dictates of gender decorum as literal expressions of the author’s views or sense of self. Doing so risks misinterpreting strategic authorial positioning as conformity to patriarchal circumscription.

Third, scholars of early modern women’s writing have advised against over-relying on biography in interpreting text. For example, Danielle Clarke cautions:

“if biography becomes the interpretive principle governing the text’s meanings rather

than a resource which can open up those meanings, it does often tend to relegate a

woman’s concerns to the private sphere, leading to interpretations which suggest that

literary texts are little more than inscriptions of private lives.”51

49 Ibid., 317. Ross’ comments are particularly pertinent to this discussion of Marinella, whose superficially conservative posture in much of her writing is belied by her sustained and often implicit undermining of patriarchal constructions of womanhood. Marinella’s relatively successful publishing career suggests that this might indeed have functioned as a considered and effective strategy for acceptance in literary society.

50 Ibid., 209-10.

51 Clarke suggests rather that: “women’s writings appear oddly impersonal to us, addressing wider concerns, generically and politically, through languages and ideologies that are the common currency of subjectivity in the period.” She argues that, “like most writers in the period, women conform largely to the literary values and modes of articulation found in their culture… In seeking to establish women’s texts as valid objects of enquiry, criticism has often failed to recognise the extent to which they are indebted to the mainstream assumptions of literary culture more generally in this period.” Danielle Clarke, The Politics of Early Modern Women's Writing (New York: Longman, 2001), 5, 13.

This argument warns against simply putting the directions of women’s writing down to the ebbs and flows, opportunities, and setbacks of their own lives. In Marinella’s case, biographical factors such as the author’s advanced age, the coincidence of the composition of the text with the writing of her will and the challenges she faced in her writing career have been interpreted as explanations for the work’s apparently conservative volte face.52 Without denying the possible influence of these factors on Marinella’s composition of the Essortationi, I provide evidence in this thesis that the Essortationi resists reductive biographical readings. Reading the work as personal reflection risks overlooking its intellectual and literary merit and the rhetorical dexterity and ingenuity of Marinella’s authorial self-representation.

To summarise, rather than focus on the obstacles women writers faced, new research supports alternative interpretations of how early modern women writers negotiated authorial personas in response to sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but always powerful cultural discourses.53 It reveals the techniques by which they cultivated an authoritative, intellectually and literarily valid voice to contribute to contemporary literary culture.

My analysis of Marinella’s construction and representation of authorial identity in the

Essortationi is conducted through the lens of the very particular literary climate of mid- seventeenth-century Venice – its attitudes towards women and the woman writer, and its characteristic stylistics and literary modes. Whilst Marinella’s biography is relevant to my analysis, particularly the details explained in Chapter 2 relating to her upbringing and affiliation

52 Panizza writes for example that the exhortations “seem appropriate for an old woman who had only death to hope for.” Panizza, "Introduction to the Translation," 15.

53 On the usefulness of the concept of “negotiation” to understand how women writers related to literary culture and tradition see Ann Rosalind Jones who suggests: “To think in terms of negotiation rather than coerced repetition or romantic rejection of literary models opens up a whole spectrum of women’s responses to the logics of power.” She reads their writing “as processes of negotiation with the social and literary conventions of a period during which they were constantly looked at but rarely encouraged to make themselves heard.” Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 4, 15.

with academies, I have sought to avoid inferring an autobiographical basis for her exhortations. For the most part, Marinella’s Essortationi is written in an impersonal tone and she rarely speaks explicitly from personal experience.

1.4 Fashioning and dissembling authorial identities in the early modern period

Marinella’s construction of an authorial alibi of traditionalism in the Essortationi represents, I argue, an exercise in strategic and rhetorical authorial self-fashioning and dissimulation. This argument is informed by the well-established body of scholarship recognising how early modern men and women conceived of self-representation as malleable and often necessitating strategies of dissimulation.

Stephen Greenblatt’s 1980 Renaissance Self-Fashioning coined the term “self- fashioning”, and argued that “in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self- consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.”54

Whilst Greenblatt’s postmodern interpretation emphasised the process of the external fashioning of selves as opposed to the individual’s free and autonomous fashioning of their own identity,55 research in the last two decades generally emphasises the two-way nature of

54 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 2. Informed by the work of Foucault, the study analysed the construction of identity in works by English writers More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. On Renaissance self-fashioning see also for example: the essays in Part I of Roy Porter, ed. Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Routledge, 1997); Natalie Zemon Davis, "Boundaries and the Sense of Self in Sixteenth-Century France," in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Thomas C. Heller, et al. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1986); Albert Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

55 Countering Jacob Burckhardt’s famous contention that the Renaissance bore witness to the birth of individualism, Greenblatt found “no moments of pure, unfettered subjectivity”. Rather the human subject seemed “the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society… a cultural artifact.” Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 256. For Burckhardt see: Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), trans. S. G. C. Middlemore with an introduction by Peter Burke (London: Penguin, 2004). See also Ruggiero who reverses Burckhardt’s claim suggesting that the “Rinascimento discovered what we think of as the state and created the individual as a work of art.” Guido Ruggiero, The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento (Cambridge:

self-fashioning. For John Jeffries Martin for example, Renaissance selves were fashioned both from within and from without.56 His modification to the term “self-fashioning” thus restores the possibility of individual agency and resistance to Greenblatt’s poststructuralist notion of the Renaissance self as “cultural artefact”.57

Reading Marinella’s authorial self-fashioning in the Essortationi as neither wholly determined by cultural forces external to her, nor entirely a manifestation of her free will, my focus is however on Marinella’s fashioning of an authorial identity, rather than the fashioning of Marinella by Renaissance culture. In this regard I follow Douglas Biow who emphasises the importance of the notion of the individual both to Renaissance men and women and to our understanding of Renaissance identities.58 Without underestimating the formative role of

Renaissance culture in shaping and circumscribing identities, my analysis similarly focuses on the other side of the dialectic, as put by Biow: “the self formed in reaction against those powerful cultural forces.”59 Moreover, it is Marinella’s fashioning of a specifically authorial self

Cambridge University Press, 2015), 326. See also: Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski, Group Identity in the Renaissance World (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

56 Martin argues for example, that Renaissance selves were “not the calm, well-demarked, accomplished, autonomous selves that the Burckhardtian myth implies; and they were far more wilful and autonomous and far less fragmented and illusory than many postmodern critics have claimed.” John Jeffries Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 17. On this argument, see also: John Martin, "Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe," The American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (1997): 1339.

57 Martin’s 2004 study of evidence of self-fashioning in inquisitorial proceedings is thus based on the presupposition that “social experience and a certain experience of inwardness are both crucial to understanding Renaissance notions of identity.” Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism, 17.

58 Douglas Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), x, xi-xii.

59 Ibid., 3.

in and through the discourse of the Essortationi that I am interested in, rather than her fashioning of a social identity.60

My reading of Marinella’s alibi of traditionalism in the Essortationi is also informed by the increasing body of scholarship recognising the pervasiveness of the concept and practice of dissimulation in the early modern period. As early modern self-fashioning often became about strategic obfuscation of inner beliefs, so dissimulation – or the strategic and circumspect representations of self – flourished.61 Indeed, Perez Zagorin has termed the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the ‘Age of Dissimulation’.62 Jon Snyder has suggested that the advent of printing was accompanied by an amplification of concerns regarding the representation of self on paper.63 Snyder suggests that dissimulation functioned as an “antidote” to intensifying anxieties about controlling identity, permitting its “practitioners to speak or act next to or beside what they think, deflecting or deterring any and all attempts by others to connect definitely thoughts with words, interior with exterior, being with appearance.”64 Recent

60 Much of the scholarship on self-fashioning focuses on the fashioning of social identities through for example art, patronage or behavioural practices. Thus Martin analyses inquisitorial proceedings for evidence of the construction of social identities and Biow examines self-fashioning through professional activities and fashions including beards.

61 The motivations and contexts of early modern dissimulation are varied. For the powerful and the ambitious, it served as a means for retaining power and gaining advantage. In Baldassare Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano, the notion of “sprezzatura” emerges as a central theme: the art of constructing an image for oneself to ensure success at court. For the marginalised and the persecuted, dissimulation consisted in feigning conformity as a mode of self-defence. Thus religious dissimulation, particularly through mental reservation or equivocation, served as a means for marginalised religious groups to avoid persecution through a pretense of conformity to the dominant religion, a practice often referred to as Nicodemism. See: Jon R. Snyder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Perez Zagorin, "The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation," Social Research 63, no. 3 (1996).

62 Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), 330. See also Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy : Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 13.

63 Snyder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy, 25.

64 Ibid.

scholarship has highlighted how, particularly for individuals who harboured heterodox ideologies, dissimulation offered a means of self-defence and self-preservation.65 In 1641,

Torquato Accetto’s treatise Della dissimulazione onesta declared: “onesta ed util è la dissimulazione”.66 As suggested by the apparently paradoxical title, the work defended the morality of dissimulation as an honest way of preserving one’s inner beliefs and freedoms when responding to the pressure to conform. Dissimulation is defined as “un velo composto di tenebre oneste e di rispetti violenti: da che non si forma il falso, ma si dà qualche riposo al vero.”67

Within libertine intellectual circles across Europe, scholarship has revealed the prevalence of dissimulation as a practice and topic for discussion.68 Zagorin, for example, has highlighted how French philosophers used dissimulation to avoid personal persecution and ensure that dangerous ideas were kept from the masses. Dissimulation in this context often consisted in the expression of opposition to orthodox ideas and beliefs via an esoteric

65 See for example: Rosario Villari, L'elogio della dissimulazione: La lotta politica nel Seicento (Bari: Laterza, 1987); Miriam Eliav-Feldon and Tamar Herzig, eds., Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). On philosophical and literary dissimulation see: Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Dis/simulations. Jules-César Vanini, François La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Louis Machon et Torquato Accetto: Religion, morale et politique au XVIIe siècle. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002); Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). On a case of dissimulation in art, see: Sara Galletti, "Rubens’s Life of Maria de’ Medici: Dissimulation and the Politics of Art in Early Seventeenth-Century France," Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 3 (2014).

66 Torquato Accetto, Della Dissimulazione Onesta (Milano: Rizzoli, 2012), 37.

67 Ibid., 23. This definition also distinguishes dissimulation from simulation. Whilst the former involves concealing what is, the latter implies simulating or pretending what is not.

68 Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 11. See also in particular Chapters 11 and 12. Zagorin writes, “When we peer deeply into the intellectual and moral life of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, we must be struck by how intensely aware its writers and thinkers were of the phenomenon of dissimulation.” Ibid., 255.

methodology.69 A key figure in French libertinism in the early seventeenth century, Gabriel

Naudé (1600-1653), was linked with intellectual circles in Italy, particularly through his friendship with the Paduan Professor Cesare Cremonini.70 Naudé was also affiliated with members of the mid-Seicento Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti and appears to have been responsible for procuring a copy of Marinella’s Essortationi for the Bibliothèque Mazarine in

Paris where it remains today.71 The Accademia degli Incogniti were proficient dissimulators.72

Heterodox ideologies were often expressed in ways that worked to obfuscate or dissemble personal commitment.73 As explained in Chapter 2, Incogniti practices of dissimulation extended to their engagement with the querelle des femmes, where misogynistic ideology was often expressed through a posture or “alibi” of deference to women in order to mitigate their personal accountability. In this thesis, I read Marinella’s authorial alibi of traditionalism in the

Essortationi as a practice of dissimulation to the extent that it obfuscates her personal

69 In Tommaso Campanella’s (1568-1639) Atheismus Triumphatus (1631) (Paris, 1636) for example, although proclaiming to conquer atheism, the extensive exposition of irreligious ideology within the text casts doubt over the veracity of this stated intention. Ibid., 318.

70 Ibid., 305-06.

71 Benedetti, "Introduction," 36-37. On Naudé see Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Between the Italian Renaissance and the French Enlightenment: Gabriel Naudé as an Editor," Renaissance Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1979). Marinella’s Venetian contemporary Arcangela Tarabotti knew Naudé and corresponded with him in her efforts to publish Tirannia paterna, see Lynn Lara Westwater, "A Cloistered Nun Abroad: Arcangela Tarabotti's International Literary Career," in Women Writing Back / Writing Women Back: Transnational Perspectives from the Late Middle Ages to the Dawn of the Modern Era, ed. Anke Gilleir, Alicia C. Montoya, and Suzan van Dijk (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010), 296-98; Stephanie Jed, "Arcangela Tarabotti and Gabriel Naudé: Libraries, Taxonomies & Ragion di Stato," in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006).

72 Edward Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 22. Tiziana Giuggia, ed. Cento Novelle Amorose de i Signori Accademici Incogniti: Editio Princeps, Venezia, 1651, vol. I (Aracne, 2017), esp. 9-19, 31. Jean- François Lattarico, Venise "Incognita": Essai sur l'académie libertine au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012).

73 On the Incogniti’s use of the novel as a vehicle for the expression of heterodox and misogynistic ideology see: Paola Cosentino, "Dee, imperatrici, cortigiane: la natura della donna nei romanzi degli Incogniti (Venezia)," in The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, ed. Jane E. Everson, Denis Reidy, and Lisa Sampson (Cambridge: MHRA and Routledge, 2016).

commitment to the challenges to dominant ideas and authorities embedded in her writing. I also read it as a strategy which engages with practices of dissimulation being practiced within mid-Seicento academic culture.

In light of the scholarship on early modern self-fashioning and dissimulation, Cox offers the rhetorical notion of ethos to understand the representation of self in Renaissance literature. 74 Along with logos and pathos, ethos played a significant role in the art of rhetorical persuasion according to the Aristotelian-Ciceronian tradition. As Cox writes, “the notion of ethos implies an element of conscious and artful performance, of acting”.75 The rhetorical notion of ethos thus helps convey a sense of the performance of identity; a performance which must be tailored to the particular circumstances and audience of the discourse. Comparing the performance of the “I” in first-person genres such as lyric poetry to the highly stylised representations of sitters in Renaissance portraiture, Cox suggests that “Both register less an expression, than a self-conscious enactment, of self.”76

Cox’s warnings about conflating the “io” of Renaissance literature with the author’s interiority are particularly pertinent to first-person discourses of the querelle des femmes, in which postures towards women – whether deferential or antagonistic – formed an important part of authorial self-fashioning.77 Within the context of mid-Seicento literature, Cox advocates reading both misogyny and idealisation of women as “rhetorical stances rather than

74 Virginia Cox, A Short History of the Italian Renaissance (London: I.B.Tauris, 2016), 120.

75 Ibid., 120.

76 Ibid., 122-24.

77 See for example Androniki Dialeti, "Defending Women, Negotiating Masculinity in Early Modern Italy," The Historical Journal 54, no. 01 (2011). See also Cox’s analysis of the significance of expressions of deference to the female sex to the construction of masculinity for male writers of the sixteenth century and the shift towards “postures of antagonism and dominance” that occurred in the seventeenth century. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 177.

expressions of committed existential conviction.”78 The often hyperbolic feminist rhetoric of

Marinella’s younger contemporary Arcangela Tarabotti suggests moreover, that we should be equally wary of assuming that sentiments expressed in female-authored literature of the querelle des femmes matched author’s beliefs.79 Regardless of the gender of the author, the authorial “io” of Seicento literature that engaged with the question of woman’s conduct, nature and role should be read with an eye for rhetorical ethos and contemporary patterns of strategic self-fashioning and dissimulation.

Historically, research into Renaissance self-fashioning and dissimulation has tended to ignore gender.80 For example, Greenblatt’s Renaissance self-fashioning examines only male authors, and does not consider the impact of gender despite comprehensively addressing questions of class and social status. Similarly, as Ross observes of John Martin’s research, despite referring to men and women collectively, the nuances of gender are not explored and women are not analysed specifically as subjects or agents of self-fashioning.81 Ross’ study constitutes a comprehensive step towards addressing this gap and she concludes at the end of her study that “women fashioned themselves in the active terms that Martin has suggested”, but that “women’s self-presentation demands further analysis”.82 Biow similarly acknowledges the imbalance in the scholarship on the notion of the individual in the Italian Renaissance towards male authored studies written about men, and the consequent assumptions about

78 Women's Writing in Italy, 194.

79 Ibid.

80 An important early exception includes Rosenthal’s analysis of Veronica Franco’s self-fashioning in: Margaret Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

81 Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 317.

82 Ibid. Ross states at the opening of her book that the studies of English and Italian “learned women as protégées of a father-patron illustrate a process of Renaissance “self-fashioning” that neither Stephen Greenblatt nor John Martin have considered in their respective treatments.” Ibid., 11.

the Renaissance individual as a male concept.83 This is an assumption that he sees as unfounded. Although Biow focuses on men’s self-fashioning, in his view: “There were… male and female individuals in the period, each operating within a variety of gendered and institutional constraints and power relations that determined and conditioned agency.”84

Alongside Ross’ study, scholarship which has broadened the conversation to explore how early modern women actively engaged with authorial self-fashioning include Cox’s recent studies of women’s writing in Renaissance Italy.85 On epistolary writing, contributions include

Fiora Bassanese’s research on Renaissance courtesans,86 Meredith Ray’s book Writing Gender in Women’s Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance,87 Deanna Shemek’s and Sarah

Cockram’s work on the letters of Isabella d’Este,88 and Francesca Medioli’s and Ray’s analyses of Arcangela Tarabotti’s engagement with self-fashioning in her letters.89 Recently, Jessica

83 Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual, 4.

84 Ibid.

85 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy; The Prodigious Muse; Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

86 Fiora A. Bassanese, "Selling the Self; or, the Epistolary Production of Renaissance Courtesans," in Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present: Revising the Canon, ed. Maria Ornella Marrotti (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).

87 Ray argues that the letter collections she analyses show “a studied performance of pervasive ideas about gender as well as genre, a form of self-fashioning that variously reflected, manipulated, and subverted cultural and literary conventions regarding femininity and masculinity.” Meredith K. Ray, Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2009), 4.

88 Deanna Shemek, "Mendacious Missives: Isabella D'este's Epistolary Theater," in Writing Relations: American Scholars in Italian Archives, ed. Deanna Shemek and Michael Wyatt (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2008); Sarah Cockram, "Epistolary Masks: Self-Presentation and Dissimulation in the Letters of Isabella D'este," Italian Studies 64 (2009); Isabella D'este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Deanna Shemek, "Ci Ci" and "Pa Pa": Script, Mimicry, and Mediation in Isabella D'Este's Letters," Rinascimento 43 (2005).

89 Francesca Medioli, "Arcangela Tarabotti's Reliability About Herself: Publication and Self- Representation (Together with a Small Collection of Previously Unpublished Letters)," Italianist 23, no. 1 (2003). Meredith K. Ray, "Letters from the Cloister: Defending the Literary Self in Arcangela Tarabotti's "Lettere Familiari e di Complimento"," Italica 81, no. 1 (2004). See also the modern editions and translation of Tarabotti’s Lettere: Arcangela Tarabotti, Lettere Familiari e di Complimento, ed. Meredith

Goethals has revealed Margherita Costa’s sophisticated strategies of self-fashioning, arguing that Costa’s “self-stylisation” as a “bizarre” writer is central to her negotiation of an authorial position which traversed conventional boundaries of gender and genre.90 Beyond early modern Italy, an increasing scholarship documents women’s strategic authorial self-fashioning across a range of cultural contexts and genres.91

This research has contributed to revising male-centric understandings of early modern authorial self-fashioning. Yet existing scholarship on dissimulation is almost exclusively focused on male authors.92 This is despite the fact that dissimulation was a deeply gendered concept in the early modern period.93 Often framed as essential to the honest women as a means for

K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 2005); Letters Familiar and Formal, ed. and trans. Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater (Toronto: Iter, 2012).

90 Jessica Goethals, "The Bizarre Muse: The Literary Persona of Margherita Costa," Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12, no. 1 (2017).

91 In the Italian context see also: Anna Wainwright, "A Simple Virgin Speaks: Authorial Identity and Persuasion in Isabella Cervoni's Oration to Pope Clement VIII," The Italianist 37, no. 1 (2017). Beyond Italy, see: Manuela Scarci, ed. Creating Women: Representation, Self-Representation and Agency in the Renaissance (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013). Claude La Charité, ed. Masques et figures du sujet féminin aux XVIe et XIIe siècles 77. Special Issue of Tangence (Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2005). In an early modern English context: Henk Dragstra, Sheila Ottway, and Helen Wilcox, eds., Betraying Our Selves: Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern English Texts (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). For a focus on the significance of genre in shaping women writers’ self-expression: Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle, eds., Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007). On literary self- fashioning by the Mexican nun and writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as both a mode of self-promotion and self-defense, see: Frederick Luciani, Literary Self-Fashioning in Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2004).

92 Important exceptions include research on Isabella D’Este’s practice of dissimulation: Cockram, "Epistolary Masks."; Shemek, "Mendacious Missives."; Cockram, Isabella D'Este and Francesco Gonzaga. Adriana Chemello, "Gioco e dissimulazione in Moderata Fonte," in Il merito delle donne, ed. Adriana Chemello (Venice: Eidos, 1988). Chapter 4 of the following unpublished thesis also discusses gender and dissimulation: Michael Gorgian, "The Culture of Dis/Simulation in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe" (The Warburg Institute, University of London, 2014). On dissimulation in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron see: Tom Conley, "The Graphics of Dissimulation: Between Heptameron 10 and L'histoire Tragique," in Critical Tales: New Studies of the "Heptameron" and Early Modern Culture, ed. John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). Also containing discussions of behavioural practices of dissimulation by women, such as wearing veils and masks, is: James H. Johnson, Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

93 Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing, 28-35.

preserving modesty and decorum, dissimulation was also an inherent vice to which women were more predisposed.94 Analysis of early modern women’s engagement with literary dissimulation, and the role of gender in inflecting this engagement, remains under-researched.

This thesis aims to contribute to closing this gap in understanding through a contextualised and historicised analysis of Marinella’s self-fashioning and dissimulation in the

Essortationi. As a woman writing in an overtly instructive mode and often unsettling male authority, Marinella’s authorship in the Essortationi wholly contravenes the Pauline dictum:

“Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. For I do not allow a woman to teach, or to exercise authority over men; but she is to keep quiet” (I Tim 2: 11-12). From the outset,

Marinella’s representation of self in this text as woman, author and didact carries with it the dilemma of negotiating a contested identity, a dilemma further complicated by the antagonistic climate for women’s writing. Close analysis offered in this thesis reveals how

Marinella negotiated this dilemma of self-representation through her construction of an authorial alibi: a strategy of self-fashioning and dissimulation that echoes the authorial practices of her intellectual milieu. The Essortationi is for all these reasons a rich text to explore how cultural context, genre, and gender inflect the construction and representation of an early modern authorial self.

94 See for example, Book 3, Chapter 3 “Of Flattery, Lying, and Dissimulation” in Pierre Charron, Of Wisdom: The Second and Third Books, trans. George Stanhope (London: R. Bonwicke, 1707). On Charron’s defense of dissimulation by princes and women, see p.197-198. See also Ludovico Domenichi’s La donna di corte (1564) on women’s lack of prudence in appropriate self-representation at court as explained in: Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990), 150.

1.5 Discourse, identity, and gender

In this section, I explain three theories on discourse, identity and gender which inform how I analyse Marinella’s fashioning of an authorial identity or “ethos” in and through the discourse of the Essortationi.

Positioning theory: subject positions and the discursive construction of identity

The first critical concept for my analytical framework is positioning theory. Positioning theory provides a way of tracing the interweaving in the Essortationi of traditionalism and subversion and understanding its implications for Marinella’s moment to moment construction of an authorial identity. The theory explains how individuals position themselves and are positioned within discourse and the constitutive effect of this positioning on their identities.

Discourse is understood within positioning theory as “an institutionalised use of language”.95 It is through discourse that “phenomena are made determinate… discourse is a multi-faceted public process through which meanings are progressively and dynamically achieved.”96

“Discourse” captures language use as it is constituted and re-constituted within broader social and cultural contexts and inscribed with the belief systems and ideologies of those contexts.97

Different discourses are also inscribed with relative value and authority, which inflects how individuals are positioned as they align with certain discourses over others.

95 Bronwyn Davies and Rom Harré, "Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20, no. 1 (1990): 45-46.

96 Davies and Harré suggest that “institutionalisation can occur at the disciplinary, the political, the cultural and the small group level.” Ibid.

97 Discourse is: “language in actual use within its social and ideological context and in institutionalized representations of the world called discursive practices.” Chris Baldick, "Discourse," in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

According to Wendy Hollway, one of the first to use positioning theory, “Discourses make available positions for subjects to take up.”98 Like Martin’s view that selves are both fashioned and fashion in response, Paul Smith defends the possibility of human agency in the adoption of different subject-positions, arguing that “a person is not simply determined and dominated by the ideological pressures of any overarching discourse or ideology but is also the agent of a certain discernment.”99 According to Smith: “Where discourses actually take hold of or produce the so-called “subject” they also enable agency and resistance.”100 Smith suggests the potential for the resistance of the subject through negotiation among and between subject-positions.101 Davies and Harré developed positioning theory further, situating their research within a poststructuralist research paradigm which also recognises both the

“constitutive force” of discourses and discursive practices in terms of its provision of subject positions, as well as the possibility of a level of choice and agency in a person’s engagement with these discourses.102

Also central to positioning theory is the notion that subject positions carry social, cultural, political, and moral significance that must be negotiated in relation to the context and the other participants in the communicative act.103 Hollway suggests that people do not “take

98 Wendy Hollway, "Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity," in Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity, ed. Julian Henriques, et al. (London and New York: Methuen, 1984), 236. Hollway’s research focused in particular on the discoursal construction of gender, examining the way in which men and women position themselves in relation to gender differentiated discourses of sexuality.

99 Paul Smith, Discerning the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), xxxiv.

100 Ibid., 40.

101 Ibid., 25.

102 Davies and Harré, "Positioning," 46.

103 Davies and Harré write that “A subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those that use that repertoire.” They suggest that, “In making choices between contradictory demands there is a complex weaving together of the positions (and the cultural/social/political meanings that are attached to those positions) that are

up positions” arbitrarily; they have what she terms “investments in taking up certain positions in discourse”.104 Analysis of subject positioning in discourse must acknowledge the advantages or “investments” associated with taking up certain positions in relation to others.105 Harré and

Van Langenhove extend this concept, emphasising the inherent power structures of subject positions.106

The focus of my analysis in this thesis in on Marinella’s engagement specifically with

Seicento discourses on womanhood. I use the term “discourses” here to emphasise the notion that Marinella is not simply writing – at a detached and purely subjective level – on issues relating to womanhood. Rather she is participating in an intertextual engagement with contemporary discourses on womanhood: culturally recognisable, dynamic and meaningful patterns in contemporary literary culture of writing about womanhood that are inscribed with

available within any number of discourses; the emotional meaning attached to each of these positions which have developed as a result of personal experiences of being located in each position, or of relating to someone in that position; the stories through which those categories and emotions are being made sense of; and the moral system that links and legitimates the choices that are being made.” Ibid., 46, 59.

104 Hollway, "Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity," 238.

105 Ibid.

106 They write that: “A position… is a metaphorical concept through reference to which a person’s ‘moral’ and personal attributes as a speaker are compendiously collected. One can position oneself or be positioned as e.g. powerful or powerless, confident or apologetic, dominant or submissive, definitive or tentative...” Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove, "Varieties of Positioning," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 21, no. 4 (1991): 395. Since 1990 positioning theory has evolved and been applied to a range of contexts and types of discourses. See for example: Fathali Moghaddam and Rom Harré, eds., Words of Conflict, Words of War: How the Language We Use in Political Processes Sparks Fighting (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012); Luk van Langenhove and Rom Harré, "Introducing Positioning Theory " in Positioning Theory ed. Rom Harré and Luk van Langenhove (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999); Bronwyn Davies, "Re-Thinking "Behavior" in Terms of Positioning and the Ethics of Responsibility," in Critical Readings in Teacher Education: Provoking Absences, ed. Anne Phelan and Jennifer Sumsion (Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2008); Rom Harré, "Positioning as a Metagrammar for Discursive Story Lines," in Telling Stories: Languages, Narrative and Social Life, ed. Deborah Schiffrin, Anna De Fina, and Anastasia Nylund (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010).

social and cultural belief systems and ideologies, as well as relative value and authority.107

Positioning theory supports my analysis of how Marinella’s invocation and subversion of these contemporary discourses on womanhood variously positions the author moment to moment throughout the Essortationi.

The subject positions made available within Seicento discourses of womanhood can be broadly defined as traditionalist and subverter of tradition. Clearly these subject positions are not neutral nor devoid of inherent structures of power and authority. Positioning theory helps understand Marinella’s shifts and negotiations between such contrasting subject positions as a gendered and politically meaningful discursive practice that produces a complex, multifaceted, and strategic authorial identity. My analysis is underpinned by Hollway’s concept of

“investment”, with a focus on analysing the advantages and claims to legitimacy and authority implicit in Marinella’s alignment with traditionalist versus subversive subject positions as a mid-Seicento woman writer engaging with contemporary discourses of womanhood.

Further, I use the term “traditionalist” to broadly characterize the way in which

Marinella’s use of discourses on womanhood – for instance, modesty, seclusion, silence, and domesticity – position the author in alignment with conservative, traditional views on womanhood and women’s conduct. There are always nuances and contradictions within

“traditionalist” discourses. Each Chapter thus elaborates more precisely on the particular strands of “traditionalist” discourses that Marinella invokes and subverts as she discusses the different areas of women’s conduct.

107 As Dorothy Smith has suggested, the study of “discourses displaces the analysis from the text as originating in writer or thinker, to the discourse itself as an ongoing intertextual process.” Dorothy Smith, Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling (London: Routledge, 1990), 161.

The discursive construction and performance of gender

The second critical component for my analytical framework is the notion of the discursive construction and performance of gender. Judith Butler’s theory of performativity is drawn on to highlight the way in which Marinella both “does” and “undoes” gender in the

Essortationi.108 According to Butler:

“If gender is a kind of a doing, an incessant activity performed, in part, without one’s

knowing and without one’s willing, it is not for that reason automatic or mechanical.

On the contrary, it is a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint.”109

Butler’s comments encapsulate, I suggest, Marinella’s act of authorship and concomitant construction of gender in the Essortationi. Within the “scene of constraint” that is mid-

Seicento ideologies about the feminine identity, Marinella’s performance of gender is a

“practice of improvisation” which ultimately stretches and questions those constraints from within.

Later in Undoing Gender, Butler points to the possibility that gender norms can be

“significantly deterritorialized through the citation. They can also be exposed as non-natural and nonnecessary when they take place in a context and through a form of embodying that defies normative expectation.”110 Butler’s theory provides a way of understanding the overarching contradiction of Marinella’s apparent reiteration of prescriptions for women’s conduct such as silence, devotion to domesticity over letters, and submission to male authority, her simultaneous resistance of these prescriptions through the act of authorship of

108 The key texts drawn on are Judith Butler, Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993); Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004).

109 Undoing Gender, 1.

110 Ibid., 218.

the Essortationi, and her appropriation of the conventionally male authorial subject position of authority and instruction.

Authorial ethos, feminist rhetoric and authority

The third critical component for my analytical framework is a modern theory on the feminist implications of the classical concept of authorial ethos introduced in the previous section of this Chapter. Ethos is a relational concept which involves an author’s or orator’s appeal to reader expectations about qualities that engender authority.111 In mid-Seicento Italy, these expectations are always gendered. The negotiation of ethos for a woman writer versus a male involves appeal to different values and codes of decorum. Negotiating authorial ethos is inherently a process of negotiating authority and agency, and as such, for women writers of this period, it is inherently political. This is especially relevant within the context of the literary and cultural climate of the mid-Seicento in Venice which, for a range of stylistic, cultural, and political reasons, problematised women’s appeal to authorial ethos.112

Recent research has highlighted the usefulness of the notion of ethos to understanding rhetoric from a feminist perspective. Nedra Reynolds’ postmodern conception of “ethos” rejects the notion that it is something “embodied” by the classical orator, or a quality that is fashioned by the orator in isolation from cultural context. She emphasises the fluidity and unfixed nature of Ethos, as something which, “like postmodern subjectivity, shifts and changes over time, across text, and around competing spaces.”113 This conception of “ethos”, she

111 See also Cherry who distinguishes ethos from ‘persona’, as a term to describe the sense of the credibility of the writer that emerges from the text: “When we evaluate a writer’s intelligence, integrity, and competence, we evaluate his or her basic character and credibility by assessing qualities that fall under the rubric of ethos.” Roger Cherry, "Ethos Versus Persona: Self-Representation in Written Discourse," Written Communication 5, no. 3 (1988): 270.

112 See discussion in Chapter 2.

113 Nedra Reynolds, "Ethos as Location: New Sites for Understanding Discursive Authority," Rhetoric Review 11, no. 2 (1993): 326.

argues, “opens up more spaces in which to study writers’ subject positions or identity formations, especially to examine how writers establish authority and enact responsibility from positions not traditionally considered authoritative.”114 For Reynolds, ethos can be understood as a “location” from which to cultivate discursive authority.

Johanna Schmertz elaborates on the implications of an understanding of ethos as the means by which knowledge is authorised:

Since those who are perceived to have good ethos are generally those whose

knowledge “counts” in our world, it has been in the best interest of feminist scholars

of rhetoric to see how such perceptions come about, as part of a larger feminist

inquiry into political construction of knowledge.115

Schmertz puts forward a definition of ethos for feminism “as neither manufactured nor fixed, neither tool nor character, but rather the stopping points at which the subject (re)negotiates her own essence to call upon whatever agency that essence enables.”116 I read Marinella’s cultivation of an authorial alibi through her invocation of culturally privileged discourses on womanhood as directed towards cultivating authorial ethos. Drawing on this postmodern conception of ethos, I argue that in response to the hostility directed towards women’s authorship in this period, Marinella appropriates a conventionally male authorial ethos, and the authority and credibility that accompanies it. This “stopping point” then becomes the platform for an interrogation and redefinition of conventional, patriarchal discourses of womanhood and the mechanisms through which they are propagated and reinforced.

114 Ibid.

115 Johanna Schmertz, "Constructing Essences: Ethos and the Postmodern Subject of Feminism," Rhetoric Review 18, no. 1 (1999): 82.

116 Ibid., 86.

1.6 Methodology

A limitation in advancing a new interpretation of the Essortationi is the lack of contextual evidence about the circumstances surrounding its publication, contemporary readership, and reception. There are few clues as to how the text was read by contemporaries

(these references are discussed in Chapter 4). We do not know, for example, if the work was read by the female readers Marinella addresses. We do know, however, that it was read by contemporary intellectuals and was apparently favourably received (as discussed in Chapter 4).

The fact that only three copies of the text are extant today suggests that the work was not widely circulated and may be indicative of a lack of resonance with contemporary readers as

Benedetti has suggested.117 But this limited distribution could also suggest that the work was only intended for a restricted, academic readership. Certainly, the extensive use of untranslated Latin and references to philosophical concepts throughout the text lends credence to this suggestion. In any case, because of the small amount of historical evidence about readership and reception, this study relies on close analysis of the text in conjunction with analysis of the cultural context and comparative analysis with contemporary conduct and querelle des femmes literature.

Further, Virginia Cox has raised the possibility that the Essortationi as published may have been the result of a collation of separately written writing by Marinella on conduct, with new material added in response to the debate sparked by the publication of Arcangela

Tarabotti’s Antisatira (1644).118 It is certainly noteworthy that the participants in this debate refer to Marinella’s fifth exhortation on dress and ornamentation in the singular as an

‘essortatione’ (see Chapter 4). It could be that singular exhortations were composed,

117 Benedetti, "Introduction," 35-36.

118 Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, 371-72, n. 246.

circulated and/or delivered at Incogniti meetings before being collated and published in 1645, or that, as Cox suggests, the material was collated into the format of a book of exhortations after its composition. I was not able to find evidence to confirm these hypotheses, but certainly the precise circumstances regarding the composition of the Essortationi warrant further research. Whether or not the Essortationi was a compilation of material or written as a single text, as I intend to show with the following analysis, there is consistency across the work in terms of Marinella's dissimulatory approach to authorial self-positioning as she engages with the literature and issues on women’s conduct. In this regard, I have interpreted the work as internally coherent and unified.

As a close textual analysis of the literary form of the Essortationi for evidence of

Marinella’s fashioning of authorial identity, this study might be located within the formalist tradition. However, I also conduct my analysis in light of new formalist criticism by highlighting throughout the textual analysis the role of cultural discourses in inflecting Marinella’s authorial self-fashioning.119 The study is also located within a poststructuralist and anti-essentialist perspective on gender and identity. I view identity and gender as performed rather than inscribed, and reject the concept of an essential, stable “core self” behind the façade. My focus is on analysing the performance of authorial identity rather than trying to uncover any essentialist notion of Marinella’s “true self”.

My approach can be termed feminist to the extent that I am interested in analysing how Marinella’s writing expresses and enacts resistance to discourses and paradigms which support patriarchal privilege and subordination of the female sex. As part of my approach in

119 In this regard, I follow Pender’s lead, who writes: “returning to questions of form also provides access to the detailed historical specificity and contextual nuance that I believe a new appreciation of early modern women’s modesty rhetoric demands. New formalist techniques can helpfully re-historicize what formalist critical paradigms have previously de-historicized.” Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing, 12.

this regard, it is necessary to address the issue of whether this aspect of Marinella’s writing can be termed “feminist”? The applicability of the term in an early modern context is debated.

For example, in her study of male-authored Renaissance discourses that expressed a positive attitude towards the female sex, Pamela Benson uses instead the terms “profeminist” and

“profeminism” because she suggests that although the texts offered new definitions of womanhood, they lacked a concrete agenda for political reform. Indeed, in some instances the ostensibly pro-woman texts seemed to be directed towards impeding such reform.120

Cox draws on a range of terms in her study to highlight the nuanced nature of querelle des femmes discourses, from the more abstract celebrations of the female sex, to the more political texts which argued for women’s equal capacities. In cases of the latter, she uses the terms “feminist” and “feminism”, with the expectation that the reader applies “the necessary historicizing caution” in interpreting the terms within context.121

Marinella’s Essortationi emerged from a very particular period in the history of women writers’ defence of the female sex. Texts such as Moderata Fonte’s Il merito delle donne

(1600),122 Marinella’s La nobiltà (1601), and Arcangela Tarabotti’s Tirannia paterna and

Antisatira (1644)123 broke new ground in their deconstruction of misogynistic ideology and

120 Benson, The Invention of the Renaissance Woman, 1-2.

121 Cox writes, “I have not attempted any kind of purist solution but have rather used the terms ‘feminist,’ ‘pro-‘ or ‘protofeminist,’ ‘prowoman,’ ‘gynephile’ and ‘philogynist’ as near synonyms, trusting to the reader to apply the necessary historicizing caution in understanding the sense of ‘feminist’ in this context. The term ‘feminist’ is used to pick out the more politicized strands within the more general gynephilia of the age: those that argued for women’s capacity for political leadership and intellectual excellence, for example, rather than those that rapturized on their angelic beauty.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, xxvii.

122 Moderata Fonte, Il merito delle donne (Venice: Domenico Imberti, 1600); Il merito delle donne, ed. Adriana Chemello (Venice: Eidos, 1988); The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men, trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

123 For further discussion of Tarabotti, these texts and relevant primary and secondary sources, see Section 2.2 and the Bibliography.

arguments for women’s equality.124 These texts arguably lack concrete proposals for social reform (although Tarabotti’s texts are more explicit in this regard). Nonetheless they are more than abstract celebrations of the female sex. The texts stand out for their cogent arguments about women’s equal or superior capacities and right to equal opportunities, and for their identification of specific social, economic, cultural, and political mechanisms through which women are subordinated. For example, the issue of women’s exclusion from education is highlighted by all three texts as one of the key ways in which women are precluded from positions of authority and power.

For this reason, I use the terms “feminist” and “feminism” when referring specifically to the more politicised pro-woman discourses of the period, including those that emerge from

Marinella’s Essortationi. Like Cox, I use the terms with an appreciation of the place of these texts and their authors in the history of feminism. I also use other terms including “pro- woman” and “anti-misogynist”, to describe discourses which are less politicized but none the less celebrate women and critique detractors of women. In my use of the term “feminism” and

“feminist” as opposed to “profeminism” or “profeminist”, I am also following Ross’ argument that “however tentative and provisional the demands of early modern intellectuals for a redefinition of “womanhood” and normative female endeavor may appear, segregating

Renaissance feminists from our wider discussion of modern political feminism…. deprives feminism of its history.”125

It is also necessary to explain my use of the term “patriarchy” in this thesis. One of the focuses of my analysis of Marinella’s Essortationi is its consistent disruption of the link, pervasive in contemporary conduct and querelle des femmes literature, between traditionalist

124 On Fonte’s and Marinella’s texts in this regard, see Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 276-98.

125 Ibid., 3.

paradigms of women’s conduct and their subordination. My analysis reveals how, in the

Essortationi, traditionalist discourses on women’s conduct are refunctioned to undermine rather than ratify this link. In doing so, I suggest that Marinella is undermining a fundamentally

“patriarchal” mechanism: the circumscription of women’s status to one of subordination through the literature of female conduct. This is a discursive practice or mechanism that can be interpreted as “patriarchal” to the extent that it works to reinforce male privilege and power.

In my use of the term “patriarchal” to describe this discursive practice, I am recognising Judith Bennett’s recommendation of a return to interrogating patriarchal practices and privilege in history, and to the use of more politicised language such as “patriarchy”.

Noting a shift away from the term and its derivatives in women’s history towards softer, less politicised terms such as “gender hierarchy”,126 the scholar suggests: “If we have the courage to make patriarchy – its mechanisms, its changes, its forms, its endurance – a central problem of women’s history, we will write not only better history but also history that speaks more strongly to central feminist concerns.”127

Chapter 2 of this thesis provides the cultural and literary context for my reading of

Marinella’s construction of an authorial alibi to engage with the querelle des femmes in the

Essortationi. I review the expanding body of scholarship that has elucidated the ways in which

Marinella’s oeuvre redefined patriarchal constructions of womanhood across a range of subjects and genres. I suggest that the mid-Seicento literary climate, dominated by the

Incogniti’s often antagonistic attitude towards women writers and feminist rhetoric, as well as

126 Judith M. Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 155.

127 Ibid., 54.

their practices of authorial dissimulation, profoundly informed Marinella’s circumspect approach to the querelle des femmes in the Essortationi. Finally, I situate the Essortationi in relation to an entrenched, almost exclusively male-authored conduct literature tradition, and introduce my reading of the work as a parody rather than straightforward imitation of the tradition.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 each conduct a detailed textual analysis of Marinella’s engagement with a particular aspect of women’s conduct in the Essortationi, respectively: domesticity and learning (addressed in exhortations, 1-4); modesty and beauty (exhortations 5 and 8); prudence and authority within the home (Prudenza donnesca and exhortations 6 and 7). This thematic structure of the analysis enables Marinella’s engagement with the different areas of women’s conduct to be historicised and contextualised through comparative analysis of treatment of the subject in contemporary conduct and querelle des femmes literature.

The primary texts included for comparative analysis are Torquato Tasso’s Il padre di famiglia (1583),128 Tasso’s Della virtù feminile, e donnesca (1582), Silvio Antoniano’s Tre libri dell'educatione christiana dei figliuoli (1584),129 Giuseppe Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti (1599) and

Dello stato maritale (1602), Giovan Battista Assandri’s Della economica, overo disciplina

128 Refer to primary source section of bibliography for listing of editions of texts used for comparative analysis.

129 Analysis and excepts in English translation can be found in: Julie D. Campbell, "Christian Feminine Virtue in Silvio Antoniano's Three Books on the Christian Education of Children," in In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women's Writing, ed. Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino (Toronto: Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011).

domestica (1616),130 and Lodovico Dolce’s De gli ammaestramenti pregiatissimi (1622).131

These texts have been chosen because of the proximity in their date of publication relative to

Marinella’s Essortationi, their popularity, the location of their publication, and/or the fact that their treatment of these different matters of conduct closely parallels Marinella’s in terms of the authorities drawn upon, the exemplars and arguments invoked. I also include comparative analysis of contemporary writing by members of the Accademia degli Incogniti on women’s conduct and nature. The Incogniti texts analysed include Angelico Aprosio’s Lo scudo di Rinaldo

(1646), Giovanni Francesco Loredano’s Bizzarrie academiche, and Discorsi Academici.132 My comparative analysis elucidates the characteristics of the prevailing strands of discourses of womanhood that show, in particular, a bias towards reinforcing women’s inferiority and submission. These works provide a reference point against which to analyse how Marinella’s

Essortationi diverges.

130 Assandri’s text is particularly useful because of the depth and breadth of the work, as well as its popularity. The work constitutes a rich and comprehensive example of a characteristic Seicento economic text, which Frigo describes as: “opera vasta, precisa, ma anche un po’ retorica; opera, soprattutto, sistematica; tutti gli aspetti della vita domestica sono infatti sapientemente distribuiti in «libri» e «capitoli»” Daniela Frigo, Il padre di famiglia: governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell' "economica" tra Cinque e Seicento (Roma: Bulzoni, 1985), 42.

131 In its first incarnation, Dolce’s text was published as a dialogic adaptation (without explicit acknowledgement) of Juan Luis Vives’ didactic treatise De institutione fœminae Christianae. Dolce’s text was entitled Dialogo della institution delle donne and published first in Venice in 1545 by Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari. Dolce was accused of plagiarism, yet as Helena Sanson notes, the Dialogo “went on to become one of the most successful works on female conduct of Cinquecento Italy, with a further four editions before the end of the century and another in 1622.” Helena Sanson, "Teaching and Learning Conduct in Lodovico Dolce's Dialogo della instituzion delle donne (1545): An 'Original' Plagiarism?," in Dialogo della Instituzion delle donne, Secondo li Tre Stati Che Cadono nella vita Umana (1545). (Cambridge: MHRA, 2015), 4. In addition to providing an introduction to the conduct literature genre and to Dolce’s Dialogo, Sanson provides the text of the 1545 princeps of Dolce’s Dialogo with commentary and notes. The 1622 publication, to which I refer in my analysis, was published in Venice by Barezzo Barezzi (one of Marinella’s publishers) and is cast as a prose treatise rather than a dialogue as in the earlier publications. The new title matches the new format: De gli ammaestramenti pregiatissimi. Dolce’s adaptation reflects the waning of the dialogue as a privileged literary form at the turn of the Seicento: “the didactic exposition was now favoured at the expense of conversation.” Ibid., 67.

132 Refer to primary source section of bibliography for listing of editions of texts used for comparative analysis

The centrality of this comparative analysis to my analysis of Marinella’s Essortationi reflects my argument that Marinella is responding particularly to the discursive circumscription of women’s nature and conduct in literature as opposed to ‘actual’ practices of circumscription. As recent scholarship has highlighted, prescriptions for women’s conduct in literature, such as silence and enforced seclusion for example, often tell us more about a patriarchal feminine ideal than about actual practices and conduct of women.133

Informed by this comparative analysis, Chapters 3, 4, and 5, trace through close textual analysis Marinella’s cultivation of an authorial alibi through the invocation of traditionalist discourses on womanhood. The close analysis reveals the way in which these discourses function to position the author “elsewhere” as she engages critically with prevailing paradigms and authorities on womanhood. In particular, as addressed respectively in Chapters 3, 4 and 5,

Marinella subverts: the notion of women’s silence and exclusive devotion to domesticity, the notion of women’s natural inclination towards luxuries, vanity, and responsibility for leading men to vice; and the notion of women’s absolute subordination to the prudence, authority, and rule of men. These are notions entrenched in contemporary conduct and querelle des femmes literature, which Marinella’s Essortationi subjects to critical scrutiny and revision, exposing in the process fallible logic and reasoning underpinned by masculinist bias and assumptions.

133 Scholarship has highlighted the disjunction between on the one hand, the feminine ideal represented in conduct literature, the pervasive presence of Aristotelian and biblical based prescriptions for women’s silence, chastity, submission, and confinement to the home, and on the other hand the reality of women’s daily lives. See Sanson and Lucioli’s volume on conduct literature, especially the final section on “Conduct, Women and Work”, the essays of which explore “the question of the rift between theory and actuality which permeates works of conduct”. Helena Sanson and Francesco Lucioli, eds., Conduct Literature for and About Women in Italy 1470-1900: Prescribing and Describing Life (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), 37, 303-64. Pender also warns that “while conduct manuals are pedagogical treatises designed to police certain behaviors, they do not necessarily succeed in this ambition.” Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing, 5-6. See also Benson and Kirkham, Strong Voices, Weak History, 1.

A variety of discursive mechanisms are employed by Marinella across the Essortationi to interrogate and revise these notions through a posture or alibi of traditionalism. The discursive mechanisms are identified and explained through examples in each chapter and include methodologies of blame through apparent praise and critique through apparent acquiescence, invocation of unresolved counter-arguments, parody and the “repurposing” of traditionalist discourses to subvert rather than ratify the notion of women’s inferior status and place in domestic subservience.

The theories outlined in the fifth section of this Chapter on subject positioning and the performance of authorial identity and gender underpin my analysis of Marinella’s authorial self-positioning throughout the text. These theories help to unravel Marinella’s invocation of contrasting discourses and understand these shifts in positioning in terms of the author’s negotiation of an authorial identity or ethos to engage with the querelle des femmes in mid-

Seicento Venice.

Chapter 6 adopts a broader lens of analysis to examine the act of authorship of the

Essortationi as a bold appropriation of a male-dominated literary domain. Through close textual analyse I show the figuring of gender in the authorial “io” across the Essortationi, highighting the way in which Marinella rarely includes herself in the category of the female sex, aligning herself more often with a subject position of “other”. Modern theories of literary and gender parody are invoked to help understand the fundamental irony between Marinella’s apparent re-inscription of gender norms and simultaneous resistance through the act of authorship of the text. These theories inform my argument that in the act of authorship of the text, Marinella appropriates a male authorial subject position and ethos and that this can be understood as an act of parody which calls into question the validity of entrenched norms and

expectations around authority, instruction, and gender. The result is a ‘refunctioned’ conduct book, which unravels rather than reinscribes the norms and discourses of the tradition.134

Ultimately, this study offers a contextualised and comprehensive, close textual analysis of Marinella’s Essortationi, and her informed and strategic engagement with the issue of women’s conduct – a critical text in the history of female-authored querelle des femmes literature from an early modern pioneer.

134 As explained in Chapter 6, my use of the term ‘refunctioned’ is informed by Margaret Rose’s definition of parody as “the comic refunctioning of performed linguistic or artistic material”, where ‘refunctioning’ refers to the “new set of functions given to parodied material in the parody and may also entail some criticism of the parodied work.” Margaret Rose, Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 52.

Chapter 2: Marinella rewriting womanhood and tradition in Seicento Venice

This chapter contextualises my analysis of the Essortationi within Marinella’s engagement with the querelle des femmes across her career and across a changing climate for women’s writing. The final section situates the Essortationi within the Renaissance tradition of conduct literature, to suggest that like her other contributions to male-dominated genres,

Marinella’s Essortationi is a critical engagement with the tradition that subjects its masculinist conventions and norms to redefinition and subversion.

2.1 Lucrezia Marinella (c. 1579-1653), her oeuvre and the querelle des femmes

A growing body of scholarship into Marinella’s oeuvre is expanding our understanding of the author’s literary identity. Yet we still know relatively little about her personal life.

Recent archival research by Susan Haskins has provided a clearer picture of her biography, elucidating details concerning her marriage to the Paduan Girolamo Vacca in 1607, her two children Antonio and Paolina, her time in Padua particularly following her marriage, as well as her business dealings and status as a member of a wealthy cittadino family.135 There is some ambiguity around the year of her birth, but a number of factors point to the likelihood of 1579 as opposed to the earlier date of 1571 that is sometimes given.136 In terms of her upbringing, whilst we know very little about her mother, we do know that her father Giovanni Marinelli and older brother Curzio were both physicians, authors and members of Venice’s intellectual

135 Susan Haskins, "Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? New Documents Concerning Her Life (Part I)," Nouvelles de la république des lettres 1 (2006); "Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? New Documents Concerning Her Life (Part II)," Nouvelles de la république des lettres 1-2 (2007). See also: Chemello, "La donna, il modello, l'immaginario," 150-70.

136 Whilst a parish record notes Marinella’s age at her death in 1653 as 82, a portrait of Marinella in 1601 notes her age as 22. Marinella’s marriage in 1607 points to the likelihood of 1579 as the year of her birth, as this would make her 27 or 28 at the time of her marriage – a more likely age for marriage than 36. For discussion see: Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 271, n. 5.

community.137 Marinella appears to have continued living with her brother following her father’s death up until the time of her marriage to Vacca in 1607.138 From an early age,

Marinella was ensconced in a milieu which not only fostered her education, but also facilitated her engagement (albeit carefully controlled according to patriarchal norms) with important members of Venice’s intellectual and academic community, specifically those associated with the second Accademia Veneziana.139 Marinella’s relationship with the academic community proved instrumental in supporting and promoting the author’s literary and publishing career in its formative years at the turn of the seventeenth century.140

Particularly illustrative in this regard are the circumstances surrounding the composition and publication of La nobiltà, which Stephen Kolsky describes as “bound to late

Renaissance academic culture”.141 La nobiltà was published by Giovanni Battista Ciotti (the official printer of the second Accademia Veneziana) and Kolsky notes that a reference by

137 On Marinella’s father and in particular his work on women’s medicine see Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi et al., eds., Medicina per le donne nel Cinquecento (Turin: Strenna UTET, 1992).

138 Haskins, "Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? (Part I)," 102.

139 Marinella “probabilmente tramite il padre, era legata ai più influenti membri di quest’ambiente nei primi anni della sua carriera letteraria” Lavocat, "Introduzione," xiii.

140 On Marinella’s relationship with academies see: Virginia Cox, "Members, Muses, Mascots: Women and Italian Academies," in The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation, and Dissent, ed. Jane E. Everson, Denis Reidy, and Lisa Sampson (Cambridge: MHRA and Routledge, 2016). As well as La nobiltà, Marinella’s first publication La Colomba sacra (1595) was published by the second Accademia Veneziana printer, Giovanni Battista Ciotti, and two of its four prefatory sonnets were by members of the academy. Susan Haskins also notes that Marinella exchanged Petrarchan sonnets with the poet and academician Celio Magno (1536-1602) and that the two prefatory sonnets in the Vita del serafico et glorioso San Francesco (1597) were written by prominent academicians Boncio Leone and Orsatto Giustinian (1538-1603). Haskins, "Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? (Part I)," 101-2.

141 Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 975. Scholarship on La nobiltà is extensive. In addition to the works cited here, see also: Sharon L. Jansen, Debating Women, Politics and Power in Early Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 136-51; Adriana Chemello, "The Rhetoric of Eulogy in Lucrezia Marinella's La nobiltà et l'eccellenza delle donne," in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford, 2000); "La donna, il modello, l'immaginario."; Ginevra Conti-Odorisio, Donna e società nel Seicento: Lucrezia Marinella e Arcangela Tarabotti (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979).

Marinella in the work to a deadline of two months imposed by her publisher suggests the possibility that the work was commissioned.142 Moreover, the treatise is dedicated to Lucio

Scarano, a central academician, and contains a reference to a lecture held by Scarano during which he complimented Marinella on her poetic talents.143

La nobiltà was explicitly composed as a response to the highly misogynistic I Donneschi diffetti (1599) by Giuseppe Passi - a contemporary writer from a different academy.144 The traces of academic relations within La nobiltà suggest the academy’s support of Marinella and at least at some level the pro-woman stance she adopts in the text. Indeed, Kolsky has suggested that the treatise may have been commissioned as a strategy on the part of academicians to demonstrate rather than merely argue against the baseless nature of Passi’s claims regarding women’s intellectual inferiority.145 Marinella’s support from the Accademia

Veneziana, and the basis for the composition of La nobiltà as a retort to the misogyny of

Passi’s text, were arguably critical enabling factors in the publication of Marinella’s pioneering

142 Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 975. This was not the only occasion on which Marinella was commissioned by a publisher. A couple of years later the author wrote, on commission, “a series of allegories and argumenti for a new edition of Luigi Tansillo’s Le lagrime di San Pietro” published by Barezzo Barezzi. See: Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 7.

143 Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 976.

144 Giuseppe Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, nuovamente riformati, e posti in luce (Venice: Giacomo Antonio Somasco, 1599). For analysis and an excerpt of the work in English translation see: Suzanne Magnanini and with David Lamari, "Giuseppe Passi's Attacks on Women in the Defects of Women," in In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women's Writing, ed. Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino (Toronto: Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011). On Passi see: Alessandro Rebonato, "Di alcuni imitatori di Tommaso Garzoni," Studi Secenteschi 45 (2004): 196-97.

145 Kolsky notes the contemporaneous publication of Moderata Fonte’s manuscript of Il merito delle donne in 1600 with an introduction by Giovanni Nicolò Doglioni (one of the founding members of the academy), suggesting that “instead of responding directly to Passi themselves, the Venetian academicians undermined his position by the publication of texts written by women that spelt out the short-sightedness of Passi’s polemic more sharply than any male-authored text would have done” Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 976.

feminist polemic and her construction of such an authoritative and forthright authorial persona within the text.146

A particularly remarkable feature of La nobiltà, in terms of this study of the

Essortationi, is the work’s explicit critique of the literary authorities (particularly Aristotle) and modes of reasoning through which an embedded, sometimes concealed misogynistic ideology is propagated by a patriarchal literary tradition. As noted by Kolsky, the first part of La nobiltà is “concerned with dismantling and unsettling male authorities.” Marinella positions herself unambiguously as “not in awe of male thought, which she reduces to the rank of opinion, that she has the philosophical capability to discredit.”147 Although Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti was the impetus for Marinella’s retort, the preface to the work indicates that her critique spans the generations from the “great” Aristotle, through Boccaccio, to Tasso, Speroni, and Passi. By including in her response to Passi this broader critique, Marinella undermines the key links in a chain of literary authorities and, in so doing, the tradition as a whole.148 Marinella criticises, in particular, the reliance of detractors of women upon the ‘opinions’ of other literary authorities, as well as their specious reasoning and tendency to generalise about women.149 As

146 According to Cox: “There is no real precedent for La nobiltà as a sustained, first-person exercise in female-authored feminist polemic nor one that appropriates so accurately male academic disputational modes.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 174.

147 Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 978. ibid. Wording on the title page of the 1601 edition establishes from the outset Marinella’s aims in this regard: “Nella prima si manifesta la nobiltà delle Donne co’ forti ragioni, & infiniti essempi, & non solo si distrugge l’opinione del Boccaccio, d’ambedue I Tassi, dello Sperone, di Monsig. Di Namur, & del Passi, ma d’Aristotile il grande anchora.” See also Panizza, "Introduction to the Translation," 25-29; Lynn Lara Westwater, "«Le False Obiezioni De' Nostri Calunniatori»: Lucrezia Marinella Responds to the Misogynist Tradition," Bruniana & Campanelliana 12, no. 1 (2006).

148 Kolsky suggests the possibility of Marinella’s “realization that there was a clearly delineated Italian genealogy of misogynous thought, beginning with Boccaccio, which needed to be ‘destroyed’, as she put it”, and that Marinella sees Passi as “representative of an uninterrupted line of anti-feminist thought, and that by combating him she is undermining the entire tradition.” Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 978.

149 La nobiltà devotes the sixth chapter of Part I to a “Risposta alla leggierissime, & vane ragioni addotte da gli huomini in lor favore”. In this chapter Marinella responds to the “false obiettioni de nostri

Meredith Ray suggests, Marinella’s critical engagement in La nobiltà with Aristotle especially

“demonstrates her mastery of the philosophical underpinnings of the controversy over women as well as her gift for philosophical argument.”150 As this thesis aims to show, there is continuity here with the Essortationi, throughout which, implicit and explicit critique of

Aristotelian philosophy abounds.

As put by Françoise Lavocat, La nobiltà “fu e rimane il titolo di maggior gloria della nostra autrice. Fu questo libro a permettere che la fama di Lucrezia Marinella valicasse le

Alpi.”151 Beyond La nobiltà Marinella enjoyed a successful publishing career, receiving commissions, and demonstrating ambition and professionalism in her writing and dedicatory practices.152 In addition to the polemical treatise, she wrote across a broad range of genres, secular and religious subjects, and in prose and verse.153 These texts are less explicit in their engagement with the querelle des femmes, and in Marinella’s adoption of a pro-woman stance. Yet an expanding body of scholarship reveals the extent to which across her oeuvre

Marinella consistently resists and redefines patriarchal constructions of womanhood in literary

calunniatori” which she divides into two categories: “alcune sono fondate su le ragioni apparenti, & l’altre sopra la semplice auttorità, & opinione loro”. She also targets those who make unfavourable generalisations about women. Marinella, La nobiltà, 108-10.

150 Meredith K. Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015), 99.

151 Lavocat, "Introduzione," xiv.

152 Along with her history of writing for commission, Cox notes that Marinella “signed the dedicatory letters to her works, and she pursued an ambitious strategy with regard to her dedications: among those receiving her works were two grand duchesses of Tuscany, two duchesses of Mantua, two doges, and a pope. Her correspondence in the 1620s with the Medici courtier Cristofano Bronzini (1560-1640), who had offered to serve as broker for her literary courtship of the Medici, shows the seriousness with which she pursued such contacts, and there is evidence that she was successful in attracting favourable responses from patrons in the form of recognition and gifts.” Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 7. On Marinella’s relationship with Bronzini see also: Ryan Gogol, "The Literary Exchange Betweeen Lucrezia Marinella and Cristofano Bronzini," in De' gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica S. Caterina Da Siena, ed. Armando Maggi (Ravenna: Longo, 2011).

153 For a full listing of Marinella’s works, including modern editions and translations, see the Bibliography.

tradition. As Lynn Westwater writes, Marinella “showed an unwavering allegiance to her sex.”154 Paola Malpezzi Price and Christine Ristaino, whose book on Marinella focuses on this characteristic of Marinella’s writing, suggest that “once she discredits the preconceived ideas that her culture holds about women, Marinella must fill this void with new categories.” Her writing, they suggest, addresses this “void” by reconstructing “woman into something different”.155

In particular, Marinella resists and redefines conventional narratives in which women are inferior, hyper-sexualised and responsible for the downfall of men. Instead, female figures are represented as de-sexualised, proficient in traditionally male-dominated realms as warriors, athletes, and intellectuals, and with agency, authority, and prominence in the narrative. As my analysis in this thesis shows, this career-long pattern is reaffirmed in the

Essortationi, as she subverts again conventional narratives about women’s exclusive confinement to domesticity (Chapter 3), vanity and responsibility for men’s ills (Chapter 4), and subordination to the intellect, authority, and agency of men (Chapter 5).

Marinella’s early hagiographic epics La colomba sacra (1595) and Vita del serafico et glorioso San Francesco (1597) show an ambitious and critical engagement with privileged, male-dominated literary traditions that would persist throughout her career.156 In both texts, however, Marinella reworks traditional characterisations to emphasise women’s spiritual role

154 Westwater, "Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653)," 234.

155 Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 159. On this characteristic of Marinella’s writing, see also the chapters in the volume: Antonella Cagnolati, ed. A Portrait of a Renaissance Feminist: Lucrezia Marinella's Life and Works (Roma: Aracne, 2013).

156 Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 143. Moreover, the prefatory sonnets in both by important intellectuals of the period are indicative of the support she received from within the academic and intellectual community at this early point in her career. On Marinella’s Rime sacre and the noteworthy influence of Marino see also: Lyric Poetry, 250-56; The Prodigious Muse, 54-55.

and agency.157 Eleonora Carinci argues that in her later and arguably most popular hagiographic work, Vita di Maria Vergine (1602),158 Marinella draws on Aretino’s representation of the Virgin in Vita di Maria Vergine (1539) as powerful and virtuous rather than merely a model of obedience and submission – a significant divergence from contemporary post-Tridentine representations which tended to emphasise her humility and submission.159 Cox argues that both the Vita di Maria Vergine and her later hagiographic work

De’ gesti heroici (1624)160 are noteworthy for their “exploration of women’s potential for spiritual authority.”161

In Arcadia felice (1605) – a foray into the male-dominated genre of the pastoral romance – Marinella breaks with convention by creating a number of significant female figures in the characters of the poet Licori, or Canente; Ersilia (who successfully masquerades as an

157 Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 69, 76. See also Cox who notes the significance in the Vita del serafico of Marinella’s “deemphasizing of Francis’s role as spiritual leader and her privileging instead of his solitary meditative practice”, a shift that has the effect of making him “a more accessible role model for Christian readers of both sexes.” This notion is reinforced at the end of the poem, when Marinella cites both her brother and her sister as “modern exemplars of the Franciscan ideal of ascetic piety”. Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 150-51. On this work, and for a modern edition of the accompanying Rivolgimento amoroso, see: Guido Mongini, "'Nel cor ch'è pur di Cristo il tempio': La Vita Del Serafico e Glorioso San Francesco di Lucrezia Marinella tra influssi ignaziani, spiritualismo, e prisca teologia," Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 10 (1997).

158 On Marinella’s representations of the Virgin Mary see also Haskins’ introduction to: Susan Haskins, ed. Who Is Mary?: Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). The book also contains an English translation of the 1610 edition.

159 Eleonora Carinci, "Una riscrittura di Pietro Aretino: La vita di Maria Vergine di Lucrezia Marinella e le sue fonti," The Italianist 33, no. 3 (2013): 378. See also Haraguchi who suggests that although Marinella’s hagiography appears to conform to the patriarchal ideal represented in contemporary conduct literature, she also “transforms Mary into an active spiritual role model for women” Jennifer Haraguchi, "The Virgin Mary in the Early Modern Italian Writings of Vittoria Colonna, Lucrezia Marinella, and Eleonora Montalvo," Religions 9, no. 2 (2018): 5.

160 See also Subialka who argues, that Marinella reinterprets the genre in her emphasis of the work as an exposition of the saint’s “female heroism.” Michael Subialka, "Heroic Sainthood: Marinella's Genealogy of the Medici Aristocracy and Saint Catherine's "Gest Eroici" as a Rewriting of the Gender of Virtue," in De' gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica S. Caterina Da Siena ed. Armando Maggi (Ravenna: Longo, 2011).

161 Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 156.

athletic male named Ersilio) and Erato.162 The male-centric genre and narrative of the pastoral romance is refashioned with female perspective in Marinella’s version, and in a way which emphasises the female characters’ intellectual, physical, musical and creative rather than erotic or romantic dimensions.163 Later, her Amore Innamorato (1618) departs from the Cupid-

Psyche myth in meaningful ways.164 The characterisations of Ersilia and Cupid invert the gender stereotypes of the conventional narrative which portrays women as manipulative, lustful, flawed and responsible for the downfall of men.165 Instead, Ersilia is represented as rational, in control, steadfast in her rejection of inappropriate male advances and equally uninterested in inviting them, and innocent of any role in Cupid’s failures. Cupid on the other hand is depicted as inconstant, emotional and driven by sexual desire.166 In her characterisation of Erina in her epic, L’Enrico (1635), Marinella counters tradition by emphasising the figure’s strength and wisdom over her sexuality.167 Erina, is described by Panizza as “a feminist response to the Siren

162 Cox suggests that Erato is also significant in terms of her role within a “kind of female intellectual community devoted to contemplative and natural-philosophical pursuits.” Ibid., 206. See also Shannon McHugh, "A Guided Tour of Heaven and Hell: The Otherworldly Journey in Chiara Matraini and Lucrezia Marinella," Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9, no. 1 (2014).

163 As Cox writes: “Italian pastoral romance was not only traditionally male-authored but also distinctly male-centered in its cast list and gender ideology by comparison with its sister genre, pastoral drama, which… had already attracted female authors in some numbers by the time Marinella began to write.” Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 198. Cox notes the significance of the work in terms of its engagement with gender ideology is Marinella’s representation of the female figures as “embodying prowess of various kinds within a nonerotic context” ibid., 206.

164 An English translation by Maria Galli Stampino and Janet Gomez is forthcoming.

165 Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 200-05. Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 38-60.

166 See also Panizza, "Introduction to the Translation," 8-9.

167 On the significance of the figure of Erina in L’Enrico in terms of Marinella’s refashioning of tradition see also Virginia Cox, "Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Literature," in Sguardi sull'Italia: miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari, ed. Gino Bedani, et al. (Leeds, UK: Society for Italian Studies, 1997), 142-43; Stephen Kolsky, "The Literary Career of Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653): The Constraints of Gender and the Writing Woman " in Rituals, Images and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F.W Kent and Charles Zika (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). Marinella, Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered, 57-62. Laura Lazzari, Poesia epica e scrittura femminile nel

temptresses [Ariosto’s] Alcina and [Tasso’s] Armida, and their destructive magical arts” who

“uses her gifts of prophecy and divination benignly”.168 Meredith Ray has shown, moreover, the significance of Marinella’s use of scientific discourse and knowledge in La nobiltà, L’Enrico, and Arcadia Felice, to the pro-woman agendas of these texts and their assertion of women’s intellectual capacities.169

The 1640s proved a relatively prolific period in Marinella’s career. The Essortationi was one of three works to be published between 1642 and 1648. Also published were two hagiographic works in Padua and Venice respectively: Le Vittorie Di Francesco il Serafico (1642) and a hagiography of the patron saint of Padua St. Justina, Holocausto D’Amore Della Vergine

Santa Giustina (1648). As suggested by Cox, these texts are noteworthy for the ambitiousness of their dedications to Pope Urban VIII and Doge Francesco Molin respectively.170 They also show Marinella’s continued interest in philosophy and in manipulating the conventions of genre and tradition. The texts are both philosophically inflected hagiographies which include extensive marginal notes in Latin expounding philosophical concepts.171 Even at this late stage in her career Marinella was continuing to write with ingenuity and erudition, and pursue publishing opportunities, problematising an interpretation of the Essortationi as a resigned final adieu to the reading public or an admission of defeat.172

Seicento: L'Enrico di Lucrezia Marinelli (Leonforte [En]: Insula, 2010), 98-119; Maria Galli Stampino, "The Woman Narrator’s Voice: The Case of Lucrezia Marinella’s Enrico," Italian Studies 69, no. 1 (2014).

168 Panizza, "Introduction to the Translation," 14.

169 Ray, Daughters of Alchemy, 93-110.

170 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224-25.

171 Cox suggests that the texts are “remarkable as attempts to fuse hagiographical narrative with philosophical and theological doctrine, the latter incorporated via a dense series of marginal notes. Their tone is well conveyed by the publisher’s description in his preface of [the book on St. Francis] as a “theological and philosophical work, in which readers will find a great part of Aristotelian wisdom.”” Ibid., 372 n. 250.

172 Ibid., 225.

This extensive recent scholarship suggests that La nobiltà can be understood as the most explicit manifestation of a career-long pattern of subverting and rewriting literary representations of womanhood.173 Moreover, Marinella’s contributions to the traditionally male-dominated genres of epic poetry (L’Enrico), the polemical treatise (La nobiltà) and the pastoral romance (Arcadia Felice) enact a challenge to the norms and boundaries of early modern women’s authorship.174 Marinella’s appropriation of a conventionally male authorial voice with which to refashion literary constructions of womanhood can in itself be understood as a powerful act; an act which shows the author reclaiming discourse for a female-authored redefinition of the female sex.

Against the backdrop of this analysis of Marinella’s oeuvre, this thesis argues that the

Essortationi is best understood as a culmination of the author’s sustained commitment to appropriating the voice of tradition and rewriting womanhood.

2.2 A changing climate for women’s writing and the Accademia degli Incogniti

The mode of authorship evident in the Essortationi sits in sharp contradistinction to La nobiltà in which Marinella’s conclusions are explicit, supported by logical reasoning, exempla and literary authorities, and the author is unambiguous in her argument for the superiority of the female sex and in her self-positioning as a defender of women. On each these counts the

Essortationi departs from La nobiltà. Despite Marinella’s physical return to the house in Campo

173 Ray writes that Marinella (alongside Fonte) “revitalized and reinvented archetypical female characters… and tried their hands at “male” genres in which women had only just begun to experiment, such as epic.” Ray, Daughters of Alchemy, 109.

174 Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 982. Also noteworthy in this regard is Marinella’s Discorso del rivolgimento amoroso verso la somma bellezza, composed whilst still an adolescent and published alongside her early hagiographic Vita di San Francesco. Cox notes the striking nature of Marinella’s adoption in this work of the role of didact: Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 220. For the Discorso del rivolgimento see: Mongini, "'Nel cor ch'è pur di Cristo il tempio'"

dei Squellini where she composed La nobiltà to write her second explicit contribution to the querelle des femmes,175 the two works occupy vastly different literary and rhetorical spaces.

Each text can be better understood as a product of its distinctive cultural and literary context. Cox has explained the matrix of factors which by the mid-Seicento culminated in a far more hostile environment for the ‘respectable’ woman writer.176 In particular, Cox notes the waning of secular princely courts and by extension the influence of an elite female readership, as well as a surge in misogynistic discourses and interest in baroque stylistics. The highly stylised, decorous poetics of the previous century had waned in resonance with readers, supplanted by a baroque mode of authorship that favoured the marvellous and the ostentatious. With the new poetics less ‘appropriable’ by women writers, literary survival meant negotiating a way of appealing to readers without compromising authorial decorum.177

For mid-Seicento female writers moreover, the risks of personal denunciation were real and are reflected in their adoption of various strategies of self-defence. Isabella Sori’s conduct book Ammaestramenti e ricordi circa a’ buoni costumi (1628) is accompanied by a series of defences against detractors, defending both herself personally and the female sex in general.178 Cox notes that the dedicatory letters of Arcangela Tarabotti’s Antisatira (1644),

175 Haskins, "Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? (Part II)," 228-29.

176 See especially the chapter “Backlash (1590-1650)” in: Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 166-227. An exception to Seicento literary patterns of misogyny and opposition to the woman writer is a work which celebrates letterate, including Marinella: Francesco Agostino della Chiesa, Theatro delle donne Letterate Con Un Breve Discorso della Preminenza e Perfettione Del Sesso Donnesco (Mondovi: Giovanni Gislandi and Giovanni Tommaso Rossi, 1620).

177 As Cox writes, “the dominant literary mode of the day allowed no easy mode of entry for the “respectable” female writer, while the model of literature mandated by a socially “correct” female persona was one for which no obvious market endured.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 210.

178 The Prodigious Muse, 219. On Sori see also: Delmo Maestri, "Isabella Sori: Una Scrittrice Alessandrina Del Seicento," Critica letteraria 21-22, no. 79 (1993). A modern edition of Sori’s Ammaestramenti e ricordi edited by Helena Sanson is forthcoming in 2018.

Barbara Strozzi’s first book of madrigals (1644) and Margherita Costa’s La selva di Diana (1647) allude to the authors’ hopes that their female patrons will offer some protection from inevitable detractors.179 Tarabotti wrote her Antisatira under a pseudonym, although she was

‘unmasked’ by Angelico Aprosio in his aptly titled response: La maschera scoperta.180 The disparagement inflicted upon Margherita Sarrocchi (by Marino), Tarabotti (by Angelico

Aprosio, Antonio Santacroce and Girolamo Brusoni) and Sara Copio Sullam (by Baldassare

Bonifaccio) confirm however, that these concerns were not unfounded.181 The anticipation of criticism and the need for self-defensive mechanisms profoundly inflected women’s writing in this period. Goethals has recently shown the strategy and dexterity with which Costa successfully negotiated this hostility to become "an important exception to the overarching trend of decreased secular female authorship.”182 Her capacity – and relative freedom – to engage with contemporary baroque literary trends, her active cultivation of patronage networks and relationships, and her self-representation as a “bizarre” writer, were central to

179 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 207-08, 361, n. 164.

180 As Aprosio’s title suggests, the work is censures Tarabotti’s efforts to challenge patriarchy anonymously – a particularly hypocritical attack given that as Biga has noted, Aprosio didn’t publish any works with his real name. Biga, Una polemica antifemminista, 85-86. Tarabotti’s Antisatira and Aprosio’s response are discussed further in Chapter 4.

181 On Sarrocchi and Marino see Rinaldina Russell’s introduction to her translation of Scanderbeide: Margherita Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus, ed. and trans. Rinaldina Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). On Tarabotti and adversaries see for example: Biga, Una polemica antifemminista, esp. 25-29; Elissa Weaver, ed. Satira e Antisatira di Francesco Buoninsegni e Suor Arcangela Tarabotti (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 1998); Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 63-68; Letizia Panizza, "Volume Editor's Introduction," in Paternal Tyranny, ed. and trans. Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). On Sullam and Bonifaccio see for example: Sarra Copia Sulam, Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Works of Sarra Copia Sulam in Verse and Prose, Along with Writings of Her Contemporaries in Her Praise, Condemnation, or Defense, trans. Don Harran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice."

182 Jessica Goethals, "The Patronage Politics of Equestrian Ballet: Allegory, Allusion, and Satire in the Courts of Seventeenth-Century Italy and France," Renaissance Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2017): 1404.

her success in this regard.183 But such strategies were less compatible with Marinella’s reputation as a highly decorous and respectable woman writer.

In 1640s Venice, when Marinella published her Essortationi, the shift towards a more antagonistic climate for women writers was acute.184 The second Accademia Veneziana which had supported and enabled Marinella’s publication of La nobiltà had dissolved, and, in its place, the highly influential Accademia degli Incogniti held an ambivalent relationship with women writers and was responsible for publishing a number of misogynistic texts.185

It is difficult to gauge with certainty the nature of Marinella’s relationship with the

Accademia degli Incogniti.186 The reputation of the Incogniti for misogynistic and irreverent discourses is difficult to reconcile with Marinella’s highly respectable authorial persona.187 Yet, the fact that her text was published by Valvasense – one of the preferred printers of the

183 Ibid. As Goethals writes, “a lynchpin of Costa’s ability to circumvent traditional gender-genre rules while still becoming “most venerated in Italy and abroad” was her self-stylization as a “bizarre” writer.” "The Bizarre Muse," 49.

184 On the climate in Venice in particular see: Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice."

185 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 183-84, 91-93. Scholarship on the Accademia degli Incogniti is extensive, see for example: Giorgio Spini, Ricerca Dei Libertini: La Teoria Dell'impostura delle Religioni nel Seicento Italiano (Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1983); Mario Infelise, Ex ignoto notus? Note sul tipografo Sarzina e l'accademia degli Incogniti (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1997); Tiziana Menegatti, Ex ignoto notus: Bibliografia delle opere a stampa del principe degli Incogniti: Giovan Francesco Loredano (Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2000); A. Beniscelli, Libertini Italiani: Letteratura e idee tra XVII e XVIII secolo (Milano: BUR- Rizzoli, 2013). On central Incogniti figure Giovan Francesco Loredano, including his relationship with Marinella’s younger contemporary Tarabotti see: Miato, L'accademia degli Incogniti. On the complexity of Incogniti attitudes towards women, and their engagement with the querelle des femmes see: Cox, "Members, Muses, Mascots," 157-58; Heller, Emblems of Eloquence; Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 43-57. For a recent critical bibliography on the Incogniti and bibliography of Incogniti members see: Tiziana Giuggia, ed. Cento novelle amorose de i signori accademici Incogniti: editio princeps, Venezia, 1651, vol. II (Aracne, 2017), 1483-612.

186 On the difficulty of assessing the nature and extent of women’s participation in Renaissance academies, and the complexity of such relationships, see: Cox, "Members, Muses, Mascots." On women’s participation in Incogniti meetings see also: Ellen Rosand, "Barbara Strozzi, "Virtuosissima Cantatrice": The Composer's Voice," Journal of the American Musicological Society 31, no. 2 (1978): 247, n. 23.

187 As Panizza writes, to Marinella the academicians “would have seemed disreputable, and both immoral and irreligious.” Panizza, "Introduction to the Translation," 5.

academy – suggests a status and presence in the academic community.188 Likewise, the fact that two of the extant copies of the Essortationi are located in the Biblioteca Civica Aprosiana in Ventimiglia and the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris reinforces the connection between

Marinella and the Incogniti.189 These libraries were associated with Angelico Aprosio and

Gabriel Naudé respectively – two important figures affiliated with the academy.190 Marinella is further implicated in the Incogniti milieu through the inclusion of her sonnet in the prefatory material to Tarabotti’s Paradiso monacale (1643),191 a work which, central figure of the academy Giovanni Francesco Loredano played a significant role in bringing to press.192

In addition, a number of references to Marinella by Incogniti members provide insight into her reputation within the academy. As discussed in further detail in Chapter 4, she is celebrated by Aprosio in Lo scudo di Rinaldo (1646) and his later La Biblioteca Aprosiana (1673) includes a sonnet by Marinella, who is introduced as “Sig. Lucretia Marinelli, Minerva

Venetiana”.193 Marinella is also lauded by Pietro Bissari in a discourse entitled “Le dame

188 On Marinella and the Incogniti see also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice." Valvasense was one of the most prolific printers in Venice in the 1640s. See: Infelise, "Books and Politics," 58-59. Cox has suggested the possibility that the Essortationi may have been commissioned by Valvasense as a rejoinder in the 1640s literary debate about female luxury (see Chapter 4).

189 A third copy is located in the Biblioteca Antoniana in Padua. Benedetti, "Introduction," 35-36.

190 Valvasense also published Tarabotti’s Antisatira and Tarabotti corresponded with both Naudé and Aprosio. Benedetti has noted the intriguing nature of the apparent silence between Tarabotti and Marinella at this point in their careers, particularly given their shared links with contemporary intellectuals and publishers. "Arcangela Tarabotti e Lucrezia Marinella," S94-S95.

191 A modern edition of this text by Ray and Westwater is forthcoming.

192 Beatrice Collina, "Women in the Gutenberg Galaxy," in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006).

193 Angelico Aprosio, La Biblioteca Aprosiana (Bologna: Manolessi, 1673), 172. See also p. 224.

accademiche” as part of his argument in favour of allowing women admission to academic meetings.194

Bissari’s reference is particularly noteworthy because it refers to Marinella’s “nuovo, e più bel lavoro”, before stating in Latin: prò lana librum, pro fuso calamum, stylum pro acu tractare.195 As Bissari’s text was published in 1648, the “new” work to which Bissari refers is likely to be either Marinella’s Essortationi (1645) or her Holocausto d’amore (1648). Given the date of publication of Bissari’s Le scorse olimpiche in May 1648, it is possible that the

Holocausto had not yet been published or was not yet in circulation at the time of the composition and publication of Bissari’s text. Along with the fact that Le scorse olimpiche was also published by Valvasense, these details suggest the possibility that the work to which

Bissari refers is the Essortationi. The least that can be said is that following the publication of the Essortationi Marinella continued to enjoy a reputation in the contemporary intellectual milieu as a respected writer. For him to include her and her latest work as part of his argument in favour of women’s participation in academy meeting, Bissari must have considered her to be sufficiently well respected amongst the text’s intended audience for her example to help his argument. Moreover, the Latin citation that follows suggests that despite the apparently

194 The specific text, “Le dame accademiche” is located p. 3-15. Pietro Paolo Bissari, Le Scorse Olimpiche. Trattenimenti Academici (Venice: Francesco Valvasense, 1648), 11. Cox, "Members, Muses, Mascots," 158.

195 p. 11-12 “Mà da vivo, e non figurato specchio risplenda qual nuova Lucretia la Marinelli, e vedasi con nuovo, e più bel lavoro prò lana librum, pro fuso calamum, stylum pro acu tractare: risplenda qual nuova Arcangela Taraboti, e so urhumana ne’ costumi, immortal ne componimenti mostrirsi dal Cielo d’un sacro chiostro non mancante de gli alti attributi d’Arcangela contemplatione immutabilis, stirpe eterna, beatitudine perpetua.” The Latin citation appears to be from Angelo Politian (“Polit.” is included in the margin) and to derive from correspondence with Cassandra Fedele. Politian celebrates Fedele’s learning: “But truly in our age, in which few men indeed raise their head to any height in letters, you, however, stand forth as the sole girl who handles books in place of wool, a reed instead of vegetable dye, a quill pen instead of a needle, and who instead of daubing her skin with white lead, covers paper with ink.” In Latin: “At vero aetate nostra, qua pauci quoq (ue) virorum caput altius in literis extulerunt, vnicam te tamen existere puellam, quae pro lana librum, pro fuco calamum, stylum pro acu tractes, et quae non cutem cerussa, sed atramento papyrum lineas’ As cited in: Lisa Jardine, "'O Decus Italiae Virgo' or the Myth of the Learned Lady in the Renaissance," Historical Journal 28, no. 4 (1985): 806.

traditionalist volte face of the Essortationi, Bissari did not see Marinella as having renounced her pursuit of learning and literature in favour of domesticity.196

A reference by Giovanni Francesco Loredano to a particular “dama” who frequented

Incogniti meetings is also intriguing as a possible reference to Marinella. In one of the discourses of his Bizzarrie accademiche, Loredano describes an exchange between himself and what he describes to his Incogniti readers as “Una di queste virtuosissime Dame, Illustrissimi

Academici, versata nelle vaghezze de i Poeti, e nelle dottrine de’ Filosofi, che Honora di continuo con la sua bellissima presenza i nostri congressi”.197 Marinella is often celebrated by her contemporaries both for her poetry and for her knowledge of philosophy. Aprosio lauds

Marinella in Lo Scudo di Rinaldo for her knowledge of Platonic and Peripatetic doctrine which he suggests makes her “degna di ammiratione appo coloro, che la senton discorrere.”198 As

Benedetti has suggested, Aprosio’s wording here also seems to suggest the possibility of attendance at academic meetings.199 In any case, it is difficult to think of another Venetian female contemporary that would fit Loredano’s description of the “dama” with whom he conversed. Certainly, Tarabotti’s lack of knowledge of philosophy makes her an unlikely candidate.

196 Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 105, n.61.

197 Gio. Francesco Loredano, Bizzarrie Academiche. Parte Seconda. (Venice: Guerigli, 1651), 178. The Bizzarrie Academiche comprised two parts, the first of which was probably written in 1635 or 1636, and published in 1638. The second part was first published in 1646 by Valvasense. For publication details as well as information on Loredano, see: Menegatti, Ex ignoto notus. The edition will be specified for individual references in this thesis.

198 Angelico Aprosio, Lo Scudo di Rinaldo, Ovvero Lo Specchio Del Disinganno (Venice: Herz, 1646), B10. See also Cristofano Bronzini in his Della dignità e nobiltà delle donne (1625) who through the voice of the interlocutor Onofrio (the author’s mouthpiece in the dialogue) declares Marinella an “expert in both moral and natural philosophy”. As cited in: Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 292. See also Ribera, Le glorie immortali de’ trionfi who celebrates Marinella: “E nella Filosofia molto intendente, e Poetessa di leggiadro, polito, & elegante stile.” Pietro Paolo di Ribera, Le glorie immortali de' trionfi, et heroiche imprese d'ottocento quarantacinque donne (Venice: Evangelista Deuchino, 1609), 330.

199 Benedetti, "Arcangela Tarabotti e Lucrezia Marinella," S91, n. 15.

Loredano goes on to state that this “dama” attended an Incogniti discussion on whether men or women love more ardently. The woman interrupted him to argue in opposition that in fact women love more ardently than men. Out of admiration for this “dama”

Loredano recounts her discourse.200 What follows is a complicated argument which ends by concluding that women risk more in their love for men than men do for women.201 In response to the woman’s discourse, Loredano declares that by her eloquence, he was “se non convinto, almeno confuso.”202 This is an intriguing representation of a contemporary woman’s academic discourse and participation at an Incogniti meeting. It is all the more intriguing because

Loredano’s description of the effect of her eloquence on him seems to encapsulate the sort of destabilising and disruptive effect of Marinella’s mode of writing in the Essortationi.

Marinella’s exhortations to traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct are rarely linear and conclusive. Rather they complicate and confuse, disrupting and destabilising patriarchal logic and narratives.

Together, this contextual evidence suggests Marinella’s continued presence and status as a reputable writer in mid-Seicento Venice. It is possible that having spent a number of years

200 Loredano writes: “Io che ammiro in questa Signora conditioni giamai osservate nel sesso donnesco, e che so, che tiene maggior pratica de’ Libri d’Aristotile, che d’Amadis di Gaula, ne mostrai desiderio non ordinario, ond’ella così discorse.” Loredano, Bizzarrie Academiche. Parte Seconda., 180.

201 On this final point she states that: “Perché volendo l’amata dar il maggior segno d’amore, che dar si possa all’amante si fa oggetto della censura di tutti gli occhi, e di tutte le lingue, e pone in evidente perdita quell’honestà ch’ è il più pregiato ornamento del sesso feminile. Perché. Che può haver’ al mondo più di buono Donna cui l’honestà levata sia.” Ibid., 181-82. The last line is a quote from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso although it is adapted slightly, with “castità” replaced with “honestà”. The emphasis on women’s “honestà” is certainly consistent with the Essortationi.

202 Loredano continues: “Essendo dunque sopravenuta l’hora di proporre il problema ho risoluto supplicarvi a giudicare le nostre differenze, & a risolvere con la vostra inimitabile virtù, se la Donna ami più ardentemente dell’huomo.” Ibid., 182.

in Padua or its surrounds following her marriage in 1607,203 Marinella’s return to Venice might have aroused a particular interest in the accomplished writer. In her early career Marinella proved herself adept at negotiating and fostering professional relationships with influential intellectuals and the academy in order to promote her literary career. It is plausible that, upon her return to Venice, Marinella drew on these same networking skills in order to re-establish and promote her authorial presence in 1640s Venice.

At the same time however, we should by wary of assuming that Marinella enjoyed unconditional and widespread support amongst the academic community, as the case of

Tarabotti attests.204 Wendy Heller has noted Tarabotti’s “close though volatile relationship with the Incogniti, based on a combination of mutual dependency, admiration, curiosity, and, at times, antagonism.”205 Thus whilst Tarabotti is celebrated alongside Marinella by Bissari, she was also subjected to extreme censure by Incogniti members including Antonio Santacroce in his La Segretaria di Apollo (1653), Girolamo Brusoni in his Sogni di Parnaso and by Angelico

Aprosio following the publication of her unambiguously feminist polemic Antisatira in 1644

(see Chapter 4).206

203 Haskins, "Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? (Part II)," 206. Also 228-229. Despite this period in Padua, the publication of a number of her works in Venice after her marriage suggests that she managed to retain ties with the Venetian literary community during this period.

204 Refer to bibliography for editions of Tarabotti’s texts discussed in this thesis, including modern editions and translations. In addition to the introductions to these editions, and to the sources on Tarabotti cited in context in this thesis, see: Claire Lesage, "Femmes de lettres a Venise aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Arcangela Tarabotti," Clio: Histoire, Femmes Et Sociétés, no. 13 (2001); Conti-Odorisio, Donna e Società nel Seicento. On Tarabotti’s relationship with the Incogniti see also the essays in Elissa Weaver, ed. Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice (Ravenna: Longo, 2006).

205 Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 61. See also: Ray, "Letters from the Cloister."

206 Panizza, "Volume Editor's Introduction," 25-29.

As Heller argues: “For Tarabotti, acceptance by the Incogniti was not only desirable – evidence of her success as an author – but a necessity... She was entirely dependent upon

Incogniti support to get her works published.”207 Without the institutional support of the by now defunct Accademia Veneziana, it is likely that Marinella’s relationship with Valvasense

(and by extension the highly influential Incogniti) was similarly one of necessity, in terms of finding a publisher and sustaining her literary career in this new climate.208

Moreover, the case of Tarabotti and the difficulty she encountered in seeking to publish particularly her overtly feminist writing (Tirannia paterna and the Antisatira) in the

1640s warned of the pitfalls of directly challenging misogyny in mid-Seicento Venice.209

Marinella’s construction of an authorial alibi of traditionalism in the Essortationi represents, I suggest, a strategy to mitigate such risks. It is also a strategy that parallels practices of authorial dissimulation prevalent in Incogniti writing that engaged with the querelle des femmes.

As noted in the Introduction, Incogniti members often dissembled their accountability for misogynistic ideology expressed in their writing by including ostentatious praise of the

207 Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 61. See also Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater, "Arcangela Tarabotti: A Life of Letters," in Letters Familiar and Formal, ed. Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater (Toronto: Iter, 2012), esp. 23-26.

208 Scholars have highlighted the central role played by the Accademia degli Incogniti in the literary and publishing world of early to mid-Seicento Venice. Collina suggests that, “it would not be an exaggeration to say that between 1630 and 1640 almost one half of Venetian editorial production was supported by the Academy.” Collina, "Women in the Gutenberg Galaxy," 58. See also Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 37.

209 On the difficulty Tarabotti experienced trying to publish Tirannia paterna, and the means through which it was finally published, posthumously in Holland under the title of Semplicità ingannata see: Lynn Lara Westwater, "A Rediscovered Friendship in the Republic of Letters: The Unpublished Correspondence of Arcangela Tarabotti and Ismaël Boulliau," Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2012). See also: Elissa B. Weaver, ""With Truthful Tongue and Faithful Pen": Arcangela Tarabotti against Paternal Tyranny," Annali d'Italianistica 34 (2016).

female sex, disclaimers, or apologies.210 In these instances, a rhetorical posture of deference to women functioned for Incogniti members as their “authorial alibi”. Examples include Angelico

Aprosio’s Lo scudo di Rinaldo (1646); this text is a reworking of his earlier work La maschera scoperta in which the author vilifies Tarabotti for her Antisatira (1644), but which Tarabotti managed to prevent from being published.211 In Lo scudo di Rinaldo, and particularly the opening pages, Aprosio positions himself as a defender of women, praising the female sex and listing exemplary women. Yet the persistent thread of misogyny that pervades the text suggests that his praise is strategic and rhetorical self-fashioning rather than genuine ideological commitment. Similarly, Loredano commences his In Biasimo delle Donne with an epideictic praise of women before vilifying the female sex in more general terms as

“un’animale imperfetto, un’errore della natura, & un mostro della nostra spetie”.212 Further, a number of the academic discourses in Le scorse olimpiche (published after the Essortationi in

1648 and also by Valvasense) include disclaimers or apologies to obscure commitment to the misogynistic ideology expressed.213 Although circumventing Counter-Reformation censorship

210 As Heller writes: “Although the tone is often playful and the speaker claims to be open to opposing viewpoints, what emerges is a negative view of women masked by a pretense of chivalry that is at once exaggerated and patronizing.” Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 53.

211 Aprosio, Lo Scudo di Rinaldo. This text and the circumstances surrounding its publication are discussed in greater depth in Chapter 4 of this thesis.

212 Loredano, Bizzarrie Academiche. Parte Seconda., 167.

213 Bissari, Le Scorse Olimpiche. For commentary see: Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 313. Also noteworthy for a similar methodology is: Francesco Pona, Della Eccellenza et Perfettione Ammirabile della Donna, Panegirico (Verona: Presso Antonio Rossi, & Fratelli, 1653). Discussed in Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 55, n.182. See also the disclaimer offered by Buoninsegni at the beginning of Del lusso donnesco (discussed in Chapter 4) in which he cites the opening lines of Canto 28 of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso which function as a disclaimer for the anti-woman sentiment of the canto. Addressing “donne, e voi che havete le donne in pregio” Buoninsegni writes: “non date a questa istoria orecchia.” The premise for his disclaimer is that his work is merely: “Un sogno d’infermo, un delirio Accademico, una lamentatione d’ammogliati,” composed “fra I bollori del mosto”. Lodovico Sesti, Arcangela Tarabotti, and Francesco Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira della signora Angelica Tarabotti fatta in risposta alla satira menippea contro il lusso donnesco del sig. Franc. Buoninsegni. (Siena: Bonetti nella stamperia del publico, 1656), 7-8.

was probably at least in part driving such practices of dissimulation amongst the Incogniti, there is arguably also intellectual gamesmanship involved; a game of rhetorical dexterity for the enjoyment and mutual reinforcement of the initiated.214

Marinella’s Essortationi was composed and published within a milieu in which heightened risks of censorship and an interest in challenging dogma fostered intense experimentation in authorial dissimulation. My analysis in the following chapters of this thesis aims to suggest that Marinella’s use of an authorial alibi echoes or appropriates these practices of dissimulation prevalent within mid-Seicento Venetian intellectual and academic culture. In doing so, I hope to show that despite a lack of scholarly attention, women writers such as Marinella also exploited the authorising potential of dissimulation. It is important to emphasise, however, that my aim is not to uncover Marinella’s “true”, “hidden” beliefs, but rather to suggest that she can be interpreted as intentionally dissembling those beliefs.215

214 This rhetorical game of blame through apparent praise can be understood through Cox’s analysis of the display of the rhetorical “marvelous” prevalent in misogynistic discourses of the period and its role in reinforcing bonds between like-minded authors and readers. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 194. On Incogniti practices of dissimulation more broadly, Giuggia writes: “la dissimulazione, che non è solo l’arte di sapersi “comportare” nei diversi contesti, ma ben esprime la dottrina della doppia verità che sin dal Rinascimento si era diffusa nell’ambito dell’aristotelismo padovano, sono tutti elementi, riscontrabili nelle opera degli Incogniti, che si possono ricondurre a un libertinismo intellettuale, a un esame razionale della realtà espresso tramite giochi del significante e diretta agli intellettuali in grado di coglierne le allusioni…” Giuggia, Cento novelle amorose Vol I, 12-13. Encapsulating this methodology and its impetus towards avoiding censure, but also its playful aspect, the publisher of the Incogniti’s Discorsi Academici includes a disclaimer in the opening letter to the reader that some of the discorsi “sono semplici tratti di penna, non veri sentimenti del cuore. Gli abusi dello scrivere, non pregiudicano ai debiti del credere. S’adula il secolo, che appetisce simili vaghezze, non s’inganna se stesso co’l partirsi dai dogmi della fede.” Accademia degli Incogniti, Discorsi academici de' signori Incogniti (Venice: Sarzina, 1635), b2. Als illustrative is the emblem of the Incogniti: a picture of the Nile which flows from an unknown source with the motto Ex ignoto notus. On the motto see: Nina Cannizzaro, "The Nile, Nothingness, and Knowledge: The Incogniti Impresa," in Coming About: A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. Lars Jones and Louisa Matthew (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2001).

215 Zagorin warns against the sort of method advocated by Leo Strauss (Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe: Free Press, 1952).) which involves decoding the hidden messages of texts in which the author is believed to be dissimulating. As Zagorin warns “Starting with the assumption of an author’s intention to convey a hidden message, the Straussian interpreter tortures and manipulates the text to produce a result guaranteed in advance… Strauss’s disciples have been guilty of similar

In sum, I suggest that this cultural and literary context, dominated by the Incogniti, its modes of authorial dissimulation and fickle attitude towards women and women’s writing, profoundly affected Marinella’s composition of her Essortationi. The rising prominence of misogynistic discourses and threat for women writers of censure necessitated strategies of authorial self-defence and a circumspect engagement with the querelle des femmes. At the same time, finding a publisher and reaching an audience required a mode of authorship that appealed to mid-Seicento (and Incogniti) literary interests. I argue that Marinella’s construction of an authorial alibi of traditionalist exhortation is an attempt to accommodate these two potentially conflicting demands.216

2.3 The Essortationi and the conduct literature tradition

The Essortationi expands even further the wide range of genres that make up

Marinella’s oeuvre to include a book of conduct.217 But as Ross warns, the indication on the frontispiece that it was published by Valvasense should in itself make us “suspicious of

“sincerity””.218 Certainly the implication of the text within the Incogniti milieu should prompt a critical and interrogative reading of the text’s claims of traditionalist moralistic exhortation.

At face value, Marinella’s exhortations appear consistent with traditional conduct literature of the period, in terms of the components of the patriarchal feminine ideal proposed and the use of a range of common classical and modern sources to authorise this ideal.

distortions through their tendentious misreadings pretending to lay bare the subversive meanings allegedly concealed in certain texts.” Zagorin, Ways of Lying, 10.

216 Cox notes this sort of negotiation at work in Tarabotti’s writing, suggesting that the “tension between demands of literary fashion and the imperative of feminine authorial decorum is implicitly acknowledged in the letter to the reader that prefaces Arcangela Tarabotti’s eminently “decorous” Paradiso monacale of 1643. Tarabotti’s publisher, Guglielmo Oddoni, takes the opportunity to promise there the proximate publication of others of Tarabotti’s works “più piccanti, per esser assai più aggiustate al gusto del secolo” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 362, n.173.

217 Benedetti, "Introduction," 2.

218 Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 296.

Conduct literature proliferated in the Renaissance, and Marinella would have been well acquainted with the genre and its conventions by the time she composed the Essortationi.219

Indeed, her father Giovanni Marinelli wrote two advice books – Gli ornamenti delle donne

(1562) and Le medicine partenenti alle infermità delle donne (1563), both written in the vernacular and intended to be read by women.220 The intended recipients of the guidance offered in advice and conduct books could be both sexes, or men or women exclusively, but the authors were almost exclusively male.221 Conduct books which focused on household management in the “oeconomica” tradition, within which Marinella situates her work in the dedicatory letter,222 were usually directed towards the male heads of the family and underscored male authority.223 Marinella’s contribution to this genre is another instance of the author’s circumvention of the conventions of early modern women’s authorship. As described

219 On Renaissance conduct literature see the essays and introduction in the volume: Sanson and Lucioli, Conduct Literature for and About Women; Sanson, "Teaching and Learning Conduct." Frigo, Il padre di famiglia; Gabriella Zarri, Donna, Disciplina, Creanza Cristiana Dal XV Al XVII Secolo : Studi e Testi a Stampa (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1996); Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956). Zarri’s volume provides an extensive bibliography that is subdivided into different categories based on the type and focus of the conduct books.

220 Giovanni Marinelli, Gli ornamenti delle donne (Venice: Francesco De Franceschi, 1562); Le medicine partenenti alle infermità delle donne (Venice: Francesco De Franceschi per Giovanni Bonadio, 1563). For details on Marinelli and a partial modern edition of Le medicine see: Biagi et al., Medicina per le donne nel Cinquecento.

221 Helena Sanson, "Women and Conduct in the Italian Tradition, 1470-1900: An Overview," in Conduct Literature for and About Women in Italy 1470-1900: Prescribing and Describing Life, ed. Helena Sanson and Francesco Lucioli (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), 19. Another seventeenth-century exception to this rule is Isabella Sori’s conduct book Ammaestramenti e ricordi circa a’ buoni costumi published in Pavia in 1628. See: Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 216.

222 She writes that her exhortations “traggano l’origine loro... da cose Economiche, e famigliari” (5)

223 Silvia Evangelisti, "Vincenzo Nolfi's Ginipedia (1631): Household Management and Civic Femininity in Seventeenth-Century Italy," in Conduct Literature for and About Women in Italy 1470-1900, ed. Helena Sanson and Francesco Lucioli (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), 63-64; Manuela Doni Garfagnini, "Autorità maschili e ruoli femminili: le fonti classiche degli "economici"," in Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: studi e testi a stampa, ed. Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1996).

below, like Marinella’s other contributions to male-dominated literary traditions, the

Essortationi differs in meaningful ways.

Helena Sanson notes the apparently impersonal nature of the authorial voice of

Renaissance (male-authored) literature on women’s conduct, arguing that although they often

positioned themselves as ideological authorities: in fact, they had absorbed and

interiorized ideas on the subject that can be traced back, among others, to biblical,

classical, or patristic sources, and to the broader opinio communis. They were

therefore acting, more or less consciously, as the mouthpiece of common and popular

trends of thought and of accumulated “wisdom”.224

Conduct literature thus tended to reinforce prevailing cultural and social norms, invoking commonplace thought and a fossilised set of authorities, citations, and exempla from classical

(and to a lesser extent modern) sources, as it circumscribed and defined womanhood.

This thesis reveals the extent to which Marinella both engages the voice of this tradition, and consistently subverts and redirects it. Entrenched discourses and authorities on women’s conduct are invoked to be disrupted and reframed rather than merely reiterated. As explained in Chapter 6, and with insights from modern theories on literary and gender parody,

I argue that beyond straightforward imitation of the conduct literature genre, Marinella’s

Essortationi can be understood as a work which parodies the tradition, distorting its conventions and premises to unsettle dogma, expose inherent fallibilities, assumptions, and biases.

Indeed, there are indications from the very outset of Marinella’s Essortationi of an agenda beyond the moralistic edification of women readers on conduct. The unusual use of

224 Sanson, "Women and Conduct in the Italian Tradition" 19-20.

the term ‘essortationi’ in the title evokes the classical tradition of exhortative literature as well as its more religious Renaissance forms.225 Yet the title is laced with ambiguity: Essortationi alle donne et a gli altri se a loro saranno a grado. Who are “gli altri”? The natural assumption would be men, but why not make this explicit? The second part of the title compounds this ambiguity as it can be interpreted as both: ‘if they are willing’ or ‘if they are able’ and this qualification seems to question the capacity and willingness of addressees to receive these exhortations.

Moreover, the work’s dedicatee is male - Spanish Ambassador Don Gaspar de Teves y

Guzman; a surprising choice given the title’s indication that women are the principal intended audience, and given Marinella’s history of dedications to high-profile women.226 Combined with the prevalence in the work of untranslated Latin citations, the male dedicatee suggests a male rather than female implied reader.227 In the dedicatory letter to the Spanish Ambassador,

Marinella expresses her confidence that the “splendore” of the ambassador’s “infinite virtù”

225 The tradition of exhortatory literature has its roots in classical and early Christian literature with the protrepsis or paraenesis, and conventionally exhorted to philosophy or to Christianity. Abraham J. Malherbe, Moral Exhortation : A Greco-Roman Sourcebook (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 121. As Jordan argues, the “unity of the protreptic genre could be provided... by the recurring situation of trying to produce a certain volitional or cognitive state in the hearer at the moment of decision about a way-of-life.” Mark D. Jordan, "Ancient Philosophic Protreptic and the Problem of Persuasive Genres," Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 4, no. 4 (1986): 328; 31.

226 La colomba sacra was dedicated to Margherita d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara, her Vita del serafico e glorioso San Francesco to Christine of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, her De’ gesti heroic e della vita maravigliosa della serafica S Caterina to grand duchess Maria Maddalena d’Austria, whilst Arcadia felice and Amore Innamorato were dedicated to duchesses of Mantua. On these dedications, and the notable shift from male to female dedicatees in women’s writing of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries, see Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 156-57. On the gender of dedicatees influencing and indicating readership see: Helena Sanson, Women, Language and Grammar in Italy, 1500-1900 (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2011), 45-82. Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 144, 147-48. On Guzman see: Mark P. McDonald, "A Genealogy for the Count Duke of Olivares," Print Quarterly 23, no. 4 (2006); J. H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

227 Cox has suggested that the dedication of the work to a high-status male rather than female also suggests that the implied reader of the Essortationi is male rather than female. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224.

will penetrate the “densa oscurità di queste mie compositioni, la renderà, come spero, luminose, e chiare” (4). This sense of the need to penetrate the obscurity of the Essortationi is echoed in the subsequent letter to the reader, which as scholars have noted is particularly provocative in its allusion to different layers of meaning.228 The letter states that Marinella does not want her readers to be attracted to the “corteccia” of her discourse. Rather she wants the reader to locate the “il midollo della scienza, & della Dottrina” (9).229 The close reading of the text conducted in this thesis confirms the clues offered in the opening pages of the Essortationi to an agenda beyond the moralistic instruction of women, pointing instead to a parodic relationship with the conduct literature tradition.

My argument for a parodic reading of the Essortationi can be contextualised within a broader sixteenth- and seventeenth-century practice of exploiting the genre for parody.

Extreme examples include Alessandro Piccolomini’s Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne

(1539) and Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamento della Nanna e della Pippa (1534), which both parody the tradition in their use of female prostitutes as main characters who provide advice to their women interlocutors that ostentatiously goes against the contemporary feminine ideal.230 In a more ambiguously parodic mode, Cosimo Agnelli’s Amorevole Aviso Circa Gli

228 Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 121.

229 A noteworthy occurrence of this same metaphor of the “midollo” over the “corteccia” occurs in the opening pages of a “Comedia morale” by an “Inquieto Accademico Incognito”, dedicated to Loredano and published in 1640. In a discussion between “Silvano” and “Simplicia” in the first act, the former states: “Eh Simplicia, non bisogna co’l ponsiero fermarsi nella corteccia, ma penetrare al midollo. Non hai tu sentito dire, che non stanno bene i Nibbi, con i pulcini?” Inquieto Accademico Incognito, Il contrasto dei genii (Venice: Sarzina, 1640), 16.

230 Sanson, "Women and Conduct in the Italian Tradition," 18, n.5. On the irony of the ‘bella creanza’ in Piccolomini’s title, see: Sanson, "Teaching and Learning Conduct," 37, n. 153. Analysis and excerpts in English translation of Piccolomini’s text can be found in: Maria Gall Stampino, "Alessandro Piccolomini's Raffaella: A Parody of Women's Behavior and Men's Dialogues," in In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women's Writing, ed. Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino (Toronto: Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011). A modern Italian edition is: Alessandro Piccolomini, La raffaella ovvero dialogo della bella creanza delle donne, ed. Giancarlo Alfano (Rome: Salerno, 2001). Aretino’s Raggionamenti parodies the tripartite

Abusi delle Donne Vane (1592) provides advice to virgins, widows and wives on avoiding excessive ornamentation, but its hyperbolic, often ascerbic and gratuitous descriptions of the sartorial “abuses” practiced by contemporary women problematises the notion that moral and benevolent edification of women is his aim.231

Giuseppe Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti and its follow up, Dello stato maritale (1602) – which attempted to reframe the extreme misogyny of the earlier work following backlash – represent noteworthy parodic advice manuals precedent, given their relevance within

Marinella’s literary career.232 The opening letter of Dello stato maritale highlights Passi’s intention, promised in Donneschi diffetti, to write on the four stages of womanhood – virgins, wives, widows and nuns – a practice that is in keeping with the conduct literature tradition.233

However, although purporting to recommend and provide advice for women, the extreme misogyny of the earlier text and the thinly veiled misogyny that dominates particularly the opening pages of the later text suggest an alternative agenda.234

division characteristic of conduct literature for women which presents instruction for virgins, wives and widows in its construction of a dialogue that occurs over the course of three days, each of which tackles a different state of womanhood: the nun, the wife and the whore. The main character of the dialogue, the prostitute Nanna, advises her daughter to pursue prostitution. Daniele Vianello, "Ragionamenti, 1534-1536: Dialogues by Pietro Aretino," in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A-J, ed. Gaetana Marrone, Paolo Puppa, and Luca Somigli (New York: Routledge, 2007).

231 Cosimo Agnelli, Amoreuole Aviso Circa Gli Abusi delle donne Vane (Bologna: Giovanni Rossi : ad instanza Giovanni Francesco Rasca & Gaspare II Bindoni, 1592). Rudolph M. Bell, How to Do It : Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 204-06.

232 On Dello stato maritale as an attempt to tone down and reframe the overt misogyny of I Donneschi diffetti following backlash, see amongst others: Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 985-89; Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 33-34.

233 Passi writes: “perciò havendo io ne’ miei Donneschi Difetti promesso i quattro stati delle Donne Virginale, Maritale, Vedovile, e Monacale: Eccovi lo Maritale per hora; il quale ho formato primo (se bene doveva esser secondo) per sgannare quei sciocchi, i quali poco leggendo i miei Difetti, e manco forse intendendoli, fanno giudicij strani del fatto mio, come, che io voglia in tutto dissuadere all’huomo il maritarsi, il che è falsissimo, se osservaranno i miei detti” Giuseppe Passi, Dello stato maritale trattato di Giuseppe Passi (Venice: Giacomo Antonio Somasco, 1602).

234 In the opening paragraph he writes: “Il matrimonio non è altro, che un legame strettissimo di fedele amore di maschio, & di femina, per desiderio d’haver figliuoli. Ma a tutti non piace il maritarsi, e molti

Within Incogniti writing, Francesco Pona’s La Messalina (1628) frames his misogynistic exposition of women’s sexuality as an ostensibly moralistic didactic work, intended as a warning to women.235 Ferrante Pallavicino’s Retorica delle puttane (1642) is an extreme parody of the Jesuit rhetorical manual De arte retorica libri tres by Cipriano Suario in which a prostitute teaches the art of simulation and manipulation to a young girl.236

Moreover, two parodic exhortations written by Ortensio Lando in the mid-sixteenth century offer an intriguing possible precedent for Marinella’s parodic Essortationi. The first of these is entitled Essortatione a gli huomini perché non si lascino superar dalle donne, mostrandogli il gran danno che lor e per sopravenire and was published together with a defence of women written by Vincenzo Maggi.237 In this exhortation Lando facetiously recommends that men apply themselves to learning and restrict women to the domestic sphere in order not to be surpassed and overthrown by women who were beginning to

de gl’ antichi Filosofi l’hebbero per cosa difficilissima, & infelicissima; e questo fu (credo io) perché le donne per il più sono di mala natura, e cattive.” Ibid., 1. Passi proceeds to support this statement with around ten pages of citations of classical authorities which denigrate women and marriage.

235 As Heller writes Pona’s “didactic purpose is but a thin disguise for a blatant work of pornography... Indeed, we are left wondering whether the work is truly intended for the women to whom it is ostensibly addressed, or for men who will be both aroused by Messalina and warned by the less than covert message of her sexuality.” Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 73.

236 Ferrante Pallavicino, La Retorica delle puttane (Cambrai: s.n., 1642). For a modern edition and introduction: La Retorica delle puttane, ed. Laura Coci (Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, Ugo Guando Editore, 1992). See also: James Grantham Turner, Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France and England, 1534-1685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 88-103. On the parodic nature of the work, see also Anna Maria Pedullà, "Introduzione," in Romanzi e parodie di Ferrante Pallavicino (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 2009), esp. 24-26.

237 Vincenzo Maggi, Un brieue trattato dell'eccellentia delle donne, composto dal prestantissimo philosopho (il Maggio) & di latina lingua, in italiana tradotto. Vi si e poi aggiunto un'essortatione a gli huomini perche non si lascino superar dalle donne, mostrandogli il gran danno che lor e per sopravenire. (Brescia: Damiano Turlino, 1545). According to Conor Fahy, the brieve trattato is an Italian translation of a lecture delivered by Vincenzo Maggi in Latin to members of the Estense court. Conor Fahy, "Three Early Renaissance Treatises on Women," Italian Studies 11, no. 1 (1956): 30. In a subsequent article, Fahy attributes authorship of the accompanying anonymous essortatione a gli huomini to Ortensio Lando. "Un trattato di Vincenzo Maggi sulle donne e un'opera sconosciuta di Ortensio Lando," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 138 (1961).

demonstrate their capacities for intellectual pursuits.238 The second exhortation, which is entitled essortatione allo studio delle lettere, constitutes a palinode which exhorts the reader to the study of letters after the first part of the text denounces learning.239 Neither of Lando’s exhortations are intended to be interpreted literally as genuine advice. Marinella’s use of the term ‘essortationi’ in her title is relatively rare,240 and it is noteworthy that these two precedents by Lando also engage a parodic relationship with the tradition of exhortative or didactic literature.

The pretext of didactic literature was regularly exploited through parody in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through a show of ostensible didacticism and moralistic authority, these parodies unsettled and distorted rather than reinforced cultural, social, and literary norms.241 Like early modern readers habituated to such parodies, we should read

Marinella’s claims of moralistic didacticism attuned to its history of use as a pretext for critique and subversion.

238 Ray interprets this text as “quasi-misogynistic”, noting that Lando warned that “If men did not reform… women would assert their superiority and rule men cruelly, seeking vengeance for their own mistreatment.” Ray, Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections, 55.

239 Ortensio Lando, La sferza de scrittori antichi et moderni di m. anonimo di utopia alla quale, è dal medesimo aggiunta una essortatione allo studio delle lettere (Venezia: [Andrea Arrivabene], 1550); Paolo Procaccioli, "Introduzione: La libraria negata," in La sferza de' scrittori antichi et moderni / anonimo di utopia (Ortensio Lando), ed. Paolo Procaccioli (Roma: B. Vignola, 1995), 10.

240 In addition to Lando’s, a noteworthy sixteenth century precedent which uses the term in its subtitle is a translation of Isocrates’ To Demonicus by Chiara Matraini (1515-1604?), an early contemporary of Marinella’s: Isocrates, Oratione d'Isocrate a Demonico di Latino in Volgare, Tradotta Da Madonna Chiara Matraini (Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino 1556). Matraini’s text is particularly interesting as it represents, “a rare early case of a woman presenting herself publicly in a teaching role in relation to a male.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 113.

241 This seems particularly true of the seventeenth century, during which, as Cox has noted, “the expression of misogynistic sentiment began progressively to gain in social acceptability, especially when it cast itself, as it did in Passi, as moralism or moral satire on the corruption of the age.” Women's Writing in Italy, 177.

In the following three chapters, I trace Marinella’s invocation and subversion of traditionalist prescriptive discourses for women as she engages with the themes of domesticity and learning, modesty and beauty, and prudence and authority within the home. In Chapter 6,

I argue that this process of invocation and subversion can be understood as part of a broader appropriation of the traditional voice of patriarchal didacticism and exhortation. Beyond mere imitation, I suggest that Marinella’s Essortationi represents a political exercise in parody which denaturalises prevailing norms around gender, authority and instruction and the tradition of patriarchal conduct literature itself.

Chapter 3: Domesticity and Learning

The focus of this chapter is the opening four exhortations of Marinella’s Essortationi. I argue that in this section of the text, Marinella’s apparently traditionalist exhortations to women to practice seclusion, domesticity over learning, and silence, are best understood as an authorial alibi for subversion. From the relation protection and authority of this subject position, Marinella interrogates and subverts prevailing paradigms and discourses which circumscribe women to a position of domestic subservience.

Comparative analysis of approaches to the subject of women and domesticity in

Renaissance conduct and querelle des femmes literature shows how a traditionalist position is regularly underpinned by Aristotle’s principle of biologically determined sex based roles and natures – the role of the male, more robust, is to acquire for the household, whilst the role of the female, more delicate, is to preserve within the home.242 The principle is invoked to authorise arguments for women’s seclusion and devotion to domesticity and silence, with each prescription reinforcing the other in a circular logic: secluding women within the home suits their nature and enables them to devote themselves to their proper role of preservation within the home. Taciturnity and silence are recommended for women because, being secluded and devoted to domestic activities, women lack knowledge of matters of the world and of human affairs.

242 It is difficult to overestimate the influence of this principle on early modern discourses of womanhood. For analysis see: Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, esp. 29-34. Jordan notes that Aristotle’s Politics contains an elaboration of the implications of the philosopher’s conception of biological sex differences, described in the Generation of Animals, which predetermine woman’s natural subordination to men. Based on this principle, Aristotle argues in the Politics that men and women’s role within the management of the household is by nature different “for the duty of the one is to acquire, and of the other to preserve” (Politics 3.4; 1277bI, p. 2027). Cited in ibid., 32.

In this chapter, I show how Marinella aligns herself with the prevailing Aristotelian traditionalist position on women’s place within the home and devotion to her “proprie arte”, appropriating the authority it implicitly signifies to construct her authorial alibi and ethos.243

Informed by Schmertz’s and Reynolds’ research on the notion of ethos and its potential to create authoritative subject positions for feminist rhetoric, I suggest that this process of appropriation enables Marinella to authorise her subversion of conventional, patriarchal discourses of womanhood and domesticity.244 My close textual analysis shows how Marinella repurposes, reframes and subverts these discourses, opening up rather than closing down women’s value and possibilities beyond the domestic walls. Positioning theory provides the framework for this analysis, helping to extricate and trace Marinella’s embedding of subversion within traditionalist discourses. The theory helps understand this discursive practice in terms of Marinella’s “investments” in aligning with certain discourses over others and how it works to cultivate an authorial alibi.245

The next four sections analyse respectively Marinella’s engagement with the notion of women’s seclusion, silence, rejection of learning and letters, and sole devotion to domestic pursuits.

243 Marinella’s clear familiarity with Aristotelian philosophy, as evidenced in both La nobiltà and the Essortationi, was probably at least in part due to the fact that, as Westwater points out, Marinella’s father and brother “coedited a seven volume series of Aristotle’s works.” Westwater, "Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653)," 235.

244 Reynolds, "Ethos as Location"; Schmertz, "Constructing Essences".

245 Davies and Harré, "Positioning."; Hollway, "Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity."

3.1 Repurposing discourses on women’s seclusion

The title of Marinella’s first exhortation is:

Questa Esortatione ci farà accorti, che la retiratezza è propria delle persone in

superiorità poste, come di Dio, de’ principi, e delle Donne, a cui la natura, e la prima

Causa l’ha attribuita più, che all’huomo. (1)

Her use of the term “retiratezza” here anchors Marinella’s discussion in the extensive tradition of prescriptive discourses on the seclusion of women – their body, fame, and virtue – within the home.246 The prescription for seclusion features in all three sections of Lodovico Dolce’s De gli ammaestramenti (1622) tripartite division of instructions on conduct for virgins, wives, and widows. On virgins, he suggests “di rado esca di casa” and then only with an appropriate female companion.247 Seclusion is recommended for wives in order to avoid “il sospetto d’impudicitia”,248 although he later clarifies that a wife need not never leave the house, just “di rado”.249 On widows Dolce writes that they should only leave the house “per udir la parola di

246 It is important to note here that despite the prevalence of prescriptions for women’s seclusion in conduct literature, early modern women – both elite and non-elite – were not in practice confined to the home to the extent that is often assumed. See: Anne Jacobson Schutte, "Society and the Sexes in the Venetian Republic," in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797, ed. Eric R. Dursteler (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Elizabeth S. Cohen, "To Pray, to Work, to Hear, to Speak: Women in Roman Streets C.1600," in Cultural History of Early Modern European Streets, ed. Riitta Laitinen and Thomas V. Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Monica Chojnacka, Working Women in Early Modern Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). According to Cohen, “An image of generalized female seclusion misrepresents the urban life of early modern Italy.” Cohen, "To Pray, to Work, to Hear, to Speak," 100. My analysis is concerned with Marinella’s response in this exhortation to the discursive practice of prescribing seclusion as a way of circumscribing women to domesticity, as opposed to the actual practice.

247 Dolce, De gli ammaestramenti, 45-46.

248 Ibid., 94-95.

249 “Ora mi si potrebbe addimandare: Questa tua sposa deve ella rimaner sempre rinchiusa dentro le porte della sua casa? Non già; ma uscire, come ho detto altre volte di rado, & in tutti i luoghi serbare honestà di Donna, & gravità di Matrona, così nelle parole, come nel volto, & in tutti i gesti.” Ibid., 106.

Dio, & visitar la sua Chiesa” and even then she must not be the first to enter or the last to leave in order not to arouse suspicion.250

Antoniano’s Tre libri dell'educatione christiana dei figliuoli (1584) similarly prescribes that women remain always at home, unless there is an honest and absolutely necessary reason to go outside, in which case she should return as quickly as possible. This prescription is represented as a natural extension of household gender roles, where the man acquires outside the home and the woman preserves within.251 In a chapter of Della economica (1616) entitled

“Della riforma dell’Appetito nella Figliuola femina” Assandri recommends the seclusion of female daughters both as a way of acclimatising her to her proper role within the home and as a way of keeping her from “tutti gli oggetti dilettevoli, che possono entrare per li sensi a stimolare l’Appetito”252 Keeping daughters secluded will ensure they are not occupied with useless vanities but rather with the “proprie operationi Donnesche” such as spinning and cooking, “alle quali seguirà in conseguenza il proprio diletto, che le indolcirà quel rinchiudimento”.253 Moreover, according to Assandri, seclusion will habituate women to silence, “proprio ornamento di lei”.254 For the wife too, Assandri recommends husbands enforce seclusion for the vital purpose of preserving “vergogna”. He suggests that the woman’s desire to go out and about can be alleviated by keeping her occupied in domestic

250 Ibid., 130-31.

251 “Et perché l’offitio dell’huomo è star assai fuori di casa, si per procacciar il vivere per la famiglia, come egli è obliato, si per governare, et trafficare le sostanze che son fuori, si per il commertio che deve havere con gli altri cittadini, la dove la donna deve starsi sempre in casa..” Antoniano, Tre libri, 27b.

252 “Primieramente adunque starà rinchiusa in Casa, non solo acciò s’assuefaccia al suo proprio officio di governare le cose di dentro, ma acciò si conserve lontana da tutti gli oggetti dilettevoli, che possono entrare per li sensi a stimolare l’Appetito…onde il rinchiudimento le sarà fedelissimo custode del suo bene maggiore, ch’è la Pudicitia” Assandri, Della economica, 184.

253 Ibid., 185-86.

254 Ibid., 186.

activities and impressing upon her the fact that “la Casa è la sua propria sfera.”255 In Donneschi diffetti (1599) Marinella’s antagonist Giuseppe Passi invokes Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint

Jerome to argue for women’s seclusion and concomitant devotion to domestic activities, stating that women must remain “nelle sue case rinchiuse, e serrate” for a woman who likes to go wandering will be assumed to be impudent.256

The issue of seclusion also opens Torquato Tasso’s Discorso della virtù feminile, e donnesca, a work which Marinella refutes in La nobiltà.257 Tasso cites first the position of

Thucydides, that “quella Donna maggior laude meritasse, la cui laude, e la cui fama tra le mura della casa privata fosser contenute.”258 He notes that Plutarch refuted this position in his work on illustrious women (Mulierum Virtutes) and that Thucydides and Plutarch represent respectively the Aristotelian and the Platonic position, which he proceeds to outline. Plato considered the virtues of men and women to be the same, that any difference in virtues is a consequence of practice rather than nature and that women have the capacity to participate in the Republic and in military activities alongside men. Aristotle on the other hand considered that nature predetermines different virtues for men and women. For example, Tasso writes

255 Assandri advises: “Si levarà dunque dalla Donna il desiderio d’andare vagando per la Città, overo a visite frequenti de congiunte, & d’amiche, col tenerla occupata nel governo domestico, & con l’insinuarle a tempo, che la Casa è la sua propria sfera.” He also stipulates that the husband inform his wife “non ne ha da uscire senza ragionevole occasione, la quale overo sarà necessaria, come per andare alla Chiesa ad assistere al divino Sacrificio, & a fare gli altri atti di religione, overo volontaria, & questa sarà più di rado, et con particolare consenso del Marito” ibid., 104-05.

256 He also exhorts: “Io esorto ogni donna a star quietamente nella sua casa, per non esser notata col sigillo dell’infamia, & io per me credo, che Dio non habbia data la barba alla donna, perché non havendo a partire molto di casa, non dee temer del Sole.” Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 78-83.

257 For analysis of Marinella’s response to the work in La nobiltà see for example Laura Benedetti, "Virtù femminile o virtù donnesca? Torquato Tasso, Lucrezia Marinella ed una polemica rinascimentale," in Torquato Tasso e la cultura estense, ed. Gianni Venturi (Florence: Olshki, 1999); Westwater, "«Le false obiezioni de' nostri calunniatori»"

258 Torquato Tasso, Discorso della virtù feminile, e donnesca, del Sig. Torquato Tasso (Venice: Bernardo II Giunta & fratres, 1582), 2b. References are to the modern edition: Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca, ed. Maria Luisa Doglio (Palermo: Sellerio, 1997), 53.

citing Gorgias, “il silenzio è virtù della donna, come l’eloquenza dell’uomo.”259 Ultimately,

Tasso positions himself alongside Aristotle, arguing for different virtues for the sexes based on their roles within the home.260 Thus women’s virtue “s’impiega dentro la casa, come quella dell’uomo fuori si dimostra”, and by extension, “dentro la casa ancora la fama feminile par che debba esser contenuta.”261 If the virtue of “pudicizia” is a virtue that pertains to woman, she must “ama la ritiratezza, e i luoghi privati, e solitari”.262

This analysis of contemporary discourses on seclusion shows their role in reinforcing paradigms of womanhood which confine the female gender to domesticity, silence, and subservience. Seclusion supports women’s biologically determined domestic roles and subordination to the husband, enabling her to foster the virtues that pertain to her –

“pudicizia”, “vergogna” and “silenzio”. The following analysis shows how in her first exhortation Marinella invokes traditionalist discourses on women’s seclusion, but also repurposes them, disrupting rather than ratifying patriarchal paradigms of womanhood.

Marinella opens the exhortation with a citation of Gorgias, who she says left us “una sentenza non minor di pregio, e di dignità”, which is that “la fama della Donna non sappia passare le domestiche parieti.” (1). She writes that Gorgias believed that a woman’s reputation was “tanto delicata, e pretiosa” and keeping it confined within the domestic walls would

259 Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca, 56.

260 Virginia Cox describes Tasso’s Discorso as an “ingenious and revealing attempt to remap the borders between Aristotelian-traditionalist and profeminist conceptions of women’s virtue.” As Cox explains, whilst the opening of the text reads as an essentially Aristotelian designation of female virtues and role within the home subordinate to her husband, the second part of the treatise diverges from tradition in its description of “virtù donnesca” which pertains to heroic women. For these women, whose role is to govern, the “virtues necessary to them are the “masculine” virtues of power rather than the “feminine” virtues of subservience” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 169-70.

261 Tasso, Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca, 57-58.

262 Ibid., 58.

prevent it from being denigrated by men. Marinella states that she cannot but praise the statements of such a man, and criticise the desires of some women who want their names,

“per via di virtù alte, e nobili, e non sue proprie”, to circulate in the city amongst men (2).263

She describes a woman’s fame as “come una cosa divina, come un candor di Cigno, che poc’ombra l’oscura”(3), and expresses the importance of avoiding that which “apporta danno particolarmente all’honore”. The “rimedio” Marinella proposes, “sarà la retiratezza, adunque nella segretezza della propria habitatione il grido della vostra fama farete rimanere” (3).

Marinella’s opening citation of Gorgias as the authority to support her exhortation is surprising, as the philosopher was commonly invoked to counter rather than support arguments for the seclusion of women’s fame and person within the domestic walls. By opening her exhortation with a citation of Gorgias’ position on a woman’s fame, Marinella is engaging like Tasso with the common practice in contemporary discussions of seclusion to align either with Plutarch (and Gorgias) or with Thucydides, who represent opposing stances on the subject. As suggested above, Tasso aligns with Thucydides in his Discorso della virtù feminile, e donnesca. In the chapter of La nobiltà dedicated to a refutation of Tasso, Marinella positions herself instead with Gorgias.264 Writing that contrary to Tasso’s opinion (and

Thucydides’) that a women’s reputation should not be known outside her home, she follows

Gorgias and Plutarch in her opinion that “il grido dell’operationi donnesche, parlo in materia di scientie, & d’attioni virtuose, deve risonare non solo nella propria Città: ma in diverse, & varie provincie”.265

263 On the notion that this might constitute a veiled reference to Tarabotti, see: Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 373, n. 252.The irony of this critique, given that it follows her ambitious dedicatory letter to the male Spanish ambassador and the recapitulation of her literary works and expertise in the letter to the reader, is explored in Chapter 6 of this thesis.

264 See also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 115-16.

265 Marinella, La nobiltà, 130.

Marinella’s citation of Gorgias in the Essortationi thus inverts not only the philosopher’s well-known position on a woman’s fame, but her own use of his authority in La nobiltà to argue that women’s fame should be known to many. Laura Benedetti has noted this apparent mis-citation, and speculated about possible explanations, including the possibility of an error in Marinella’s source text or the haste with which the Essortationi was written.266 Yet the fact that Gorgias’ position was widely known, as well as the evidence of Marinella’s familiarity with his argument, suggests the possibility that her mis-citation here is rhetorical;267 that while overtly claiming the importance of women’s fame remaining within the domestic walls, her invocation of Gorgias implicitly directs the reader to an alternative argument: that a woman’s fame should be known to many.268 The following analysis suggests the possibility that this mis-citation is a prelude to her ostensibly traditionalist but simultaneously subversive exhortation to seclusion.

In keeping with conventional discussions of the subject in conduct and querelle des femmes literature, Marinella invokes the Aristotelian principle of sex based virtues and roles as determined by nature, including extensive Latin citations of Aristotle on the subject in the

266 Benedetti, "Tradurre Marinella in America." Although Benedetti notes other instances of mis-citation by Marinella, I suggest that the Gorgias mis-citation is exceptional in terms of the degree to which it contradicts a well-known position, and therefore likely to be rhetorical rather than accidental.

267 On the practice of rhetorical mis-citation in relation to Tarabotti see: Letizia Panizza, "Reading over Arcangela's Shoulder: Tarabotti at Work with Her Sources," in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006). For broader Renaissance practices of mis- citation see: Julie Maxwell, "How the Renaissance (Mis)Used Sources: The Art of Misquotation " in How to Do Things with Shakespeare: New Approaches, New Essays, ed. Laurie Maguire (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008).

268 Marinella invokes Gorgias again on page 19: “ponne laudare, non biasimare Gorgia Leontino, che tanto honorò le Donne, volendo, che tra le domestiche parieti viva quella fama, che la persona essercitando la sua virtù fa che nasca dalle operationi da lei fatte in tra li men, poiché tutte le eccelenze stanno ritirate, e raccolte.” And in a sonnet in the second exhortation, claimed by the author to be written by “un buon letterato” but apparently written by Marinella herself. Here she writes: “Buono è disse Gorgia, che l’honor chiuso / Stia della Donna; ne gir più lontano / De la casa egli sappia.” (51)

margins.269 Marinella’s argument for women’s seclusion as a state that suits women’s nature reads as a volte face on La nobiltà in which she categorically rejected the Aristotelian position in favour of the Platonic, and argued that men, rather than nature, keep women from pursuing activities beyond the domestic out of fear of being surpassed and subordinated by them.270 In the Essortationi, Marinella explicitly rejects this notion and even draws attention to her change of stance in this regard.271 She states that some believe that seclusion is enforced by men in order to keep women “senza esperienza delle cose del mondo rinchiuse; acciocché inesperte, di poco ardire, e poco valore riescano”. Marinella admits that whilst she also made this claim in

La nobiltà, now considering the matter more “maturely” she has realised that women’s seclusion “non essere inventione, né attione di animo appassionato; ma volere, e providenza

269 She writes that God “ha dato per natura diversità d’uffitio a questi duo individui. Ciò è al Maschio, & alla Femina, con quel saper supremo; onde creò il tutto. Sapeva, ch’una medesima operatione ad ambo data non adimpirebbe la perfettione nel menar la vita, e per la cagione delle diverse attioni fece in qualche parte diversa la natura dell’uno, e dell’altro: onde uno ne fece forte, e robusto. Alla Donna diede forza; ma più rimessa, e soave; accioché senza Querimonia in casa governando il tutto lieta, e contenta si addaggiasse. E l’huomo più forte, e tollerante sopportando le fatiche acquistasse le cose necessarie alla casa, e alla famiglia resistendo alli pericoli, viaggi, & ad altre contrarietà… Dio, e la natura, che non mancano nelle cose necessarie, ne operano inutilmente cosa alcuna, ne formò un valido e vigoroso, l’altro gentile, e di mediocre forza ciò fece per cagione di quel bene, il quale da questi differenti affari doveva provenire essa assistendo nella casa. L’altro negotiando, e trattando fuori” (12- 13)

270 The relevant passages from La nobiltà are: “Ma poco sono quelle, che dieno opera a gli studi, overo all’arte militare in questi nostri tempi; percioché gli huomini, temendo di non perdere la signoria, et di divenir servi delle donne, vietano a quelle ben spesso ancho il saper leggere, & scrivere.” She then proceeds to explicitly reject the Aristotelian position in favour of Plato’s. Later, she laments: “O Dio volesse, che a questi nostri tempi fosse lecito alle donne l’essercitarsi nelle armi, et nelle lettere. Che si vedrebbono cose meravigliose… se non si adoprano in questo, avviene; perché non si essercitano, essendo ciò a loro da gli huomini vietato, spinti da una loro ostinata ignoranza, persuadendosi che le donne non sieno buone da imparare quelle cose, che imparano essi.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 32-33. On Marinella’s rebuttal of Aristotle and others in La nobiltà see most recently: Marguerite Deslauriers, "Marinella and Her Interlocutors: Hot Blood, Hot Words, Hot Deeds," Philosophical Studies 174, no. 10 (2017).

271 This is the first in a series of three references to La nobiltà which apparently retract arguments made in the earlier treatise. The other two are analysed in Chapters 4 and 5.

della natura, e di Dio” (11).272 Marinella then raises the example of the Amazons who governed themselves for an extended period, but argues that this period was limited compared with the time spent with men, before stating that “quello, ch’è dato dalla Natura, e da Dio non si può retrattare.” (12)

Marinella’s invocation of traditionalist discourses on seclusion and her explicit statement of a change in stance show the author emphatically distancing herself from the polemical, overtly feminist authorial subject position that she adopted in La nobiltà. Yet we should be wary of assuming a sincere shift in ideological perspective without acknowledging the role of rhetoric and literary context in Marinella’s authorial self-positioning here. Her apparently anti-feminist volte face would undoubtedly have attracted the attention of contemporary readers, and the explicitness of her retraction suggests an effort to capitalise on this interest. Moreover, in apparently denying the role of male tyranny in women’s seclusion,

Marinella is distancing herself from unpopular feminist arguments, which a year later prompted an attack of unnamed women by Angelico Aprosio in Lo scudo di Rinaldo. Aprosio argues that contrary to the claims of such women: “Non la Tirannia degli huomini, ma la loro delicatezza è quella che le allontana dall’armi.”273

Yet although appearing to side with the anti-feminist position in her argument that nature predetermines women’s seclusion rather than male tyranny, close analysis of

272 The second explicit refutation of the notion that seclusion is enforced by male tyranny occurs on the subsequent page: “E però diremo, che ne mal vagità per tiranneggiarle, né altra forza esterna habbia constretta la Donna a star ristretta tra le amiche mura; ma Dio, e la natura” (12)

273 This reference is from the eighth chapter entitled: “Qual sia la cagione, che poche Donne attendono all’essercitio delle Armi, e delle Lettere”. He opens: “Chi n’interrogasse le Donne, risponderebbono subitamente, che non per mancanza di forze, né d’ingegno; ma per la Tirannia de gli huomini, che non ha altra mira, che di vederle abbassate. Diranno, che furono create eguali, e forse anco superiori. Quanto s’inganna, gentilissimo, e virtuosissimo signor mio, ne’ propri interessi chi ha il cervello foderato di cenci! Disinganniamole per cortesia...” Aprosio, Lo Scudo di Rinaldo, 28, 32-33. Although not explicitly named, Tarabotti and her Tirannia paterna are perhaps implied in Aprosio’s critique.

Marinella’s exhortation reveals how she appropriates this argument, reinterpreting it with a pro-woman perspective. Rather than a genuine volte face, the following analysis exposes the rhetorical dexterity with which Marinella invokes and then repurposes traditionalist discourses on women’s seclusion to subvert rather than ratify patriarchal paradigms of womanhood.

Marinella’s circumspect approach of subversion through an alibi of traditionalism can be understood against the backdrop of Aprosio’s comments which attest to the risks in this new climate of backlash for blaming male tyranny as she did in La nobiltà.

Marinella’s repurposing of the discourses of seclusion occurs in three main ways. First, although Marinella argues that women’s seclusion is a consequence of nature rather than male tyranny, this discourse is repurposed to argue for women’s natural and God given superiority over men, as opposed to arguing for their natural fragility and predisposition to activities within the home.274 Thus although apparently anti-feminist in her rejection of the argument that male tyranny is to blame, Marinella appropriates the other side of the argument – that seclusion suits women’s nature – to make an argument for women’s superiority. The title of her exhortation, in which Marinella advocates seclusion before suggesting that it suits “persone in superiorità poste, come di Dio, de’ principi, e delle Donne” initiates this process. Embedded in the title is an expression of pro-woman rhetoric, which recalls arguments about women’s natural and God given superiority made in La nobiltà.275 This rhetoric continues over the course of the first pages of the exhortation. Marinella emphasises women’s natural superiority as a reason for their seclusion. Women, she suggests, “gloriare si debbono dell’honore della retiratezza; poiché sono custodite, come le cose divine, e sacre” (5).

274 Marinella writes: “Questa retiratezza parche Dio, e la natura più alla Donna, ch’ad altri assignato habbia” (6)

275 See in particular the chapter “Delle cause, dalle quali dipendono le Donne” Marinella, La nobiltà, 9- 11.

A series of analogies are invoked to illustrate the way in which things of beauty, worth and value are hidden. Nature hides gold, silver and other treasures within the earth,276 and “gli antichi Sapienti” hid the beauty of their Gods “sotto ruvidi sembianti di brutti mostri; acciocché le eccellenze loro ad ogn’uno note non fossero e apprendosi tallhora per qualche occasione le loro Salvatichezze, erano comprese dalla conoscenza altrui mirabili, e venerabili maraviglie” (3-4). She emphasises the practice of seclusion by superior beings such as emperors, Kings, great princes, and doges who rarely show themselves in public because “La retiratezza cagiona maestà, e decoro nelle persone, che dal merito, o dalla fortuna sono rivolte alle superiorità, & alla grandezze regali” (6). Even God, Marinella suggests, “nega essere conosciuto da noi se non negli effetti della clemenza sua” (6).

Second, Marinella repurposes the discourses of seclusion towards exposing the societal failing that necessitates such a prescription: that is, the failure of men to refrain from

“lacerating” the reputations of women. Marinella’s celebration of seclusion in the opening paragraph of the exhortation is thus followed by the statement that once a woman’s reputation leaves the home it will inevitably be denigrated by “le lingue de gli huomini (le quali sono piene di falsità, e di viltà)” (2). Later Marinella describes women whose reputation enters the public domain as like targets for archers, “li quali sono percossi, e lacerati da ogn’uno, e da ogni parte.” Framing seclusion as a “remedy” to a defective status quo rather than women’s defective nature is a notable departure from conduct literature such as Assandri’s Della

276 “la natura asconde le gemme, e le cose elette nello interno delle viscere della terra come l’oro, lo argento, & alptre [sic] ricchezze; perché sono pretiose, & desiderate, tutte le cose, c’hanno in sé del venusto fuggono la vista popolare, e nello manifestarsi rimangono di minor conto, e volgari.” (3)

economica which recommended seclusion as a means for reforming the appetites of young girls.277

Third, despite her statements in support of the Aristotelian position on women’s biologically determined role to preserve within the home, Marinella reframes seclusion from a mode of enforcing women’s devotion to domestic activities to an opportunity for the pursuit contemplation, truth, and wisdom. The Vestal Virgins are invoked for their love of seclusion and described as “come autrice delle virtù, della contemplatione, e della sapienza” (8).

Marinella later writes: “O quanto la solitudine piace. Sola sedeva, accompagnata da suoi pensieri: perché sedendo, e riposando lo intelletto, all’hora non molestato al senso, ritrova la verità delle più occulte cose, che la natura conservi in seno” (9). A Latin citation in the margins from Aristotle reinforces the message: “sedendo, & quiescendo fit vir prudens & sciens”.

Marinella suggests that many men and wise philosophers also favour seclusion because “in se stesso raccolto apre nell’oscurità delle cose occhi di Lince”,278 before inviting her women readers to do the same: “Così voi valorose Donne tra le domestiche mura, stando potrette delli affari della causa conoscere a pieno cioche è utile, ciò che è dannoso” (10).279 Combined with the closing paragraphs of the exhortation which describe the practice of seclusion by men

277 See also Vives who writes: “A woman should live in seclusion and not be known to many. It is a sign of imperfect chastity and of uncertain reputation to be known by a great number of people.” In this regard Vives explicitly aligns himself with Thucydides rather than Gorgias. Vives does however refer to the dangers of women exposing their reputations to damage by going beyond the home in terms of battle like Marinella’s use of the archer metaphor. See Book I, Chapter XI p.126 Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual by Juan Luis Vives, ed. and trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

278 Marinella discusses seclusion as a means for pursuing truth in similar terms in her Discorso del rivolgimento amoroso verso la somma bellezza (published alongside her early hagiographic Vita di San Francesco). Although there her advice is explicitly directed towards men.

279 Marinella writes that many men and wise philosophers pursue seclusion “per poter meglio contemplare le Secrete essenze, e penetrar negli occulti segreti della Natura: perché non è cosa ch’innalzi più il nostro intelletto alla sommità dello’ntendimento, quanto il sottrarsi dalle communi pratiche” (10).

including Achilles and Hercules, Marinella’s argument that women like men might enjoy seclusion for the pursuit of truth and wisdom effectively counters the Aristotelian sex-based rationale for women’s seclusion and subverts the practice of prescribing seclusion in order to reinforce women’s devotion to domestic duties.

One final novelty of the exhortation on seclusion is worthy of note for the clues it offers to Marinella’s broader mode of authorship. As part of her argument for women’s superiority and therefore seclusion, Marinella cites the description in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata of the Silenus’ rustic exterior which once opened reveals “meraviglie”.280 It is followed by a discussion of the importance of keeping excellent things hidden or concealed from the faulty judgement of the masses, stating that: “La conoscenza del volgo discredita, & avilisse la grandezza de gli honori, dell’altezze divine”. Marinella subsequently invokes the authority of

Marsilio Ficino on the importance of keeping the “deepest theological mysteries” from the

“common people, so that they not conceive false and vain opinions because of their faulty judgment.”281 She summarises the sentiment: “Onde si vede le cose di eccellenza dotate non si esponere alle altrui avidità, né al giuditio del volgo” (5) before returning to emphasise how superhuman deities are hidden “sotto favolose faccie… togliendole al tozo, e poco saper della plebe” (5) and inviting women to glory in their seclusion “poiché sono custodite, come le cose divine, e sacre.” (5).

280 The citation is: “Tal ne l’aprir di un rustico Sileno / Meraviglie vedea l’antica etade.” (4) As noted by Benedetti, the citation is from Canto XVIII.30, not the eighth canto as Marinella states. Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 44, n.8.

281 Marsilio Ficino, "Dionysii Areopagitae De Mistica Theologia Translatio," in Opera Omnia (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1959-60), Vol. II. 1015-16. As cited in: Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 45. On this text see: Pauline Moffitt Watts, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Three Renaissance Neoplatonists Cusanus Ficino & Pico on Mind and Cosmos (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987).

At a localised level, the discussion of the Silenus serves to reinforce Marinella’s argument that women, because superior, should be secluded to avoid being subject to denigration and faulty judgement. But the metaphor of the Silenus – often used in the period to describe Socrates’ dissimulation – combined with the references to guises and the cautious dissemination of doctrine, suggests broader significance.282 The emphasis on exterior and interior echoes the opening letter to the reader in which the reader is challenged to seek “il midollo della scienza, & della Dottrina” (9) rather than focusing on the “corteccia”.283 In my opinion, Marinella is here reinforcing the notion of penetrating exteriors to reveal deeper truths, truths that need to be protected from the faulty judgement and opinion of the masses.284 The Silenus serves as a metaphor for Marinella’s method in the Essortationi in which

282 The Silenus is a metaphor laden with significance in the Renaissance, with origins in Alcibiades’ likening of Socrates to a Silenus in Plato’s Symposium 216d-217a. Erasmus’ adage “The Sileni of Alcibiades” reinvigorated interest in the metaphor and its use to describe Socrates as “very different on close inspection from what he seemed in his outward bearing and appearance.” Desiderius Erasmus, Adages: II vii 1 to III iii 100, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, vol. 34, Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 262. Erasmus writes that the Sileni can be used to describe “some man whose face and bearing promises far less than what he hides in his heart.” Ibid. Jon Snyder notes the significance of the Silenus as a metaphor for Socrates’ dissimulation: like the Silenus, “his dissimulating words needed to be cracked open in order to gain access to the god-like knowledge hidden within them.” Snyder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy, 13. On the noteworthy use of this metaphor by Marinella, see also Chemello who suggests that Marinella “si preoccupa di andare e cogliere l’intrinseco delle cose, la verità nascosta sotto la ruvida scorza dell’apparenza, quella verità interna che abita nell’anima e che sola può condurre al “ben vivere” e alla felicità, come lucidamente esprime la figura silenica.” Chemello, "Letteratura di condotta e vita delle donne," 154-55.

283 On a similar use of the marrow topos by Erasmus see: Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 92-93. Ross has noted that “Marinella’s tone, as well as her list of philosophy’s physical and emotion tolls, echoes Erasmus’s Praise of Folly.” Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 297.

284 It is noteworthy that in his adage “The Sileni of Alcibiades”, Erasmus also emphasised the way in which things of value and worth are hidden, as nature hides jewels and gold and God Himself cannot be seen or comprehended. He also suggests that “It is the same with knowledge: the real truth of things is always most profoundly concealed, and cannot be detected easily or by many people.” Erasmus, Adages: II vii 1 to III iii 100, 34, 266-67.

a “rustico” exterior once opened reveals “meraviglie.” An alibi of traditionalist exhortation, once cracked, reveals deeper truths.285

In sum, I argue that Marinella’s authorial alibi in this first exhortation is a traditionalist recantation and recommendation for women’s seclusion. This alibi offers Marinella an unassuming and authoritative pretext to question and subvert the discursive practice, highlighted in the comparative analysis, of prescribing seclusion to confine women, their fame, and pursuits, within the boundaries of domesticity. As my analysis has shown, Marinella repurposes traditionalist discourses of seclusion to argue rather for women’s superiority, to critique social habits of denigrating women’s reputation, and to suggest the potential of seclusion to enable women to pursue truth and wisdom as opposed to simply domestic duties.

3.2 Silent because ignorant because secluded? Parodying patriarchal reasoning

Marinella returns to the subject of seclusion in the section of the fourth exhortation which addresses women’s silence. This fourth exhortation as a whole is a highly erudite exposition of the importance of circumspect speech and reasoning, which engages with ideas about self-fashioning and dissimulation that scholars have identified as central to the early modern consciousness.286 It should not be underestimated as a perspective on self- representation that plays out in Marinella’s circumspect mode of authorship across the

285 Scholars have suggested that the proverb of the Silenus represents Erasmus’ method across the Adages of “opening up” proverbs to reveal latent meaning. Desiderius Erasmus, The Adages of Erasmus, ed. William Barker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), xxxi. See also Daniel Kinney, "Erasmus' Adagia: Midwife to the Rebirth of Learning," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1981).

286 See Chapter 1 for discussion of scholarship. For example, in this exhortation Marinella suggests the imperative to first “considerar la qualità di quanto habbiamo a dire, per levarsi da gli altrui scherni. Per ciò gli antichi adoravano una Dea nominata Nemisi, la quale dipingevano con un freno in una mano, e nell’altra un legno, con il quale si misuran, le lunghezze, questo ci dava notitia, che avanti il ragionare pensar bisogna, e considerar quello, che dir vogliamo.” (118) Her discussion closely parallels Cartari’s discussion of taciturnity in: Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagini de gli dei de gli antichi (Venice: Evangelista Deuchino & Giovanni Battista Pulciani, 1609), 344.

Essortationi. It should also not be underestimated as a display of the author’s learning, knowledge, and capacity for reasoning – a display which belies the statement made towards the end of the exhortation about women:287

La parcità delle parole è particolarmente attribuito [sic] alla Donna, la quale non

essendo molto esperimentata, non potrà ne anco di molte cose ragionare; perché

l’esperienza, quasi dotto maestra, insegna la vita, l’opre, & li ragionamenti all’huomo.

(121)

Like seclusion, the prescription for women’s silence is ubiquitous in conduct literature of the period and often buttressed by the authority of Saint Paul.288 It is also often framed as a prescription directed towards compensating for women’s natural lack of capacity for reasoning and circumspect speech.289 In misogynistic discourses, women’s silence is justified even more explicitly as a consequence of their inherent lack of prudence and capacity for reason. Passi’s

287 This exhortation comprehensively exhibits the author’s familiarity with contemporary thought on silence and reasoning and is dense with citations from modern and classical authorities. As explored in Chapter 6, it is a particularly striking case of the irony of Marinella’s act of authorship, in which she enacts resistance to the patriarchal feminine ideal she ostensibly promotes.

288 Illustrative is a chapter of Antoniano’s Tre libri which, like Marinella’s fourth exhortation, concerns the importance of taciturnity and considered speech (entitled Della loquacità, & del parlare considerate Cap. CXVIII.) Antoniano writes: “nella donna è grande ornamento la modestia, & la taciturnità, onde san Paolo scriveva a Timoteo dicendo, La donna impari in silentio con ogni sommissione.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 105. See also: Onofrio Zarrabbini, Della nobiltà civile; et christiana libri quattro (Venice: Francesco De Franceschi, 1586), 18. For analysis of the prescription for silence in Renaissance conduct literature see also: Helena L. Sanson, "Ornamentum mulieri breviloquentia: donne, silenzi, parole nell'Italia del Cinquecento," Italianist 23, no. 2 (2003).

289 See for example Assandri’s recommendations of silence which are made in the context of his recommendation that women pursue the domestic arts: “In questo stato sarà facile habituare la Donzella nel silentio, proprio ornamento di lei, col quale per riuscire le Donne d’ordinario loquaci, per essere di poco senno, & simili ai Fanciulli, ella per la sua rarità si renderà ammiranda, & per la debolezza della ragione potendo trascorrere in parole incaute, verrà col tacere a correggere in se il diffetto della Natura” Assandri, Della economica, 186. See also Dolce who like Marinella discusses women’s silence within the context of the importance of circumspect and premediated speech. Dolce criticizes those women who lack this capacity: “sciolgono la lingua in varie parole prima che habbiano, o inteso, o veduto, o considerato nel loro animo la forma, & qualità di quello, che vogliono profferire” before prescribing taciturnity for women. Dolce, De gli ammaestramenti, 49.

Donneschi diffetti for example draws on a range of authorities to state that silence is the ornament of women “come animale di pochissima prudenza. Tacciano dunque le donne”.290

Amongst the Accademia degli Incogniti too, women’s speech and silence were a particularly favoured topic.291

At least at first glance, Marinella would appear to be positioning herself in alignment with the traditionalist position advocating women’s silence. However, her omission of any reference to Saint Paul is remarkable, given his entrenched status as a powerful authority for moralistic exhortations on women’s silence. Moreover, Marinella’s phrasing here suggests a reframing rather than reiteration of conventional discourses on women’s silence. Rather than representing silence as “proprio ornamento di lei,”292 Marinella suggests that silence is

“attribuito” to women, a divergence that insinuates that silence is imposed rather than a natural virtue of women. This notion is echoed in the statement that follows:

290 Passi continues: “Le Donne per loro natura ciarliere non considerano molto quello, che parlano, non discorrono chi è quella di loro, che parla; perché parla, dove, e quando parla cose, che farebbe di mestiero, che ciascuna donna considerasse molto bene Avanti, che si desse a parlare, e queste circostanze sono poco avertite da loro; e se non sanno parlare, imparino a tacere…” Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 280-81. Published after the Essortationi, two texts which represent an extreme misogynistic position on women’s silence and seclusion are: Paolo Botti, La donna di poche parole commendata (Padua: n.p., 1663); Girolamo Ercolani, Le eroine della solitudine sacra ovvero vite d'alcune romite sacre (Venice: Baba, 1655). For analysis of these texts see: Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 43-47.

291 Loredano lists in Bizzarrie accademiche the numerous literary authorities who have advocated women’s silence underlining the weight of the tradition of the prescription: “Che cosa fa il Silentio alla donna? Epicare vuole, che la dia concetto di bontà. Nicostrato, che sia pegno di castità. Democrito che le serva di bellissimo ornamento, e Sofocle, che le aggiunga grandissimo honore. In somma tutti gli abbigliamenti, che le potessero appotare la superbia dell’Asia, o la novità dell’Africa non potrebbero fare tanto bella la donna, quanto la fa il Silentio, non essendo di lui cosa più desiderabile al mondo.” Loredano, Bizzarrie Academiche. Parte Seconda., 147. See also Pona, Della Eccellenza et Perfettione Ammirabile della Donna, 8. And for analysis: Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," esp. 54-55.

292 Assandri, Della economica, 186. See also Tasso citing Gorgias, “il silenzio è virtù della donna” Tasso, Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca, 56.

Considerando questo Gorgia leontino, quel gran legislatore disse. Mulieri decus affert

taciturnitas, non ita viro; perché la retirattezza [sic] cagiona inscitia del vivere humano,

e però taciturnitas affert decus mulieri. (121-122)

In suggesting that seclusion results in ignorance and a lack of experience, Marinella implicitly recalls the argument – repudiated in the first exhortation – that women are secluded in order to keep them inexperienced and inept. Rather than promoting contemplation and intellectual development as argued in the first exhortation, here seclusion is framed as the reason for

“inscitia del vivere humano”.

In this striking passage, Marinella parodies the patriarchal reasoning through which women’s silence is justified as a consequence of their ignorance which is caused by their prescribed seclusion. Marinella’s bookending of the vernacular with the mirror image Latin citations of Gorgias reinforces this circularity, underlining the way in which the prescriptions for silence and seclusion feed each other: the silence of a woman brings honour, seclusion brings ignorance of human affairs and therefore silence brings honour to women.

Through the alibi of an apparently traditionalist discourse on women’s silence,

Marinella unsettles the patriarchal reasoning through which prescriptions for women’s seclusion keep women from knowledge of human affairs, thereby rationalising injunctions for their silence. Marinella has already undermined a key factor in this reasoning through her argument in the first exhortation that seclusion offers women, as it does for men, the possibility for the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. With the principle that seclusion brings ignorance undermined, Marinella undermines the rationale underpinning the prescription for women’s silence.

3.3 The futility of women’s learning – critique through apparent acquiescence

In the second exhortation Marinella turns to the question of the pursuit of learning and literature. The premise is an exhortation to women to attend to their “proprie industrie, & alle proprie arte”, rather than the study of letters which Marinella describes as “una vanità inutile, e di poco consolatione” (23).293 This exhortation is one of the most widely discussed by modern scholars. While some read it as a strongly autobiographical exhortation to women to acquiesce in order to avoid the disillusionments of the study of letters,294 others see the extended exposition of the hostility directed towards the woman intellectual as more accusatory than acquiescent.295 Further, an unresolved, provocative irony complicates the exhortation as Marinella’s highly erudite act of authorship – in this exhortation but in the

Essortationi as a whole – enacts resistance to the rejection of learning and literature ostensibly advocated in this second exhortation.296

Is this a disillusioned exhortation to acquiesce or an act and statement of defiant dissent? I argue that both readings are possible, and that as for the Essortationi as a whole, this inherent hermeneutic ambivalence is strategic.297 Marinella’s posture of acquiescent traditionalism in this second exhortation functions as an authorial alibi; a pretext and line of

293 The title of the exhortation is: “Da questa essortatione s’intenderà, come è cosa di laude attendere alle proprie industrie, & alle proprie arti: Et che lo studio delle lettere è una vanità inutile, e di poca consolatione.” (23)

294 See for example: Benedetti, "Le Essortationi di Lucrezia Marinella," 390. Lavocat, "Introduzione," xxii- xxiii.

295 For example, Cox suggests that “the tone is sufficiently impassioned and bitter for the passage to read less as the traditionalist apologia it claims to be than a kind of extended j’accuse.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224.

296 This irony between Marinella’s deeds and words is explored in depth in Chapter 6 of this thesis.

297 As noted in the Introduction, this argument draws on Hinds’ reading of Ovid’s hermeneutic alibi which similarly emphasises the openness of his poetry to both acquiescent and subversive readings. Hinds, "Generalizing About Ovid."

defence against potential censure for the challenges posed by her exposition and interrogation of prejudices against the woman intellectual.

Before the analysis, a passage at the beginning of this exhortation is worthy of note for the clues it offers to Marinella’s approach to the issue of women and learning. In an aside which appears out of place within the context of her ostensible exhortation to reject learning and literature, Marinella emphasises that in order to avoid being “sciocchi, & insipidi” compositions require “parole dolci,” and “soavità di volto, non di detti iracondi, & di fronte dispettosa” (26). Quoting Guarino she writes: “Lieto nido, esca dolce aura cortese/ Bramano i

Cigni, e non si va in Parnaso/ Colle cure mordaci.” This description effectively encapsulates

Marinella’s methodology in this exhortation, in which the author’s wrath and scorn are couched within an ostensibly conciliatory exhortation to acquiescence.

It is also important to contextualise Marinella’s exhortation on women and learning within a cultural climate which, as explained in Chapter 2, increasingly vilified women intellectuals (often personally) and disparaged women’s efforts to participate in the republic of letters.298 This opposition is reflected in conduct literature which warns against women’s education. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Antoniano’s Tre libri dell'educatione christiana dei figliuoli cautions against educating boys and girls together and in the same way, suggesting that because the female sex is “vano per natura” they might become “tanto più superbo” and even want to “far del maestro” in contravention of the Pauline dictum.

Antoniano recommends for girls only the reading of the lives of saints and spiritual works alongside their devotion to their proper womanly activities.299 In the early Seicento Assandri’s

298 For analysis of Seicento misogyny and the woman writer, see especially: Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 195-227.

299 Antoniano, Tre libri, 153-54. He also warns of the risks to a daughter’s chastity posed by her mingling with male literati.

Della economica warns of the risks that women’s learning pose to the natural order of man’s dominion over women, suggesting that women might “presumere troppo di se stessa”.300

In more overtly misogynistic terms, Giuseppe Passi’s Donneschi diffetti ridiculed the aspiring woman intellectual,301 whilst Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnaso (1612) reinvigorated the association of women’s learning with unchastity in his satire of women’s participation in academies. Boccalini has Apollo judge that it always ends in debauchery: “dopo brieve tempo tutti forniscono alle fine in montarsi addosso l’uno l’altro”, and that “la vera

Poetica delle donne era l’aco, & il fuso”.302 Within Incogniti writing, Francesco Pona’s La lucerna has Eureta (Pona’s pseudonym) declare it a miracle if a woman, “volendo superare il sesso, data alle dottrine, & alle lingue non macchia l’animo di vitij, e di sporche abominationi.”303

Against the backdrop of this hostility, Marinella’s second exhortation to women to reject learning and literature would seem to be defeatist. Her invocation in the title of her second exhortation of the notion of women’s “proprie industrie” and “proprie arti” positions

300 “perché passando alla cognitione delle Scienze, potrebbe per la debolezza del giudicio, & della ragione, nell’incominciare a capire quei termini, presumere troppo di se stessa… & tenere gli huomini in stima minore, & così pervertire l’ordine di Natura, o almeno riputarsi loro eguale, & darsi ad intendere di non essere più obligate alla legge di Pudicitia…” Assandri, Della economica, 188.

301 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 278-80. For analysis see: Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 975.

302 Traiano Boccalini, De' Ragguagli di Parnaso (Venice: Pietro Farri, 1612), 74.

303 Pona, La Lucerna, 19. Cited in Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 55-56. Westwater also notes how Girolamo Brusoni laments the fact that women have forgotten “le proprie funzioni del filare, del tessere, del cuccire, e dell’imbellettarsi abbiano esse ancora tentato d’occupar le catedre e i pulpiti (e vi facevano una bellissima riuscita mentre Sapiens Femina stultabis est) e s’ingegnino tuttavia di maneggiar le penne, di trattar le guerre e di governare il Mondo ad onta della terra e del cielo…” Girolamo Brusoni, Trascorsi Accademici... Libri Sei (Venice: Guerigli, 1656), 6. Cited in Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 56. See also Aprosio who states that women: “Sono prive delle lettere non per colpa degli huomini: ma perché essendo nemiche della fatica, non sanno staccarsi dall’otio: o se da esso si staccano, non per altra cagione lo fanno, che per lisciarsi, e mostrarsi più vane dell’istessa vanità.” Aprosio, Lo Scudo di Rinaldo, 34.

Marinella again in alignment with a traditionalist Aristotelian view of biologically determined sex-based natures and roles and foreshadows her recommendations in the exhortation that women confine themselves to the domestic arts. Throughout the exhortation Marinella cultivates this posture, emphasising that the pursuit of knowledge “non sia arte propria”

(25).304 After a detailed description of the antagonism the woman writer experiences from both family and male intellectuals, Marinella writes that “invece di cogliere dopo tante vigilie, sudori, fatiche consolatione, & honori; cogli lappoli, e spine però vieni a conoscere, ch’l rimanersi ne’ propri ingegni, e nelle proprie arti è di laude, e di gusto.” (30)

As an accomplished letterata, lauded by contemporaries for her learning and writing,

Marinella’s authorial self-positioning here would have arguably surprised contemporary readers. Indeed, it could be that Marinella sought (as in her exhortation to seclusion) to capitalise on the attention that such an unexpected claim would have attracted within contemporary discussions of women and learning. Yet as suggested in the citation above,

Marinella’s exhortations to women to pursue their proper arts are consistently framed as the solution to unjust social and cultural opposition to the letterata.305

In locating the reason for her exhortation with a defective status quo rather than with the woman intellectual, Marinella differentiates her argument from contemporary discourses

304 This is a position that La nobiltà is devoted to undermining through her copious examples of women’s excellence in activities beyond the domestic. She also explicitly challenges the Aristotelian principle: “Onde dice quel buon compagno d’Aristotile; debbono in tutto, e per tutto le donne ubedire a’ maschi, ne cercar quello, che si facci fuori di casa. Opinione sciocca, & sentenza cruda, & empia di huomo Tirranno, & pauroso” Marinella, La nobiltà, 32.

305 See also the following paragraph: “Io essorterò sempre la Donna alla virtù della temperanza, della bontà, della giustitia, della religione, & alli propri lavori nativi donneschi attendere. Sapendo, che queste virtù sono di laude, & di gloria alla Donna, come l’industria, e la diligenza, e la parsimonia. Queste tali sono ben vedute da ogn’uno; ma non così la letterata; perché adorna di quelle doti; onde, si ascende al monte della fama, sarà mal veduta da gli huomini, come sopra vi dissi, stimando, che voglia superare, o equiparare il lor valore; onde essi per troncare l’ali alla tua gloria incominciante a volare, vanno denigrando quanto di buono e di dotto è ne vostri componimenti.” (38-39)

which focused on women’s innate incapacity for intellectual pursuits, or the inevitability of sexual impropriety or overconfidence that accompanies women’s learning. She repeatedly emphasises the notion that the pursuit of knowledge and learning is potentially the source of immense fulfilment and happiness for women. However, these potential benefits are denied to women by a society which problematises women’s participation in the republic of letters:

“Vero è, che la sapienza felici ne farebbe in tutte le humane cose, quando fosse apprezzata; ma di ciò poco gloriar si puo” (24). The benefit of pursuing knowledge is emphasised in the margins here with an untranslated Latin citation from Plato’s protreptic dialogue Euthydemus:

“Sapientia igitur omnibus humanis in rebus felices nos facit.” (24).306 The price that women pay for their pursuit of learning is described in unambiguous terms. Marinella exhorts women to

“fuggir questo stratiamento d’intelletto, & attendere alla propria virtù per fuggir disgusti, travagli, & afflittioni di animo,” before positing that “Se anco ogn’una conseguir potesse quanto desidera ciò è fama, e laude, forse, che di simili seguitare il volere: perché niuna cosa è più dolce, quanto ottener quello, ch’è con ansietà desiderato” (24).

Marinella describes at length the opposition endured by the woman intellectual: mocking and rebuke from her mother and sister for neglecting her womanly duties, the envy and spiteful gossip of her neighbours and friends who see her as trying to surpass them. If she manages some successes in learning, she will be vituperated and abandoned by her family.

What’s more, the woman’s beauty will be sacrificed in the pursuit of learning.307 To the woman

306 The reference here is to a discussion between Cleinias and Socrates on wisdom and happiness. The line is Socrates’ who states at 280a: “Sapientia igitur omnibus humanis in rebus, inqua, felices nos efficit.” In English: “Wisdom everywhere causes men to be fortunate.” For Latin, see: Immanuel Becker, ed. Platonis dialogi latine juxta interpretationem ficini aliorumque, vol. X (London: A. J. Valpy and A. M. Richard Priestley, 1826). For English, see: Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, vol. III (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).

307 “il color gratioso li lineamenti, il sereno della fronte per la magrezza, e pallidezza sono fuggiti, guasti, e volti in malinconica tristezza onde non più bella ma brutta, e spiacevole stimata sei,” (42) Note

100

who must endure the envy and reproach inflicted upon a woman of letters, Marinella warns:

“havrai sempre roso il petto dalli Tarli del dolore, ne può la sapienza acquistata recarti allegrezza: anchorché dal petto ogni mestitia scacci” (25). Once again, this vernacular address to her female readers is accompanied by a Latin citation, this time from Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum, which affirms the price women must pay for their rejection of learning:

“Sapientia est illa, que mestitia pellat ex anii” [sic] (25).308 Despite the Latin citation which celebrates knowledge and underscores that which is at stake, Marinella exhorts women instead to pursue domestic activities, because “se attenderai all’ago, & agli altri essercitij feminili havrai laude da tuoi, e da gli altri” (26).309

Marinella is particularly acerbic in her exposition of the unqualified resistance of male dominated literary institutions to women writers and their writing. She suggests that if a woman’s works manage to find themselves in the hands of men, they will not be praised or judged according to their merit. To the contrary:

Quando poi li tuoi componimenti incomincianno andar per le mani de gli huomini

alcuni leggendoli faranno il viso arcigno, somiglieranno a Colui, c’ha gustato l’acerbità

however that this argument is undermined in the final exhortation in which we learn that beauty is mortal anyway; it fades regardless and should not be privileged (see Chapter 4 of this thesis).

308 Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum, Book I, Section 43, where the phrase is: “Sapientia enim est una, quae maestitiam pellat ex animis,” and then proceeds as follows: “quae nos exhorrescere metu non sinat; qua praeceptrice in tranquillitate vivi potest, omnium cupiditatum ardore restincto.” In English: “it is wisdom alone which drives misery from our hearts;” and then: “wisdom alone which stops us trembling with fear. Under her tutelage one can live in peace, the flame of all our desires extinguished.” For the Latin see: Marcus Tullius Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, ed. Thomas Schiche (Leipzig: Teubner, 1915). For the English see: On Moral Ends, ed. Julia Annas, trans. Raphael Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.

309 See also a later passage which reiterates the potential benefits of knowledge: “la sapienza è tale che dir si può, cosa divinne si, altrova ne la più degna, ne la più nobile, ne la più gratiosa, quando fosse ben veduta dal mondo, ma essendo poco grata genera queste contrarietà.” (27)

101

di un Sorbo: altri laudar non ti vorranno, né biasimare, ma diranno per Donna può

passare. (27).

This vernacular address to women is again accompanied by a Latin citation in the margin, also from Cicero but this time it is an adaptation from the second book of De Officiis.: “Nihil obtabilius, nihil praestantius, nihil homine dignius, sapientia.” (27)310 Thus Marinella’s description of male antagonism towards women’s efforts at learning and writing is accompanied by a citation which reinforces the notion of the pursuit of wisdom or knowledge as something to be honoured and revered. Marinella’s Latin citation questions obliquely but with authority the legitimacy of the response of these men to the woman intellectual.

Marinella also describes the domino effect that occurs when a group of men reject a woman’s compositions as “di poco sapere, e di niuno spirito,” and others subsequently follow:

“a tal detto se alcuno pone la mano al libro, per leggerlo, lo tra da parte, ne à leggerlo più si affatica” (28). Some men will read the works but “per invidia non vogliono laudarle, con occhi torti e biechi le gittano da parte benché degne,” (28-29) whilst others will assume that as it was written by a woman “non può essere cosa buona. Nemo dat, quod non habet, e ridendo volge il capo, e li passi altrove” (29). On this last point, Marinella returns to the discourse in the first person to state: “io non so quanto sdegno, e dolore vi tormenterà l’anima a queste parole di disprezzo, e quanto astio & ira vi flagellerà il cuore” (29). These words read as poignantly ironic.311 We know that Marinella was closely associated with male-dominated intellectual

310 The line is from Book II, Section 5. The wording is: “Quid enim est, per deos, optabilius sapientia, quid praestantius, quid homini melius, quid homine dignius?” In English: “For what, in the name of heaven, is more to be desired than wisdom? What is more to be prized? What is better for a man, what more worthy of his nature?” The passage forms part of Cicero’s defense of philosophy. For the Latin and English see: Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis. With an English Translation, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913).

311 I discuss the irony of this statement and its implications for Marinella’s authorial self-fashioning in Chapter 6.

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circles during her life. The detail of her description of their attitudes towards the female writer, and the ire with which it is conveyed suggest the closeness of the material to Marinella’s own experience as a writer. Yet remarkably, at no point does she explicitly indicate that she writes from experience.

Marinella identifies men’s insecurity and a fear of being surpassed as the reason behind their opposition to women’s learning and writing, and emphasises women’s equal intellectual capacities. She parodies the male intellectual’s reasoning to himself as he rejects the notion of having to compete with a woman whose only prerogative is the distaff and thread: “Adunque io di tanto sapere sarò pareggiato da una donna, a cui la Connocchia adorna della sua chioma sono le sue prerogative?” (39-40)312

After this description of the opposition to the letterata by male intellectuals, Marinella states unambiguously that this is the reason women’s works do not receive the recognition that they deserve.313 She describes the torment woman writers will feel when they find unworthy works celebrated and their own neglected. If they do manage to write good work, she assures them that it will not be in print for long.314 She asks why many ancient books by men have been and are preserved, but “di Donne non ne veggiamo alcuno?”.315 This is not

312 Marinella continues: “E parli rimanere avilito, e di poco prezzo, parche il suo saper s’infermi come due piante nemiche poste una poca discosta dal altra non intende lo’ntelleto vostro possa agguagliarsi al suo, né intender vuogliono, che così facilmente si addotrinino le Donne come essi.” (40)

313 “Questa è la cagione, che le opera Donnesche non hanno né gloria, né buon volto: anchorché di perfettione forse avanzino, o almeno pari alle loro sieno; perché gli huomini non vogliono havere una Donna compagna nel saper, onde quasi abbandonata rimani.” (40)

314 “Vi tormenterà anchora il vedere molti componimenti sciocchi, privi di sapere essere abbracciati, & hauti molti cari, e molti pieni di arte, e di Dottrina in breve tempo correre alla sua fine; questo è cagione di affliggervi, e con ragione veggendo il male havuto in pregio, & il bene biasimato. Se havrete alcuna opera buona, e perfetta & laudata non vedrete lungamente stamparla di questo si possiamo facilmente assicurare.” (60-61)

315 “Considerate per vostra se quanti libri di huomini antichi si sono conservati, & si conservano, e di Donne non ne veggiamo alcuno? Parlo di quelle antiche pur possiamo credere esserne state almeno

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because women didn’t write, rather she suggests that it shows that men “non vogliono, che la

Donna gareggi seco, hanno acquistato la tirannide del Regno della gloria; onde tutte le opere vostre [women’s] corrono nel grembo dell’oblivione.” (62)

Marinella’s designation of male fear of being surpassed and subordinated by women as central to opposition to women’s learning and a tyrannical refusal to incorporate women into the literary canon echoes arguments made in La nobiltà.316 The difference is that here the critique is couched in an acquiescent exhortation to women not to pursue learning: “Però le scienze non sono da essere seguite da voi Donne Carissime anchor che la sapientia per se sola sia la stessa felicità. Della quale quando siamo arricchite, altro a noi bisogno non è. E la vera suficientia, che per sé sola è cagione di ogni bene, e di ogni consolatione” (32).317 As the analysis has shown, the happiness and benefits that derive from knowledge are repeatedly emphasised in the margins through untranslated Latin citations, particularly from Plato and

Cicero. The effect of the marginalia and statements celebrating knowledge is to implicitly

alcune, se non molte, c’habbiano composte opere, degne di eterna fama... Da ciò conoscerete, che gli huomini non vogliono favorire le vostre compositioni o buone, o non buone” (61-62).

316 See for example: “Ma poco sono quelle, che dieno opera a gli studi, overo all’arte militare in questi nostri tempi; percioché gli huomini, temendo di non perdere la signoria, et di divenir servi delle donne, vietano a quelle ben spesso ancho il saper leggere, & scrivere.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 32. See also the passage in which Marinella challenges the misconception that women throughout history have not proved their capacities in learning and knowledge. “Credono alcuni poco pratichi dell’Historie, che non ci sieno state, né ci sieno donne nelle scienze & nell’arti perite, & dotte. & questo appresso loro pare impossibile. Ne si possono ciò dare ad intendere anchor che lo veggano & odano tutto il giorno, persuadendosi che Giove habbia dato l’ingegno, & l’intelletto a maschi solamente, lasciandone le donne, ancorché della medesima spetie prive. Ma se quelle hanno la medesima anima ragionevole, che ha l’huomo, come di sopra ho mostrato chiaramente, & anco più nobile: perché anchor più perfettamente non possono imparare le medesime arti, & scienze, le quali imparano gli huomini? Anzi quelle poche, che alle dottrine attendono, divengono tanto delle scienze ornate, che gli huomini le invidiano, & le odiano, come sogliono odiare i minori i maggiori” ibid., 37.

317 Marinella’s use of the term “scienze” here and throughout the exhortation is particularly noteworthy for the attention it draws to scientific learning. On Marinella’s engagement with scientific discourses, and her representation of women’s capacity for science in La nobiltà, L’Enrico, and Arcadia felice, see Ray, Daughters of Alchemy, 93-110.

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question rather than support Marinella’s exhortations to women to reject learning; emphasising that which is at stake rather than justifying her advice.318

The following passage encapsulates Marinella’s methodology in this exhortation of critique through a posture of acquiescence. Numbers have been used to indicate the shifts between contrasting discourses.

[1] Lassiamo le scienze da parte, sono contrarie alla sanità. [2] Rare volte gode di

questa gemma chi alla Sapienza attenda. E però più cara, le desiderabile dell’oro, e

delle Pietre pretioso, ma per ritornare alle contrarietà, che seguono questo sapere,

diremo, che [3] se voi farete profitto nelle Filosofie, e Poesie, molti vi havranno a

sdegno stimando e temendo di essere superati dalla sufficientia vostra; onde la invidia

armata delle sue malignità, vi odierà, vi perseguiterà col coltello avvenenato della

langua: [4] accioché non godiate della vostra ellettione delle lettere dalle quali vi prego

star lontane come da cose dannose, e di poco bene. (37)

In the quote four different subject positions are highlighted beginning with Marinella’s use of the inclusive first-person plural as she implores women to join her in rejecting the pursuit of knowledge, before she shifts to emphasising how women lose out. In the subsequent barbed

318 This dislocating use of the margin is a noteworthy departure from conventional conduct literature, which tended towards either no use of the margin (eg. Assandri) or towards the use of the margin as a space for short summaries in the vernacular to direct readers to important passages, and for ease of reference. William Slights notes that “while the announced and often achieved effect of the annotating procedure is to simplify, usually by offering an epitome of the text, and sometimes by announcing one of the possible senses of the texts as the authorized version, in other cases the annotations provide perspectives on the text that greatly complicate and sometimes radically destabilize it.” William W. E. Slights, "The Edifying Margins of Renaissance English Books," Renaissance Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1989): 682. It is noteworthy that a similar complicating recourse to Latin marginalia has been identified by Heller as evident in Passi’s Dello stato maritale in which misogynistic arguments sit in contradistinction with Latin citations celebrating women. Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 33-34.

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critique, Marinella suggests that envy and a fear of being surpassed will prompt many to persecute the woman writer, before returning again to implore women to reject the pursuit.

Neither a straightforward, traditionalist recommendation to women to reject learning and letters, nor straightforward defiance toward societal opposition of women’s intellectual pursuits, the contrasting discourses of Marinella’s discussion here multiply-position the author.

Ostensibly, it reads as a warning to women and an exhortation to surrender to the status quo – indeed I suggest that this is her alibi. But the degree to which Marinella exposes the mechanisms, injustices and consequences of this exclusion should not be underestimated. My contention is that this hermeneutic ambiguity is strategic. By couching critique within an alibi of acquiescence, Marinella calls into question the validity of women’s exclusion from learning and letters without self-identifying with a position of dissent and leaving herself vulnerable to censure. The fact that this chapter of the Essortationi precedes a further seven erudite chapters suggests that she is enacting defiance of the prescription, yet this is by no means made explicit in the text.

3.4 Celebrating and interrogating the “verità” of women’s “proprie arte”

Before Marinella embarks on a discussion of the domestic arts in the third exhortation, she concludes her discussion in the second exhortation on whether women should pursue learning and literature by suggesting the impossibility of true knowledge:

Concludiamo dunque tutti di un animo, che la sapienza non si ritrova in alcuno, se non

si ritrova in alcuno, contentatevi non l’haverene ancor voi. (70)

If not even men possess knowledge, Marinella suggests, women should be content not to have it either. Marinella cites Ficino on Plato and Pythagoras to claim that only God is wise, and without knowledge of the first causes, true wisdom cannot be known: “La vera sapientia non è conosciuta da noi; perché coloro, che non conoscono le cause, ne sapienti saranno detti” (71).

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Citing Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics she states that our senses and faculties of reason are fallible and unreliable in the pursuit of knowledge and “non possiamo godere della verità”

(71).319 She then cites Aristotle’s Metaphysics where Anaxagoras is quoted as stating that knowledge is subjective: “’l sapere sia secondo il pensiero d’ogn’uno. Talia eis entia erunt, qualia ea esse putarint” (72), and Democritus that “Aut verum nihil est, aut non est notum nobis.” (72)320

This discussion of the impossibility of true knowledge is framed as justification for

Marinella’s exhortation to women to reject the pursuit of learning and literature. In the concluding paragraph she writes: ‘Però contentiamosi della ignoranza nostra, perché il Quod quid erat e per così dir impossibile a conoscersi Amate mie,’ (72). Yet Marinella’s engagement here with some of the central concerns of the late Renaissance revival of philosophical scepticism321 is conspicuously out of keeping with contemporary conduct literature and suggestive of an agenda beyond merely a traditionalist exhortation to women.

319 Marinella cites Aristotle, Metaphysics, II.i (992b9-10): ‘Sicut oculus hoctico [sic] aeris ad lumen diei, sic intellectus noster ad ea qua sunt manifestissima in natura.’ Benedetti’s translation: ‘As the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our souls to the things which are by nature most evident of all.’Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 78. The passage is accompanied by a Latin citation in the margin: “Exspertin sciunt quod est propter quid autem nesciunt scientes vero propter quid, & causam cognoscnt”.

320 Benedetti suggests that this Latin citation derives from Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.iv (1009 b10) and that the preceding Latin citation describing Anaxagoras’ position recalls a statement from the same work at (1009 b25) ibid., 79, n.84, n.85. Aristotle proceeds to discount both positions.

321 The principal sources for Renaissance scepticism were Cicero’s Academica, Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, which contains a chapter on Pyrrho of Elis, founder of the sceptical movement. Translations of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines were widely read during the late Renaissance, leading to a reinvigoration of interest in Pyrrhonian scepticism which had largely remained dormant since its Hellenistic inception. See: Jill Kraye, "The Revival of Hellenistic Philosophies," in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Latin and Italian translations of Laertius’ Lives were published in Venice in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries. The scholarship on skepticism in the Renaissance is extensive, see for example: Richard Henry Popkin, History of Scepticism : From Savonarola to Bayle, Revised and Expanded Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Gianni Paganini and José R. Maia Neto, "Introduction," in Renaissance Scepticisms, ed. Gianni Paganini and José R. Maia Neto (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2009). See Chapter 5 of Popkin’s book on the skepticism of Gabriel Naudé, who procured a copy of Marinella’s Essortationi.

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Seicento intellectual culture, particularly within the Incogniti, was manifestly interested in the notion of the precariousness of knowledge and the process of instilling doubt and challenging perceived truths.322 Montaigne’s Essais and Apologie de Raimund Sebond – pivotal works in the evolution and diffusion of scepticism in the Renaissance – were translated into Italian and published in Venice just over a decade before the Essortationi.323 A reference in

Giovanni Francesco Loredano’s Lettere to “un bell’ ingegno Francese” suggests a familiarity with Montaigne, and an appreciation of his sense of the pro and contra of every proposition and the instability of human knowledge and reason.324 Giulio Crivellari – publisher of

Marinella’s Le vittorie di Francesco il Serafico (1642) – also published Flavio Querenghi’s

Discorsi morali politici et naturali (1644), which was composed in imitation of Montaigne’s

Essais.325 In the Discorsi academici, Incogniti member Agostino Lampugnano invokes

Anaxagoras and Democritus (like Marinella) in order to expound on the precariousness of claims to truth and the fallibility of the senses as part of his paradoxical praise of ugliness.326

322 The influence of Montaigne and his skepticism on the Accademia degli Incogniti has been noted by Muir: Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance, 70-71.

323 Michel de Montaigne, Saggi overo discorsi, naturali, politici e morali (Venice: Marco Ginammi, 1633); Apologia di Raimondo di Sebonda (Venice: Marco Ginammi, 1634). A translation of Montaigne’s Essais was also published in Ferrara in 1590: Discorsi morali, politici, et militari, trans. Girolamo Naelli (Ferrara: Benedetto Mammarello, 1590). Montaigne’s works reinterpreted ancient scepticism in line with Renaissance preoccupations and made the philosophy accessible to a broader audience than the intellectual elite. Kraye, "The Revival of Hellenistic Philosophies," 110.

324 “Bisogna haver patienza, e credere, che l’unire tutti i capricci è un tentar l’impossibile, e che sino dureranno le teste, e le passioni, si troveranno le dispute, e le controversie. Il Prò, e ‘l Contra, scrive un bell’ingegno Francese, sono venuti nel mondo co’l mio, e col tuo. La ragione non è niente più antica dell’opinione.” Gio. Francesco Loredano, Lettere Del Signor Gio. Francesco Loredano Nobile Veneto. (Venice: Guerigli, 1655), 253.

325 One of the letters included in the work writes that the author “ha perfettamente imitato lo stile del suo Montagna” Flavio Querenghi, Discorsi morali politici et naturali (Padua: Giulio Crivellari, 1644), 346. Peter N. Miller, "The "Man of Learning" Defended: Seventeenth-Century Biographies of Scholars and an Early Modern Ideal of Excellence," in Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Patrick Coleman, Jayne Lewis, and Jill Kowalik (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 45.

326 Lampugnano writes: “Qual è quel Giudice, che dall’incertezza delle cose atto sia a darne certa sentenza! A questo risguardò Anassagora, quando ci disse, che la verità stava nascosta in profondissimo

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Marinella’s discussion of the impossibility of true knowledge in her second exhortation engages with these intellectually current concerns and would have likely appealed to contemporary readers.327 But her invocation of the principles of philosophical scepticism within the context of a discussion on women’s conduct also has significant implications.328 By questioning the possibility of true and absolute knowledge, scepticism enables fossilised discourses – in this case those on women’s confinement to domesticity – to be interrogated and opened up for critical scrutiny. Through the analysis that follows, I suggest that the sceptical questions raised in the passages cited above are reflected in Marinella’s methodology of interrogative inquiry across the second and third exhortations as she questions the prescription for women’s exclusive devotion to domesticity. In particular, this section shows how Marinella incorporates counter-exempla and antithetical statements – a juxtaposition of the pro and the contra without resolution – to call into question the “truth” claims of women’s confinement to domesticity. The analysis also shows however, how Marinella conducts this process of sceptical inquiry through an authorial alibi of a highly traditionalist celebration of the domestic arts.

The third exhortation celebrates at length and without qualification “l’arte feminile”.

According to the title:

pozzo. O come afferma Democrito, che è risposta in eminente luogo involta, e coperta da caliginoso velo. Che perciò Platone vuole, che nel Mondo sensibile, non la verità: ma l’opinione soggiorni. Per lo che, non la certezza, & evidenza delle cose: ma l’incertezza, & oscurità sempre ci si pari davanti.” Discorsi academici de' signori Incogniti, 220.

327 It is noteworthy that these statements and citations are deemed sufficiently important to warrant their inclusion in the Essortationi’s Table of Contents. The entries are: “Le cause delle cose non sono conosciute da noi”; “Anaxagora crede non ritrovarsi la Verità” “Democrita stima non ritrorsi la verità”; “Huomo non conosce le cause, se non gli effetti”

328 For a recent analysis of the influence of skepticism on the querelle des femmes and early modern conceptions of gender in France see: Rebecca Wilkin, Women, Imagination and the Search for Truth in Early Modern France (Aldershot: Ashgate 2008).

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si essortano le donne a conoscere, quanto sia nobile, utile, e commoda l’arte feminile,

e come dalle Imperatrici, Regine, e Dee è stata essercitata; onde non credo, che alcuna

se lo recherà à vergogna ad essere veduta a trarre lo stame dalle Cannocchia. (73).

In the discussion that follows Marinella uses discourses which align her with the traditionalist subject position typically adopted by authors of Renaissance conduct literature in relation to domestic activities. Like Dolce in his Ammaestramenti, she argues that such arts are not suited only to lay women, as some believe, but empresses, queens and goddesses alike.329 She invokes again the Aristotelian principle of biologically determined natures and roles to argue that men’s role is to acquire outside the home and women’s to preserve within.330 Weaving and needlework are thus appropriate activities for the woman, allowing her to remain within the “retiratezza, e solitudine” of her home (77). The letterata also states that woman was created “delicato, molle, e gentile, che senza lamentarsi,” she accepts her place in the home fulfilling her domestic responsibilities (77).331 Like Vives, Dolce and Assandri, Marinella frames the domestic arts as a means for warding off idleness (78), although she does not take the opportunity to describe it as a way of preventing women from indecorous activities such as

329 “il lavoro delle Gentildonne antiche era il filo, & la lana: due cose di grande utile alla conservatione delle famiglie. Hoddidi sono ambedue rimase alle femine di basso grado” and later he concludes: “le nostre Donne non dovrebbono disprezzar quell lavoro, che alle passate è stato in ogni tempo, come s’è veduto, honorevole, & di sommo pregio.” Dolce, De gli ammaestramenti, 12, 14-15.

330 “Esso col ridurre alla sua habitatione le cose con fatica raccolte ad amplificatione del suo Ricetto. Essa col conservar l’acquisito. Egli fuori, essa dentro aggrandisce la diletta propria magione” (77-78)

331 In Guazzo’s Dialoghi Piacevoli, the importance of the woman’s unquestioning attitude towards this role is also underlined: “si faccia senza querele, senza tristezza d’animo, & con una lieta, & felice concordia.” Stefano Guazzo, Dialoghi Piacevoli Del Sig. Stefano Guazzo Gentil'huomo di Casale di Monferrato (Venice: Antonio Pinelli, 1610), 394.

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speaking, thinking, indulging in vanities or concerning herself with matters beyond the domestic walls.332

Embedded within Marinella’s apparently traditionalist discourse however, are representations of classical exempla which undermine the argument that women should be confined only to domestic activities. In so doing, Marinella undermines a belief which

Moderata Fonte’s biographer Doglioni identifies as pervasive and unfounded in the city, which is that “non si vuol veder Donna virtuosa in altro, che nel governo di casa.”333 According to

Doglioni, Fonte is an exemplar of women’s capacity to excel in intellectual pursuits without neglecting her domestic duties.

Marinella’s use of classical exempla of the womanly arts in this exhortation is entirely in keeping with conduct literature of the period.334 Yet noteworthy is her representation of those famous women as wielding the tools of domesticity – needle, spindle, distaff – alongside other tools traditionally delineating masculinity – sword, sceptre, pen. In this regard, Marinella

332 After celebrating the domestic arts as “a matter of prime concern for women” and “fitting even for a princess or queen”, Vives asks “What could she do better than this when free of all the household tasks? She will converse with men, I suppose, or other women. About what? Is she to talk forever? Will she never keep quiet? Perhaps she will think. About what? A woman’s thoughts are swift and generally unsettled, roving without direction, and I know not where her instability will lead her.” Book I, Chapter 3: Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman, 59. See also Dolce: “La Donna ancora, che è occupata nell’amministratione della sua casa, non di facile può dar luogo a’ piaceri, alle feste, & alle vanità del Mondo, & per questo ne avverrà, che sia sempre, & più continente, & più casta”. Later he writes: “Però ne I maneggi famigliari dee esser sempre intenta, & sollecita, con si fatto animo, che ne riporti honore: conciosiacosa, che non s’appartiene al marito la cura delle cose domestiche. Ne gli altri affari non esca d’I termini, che sono prescritti alla Donna: come in non cercar di saper quello, che si tratta nella Republica; & in non traporsi ne le cure di maritaggi.” Dolce, De gli ammaestramenti, 100-02. See also Assandri, Della economica, 185-86.

333 Nicolo Doglioni, "Vita della Sig. Modesta Pozzo di Zorzi, Nominata Moderata Fonte," in Il merito delle donne (Venice: Domenico Imberti, 1600), 6. Tasso encapsulates this position when he writes: “principalissima cura sua dee essere quella de’ lini, e delle tele, & delle sete” Tasso, Il padre di famiglia, 64.

334 On the use of exempla see: Beatrice Collina, "L'esemplarità delle donne illustri fra umanesimo e controriforma," in Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo. Studi e testi a stampa, ed. Gabriella Zarri (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996).

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exploits the potential of classical exempla to exemplify women’s capacities beyond the domestic walls; a potential that humanists such as Vives sought to nullify.335 For example,

Marinella includes the same set of female exemplars used by Tasso in Il padre di famiglia in celebration of the domestic arts – Minerva, Penelope, Circe and Nausicaa.336 In contrast to

Tasso’s one-dimensional portraits however, Marinella’s representation of these classical exempla and others is distinctly multifaceted. The domestic arts are portrayed as but one of many virtuous activities the women excelled at. Particularly illustrative is the privileged place assigned to Minerva (goddess not only of weaving but also of wisdom, warfare, and knowledge), and the way in which she is depicted throughout the exhortation. Descriptions of the goddess consistently reinforce her multifaceted nature: Marinella writes that Minerva

“nella destra mano brandiva un’Asta, nell’altra teneva la connocchia, e ‘l fuso,” (75) showing that “egualmente erano così da tenere in pregio gli honori, che dall’armi derivavano come quelli che dalla Connocchia, e dal fuso procedevano” (75). Marinella reinforces the fact that

Minerva was “né mica una Dea vuolgare; ma la Dea dell’Intelligenza, e del sapere, la quale si fece Vesti, & un Velo di celesti bellezze colle proprie mani, il quale depose quando si vesti l’armi per gir contra i Troiani” (84-85).

335 Kolsky’s analysis of the use of classical exemplum in De institutione feminae christianae shows Vives’ efforts to resolve the contradictions that result from his pervasive use of classical exempla which conflict with his conservative injunctions for the Christian woman’s silence and preclusion from participation outside the domestic sphere. Stephen Kolsky, "Making Examples of Women: Juan Luis Vives' the Education of a Christian Woman," Early Modern Culture Online 3, no. 1 (2012). See also Marta Ajmar who suggests that authors frequently reinterpreted female figures in order to bring them in line with more contemporary moral precepts. Marta Ajmar, "Exemplary Women in Renaissance Italy: Ambivalent Models of Behaviour? ," in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000), 248-49. Cox argues that collectively, “‘famous women’ treatises serve implicitly to undermine the Aristotelian essentialist theory of sex difference by providing a mass of counter-examples to the thesis of women’s intellectual and moral defectiveness. This implicit proto-feminist argument could be more or less stressed, depending on the individual author.” Cox, A Short History, 180.

336 Torquato Tasso, Il padre di famiglia dialogo del signor Torquato Tasso (Venice: Aldo II Manuzio, 1583), 68.

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In her invocation of a number of other exemplary figures, Marinella applies this same emphasis on the presence of other virtues and talents alongside the domestic. Hector’s wife

Andromache is described as a woman who “al filo, alla tela volgesse la mano, che tall’hora, e forse sovente adorna di scettro d’oro si dimostrava,” (87). Of queen Arete, Marinella writes

“né credeva essere di danno alla sua grandezza; benché Donna ornata di corona, e di scettro, haver la Rocca a canto” (92). Despite initially aligning herself with an essentialist Aristotelian position on sex-based roles and natures, throughout the exhortation Marinella’s representation of female exemplars effectively undermines this principle.337

Marinella’s emphasis in the first part of the exhortation on her female exemplars’ multifaceted talents engages implicitly with the question of women’s exclusive devotion to domesticity which is explicitly raised in the second exhortation and returned to in the third.

Her engagement with the question is characterised by antithetical statements and unresolved contradiction, contrasting sharply with her approach to the issue in La nobiltà. In La nobiltà

Marinella unambiguously challenges Aristotle for his belief that women must obey men and never “cercar quello, che si facci fuori di casa.” Marinella describes this as “Opinione sciocca, & sentenza cruda, & empia di huomo Tirrano, & pauroso”,338 before excusing it with irony as understandable coming from a man who wants to affirm male superiority.

In the second exhortation, Marinella opens the discussion of this subject with the statement: “Dicono alcuni, che le Donne, le quali alle lettere attendono non utili sono anzi

337 Marinella also destabilizes the Aristotelian argument in her representation of Hercules practicing the domestic arts. Hercules: “non contento di esser famoso per haver li Serpenti strangolati nella Culla, haver ucciso Cacco. Et tanti, e tanti altri fatti illustri haver finiti, con nome di Domator di Mostri. Si avidde non poter prender riposo ne pace se non quando lieto si pose la connocchia a lato allhora colmò di splendor le sue glorie, e per farsi più chiaro prese la Gonna feminile” (85).

338 She writes: “ma voglio che lo scusiamo: percioché essendo egli huomo, era cosa conveniente, che desiderasse la grandezza, & la superiorità de gli huomini, & non delle donne.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 32.

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inutili, e di poca diligenza nella casa, e di poco governo (42-43). This, Marinella asserts, is confirmed by the words of Ariosto in Orlando Furioso which Marinella cites.339 The words of

Ariosto allude to women leaving their domestic activities to visit the fountain of Aganippe in search of poetic inspiration. Interpreting these words, Marinella states: “Lasciato l’ago, e ‘l panno. Però seguono con la conclusione. Adunque sono inutili: perché proprio è della Donna addoperare la tela, e l’Ago, instrumenti Donneschi,” (43). Her ‘conclusione’ however is contrary to Ariosto’s which is celebratory rather than critical of learned women.340 Like the

Gorgias citation explored in the first section of this chapter, Marinella’s misrepresentation of

Ariosto directs the reader to a discourse which counters her overtly stated position, in this case undermining rather than supporting the notion of women’s confinement to domestic activities.

The passage that follows the citation of Ariosto epitomises Marinella’s shifts between contrasting discourses as she addresses this topic. Numbers have been used to highlight the transitions. She writes:

[1] proprio è della Donna addopperare la tela, e l’Ago, instrumenti Donneschi,

mancando questo lavoro necessario, credono, che di grave danno resti offesa la Casa

quasi, che non possano imitando Minerva, godere nelle scienze, & alle opere feminili

attendere… Dicono molti esser cosa ardua e difficile applicarsi a due arti, che ambe di

tempo, e d’intelletto bisognose sieno. [2] Io dirò, che’è cosa facile servire a questa, e a

quella; perché il governo del tuo albergo sarà, come un passatempo paragonato allo

studio delle scienze… (43)

339 Marinella’s citation is as follows: “Perché molte lasciando l’Ago e ‘l panno Al fonte d’Aganippe andate, e vanno.” The source is Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XXXVII, 14. Exhortations to Women, 63, n.43.

340 Ibid., 63, n.44.

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In the first point, Marinella aligns herself with a traditionalist subject position advocating women’s devotion to the domestic arts. Minerva – in her capacity to pursue knowledge alongside the domestic arts – is held up as an impossible exemplar for the everyday woman. In the next paragraph however, Marinella suggests in the first person (“Io dirò”) that in fact women might manage their household and intellectual pursuits simultaneously and with ease.

The subsequent Latin citation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics which alludes to the law of the excluded middle seems to draw attention to her use of contradiction here.341 Indeed,

Marinella’s discussion seems to offer an implicit challenge to this central principle of

Aristotelian logic, highlighting – in keeping with the principles of philosophical scepticism – the possibility of contrary opinions and contrary experiences, and a middle road between the extremes of women’s exclusive devotion to, and total rejection of, domesticity.342

This pattern continues. In the next paragraph, Marinella holds Minerva up as a positive exemplar, suggesting that the management of the household will be a source of relaxation because domestic activity “è poco al suo grande intendimento.” She suggests that “maraviglia non sarebbe, se la Donna attendesse alle Dottrine, & anco fosse diligente, & industriosa né gli affari della sua habitatione; poiché questa Dea della quale vogliono seguitar l’orme, si mostra perfetta in tante operationi” (44). Immediately afterwards however, Marinella states the impossibility of dividing one’s heart in two and suggests that women should “seguire la ordinaria sua arte propria, naturale” (44-45).

341 The citation is: “Ex duobus in actu non fit tertium in natura nisi unum sit tamquam materia”. As Benedetti notes, the Law of the Excluded Middle is discussed in Aristotle Metaphysics IV.vi. Ibid., 64, n.46.

342 According to the law of the excluded middle, it is not possible for there to be “any intermediate between contrary statements, but of one thing we must either assert or deny one thing, whatever it may be.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, Volume I: Books 1-9, trans. Hugh Tredennick, Loeb Classical Library 271 (Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press, 1933), IV.vii.

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Despite this apparent conclusion to the question, Marinella returns to the subject in the third exhortation. Invoking Minerva again Marinella writes: “non pur gode a trattar l’Asta, e la spada, & haver il Dominio sopra le scienze, e le Dottrine, non contenta di tanto, stende l’honorata mano al fuso, all’Ago alle Tele invitando le Donne a far il simile” (102). Despite her argument to the contrary in the second exhortation, Marinella now recommends that following Minerva’s lead, women can pursue learning without neglecting their domestic duties, and in so doing: “far risplendere le proprie virtù con doppio lume” (102). Shortly afterwards Marinella appears to reiterate the sentiment suggesting that “Una virtù, o Amate mie, non è bastante a fare la persona chiara, e degna di gloria; ma molte son necesarie” (103).

This is followed however, by advice to the contrary: “Però non vi essorto ad altro, che al governo della propria casa, & all’amplificacione sua, che tanto basta” (103).

As she closes her exhortation Marinella writes, “Io ho invitato, & invito con amor vero il sesso feminile a farsi nobile colli proprij ingegni; perché le cose fuori della sua sfera, o poco, o nulla vagliono” (104). Her suggestion here that women’s participation in pursuits outside the domestic “poco o nulla vagliono” insinuates, in a similar way to her discourse analysed in the previous section of this Chapter, that the exhortation is predicated on a problematic patriarchal status quo rather than women’s natural, biologically determined suitability for domestic duties alone. Moreover, this ostensibly conclusive exhortation is once again problematised by a series of citations from Plato which effectively count against her own argument. Marinella writes: “Questo è il mio consiglio, e ‘l mio parere, e farsi illustri, e famose colle proprie arti, e non coll’altrui; anchorché ’l maschio, e la femina per natura sono alle medesime cose buoni” (104). She subsequently confirms her agreement with Plato’s statement, although she offers a qualification, stating that “ancorché tanto il maschio quanto la femina sieno idonei alle istesse operationi, nondimeno io non voglio esortare, né essorterò la Donna a combattere in Campo, né ad ordinar gli esserciti, né à formar il Vallo, o le Trinciere,

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né a custodir la Città, come piace a Platone” (104-105). By concluding the exhortation with

Plato’s belief in the equality of the sexes in terms of their equal capacities for all occupations,

Marinella pits this argument against the essentialist Aristotelian position. The exemplars used by Marinella throughout the exhortation implicitly lend support to Plato’s argument, showing women who excelled not only in the domestic arts, but in warfare, knowledge and politics.

In light of the doubt cultivated across these exhortations around the principle of women’s proper confinement to domesticity, her concluding message to her readers (“Care mie”) that they be grateful “che havete havuto, chi vi ha mostrata la verità” (107) reads as ironic. Marinella’s phrasing here though is noteworthy in its use of the verb “mostrare” because of the attention it draws to what Marinella has shown as opposed to what she has said. The statement is provocative as an allusion to the notion that Marinella’s act of authorship has shown the “verità” of women’s capacity to pursue intellectual endeavours without neglecting or rejecting domesticity.

In her engagement with the patriarchal prescription for women’s sole devotion to domestic duties, Marinella shifts between arguing pro and arguing contra. At a superficial level we could read this as an exercise in arguing in utramque partem, yet it does not progress systematically towards a logical and justified truth, or even a “probable” truth in the

Ciceronian manner. Rather, Marinella’s vacillation between the pro and the contra continues without resolution. Her return to the subject in the third exhortation after apparently concluding in the second exacerbates this sense of a lack of resolution. Ultimately, Marinella’s methodology of counter-exempla and antithetical statements unsettles the truth value of the patriarchal prescription for women’s sole devotion to domesticity. A traditionalist celebration of the domestic arts serves as an authorial alibi for this potentially polemical challenge to an

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ingrained tradition of confining women’s person, pursuits, virtue, and fame within the domestic walls. 343

3.5 Conclusion

The analysis in this Chapter of Marinella’s first four exhortations has shown how

Marinella invokes traditionalist discourses on women and domesticity, appropriating the authority they implicitly signify, to cultivate her authorial alibi. From the protection and credibility associated with this subject position, Marinella employs a range of discursive techniques to expose the fallibilities and biases that underpin patriarchal prescriptions for women’s seclusion, silence, preclusion from learning and exclusive devotion to domesticity.

Traditionalist discourses on women’s seclusion are repurposed with a pro-woman perspective, patriarchal reasoning on women’s silence is parodied and undermined, critique of opposition to the woman intellectual is embedded within an exhortation to women to acquiesce and reject learning, and a traditionalist celebration of the domestic arts serves as the platform for an interrogation of the “truth” value of women’s exclusive confinement to domesticity.

Marinella’s appropriation of these discourses effectively opens up rather than denies women’s possibilities beyond domesticity.

This analysis has also highlighted the passages in the text that reveal more about

Marinella’s approach to authorship in the Essortationi than her position on women’s conduct.

Her analogy of the Silenus whose rustic exterior once cracked reveals wonders, her exposition of the importance of the restrained and circumspect representation of thoughts and beliefs,

343 It is important to emphasise that there is nothing in these opening exhortations to suggest that Marinella is criticising or rejecting seclusion and domestic activities for women per se. Indeed, as noted by Haskins, seclusion and the domestic arts are celebrated by Marinella in her Vita di Maria vergine. Haskins, Who Is Mary?: Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary, 125-26. Rather, I suggest that she is interrogating the discursive practice of prescribing seclusion and exclusive confinement of women to domesticity as a way of reinforcing their preclusion from roles and practices beyond domesticity.

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her advice on the use of “parole dolci,” and “soavità di volto” in compositions as opposed to

“detti iracondi, & di fronte dispettosa”, and her discussion of the impossibility of true and absolute knowledge. These are concepts made manifest in Marinella’s mode of writing where unassuming and acquiescent exhortations function as an alibi for a systematic interrogation and subversion of patriarchal discourses which circumscribe womanhood to a position of domestic subservience and silence.

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Chapter 4: Modesty and beauty

In this chapter, I explore Marinella’s engagement in the Essortationi with the subject of women’s dress and beauty. Section 4.1 examines Marinella’s fifth exhortation to modesty in dress and Section 4.2 examines Marinella’s eighth exhortation to pursue virtue over beauty.

These exhortations have been analysed together because of the intertwined nature of the subjects in contemporary discourses, including Marinella’s; women’s dress and ornamentation shapes their corporeal beauty.

Comparative analysis of contemporary conduct and querelle des femmes literature will show the role of discourses on women’s beauty and its augmentation in defining women’s morality, status, and nature. A prevailing pattern of these discourses is the representation of adornment and luxury as a vice innate to women which exacerbates the threat that women’s beauty poses to morality and to men. A mid-Seicento debate about female luxury manifests this trope in exaggerated form, as it becomes the platform for hyperbolic misogynistic rhetoric.

Against the backdrop of this context, I argue that Marinella’s traditionalist exhortations to modesty and virtue over vanity and corporeal adornment function as an authorial alibi; an authoritative pretext for her to parody and subvert contemporary discursive practices of using the subject of women’s dress and beauty as a platform for misogyny. As in

Chapter 3, positioning theory underpins my analysis of Marinella’s invocation of traditionalist and prevailing discourses on women’s modesty and beauty, and the “investment” she has in taking up such a position in terms of how it works to cultivate an authoritative alibi. The theory of ethos as a location for feminist rhetoric informs my analysis of Marinella’s appropriation of traditionally patriarchal discourses on womanhood, and the authority and credibility they implicitly signify, as a location from which to present a feminist reinterpretation of women’s modesty and beauty.

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4.1 A repurposed exhortation to modesty

The title of the fifth exhortation is: “Si mostra, onde hebbero principio gli ornamenti, il

Lusso, & l’accrescimento di quelli. Però si essorta alla parcità, e modestia della superfluità loro.” (125) The overarching pretext is a moralistic exhortation to modesty in dress and ornamentation. Marinella indicates her ascetic, relatively extreme traditionalist position on dress: “Il vero, e laudabile ornamento della Donna, e di ogn’uno sarà la parcità del culto, de’ lisci, e de’ fregi & un sobrio, schietto, e polito modo di vestire.” (142) Referring to artificial ornamentation as “infrascamenti, e foggie fuori di ragione”, Marinella suggests that it is wrong to believe that such ornamentation increases a person’s beauty or glory. Rather, “bene si sono di biasimo, di offesa e di poco pregio, al decoro all’honesta, & al nome” (141-142).

The extensive Italian tradition of prescriptions on dress and ornamentation is particularly complex and multifaceted, involving contrasting arguments and perspectives.344 A

“traditionalist” position on the prescription is thus more problematic to define. For example, whilst some religious moralists strictly prescribed modesty, others, including Thomas Aquinas, accepted married women’s adornment if it was directed towards pleasing a husband or keeping him faithful.345 With acknowledgement of the complexity and nuances of this tradition, I use the term “traditionalist” to characterize Marinella’s rhetorical posture on modesty as in alignment with a relatively extreme, conservative, and ascetic strand of the tradition. It is from the authority of this posture – her authorial alibi – that Marinella creates a

344 Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200-1500 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002). In Kovesi’s text see in particular Chapters 5 and 6 for a detailed analysis of the complexities and contradictions surrounding sumptuary laws and the Church and women.

345 Ibid., 97-99. Kovesi also notes that whilst strictly legislated, luxurious dress on women (and men) displayed the wealth and honour of a city and was therefore sometimes sanctioned to impress foreign visitors. Ibid., 115.

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‘repurposed’ exhortation to modesty that is imbued with pro-woman perspective and subverts misogynistic representations of women and luxury.

Prescriptions for women’s modesty in dress and ornamentation are pervasive in

Renaissance conduct literature, and regularly represented as a means for preserving chastity – both men’s and women’s. On the successful repeal of the historic Oppian Law which regulated women’s dress and ornamentation,346 Vives writes: “Who could describe what a loss to chastity results from this competition in adornment? Shamed to be outdone by their peers in personal adornment, it is only when they consider themselves duly groomed and attired that they are impatient to issue forth in public, put themselves on display, and converse with men.

That is the shipwreck of chastity.”347 In Tre libri dell'educatione christiana dei figliuoli

Antoniano recommends women reject excessive ornamentation to preserve not only their own chastity, but also their husbands’. Citing John Chrysostom, he suggests that dressing immodestly will “teach” a husband to appreciate such lasciviousness and pursue other women, including prostitutes. The onus on restraining the sexual appetites and infidelity of the husband therefore rests on women and their devotion to modesty in dress.348

346 The Oppian law was passed in Rome in 215 B.C.E. to curb spending on women’s dress and ornamentation because of economic stress associated with the war against Hannibal. Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 71, n.3. As discussed below, Marinella refers to the Oppian Law in both La nobiltà and the Essortationi, and so does Passi: Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 180.

347 Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman, 103.

348 Cap XCIIII: “Non insegnare a tuo marito a lasciarsi ingannare da un riso suave, né a restar preso dall’andar mole, & lascivo, altrimenti gli somministrarai armi contra te stessa; ammaestralo a dilettarsi della castità, & quello che segue.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 90b. An English translation and analysis of chapters XCIIII and XCV of Antoniano’s text which address women’s dress and ornamentation is provided in: Campbell, "Christian Feminine Virtue." Conversely, Aquinas permitted women to ornament themselves if it was in order to attact a husband or keep one faithful. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 97-99.

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Assandri’s Della economica emphasised women’s proclivity towards luxury and vanity, which must be moderated by the husband or father.349 Assandri advises men to restrain and control the “fantastici appetiti della Moglie nei limiti della ragione, acciò l’ornamento riesca decente, & lodevole per la mediocrità”.350 Cosimo Agnelli’s Amorevole Aviso Circa Gli Abusi delle Donne Vane similarly attributes to women a natural inclination towards excessive ornamentation, suggesting the possibility that it reflects their desire to compensate for the natural imperfections of their sex.351

The argument that women are innately predisposed to luxury recurs with frequency in misogynistic querelle des femmes literature, often with allusions to or explicit invocation of the story of Original Sin, which leads by extension to attribute the fall of mankind to women.352

Emblematic in this regard is Giuseppe Passi’s Donneschi diffetti, which devotes considerable attention to the subject. In a malicious address to women, Passi denounces their excessive ornamentation and their going into public places “baldanzosamente” and warns her “il fomite

349 Discussion occurs under the heading Donna perché divenga lussuriosa. Assandri, Della economica, 62.

350 Explaining women’s tendency towards excess in this regard, Assandri writes “essendo gli ornamenti arbitrate dalla fantasia Potenza dell’anima dipendente dal temperamento de gli humori, & perciò più corrotta nelle Donne, che ne gli Huomini, facilmente elle appetiscono la novità, & la varietà delle foggie, la politezza, le cose di gran valore, & caminano a cose infinite, & finalmente mostruose” ibid., 94.

351 “quasi che consapevoli a sé stesse della natural sua imperfettione, cerchino per quel mezo di supplire al mancamento della natura, & mettersi in gratia de gl’huomini, e farsi da loro stimare.” The wearing of high heels is one of the three principal abuses on which he focuses, alongside dying the hair blond and the use of make-up. Agnelli, Amoreuole Aviso Circa Gli Abusi delle donne Vane, 3.

352 As Kovesi writes: “Woman was depicted as the source of Original Sin, a sin whose origin lay in woman’s inability to regulate her own desires, and who thereby tempted man to follow those same desires. Excessive appetites and woman are, therefore, linked from the Garden of Eden onwards” Catherine Kovesi, "What Is Luxury? The Rebirth of a Concept in the Early Modern World," Luxury 2, no. 1 (2015): 31. See also the discussion in Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 118-19. On the evolution of the concept and language of luxury see: Kovesi, "What Is Luxury? The Rebirth of a Concept in the Early Modern World."; "Luxury in the Renaissance: A Contribution to the Etymology of a Concept," in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. Machtelt Israëls and Louis A. Waldman (Harvard University Press, 2013).

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del peccato raccendi in modo, che se tu non peri, nondimeno sei causa ch’altri periscono”.353

Passi also decries the current situation in which women spend all of their husbands’ money on luxury items. Addressing women he writes: “Ma che cosa è questo Vostro andar tanto pompose, madonne? Non altro, che dar segno alla persa vergogna al mondo.”354 In the more mitigated tone of Dello stato maritale Passi recommends that women dress modestly and adhere to the limits mandated by law.355 Yet traces of the misogyny of I Donneschi diffetti remain in his warning that women’s excessive ornamentation is to blame for rendering “gl’ huomini più dissoluti, & inclinati alla lubricità”.356

Marinella’s invocation of discourses on women’s modesty in dress and ornamentation ostensibly position the author in alignment with a relatively extreme ascetic traditionalist position. Yet close textual analysis of the exhortation shows how Marinella’s traditionalist discourses are embedded with an undertow of subversion and critique. In particular, I show how Marinella subverts the discursive pattern shown above, of using the pretext of prescriptions for women’s modesty to assert women’s inherent weakness to resist temptation, desire, and luxury, and by extension, their proclivity to lead men to vice. Marinella creates a

“repurposed” exhortation to modesty, which rather than reiterating this pattern, exposes its masculinist biases and assumptions, and frames modesty as a means of freedom for women, as opposed to a way of restraining and controlling their unbridled appetites. Her traditionalist exhortation to modesty functions as an authorial alibi to mitigate her vulnerability to censure for these challenges to prevailing discourses on women’s dress and ornamentation. Before

353 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 186.

354 Ibid., 189.

355 “la Donna deve esser modesta ne’ vestimenti, & ornamenti del corpo, e non usare anco i sontuosi adobbamenti, che le leggi, o costumi del paese permettono” Dello stato maritale, 164.

356 Ibid., 165.

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analysis of the fifth exhortation, details regarding a heated literary debate on female luxury show the escalation and intensification in mid-Seicento Venice of discourses which used the subject as a platform for misogyny and reveal the perils of tackling this misogyny head-on.

Satirising and defending women and luxury in the mid-Seicento

The female luxury debate originated with a misogynistic satirical speech on female luxury delivered by Francesco Buoninsegni at a meeting of the Accademia degli Intronati in

Siena.357 In 1644 – a year before his publication of Marinella’s Essortationi – Valvasense published an edition comprising the original satire by Buoninsegni along with a response by

Arcangela Tarabotti entitled Antisatira.358 According to Tarabotti, Buoninsegni’s satire was brought to her attention and she was compelled by “alcune Gentildonne” to respond.359 Whilst a defence of women’s right to luxury is the premise of Tarabotti’s Antisatira, the work is unambiguously directed towards the broader purpose of defending the female sex and their

357 The speech was subsequently published: Francesco Buoninsegni and Giovanni Battista Torretti, Del Lusso Donnesco Satira Menipea ... Con L'antisatira Apologetica di G.B. Torretti (Venice: Sarzina, 1638). This publication included a response by Giovanni Battista Torretti dedicated to Loredano, founder of the Incogniti. The debate has attracted significant critical attention. See for example: Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, esp. 63-72; Daniela De Bellis, "Attacking Sumptuary Laws in Seicento Venice: Arcangela Tarabotti," in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford, 2000); Eugenia Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 180-201; Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice."; Ray, "Letters from the Cloister," 34-36. For discussion and modern editions of texts in the debate see: Biga, Una polemica antifemminista; Weaver, Satira e Antisatira.

358 Francesco Buoninsegni and Arcangela Tarabotti, Contro 'L Lusso Donnesco, Satira Menippea Con L'antisatira di D. A. T. In Risposta (Venice: Francesco Valvasense, 1644).

359 In the Antisatira, Tarabotti writes in reference to Buoninsegni’s text: “solo a’ giorni passati mi sia arrivato alle mani resomi” (39). On how or by whom Buoninsegni’s text was brought to her attention, Tarabotti does not elaborate. One might speculate that her publisher Valvasense was responsible, having identified the marketing potential in publishing a woman’s response to the misogynistic satire. All references in this thesis to Buoninsegni’s Lusso donnesco, Tarabotti’s Antisatira and the response by Ludovico Sesti, Censure dell’antisatira, are to the later 1656 edition in which they were published together: Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira.

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right to freedom from patriarchal tyranny.360 Even prior to its publication, the Antisatira was stirring controversy. Tarabotti gave the text to her brother-in-law Giacomo Pighetti to read, who promptly forwarded it to Accademia degli Incogniti member, Padre Angelico Aprosio.361

Both implored her to withdraw the text.362 Upon her refusal Aprosio responded with indignation writing his own response entitled La maschera scoperta, which censured Tarabotti and the message of the Antisatira.363 Contemporary Incogniti member Girolamo Brusoni also wrote a denunciation entitled the Antisatira satirizzata. It is testament to the strength of

Tarabotti’s support from influential intellectuals, most notably Loredano, and the importance of these relationships to her career, that neither Aprosio’s La maschera scoperta nor Brusoni’s

Antisatira satirizzata ever came to press.364 Aprosio did however, manage to rework La maschera scoperta into a slightly less overtly misogynistic work, publishing it as Lo scudo di

Rinaldo overo lo specchio di disinganno in 1646.365

Whilst neither Aprosio’s La maschera scoperta nor Brusoni’s Antisatira satirizzata was published, both texts were known within academic circles by the end of 1644. Buoninsegni’s

Del lusso donnesco had been in circulation for six years, and Tarabotti’s Antisatira was hot off

360 As Weaver writes, the Antisatira, “è una difesa della moda femminile e una denuncia di quella maschile, ma è anche, e soprattutto, una difesa generale del suo sesso e una forte condanna dei soprusi compiuti dagli uomini contro le donne.” Weaver, Satira e Antisatira, 9.

361 Ray suggests that Pighetti – a member of the Incogniti – likely played an important role in helping Tarabotti “establish, from within the convent, the literary network she relied on to publish not only the Lettere but her other works”. Ray, "Letters from the Cloister," 31.

362 Biga, Una polemica antifemminista, 83-90.

363 See Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 63-64. Aprosio later describes the work as “ripiena di mille spropositi, e di non poche impertinenze” and explains how Pighetti “non poterono non istupire di tante impertinenze.” Aprosio, La Biblioteca Aprosiana, 168.

364 Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 64. On Tarabotti’s use of her Lettere to defend herself and her Antisatira see also the Introductions to the modern editions of her Lettere and Ray, "Letters from the Cloister."

365 Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 64.

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the press. At the time of the publication of Marinella’s Essortationi in 1645, the debate was in full swing. Questions of female luxury and vanity were topical, and they were about more than simply women’s dress.366 For Tarabotti, women’s freedom in dress and ornamentation signified freedom from patriarchal control. For Buoninsegni and Aprosio, women’s beauty represented a threat to men and to morality, a threat exacerbated by women’s proclivity for luxury and corporeal ornamentation.367

Valvasense’ ties to the debate have prompted Virginia Cox to suggest the possibility that he may have commissioned Marinella’s Essortationi to stoke the controversy.368 Marinella and Tarabotti shared a status as prominent female intellectuals and writers of mid-Seicento

Venice, and the opportunity to play them off against one another surely would have appealed.

I was unable to find definitive evidence to confirm if the work was commissioned by

Valvasense, but Marinella’s fifth exhortation shows some parallels with the other texts in the debate. For example, satire and digression are, as in Marinella’s text, also prominent in

Tarabotti’s and Buoninsegni’s texts.369 In addition, all three works address the wearing of wigs

(by women in Buoninsegni, and by men in Tarabotti and Marinella) and discuss the notion of

366 As Benedetti notes “come la Satira di Buoninsegni e lo Scudo di Rinaldo di Aprosio utilizzano la moda quale pretesto per rispolverare il vieto campionario misogino, così l’Antisatira di Tarabotti si spinge al di là di una rivendicazione del diritto delle donne di abbellire la propria persona per esplorare alcuni temi cari all’autrice” Benedetti, "Arcangela Tarabotti e Lucrezia Marinella," S92.

367 As Heller writes: “Both Buoninsegni and Aprosio invest female luxuries – jewelry, silks, clothing and fashions – with a variety of metaphorical meanings that demonstrate their danger to men and society.” Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 64.

368 Cox notes parallels between the circumstances which led to Giovanni Battista Ciotti’s commissioning of Marinella’s La nobiltà in response to Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti, and those surrounding this “new “sex war” controversy.” Valvasense may likewise have seized the opportunity to commission, or at least prompt, female authored responses to Buoninsegni’s overtly misogynistic satire from Tarabotti and Marinella. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, p. 371-72, n.246.

369 On satire and digression in Tarabotti and Buoninsegni see: Weaver, Satira e Antisatira, esp. 22.

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the height of high-heeled shoes (pianelle) as representative of the wearer’s superiority.370

Unlike the other texts in the debate, the Essortationi does not contain explicit references to other participants and their texts.

However, references to Marinella’s fifth exhortation, which compare it to Tarabotti’s

Antisatira provide insight into how her contribution to the subject was received, and evidence that the two texts on women’s luxury were read in relation to one another. Aprosio appears to have immediately procured Marinella’s Essortationi upon its publication for his library.371 In Lo scudo Aprosio celebrates Marinella, citing a long passage from the Essortationi which condemns contemporary fashions, before lauding Marinella as a woman to be celebrated for her choice of learning, literature, and philosophy over vanity; of adornment of the mind over adornment of the body.372 It is noteworthy that in his citation of Marinella’s Essortationi,

Aprosio extracts from the fifth exhortation the passages that critique and satirise women’s fashions, omitting the more polemical and subversive elements of the exhortation.373 He

370 On parallels between Tarabotti and Marinella’s attitudes towards the pianelle as representative of women’s superiority, and their critique of men’s wearing of the pianelle and wigs see: Benedetti, "Arcangela Tarabotti e Lucrezia Marinella," S92.

371 Biga, Una polemica antifemminista, 38.

372 Of Marinella Aprosio writes: “Chi impiega le hore intorno allo SPECCHIO non ha tempo d’arricchire la REPUBLICA Letteraria di tanti dottissimi volume com’Ella ha fatto: né d’impossessarsi delle dottrine Platoniche, e Peripatetiche, che la rendono degna di ammiratione appo coloro, che la senton discorrere.” Aprosio, Lo Scudo di Rinaldo, B10. Aprosio also compares Marinella to fifteenth-century author Laura Cereta who also rejected luxury and vanity. Ibid., B6-9. Cereta’s work was published in Padua in 1640 (see Bibliography). Aprosio cites a letter to Agostino Emilio where Cereta writes “Do be aware, though, that you are going to see a little woman who is humble in both her appearance and her dress, since I am more concerned with letters than with adornment, having committed myself to the care of virtue, which can indeed confer honor on me not only during my lifetime but when I am dead.” Laura Cereta, Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, ed. and trans. Diana Robin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 83. On this comparison between Marinella and Cereta see: De Bellis, "Attacking Sumptuary Laws," 238-39.

373 The citation is extensive and precise, taking up approximately three pages of Aprosio’s text. His citation starts at p. 130 of Marinella’s Essortationi, which he indicates in a footnote. He breaks the citation at p. 133 of Marinella’s text, omitting the sonnets before resuming at p. 138. He cites to the bottom of p.138, breaking off immediately prior to her discussion of the pianelle. On Aprosio’s selective citation of Marinella here, see also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 112, n.3.

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makes no mention of Marinella’s unconventional identification of men as the origins of luxury and breaks off his citation at precisely the point at which Marinella introduces her sophistic and parodic discussion of the pianelle. He also omits the contradictory sonnets that occur in the middle of the exhortation which, as discussed below, introduce diverging novelties to

Marinella’s exhortation to modesty and critique of vanity. The presence of a sonnet by

Marinella in a later work by Aprosio, La Biblioteca Aprosiana, in which she ratifies Lo scudo’s denunciation of vanity, attests to Marinella’s familiarity with the work, and reiterates the anti- vanity stance expressed in the Essortationi.374 It is noteworthy that Aprosio also misleadingly represents Marinella’s sonnet as a direct refutation of Tarabotti.375

The longevity of the debate about female luxury is evidenced by the publication in

1656 of an edition comprising Buoninsegni’s Del lusso donnesco, Tarabotti’s Antisatira and a work written by Lodovico Sesti under the pseudonym Lucido Ossiteo and entitled Censura dell’antisatira. As the title suggests, Sesti’s text is highly critical of Tarabotti’s Antisatira. Just as

Tarabotti’s text systematically undermined Buoninsegni’s arguments, turning them on men or inverting them such that the superiority of women is evidenced, Sesti systematically undermines Tarabotti’s critique of Buoninsegni’s satire. The work is explicitly addressed to

Tarabotti – Sesti addresses her directly throughout the work – and the critique is personal.376

374 Aprosio, La Biblioteca Aprosiana, 172.

375 Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 106. Aprosio also celebrates Marinella over Tarabotti in La maschera scoperta, lauding the way in which she defends her sex “non con ispiriti, che per esser più leggieri del vento, con lo stesso vento svaniscono, ma con ragioni saldissime, che hanno li fondamenti su ‘l vero”. Biga, Una polemica antifemminista, 161.

376 In the prefazione, Sesti undermines Tarabotti’s erudition and efforts to participate in the academic world, suggesting that “se i Satiri sono mezzi huomini, mezze bestie, e tutti animali, la vostra compositione altresi, è mezza filosofica, mezza Accademica, e tutta spropositi.” In a complicated metaphor, Sesti aligns Tarabotti’s writing with embroidery, highlighting the artificial, interwoven, patchwork nature of her writing as a way of denigrating it. He writes: “Havete mostrato, che siete donna con far si bel ricamo, ed unire insieme motivi così disparati per divider la verità. Anzi che un grand’artificio vi si scorge, che Mosaico appunto può chiamarsi, mentre di sì varie scienze, egli è

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In a somewhat ambiguous reference, Sesti also refers to Marinella and her fifth exhortation as part of his censure of the Antisatira. Addressing Tarabotti, Sesti writes: “Perché non vi dolete della Signora Lucrezia Marinella, che nell’esortazione alle Donne, tanto acramente esaggera il vostro Lusso?”377 Sesti’s comment underscores the satirical, hyperbolic nature of Marinella’s discussion of the subject, as not merely a rejection of vanity, but a “bitter exaggeration” of it.

In the mid-Seicento debate about women’s luxury, both Sesti and Aprosio recruit

Marinella as an ally in their censure of Tarabotti, even though, as the next section shows,

Marinella’s text argues for women’s superiority and critiques men’s vanity just as Tarabotti’s

Antisatira does. Aprosio positions Marinella as the conservative moralist, rejecting the pursuit of ornamentation in favour of the pursuit of virtue and learning, and his selective citation of her text effectively omits the more subversive sections of her exhortation. Sesti instead positions Marinella as a satirist of female luxury. Both extrapolate these culturally recognisable discourses as representative of Marinella’s approach to the subject, and one that is held up as a positive alternative to Tarabotti’s.

The fact that Marinella’s contribution to the question of luxury was received more favourably than Tarabotti’s is testament, I suggest, to her strategic authorial self- representation. I argue that the pretext of a moralistic exhortation to modesty and denunciation of vanity was cultivated by Marinella as an authorial alibi to forestall possible

composto.” The insinuation is that the place for women’s creativity and ingenuity is with needle and thread rather than pen and paper. The metaphor is invoked again at the close of the prefazione as he leads into his reading of her Antisatira: “Vediamo un poco che filo ha tessuto questa tela.” Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 113-14.

377 Ibid., 125. Sesti’s and Aprosio’s reference to the exhortation in the singular is intriguing. One might speculate that singular exhortations were circulated and/or delivered at Incogniti meetings before being collated and published in 1645, providing further cause for speculation about Marinella’s participation at academic meetings.

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objections to some of the more subversive implications of the text and the sort of reproach

Tarabotti endured for her forthright feminism and “impertinenze” in the Antisatira.

It is important to emphasise that I am not suggesting Marinella’s position on modesty in dress is feigned; a “mask”. It might seem to be a retraction of the stance taken in La nobiltà where Marinella argues that the ornaments bestowed upon women are indicative of their honour and superiority.378 Yet this argument in La nobiltà forms part of her point-by-point rebuttal of Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti, which redirects the misogynist’s arguments against women into arguments which demonstrate instead the superiority of the female sex.379 Her celebration of highly ornamented women next to men in their grubbiest and plainest, is thus grounded in her argument for the superiority of women rather than a defence of luxury.380

Later in La nobiltà Marinella attacks male vanity and also emphasises that women should not be excessive in their dress, suggesting a consonance with the argument for modesty in the

Essortationi.381 Moreover, an anti-vanity stance is expressed by Marinella early in her career in her Discorso del rivolgimento amoroso verso la somma bellezza, and in terms which recall the denunciation of vanity in this exhortation.382 Certainly however, Marinella’s conservatism in

378 “è necessario, che la donna, ancorché sia vile, & minima, sia di tali vestimenti ornata per le sue eccellenze, & dignità naturali, & che il Maschio come servo, & Asinello, nato per server lei meno adorno se ne stia.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 25-26. Cox points out that while Marinella’s reasoning here is “obviously sophistic”, the significance of her argument is that “women’s dress is explicitly presented here as a symbolic figuring of the power they are denied.” Virginia Cox, "The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice," Renaissance Quarterly 48, no. 3 (1995): 556.

379 As indicated above, Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti contains an extended and acerbic denunciation of women’s luxury and vanity.

380 This argument is reinforced by the passage which follows where Marinella discusses the terms used by men to honour women such as donna “il quale mostra immediatamente la superiorità, & la precedenza di quelle sopra gli huomini; perché chiamandole essi Padrone restano neccessariamente sudditi, & servi.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 26. This etymological discussion is echoed by the concluding digression of the fifth exhortation of the Essortationi (see below).

381 Ibid., 262-64.

382 In this early work which is attached to her Vita del Serafico et glorioso San Francesco, Marinella critiques women’s use of dye and emphasises that such obsession with vanity distracts women from

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relation to dress and ornamentation is amplified in the Essortationi, and performs a distinct rhetorical function within the debate about female luxury and contemporary antagonism towards forthright feminist rhetoric. I suggest therefore, that her exhortation to modesty is better understood as an authorial alibi rather than a mask. As argued in the next section, from the relative protection and authority associated with this socio-culturally sanctioned subject position Marinella inverts and parodies contemporary practices of using the subject of women’s dress as a platform for misogyny. The result is a ‘repurposed’ exhortation to modesty.

Marinella’s repurposed exhortation to modesty

Marinella opens her fifth exhortation with a description of the origins of luxury which announces from the outset her departure from tradition. Describing the origins of luxury in mythological rather than biblical terms, she designates man’s excessive pride, vanity and desire to rival the gods as the cause of the use and abuse of ornaments and luxury.383 In so doing, Marinella inverts the pervasive attribution of the fall of man and the origins of luxury to women and the Original Sin, an argument that is central to the mid-Seicento debate about female luxury.384 In contrast to Marinella’s approach which draws extensively on Ovid’s

Metamorphoses, chapters 2-6 of Aprosio’s Lo scudo di Rinaldo use the story of Adam and Eve

other more worthwhile pursuits. In her hagiography of Mary, Marinella also describes the Virgin as having rejected vanity and ornamentation. Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 84, n. 83. In a forthcoming article, I explore further Marinella’s asceticism as expressed in the Essortationi in relation to its expression in her hagiographic works, including her late treatise on St Frances and St Clare of Assisi (a modern edition was published after the completion of this thesis: Lucrezia Marinella, Vita del serafico et glorioso S. Francesco e Le vittorie di Francesco il Serafico. Li passi glorioso della diva Chiara, ed. Armando Maggi (Ravenna: Longo, 2018)).

383 “Questa avidità di superbia, di emulatione, e di ambitione spinse l’huomo a trar dal seno delle marine Conchlie le lucide perle, e dal profondo del mare li rosseggianti coralli, e dalle più riposte viscere della terra gli ori, argenti, & alter pretiose materia” (129-130).

384 See Westwater who notes, “By placing blame for humankind’s fall on men, and eschewing the story so often used against women, Marinella provides a subtle but effective defense of her sex.” Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 370.

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as the basis for gendered discussions of the origins of luxury and vanity. Buoninsegni’s Del lusso donnesco also focuses on the creation story and Original Sin, suggesting that women’s luxury is “illustre testimonianza della vostra schiavitudine, e meritata pena dell’antico peccato.”385

As she discusses women’s modesty throughout the exhortation, Marinella’s omission of any biblical references is conspicuous and suggests an agenda beyond a moralistic exhortation to lay women.386 Rather than prescribing modesty as a way of preserving chastity, controlling excessive and unbridled appetites, or protecting men from temptation, Marinella is critical of the way in which obsession with ornamentation monopolises some women’s attention, describing it as a form of servitude that distracts women from more worthwhile pursuits.387 This is a line of reasoning developed in the sonnets on sumptuary legislation described below and further elaborated in the final exhortation discussed in Section 4.2 of this

Chapter.

After the opening discussion of the origins of luxury, Marinella satirises some women’s tendency towards excessive ornamentation.388 The satirical nature of Marinella’s attack on

385 Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 11. See also Buoninsegni’s statement: “la vergogna della propria nudità, e l’inclemenza del Cielo indussero la necessita del vestire. Hoggi il fasto femminile ha cangiata la necessità in superbia, e la donna gloriandosi nell’insegne del suo servaggio, doppiamente colpevole, ha convertito in trionfo del suo Lusso, il gastigo del suo delitto.” Ibid.

386 Conduct literature regularly draws on religious authorities to support moralistic arguments on women’s dress. See for example Antoniano’s Tre libri which invokes the apostles Peter and Paul and Chrysostom in his chapters on women’s rejection of ornamentation. See Cap XCIIII and Cap XCV, Antoniano, Tre libri, 90-91.

387 “E tanto il lusso, la vanagloria, & il frascheggiamento di alcuna, che pone ogn’arte, ogni studio à pulirsi, & ornarsi, e poco, o nulla d’altro cura, ne crede ritrovarsi al mondo altra Deità, che una falsificata sembianza, & quando le più nobili, ricche, & virtuose, che sieno, tanto può una servitù stimata da queste tali felicità.” (132) Marinella herself constitutes the greatest exemplar of one who rejects artifice and ornamentation in favour of more worthwhile pursuits – specifically learning and letters – as Aprosio’s comments cited above make clear.

388 Marinella writes of some women who adorn their hair with so many flowers that “perderebbono li Giardini di Genova, e di Napoli, & quegli del Rè Alciono” (131). She describes women wearing “le penne

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female vanity was acknowledged by Sesti as described above. This satire is also balanced later in the exhortation, however, by an equally satirical description of men’s propensity for luxury and excessive ornamentation, countering any presumption that Marinella is participating, like

Sesti, in the hypocritical misogynistic tradition of satirising female luxury without considering men’s. In targeting both sexes – a fact reinforced in the title which directs the exhortation to a gender neutral audience – Marinella implicitly counters the misogynistic commonplace that luxury was a vice innate to women.389 In doing so, she joins Tarabotti, Moderata Fonte and

Margherita Costa who all in different ways sought to redress this hypocrisy.390 Moreover, her emphatic rejection, as a woman, of vanity and adornment, constitutes a powerful challenge to the misogynistic commonplace of women’s innate proclivity in this regard; proving the lie of

Passi’s statement that women would sooner die than not be beautiful.391

In addition to these important challenges to tradition, the second half of the exhortation includes a series of ambiguous assertions that suggest a more subversive agenda than a moralistic exhortation to women. The remainder of this section analyses each of these, which include a pair of sonnets on sumptuary legislation, a sophistic defence of women’s high-

di diversi colori appresso le altre vanità sopra il capo…imitando l’ornato de’ famosi Cavallieri, e de prodi Capitani.” (132) On Venetian women’s excessive and competitive adornment with gold, Marinella writes that Jupiter thought that the “secolo d’oro, che di già buona pezza più veduto non s’era, fosse stato dalla vanità superba di tante pompe formato in quelle belle forme di Collane, Baltei, Maniglie Globi d’oro, & in altre infinite maniere, e però più veduto non si fosse; ma consumato si rimanesse trasformato in varie forme di ornati.” (134)

389 The title reads: “Si mostra, onde hebbero principio gli ornamenti, il Lusso, & l’accrescimento di quelli. Però si essorta alla parcità, e modestia della superfluità loro.” (125)

390 For critique of this hypocrisy see: Marinella, La nobiltà, 263; Fonte, Il merito delle donne, 145. Tarabotti is particularly explicit: Buoninsegni and Tarabotti, Contro 'L Lusso Donnesco, 50-51, 55-56. See also Margherita Costa’s Lo stipo (1639) (p. 194-207) which as Cox notes, also turns the tables in this regard and satirizes men’s vanity. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 214.

391 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 204-05.

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heeled platform shoes (pianelle), and a concluding digression which criticises the use of the word “dame” rather than “donne”.

Sumptuary legislation and women’s freedom:

The ideological weight of clothing and adornment, particularly women’s, is evidenced by the extensive history of sumptuary legislation in Italy.392 Sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Venice witnessed a proliferation of sumptuary legislation designed to curb excessive ornamentation,393 and, from the end of the fifteenth century, the legislation increasingly focused on women’s clothing as opposed to men’s.394 Diane Owen Hughes suggests that in the sixteenth century, sumptuary regulation became a mode of restricting “feminine license”; a mode of exerting patriarchal control over women’s freedom.395 Prescriptions for women’s dress complemented, some argue “materialized”, gendered conduct codes which mandated women’s confinement to domesticity.396 It is noteworthy in this regard that Marinella,

392 On sumptuary legislation in Italy see: Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy; Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Antonella Campanini, eds., Disciplinare il lusso: La legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra medioevo ed età moderna (Roma: Carocci, 2003); Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, & Fine Clothing (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Diane Owen Hughes, "Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy," in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Ann Rosalind Jones, "The Failure of the Fashion Police: On Sumptuary Laws in Early Modern Europe," Vestoj: The Journal of Sartorial Matters Special Edition 'On Failure', no. 6 (2015).

393 See Patricia Fortini Brown, "Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites," in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilisation of an Italian City-State 1297-1797, ed. Dennis Romano and John Jeffries Martin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), esp. 319-29. See also Patricia Allerston on the notion that sumptuary laws tend to reveal more about “corporate patrician ideals [rather] than about specific social realities.” She suggests, “The sheer volume of sumptuary laws issued in Venice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suggests that they failed to prevent ostentation.” Patricia Allerston, "Clothing and Early Modern Venetian Society," Continuity & Change 15, no. 3 (2000): 373.

394 Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 113.

395 Hughes, "Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy," 71.

396 Rosenthal and Jones note how Vecellio describes the rejection of wide sleeves for women in favour of more practical narrow ones allowed women to be “fit and quick to attend to their household duties

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Tarabotti and Fonte all pay significant attention to the issue of women’s dress within the context of discussions about women’s status and freedom.397

After the opening of the fifth exhortation on the origins of luxury, Marinella provides an account of the circumstances that led to the introduction of sumptuary legislation. She describes the excessive amounts of money Venetian women were spending on gold and precious metals, and superfluous ornamentation, and writes that the Father of the Gods summoned Maia’s son to advise Venetians that they “raffrenano queste immoderate licenze col divieto d’esse” (135). Marinella describes the anguish and sorrow felt by Venetian women as a consequence of this injunction which pierced “senza clemenza di misericordia il cuore dell’anima, & l’anima del cuore delle gratiose Figlie di questa Città” (135). So great was their anguish and sorrow, according to Marinella, that a friend of Phoebus, whose name she has

“forgotten”, composed two sonnets as a means for consoling and providing advice to the women. It is generally agreed that these sonnets, like that in the second exhortation whose author’s name Marinella had likewise “forgotten,” were most probably written by Marinella herself.398

The first sonnet advises women readers to accept their God-given natural beauty rather than obsessing over worldly ornamentation. The second sonnet, which opens with

“Ma,” contradicts the first, advising those “magnanime donne” (137) who cannot be placated to follow the lead of the women Patricians of Rome who successfully challenged the laws

with the greatest diligence and to care for their children and husbands.” Margaret F. Rosenthal and Ann Rosalind Jones, eds., Cesare Vecellio's Habiti Antichi et Moderni: The Clothing of the Renaissance World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 30.

397 Cox, "The Single Self," 552. On Tarabotti’s critique of sumptuary legislation see: De Bellis, "Attacking Sumptuary Laws."

398 Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 114, n.83; Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 144.

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regulating ornamentation through firmness and eloquence of speech.399 Despite the apparently contradictory advice offered by these sonnets,400 Marinella subsequently concludes: “Di queste consolationi, & essortationi credo, che appagati si trovino, gli animi

Donneschi, li quali contentandosi del giusto, conosceranno laudabile la natural bellezza, essendo dono proprio; benché fuggitivo.” (137-138)

Marinella’s description of natural beauty as a “dono proprio; benché fuggitivo” is significant and prefigures her eighth exhortation on the ephemeral nature of beauty (discussed in the next section of this Chapter). It also reinforces a point made by Marinella in the allusive end notes of each sonnet. After celebrating women’s natural beauty, the first sonnet encourages women to adorn themselves in a different way: “S’orni di fregio tal Donna e

Donzella / Che soggetto non resti a l’altrui voglie, / né al minacciar d’insidiosa stella” (137).

Marinella alludes here to the notion that the pursuit of corporeal beauty through adornment makes one subject to the wills of another and to the threats of an “insidious star” – perhaps time and fate. The tail of the second sonnet describes the way in which, following their successful fight to have the Oppian Law repealed, the Patrician women of Rome were granted

“le gemme ai loro lamenti / E con le gemme incatenati i cori.” (137).401 Here, Marinella alludes

399 In La nobiltà Marinella recounts the story told in Livy, History of Rome, From the Founding of the City, book 34, in which, following the conclusion of the wars, the Roman women protested against the law and ultimately succeeded in having it overturned. Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 71, n.3. Her conclusion that the law was “annullata da tutti i patritij fatti capaci della ragione, conosciuta la nobiltà, et i meriti delle donne” is not found in Livy but appears to be Marinella’s own adaptation to suit her pro-woman argument. La nobiltà, 25.

400 Rather than contradictory, Benedetti sees the two sonnets as complementary: the first is “moralistic” whilst the second “is a gallant celebration of women’s power to bend the will of the sternest legislators.” Exhortations to Women, 114, n. 83. On the other hand, rather than complementing one another, Price and Ristaino suggest that “these two sonnets well represent the antithetical and paradoxical nature of Marinella’s discourse throughout her entire text.” Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 145.

401 The last lines of the second sonnet show a divergence both from Livy and from Marinella’s recounting of the story of the Patrician women of Rome in La nobiltà. I was unable to find a source for this unconventional end to the story.

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to the notion that the women’s freedom to ornament themselves and augment their beauty led to some sort of enslavement; a paradoxical loss of freedom.402

In her final exhortation (discussed in the next section), Marinella explains that beauty is ephemeral and mortal, and she exhorts women to redirect effort to pursuing virtue – adornment of the soul – which will remain with them forever.403 Marinella is acerbic in this final exhortation in her critique of the way in which women are rejected once their beauty inevitably fades. Unlike beauty, the pursuit of virtue does not leave women’s worth in the hands of men and time and is thus offered as a means for escaping such subjection. This argument contrasts sharply with Tarabotti’s defence of women’s right to luxury, which is presented as a form of freedom. It is also divergent from contemporary conduct literature – at no point does Marinella link modesty in dress and ornamentation to women’s confinement within the home, in chaste devotion to domesticity. Rather, women are exhorted to modesty to preserve their freedom.

The Pianelle – raising women up and weighing them down

After the sonnets Marinella declares an exception to her rule of modesty in dress and ornamentation: the pianelle.404 Yet the sophistic nature of the argument which follows

402 The notion of women’s ornamentation as representative of their enslavement to men is alluded to in a letter by Laura Cereta. In the same letter as that cited above in which Cereta declares her concerns for letters over adornment, she writes of some women: “Some wind strings of pearls around their throats, as though they were captives proud of being owned by free men.” Cereta, Collected Letters, 84.

403 Marinella writes: “Ricordatevi, che sparisce questo decoro, il ritorno, come dissi è impossibile… onde duro non vi parrà sprezzare queste lusinghiere vaghezze, approssimandovi sempre alla virtù” (294) and later “pensate che non potete suplire al mancamento, e diffetto delle perdute gratie, se non con l’acquisto della virtù, la qual sempre rimanerà con voi” (299). Once again, Marinella’s argument here recalls sentiments expressed by Laura Cereta who states that instead of personal adornment, she has committed herself “to the care of virtue, which can indeed confer honor on me not only during my lifetime but when I am dead.” Cereta, Collected Letters, 83.

404 For a recent discussion of the pianelle, including images of the shoes, see: Michelle O'Malley, "A Pair of Little Gilded Shoes: Commission, Cost, and Meaning in Renaissance Footwear," Renaissance Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2010).

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problematises a literal reading of Marinella’s defence. Amongst items of fashion, footwear was particularly deeply encoded with meaning and gender-based codes of conduct, morality, status, and power.405 In patriarchal conduct literature, prescriptions for footwear often served to circumscribe women to the domestic sphere. Thus, Vives cites Plutarch’s reference to the

Egyptian custom of preventing women from wearing shoes in order to keep them in the home.406 This is a reference preserved in Dolce’s adaptation, where he writes “Vorrei, che questo costume fosse hoggidi nella Italia solamente nelle soverchie pompe, & ben fa la

Eccellente Republica Vinitiana a provedervici così spesso.”407

Like the wearing of no footwear, the wearing of pianelle of excessive height was recommended as a way of keeping women within the domestic walls because they made movement such a challenge. In 1655, a Venetian senator argued against legislation to restrict the height of the shoes, suggesting that they should actually be increased in order to make leaving home and traversing the city difficult.408 On the other hand, Laughran and Vianello suggest that wearing the tall pianelle outside the home offered women an opportunity to

405 Catherine Kovesi, "Brought to Heel: A Short History of Failed Attempts to Bring Down the High- Heeled Shoe in Venice and Beyond," Vestoj: The Journal of Sartorial Matters Special Edition 'On Failure', no. 6 (2015): 66-67; Andrea Vianello, "Courtly Lady or Courtesan? The Venetian Chopine in the Renaissance," in Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers, ed. Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil (Oxford: Berg, 2006); Elizabeth Semmelhack, "A Delicate Balance : Women, Power and High Heels," ibid.

406 Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman, 103.

407 This occurs after a lengthy denunciation of excess in contemporary female fashions. He subsequently states that “l’ornamento delle Donne non sono i panni fregiati, ma i costumi buoni” before prescribing women’s seclusion. Dolce, De gli ammaestramenti, 43-44.

408 Laughran and Vianello note that the senator ostensibly said that if the height of the shoes was not increased the women “would go to all the parties and scorn their houses, and such bad government (mal governo) would ruin the family.” Biblioteca Museo Correr (Venice), “Codice Gradenigo,” n. 189, c. 84r and 86v. As cited in Michelle A. Laughran and Andrea Vianello, ""Grandissima Gratia": The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear," in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, ed. Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2011), 272.

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make a very public statement of agency and even defiance against prescribed seclusion.409 The pianelle could thus function paradoxically as a symbol of both women’s freedom and constriction. Moreover, by 1600 the pianelle were worn by courtesans and noble women alike, symbolising either sexual availability or status.410

In misogynistic discourses, women’s wearing of the pianelle is often invoked as evidence of women’s inherent deficiencies and inferiority to men. A speaker in Lucrezio

Borsati’s dialogue La vittoria delle donne suggests that women wear the pianelle in order to

“farsi uguale, e anco soperiore [sic] alla grandezza dell’huomo”411 Passi also ridicules women wearing the pianelle, suggesting that they are laughed at by all who meet them. He suggests that women wear the shoes in order to appear “di natura Gigantesca, volendo dove la natura secondo loro, è stata difettosa (se bene natura nihil frustra) supplirvi con l’artificio”.412

Buoninsegni’s extended satire of women’s use of the pianelle in Del lusso donnesco follows an ostensible show of defending the height of the shoes. He writes, “Io non biasimo la grandezza delle pianelle. Questo non è carico mio. Faccianle tanto grandi che siino principesse e meritino dell’Altezza. Poco importa.”413 The dismissive comments “Questo non è carico mio” and “Poco importa” suggest that he is mocking the argument that the pianelle raise women up in accordance with their worth. Later the subject of the pianelle becomes the platform for a sophistic and bizarre denunciation of the female sex. Alluding to the fact that the pianelle are

409 Laughran and Vianello write: “Renaissance shoes thus offered women the very real opportunity to try to take back some control over their own body and thereby undermine the image of being so effectively under the foot of men.” Ibid., 263. See also: Cox, "The Single Self," 554.

410 Kovesi, "Brought to Heel," 66-67; Vianello, "Courtly Lady or Courtesan?."

411 Lucrezio Borsati, La vittoria delle donne (Venice: Evangelista Deuchino, 1621), 238. Cited in Cox, "The Single Self," p. 554 n. 114.

412 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 194.

413 Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 14.

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made of wood, Buoninsegni suggests that wearing the shoes women “si trasformeranno una volta tutte in alberi… Già il terzo del loro corpo è di legno.” Through a convoluted argument

Buoninsegni then suggests that it is the head of woman rather than her feet that is made of wood, before concluding with allusion to the authority of Saint Paul that actually, “il capo della donna è l’huomo”.414

For Tarabotti however, the pianelle are a fitting celebration of women’s superiority, because “la donna deve per ogni rispetto andar inalzata dall’ordinarie bassezze terrene come appunto un miracolo della natura.”415 Aprosio responded to this argument with sarcasm in La maschera scoperta, quoting Tarabotti directly, and stating “Inalziamole quanto vogliano e se non bastano i zoccoli, serviamoci delle famose Colonne di S. Marco”.416

Like her contemporaries, Marinella uses the subject of the pianelle as a pretext for a broader discussion about the status and role of women. Indeed, I suggest that Marinella plays with and parodies the contradictory and ideologically loaded tradition of using the pianelle to define the feminine identity. Marinella echoes Tarabotti when she talks of the height of the pianelle and the association between men and ‘terrestrial baseness’. She writes:

L’altezza di questi instrumenti è cagione, che se alcuno desidera di mirare la bellezza

della Donna è sforzato a rivolgere gli occhi in su come ad una Deità; questo è di laude,

rimovendosi l’huomo dalle bassezze terrene, che se ciò non fosse, forse, che rare volte

414 Ibid., 16-18.

415 Tarabotti continues: “è ragionevole, ch’ella altrettanto si porti alta su le pianelle, quanta distanza, è dal piede virile alla costa, già che la natura, e Dio l’ha creata con questo privilegio;” ibid., 69.

416 Aprosio continues: “e se quest’altezza non gli pare a bastanza, ficchino un piede su la Torre del Mangia, e l’altro su quella degli Asinelli, che acquisteranno titolo di Serenissime.” La maschera scoperta fol. 64. As cited in: De Bellis, "Attacking Sumptuary Laws," 242, n. 49.

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innalzerebbe i lumi allo’n su per mirare il Cielo, né dir si può, che questo non sia un

buono effetto prodotto da quelli. (139)

Embedded within her defence of the pianelle is a forthright, if hyperbolic, statement of feminist rhetoric and criticism of men.

Marinella also parodies patriarchal discourses which use the shoes to reinforce women’s seclusion. She opens her defence with the argument that “gli antichi facevano

Venere con le pianelle, cosa misteriosamente intesa” (138-139). According to Marinella, this curious mode of depicting Venus reflects the desire of the ancients to demonstrate that “la

Donna non deve andar qua, e la; ma rimanersi per lo più nelle proprie habitationi al governo de figliuoli, e della propria famiglia” (139). For the ancients, that is, the pianelle symbolised and enforced women’s seclusion. Marinella continues: “essendo le Pianelle pesi, che prohibiscono il corso, & rendono la Donna piena di gravità, e di riverenza, cosa conveniente a persona qualificata, e meritevole di honore” (139). Deferring again to “quelli antichi sapienti” Marinella suggests that they:

mostrar volevano alla Donna, che il rimanersi con qualche retiratezza è di laude

sapendo, che sono alcune, che vogliono non pur il giorno scorrere vagando; ma ancor

la notte alli Ridutti, alle Comedie, & ad altre maniere di passatempi transferirsi, e

spesso con poca reputatione, & utilità di sé stesse, e della casa. (140)

This is followed by Marinella’s input in the first person: “però non dico, che sia negato a loro alcuno honesto piacere.” (140) This statement undermines the authority of those ancient wise

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men, and points rather to the unreasonableness of the prescription of complete seclusion to the domestic sphere.417

The analogy by Marinella of the pianelle as “pesi” which “prohibiscono” their movement also suggests the repressive nature of the prescription. This analogy is reiterated in a later passage where she considers the alternative argument, held by “non pocchi,” that women’s use of the pianelle reflect not their goddess-like nature but their vain pride to emulate the Gods.418 Marinella writes, “per approsimarsi al Cielo… sofriscono questi pesi gravi”

(140-141). She also addresses men’s wearing of the pianelle: “indarno tentavano di pareggiar le torri, & agguagliar l’altezze de’ monti.” (141) She suggests that “bramando imitar le Donne”

(141) they now love excessive hair and then satirises men’s use of wigs made from the hair of corpses. They do this, Marinella suggests “perché vogliono, che la Donna creda, che anchor essi sono amati, & a suffitientia suffragati dalla natura.” (142) – an implicit inversion of the pervasive argument that women’s vanity is an attempt to compensate for their inherent, natural deficiencies.

Marinella’s discussion of the pianelle complicates the overarching pretext of a traditionalist exhortation to modesty, and problematises efforts to define Marinella’s stance.

Emphatic statements on women’s excellence are juxtaposed with descriptions of their tendency to spend inordinate amounts of time outside the home indulging in frivolous pastimes; celebrations of the pianelle as bestowing gravitas upon women as if they are goddesses are juxtaposed with descriptions of the shoes as “pesi gravi.” Her statement that

417 This passage follows a reference to Momus’ criticism of Venus’ pianelle for making too much noise which is also intriguing as it suggests that her shoes were targeted simply because he couldn’t find any other thing to criticise (139-140).

418 Passi is arguably implied here for his patronizing address to women: “Io so bene, madonne, che Homero, lodò Diana, e Minerva, e Statio Violantilla, ma le grandezze loro erano naturalis, non aiutate dall’artifitio d’un par di zanche, come fate voi al tempo nostro.” Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 195.

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the height of the shoes fittingly forces men to gaze upwards at women is exaggerated but nonetheless suggests critique and an anti-misogynistic position. Her framing of the shoes as weights which prohibit women from wandering around and engaging in frivolous activities suggests parody and critique of patriarchal discourses. Yet her parody is ambiguous and combined with her use of hyperbole, our capacity to discern with any certainty the author’s

“true” position is disabled. Clearly this is more than a straightforward defence of the pianelle.

Ultimately, I suggest that Marinella’s discussion of the pianelle parodies the contemporary obsession with the pianelle as a discursive platform for defining women’s status and role.

Digressing on women’s superiority and power:

Marinella concludes her fifth exhortation with a digression which invokes explicitly the notions of gender hierarchy, freedom and power that exist as an undercurrent in the exhortation, particularly in the sonnets on sumptuary legislation and discussion of the pianelle.

She segues into the digression writing “ma lasciamo questa da parte perché molto sarebbe da dire” (143). In the digression Marinella suggests that many men, and not necessarily those of little wisdom, think they are showing women respect by calling them “dame”. However, she suggests that if they knew the meaning of the word they wouldn’t do so.419 Marinella states

419 It is difficult to know if Marinella is targeting a particular author or group of authors here. The use of the term “dame” is widespread in the period. In Del lusso donnesco Buoninsegni frequently refers to women as “dame” within often highly condescending rhetorical addresses which precede misogynistic remarks. Traiano Boccalini’s satire of the participation of learned women in academic meetings also uses the term to refer to the learned women who were admitted to the Accademia degli Intronati. Boccalini, De' Ragguagli di Parnaso, 73-74. Loredano frequently uses the term in his Bizzarrie Academiche, and often in reference to learned women. In one instance he refers to having offended some “dame” at a past session, whilst in another instance he appears to be referring to Marinella herself (see Chapter 2 of this thesis). Loredano, Bizzarrie Academiche. Parte Seconda., 30. See also the discussion of the term by Incogniti member Girolamo Brusoni, who suggests that some of the “Dame che favoriscono della loro presenza i nostri congressi tengano veramente occasione lamentarsi di noi, ‘perché nel discorrere generalmente sovra i Quesiti particolari, che vengono proposti dall’Illustrissimo nostro principe, le mettiamo tutte in un fascio con le Donne e con le femmine, perch’io ancora, che non fui mai a’ miei giorni, né Dama, né Donna, né femmina, metto una gran differenza tra le Femmine, le Donne, e le Dame: Perché e le Dame e le Donne son ben tutte Femmine; ma non già tutte le Femmine son Donne e Dame:” Brusoni, Trascorsi Accademici, 102-04.

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that “Donne” should always be used instead of “Dame”, as the latter implies servitude and subjection. In terms that closely recall the feminist etymology in La nobiltà Marinella writes:

Il nome di Dama non è voce di Dominio, e d’impero: ma di servitù, e di soggettione… Il

nome di Dama non significa maggioranza. Alle Donne sempre si darà il nome di Donne:

perché è nome di superiorità, e d’impero, deriva il vocabolo di Donna a Dominando, &

reggendo, come la voce di Dama a serviendo, & parendo, come si mostrerà significar

sempre servaggio, e soggettione. (143-144)

This is a striking and provocative end to Marinella’s ostensibly traditionalist exhortation to modesty. As a forthright expression of feminist rhetoric, it unsettles any assumption that

Marinella’s anti-vanity stance is synonymous with the argument for women’s inferiority.

Rather, Marinella disrupts and inverts the logic through which denunciations of vanity lead to denunciations of the female sex. Importantly, expressed through a digression, this disruption occurs in the sidelines, allowing Marinella to make this challenge oblique.420 At the same time, it is important to emphasise the highly sophistic and rhetorical nature of this digression.

Marinella is arguably “playing the game” here rather than expressing a genuine existential conviction.

Marinella’s appending of an etymological discussion as a concluding digression also constitutes an inversion of the contemporary querelle des femmes convention of invoking etymology to open and establish the basis for an argument. Passi’s Donneschi diffetti prefaces his etymological discussion of the words used for the female sex in his opening chapter “Donna

420 On the use of digression by early modern female writers, Anne Cotterill draws on Luce Irigaray and Helène Cixous to suggest that “formal rhetorical features, like digression, that disrupt expectations of linear logic and narration have been essential to female speech and the female interrogation of patriarchal discourse.” Anne Cotterill, Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 29. See also: Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni Press, 1985). And Cixous in Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

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che cosa sia” stating that, in order to proceed in an orderly fashion with his discussion of the many defects of women, it is necessary to start at the beginning: “come dice il Filosofo,

Ignoratis principiis, ignorantur omnia; e Demostene sole va dire, che le cose, che da principio trattiamo ordinatamente, sempre succedono di beve in meglio”.421 In keeping with her point by point methodological rebuttal of Passi in La nobiltà, Marinella similarly opens with a chapter on the names used for women and how this demonstrates their superiority.422 One of these names is “donna” which she states, in terms closely echoed in the Essortationi, derives from the Latin “domina” and “denota Signoria, & imperio”.423 As she closes her fifth exhortation, having cultivated her alibi of an exhortation to modesty and denunciation of vanity, the concluding etymological digression offers Marinella a tangential discursive space wholly to invert the practice of exploiting the subject of women’s dress and luxury to reinforce their inferiority and subordination.424

Marinella’s ostensibly traditionalist exhortation to modesty is progressively and cumulatively complicated by the sonnets on sumptuary legislation, the subsequent discussion of the pianelle, and the concluding digression on women’s superiority. These are the sections

421 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 1. For Tarabotti’s engagement with etymology, see for example: Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 134. See also the debate between the interlocutors in Fonte’s Il merito delle donne which highlights how the etymology of the word “donna” can be manipulated to suit both pro- and anti- woman arguments, whether it is interpreted as deriving from “dono celeste” or “danno”. Fonte, Il merito delle donne, 47.

422 The chapter opens by justifying the importance of etymology as a means for determining the nature and essences of things: “Non è dubbio alcuno, che i propri nomi, co’ quali si chiamano le cose, dimostrano, & fanno manifesta la natura, & essenza di quelle” Marinella, La nobiltà, 3.

423 Ibid., 4-5. She also rejects the claim that the word “donna” does not apply to the whole of the female sex, explicitly rebutting in particular Passi for his claim that it does not apply to virgins. Ibid., 5. On this section of La nobiltà see: Chemello, "The Rhetoric of Eulogy," 466-69.

424 Cotterill’s research shows how the authors she studies use digression “to create a complex form of underground writing and of self-definition”. By underground writing she refers to “the veiled expression of political doubt and enmity together with an exploration of hidden and unruly or disturbing parts of the speaker’s self.” Her study shows how the writers “use digression to stake out intellectual territory and form powerful personae.” Cotterill, Digressive Voices, 1, 2.

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not cited by Aprosio in Lo scudo di Rinaldo when he recruits her as an ally in the fight against women’s vanity. They are passages which betray a more multifaceted agenda, through their parody and inversion of prevailing discursive practices of using the subject of women’s dress and ornamentation as a platform for misogynistic denunciations of the female sex. Through an alibi of traditionalism Marinella reclaims modesty as a form of freedom for women and a pretext for arguing for women’s superiority.

4.2 Exhorting virtue, rejecting beauty and its tyranny

The eighth and final exhortation of the Essortationi returns to the subject of women’s appearance in an exhortation to women to pursue virtue over beauty because, Marinella argues, beauty is ephemeral and mortal rather than divine. The title of the exhortation makes this stance on beauty clear:

Essortationi alli animi donneschi, acciòche da queste conoscano, che non è da gloriarsi,

o insuperbirsi della bellezza, essendo cosa fragile, e fugace, & non un raggio divino,

come già alcuni sognato si hanno, ma ben si cosa caduca e mortale. (284)

As in the fifth exhortation analysed above, I argue here that the moralistic and traditionalist pretext of this exhortation – in this case advocating the pursuit of virtue over beauty – functions as an authorial alibi. With the credibility and authority associated with this alibi,

Marinella appropriates contemporary discourses on the ephemeral and destructive nature of women’s beauty, reinterpreting them from the perspective of women.

Readers familiar with La nobiltà – both contemporary and modern – might be surprised to see Marinella’s representation of beauty as ephemeral and mortal, given that she argued in the earlier treatise that women’s beauty is a divine reflection of their inner

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perfection and superiority.425 Indeed, as explained below, Marinella explicitly acknowledges her change of stance at the beginning of this exhortation. In the first part of this analysis, I show how Marinella’s shift in her conception of beauty parallels influential shifts in contemporary literature and philosophical thought on the subject. I suggest the need therefore, to acknowledge the role of this change of stance in the author’s construction of an authoritative, contemporary ethos, rather than simply reading it as a genuine shift in ideological commitment. In the second part of the analysis, I show how, whilst Marinella explicitly invokes contemporary discourses on beauty, she departs in significant ways, inverting the prevailing perspective of the effect of beauty on men to the effect of beauty on women. In the final part of the analysis, I explore Marinella’s approach to the subject of women’s beauty and ornamentation in relation to Tarabotti’s to show how Marinella’s rhetorical strategies of authorial self-representation are shaped by an effort to distinguish herself from her younger contemporary and from unpopular feminist rhetoric.426

Divine and destructive, immortal and mortal: Seicento discourses on women’s beauty

Renaissance literature and philosophy inherited from the classical period a morally loaded conceptual framework around female beauty. A divine ray that reflects inner virtue and leads men to contemplation of the divine, it was also conceived of as a reflection of women’s

425 Marinella’s rejection of corporeal beauty, in the fifth and final exhortations, is however consistent with her early works Vita del Serafico et glorioso San Francesco and accompanying Discorso del rivolgimento. In the Discorso del rivolgimento, Marinella conceived of beauty in three forms – corporeal, grace and divine. Her stated focus in the Vita and Discorso is on the second, whilst the first (corporeal) is rejected. In La nobiltà by contrast, in line with her argument for women’s excellence, even corporal beauty is celebrated as a reflection of inner spiritual perfection. See: Valeria Ferrari, "La teologia della bellezza di Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653) in tre delle sue opere," Annali di studi religiosi 2 (2001).

426 In her assessment of the Essortationi Cox suggested that there is in the work “almost certainly, a sharp self-distancing from Arcangela Tarabotti, precisely in 1643-4 establishing herself as a published presence on the Venetian literary scene.” Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 225. My analysis here supports Cox’s contention and suggests that the fifth and eight exhortations in particular represent the most pronounced examples of Marinella’s “self-distancing” from Tarabotti.

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dangerous sexual desire with the potential to lead men to vice and devastation. The contrasting interpretations of the figure of Helen of Troy throughout history is emblematic of the malleability of the concept of female beauty and its role in defining women’s status, morality, agency and worth.427 In the Renaissance, the multivalence of female beauty made it a fertile and popular discourse in the querelle des femmes. Two characteristics of Seicento discourses on women’s beauty are particularly important for this analysis: the notion that it is ephemeral and mortal (rather than divine and immortal) and its danger to men and morality.

Throughout the eighth exhortation, Marinella’s representation of beauty as ephemeral and mortal rather than “un raggio divino, come già alcuni sognato si hanno” shows the author engaging with contemporary Baroque poetics which rejected Neoplatonic and Petrarchan notions of beauty as a divine reflection of inner virtue. Cox has shown how the Baroque poetic tradition reframed women’s beauty, sexualising it, and abandoning the association with spiritual and moral enlightenment. The idealisation of beauty’s divine and immortal nature was also supplanted by an often pernicious thematization of the decay of women’s beauty with age.428 Within the context of Seicento poetry, Patrizia Bettella argues that “concern with the transience of everything earthly is a constant and obsessive theme.” In keeping with these concerns, “Female beauty is no longer assumed to be eternal and unchangeable, as the

Petrarchan model had presented it; beauty is unstable, precarious, and subject to the effects of time.”429

427 See Ruby Blondell, Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

428 Cox, Lyric Poetry, 35-36.

429 Patrizia Bettella, The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 154.

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The destructive and tyrannical potential of women’s beauty also emerges as a prominent theme in moralistic didactic literature. Framed by the statement that a Christian woman would never desire to appear beautiful, Antoniano describes a woman adorned in a public place as “una esca del diavolo & un sasso di ruina, & pietra di scandolo a mille infelici huomini”.430 Within Incogniti writing, Wendy Heller has highlighted the extent to which the academy was preoccupied with the notion of the allure of female beauty, and its potential to wreak havoc on men’s lives and souls.431 Loredano describes the tyranny and brevity of beauty,432 but also the damage inflicted by a beautiful woman’s gaze on her lover: “Il veleno uscito dagli occhi di bella donna haverà tolta la vita all’amante”.433 In his parody of Genesis

L’Adamo, which is devoted to attributing the fall of mankind to women, and which Tarabotti sought to challenge in Tirannia paterna, Loredano writes “le donne hanno sortito dal Cielo una tirannide così dolce nel volto, che il contendere loro la soggettione di tutti i cuori, è effetto più tosto di stupidità, che di prudenza”.434

430 Antoniano, Tre libri, 91a.

431 Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 52. Francesco Pona writes in his Messalina (1628): “Fermati, o mano audace: non toccare ciò che mira l’occhio invaghito. La bellezza che ti lusinga è cadaverosa.” Cited in ibid., 349, n. 28. See also the pair of contrary discourses “La Brutezza Lodata” and “La Bellezza Lodata” in Discorsi academici de' signori Incogniti, both by D. Agostino Lampugnano. The first is a paradoxical praise of ugliness which rejects beauty with examples from history including the archetypal Helen to demonstrate the damage caused by beauty, a “tirannia di poco tempo” (p. 225). The second highlights the rhetorical nature of these stances on beauty in its statement: “Udiste, Signori, della Brutezza le lodi, udite hora della Bellezza gli Encomi.” (p. 239-240), before celebrating beauty. Similar themes are also expressed in the chapter entitled “Qual cosa pregiudichi maggiormente alla bellezza d’un volo” in Brusoni, Trascorsi Accademici, 14-23.

432 He describes beauty as “una muta raccomandatione della Natura scritta con caratteri di divinità; co’ quali soggetta gl’animi ad una dolce tirannide. Il suo Imperio con tutto ciò quant’ è più grato, tant’è più breve.” Loredano, Bizzarrie Academiche. Parte Seconda., 137.

433 Bizzarrie Academiche (Venice: Steffano Curti, 1684), 61-62. Cited in Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 313, n. 20.

434 Gio. Francesco Loredano, L'adamo (Venice: Sarzina, 1640), 33. Tarabotti challenges Loredano’s masculinist misrepresentations of Genesis in L’adamo, designating Adam rather than Eve as principally responsible for the fall. For analysis see Panizza, "Volume Editor's Introduction," 19-21. For the relevant sections of Tarabotti’s text see: Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 52-53, 108-10, 21.

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Girolamo Ercolani’s Le eroine della solitudine, which advocates seclusion for women and rejection of luxury and ornamentation, is extreme in its description of the destruction brought about by women’s beauty, describing it as “un amo del demonio, con cui adesca egli e fa preda dell’anime; una rete che tende innanzi al cielo, per impedire a’ mortali l’ingresso di quello”, and he warns women not to glory in their corporeal beauty.435 In the misogynistic letter accompanying Il Corriero Svaligiato, Ferrante Pallavicino suggests that although women might not be able to wield a sceptre over man, “fondano un’orgoglioso dominio su l’impero di fugace bellezza, per travagliarlo sotto il giogo d’un indiscreto comando.”436

As suggested in Section 4.1, the theme of the damage caused to men by women’s beauty is also central to the debate about female luxury. Buoninsegni invokes the myth of

Deianira’s poisoned robe which killed Hercules to suggest that, in contrast, the wearing of silk gowns by women “non uccidono le donne che le portano, (che saria manco male) ma i mariti che le fanno, e gli amanti che le mirano.”437 Similarly the title and subtitle of Aprosio’s Lo scudo di Rinaldo: specchio del disinganno allude to the work’s stated purpose of protecting men from the vanities of women.438 Tarabotti counters these misogynistic denunciations of the destructive potential of women’s beauty by holding on to Petrarchan and Neoplatonic rhetoric, arguing in the Antisatira that women’s beauty is “un raggio vivo della Divinità” and a reflection of women’s inner perfection.439

435 Ercolani, Le eroine della solitudine, 106. As cited in: Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 310-11, n. 66.

436 Ferrante Pallavicino, Il corriero svaligiato, publicato da Ginifacio Spironcini (Nürnberg (=Venezia): Hans Jacques Stoer, 1646) 35.

437 Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 12. For commentary on this passage, see Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 65-68.

438 Emblems of Eloquence, 67.

439 Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 53.

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In La nobiltà, Marinella responded to Passi’s misogynistic arguments about women’s beauty with a similar line of reasoning to Tarabotti. Passi’s Donneschi diffetti describes the dangers of beauty in a woman, particularly a wife, and the threat that it poses to a woman’s modesty. His emphasis though, is on the damage caused to others by a woman’s beauty, providing a list of examples including the archetypal Helen whose beauty caused the ruin of

Troy.440 Passi addresses women directly, advising them not to put hope in beauty given its fragile and ephemeral nature, before denouncing women’s “superbia” in their beauty.441 The author suggests that women would rather die than not be beautiful,442 and concludes with a damning criticism of the use of cosmetics by vain women in an attempt to augment their beauty.443 Marinella responds by arguing in La nobiltà, like Tarabotti, that beauty is a divine ray that emanates from the soul and this forms the basis for her argument for women’s superiority.444 She draws on Petrarch, amongst other mostly modern authors, to suggest that

“quanto è più bella la donna, tanto più affermano, che l’anima di lei rende in quel tal corpo

440 “La bellezza d’Helena mise il mondo in gran rumore, e Troia ruinò con sua bellezza.” Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 200.

441 “Questa è la fragilità della bellezza, nella quale non dovete, Madonne, porre speranza, perché i pensieri non riescono, et ella, come foglia al vento, se ne vola, e muore.” Ibid., 203.

442 “e tutto procede da questa sua creduta bellezza, che più presto desiderano la morte, che restar priva di quella… Non basta donne, haver l’esterior bellezza, bisogna esser vestite dell’interiore, alla quale essortandovi Chris. S. dice….” Corporeal beauty Passi suggests “è fumo, & ombra: e fate pur, madonne, quanto sapete, e usate quanta diligenza volete: che o la vechiezza, o la morte vi renderà brute…”. Ibid., 204-05.

443 “sete per tanto più degne di biasimo donne vane, che vi dipingete la faccia, e con varii colori vi forzate d’accendere le bellezze vostre, e per ciò n’haverete il fuoco eterno. Ma parliamo d’altro” ibid., 206-07.

444 She writes: “La beltà senza dubbio è un raggio, & un lume dell’anima, che informa quel corpo, in cui ella si ritrova” Marinella, La nobiltà, 13. On Marinella’s engagement with the concept of beauty in La nobiltà, see Shapiro who suggests that Marinella reframes the premises of Plato’s Symposium to endow women with a personal advantage in their beauty in terms of their journey to God. Lisa Shapiro, "The Outward and Inward Beauty of Early Modern Women," Revue philosophique de la France et d l'etranger Tome 138, no. 3 (2013).

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gratia, & leggiadria.”445 Marinella argues that: “è adunque causa, & origine l’anima della beltà del corpo, si come habbiamo dimostrato & non solamente è l’anima cagione”.446 Moreover she suggests that if in general women are more beautiful than men, it must follow that women are also “più singolari de’ maschi”.447 She acknowledges the way in which women’s beauty compels men to fall in love with them although for Marinella this is beneficial rather than destructive as it leads them to divine contemplation.448

In Dello stato maritale, Passi returns to the subject of women’s beauty, this time celebrating it in highly stylised terms, listing a series of examples of beautiful women throughout history, including Helen, and describing how they won over men with their beauty.449 Passi’s shift in stance must, however, be read in light of the negative reaction to

Donneschi diffetti, and we must be wary of assuming sincerity in either text without acknowledging the rhetorical function of Passi’s use of discourses on women’s beauty. The same eye for rhetoric must be applied to Marinella’s stance on women’s beauty in La nobiltà, where her declaration of beauty as a reflection of women’s innate virtue is in line with the precise aim of refuting Passi’s Donneschi diffetti by systematically inverting his arguments to demonstrate the superiority of women. Similarly, our reading of Marinella’s discussion of beauty in the Essortationi should be attuned to the role of rhetoric and contemporary poetics in shaping the author’s stance.

445 Marinella, La nobiltà, 13.

446 Ibid., 14.

447 Ibid., 17.

448 Ibid., 18.

449 Passi, Dello stato maritale, 28-34. Helen’s beauty is here celebrated rather than vilified as the cause of destruction.

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As the analysis of the Essortationi below shows, in contrast to her approach in La nobiltà and to Tarabotti’s in the Antisatira, rather than celebrate women’s beauty as a divine reflection of women’s worth, Marinella invokes the counter-discourses, emphasising its ephemeral and mortal nature, and destructive and tyrannical potential. Yet unlike the prevailing Seicento discourses of women’s beauty described above, which represent men as the victims of women’s beauty, Marinella reinterprets the premise from the perspective of woman. Her rejection of beauty is thus framed not as a means for preserving and protecting men’s virtue and freedom, but women’s.

Rejecting mortal beauty in favour of virtue in the Essortationi

Despite the title which makes clear Marinella’s conception of beauty as ephemeral and mortal, the opening paragraphs outline the Neoplatonic position: “Dir non si può, che la bellezza non sia un decoro, una gratia cara, e da ogn’uno gradita, & essere, come dicono alcuni, una imagine, un raggio, che deriva dalle divine bellezza” (284). Marinella identifies the authorities associated with this position, listing Leone Ebreo, Marsilio Ficino and Plato himself.

Her vernacular summary of their arguments, that beauty is “un lume del sommo bene, che uscendo dalle parti di un ben formato corpo ci segna la via di salire con la mente al Cielo a contemplare, & ammirare l’origine, e la cagione di ogni perfetta bellezza” (285), is reinforced with Latin citations in the margins. Marinella suggests that whilst these authorities affirm that beauty is a divine light, they also affirm its potential to be a tyranny.450 Marinella then notes

450 “Alcuna volta, si sono conformati questi Autori affirmando la bellezza essere un lume divino, che ferisca le anime nostre, e quasi hamato uncino ci rapisca la libertà, e prigioniera la guidi a suo piacere” (285)

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Ficino’s subsequent change in position451 – and aligns herself similarly, arguing that beauty is not a celestial light but earthly and mortal.

In these opening pages of the exhortation, Marinella elaborates on the outmoded notion of beauty as a divine ray and the “molti filosofi” who argued for it, in order to underscore her departure from this position, and her alignment with more contemporary philosophy on beauty.452 Her signalling of this departure is particularly noteworthy because it is also explicitly acknowledged as a divergence from La nobiltà.453 Marinella’s rejection of the notion of beauty as divine and immortal in the Essortationi is, however, entirely in keeping with Seicento shifts in the concept of beauty as outlined above. By the mid-Seicento the divinity of female beauty no longer held intellectual currency; a new, more contemporary line of reasoning was required. The fact that Marinella draws attention to this shift in her stance suggests an effort to underscore her familiarity with the philosophical and literary interests of the period. But it also suggests an effort to capitalise on the shock value and interest that this ostensible recantation would have generated for contemporary readers.

Linguistically, Marinella’s discourse on beauty in this exhortation recalls Passi’s in

Donneschi diffetti, inviting speculation that she is now siding with her opponent. In particular, the chapter titles in both works invoke the same words to describe beauty as “fragile” and

451 “ma dice il ficino poi essere splendor humano, non divino” I was not able to locate the source for this ostensible change in Ficino’s position.

452 Noteworthy for a similar methodology is “La Bellezza Discorso Del Signor Gio. Battista Dolgioni” in Discorsi Academici which opens with the Neoplatonic position before exploring its limitations through examples and suggesting “non ogni bellezza è il vero, & reale inditio della beltà dell’anima.” Discorsi academici de' signori Incogniti, 59, 62. See also: Marino Dall'Angelo, Le Glorie Del Niente (Venice: Sarzina, 1634).

453 Marinella writes: “così stimo io, non esser lume celeste ma terreno, e mortale, perché se divino fosse, come tengono molti filosofi, e come io stessa ho affermato nel mio libro della Nobiltà & Eccellenza delle Donne nel Capitolo della bellezza, non credo, che fuggisse, e suanisse in così breve tempo” (285-86) This is the final in a series of three apparent retractions of La nobiltà.

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“caduca” and warn against pride in beauty.454 Throughout the exhortation Marinella draws on

Baroque poetics, comparing the ephemeral nature of beauty to a rose which whilst beautiful in the morning, fades by the evening. Beauty is not divine she concludes, for if it was, “non perderebbe in tanta fretta la sua gratia.” (186) She suggests that women should realise that they do not possess in their faces “la bellezza de gli Angeli,” but merely a grace that derives from well-formed parts (289) and underscores the temporary nature of this beauty which with time “viene in modo tiranneggiata, abbattuta, e percossa” (290). She invokes the parts of the woman traditionally idealised in Petrarchan discourses, highlighting the way in which the eyes

“si fanno mesti, & oscuri”, the golden locks “si muta in argento,” and “le polite, e ben formate membra fatte lasse, e cadenti chiamano il bastone per aiuto, e per sostegno” (290).455 In particularly acerbic tones, Marinella criticises those beautiful women who are proud of their beauty and, addressing them directly, states that they are deceiving themselves if they believe that their beauty is a divine ray.456 She warns them that “con questo pensiero passate gli anni, li quali, come corrente fiume portano seco que’ lumi terreni, tanto a voi graditi.” (291)

Couched within these very contemporary baroque discourses on women and beauty are important novelties which set Marinella’s discussion apart. The first example of this occurs on the fifth page of the exhortation, when she draws on the popular notion of beauty as a

454 Passi’s title is: “Donna bella quanto sospetta; bellezza in lei quanto pericolosa, fragile, caduca, e che sol sia cagione di superbia, e d’altri mali.” Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 196. The second part of Marinella’s title reads: “non è da gloriarsi, o insuperbirsi della bellezza, essendo cosa fragile, e fugace, & non un raggio divino, come già alcuni sognato si hanno, ma ben si cosa caduca e mortale” (284). My emphasis in both citations.

455 She includes a variety of descriptions of the way in which beauty fades. See also: “Se stato fosse raggio, e splendor divino non si guasterebbe, o partirebbe per le contrariatà: perché questo non li può accadere essendo immortale. Diremo adunque, che la bellezza sia uno splendore humano, il quale si oscura, & intenebrisse, al moto del tempo a fuggir de’ colori, e della leggiadria delle parti travagliate da’ suoi contrari.” (291)

456 “ingannando voi stesse vi date ad intendere, che la beltà sia un raggio divino, un essempio delle faccie angeliche” (291)

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tyranny. As indicated above, this is a prominent theme of Seicento discourses on women’s beauty, although it extends back to Socrates. In the Essortationi Marinella describes beauty as

“una forza vaga, & allettatrice, che sforza l’huomo ad impadronirsi di tanta bellezza” (289). She emphasises here not only the way in which the appeal of beauty is so great as to be tyrannical, but also the way in which it compels men to want to take ownership of that beauty.

Marinella’s focus is not how beauty tyrannises men with its appeal, but how it compels men to tyrannise objects of beauty. Although referring to inanimate objects here, given the focus in the exhortation on women’s beauty her argument implies the role of women’s beauty in making them subject to the tyranny of men – a notion introduced in the sonnets of the fifth exhortation as discussed above.457

This shift in perspective is reflected in Marinella’s invocation of the example of Helen.

Used by Passi, Loredano and others as an example of the damage and destruction to men and the world caused by women’s beauty, Marinella’s focus instead is on the experience of Helen herself. She cites the description in Ovid’s Metamorphoses of Helen weeping at the sight of her wrinkles in the mirror and wondering how she “should twice have been a lover’s prey.”458

Helen is the victim of the tyranny of beauty in this representation, not the cause of destruction.459 She cries for the loss of her beauty and for the enemy of time, having once

457 This reconceptualization of the tyranny of beauty as it effects women is alluded to in the final lines of the sonnet, where women are described as having been granted “le gemme ai loro lamenti / E con le gemme incatenati i cori.” (137)

458 That is, first by Theseus, then by Paris. Latin citation in text reads: “Flet, quoque, ut in Speculo rugas adspexit anilles / Tyndaridis, & secum cur sit bis rapta requirit.” Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV.232. Translation as cited in Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 199.

459 There is consistency here with La nobiltà where Marinella dismantles the notion that Helen was to blame for the ruin of Troy, arguing rather that Paris was the first to fall in love. This forms part of her refutation of the argument that woman is to blame for all of men’s ills. She writes: “Dicono alcuni huomini di poca levatura, che Elena fu la ruina di Troia, cosa in tutto falsa.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 117. Borsati has one of the interlocutors in his dialogue question the notion tha Helen caused the ruin of Troy, citing Marinella’s argument in La nobiltà: “Ne si può dir con verità, che Elena fusse la primiera cagione della guerra di Troia perché (come avertisce la Marinella) Paride fu il primo ad innamorarsi di

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been considered “divina Mulierum”. Marinella subverts once again the language of

Petrarchism as she describes the ravages of time on Helen’s forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, and that “gratiose maniere” she once possessed. She cried for “tutte quelle parti, che la rendevano amabile, e desiderabile mutate in horrida brutezza” (292). In her representation of

Helen Marinella reinterprets the implications of contemporary discourses on the ephemeral nature of beauty for women: all that makes women loveable and desirable is extinguished with time.

The subsequent vernacular citation describes how Helen “piange le passate per lei menzogne e fole.” (293)460 Marinella implores women not to put hope in beauty given its fleeting nature, before reiterating in emphatic terms that it is mortal rather than divine, and warning them not to listen to Petrarch and the others: “ne date orecchio al favoleggiar de’

Poeti, Adulatori, come il sopranominato Poeta, che dà l’epitetto di divino alle bellezze di

Maddonna Laura, & così gli altri Menzognieri scrittori, fugge ne ritorna” (294). Marinella’s denunciation of Petrarch and “gli altri Menzognieri scrittori” here points to the damage caused by the literary idealisation of women’s beauty.461 As her representation of Helen shows, it leads women to place false hope and value in their beauty, leaving them destitute when it is ravaged by time.

Marinella elaborates at a number of points in the exhortation on the way in which this idealisation also leads to the rejection and devaluation of women by society once their beauty fades. Comparing the beauty of women to flowers which “per poca fervenza di Sole languono,”

lei, onde le scrisse un’amorosa lettera per piegarla al suo amore.” Lucrezio Borsati, La vittoria delle donne, 341. Marinella is also lauded for her learning and writing on p. 192-93.

460 I was unable to locate the source for this citation.

461 As Westwater notes in relation to this passage, “Marinella recognizes the cult of female beauty as a cultural construct of men”, Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 117.

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Marinella is acerbic in her description of the maltreatment of old women who are no longer considered beautiful and therefore “sono de’ piedi premuti, e calpestrati”.462 Later she describes the way in which “Si trasforma quella venusta nell’horridezza di uno spinoso Diserto, e la beltà assomigliata a quella de gli Angeli, si cangia in brutezza d’Angello Infernale… onde resta mal vedutta, & abhorrita, come cosa che fastidia gli occhi, e gli animi” (296).

In this exhortation, Marinella exploits the intellectual currency of contemporary discourses which rejected Petrarchism and emphasised the transient nature of female beauty.

Yet countering their use by contemporary authors as a platform for misogyny, Marinella redirects these discourses towards exposing the negative implications for women of the social and cultural idealisation of female beauty. The tyranny of beauty in its power to lead men to vice is reframed as a tyranny for women – a form of subjugation which renders women at the mercy of the value systems of men. Helen is invoked not as an example of the destructive potential of women’s beauty, but as an example of the devaluing and social destitution that women experience when their beauty is lost. Through a traditionalist, moralistic exhortation to virtue over beauty – her authorial alibi – Marinella appropriates prevailing Seicento discourses on female beauty, subverting their misogynistic assumptions and reinterpreting them from the perspective of women.

Defending and rejecting beauty: Tarabotti versus Marinella

It is noteworthy that Tarabotti also rejects the notion of women’s beauty as a tyranny from which men suffer, although she is far more direct and explicit than Marinella. As in her

Antisatira cited above, in Semplicità ingannata Tarabotti maintains that women’s beauty is a divine reflection of inner spirituality and also challenges the way in which women are blamed

462 “fracidi questi già tanto desiderati, sono de’ piedi premuti, e calpestrati. Fuggita la bellezza, rimane la posseditrice di quella, come un misero Rosaio impoverito delle sue già ammirate rose, che solo rimane circondato di spine, fuggito da ogn’uno, e più da coloro, a cui erano più care.” (290)

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for the destruction caused by female beauty. For Tarabotti, it is rather men’s lack of sexual self-control that results in such destruction: “Chi è in colpa delle ruine cagionate dal merito della beltà feminile, se non solo la sozza, e irregolata libidine virile, ch’è sempre la causa principale d’ogni male.”463 Tarabotti’s approach here is antagonistic and accusatory and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was met with hostility. By contrast, Marinella’s approach in the

Essortationi was to align herself with the prevailing discourses on women’s beauty, and in so doing locate an authoritative, intellectually current ethos with which to counter masculinist representations of women’s beauty. Rather than explicitly challenging the misogyny as

Tarabotti does, Marinella appropriates and reinterprets its premise.

Marinella’s solution to the problem of the decay of beauty is an emphasis on women’s pursuit of virtue instead of corporeal beauty. In her penultimate address to women she exhorts them to focus on virtue which will be theirs forever:

Perciò, dilette mie, considerate, che’ l tempo, l’infirmità e gli travagli rapiscono, quanto

di buono, e di bello vi ha dato la natura. E pensate che non potete suplire al

mancamento, e diffetto delle perdute gratie, se non con l’acquisto della virtù, la qual

sempre rimanerà con voi. (299)

She invokes the story of the man who lost everything at sea and exhorted others to pursue

“que’ beni, che la rabbia di nemica fortuna rapire non possa, né esser Tiranneggiate da lei.”

(300)

In the final paragraphs of this exhortation and the Essortationi as a whole, Marinella returns to the subject of ornamentation, in this case the use of cosmetics, inviting once again comparative analysis with Tarabotti’s defence of women’s right to luxury and ornamentation

463 Arcangela Tarabotti, La Semplicità Ingannata (Leiden: Sambix, 1654), 174-75.

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in the Antisatira. The fact that Marinella chooses to end the Essortationi with this topic lends further weight to the possibility that the text was written as a rejoinder in the debate on female luxury. In these final paragraphs Marinella warns women: “Se a questi diffetti alcuna vorrà, o tenterà con l’arte riparare a tanto danno, si troverà ingannata; perché è cosa brutta, & biasimata” (300), before citing lines from Guarini’s Il Pastor fido which disparage women’s use of cosmetics to “occultar le mende / di natura e del tempo”.464 She advises women “alle mie essortationi porgete orecchie, che sarete sempre laudate, riverite, & honorate”465 and concludes with a citation from Ariosto who she says loves “la schietezza, e purità nella Donna”.

A note in the margin indicates that the lines are from Ariosto’s Satire, and the lines are as follows: “Non sappia far tua Donna bianco o rosso, / Ma sia del filo, e de la tela dotta.” (300)466

In the years leading up to the publication of Marinella’s Essortationi, Tarabotti was vocal and forthright in her defence of women’s right to augment their beauty and in her expression of resistance to contemporary discourses which framed women’s beauty as the cause of men’s downfall. She was also experiencing difficulty trying to publish her Semplicità ingannata (Tirannia paterna)467 and being subjected to scathing critique for her defence of women’s right to luxury in the Antisatira. Against this backdrop of hostility, I suggest that

464 The lines are from Guarini, Il Pastor Fido, Act I, Sc. V, 977-79. Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 204, n.422.

465 It is worth noting Marinella’s use of the phrase “porgete orecchie” here, which recalls language used in Buoninsegni’s and Tarabotti’s contributions to the female luxury debate. As a disclaimer against the misogyny of the work Buoninsegni cites Ariosto’s lines “Donne e voi che le donne havete in pregio / Per Dio non date a quest’ historia orecchia” (my emphasis), while Tarabotti inverts the second line of the citation: “Date vi prego a questa historia orecchia.” Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 8, 47.

466 Benedetti notes that the lines are from Ariosto’s fifth satire, V.230-31. Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 204, n.423.

467 See Westwater, "A Rediscovered Friendship."; "A Cloistered Nun Abroad." Westwater notes: “Tarabotti sought until the end of her life to put the work to press, but the text’s unabashedly polemic stance thwarted its publication” ibid., 284. See also Panizza, "Volume Editor's Introduction."

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Marinella’s emphatic rejection of beauty and ornamentation in this final exhortation can be understood as driven, at least in part, by an effort to distinguish herself from Tarabotti and the sort of forthright feminist polemic for which her contemporary was being censured.

But that is not to suggest that Marinella’s stance in this regard is feigned. As suggested in Section 4.1 above, she also advocates modesty in dress and ornamentation elsewhere in her oeuvre. Moreover, the argument Marinella makes for rejecting beauty and ornamentation should not be considered “antifeminist” or the antithesis to Tarabotti’s feminist position. Like

Laura Cereta, who noted how some women like to wear “pearls around their throats, as though they were captives proud of being owned by free men”,468 Marinella sees the tyranny of beauty for women and rejects it on these grounds.469 De Bellis identifies the conundrum of female beauty for Renaissance women that I suggest is central to Marinella’s rejection of beauty in this exhortation:

Vanity and luxury were often the only outward signs of women’s value, but at the

same time their cultivation posed a serious dilemma for women in the Renaissance. In

concentrating exclusively on caring for their own physical appearances, women were

in danger of enclosing themselves within the prison of appearance, and confirming and

almost ratifying society’s traditional vision of their role.470

468 Cereta, Collected Letters, 84.

469 Marinella’s and Cereta’s argument contrasts in this regard with the position expressed by Nicolosa Sanuti in her 1453 treatise in which she challenged sumptuary law, defended the female sex more broadly, and argued that women’s dress and ornamentation are the “heralds of a well-instructed mind”. Catherine Kovesi Killerby, "'Heralds of a Well-Instructed Mind': Nicolosa Sanuti's Defence of Women and Their Clothes," Renaissance Studies 13, no. 3 (1999). As Kovesi notes, Cereta lauded Sanuti for her learning but made clear her divergent views on the matter of women’s dress. Ibid., 271.

470 De Bellis, "Attacking Sumptuary Laws," 239.

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Marinella’s rejection of beauty and ornamentation is better understood as an alternative feminist perspective on the issue to Tarabotti’s. But I suggest this divergence is also amplified by Marinella, as part of her effort to cultivate a more authoritative and intellectually current authorial ethos through which to contest masculinist discourses on women’s beauty and luxury and offer feminist critique.

Finally, it is intriguing that Marinella would choose as the final words of her ostensibly traditionalist book of exhortations a citation from Ariosto’s Satire, and specifically the fifth satire in which Ariosto provides his cousin with advice on marriage which is pervaded by irony and witticisms.471 The advice expressed in the Essortationi’s final lines through this citation is that it is better for a woman to be “dotta” with cloth and thread than “sappia far tua Donna bianco o rosso”, or use cosmetics.

This final statement recalls contemporary works by Margherita Costa which end with similar exhortations. A poem in La chitarra (1638) for example ends with the author declaring that she will “lasciar la penna, abandonar il canto… hor l’arte mia sarà sol di filare”.472 These lines are followed by the words “Il Fine” despite the fact that as noted by Cox, a further 166 pages follow.473 In a similar vein, she concludes La chitarra with the lines: “già che di filar solo ci tocca / Lasciamo ogn’altro affare, prendiam la rocca.”474 In these instances, Costa is arguably

471 DeSa Wiggins describes the fifth satire as: “a piece of ironic advice to his cousin the bridegroom on the subject of marriage… a facetious treatise in miniature on the pitfalls of wedded bliss” Ludovico Ariosto, The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto : A Renaissance Autobiography, trans. Peter DeSa Wiggins (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), 117.

472 Margherita Costa, La Chitarra... Canzoniere Amoroso (Frankfurt: Daniel Wastch, 1638), 397. Cited in Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 225.

473 Women's Writing in Italy, 225.

474 Costa, La Chitarra, 518. Cited in Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 227. As Cox suggests, Costa “evolves a virtual subgenre of poems earnestly recommending women to abandon all other pursuits… to cleave only to their proper arts of needlework and especially spinning.” Ibid., 225.

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playing with irony. I suggest that there might be a similarly playful use of the discourses of domesticity in Marinella’s citation of Ariosto’s lines at the end of the Essortationi.

The final word “dotta” is used in Marinella’s lines to refer to the act of working with cloth and thread (“del filo, e de la tela dotta”). In contrast to the quintessentially feminine activity of spinning, needlework had distinctly intellectual connotations because it required ingenium.475 Indeed, needlework had come to be understood as a metaphor for the act of writing with pen and paper, particularly when pursued by women. Laura Cereta for example legitimised her writing by making it analogous to her needlework.476 In the preface to Censura dell’antisatira, Lodovico Sesti introduces his analysis of Tarabotti’s text by comparing her writing to needlework: “Vediamo un poco che filo ha tessuto questa tela.”477 It could be suggested that Marinella is here exploiting the analogy between needlework and writing in these final lines to construct a second layer of meaning; holding up the pursuit of learning and writing as a positive alternative for women to the pursuit of corporeal beauty. Certainly, I suggest that these final lines metaphorically encapsulate the ingenuity and intricacy of

Marinella’s textual engagement with the subject of women’s conduct across the preceding 300 pages of the Essortationi. She has cogently shown herself to be “del filo, e de la tela dotta”.

4.3 Conclusion

My analysis in this chapter has shown how Marinella’s traditionalist exhortations to modesty and virtue over vanity and corporeal beauty function as an authorial alibi. From the

475 On this distinction, and the association of the needle with the pen, see Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 134-71; R.Natasha Amendola, "Weaving Virtue: Laura Cereta as a New Penelope," in Virtue Ethics for Women 1250-1500, ed. Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), esp. 134-35.

476 See Diana Robin, "Autobiography," in Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, ed. Diana Robin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 21, 24; Amendola, "Weaving Virtue."

477 Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 114.

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relative protection and authority associated with this alibi, Marinella disrupts, parodies, and inverts the literary tradition of using the subject of women’s dress and beauty as a platform for misogyny. Although aligning with an ostensibly traditionalist, moralistic position, particularly in comparison to Tarabotti, Marinella appropriates this position to reinterpret adornment and beauty from a female perspective. Rejection of adornment and beauty is thus reframed as a means for women’s freedom from a masculinist value system rather than a way of keeping women chaste and countering the threat posed to men and morality by their beauty.

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Chapter 5: Prudence and authority

In the sixth chapter of the Essortationi, entitled simply Prudenza donnesca, Marinella makes a claim for women’s prudence. In contrast to the other chapters of the Essortationi, this chapter is framed as a statement regarding a virtue that pertains to women rather than a mode of conduct women are advised to follow. The subsequent exhortations (the sixth and seventh in the series) address respectively marital harmony and the raising of children.

As explained below, Aristotle defined prudence as the virtue that concerns the capacity for deliberation and the instruction of subordinates based on that deliberation.

According to the philosopher, prudence is the virtue that distinguishes the ruler from the ruled and it is a virtue that does not pertain to women. Analysis of Renaissance conduct and querelle des femmes literature in this Chapter shows how this notion of prudence was invoked to authorise women’s subordination to male authority within the home: the husband rules with prudence, the wife defers to the prudence, instruction, and authority of her husband.

My analysis in the first section of this Chapter reveals how Marinella undermines

Aristotle’s denial of prudence to the female sex, defending and simultaneously enacting women’s capacity for prudential deliberation. The second section shows how, having undermined the principle that prudence does not pertain to women, the subsequent exhortation interrogates the prescription for women’s submission to the law and example of her husband through an extended critique of the propensity for husbands to be imprudent and unworthy models. In the third section, I argue that the seventh exhortation enacts with authority Marinella’s capacity for prudence in matters domestic and political as she deliberates and instructs on the raising of children and princes. Together, my analysis in this Chapter shows how across these sections of the Essortationi Marinella subverts – in discourse and in

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practice – the pervasive notion of woman’s lack of prudence and deliberative capacity, and by extension her natural subordination to the rule, authority, and instruction of men.

Through close textual analysis in each section, I reveal how this subversion is embedded within an authorial alibi of traditionalism as Marinella emphasises women’s domestic prudence, exhorts marital harmony and the proper raising of children. As in Chapters

3 and 4, positioning theory informs my analysis of Marinella’s construction of an authorial alibi.478 Positioning theory recognises that individuals’ alignment with different subject positions in discourse carries cultural and political implications. It recognises that individuals have “investments” in taking up certain positions in discourse; that certain subject positions bring legitimacy or “payoffs”.479 The theory helps understand the “investments” that Marinella has in aligning with certain authorities and conservative discourses such as women’s domesticity and marital harmony. I argue that Marinella exploits the authorizing potential of these discourses to cultivate authorial ethos, an authoritative “location” from which to subvert the notion of women’s subordination to the prudence, authority, and instruction of men.480

5.1 Re-reading Aristotle with Prudenza donnesca

The statement on Prudenza donnesca occurs almost exactly at the midpoint of the text

(p. 147 out of 300 pages). From the outset Marinella situates her discussion of prudence within the Aristotelian tradition, opening with the following definition: “La prudenza è un habito intellettuale overo possedimento attivo, il quale si rivolge, & addopera intorno a quelle cose, che altrimenti possono evenire, diffinitione Aristotelica.” (147). A Latin citation in the margin

478 Davies and Harré, "Positioning."

479 Hollway, "Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity," 238.

480 Reynolds, "Ethos as Location"; Schmertz, "Constructing Essences".

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reiterates the source and definition, reinforcing Aristotle’s principle as the theoretical and conceptual point of departure for the ensuing discussion of prudence.481

Marinella’s alibi in Prudenza donnesca is a relatively conservative but by no means insignificant defence of women’s capacity for prudence which is tempered in its emphasis on domestic prudence. An emphasis on women’s domestic role is central to the foundations and tradition of economic thought, beginning with pseudo-Aristotle’s Oeconomica and Xenophon’s

Oeconomicus and reiterated by the humanists.482 Yet as shown below, Marinella makes her argument for women’s domestic prudence via a provocative process of systematically interrogating and subverting Aristotle’s logic and reasoning on the nature of prudence, and in particular, his preclusion of women from the virtue. When understood through the lens of the entrenched Renaissance tradition of denying women’s prudence in order to justify their subservience, Marinella’s undermining of Aristotle’s authority in this way constitutes a powerful subversion of the foundations of Renaissance discourses on women’s subordination to the prudence and authority of men.

Before analysis of Marinella’s Prudenza donnesca, it is necessary to explain Aristotle’s gendered conception of prudence and its invocation as the authority for discourses on gender hierarchy in Renaissance conduct and querelle des femmes literature.

481 The citation reads: “Arist. de prudentia. Prudentia est habitus cum ratione vera activus circa ea, quae possunt aliter se habere.” (147) The first part of the citation derives from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, VI.v where prudence is defined as a “truth-attaining rational quality, concerned with action”. Marinella also emphasises that prudence has to do with matters that are subject to change, which Aristotle states in Chapter v: “no one deliberates about things that cannot vary, nor about things not within his power to do.” English citation from: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 73 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926).

482 See for example Aristotle, Oeconomica, 1.1344a and Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.22-30. For analysis of Galeazzo Flavio Capella’s (pseudonym – real surname Capra) Della eccellenza et dignità della donna (1525) which draws on these classical sources to argue for women’s domestic prudence, whilst quashing the political implications of a claim for women’s capacity for prudence, see: Benson, The Invention of the Renaissance Woman, 66-70.

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Aristotle on prudence – the virtue of the ruler

Central to Aristotle’s conception of prudence (phronesis) is the notion that it distinguishes the ruler from the ruled. In the Politics Aristotle states: “Prudence is the only virtue peculiar to the ruler”.483 In the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics the philosopher describes in depth the nature of prudence, stating that a prudent man is he who is able to

“deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for himself” in general and put that deliberation towards “attaining some particular end of value” or a particular course of action.484 The capacity for deliberation is fundamental here. The virtue is shown in those, such as Pericles, who demonstrate the “faculty of discerning what things are good for themselves and for mankind”, rendering such individuals “an expert in Domestic Economy or Political

Science.”485

Action is also key to the Aristotelian notion of prudence. As Leah Bradshaw notes, for

Aristotle “prudence requires the opportunity to make decisions and issue commands, meaning that it can be exercised only in practical conduct and from a position of authority.”486 Prudence thus not only involves deliberation, but the capacity to act and direct others in response to that deliberation. It is via this understanding of prudence that Aristotle makes the argument

483 Aristotle, Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1277b. As cited in: Leah Bradshaw, "Political Rule, Prudence and the "Woman Question" in Aristotle," Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 24, no. 3 (1991): 558.

484 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.v. It is perhaps no coincidence that Marinella also discusses prudence in the sixth chapter of her Essortationi, given the degree to which Prudenza donnesca engages with Aristotelian philosophy on prudence as outlined in the Ethics.

485 Ibid. See also the following definition of prudence as: “concerned with the affairs of men, and with things that can be the object of deliberation. For we say that to deliberate well is the most characteristic function of the prudent man” VI.vii.

486 Bradshaw, "Political Rule, Prudence and the "Woman Question" in Aristotle," 561.

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that prudence separates the ruler from the ruled: “Only the ruler has prudence because only he has the authority to carry out his judgments in action.”487

In the Politics, Aristotle designates that the relationship between husband and wife parallels the relations of political rule. Unlike the political context however, which allows for some flexibility in the power balance between individuals, within the home the husband rules and the wife is ruled. As Bradshaw points out, this fixed hierarchy has implications for women’s capacity for prudence: without the potential to lead, women are precluded from cultivating the virtue of prudence.488 At the heart of Aristotle’s argument that nature predisposes men to leadership over women489 is the premise that women’s deliberative faculty lacks authority relative to men’s, and therefore they lack the capacity for prudence.490

487 Ibid., 563.

488 Ibid. Bradshaw writes: “Unlike citizens in a political association, who share the potential for prudence and the hope of taking their turn at rule, women in a political partnership with men have no potential or hope for prudence.”

489 “the male, unless constituted in some respect contrary to nature, is by nature more adept at leading than the female” (Pol. 1259a). As cited in: ibid.

490 The key passage here is as follows: “Almost all things rule and are ruled according to nature. But the kind of rule differs – the freeman rules over the slave after another manner from that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the child; although the parts of the soul are present in all of them, they are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature.” Pol. 1260a Jonathan Barnes and Melissa Lane (Introduction), eds., Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016). The reason why Aristotle deems women’s deliberative faculty lacking in authority is a not entirely clear. He seems to suggest that whilst women possess the capacity for deliberation, they lack the capacity to command and act on this deliberation, but there is significant debate in the scholarship around this issue. See: Marguerite Deslauriers, "Political Rule over Women in Politis I," in Aristotle's Politics: A Critical Guide, ed. Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 60. See also: Bradshaw, "Political Rule, Prudence and the "Woman Question" in Aristotle."; Karen Margrethe Nielsen, "The Constitution of the Soul: Aristotle on Lack of Deliberative Authority," Classical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (2015); Joseph Karbowski, "Aristotle on the Deliberative Abilities of Women," in Apeiron (2014); Irina Deretić, "Why Does a Woman’s Deliberative Faculty Have No Authority? Aristotle on the Political Role of Women," Filozofija i Društvo 26, no. 4 (2015); Deslauriers, "Political Rule over Women in Politis I." Despite the ambiguity in Aristotle’s position, as I explain below, Renaissance authors of conduct literature unproblematically adopted the view that women lacked prudence and authority in their deliberative faculty.

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Prudenza virile and women’s subordination in Renaissance discourses

The Aristotelian conception of prudence as deliberation on best modes of conduct and the instruction of subordinates based on that deliberation, is central to Renaissance conduct literature and discourses on household management.491 In texts with a patriarchal bias, the philosopher’s position regarding the husband’s role to deliberate and act, and the wife’s to defer to the husband’s prudence and commands is invoked to support arguments regarding the natural dominion of the husband over the wife. Assandri’s Della economica is a case in point. A discussion of the different types of prudence opens the work and Assandri indicates that his concern is for domestic prudence, which is framed as central to good household management: “L’Economica è prudenza di rendere, & conservare la Casa felice”.492 Prudence is however unequivocally represented by Assandri as the virtue that pertains to the husband. He echoes Aristotle in his statement that “la prudenza virtù propria di chi commanda.”493 In a chapter entitled: “Perché, & come la Moglie sia soggetta al marito” Assandri first aligns with an

Aristotelian (as opposed to Socratic /Platonic) position that men’s and women’s virtues differ.

He draws on biological differences between the sexes as evidence of men’s status as agents and women as passive.494 Assandri claims that likewise, women’s virtues – particularly intellectual – are different to men’s.495 This reasoning provides the basis for his argument in the subsequent chapter that women “non havendo in sé perfettamente cotal virtù intellettiva,

491 On the influence of Aristotle’s notions of prudence and gender hierarchy in the Renaissance see also Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman, esp 49-67.

492 “per la qual cosa diciamo, che l’Economica, la quale considera l’Huomo unito in Casa, & però Agente dell’attione domestica, soggiace al genere di Prudenza, & la Prudenza domestica medesima.” Assandri, Della economica, 17.

493 Ibid., 65.

494 “havendo le membra differenti, & a cotali facoltà appropriata, con le quali il maschio si congiunge come agente, & la femina v’interviene come paciente, & recipiente di quello, che dalla forma del maschio in essa può procedere, il simile diremo delle virtù;” ibid., 74.

495 Ibid.

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bisogna che ricevi la determinatione del mezzo dalla Prudenza dell’huomo”.496 He concludes therefore that the husband’s role is to command and the wife’s is to obey.497 In terms which closely recall Aristotle’s, Assandri effectively argues that women’s lack of capacity for this intellectual virtue is innate and justifies the domestic hierarchy which subordinates the woman to her husband.

Aristotle’s notion of women’s lack of an authoritative deliberative faculty and therefore prudence was also invoked implicitly or explicitly as rhetorical fodder in querelle des femmes texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to argue for women’s inferiority, faulty advice and natural subordination to men.498 In response to Tarabotti’s Antisatira,

Lodovico Sesti writes: “Non è perfidia dell’huomo togliervi il governo, è prudenza virile. Non siete nate per questo. Lo Scettro d’oro non è il caso per mani così tenere. Ne volete saper più d’Aristotile?” (my emphasis).499 Two earlier texts which also draw on this line of reasoning and are explicitly critiqued for doing so by Marinella in La nobiltà are Tasso’s Discorso della virtù

496 Ibid., 81. Prior to this statement Assandri defines prudence: “Il considerare poi cotali circostanze è officio proprio della prudenza virtù intellettiva, la quale si acquista oltre un certo discorso naturale fatto per lunga esperienza nelle attioni humane, dalla natura, dalla buona educatione, dalla lettione de molte historie, dalle dottrine dei Sapienti, dalle leggi, & da i costumi de i popoli, onde è quella che discerne la via del mezzo, & però fu convenevolmente chiamata occhio, & guida della virtù morale.” Ibid., 80-81.

497 “Così ponderate le due virtù virile, & donnesca conchiudiamo ch’il Marito rappresenta la parte ragionevole, in cui sta l’intelletto, che commanda, & la Moglie rappresenta la parte appetitiva in cui stanno gli affetti ch’ubidiscono.” Ibid., 86-87.

498 See also the misogynistic letter which accompanies Ferrante Pallavicino’s Il corriero svaligiato and warns that “I semi della prudenza infusi nelle humane menti, come diceva quel saggio, quando si inseriscono nella donna, sono investiti di una natura tanto corrotta, che producono frutti molto dissomiglianti dall’origine.” Pallavicino, Il corriero svaligiato, 29.

499 Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 132. Tarabotti is also challenged for her arguments against women’s subjection to men in Antonio Santacroce’s La Segretaria di Apollo (1653). In reference to the obliquely named “Michela Tarabotta” alongside “Vittoria Colonna, Lugrezia Boccalini and Angela Zacco Pappafava”, Santacroce suggests that despite having “considerate attentamente” their arguments, “contuttociò avendo altresì considerato la natura del vostro sesso, superbo, iracondo, petulante, e malizioso, e che le donne, eccettuate alcune poche, sono tutte senza cervello, abbiamo determinato di non innovare niuna cosa sopra di ciò”. Antonio Santacroce, La Secretaria di Apollo di Antonio Santacroce (Venice: Francesco Storti, 1654), 198-99. See also the discussion of men’s prudence and women’s subjection to it: ibid., 251-52. The text was first published in 1653.

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feminile, e donnesca and Passi’s Donneschi diffetti. Tasso argues that prudence, an intellectual virtue, does not suit women. Following Aristotle, he emphasises that prudence is a virtue that involves commanding others and that women need only enough to obey the prudence of her husband.500 Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti includes a chapter that warns against accepting advice from women because of their lack of prudence. Invoking a range of authorities, first and foremost amongst them Aristotle, he suggests that a woman’s advice is “instabile, invalido, fragile, & infermo.”501 Passi affirms the commonplace nature of Aristotle’s argument in the opening line: “Io non so da qual parte si muovano queste donne per voler dar consiglio a gli huomini, sapendosi communemente, Aristotile haver lasciato scritto nel secondo della Politica:

Il consiglio di Donna esser invalido.”502 For Passi moreover, women’s lack of prudence is innate and he links it to their also innate incapacity for wisdom: “non hanno in loro parte alcuna, con cui si possa generare la prudenza, e la sapienza.”503 The chapter concludes with a series of examples of the damage that has been done by following the advice of women.

500 “ma di quell’altre virtù, che nell’intellettual parte son poste, a pena par, che la donna debba participare, perciò che gli abiti dell’intelletto speculativo a lei non si convengono, e della prudenza e degli altri che sono nell’intelletto pratico, a pena participa, perciò che la prudenza, ch’è propriamente virtù, che comanda a gli altri, & è regola dell’altre virtù, nella donna è serva della prudenza dell’uomo, e non deve essere se non tanta, quanta basta per ubbidire alla prudenza virile” Tasso, Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca, 61. For Tasso, all virtues speculative and intellectual are banned for women. Virginia Cox has noted the way in which Tasso reframes the Aristotelian view of sex-based virtues, including prudence, that had been progressively challenged by pro-woman discourses during the earlier part of the sixteenth century. See: Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 169. In Il padre di famiglia Tasso argues similarly that the virtues pertaining to men and to women are different and prudence is the virtue that pertains to the husband. See Torquato Tasso, Tasso's Dialogues : A Selection with the Discourse on the Art of the Dialogue, ed. and trans. Carnes Lord and Dain A. Trafton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 84.

501 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 215.

502 Ibid.

503 Ibid., 217.

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La nobiltà arguing for women’s prudence

In La nobiltà Marinella explicitly challenges Tasso and Passi and their arguments about women’s lack of prudence. In characteristic fashion, the treatise responds to Passi by inverting his argument, including a chapter on “Delle Donne prudenti, & nel consigliare esperte Cap.

IIII”. Here, Marinella anchors her argument in an Aristotelian definition of prudence, citing

Nicomachean Ethics and writing that this most noble of virtues is the means by which

“l’huomo determina, & consiglia quel, ch’egli può operare intorno, per lo più, a cose malagevoli, e di momento, eleggendo il meglio.”504 In this chapter of La nobiltà Marinella underscores the link between the virtue of prudence and the capacity for advice-giving in her extensive list of exemplary women throughout history who have demonstrated their prudence through provision of expedient advice on matters military and political as well as domestic.

Later in La nobiltà, Marinella interrogates Tasso’s claim that the speculative virtues

“don’t suit women” and that women need only enough prudence to obey the prudence of men.505 She challenges his Aristotelian based argument that this is a consequence of women’s nature,506 suggesting rather that the argument is a reflection of men’s fear of women’s superiority and capacity for deliberation: “l’Huomo non lascia, che la Donna a tali

504 Marinella, La nobiltà, 64. See also the recent article by Deslauriers which analyses Marinella’s engagement with Aristotle and other literary predecessors in La nobiltà to show how she appropriates, adapts and develops the principle of bodily temperatures of the sexes to defend women’s capacity for political deliberation and rule. Deslauriers, "Marinella and Her Interlocutors."

505 She states that Tasso “fa una distintione delle virtù, una spetie delle quali, che all’intelletto s’appartiene nega alla Donna convenire, similmente afferma la prudenza non esser sua virtù, perché nella donna non dee esser se non tanta quanta basti per ubbidire alla prudenza dell’Huomo, cosa, che racconta etiandio Aristotile, si come anchora egli disse della fortezza donnesca.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 128.

506 “io non admetto questa sua suppositione, anzi essendo le donne della medesima spetie de gli huomini, & havendo una stessa anima, & le stesse potenze, come tutti i peripateci affermano, la qual cosa conobbe etiandio Senofonte nella sua Economica, ove egli dice. Virum fecit audaciorem muliere, memoriam verò, & intelligentiam dedit fratrem direi che tanto si conviene la speculatione alla Donna, quanto all’Huomo;” ibid., 129.

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contemplationi attenda, temendo ragionevolmente la superiorità di lei”.507 Marinella argues that based on Aristotle’s definition of a prudent person as one who “intorno alle cose venture sa consigliare, & elegere quello, ch’è meglio”, who can deny that there have been many

“donne ne governi militari, & pacifici prudentissime?” Referring to her earlier chapter in which she describes such women, she asks: “Leggasi il capo delle donne prudenti?”.508 In the passage that follows, Marinella calls into question the way in which prudence is defined as the virtue of the ruler and identifies the implications of women’s preclusion from such a virtue on gender hierarchy.509

Prudenza donnesca and undermining Aristotle in the Essortationi

As in La nobiltà, in her chapter of the Essortationi entitled Prudenza donnesca,

Marinella defends women’s capacity for the intellectual virtue of prudence, which is defined as the capacity to deliberate and determine best courses of action. Given the historical significance of this virtue as central to household management, Marinella’s inclusion of

Prudenza donnesca at the centre of the Essortationi is conventional. However, her explicit designation of prudence to the female sex is subversive. The title, Prudenza donnesca, highlights her inversion of “prudenza virile” - the virtue that pertains to the husband, as ruler of the household who deliberates and instructs on best conduct within the home for his subordinates, including the wife. Marinella reallocates this role within the household to the

507 Ibid.

508 Ibid.

509 “se colui è ornato di principal prudenza, che governa, & impera seguitererebbe che tutti i sudditi sarebbono prudenti di prudenza ubbediente, & sarrebbono secondo questa opinione tali a rispetto del Principe, quali sono le donne a rispetto del marito? Grande inconvenienza; percioché il somma della prudenza non si misura dal signoreggiare: ma dall’operare con maturità d’ingegno prevedendo, & procedendo.” Ibid., 130. Marinella also refutes Speroni’s claim that the husband naturally rules over the wife, who is like a slave. Drawing on Aristotle, Marinella suggests rather that the relationship between husband and wife is more equal, one in which at times the wife is ruled, at others she rules. Ibid., 126- 28.

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woman: a powerful challenge to entrenched discourses, as voiced by Tasso, Passi and Assandri, on women’s incapacity for such a virtue and by extension their natural subordination to the prudence and authority of the husband.

In contrast to La nobiltà, however, women’s prudence is circumscribed at different points in Prudenza donnesca to domestic or household prudence. After her initial definition of prudence, Marinella makes explicit the Aristotelian based distinction between three different types of prudence: “quella del presidente” or architectonic prudence, that pertaining to the self, and to the household.510 It is the latter - prudentia rei familiaris – that according to

Marinella “si appartiene alla donna” (147). She claims that she is “sicura” that women, “di quello, che si appartiene all’arte militare, o all’arte del Cocchiero non ne saprà nulla; ma sarà bene esperimentata nelle varietà delle operationi della casa, che sono infinite”.511 Marinella suggests that the woman shows her prudence, gained through repeated experiences within the home, and becomes “Regina di questa virtù” (152).512 The concluding statements of

Prudenza donnesca reinforce this delineation of the boundaries of women’s prudence to the domestic sphere through an ostensible qualification of La nobiltà. Marinella writes:

Io non dirò, che habbia in sé la prudenza di Semiramis nel giudicare da qual parte

battere si deve una Città difficilissima da essere Battuta; né di tante altre cose, che ho

510 As Benedetti notes, this distinction between different kinds of prudence appears to derive from Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, VI.viii where the philosopher notes that there is prudence that is concerned with the individual and that concerned with the city. Of the latter there are three categories: “one is called household management, another legislation, the third politics.” Architectonic prudence pertains to legislative prudence. As cited in: Exhortations to Women, 120, n. 97.

511 As Chapter 6 explains, this is a claim arguably contradicted by Marinella’s later discussion of examples of military prudence and by the letter to the reader of the Essortationi which emphasises the author’s adeptness for describing military matters in L’Enrico.

512 “Scoprirà la Donna la prudenza acquistata da esperienze iterate nella casa, e dal successo loro si farà Regina di questa virtù, e conoscerà, quali cose sieno giovevoli, quali dannose, quali utili, quali di perdita, e perniciose.” (152)

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commemorate nel mio libro intitolato la Nobiltà, & Eccelenza delle Donne; perché

appagate si ritroveremo, che prudenti sieno nelle operationi Donnesche e con seduli, e

cari modi reggano la famiglia, e la propria habitatione. (155)

As in the other two apparent retractions examined in Chapters 3 and 4, Marinella’s reference to La nobiltà positions the author in opposition to the more polemical and subversive arguments of the earlier treatise, in this case her defence of women’s prudence beyond the domestic in La nobiltà.

At least at a superficial level, a reading of this chapter as simply an argument for women’s domestic prudence and a conservative qualification of La nobiltà is tenable. Indeed, I suggest this is her authorial alibi. However, aspects of this apparent qualification and

Marinella’s mode of argumentation across Prudenza donnesca suggest that her emphasis on women’s domestic prudence can be better understood as part of a process of constructing authorial ethos as opposed to a genuine tempering of her ideological perspective.

As in the other instances in which La nobiltà is apparently retracted, Marinella underscores the ideological divergence in her authorial stance between the two texts, possibly to capitalise on the ethos of traditionalist discourses of womanhood, as well as the interest that an apparently conservative change in perspective from her famous feminist treatise arguably would have generated amongst contemporary readers. Yet despite her explicit qualification to the argument of La nobiltà, Marinella’s reference to Semiramis’ military prudence and to the “tante altre” examples of women’s prudence that the author has

“commemorate” in La nobiltà directs the reader to numerous examples which effectively undermine the validity of the qualification.513 In this regard, the reference to La nobiltà could

513 Benedetti notes parallels between Marinella’s reference to Semiramis and that of Christine de Pisan in the City of Ladies. Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 125, n.213. Price and Ristaino suggest that

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be read as an instance of preterition, a rhetorical technique to draw attention to historical examples of women’s capacity for prudence beyond the domestic while professing to negate it.514

Moreover, close analysis of Prudenza donnesca reveals how Marinella makes her relatively conservative argument for women’s domestic prudence through a provocative deconstruction and appropriation of Aristotle’s logic and reasoning on prudence.515 Marinella’s first explicit challenge to Aristotle occurs on the first page of Prudenza donnesca when she questions the validity of the philosopher’s negation of prudence to women, given his allocation of the governing of the home to the woman – an activity which according to the philosopher requires prudence. Marinella issues the following rhetorical question: “anchor che egli nieghi, che si ritrovi la prudenza nella Donna, e pur dice prudentia rei familiaris. Il governo della casa secondo il suo volere appartiene alla Donna, se sarà priva di prudenza, come la potrà reggere?”, accompanied by a Latin citation “prudentia non convenit nec mulieri, nec puero”

Marinella’s invocation of Semiramis: “undermines that same idea that women have prudence merely in domestic matters, since it highlights the possibility of women’s skills also in the military arts. Furthermore, by mentioning again her own work, Marinella suggests that women’s prudence extends also into the literary domain.” Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 146-47. Heller has noted the ambivalent nature of the exempla of Semiramis in early modern Venetian writing on the querelle des femmes – she could be invoked as both a positive and negative example of the nature of the female sex depending on the stance of the author in relation to women governing. See: Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 227-28.

514 Preterition “understood in a broad sense” is “any of a variety of techniques that articulate statements while at the same time denying their sufficiency or adequacy. One form would be denegation in the Freudian sense, denying a statement in such a way as to also affirm it … in every case, the preteritive discourse is double, carrying some implicit statement, some praise, that is put forth when a second discourse, a metadiscourse, affirms that it cannot be stated or is not adequate. Preterition does not state something; it works, by stating that it can’t state. Like irony, Plato’s preferred form of double discourse, it does not simply vanish, but leaves behind it a trace, the possible statement it refused” Richard Lockwood, The Reader's Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal (Geneve: Droz, 1996), 172; H. A. Kelly, "Occupatio as Negative Narration: A Mistake for "Occultatio/Praeteritio"," Modern Philology 74, no. 3 (1977).

515 On Marinella’s challenging of Aristotle here see also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 134-35.

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(147).516 The use of the phrase “secondo il suo volere” is noteworthy here for the attention it draws to Marinella’s use of Aristotle’s arguments to undermine his own logic. It also reduces

Aristotle’s authority to opinion – and therefore contestable. In this challenge Marinella uses premises derived from the philosopher’s work – that the governance of the household pertains to women, and that the governance of the household requires prudence – in order to demonstrate via syllogistic reasoning that contrary to Aristotle’s position, women possess prudence. The argument is reiterated on two further instances in Prudenza donnesca.517 In the second of these Marinella highlights the philosopher’s history of antagonism towards the female sex before suggesting that his own principles implicitly concede women’s capacity for prudence.518 Marinella also draws attention to the problematic and unjust implications for women of Aristotle’s premise in the Nicomachean Ethics that “true Virtue cannot exist without

Prudence… it is not possible to be good in the true sense without Prudence, nor to be prudent without Moral Virtue.”519 She writes: “il levar la prudenza alla Madre di famiglia è come levarle

516 Marinella attributes the citation to Aristotle’s Poetics although, as Benedetti notes, it does not appear to derive from this text. Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 120 n.98 A truncated version of the citation is reiterated later in the chapter (stopping at mulieri). It is noteworthy that the term “convenit” recalls Tasso’s statements in his Discorso where he writes: “gli habiti dell’intelletto speculative a lei non si convengono” Marinella invokes this same terminology in La nobiltà when she writes that Tasso negates that the intellectual virtue of prudence “alla Donna convenire”. La nobiltà, 128.

517 In the first of these Marinella writes: “Benché in alcun luoco neghi il filosofo la prudenza nella Donna; nondimeno con tacito modo in essa la conferma dicendo, che la Donna debbia reggere, ed imperare a quanto è nella casa. Da un solo deve esser tetta cioè dalla Donna. Unius est imperium, nam ab uno regitur omnis domus. Far non si può senza prudenza” (150-51) Her use of the verbs “reggere” and “imperare” allude to notions of rulership, authority and power which are implied by her reallocation of the virtue of prudence to the woman within the home. As Benedetti points out, the citation of Aristotle is a misreading of the Politics I.7 (1255b20) as the philosopher proceeds to argue that the head of the household is the man, not the woman (1259a38-1259b3). Whether this is creative misappropriation or inadvertent is difficult to determine. Exhortations to Women, 122-23, n. 206.

518 “Aristotile; benché al sesso feminile si mostri tall’hora ritroso, e poco amico; nondimeno concede alla Donna lo impero, il reggimento, & il Dominio di quanto è nel suo albergo… Onde anchor esso concede la prudenza famigliare alla Donna, facendola padrona di quanto l’huomo ha potuto con fatica acquistare” (154)

519 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI. xiii.

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ogni virtù; benché non habbia esperienza, non è cosa giusta” (148). This process of undermining Aristotle’s authority on women’s lack of prudence by using the philosopher’s own principles and logic continues throughout Prudenza donnesca.

The second line of syllogistic reasoning deployed by Marinella to argue for women’s prudence invokes Aristotle’s conclusion, based on Anaxagoras, that Nature gave hands to man because he is most prudent. Marinella suggests that based on this premise we must conclude that as women also have hands, they must like men be most prudent.520 She then invokes

Aristotle’s qualification of Anaxagoras’ position to suggest that rather than hands enabling prudence, man was given hands because he is the most prudent. This enables her to conclude that women’s hands are a sign of women’s innate and natural prudence. Marinella writes: “Se le mani sono segni della prudenza. La Donna etiandio ha le mani; perché negare a lei la prudenza? Se ha quelle parti che ha date la natura all’huomo perché è prudentissimo? E pur dice prudentia est mos non convenit mulieri. Perciò è prudentissima; poiché dalla natura ha ottenute le mani, come l’huomo” (150).521 The use of the term convenit here recalls Tasso’s argument and Marinella’s recapitulation of his position in La nobiltà, so it could be that Tasso is also being implicitly rebuked here.522 At the end of Prudenza donnesca, Marinella concludes her deconstruction of Aristotle’s denial of prudence to women by highlighting the flaw in his

520 She writes: “La Natura, la qual non abbonda nelle cose superflue, ne manca nelle necessarie ha dato le mani all’huomo, perché è prudentissimo. Potremo far la consequenza, e dire la Donna ha le mani. Adunque, è prudentissima, non che prudente.” (149)

521 The Latin citation also appears on the opening page of the chapter (see note 516 above), though it is apparently incorrectly attributed to Aristotle’s Poetics.

522 See note 516 above.

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statement about the prudence of spiders and bees. If hands are the sign of prudence, how can these animals be prudent without hands, whilst women who possess hands are not?523

The third syllogism of Prudenza donnesca concerns the link between prudence and experience. Marinella states in Latin: “Prudentia est ex experientia. Ex multis actibus iteratis fit experientia, ex multis experimentis fit prudentia.” (148).524 Initially, she uses the syllogism to suggest that women’s repeated experiences within the home enable them to acquire prudence.525 Subsequently, however, Marinella proceeds to explicitly challenge Aristotle’s argument that prudence results from experience. Emphasising the intellectual, over the experiential quality of prudence, she writes in the first person and then invokes the female sex as she switches to the rarely used first-person plural:

Io stimerei questa virtù essere una consideratione matura dello’ntelletto nostro di

quanto possa accadere, e di bene e di male. Questo facciamo senza esperienza. Fatto

questo giuditio a quello, che più si appartiene alle nostre bisogna rivolgiamo la mente.

Io direi a questo giuditio prudenza; anchorché senza esperienza operi. (152)

To support her argument, Marinella provides the specifically military examples of Alexander,

Hannibal, and Scipio who at a young age and with limited experience managed to defeat their enemies.526 These examples, she suggests “hanno fatto apparire falso il detto del filosofo.

523 “ne giusto sarebbe, se chiama prudentissimo il genere delli Ragni, prudentissime le Api, dicendo Animalia prudentia negasse poi la prudenza nella Donna, la quale come l’huomo, ha ottenute dalla natura le mani; accioché scoprir possa l’eccellenza dello intelletto.” (154-155)

524 The source for this reference is unknown.

525 She suggests: “Scoprirà la Donna la prudenza acquistata da esperienze iterate nella casa, e dal successo loro si farà Regina di questa virtù, e conoscerà, quali cose sieno giovevoli, quali dannose, quali utili, quali di perdita, e perniciose.” (152)

526 She writes: “Bastante era in questi valorosi il giuditio. Solo con questo superavano il potere de’ nemici, e con nuove stratageme & inventioni militari, senza esperienza, abbattevano delle contrarie squadre il quasi insuperabil potere, con maraviglia del mondo, e gloria di sé stessi, senza esperienza.” (153)

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Iuvenis expertus non est.” (153) Marinella concludes: “il Giuditio essere in molti una virtù naturale” and having revoked the dependence of prudence on experience is now able to claim that: “con ragione non potrà alcuno negare la prudenza nella Donna”.527 Marinella undermines

Aristotle’s link between prudence and experience and in doing so opens up the possibilities for prudence for women, suggesting that even without direct experience of different domains, women have an innate and natural capacity for intellectual deliberation and the exercise of prudence. Her subsequent challenge to the logic of Aristotle’s statement about the prudence of bees and spiders (discussed above), is followed by the affirmative statement that woman, like man, “ha ottenute dalla nature le mani; accioché scoprir possa l’eccellenza dello intelletto”

(155).

Marinella concludes Prudenza donnesca by describing, using the first-person plural, the way she along with the female sex “appagate si ritroveremo” in exercising their prudence within “la propria habitatione”. This statement belies the preceding text, which beyond merely defending women’s domestic prudence, cogently and authoritatively exposes the fallibility of the deliberative authority of Aristotle and his argument for women’s lack of prudence. In this regard, Prudenza donnesca represents a continuation of Marinella’s undermining of male authority on women’s lack of prudence in La nobiltà. In contrast to the more provocative and explicit claims in La nobiltà for women’s capacity for prudential deliberation and provision of advice in matters domestic and political however, this potentially polemical challenge in

527 She continues: “benché non habbia esperienza; perciò che un certo lume naturale è in loro in vece dell’iterati successi, che mostra a quelle, ciò che seguire, ciò che fuggir bisogna, e questo sarà giuditio retto.” (154)

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Prudenza donnesca is embedded within an ostensibly tempered argument for women’s domestic prudence – her authorial alibi.528

Moreover, as Marinella undermines the deliberative authority of Aristotle’s denial of women’s prudence, she simultaneously appropriates his syllogistic reasoning to assert her own authority as she defends women’s prudence. In so doing, Marinella effectively subverts in practice the premise that underpins dominant Renaissance discourses on women’s subordination to the prudence and authority of men. Her use of syllogistic reasoning in this regard is particularly significant, as Aristotle considered it fundamental to deliberation, and the premise that women’s deliberative faculty lacks authority forms the basis for Aristotle’s argument for women’s subordination to men.529 Marinella enacts a challenge to this premise by showing the authority of her own deliberative faculty over Aristotle’s, demonstrating the fallibility of the entrenched Aristotelian doctrine of gender hierarchy by subverting its premise.

It is noteworthy in this regard that Marinella’s Prudenza donnesca is directly foreshadowed by the concluding digression of the fifth exhortation on dress and modesty which, as shown in

528 Marinella’s defense of women’s prudence participates in a long-standing tradition, identified by Karen Green as beginning with Christine de Pisan and her City of Ladies, of women who understood the importance of defending women’s capacity for prudence as a way of challenging women’s preclusion from positions of power and authority. In an interesting parallel with Marinella’s methodology here, Karen Green has noted how, in Chapter 43 of the first book of the City of Ladies, Christine similarly emphasises women’s domestic prudence, before putting forward more controversial claims about women’s prudence in government. Karen Green, "Phronesis Feminised: Prudence from Christine de Pizan to Elizabeth I," in Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1800, ed. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2007), 25-27, 35.

529 Prudence Allen summarises Aristotle’s position on the differences between the epistemological virtues of men and women as follows: “the proper epistemological virtue of a woman is true opinion, while the proper epistemological virtue of a man is practical wisdom... The science of practical wisdom involves the use of the deliberative faculty, in syllogistic reasoning, to grasp why something is true. A wise man not only grasps why something is true, but can explain the causes of a thing. True opinion simply grasps that something is true, but does not know why. True opinion, which is attributed to women, is therefore unstable and it lends the person who has it to be more prone to error.” Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500, Part 1 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 103.

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Chapter 4, argues that women should be referred to as “donna” rather than “dama” in order to convey their superiority and dominion as opposed to their subjugation.

Finally, as a stand-alone statement at the centre of the Essortationi, Prudenza donnesca has implications for the work as a whole. Prudenza donnesca counters arguments such as those of Passi that women’s lack of prudence renders their advice “instabile, invalido, fragile, & infermo”. In its defence of women’s prudence, it authorises and legitimises the author’s prudential deliberation and instruction on matters of conduct across the Essortationi, and not only those pertaining to women and the home. She deliberates and instructs on speech and silence (fourth exhortation), the pursuit of learning and wisdom (second exhortation), the subject of prudence itself, and perhaps most remarkably, the instruction of princes (end of the seventh exhortation, analysed in Section 5.3 of this Chapter). Marinella’s argument for Prudenza donnesca also prefigures her unsettling of male authority and enactment of prudential deliberation in the subsequent exhortation on marriage. As the following section explains, having made a claim for women’s prudence, in this exhortation

Marinella interrogates the notion of woman’s absolute subordination to the law and example of her husband.

5.2 Interrogating the authorities on marital harmony

The sixth exhortation concerns relations between husbands and wives and is entitled:

“Si essorta il marito e la moglie a vivere con unanimità” (156). As the title suggests, the overarching pretext is an exhortation to marital harmony. Underpinning this traditionalist message are two commonplace precepts regarding marriage derived from Aristotle and

Hesiod: that a virgin is preferable to a widow for marriage as she will be more pliable and amenable to shaping in accordance with the husband’s preferences, and that a wife should

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consider and imitate her husband’s ways as the laws of her life.530 Interwoven throughout these traditionalist discourses, however, is an extended and often acerbic critique of the propensity for many husbands to be dissolute and improper models for conduct. Despite

Marinella’s statements of deference to the authorities and their precepts at the beginning of the exhortation, this critique implicitly and sometimes explicitly calls into question their validity: a methodology of blame and critique through apparent praise. In this section, I argue that Marinella’s exhortation to marital harmony and posture of deference to authority functions as an authorial alibi; a socio-culturally sanctioned pretext for the author to expose the dissolute behaviour of some husbands, and the fallibility and limitations of these authorities and their precepts on women’s submission to the law and example of their husbands.531

In my analysis of this sixth exhortation, I first show the influence of Hesiod’s and

Aristotle’s precepts on contemporary conduct and querelle des femmes literature before showing how Marinella invokes and then interrogates their validity.

530 On sixteenth-century discussions on the question of ‘prender moglie’ see: Daniela Frigo, "Dal caos all'ordine: sulla questione del 'prender moglie' nella trattatistica del sedicesimo secolo," in Nel cerchio della luna: figure di donna in alcuni testi del XVI secolo, ed. Marina Zancan (Venice: Marsilio, 1983).

531 It is important to emphasise that it is not the institution of marriage that is under critical scrutiny here. Marinella celebrates and affirms the sanctity of marriage across her oeuvre. In her chapter devoted to systematically rebutting Ercole Tasso’s criticisms of marriage and the evil caused by women to their husbands (Dello ammogliarsi) Marinella writes: “credo che tutto il mondo si legghi col dolce legame del matrimonio.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 123. On Marinella’s Vita di Maria Vergine, Haskins notes that “the theme of matrimony and its natural concomitant, the family, exemplified in the Holy Family, is a leit-motif throughout the Life, as part of the Church’s post-Tridentine stress on the sacrament and on family ideology.” Haskins, Who Is Mary?: Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary, 124. In this exhortation, Marinella is critiquing the propensity for improper behaviour on the part of husbands, and by extension, questioning the entrenched notion of women’s absolute subordinate to the law and example of their husband.

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The authorities on shaping wives for harmonious marriages

Hesiod’s and Aristotle’s commonplaces on marriage are ubiquitous in Renaissance conduct literature. In his dialogue Il padre di famiglia Tasso invokes Hesiod’s authority as he extolls the benefits of electing a young wife over an old one as she will more readily receive

“tutte le forme de’ costumi, che a’ marito piacerà d’imprimerle”532 and it will be much easier for the husband to exercise “quella superiorità, che della natura all’huomo è stata concessa”.533 In his Ammaestramenti Dolce emphasises the importance of a wife following her husband’s ways as a God given law to ensure harmony within the home.534 Assandri in his Della economica similarly lauds the wife who takes on her husband’s ways as the law for her own life, reflecting his image like a mirror. He suggests the benefits of virgins over widows,

“essendo quella quasi tenera verga, che facilmente si piega a quella parte alla quale il Marito inclina.”535 Passi invokes Hesiod and Aristotle to argue these positions at length in his treatise

532 Tasso writes: “il marito dee procurer d’haverla anzi giovinetta che attempata, non solo perché in quell’età giovenile la donna è più atta a generare, ma anco perché, secondo il testimonio d’Hesiodo, può meglio ricevere, e ritener tutte le forme de’ costumi, ch’ al marito piacerà d’imprimerle…” Tasso, Il padre di famiglia, 35.

533 Ibid.

534 “Dee veramente istimare, che i costumi del marito le siano legge della sua vita: la qual legge l’è imposta da Dio per il legame, & congiungimento del matrimonio.” Dolce, De gli ammaestramenti, 102.

535 Assandri writes, “ottima Moglie essere colei, che riconoscendo il saggio Marito per suo Principe naturale, tiene per legge i costumi suoi, & come specchio rappresenta la viva imagine di lui; da che s’arguisce doversi nell’ellettione della Donna anteporre la Vergine alla Vedova, essendo quella quasi tenera verga, che facilmente si piega a quella parte alla quale il Marito inclina, dove questa avezza ai costumi del primo Marito difficilmente s’accommoda ai costumi del secondo.” Assandri, Della economica, 107.

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on marriage Dello stato maritale.536 Towards the end of the work he writes: “Finalmente la donna per esser amata dal marito, deve seguire i costumi di lui, e lasciar tutti gl’altri.”537

These are notions strongly opposed by Marinella in La nobiltà, in which she highlights the propensity for highly improper conduct by husbands.538 Her explicit refutations of the misogyny of Ercole Tasso and Sperone Speroni focus on systematically dismantling their reasoning on the pitfalls of marriage and improper conduct by wives. On Ercole Tasso’s statements in Dello ammogliarsi (1595) about the evil inflicted upon husbands by their wives,

Marinella writes: “a giudicio mio o non sono veri, o di poco momento, presupponendo egli molte cose per vere, che però tali non sono”.539 She then defends women’s right to complain

“dello’ndiscreto e del poco Savio marito”, because there are many “che nell’hostiere, in dishonestà, in giuochi, & in altre vanità consumano tutto l’havere.” 540 She addresses similar vices in husbands to those described in the Essortationi, including the wasting of money on gambling, excessive drinking, and physical abuse of their “honeste, e prudenti Donne”.541

536 See for example “altri volsero, che l’huomo maritandosi debba pigliare per sua consorte più presto una vergine, che un’altra donna, o vedova. Perché non sì bene senza pericolo si strapianta l’albero già indurito, come si fa il tenero ramuscello; e più facilmente avezzarà la giovenetta a suoi costumi, che non farà la vedova, già alquanto piegata, & indurita nelli costumi d’altri… Hesiodo suase anc’ egli all’huomo il pigliare per sua moglie la vergine, alla qual cosa vi consenti anco Aristotele nel secondo libro dell’Economica, al capitol quarto.” Passi, Dello stato maritale, 80.

537 Ibid., 174-75.

538 See especially Marinella, La nobiltà, 124-25.

539 Ibid., 124.

540 Ibid.

541 Ibid., 124. She also attacks Sperone Speroni for the claim made in his Dialogo della dignità delle donne (1542) that women were born to serve man, a position that Speroni voices through a female interlocutor. Marinella refutes Speroni by invoking Aristotle to claim that woman is man’s companion, not his servant. After undermining Speroni’s position, she speculates that given that his opinion has no solid basis in fact, perhaps he was “accostato a questo parere, mosso dalla insolenza tirannesca di molti Huomini, i quali si fanno servire non solo dalla moglie; ma dalla madre, e dalle sorelle con tanta ubbidienza, e con tanto timore, che con minore servono le fanti vili, & le Schiave i lor Signori, & padroni.” Ibid., 128.

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Marinella’s alignment with Aristotle and Hesiod in the opening pages of the sixth exhortation of the Essortationi thus reads at least at first glance as a shift in her ideological stance. In the analysis that follows however, I show how Marinella’s cultivation of a traditionalist subject position through invocation of discourses of deference to literary authorities, marital harmony, and the honest wife functions as an alibi for subversion.

Celebrating marriage and interrogating male authority in the Essortationi

Marinella’s sixth exhortation opens with emphatic statements declaring the importance of following the advice of wise men. She suggests that for this reason she will continue her exhortations under the escort of “huomini sapienti.”542 These statements arguably read as ironic in relation to the preceding Prudenza donnesca given Marinella’s comprehensive deconstruction of Aristotle’s authority. It is within this context of deferring to the authorities that Marinella introduces Hesiod’s statement recommending that a man choose a maiden as his wife, so that she may diligently learn his ways: Virginem habeto, ut tuos sedula discat mores. The Latin citation of the precept is repeated a total of nine times throughout the exhortation, although as my analysis shows, its validity is progressively undermined with each iteration. A Latin citation in the margin reiterates that: “To dissent from learned men is evidence of ignorance”543 and Marinella announces with confidence that “Se a questa autorità affiserai la mente, son sicura, che ubedendo a questi, della felicità ti farai partecipe.” (159 - my emphasis).

542 Marinella writes, “perché è cosa buona appoggiarsi al parere d’huomini sapienti, per non errare, credo, che sarà cosa grata ad ogn’uno, che con la scorta loro seguitiamo le nostre Essortationi: perché il non volere udire la voce de’ scientiati, e dotti mostra grande stolidezza, & ignoranza.” (157)

543 “Dissentire a viris sapientibus esset inscitiae argumentum” (158). The English Translation is Benedetti’s: Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 127, n.216.

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Marinella subsequently draws on traditionalist discourses, which like Assandri’s

“tenera verga” metaphor cited above, liken the virgin to an inert, pliable, and as yet untarnished entity to be moulded and formed by her husband. She is “come il candor di un panno, che riceve tutti li colori” (159), a young plant able to be shaped and pruned according to the experienced and knowledgeable gardener’s desires. She is “quasi un altro Ego,” an extension of her husband’s self, and requires careful modelling as “non è dissimile una fanciulla dalla materia prima, la quale è preparata a ricevere in sé tutte le forme” (162). This opening of the exhortation reads like a closed case. The literary authorities are wise and learned and “fixing our minds” to their advice will lead to happiness.544 Virgins are preferable for marriage as they are like blank matter - easily shaped in the likeness of their husbands, ensuring a harmonious and agreeable union. The rest of the exhortation however, problematizes rather than supports these affirmations.

First, Marinella considers the implications of this sort of advice when applied to the real-world complexity of marriage and human nature, particularly the propensity for many husbands to be flawed models. Addressing the husband, she writes: “Se ti haverai conosciuto buono, venirai in conoscimento, ch’anchor essa buona sarà, se vitioso, vitiosa, referirà la tua formal imagine.” (165) In contrast to the moralistic tone of the opening pages, Marinella’s tone is acerbic in her extended meditation on the different ways men show themselves to be improper models for conduct. She describes how men turn themselves into “Animali brutti, che non forse tali da Ovidio nelle sue Methamorfosi mostrati sono” (165),545 and invokes a

544 See also for example statements such as the following: “Sono di tanto sapere Aristot. Essiodo. Plato. Homero. Francesco Patritio, & altri, delli quali addurrò il parere, che non credo, si ritrovi alcuno, che non porga volentieri orecchio al consiglio loro particolarmente in cosa di tanta importanza.” (161)

545 Addressing the husband directly she writes: “Se ti vedrai pieno di mille imperfettioni, incontinente, ingiusto, dedito alla gola, a giuochi, & ad altre malvagità, e senza addoprare li venenosi succhi della Dea Circe saprai da te stesso trasformarti in varie sembianze di Animali brutti, che non forse tali da Ovidio nelle sue Methamorforsi mostrati sono, tempera la sua vita…” (165)

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series of negative exemplars of dissolute men, including Sardanapalus, Lucullus, Bacchus,

Eurixeno, Elagabalus. Addressing the husband directly again she tells him: “sei bruttato di troppa brutta pece” and reassures him with caustic sarcasm that his wife will follow his dissolute ways.546 Marinella advises men to follow the Delphic command, “know thyself,” in order to correct their ways.

Returning to the literary authorities following this exposition, Marinella’s ambiguous phrasing shows her defending Hesiod as she simultaneously highlights the limitations of his precept and the problematic assumptions that underpin it. Marinella writes, “Io credere non voglio, che Essiodo volesse, che una Donna buona si volgesse, e mutasse in cattiva, e vana, e cangiasse la natura, gentile, in biasimevole… ma ch’egli sopponessi, che l’huomo fosse continente, giusto” (171 – my emphasis). Marinella’s use of the verb “sopponessi” here implicitly underscores the notion that the precept rests on a faulty supposition rather than an irrefutable truth. Her use of the formulation “io credere non voglio” enables her to highlight the problematic implications of Hesiod’s precept from a subject position of deference: a methodology of blame through apparent praise. The formulation is repeated in a subsequent qualification to Aristotle and Hesiod’s argument that a woman should see her husband’s ways as the law for her life.547

The authorities’ advice is shown to be predicated on the assumption, just disproved by

Marinella, that men will be worthy models to imitate. We are beginning to suspect that

546 “Vivi sicuro, e certo, che imparerà li tuoi costumi” (167)

547 She writes: “Vuole il filosofo, che la Donna di seno consideri li costumi del marito, & quelli imitare, perché sono leggi alla sua vita: ma creder non voglio, che questi Sapienti volessero, che seguitasse li costumi bestiali, e incontinenti accioché fossero unanimi, ma creder dobbiamo, che dicessero de’ buoni, continenti, e laudabili, e sopponer come anchora dissi, che una giovinetta, laqual venuta fuori della casa paterna, semplice, e senza esperienza ad altro non può haver rivolto la mente, se non alli costumi dell’huomo, e quasi ferro all’inviti della Calamita, muovere se stessa, & le maniere novella far leggi della sua vita” (172 – my emphasis).

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“fixing” our minds on Hesiod’s and Aristotle’s advice might not in reality lead to harmony and happiness in marriage. Rather than corroborating their authority, Marinella’s protracted social critique draws attention to its limitations.548 Her reiteration of Hesiod’s Latin words alongside such critique invites the reader to reconsider its validity without the author explicitly repudiating it.549 On the fate of a woman in a house that has fallen into disgrace, Marinella addresses the husband, stating that his wife, “la quale ubidirà tall’hora ad Essiodo, & imiterà li tuoi costumi, e venirà per necessità dissoluta, incontinente, e con poca honesta.” (175) In this scenario, following Hesiod’s advice was clearly not a good option.

Next, Marinella addresses Aristotle’s precept that it is ordained by God and necessity for women to learn their husband’s ways, for they have no alternative. Marinella writes,

“ascolta le parole del filosofo Mores viri esse legem suae vitae, impositam sibi a deo. Dal Cielo

è ordinato il suo vivere; onde Dio, & la necessità la spingono ad aprendere li suoi costumi, o buoni, o rei ubedendo a questi filosofi, non possono le Donne, se non alla sua vita adderire.”

(186-7). Yet this is immediately followed by Marinella’s qualification: “Ma però molte sono state, & sono, che hanno negate ubidire ad Esiodo, & anco ad Aristotile” (187). These women according to Marinella are wise, mature, and fair women who meet vain, dissolute, and vicious men. Contrary to Hesiod’s and Aristotle’s advice, and to Aristotle’s suggestion of the incapacity of women to resist imitating their husband’s ways, these women do not follow the flawed model of their husbands. Moreover, many of these husbands end up doing the opposite “di quanto hanno detto questi filosofi, e prudentemente.” (187) They follow the impeccable

548 She also criticises husbands for wasting money through partying and gambling, and then uses Hesiod and Aristotle’s premise to suggest that if women are dissolute it is the husband’s fault. (174)

549 “quasi presi da un vergognoso letargo, non pensano, quanto vituperio, e danno portino alla Donna, alla casa, alli figliuoli col dishonesto modo di vivere. Onde a così vituperevole essempio non parra di maraviglia, se alcuna, poca curante del proprio decoro, & honore riceve in sé le bruttezze, e l’ignominie dell’huomo. Et discat suos sedula mores.” (173-74)

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example of their “savia e prudente Donna” rather than the other way around: sometimes contradicting the advice of these wise philosophers is the more prudent approach.

Marinella’s description of these wise and prudent women who rejected the example of their husbands and the advice of the philosophers, and instead served as the model for their husband’s conduct, continues her project initiated in Prudenza donnesca of defending women’s capacity for prudential deliberation. Across these two sections of the Essortationi

Marinella suggests that women possess the prudence to deliberate on best modes of conduct for themselves, but also that they possess the prudence to evaluate and deliberate on the advice of others – including husbands and literary authorities such as Hesiod and Aristotle.

Alongside this critique, Marinella continues to cultivate her alibi with traditionalist discourses on the importance of marital harmony550 and the wife’s modesty. A particularly noteworthy case of the latter occurs after one of the author’s more pointed challenges to

Hesiod and Aristotle (187). She writes that “La donna prudente, conoscendo quanto abhorrite, e fuggite sono le femine inhoneste, si guarderà da ogni picciol segno, da ogni picciolo neo, che possa dare di essa cattivo inditio” (190). This is followed by an exhortation to women to exercise modesty in their dress and ornamentation, in terms which recall the fifth exhortation.

Pursuit of inner beauty is advocated over external adornment and Marinella suggests the dangers for women of behaving in a way which might arouse suspicion. She recommends:

“deve la savia, e prudente Donna guardare di non dar di sé pur una mimina ombra di sospetto, essendo l’honestà, e la pudicitia virtù sua” (193).

550 “Però dovendosi unire questi due individui, sarà cosa di consideratione il pensarvi prima maturamente; accioché con felice modo possino guidar questa vita con pace, quietezza d’animo, e giocondià di mente, gloria del Cielo, laude della Casa; honor di se stessi, & finalmente della Città.” (157) And later: “Se sarà l’uno, e l’altra buoni, pudici, giusti, e fedeli con animo concorde reggeranno, & accresceranno il loro albergo con pace, è felicità… Laude Homero, & Aristotile la pace, e la Concordia dell’huomo, e della Donna circa l’honestà delle attioni humane” (178).

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The suspicion that Hesiod’s and Aristotle’s authority is being implicitly undermined is heightened towards the end of the exhortation. Marinella reiterates again that surely Aristotle and Hesiod were referring to good men,

non di alcuni inhonesti, vani, e vitiosi, indegni, che la memoria, ne serba memoria, li

quali non arrossano nudrire vicino alla Casa, e tall’hora (o vergogna grande) anco nella

propria casa le infami meretrici, distruggendo, e dilacerando l’argento, e l’oro in

vestire la scelerate, & sontuosamente spesarla, quando la moglie in povere vesti, &

cibi vili, e di poco prezzo viene nudrita, & insieme li figliuoli, e l’altra famiglia. (198-99)

In this passage, Marinella’s qualification of the authorities is overshadowed by embittered and protracted social critique. Marinella then turns to address Hesiod and Aristotle directly and, with more than a hint of accusation, asks them to reconsider their advice given the husband’s propensity to be unworthy models for conduct:

O Esiodo, o Aristotile, che essempio è questo? Deve Discere suos mores? Dittimi, o

huomini voi, che volete, che li suoi costumi sien leggi della vita della Donna, imposte

da Dio. Come deve imparare quella vita? E tallhora è tanto scarso il vivere nella propria

casa, che la necessità ha tratto alcuna ricca, dovitiosa, e gentile a pigliar li suoi costumi

indegni, & discere suos sedula mores. (199)

In an even more accusatory tone shortly after, Marinella turns to the authorities again:

molti sono, o sapiente Aristotile, o dotto Essiodo, di così brutti fregi ornati, io non so,

con qual ragione desideri, che la Donna discat suos mores. Essendo tallhora brutto, &

ignominioso l’essempio; ma ben intendo, che tu non ragionavi di tali; ma di quelli, che

fosser moderati, giusti, & arricchiti di nobili, e santi costumi (200).

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In the first sentence Marinella’s address to “sapiente Aristotile” and “dotto Essiodo” is arguably ironic and the interrogation that follows borders on blatant critique, but she subsequently returns again to defending the authorities: “ma ben intendo, che tu non ragionavi di tali”. These lines encapsulate the way in which Marinella interrogates the validity of these authorities and their precepts through a posture of praise and deference.

Ostensibly the text reads as a traditionalist exhortation to marital harmony and a deferential qualification to Hesiod’s and Aristotle’s precepts on marriage – this is her authorial alibi. As she writes towards the end: “Adunque il pigliare li costumi dell’huomo non è sempre laudabile; ma bene, e spesso di biasimo, e di vituperio.” (199) But not to be overlooked is the extent to which Marinella has cogently exposed the masculinist and flawed assumptions that underpin the prescriptions: namely that women are passive entities that require shaping by their husbands and that men will function as positive models for their wives to imitate.

Marinella suggests rather that women can resist negative influences and even be the positive model for their husbands, thus restoring to the wife the agency that Hesiod’s and Aristotle’s precepts negate. From the relative protection of a posture of deferential qualification

Marinella effectively subverts the authority of Hesiod and Aristotle and invites the reader to question the validity of their principles by applying them to the real-world complexity of marriage and human conduct.

The last paragraph of the exhortation offers a final cogent example of Marinella’s methodology of critique or blame through apparent praise. She starts with a traditionalist exhortation to husbands to ensure that as heads of their households, they set the example and the law for women and others.551 This apparent conclusion is ultimately and finally undercut by

551 “Io desidero, che gli huomini si aveggano da questi miei pochi scritti, che a loro, come capi, & principali nelle Case, si appartiene dar essempio, e norma del ben vivere alle Donne, & agli altri; tanto più, che pensano, che in essi Dio, cioè la prima Causa habbia sparso in maggior quantità l’intelletto, che

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a statement which unsettles the foundations of Aristotle’s and Hesiod’s positions. Marinella suggests that this rule applies all the more because God has allocated greater intellect to men.

Yet this statement is subsequently offset by the following statement: “se però possiamo dar questo nome di quantità all’intelletto non caggiendo sotto il predicamento della quantità.”

(201-202) By undermining the principle that underpins the notion of women’s subordination to the husband’s rule and example within the home – namely men’s superior intellect – Marinella effectively undermines the foundations of domestic gender hierarchy.552

5.3 Enacting prudential deliberation and authority – raising children and princes

In the subsequent exhortation, Marinella presents a compelling demonstration of her capacity for prudential deliberation, authority, and instruction on domestic matters as she conducts an erudite, philosophically grounded enquiry into the subject of raising children. The overarching pretext is an exhortation to parents to “allevare, & ammaestrare li figliuoli con costumi ottimi, tra le discipline, e le scienze; accioché sieno di gloria, e di laude a sé stessi, alla casa, alla Patria, ch’è la felicità.” (203) Marinella starts by offering a summary of the progress of her domestic economy thus far. She has established the household, “scacciati li vitij,” made the man a “degno essempio alla Donna” and made the woman “dominatrice della casa”. Her language here alludes back to her critique in the previous exhortation of men’s propensity to be unworthy examples for their wives and to her subversion of the domestic hierarchy that subordinates women to their husbands. Rather, Marinella has made woman “dominatrice” of the home.

nelle Donne, se però possiamo dar questo nome di quantità all’intelletto non caggiendo sotto il predicamento della quantità.” (201-202)

552 Price and Ristaino note the way in which this final message “succeeds in undermining the main foundation of the exhortation: if we cannot determine levels of human intelligence, we cannot say that either man or woman is more intelligent than the other. Therefore, even the premise that man should be the head and model for women no longer stands on firm ground.” Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 149. See also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 126-27.

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As a natural progression she now turns to advising how this partnership might

“allevare, nudrire, & ammaestrare, & erudire li figliuoli con virtù, giustitia, & amore.” (203).

She starts by drawing on Plato to underscore the difficulties of raising children and the importance of parents exercising diligence and ensuring they themselves are worthy models for imitation. In a passage that closely recalls Tasso’s Il padre di famiglia, Marinella advocates mother’s milk for babies, maturity in the nannie, and recommends that children be trained to tolerate the cold.553 This is followed by an erudite analysis of authorities and commonplace thought on best practices for raising and training children, including modes of exercise, the prohibition of wine, education on the Christian faith, and the benefits of music.554 Marinella then turns to the cultivation of virtue in children, suggesting that virtue is not acquired by habit nor given to us by nature or knowledge but rather must come with practice. She addresses each of the virtues in turn: courage, justice, temperance, and prudence. It is noteworthy that Marinella does not distinguish between the raising of boys and girls, which was a commonplace practice in conduct literature of the period.555 This could be interpreted as an implicit rejection of a practice which often prescribed a less privileged upbringing for girls, from feeding to education.556

553 Tasso also discusses in the same order the quality of mother’s milk over nurse’s and exposing children to cold. On the latter both Marinella and Tasso invoke the law of contrast (anstiparistasim in Marinella, antiperistasis in Tasso), and describe the cultural practice of bathing children in the river in order to harden them against the cold. Both then cite the same passage from the Aeneid IX, 603 on this practice. Compare p. 209 of Marinella’s text with Tasso, Il padre di famiglia, 95.

554 As Benedetti notes, Marinella’s discussion of music closely parallels Aristotle’s Politics, almost verbatim. Benedetti, "Introduction," 29.

555 As Benedetti notes, “The plea for equal access to education, which constituted the core of Le nobiltà, is all but absent here, suffocated under erudite references.” Ibid., 29-30.

556 Helena Sanson, "Widowhood and Conduct in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy: The ‘Unusual’ Case of La Vedova Del Fusco (1570)," The Italianist 35, no. 1 (2015): 10. See also Antoniano’s distinctions between educating girls and boys: Antoniano, Tre libri, 153-54.

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In keeping with her methodology across the Essortationi, as she discusses the subject of raising children, Marinella outlines commonplace thought and the opinions of authorities before questioning their universal validity by considering the reality of the diversity and complexity of real-world human conduct: What about when parents follow this advice but the children simply refuse to obey?557 She also exploits the opportunity to include a critical aside on the lack of justice in contemporary rulers, and to continue her barbed critique of dissolute husbands initiated in the previous exhortation, by questioning the sort of example this sets for children (255, 270-72).

The inclusion of this exhortation on raising children completes the conventions of the tradition of domestic economies and conduct literature. Marinella’s discussion is closely informed by classical authorities and philosophy, with Aristotle (including the Politics and pseudo-Economics) and Plato cited frequently throughout. Along with the parallels between her discussion of the care of newborns and Tasso’s, this close intertextuality underscores the work’s participation in the longstanding tradition. This seventh exhortation thus performs an important role in the Essortationi by displaying Marinella’s credentials in terms of her familiarity with the conventions and classical predecessors of the tradition and her capacity to engage with the range of issues associated with raising children.

In contrast to the other exhortations, women’s roles and conduct are less of a focus in this seventh exhortation. For the purposes of this study, this exhortation is significant for what it enacts as a gendered act of authorship, rather than its engagement at a discursive level with the subject of women’s roles, status and nature.

557 “Infelici sono quei Genitori, che affaticati si hanno: accioché la sua stirpe riesca buona, dotta e scientiata, ne hanno mancato di essempio buono; ma hanno gittato il tempo, e l’opera, che ricalcitrando li figliuoli duri, e protervi, inobidienti alli Padri & alli Precettori hanno negato esser vera la sentenza d’Aristo, che ogn’uno per natura brama di sapere” (269)

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I suggest that Marinella’s seventh exhortation reinforces, through enactment, the author’s argument in Prudenza donnesca on women’s capacity for domestic prudence. Yet the exhortation also moves beyond domesticity with its concluding discussion of the virtue of princes (277-283). This is a discussion which is conspicuously outside the traditional boundaries of a domestic economy, and, as Virginia Cox has noted, it is a subject that is categorically outside the traditional parameters for women’s writing.558 It is remarkable as further evidence of Marinella’s sustained efforts to transcend the traditional boundaries set in place for women writers and exhibit her knowledge and capacity for philosophical inquiry, prudential deliberation, and instruction, on matters outside the domestic walls.559 In characteristic fashion, this discussion is couched within a domestic pretext – in this case the raising of children; a relatively unassuming pretext or alibi which enables Marinella to position herself “elsewhere” as she encroaches on the more political and male-dominated terrain of rulership and princes. Marinella’s apparently incongruous inclusion of this discussion in her otherwise domestic treatise is certainly intriguing and warrants further research as an insight into the author’s political identity.560

558 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224.

559 Fonte’s Il merito delle donne is an interesting point of comparison here. The opening book is explicit in its focus on the querelle des femmes, whilst the second book consists of a sophisticated, scientific exposition of a diverse range of topics including nature, weather, birds and animals, and the healing properties of herbs. Cox suggests that the second day, in its enactment of women’s capacity for scientific and intellectual inquiry, may be interpreted “as a symbolic first step toward the task of empowering women by equipping them with the kind of practical and theoretical knowledge of the world from which they had traditionally been excluded by their inadequate education.” In this regard, she suggests that Fonte’s dialogue is pioneering in the way in which it goes beyond merely denouncing women’s exclusion from education to offering an “activist response to the problem.”Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men, 10. On the significance of Fonte’s use of scientific discourse and its role in her pro-woman defence of women’s intellectual and rational capacities, see Ray, Daughters of Alchemy, 73-93.

560 In particular, it would be interesting to analyse this section of the Essortationi in relation to Marinella’s political views as expressed elsewhere in her oeuvre, and to explore the function and purpose of her dissimulatory approach in this embedded political discussion.

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Overall, this exhortation enacts Marinella’s prudence and authority on matters domestic but also political. It represents, in this regard, a practical demonstration of her argument made in La nobiltà for women’s capacity for prudence, deliberation and the provision of expedient advice – to men and to women and on matters including and beyond the domestic. It also exacerbates the problematic nature of Marinella’s ostensibly traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct in the opening exhortations (examined in Chapter 3). In this seventh exhortation Marinella acts in emphatic defiance of her exhortations to women to reject learning and the pursuit of knowledge in favour of exclusive devotion to the womanly arts, and she cogently undermines her statement about women’s silence due to their lack of knowledge of human affairs.

5.4 Conclusion

The analysis in this Chapter has shown how, in Prudenza donnesca and the exhortation to marital harmony, Marinella exposes the fallibility, masculinist assumptions and biases of literary authorities (particularly Aristotle and Hesiod) and their arguments for women’s submission to the prudence, rule, and example of men. The analysis has also shown how

Marinella cultivates an authorial alibi through her invocation of discourses of deference to authorities and to traditionalist paradigms of womanhood, allowing the author to position herself “elsewhere” as ingrained dogma and authorities are exposed to critical scrutiny.

In the seventh exhortation on raising children, Marinella deliberates and instructs on matters domestic and political, effectively countering in practice the principle of women’s submission to male prudence, authority, and instruction. The significance of Marinella’s act of authorship, in this seventh exhortation and across the Essortationi, as a politically meaningful enactment of the discursive challenges posed within the text to prevailing paradigms of womanhood is the subject of the next Chapter.

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Chapter 6: The Essortationi as a ‘refunctioned’ conduct book

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of this thesis have closely analysed how Marinella constructs an alibi of traditionalism discursively as she simultaneously interrogates and subverts prevailing paradigms of womanhood. In this Chapter, I shift to a broader lens of analysis to examine how

Marinella’s act of authorship of the Essortationi, and her macro-level alibi of traditionalist exhortation, contributes to her engagement with the question of women’s status, nature, and role – a shift in analysis from subversion in discourse to subversion in practice. I suggest that

Marinella’s discursive subversion (as analysed in Chapters 3, 4 and 5) is echoed by an enactment of subversion. In particular, I argue that Marinella’s authorial alibi of traditionalist exhortation can be read as a politicised appropriation and distortion – a parody – of the voice of the patriarchal didact.

In this Chapter, I first explain the irony that modern scholarship has identified as resulting from the conflict between Marinella’s example and her advice. I argue that this irony results from Marinella’s parody of the voice of patriarchal exhortation and explain the theories of literary and gender parody that inform this reading.561 Next, I identify the instances in the text which suggest Marinella’s parody, rather than straightforward imitation, of this voice.

Finally, I suggest that Marinella’s parodic performance effectively, yet obliquely through an alibi of imitation, subverts an ingrained literary tradition of masculinist authority and instruction of women. The result is a ‘refunctioned’ conduct book, which unravels rather than reinscribes the norms and discourses of the tradition.

561 My analysis in this Chapter is not focussed on examining irony as a literary and rhetorical device in the Essortationi. Rather, I suggest that parodic repetition is at work in the text, and that the irony, revealed through analysis in this Chapter, between Marinella’s example and her advice, and between the gender of the implied and actual author, is an outcome and indicator of this parody.

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6.1 The irony of the Essortationi

Modern scholars have identified the overarching contradiction between Marinella’s example and her advice in the Essortationi.562 Indeed, the irony of Marinella’s apparent re- inscription of, and simultaneous resistance to, traditionalist prescriptions for women’s conduct is one of the text’s central problems of interpretation. As foreshadowed in the previous chapters, her prescriptions for women’s silence, devotion to domesticity over intellectual pursuits, rejection of fame beyond the domestic walls, and submission to male authority, are ironized by the act of authorship of the Essortationi. These are prescriptions which, in writing the Essortationi, Marinella contravenes.

Price and Ristaino argue that the text represents an attempt at “preserving the ritual in which she participates” whilst “pointing instead to its opposite.”563 Laura Benedetti has alternatively suggested, that the apparent contradiction between Marinella’s example and her advice might reflect the author’s perception and implicit representation of herself as an

“Amazon, the woman who soars above her sex because of exceptional merit and circumstances but who, in so doing, severs her link with the community of women and harbors no illusion of serving as an example to them.”564 I suggest, instead, that Marinella’s denunciation in La nobiltà of Tasso’s efforts in his Discorso della virtù feminile, e donnesca to distinguish between the virtue of the “heroic lady” and women in general, is suggestive of a

562 Kolsky notes the irony of Marinella’s extensive use of classical exempla and authorities given the text’s ostensible message to reject such learning. Kolsky, "Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi," 984. Cox suggests that the Essortationi are voiced by a woman “intent on ignoring her own advice”. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224. Ross writes: “She exhorted women to pick up the needle but she wielded the pen. She told women never to seek fame, yet she continued to publish.” Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 297.

563 Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 155.

564 Benedetti, "Introduction," 31-32.

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more egalitarian attitude towards the female sex, their virtues, roles, and natures.565

Moreover, Marinella makes no attempt to defend or rationalise the construction of one rule for her women readers and another for herself. It would seem problematic to assume that

Marinella and her (discerning) readers were oblivious to the irony here, particularly given that the Essortationi constitutes a bold and apparently unprecedented foray for a female author into the male-dominated terrain of Renaissance conduct literature.566 From the very outset, her gender as a woman is conspicuously incongruent with the literary tradition in which she is participating and thus emphasised in its novelty.567

Another possible reading is that the Essortationi is intended as a warning to women from a woman who is at the end of her life and literary career. Yet this is not made explicit in the text. The exhortations are not legitimised and authorised by a narrative of personal experience. Indeed, as shown in my analysis in this Chapter, Marinella’s evasion of identification with the experiences of womanhood recounted in the text – most notably the experience of the woman writer – is provocative. Moreover, the notion that the work is genuinely directed towards forewarning and advising the lay female reader is problematised by the pervasive use of untranslated Latin, classical references and citations.568 As shown in the

565 On Tasso Marinella writes: “Narrate ch’egli ha queste cose, se ne passa a raccontare della donnesca virtù, fingendo una sua novella inventione, la qual è, che gran differenza sia tra la virtù feminile, e quella che donnesca egli chiama …” and concludes her rebuttal with the following dismissive statement: “intorno a quella sua nuova distintione di femina, e di donna, nuova dico, percioché il Boccaccio, il Petrarca, & altri hanno dato il nome di donna a qualunque creatura di questo sesso, non mi voglio faticare a distruggerla, & a vituperarla.” Marinella, La nobiltà, 128-30.

566 As Sanson writes, “Authors of works of conduct in sixteenth-century Italy are male.” Sanson, "Women and Conduct in the Italian Tradition," 19.

567 On attitudes towards women writers’ adoption of a didactic role see: Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 219- 25.

568 On the question of Marinella’s use of Latin and its implications for implied readership, see also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 151-153; Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, 224. On Venetian literacy, see Sarah Gwyneth Ross, Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), esp. 28-47. On women’s literacy in Latin, see: Paul F.

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analysis below, her addresses to female readers are also often marked by irony, condescension and even antagonism.569 They accompany prescriptions which are undermined rather than ratified in the text, raising questions about their veracity as genuine appeals to readers she is seeking to instruct. These characteristics of the text encourage the view that the addresses to lay female readers are rhetorical rather than actual.570 That is not to say that the implied reader of the work is necessarily male, but that the implied reader (whether male or female) is learned and distinct from the lay female reader, who is instructed and addressed in the work.571

Moreover, compounding the irony of Marinella’s enactment of resistance to the gender scripts she ostensibly condones, is the fact that at a discursive level, although in rare instances, Marinella constructs an identifiably female authorial identity, more often the authorial “io” is aligned as “other” in relation to women.572 This is effected either through the use of personal pronouns, or the use of discourses more commonly associated during the period with male authors. Marinella’s adoption of an implied male authorial subject position of

Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 89, 95-102; Margaret King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 164-88. On literacy more broadly: Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy, 107-21.

569 Price and Ristaino also note the problematic nature of these addresses, “such affective declarations, although appearing sincere, often contain a tinge of irony or condescension.” Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 135.

570 Cox identifies the designation of women as intended readers as one of the strategies used by women writers of didactic texts: “whether a fiction or not, this avoided the indecorum of a woman overtly positioning herself in authority over men.” Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 222. It could be that Marinella’s designation of women as the intended readers of the work is a strategy of this kind. Certainly, there are numerous points in the text when Marinella is clearly addressing a male or gender-neutral audience. The fourth exhortation on speech and reasoning for example, is explicitly addressed to “ogn’animo che desidera laude” (108).

571 For an analysis of the rhetorical, ideological and poetic role of addresses to female readers in the French Renaissance context see: Pollie Bromilow, "Reading Women Writing: Female Readers and the Angoysses Douloureuses Qui Procedent D'amours (1538) by Hélisenne de Crenne," The Modern Language Review 108, no. 3 (2013).

572 On this characteristic of the text see also Westwater, "The Disquieting Voice," 149.

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deliberation and instruction on the conduct of women as “other” could be read as a reflection of her self-perception and self-representation as an “Amazon”, or exception to the rule, as

Benedetti has suggested. Yet her adoption of this subject position assumes a political resonance when read in light of the challenges across the Essortationi to patriarchal paradigms which negate the prudence, and intellectual and deliberative capacities of the female sex.

Moreover, Marinella’s invocation and subversion of prevailing discourses on women’s conduct

(as shown in Chapters 3, 4, and 5), suggests politicised appropriation rather than straightforward imitation.

This Chapter thus draws together the evidence for an alternative interpretation of the fundamental irony of Marinella’s act of authorship of the Essortationi. Through analysis of the points of tension in the text between Marinella’s act of authorship as a woman writer instructing, and the figuring of gender in the authorial “io”, I suggest that Marinella appropriates the subject position and ethos of the male authorial didact, and the authority and credibility that accompanies it.573 Beyond mere imitation, I argue that this can be understood as an act of literary and gender parody that has two effects. First, it allows the author to construct an authoritative, recognisable, authorial subject position of instruction within the genre of conduct literature which lacked a female authorial precedent and within a socio- cultural context which continued to espouse the Pauline dictum prohibiting women from instructing others.574 At a second, more provocative level, Marinella’s parodic performance of the traditionally male role of didact effectively exposes the constructed nature of this gendered concept of authority, calling in to question its validity and exposing its biases.

573 On the notion of ethos as a location for feminist rhetoric see Chapter 1 and Reynolds, "Ethos as Location"; Schmertz, "Constructing Essences".

574 “Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. For I do not allow a woman to teach, or to exercise authority over men; but she is to keep quiet” (I Tim 2: 11-12)

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6.2 Literary and gender parody

Informing my interpretation of the parody of the Essortationi is Margaret Rose’s theory of parody. Rose defines parody as broadly a process of “imitating and then changing” the parodied text.575 She offers the analogy of the work of the parodist as a process of

“decoding” a prior text and then re-presenting that text in an “encoded” or “distorted” form.

Part of this process may involve engaging and then subverting readers’ expectations as they are conjured and then disrupted in the parody text.576 I suggest that Marinella’s Essortationi can be understood as parody in its imitation and then distortion of the norms, discourses, and discursive practices of patriarchal literature on female conduct. The distortion occurs in

Marinella’s interweaving of critique and subversion into the traditionalist discourses on womanhood characteristic of the tradition (analysed in Chapters 3, 4 and 5). But it is also the gender of the author as a woman that implicitly distorts the voice of this tradition and disrupts reader expectations. It is in this regard that I suggest Marinella’s authorship constitutes an act of gender parody.

In my use of the term ‘gender parody’, I am invoking Judith Butler’s theories of gender performance, parody and its political implications as outlined in Gender Trouble and later in

Undoing Gender.577 In particular, two key principles of Butler’s theory inform my analysis. The first of these is the notion that identity and gender are constructed and performed

575 Rose, Parody, 45.

576 Ibid., 39.

577 Butler, Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity; Undoing Gender. All citations from Gender Trouble are from: Gender Trouble : Tenth Anniversary Edition (London: Taylor and Francis, 1999). A useful analysis of these theories, including ambiguities and adaptations across Butler’s oeuvre (prior to Undoing Gender), is offered in: Moya Lloyd, "Performativity, Parody, Politics," Theory, Culture & Society 16, no. 2 (1999).

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discursively, and that gender norms function through “repetition”.578 In Gender Trouble Butler writes “when the subject is said to be constituted, that means simply that the subject is a consequence of certain rule-governed discourses that govern the intelligible invocation of identity.”579 Based on this conception of the construction and performance of gender identity,

Butler argues:

If the rules governing signification not only restrict, but enable the assertion of

alternative domains of cultural intelligibility, i.e., new possibilities for gender that

contest the rigid codes of hierarchical binarisms, then it is only within the practices of

repetitive signifying that a subversion of identity becomes possible.580

The question Butler then proposes is: “What constitutes a subversive repetition within signifying practices of gender?”581 One of the possibilities she offers in response to this question is gender parody. This is the second key principle of Butler’s theory that informs my analysis. For Butler, gender parody or the parodic repetition of gender offers the potential to subvert gender norms by destabilising and denaturalizing them, drawing attention to the illusory nature of the conception of gender identity “as an intractable depth and inner substance.”582 She argues that “The task is not whether to repeat but how to repeat or, indeed, to repeat and, through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender norms that enable the repetition itself.”583 In her later work, Undoing Gender, Butler argues

578 “The rules that govern intelligible identity, i.e., that enable and restrict the intelligible assertion of an “I,” rules that are partially structured along matrices of gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, operate through repetition.” Butler, Gender Trouble, 185.

579 Ibid.

580 Ibid.

581 Ibid.

582 Ibid., 186.

583 Ibid., 189.

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more precisely that gender norms can be “significantly deterritorialized through the citation.

They can also be exposed as non-natural and nonnecessary when they take place in a context and through a form of embodying that defies normative expectation.”584

It is important to note here the distinction between gender performance and gender performativity. For Butler gender is “performative” meaning that it is constructed through repetition and recitation of gender norms and scripts. There is also however the possibility of a

“bounded act” of gender performance which exposes the performativity or constructed nature of gender.585 This notion of gender performance, often described through the example of drag, has been read as “instituting a politics of subversion.” As Moya Lloyd notes however, gender parody is not automatically subversive. “It only works as such on particular occasions in determinate locales.”586 Context and historicity are critical to determining the subversive potential of gender parody.

The following analysis of the Essortationi suggests Marinella’s parodic repetition of the signifying practices associated with the patriarchal didactic subject position in Renaissance conduct literature. Within this context, Marinella’s assumption of this subject position categorically defies normative expectations: the tradition was male-authored. As such, I argue that her parody of this subject position can be understood as a process of “deterritorializing”

Seicento norms around gender, authority, and instruction. That is, her parodic performance, in and of itself, exposes the “non-natural” and “nonnecessary” status of the gender script that defines the didact as male.

584 Undoing Gender, 218.

585 On the subversive potential of gender performance, Butler asks: “what kind of gender performance will enact and reveal the performativity of gender itself in a way that destabilizes the naturalized categories of identity and desire”. Gender Trouble, 177.

586 Lloyd, "Performativity, Parody, Politics," 209-10.

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6.3 Parodying the voice of patriarchal exhortation in the Essortationi587

The aim of this section is to identify and trace, across the Essortationi, the provocative tension that emerges from the irony of Marinella’s resistance to the gender scripts she ostensibly condones and her adoption of the subject position of “other” in relation to women, before suggesting that it can be understood as the result of literary and gender parody.

Butler’s theory of gender performance informs this analysis: gender in Marinella’s construction of an authorial identity is performed, rather than being an inherent or predetermined characteristic of the authorial “io”. While gender shapes and inflects Marinella’s construction of an authorial identity, it does not determine it. Indeed, as my analysis shows, her authorial identity is not gendered in consistent and static ways. Rather, gender identity is a malleable, meaningful, and powerful component of the author’s strategic and deliberative construction of authorial ethos.

In the prefatory material of the Essortationi, Marinella’s authority as an author is established. The dedicatory letter to the Spanish ambassador to Venice, Don Gaspar de Teves y

Guzman, displays her familiarity with rhetorical and literary conventions in its use of modesty rhetoric.588 She also emphasises her text’s scholarly credentials, drawing attention to its

587 The term “voice” is problematic. For discussion see: Hildy Miller and Lillian Bridwell-Bowles, eds., Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 9. I use the term to refer to the collective of discourses and tones characteristic of the male authorial subject position in patriarchal conduct literature, with acknowledgment that this voice cannot be freely adopted, constructed and shaped by the individuals who use it, but that it emerges out of an interplay between culture and individual agency.

588 Addressing her dedicatee she writes: “percioché lo splendore delle sue infinite virtù, e valore tante volte conosciuto dal mondo penetrando coll’acutezze de suoi raggi la densa oscurità di queste mie compositioni, le renderà, come spero, luminose, e chiare; anchorché oscure sieno, nondimeno non dissuaderò V.E. à leggerle,” (4) and later: “Non isdegnerà la picciolezza del dono; ma scuserà con la benignità, e bontà dello’nvitto animo suo il mio poco sapere, & la temerità mia, avendo voluto nobilitare col la honorevolezza del nome suo la roza rusticità di pargoletto volume” (6-7) Describing one’s work in diminutive terms as “little” is a particularly prevalent feature of early modern modesty rhetoric, see: Pender, Early Modern Women's Writing, 23.

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classical underpinnings; as a work which although “nate da principij humili, famigliari, e bassi”

(3) is informed by the authority and wisdom of classical authors and philosophers.589

Marinella’s construction of an authorial identity in this dedicatory letter is not conspicuously gendered, although the letter does underline the author’s engagement with the traditionally male-dominated, classically and philosophically informed, literary tradition of the domestic economy.

By contrast, in the subsequent letter to the reader, Marinella’s authorial identity is constructed in conspicuously gendered terms. The letter refers to Marinella in the third- person, suggesting the possibility that it was written by her publisher, Valvasense.590 The first line emphasises Marinella’s rejection of contemporary baroque poetics, declaring that she has not followed in imitation of those writers who “vanno cercando nuovi vocaboli, parole stravaganti, e di salso sapore, trasportate, e trasformate dal suo naturale credendo, & aspettando di acquistarsi la Tirannide di Parnaso, & occupare con parole poco buone il senso a

Lettori” (8). This statement negotiates the conundrum of the incompatibility of Seicento baroque poetics with female authorial decorum, by claiming rejection of the contemporary literary trend.591 Marinella’s mode of authorship is defined as not an attempt to “imitate” those (male) writers who expect to “acquistarsi la Tirannide di Parnaso”. As Benedetti notes,

589 She writes that although her exhortations “traggano l’origine loro... da cose Economiche, e famigliari, le ritroverà adorne di molti fregi filosofici, Aristotelici, e Platonici, & d’altri. E delle sentenze di Essiodo, e di Homero, & anchor piene di molta Moralità, cosa necessaria al ben vivere il quale è cagione della felicità civile” (5).

590 See Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 41, n.2. Price and Ristaino suggest the possibility that Marinella may have written the letter in the third-person, see: Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 121. It is noteworthy that the letter to the reader in Tarabotti’s Antisatira is identified as written by Valvasense; a fact that lends credence to the suggestion that he may have also authored Marinella’s letter to the reader. On Valvasense’s letter in the Antisatira see Collina, "Women in the Gutenberg Galaxy," 97-104.

591 On baroque poetics and its incompatibility with female authorial decorum see Chapter 2 of this thesis and Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 208-09.

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the mention of Parnassus here could be an implicit critique of Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di

Parnaso (1612), a work which unambiguously defines Parnassus as the realm of men.592

Marinella’s act of authorship is represented as outside the prevailing male-dominated literary culture; an attempt to create an alternate mode of authorship that is not driven by vain ambition.593

The subsequent line defines this mode of authorship in gendered terms, stating that

Marinella has “eletto un ragionamento schietto, puro, & historico” (8). The use of the adjectives “schietto, puro” to describe Marinella’s mode of reasoning is noteworthy when read in light of other female-authored literature of the period, including that by Margherita Costa and Isabetta Coreglia, which used similar terminology in crafting authorial ethos.594 The parallels suggest that this letter was participating in a broader pattern of emphasising feminine decorum as a way of negotiating authority and defending female authorship in a hostile climate.

In the subsequent paragraph the authority of this ethos is reinforced through reference to Marinella’s literary expertise, with particular emphasis on her experience in the male-dominated literary arenas of philosophy, epic poetry, and military matters. Indeed, a detailed description of Marinella’s adeptness at recounting battles, duels and military strategies extends across a number of pages and concludes with the statement regarding

L’Enrico: “Se sarà considerato questo Poema da persone intendenti dell’arte militare non

592 Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 41, n. 3.

593 An interesting point of comparison here is Margherita Costa who describes Parnassus as peopled by both genders. See Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 226, 373-74, n. 257.

594 In the letter to the reader in Isabetta Coreglia’s Rime spirituali e morali (1628) the publisher uses the terms “vaghezza,” “purità”, “facilità,” and “dolcezza” to describe her work. As cited in ibid., 209-10, 362, n. 171-72. Cox also notes parallels between the use of the adjective “schietto” by Coreglia in her later work Raccolta and Margherita Costa in La Chitarra as they craft their authorial personas. Ibid., 366, n. 202.

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potranno se non con gran maraviglia ammirare, e laudare tanta arte, e scienza in questo

Poema.” (11) Whilst negotiating a gendered authorial ethos that adhered to prevailing norms of feminine decorum, the author simultaneously emphasises Marinella’s intellectual and literary skill in less ‘feminine’ subject areas.

The conspicuously gendered authorial identity constructed in this letter to the reader contrasts with the body of the work in which, as the analysis to follow shows, Marinella more often adopts the stance of “other” in relation to the female sex. Her adoption of this stance is ironized by the expectations, reinforced in the prefatory material, that this is the voice of a woman writer.

Marinella’s first exhortation on seclusion opens with a description of Gorgias’ position that a woman’s reputation must not leave the domestic walls.595 She writes:

Io non posso se non laudare la sentenza, e il pensiero di un tanto huomo, e biasimare il

desiderio di alcune Donne, che bramano, che li loro nomi per via di virtù alte, e nobili,

e non sue proprie, scorrano per la Città e per la lingua de gli huomini (2).

Yet this statement is voiced by a woman writer who just a few pages earlier dedicated her work ambitiously to the high-status male Spanish ambassador to Venice. It also follows the letter to the reader in which Marinella’s reputation as a prolific and successful writer is celebrated. A fundamental irony concerning Marinella’s statements regarding appropriate conduct for women, and her own conduct as a woman writer is apparent in this very first paragraph.

595 As discussed in Chapter 3, this is in fact an inversion of Gorgias’ position.

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Throughout the exhortation, Marinella regularly refers to women in the third-person plural.596 This mode of referring to women is not in itself particularly remarkable. To speak objectively of women in this way is common across contemporary texts – both female and male authored – including Marinella’s own La nobiltà, Tarabotti’s Antisatira and Semplicità ingannata, conduct literature such as Assandri’s Ammaestramenti, and misogynistic texts such as Passi’s I Donneschi diffetti. What is noteworthy, however, is the extreme rarity of linguistic markers showing Marinella aligning herself with women (for example, through the use of the first-person plural) and the relative prevalence of linguistic and discoursal markers showing

Marinella aligning instead with the “other”.

In this way, Marinella’s Essortationi differs from Tarabotti’s Antisatira and Semplicità ingannata, in which Tarabotti regularly (particularly in the case of the latter) uses the first- person plural to include herself in the category of woman. In Semplicità ingannata for example, Tarabotti writes “Considerate se v’è cosa più fragile della terra, di cui sete formati, e in opposto ponderate la fortezza d’una costa, ch’è osso sodo, che fu materia della nostra creatione, e venirete a restar delusi da voi stessi”.597 By comparison, towards the end of the first exhortation on seclusion, Marinella addresses her women readers in the second-person

596 See for example the following statement: “ponne laudare, non biasimare Gorgia Leontino, che tanto honorò le Donne, volendo, che tra le domestiche parieti viva quella fama, che la persona essercitando la sua virtù fa che nasca dalle operationi da lei fatte in tra li men, poiché tutte le eccelenze stanno ritirate, e raccolte.” (19)

597 Citation from: Tarabotti, La Semplicità Ingannata, 11-12. See also statements such as the following (my emphasis): “non devo né anche passar con silentio l’imprudenza degl’huomini, in estoller al cielo la loro fortezza, & abassar nel più cupo fondo la debolezza nostra; i mentitori, che sete.” Also: “Queste cose non sono da me scritte per lodar’ il mio sesso…ma per far conoscere, ch’egli è d’assai maggiori meriti del virile. Conosco il mancamento delle femine ancor’io: siamo imperfette, conforme all’opinion d’Aristotele; ma voi animali perfetti ci superate ne gl’inganni, fallacie, e crudeltadi” ibid., 11, 54. Also, p. 34, 37-38 amongst others. On Tarabotti’s use of direct address, see also Westwater, “The Disquieting Voice,” 275-77. From the Antisatira see for example (my emphasis): “Voi al vostro solito dicitor gentile, ma appassionato, biasimate negli habiti donneschi la varietà de colori, ne v’accorgete di riuscir biasimevole mostrando di non sapere, che la varietà delle cose è quella, che fa bello il Mondo, oltre poi, che di tutte quelle vanità, che sprezzate, e detestate in noi trovansi esempij d’huomini.” See: Sesti, Tarabotti, and Buoninsegni, Censura dell’antisatira, 66-67, 79.

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plural rather than including herself through the first-person plural: “voglio anco, che crediate, che gli huomini invidiano alla tranquillità della vostra pace, dittimi per vostra sé, amatissime mie, credete forse, che Achille havrebbe presa la gonna feminile, se piacciuta non li fosse stata la retiratezza” (21).598

There is little in the first exhortation to indicate that these are the words of a female author. The mode of authorial positioning through which women are either addressed in the second-person or referred to in the third is in keeping with conventions of the male-authored conduct literature tradition. One might conclude that without a literary precedent for a woman instructing women, Marinella has merely adopted the prevailing authorial model here.

This mode of authorial positioning arguably contributed to the process of constructing a culturally recognisable didactic text that would pass by censors and potential critics without drawing attention to itself. But for those subjecting the work to closer scrutiny the irony is provocative and persistent, and often more conspicuous. In these instances, beyond merely passive avoidance of identification with women, Marinella’s authorial “io” is actively represented as “other” in relation to the female sex. In this regard, Marinella’s Essortationi also differs from La nobiltà in which, although Marinella does not use the first-person plural like Tarabotti, she nonetheless does not represent herself as “other”.

In a rare occurrence, the second exhortation opens with a reminder of the gender of the author. Referring once again to Gorgias, Marinella writes: “sforzata dall’affettione, e dall’amore che al mio sesso porto, dirò il mio parere non slontanandomi mai dall’opinione di un tanto huomo” (23 – my emphasis). This is followed however by the pattern established in

598 Marinella continues: “Ma desiderando la vostra quiete, e’l vostro riposo tra le figliuole del Re Nicomede si accomodò è falso fu, che lo nascondesse Teti per rapirlo alla guerra di Troia, troppo soave (o amiche) è la vostra pace, la quale è fine de, travagli, e delle fatiche. Le fatiche sono per cagione del riposo, come la guerra della pace. Ma voi con non molta fatica godete di quella quiete, che Dio vi ha donato nella creatione.” (21)

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the opening exhortation in which women, and learned women in particular, are represented as “other”. Marinella writes that there are “alcune nel sesso feminile” who “appagate non si trovano, che i loro vanti restino tra le domestiche mura, come sepolti; ma desiderano per via di

Dottrina, e di scienza, che apparisca il nome loro tra le genti di gloria degno, e di laude” (23-

24). The irony of this statement is stark. It follows an ambitious dedicatory letter and emphatic promotion of the author’s knowledge and literary expertise in the opening letter and precedes a highly erudite discourse on the very nature of learning and wisdom. As explained in Chapter

3, in the narrative that follows Marinella conducts a comprehensive exposition of the obstacles and opposition faced by the woman intellectual. The detail and ire with which this narrative is recounted suggests its basis in autobiography. For example, Marinella discusses how female- authored works are often attributed to men:599 an injustice that the publisher’s forward to

Arcadia felice suggests Marinella may have experienced in relation to La Vita di Maria

Vergine.600 Yet instead of a first-person narrative, this story is recounted as the story of an

“other”.

From the impersonal representation of these women who pursue learning as “alcune donne” or “una donna”, Marinella shifts to addressing this hypothetical woman in the second- person singular. She writes: “havrai sempre roso il petto dalli Tarli del dolore, ne può la sapienza acquistata recarti allegrezza” (25). The text continues this way detailing the mocking and rebuke the woman writer receives: “quanto più sarai degna di laude, tanto più odierano senza cagione” (27). Marinella then shifts to the use of the second-person plural: “Altri pongono a fatica gli occhi sopra le vostre compositioni, che tratte da parte dicono, che sono

599 “Se il tuo componimento sarà acuto, Filosofico, e degno diranno, questo non può essere parto di Donna, non si aggrappa al Cielo il suo intelletto debole, e molle; ma è di huomo, ch’a seno e Dottrina.” (30)

600 The publisher writes that the later work has been “conosciuta… vero parto del suo ingegno, da persona publica a confusione de’ maligni”. Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 368, n. 224.

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scritture Donnesche, di poco sapere, e di niuno spirito… Così restano le vostre laboriose fatiche inutili, e li vostri libri in preda alla Tignivole, e alle Tarme” (28).

The irony cultivated across this ostensibly objective narrative is particularly provocative in Marinella’s address to the woman writers who are on the receiving end of such injustice: “io non so quanto sdegno, e dolore vi tormenterà l’anima a queste parole di disprezzo, e quanto astio & ira vi flagellerà il cuore.” (29) The reader familiar with Marinella’s literary career expects that the author would understand all too well the feelings of anguish and anger experienced by the letterate she addresses, and the impassioned, detailed narrative just recounted underlines the irony. Overtly, Marinella aligns herself with the “other,” yet this alignment is dislocated from the reader’s expectations and the tone of the narrative.

As explained in Chapter 3, Marinella’s discussion in the third exhortation on whether women can manage intellectual pursuits alongside their domestic duties is highly contradictory, with traditionalist discourses advocating women’s exclusive devotion to domesticity juxtaposed with arguments to the contrary without resolution. Here the authorial

“io” is inconsistent, declaring initially in the first-person the ease with which women might pursue both before returning to the authorial subject position of patriarchal exhortation as she advises “non vi essorto ad altro, che al governo della propria casa, & all’amplificacione sua, che tanto basta” (103). The authority and validity of this voice is implicitly undermined by

Marinella’s arguments to the contrary and her example as a wife, mother, and intellectual, suggesting that the voice of patriarchal exhortation is being parodied – exposed to critical scrutiny – rather than straightforwardly imitated. At the end of the exhortation, Marinella’s concluding advice reverberates once again the irony of the first and second exhortations as she invites the female sex to confine themselves to their own arts, before defying such advice across the remaining six chapters of the Essortationi to conduct an intellectual and

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philosophical exploration of various areas of human conduct, including those outside of the domestic sphere:

Io ho invitato, & invito con amor vero il sesso feminile a farsi nobile colli proprij

ingegni; perché le cose fuori della sua sfera, o poco, o nulla vagliono. Questo è il mio

consiglio, e ‘l mio parere, e farsi illustri, e famose colle proprie arti, e non coll’altrui;

anchorché dica quel gran Filosofo, che’l maschio, e la femina per natura sono alle

medesime cose buoni. (104)

The final statement of this paragraph unsettles, through invocation of Plato, the Aristotelian principle espoused earlier in the exhortation on the biologically predetermined virtues and capacities of men and women. The principle is also unsettled, I suggest, by Marinella’s appropriation of the male authorial subject position of patriarchal exhortation. Marinella’s parodic performance of this subject position exposes the constructed, rather than “natural” and biologically determined, rule that the role of instruction of women is male.

In the fourth exhortation, which concerns silence and speech, the irony of Marinella’s exhortations recurs in her statement about the appropriateness of women’s silence. Marinella states in the first-person plural: “Il ragionare a caso è caso di capo insano, pensar prima si deve a quanto habbiamo determinato di dire, e poi imitare il Gallo, il quale avanti, che mandi lo spirito al canto, batte tre volte, e più le ali. Così prima considerar la qualità di quanto habbiamo a dire, per levarsi da gli altrui scherni.” (117-118) She is including herself here when she describes the importance of premeditated speech. Yet shortly afterwards Marinella writes that:

La parcità delle parole è particolarmente attribuito [sic] alla Donna, la quale non

essendo molto esperimentata, non potrà né anco di molte cose ragionare; perché

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l’esperienza, quasi dotto maestro, insegna la vita, l’opre, & li ragionamenti all’huomo.

(121)

Whilst at first glance the text reads as a fundamentally patriarchal discourse on women and taciturnity, the iteration of this entrenched precept for women’s conduct is tinged with irony if the reader acknowledges that it is voiced by a woman writer within her highly erudite, well informed discussion of the many facets of the issue of speech, reasoning, and silence.

Marinella is demonstrating the fallibility of the precept that she iterates here.

Across these opening four exhortations, Marinella objectifies the experience of women, particularly woman writers, representing it as the experience of the other as she exhorts women to confine themselves within the home in silence and domesticity. In so doing, she assumes a culturally recognisable, conventionally male, authorial subject position of patriarchal didact. Yet Marinella’s status as a woman writer, who is enacting dissidence to these prescriptions, distorts this voice, implicitly calling into question its validity and authority.

In the second half of the work, the tension between the gender of the implied and actual author, and between the gendered prescriptions for conduct and Marinella’s own conduct, persists. As explained in Chapter 4, in the fifth exhortation, Marinella assumes a conventionally male authorial subject position as she denounces and satirises women’s vanity.

Describing the way in which ancient wise men advocated women’s wearing of the pianelle in order to keep them secluded within the home, Marinella writes: “però non dico, che sia negato a loro alcuno honesto piacere” (140 – my emphasis). Once again, Marinella frames her opinion on the conduct of women as a rule that applies to an “other”. Yet her alignment with the voice of patriarchal exhortation turns into appropriation as she redirects contemporary discourses on vanity towards an argument for women’s superiority rather than inferiority and fault for men’s downfall. She also appropriates a conventionally male authorial subject position in her

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invocation of contemporary discourses on the ephemeral and mortal nature of women’s beauty. Whilst often used by male authors of the period to support misogynistic agendas,

Marinella appropriates these discourses to expose rather, a masculinist value system which leads to the rejection of women when their beauty fades.

In her chapter entitled Prudenza donnesca, Marinella writes that she is “sicura” that the woman lacks knowledge “di quello, che si appartiene all’arte militare, o all’arte del

Cocchiero” (148), although they have great experience in the domestic sphere.601 Yet this statement is at odds with the opening letter to the reader which describes Marinella’s expertise in military matters.602 It is also at odds with the description of specifically military examples of prudence that are recounted later in Prudenza donnesca. Introducing these examples Marinella writes: “habbiamo veduto un Alessandro, un Annibale, uno Scipione”.

Here, Marinella is either including herself with men and in opposition to women, or she is contradicting her earlier claim about women’s lack of knowledge in these areas. Despite the ostentatious display of prudence and knowledge in matters beyond the domestic walls,

Marinella resists the gender script she herself iterates when she states. “Scoprirà la Donna la prudenza acquistata da esperienze iterate nella casa” (152).603 The irony of this resistance is

601 “ma sarà bene esperimentata nelle varietà delle operationi della casa, che sono infinite.” (148)

602 On L’Enrico the letter to the reader states: “dir si può contenere quanta scienza è ne’ Poeti dell’arte militare, come il modo di constituir, formar, e guidar gli esserciti, ordinarli, formar il Vallo, condurre le squadre in battaglia, li combattimenti horribili, gli assalti della Città delle, Trincere; li Duelli poi con tanta arte narrati, sortite, stratagemi per ingannare lo inimico, e oltre tanti, e tanti accidenti, che occorrono ne’ perigliosi Certami. Un Combattimento Navale narrato con tant’arte, che lo Dio dell’armi meglio far saputo non havrebbe. Se sarà considerato questo Poema da persone intendenti dell’arte militare non potranno se non con gran maraviglia ammirare, e laudare tanta arte, e scienza in questo Poema.” (10- 11)

603 Women are represented again in the third-person plural when she describes their capacity for prudence within the home: “perciòche con ragione non potrà alcuno negare la prudenza nella Donna; benché non habbia esperienza; perciò che un certo lume naturale è in loro invece dell’iterati successi, che mostra a quelle, ciò che seguire, ciò che fuggir bisogna, e questo sarà giuditio retto.” (154)

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reinforced in the final paragraph of the chapter when Marinella ostensibly circumscribes women’s prudence to the domestic realm, writing:

Io non dirò, che habbia in sé la prudenza di Semiramis nel giudicare da qual parte

battere si deve una Città difficilissima da essere battuta; né di tante altre cose, che ho

commemorate nel mio libro intitolato la Nobiltà […] perché appagate sì ritroveremo,

che prudenti sieno nelle operationi Donnesche e con seduli, e cari modi reggano la

famiglia, e la propria habitatione. (155 – my emphasis)

In this passage, Marinella continues to objectify the experience of and codes of conduct pertaining to women. Her use of the phrase “appagate si ritroveremo” is particularly marked in the way in which it represents the author in the first-person plural with a group that is other in relation to women.604

Marinella’s subsequent exhortation on relations between husbands and wives is remarkable for the author’s cultivation of a subject position of authority as she quite boldly undermines, rebukes, and instructs, often using the informal second-person singular, both improper husbands605 and the authorities of Hesiod and Aristotle;606 adopting the role of didact of both sexes.607 The provocative nature of Marinella’s assumption of this position

604 This pattern continues in the first lines of the subsequent exhortation on marital harmony: “Poiché habbiamo invitate le Donne a non pigliar vaghezza delle lettere, & essortate a non lasciar da parte l’arte feminile; ma con ogni studio, e diligenza a quella attendere, come essercitio, utile commodo, & honorato.” (156)

605 Whilst chastising improper husbands, Marinella directs them to read Plato’s Republic: “Io vorrei, che leggessi la Republica di Platone, dove scaccia dalla Città tali huomini, come iniqui, inquinatori de’ buoni costumi…” (166)

606 See for example: “pur molti sono, o sapiente Aristotile, o dotto Essiodo, di così brutti fregi ornati, io non so, con qual ragione desideri, che la Donna discat suos mores. Essendo tallhora brutto, & ignominioso l’essempio; ma ben intendo, che tu non ragionavi di tali, ma di quelli, che fosser moderati, giusti, & arricchiti di nobili, e santi costumi…” (200)

607 See for example: “e se in questa mia essortatione repeto alcuna volta quello, ch’io ho detto, non sia reputato a vitio; ma ad un caldo desiderio d’imprimere la virtù ne gli animi altrui.” (197)

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should not be underestimated. As explained in Chapter 5, despite the opening, in which

Marinella emphasises her respect and admiration for “wise men” such as Hesiod and Aristotle, by the end of the exhortation the authorial “io” has supplanted these authorities. In the concluding paragraph of the exhortation Marinella writes:

Io desidero, che gli huomini si aveggano da questi miei pochi scritti, che a loro, come

capi, & principali nelle Case, si appartiene dar essempio, e norma del ben vivere alla

Donna & a gli altri; tanto più, che pensano, che in essi Dio, cioè la prima Causa habbia

sparso in maggior quantità l’intelletto, che nelle Donne, se però possiamo dar questo

nome di quantità all’intelletto non caggiendo sotto il predicamento della quantità.

(201-202)

The second statement constitutes a backhanded challenge to the notion that male authority over women within the home is a natural consequence of a greater inherent intellectual capacity. Moreover, the preceding text in which Marinella conducts an intellectual exposition of the limitations and fallibility of the principles and authority of Hesiod and Aristotle (see

Chapter 5), enacts a challenge to the notion of biologically determined gender-based hierarchies of intellect. Comments such as this final closing line of the exhortation suggest that

Marinella’s appropriation of the male role of patriarchal didact is political rather than mere imitation. That is, more than merely an effort to adopt the role despite her gender, her appropriation of this position can be understood as exposing through enactment the invalidity and biases of patriarchal models of authority and instruction. As explained in Chapter 5, the seventh exhortation on raising children continues this project, simultaneously drawing attention to the fallibility of male authorities and cogently enacting Marinella’s own capacity for prudential deliberation and authority on the subject.

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Moreover, Marinella’s addresses to female readers which are scattered throughout the Essortationi, suggest parody. These addresses refer to readers as “Donne Carissime” (32), and “dilette mie” (36), and such apostrophes always accompany patriarchal prescriptions. The condescending and sometimes reproachful nature of the addresses to women problematizes the notion that these are genuine efforts to speak directly to and cultivate a relationship with the female readers Marinella is ostensibly seeking to instruct.

An address to women in the second exhortation suggests in particular Marinella’s parody of the male intellectual’s fear of being surpassed in learning by women. Within the context of her exhortation to women to reject learning and literature, and drawing on the authority of Plato, Marinella initially raises the notion that men prevent their friends and lovers from learning for fear of being surpassed:

Scrive Platone, che la Filosofia spinge l’Amatore a non laciar [sic] l’amico, o l’Amante a

farsi di quella possessore, temendo, che di sé più dotto divegna [sic]; onde poi sia da

quello vilipese, e sprezzato, opera ogn’arte, accioché privo resti di ogni sapere, ma

ignavo, & ignorante. (37)

This is followed by a disclaimer: “Però io non vorrei, che voi credeste, ch’io dubitando da voi esser superata, facessi questo uffitio di stogliervi dalle lettere;” Her defense is phrased in terms of love and concern for the reader:

perché questo sarebbe atto di animo invidioso, e non di cuore, che veramente ami,

come faccio io. Che amandovi con lealtà desidero, che lasciata da parte, quella vana

opinione letterale, fuggiate li danni, li disgusti, e le passioni, che porta seco, ove pone il

piede. (38)

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Marinella is explicit in La nobiltà in her critique of the way men forbid women to learn, such that the men maintain authority and power.608 Her invocation of the notion in this exhortation reads at one level as an effort to clarify her motive for the exhortation as altruistic rather than egotistic. Yet Chapter 3 of this thesis has revealed the way in which close scrutiny of

Marinella’s protracted critique of the mechanisms and means through which women are precluded from the republic of letters problematises straightforward interpretation of the author’s ostensible exhortation to women to acquiesce and reject intellectual pursuits.

Reading this address within the context of such critique casts doubt over the veracity of her claim of altruism. It suggests rather, the possibility of a parodic repetition of precisely the sort of strategy, critiqued in La nobiltà and identified in the first part of the citation above, directed towards keeping others ignorant.

In another direct address in the same exhortation, Marinella is particularly condescending, even hostile. She writes, “Intendete, o amiche, & particolarmente voi, che tutto il giorno spendete ad augumentare la vostra beltà. Lo studio invecchia, priva la Donna di bellezza, toglie la sanità, fa la persona pallida, trista, e malinconiosa” (47).609 I suggest that, in this direct address, Marinella parodies the exploitation of a perceived inclination of women to vanity as a means for encouraging them to avoid the pursuit of learning and literature. This depiction of female frivolity is juxtaposed with a depiction of the reality of the injustices experienced by the hard-working, aspiring woman writer, suggesting the illusory nature of such claims of women’s vanity and their disjunction from the reality of life for a seventeenth- century woman writer.

608 She writes: “ma poco sono quelle, che dieno opera a gli studi, overo all’arte militare in questi nostri tempi; percioché gli huomini, temendo di non perdere la signoria, et di divenir servi delle donne, vietano a quelle ben spesso ancho il saper leggere, e scrivere,” Marinella, La nobiltà, 32.

609 Ross notes the exaggerated, satirical nature of this address Ross, The Birth of Feminism, 297.

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The condescending and antagonistic tone of these addresses also recalls addresses to women made by Passi in I Donneschi diffetti, suggesting that he may have been a specific target for Marinella’s parody. In these instances, Passi addresses women in the second-person, often calling them “madonne” before reproaching them. For example, in his critique of women’s luxury and ornamentation Passi writes: “Vogliono spendere le donne, & i mariti divengono poveri, tal che vengono meno le ricchezze, e crescono i rumori. Ma che cosa è questo Vostro andar tanto pompose, madonne? Non altro, che dar segno della persa vergogna al mondo.”610 In a similar mode of supercilious address, Passi later writes: “Io so bene, madonne, che Homero, lodò Diana, e Minerva, e Statio Violantilla, ma la grandezze loro erano naturali, non aiutate dall’artifitio d’un par di zanche, come fate voi al tempo nostro.”611 Like

Passi’s arguably purely rhetorical addresses to women, Marinella’s addresses to women are sufficiently critical and condescending to suggest that they are also rhetorical rather than genuine attempts to address her readers, and parody rather than straightforwardly imitate the voice of patriarchal exhortation.

A final example of Marinella’s gender parody is worthy of note. On two instances in the Essortationi, Marinella includes sonnets which she attributes to male poets whose name she either does not specify or says she has “forgotten.” The first of these sonnets occurs midway through the second exhortation, Marinella writes: “un buon letterato chiaro non meno

610 Passi, I Donneschi diffetti, 189. See also p. 168-69 “Cioè; donna se tu con material candore imbratti il tuo volto, e per spargerlo acquisti il rossore, quella è pittura di vitio, e non di riputatione: quella è pittura di fraude, non di semplicità: quella è pittura temporale, e momentanea… Non levare la pittura d’Iddio, e pigliare quella della meretrice, perché ti gabbi, e vaneggi, se credi dipinger meglio del sopra mondano Artefice.” And p. 261 “E, per finirla, che pensate, madonne, che significhi Venere da Canaco Scionio formata sedente? (come riferisce Pausania) non altro, che con lo star sedente, senza cosa alcuna operare induca la donna alla libidine, et a mill’ altri pensi eri lascivi, a quali poi anche havete grandissima inclinatione.”

611 Ibid., 195. The condescending addresses to women are notably absent from Passi’s more mitigated Dello stato maritale.

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per valore, che per molta carità verso il sesso feminile conoscendo quanto danno a quello portano le lettere… compose questo sonetto” (51). The second of these occurs mid-way through the fifth exhortation on dress and ornamentation and is analysed in Chapter 4.

Despite Marinella’s attribution of these sonnets to male poets, it is generally agreed that both were likely written by Marinella herself.612 In these instances Marinella thematizes – for those who suspect performance – her capacity to appropriate and ‘perform’ the voice and authority of the patriarchal didact.

Across the Essortationi, Marinella’s mode of authorial self-positioning regularly aligns her with a culturally recognisable, subject position of patriarchal exhortation. But this authorial self-positioning assumes a political resonance in light of her status as a woman writer who is simultaneously resisting and questioning the prescriptions she voices and undermining patriarchal paradigms of authority. Together, these aspects of Marinella’s conduct book suggest that her assumption of the voice of patriarchal exhortation can be understood as parody rather than straightforward imitation. Marinella appropriates this voice, and the credibility and authority that accompanies it, in order to expose and correct its inherent devices, biases, and fallibilities.

6.4 Gender, parody and a ‘refunctioned’ conduct book

The irony of Marinella’s resistance to the gender prescriptions she ostensibly advocates and her adoption of the subject position of “other” constitute two of the central problems of interpretation of the work. I have suggested a reading of this irony as parody of the voice of patriarchal exhortation. Rose suggests that parody can be defined as “the comic refunctioning of performed linguistic or artistic material”, where ‘refunctioning’ refers to the

612 Marinella, Exhortations to Women, 68, n. 57, 114, n. 83; Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 136, 144.

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“new set of functions given to parodied material in the parody and may also entail some criticism of the parodied work.”613 Rose also notes the potential of parody to ‘lay bare the devices’ at work in the original text. She quotes Tuvia Shlonsky: “In so far as it is not a simple imitation but a distortion of the original the method of parody is to disrealize the norms which the original tries to realize, that is to say, to reduce what is of normative status in the original to a convention or a mere device.”614

Helena Sanson describes conduct books as “one of the means European culture has created and developed in order to express and regulate desire, and the feminine ideal promoted by these works therefore embodies specific (and evolving) forms of social and cultural desire which in turn help to maintain a certain well-defined political order and power.”615 Sanson’s words resonate with the comparative analysis throughout this thesis, which has aimed to highlight how Renaissance literature on female conduct often reinforced patriarchal paradigms of womanhood. Across areas of women’s conduct from learning, to speech, appearance, and marital relations, the female sex is regularly represented in this literature as unsuitable for pursuits beyond the domestic, inferior in intellect and reasoning, subordinate to male authority and inherently prone to vice. I suggest that this tradition can be understood as an entrenched discursive mechanism which is patriarchal to the extent that it works to reinforce male privilege, power, and authority.

I argue that Marinella’s Essortationi can be understood as a parodic ‘refunctioning’ of this tradition. My analysis of Marinella’s appropriation of the conventionally male role of

613 Rose, Parody, 52.

614 Tuvia Shlonsky, "Literary Parody: Remarks on its Method and Function," in Proceedings of the 4th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, ed. François Jost (The Hague, 1966), 797. As cited in Rose, Parody, 82.

615 Sanson, "Women and Conduct in the Italian Tradition," 12.

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didact on women’s conduct suggests that it is more than mere imitation. It is parodic in its imitation and then distortion of the tradition. This distortion occurs through Marinella’s appropriation and subversion of traditionalist discourses on womanhood (as revealed in

Chapters 3, 4 and 5), and the act of authorship itself, both of which ‘disrealize’ rather than reinforce entrenched ideas about women’s inferiority, preclusion from domains beyond domesticity, silence, and subordination to male authority.

But the distortion also occurs through Marinella’s ‘disrealizeation’ of the norm, reinforced in the tradition of conduct literature for and about women, that the role of instruction and authority on women’s conduct is men’s. To invoke Butler’s terminology,

Marinella’s parody of the male voice of patriarchal exhortation performs a ‘denaturalisation’ of this gender script, and in doing so engages a process of ‘deterritorializing’ Seicento gender norms of power, authority, and instruction.

It is noteworthy in this regard that whilst the Essortationi is Marinella’s first and only publication of a conduct book, it is not the first time in her career that she adopted an overtly instructive authorial voice. Her Discorso del rivolgimento amoroso verso la somma bellezza, attached to her early hagiographic Vita di San Francesco, is remarkable for its adoption of this voice. As Cox writes: “while the effortless air of intellectual entitlement Marinella displays in the Rivolgimento does little to suggest it, this assumption was far from uncontroversial in the culture of her day.”616 In this early work, but especially in the Essortationi, Marinella’s example denies validity to the notion that women could not, or should not, instruct.

Marinella’s authorial stance across the Essortationi is characterised, however, by indirection and contrasts. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 have shown how Marinella crafts an authorial

616 Cox, The Prodigious Muse, 220.

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alibi of traditionalism, enabling her to critique under the radar. Similarly, I suggest that the author’s adoption across the work of the voice of patriarchal exhortation functions at one level for the author as an alibi. Rose notes the way in which the parodied text can be “used as a

‘word-mask’ or ‘decoy-code’ to conceal or complicate the message of the parodist.”617 Thus she suggests that the parodist may “choose to unmask and deflate other writers by using their works ironically as a temporary ‘word-mask’”.618 However, she also notes the inherently ambivalent characteristic of parody, where the degree to which the parody is critical of the parodied text remains opaque:

Even explicitly critical parody can make the comic discrepancy between the parodist’s

style and that of the target text into a weapon against the latter and at the same time

refunction the target’s work for a new and positive purpose within the parody in a

manner which must make the parody’s criticisms of the parodied text to some extent

ambivalent.619

Marinella’s parody in the Essortationi is fundamentally ambivalent. A reading of the work as an imitation of traditionalist prescriptive literature directed at women, in which Marinella simply resists the gendered expectations and prescriptions that she espouses, is, at least superficially, tenable. Indeed, I suggest this represents a line of defence for the author against potential detractors – an authorial alibi. Yet close analysis reveals the ways in which Marinella appropriates and undermines the authority of the voice of patriarchal exhortation, suggesting that this voice can also be read as functioning as a ‘decoy-code’ for the author.

617 Rose, Parody, 87.

618 Ibid., 51.

619 Ibid.

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Conclusion

Lucrezia Marinella was an exceptional early modern writer; a pioneer who defended in words and deeds, and with acumen and ingenuity, the validity of women’s intellect and authority. Modern scholarship has elucidated her literary talent, the rhetorical dexterity of her writing, and her sustained commitment to subverting literary traditions and paradigms that denied women agency, authority, and value beyond domesticity and corporeal beauty. Yet the

Essortationi alle donne – Marinella’s second and final explicit contribution to the querelle des femmes – presents a conundrum for scholars. The Essortationi’s ostensible retraction of the feminist principles of La nobiltà, and apparently incongruous meeting of traditionalism and pointed critique, has perplexed and problematised efforts to define the work and the author’s stance.

This thesis has offered a reading of the Essortationi which counters interpretations of the work as a conservative volte face. Through close textual analysis the thesis has traced, unravelled, and contextualised the threads of critique and subversion interwoven throughout the Essortationi. I have argued that Marinella’s traditionalist exhortations are best understood as an authorial alibi. Through a show of deference to traditional ideas about womanhood,

Marinella displays her own authority and decorum, and dissembles her personal accountability as she interrogates and subverts a patriarchal literary tradition of defining, circumscribing, and prescribing women’s conduct.

The Essortationi is a work of immense erudition and complexity, the culmination of a lifetime of devotion to philosophy and learning. As Virginia Cox suggests, despite its

“despondent analysis of women’s literary possibilities” it is “probably the most confident and

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wide-ranging female-authored secular didactic text of the age.”620 The exceptionality of the

Essortationi should not be underestimated. It merits close attention as an extremely rare example of a Seicento woman writer’s adoption of an overtly didactic authorial position – in relation to both men and women – to engage at an intellectual and philosophical level with the male-dominated conduct literature tradition. It is all the more remarkable as a work that – beyond mere participation or imitation – subverts this tradition.

My comparative analysis of contemporary querelle des femmes and conduct literature has revealed the ways in which discourses on women’s conduct – on seclusion, silence, domesticity, dress and ornamentation, and marriage – were directed towards reinforcing women’s confinement to a position of domestic subservience.621 I have read this practice as a discursive patriarchal mechanism, a way of maintaining and reinforcing, through the medium of written discourse, patriarchal privilege and power. It is a deep-rooted discursive practice that I suggest Marinella’s Essortationi interrupts, unsettles, and refunctions.

Throughout my analysis, modern theories on discourse, positioning, and identity have supported a shift of focus from reading Marinella’s Essortationi as an individual reflection and compilation of personal views. Rather, these theories encourage us to recognise her engagement with contemporary discourses of womanhood, and the implications of this engagement on how she is positioned as an author. These discourses are culturally recognisable patterns in contemporary literary culture of writing about womanhood that are inscribed with social and cultural belief systems, as well as relative value and authority. I have

620 Cox, Women's Writing in Italy, 224.

621 As I have emphasised throughout the thesis, this is a discursive practice which must not be uncritically assumed to be replicated as an enforced reality in the lived experiences of women. The reality was that many early modern women did not abide by these patriarchal prescriptions for their conduct, did not ensconce themselves within the home, nor necessarily consider themselves subordinate.

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argued that Marinella invoked traditionalist discourses on womanhood as a strategy of rhetorical, authorial self-positioning; as an “investment” that brought legitimacy, protection and authority for the author and her work. It is a strategy that enables her to cultivate an authoritative authorial identity or alibi through which to engage critically with the subject of women’s conduct.

Chapter 3 has shown how, with an alibi of acquiescence to traditionalist prescriptions for women’s seclusion, domesticity, and taciturnity, Marinella challenges rather than ratifies women’s preclusion from learning, letters, and fame. Chapter 4 shows how traditionalist exhortations to modesty and to virtue serve as an alibi for Marinella to subvert the tradition of using discourses of women’s dress and beauty as a platform for misogyny. Modesty and the pursuit of virtue over beauty are reframed by Marinella as a means for women to free themselves from a masculinist value system. Chapter 5 shows how, with an alibi of deference to authority, marital harmony, and women’s domesticity, Marinella exposes the fallibility of literary authorities (especially Hesiod and Aristotle) and the husband, and subverts the notion of woman’s absolute subordination to the prudence, authority, and instruction of men.

Modern theories on literary and gender parody have also illuminated the political implications of imitation that distorts tradition, and the potential of parody to lay bare inherent biases and denaturalise gender norms. These theories provide a way of understanding Marinella’s Essortationi as an act and discursive practice of politicised appropriation and distortion – a parody, which intervenes in an ingrained male-authored literary tradition of architecting women’s conduct to support patriarchal power and privilege.

The outcome is an unravelling, rather than reinscribing, of its norms and discourses: a

‘refunctioned’ conduct book. These theories also note, however, the inherently ambivalent nature of parody. Parody is always to some extent ambiguous in terms of the degree to which

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it critiques its source. For Marinella, I suggest that this ambivalence supports her methodology of subversion through an alibi of traditionalism. Albeit problematised, the possibility of a reading of straightforward imitation of the tradition is her alibi – her line of defence to deflect potential censure.

The rhetorical dexterity with which Marinella constructs an authorial alibi of traditionalism as she simultaneously subverts prevailing discourses and paradigms of the literature on women’s conduct is a clear example of the sort of strategic and circumspect representation of authorial selves that modern scholarship shows is pervasive in the early modern period. This analysis of Marinella’s Essortationi counters any presumption that this was an exclusively male authorial practice and contributes to redressing the bias towards analysis of male-authored texts in this scholarship.

Beyond Marinella’s Essortationi, this study offers a theoretical and analytical framework for further research into the patterns and nuances of strategic authorial self- representation in early modern women’s writing. Countering assumptions of the unmitigated sincerity of women’s writing, this study is evidence that writers such as Marinella used written discourse ingeniously and strategically to locate contested subject positions of authorship, authority, and defiance. Her Essortationi provides one compelling example of how discursive techniques and strategies can be used to dissemble or obfuscate polemical views, and to challenge entrenched assumptions about the nature, role, and status of women.622 The extent

622 Another such example that warrants closer attention, particularly for its parallels with Marinella’s Essortationi in terms of methods of dissimulation, is Moderata Fonte’s use of the open dialogue in Il merito delle donne. Fonte’s use of this format, in which no one character serves as the mouthpiece for the author, enables her greater license to write candidly and give voice to potentially subversive viewpoints without categorically accepting personal ownership of those views. I analyse Fonte’s dissimulatory method in relation to Marinella’s in a forthcoming article.

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to which these strategies mirror, invert or parody the authorising and self-defensive strategies of male author contemporaries also merits deeper and closer attention.

In the case of the Essortationi, Marinella’s use of an authorial alibi, echoes strategies evident in male-authored texts of the period that engage with the querelle des femmes such as

Passi’s Dello stato maritale, Loredano’s In Biasimo delle donne and Aprosio’s Lo scudo di

Rinaldo. In these texts, however, defender and celebrator of women is their authorial alibi as the discourse shifts into often hyperbolic denunciations of the female sex. More than straightforward self-defence, there is almost certainly an element of intellectual gamesmanship to this practice: a game of rhetorical ingenuity. I suggest that this is also true of

Marinella’s use of an authorial alibi. A self-defensive mechanism in its claim of innocent traditionalism, her construction of an alibi simultaneously displays her understanding of, and capacity to appropriate, her contemporaries’ rhetorical practices of authorial self- representation and dissimulation. In this regard, I suggest that beyond the pretext of moralistic instruction of women, the Essortationi betrays an intent to expose this tactic by which she has not been fooled. Rather, beat them at their own game.

Her first exhortation on seclusion for example, is sophistic in its argument that seclusion suits women because of their superiority. Rather than a genuine attempt to advocate for women’s seclusion, the exhortation might be better understood as a display of the dexterity with which Marinella repurposes discourses on women’s seclusion towards affirming women’s superiority. Similarly, her ostentatious recantations of La nobiltà which are often belied or complicated by the text, and the parodic characteristics of the Essortationi, suggest

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its serio-ludere quality. There is a sense that Marinella is playing “the game” here. Yet at the same time, the implications are serious.623

In my analysis of Marinella’s rhetorical posturing in the Essortationi against the backdrop of contemporary male authorial practices, this study has sought to better contextualise the work within the literary and publishing milieu from which it emerged, and to suggest at least an intertextual relationship between Marinella and the Accademia degli

Incogniti. Certainly, the intriguing paradox of the Accademia degli Incogniti’s interest in and publication of women’s writing (including by Marinella and Tarabotti), and its significant corpus of misogynistic literature warrants further research. Neither wholly antagonistic, nor straightforwardly supportive, the Incogniti’s approach to women writers was complex, conditional, and fickle.

I have also sought, particularly in my comparative analysis with Tarabotti, to bring nuance to my reading of “feminism” in mid-Seicento Venice. Tarabotti and Marinella approach the subject of women from very different angles, with different perspectives on how women are oppressed and how they might free themselves from it. This is perhaps most apparent in their discussions about dress and corporeal beauty. As explained in Chapter 4, Tarabotti defends women’s right to luxury and adornment as a freedom, whilst Marinella rejects vanity as a waste of women’s time that leads to their subjection to a masculinist value system.

Rejecting corporeal ornamentation is, for Marinella, freedom. This analysis underscores the diversity of feminisms and approaches to challenging patriarchy and misogyny represented by these contemporary women writers of mid-Seicento Venice. It aims in this regard to dispel any assumption of a distinct, essentialist divide between male-authored and female-authored

623 Price and Ristaino note the work’s playful quality, but also its serious implications. Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the "Querelle Des Femmes", 131.

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writing about women. As Judith Bennett argues “feminist history works best when it juggles both differences among women and differences between women and men.”624

There can be no doubt that the Essortationi lacks the potency and vigour of the forthright feminism of La nobiltà. Marinella’s alibi of traditionalism in the Essortationi dilutes the political force of her critique and subversion. Whilst this methodology might mitigate her personal risk of censure, it also arguably risks absorbing and nullifying the challenges embedded and interwoven in the text. But if it enables her to weigh in on the debate about women, to publish and reach a readership with less risk of backlash in a period in which personal attacks on women writers and especially feminist rhetoric was prevalent, perhaps this is a justifiable, or necessary risk.

I suggest that the circumspect, mitigated approach to subversion in the Essortationi does not make the work less worthy of critical attention. To the contrary, close scrutiny of

Marinella’s construction of authorial ethos and an alibi in the Essortationi reveals an intriguing and complex example of an early modern woman’s negotiation between challenging patriarchal ideas about womanhood and mitigating the personal risks for doing so. The need for this sort of negotiation is not a problem specific to the early modern period. The driving force of Marinella’s methodology – her interest in self-defence, acceptance and cultivating authority – continues to shape and inflect modern approaches to challenging patriarchy, as does an ever-changing and contingent socio-cultural receptivity to feminist rhetoric.

Within the context of modern academia and specifically the field of women’s history,

Judith Bennett’s book History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism has traced a gradual decline over the last 30 to 40 years in the use of overtly political feminist language in

624 Bennett, History Matters, 25.

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journal articles, with preference being given to softer terminology such as “gender hierarchy”,

“gender inequality,” and “gender imbalance” over “patriarchy” which was used with frequency in the 70’s and 80’s.625 She suggests that this dilution in the language of feminism has resulted, ironically, in a “positive feminist effect, for it has helped us establish an institutional place for women’s history within a hostile discipline. In making our voices heard within the broader conversation of history, women’s history has calmed down, behaved, and been rewarded.”626

Without negating the problems of diachronic histories of feminism, I want to suggest there might be an element of historical continuity here. The norms and expectations of female authorial decorum and the consequences for transgressing those boundaries have shifted and morphed across the centuries. Yet remaining constant is the personal risk that confronts a woman writer should she challenge the ways in which her sex is bound and defined, as well as the way in which a covert, tempered or quieter feminism is often rewarded. These are continuities which support the continuity of patriarchy itself; arguably fostering what Bennett terms a “patriarchal equilibrium”.627 But it also suggests that feminists have a long and continuing history of locating rhetorical spaces to insinuate themselves within the patriarchal order in order to challenge the system from within, without annihilating themselves and their prospects in the process. Interrogating both the way in which such challenges have been accompanied by personal risk, and the opportunities and strategies for circumventing or overcoming those risks, is central to developing our understanding of “patriarchal

625 Ibid., 21-22.

626 Ibid., 29.

627 Bennett suggests the importance of attending more closely to “the history of a “patriarchal equilibrium” whereby, despite many changes in women’s experiences over the centuries, women’s low status vis-à-vis men has remained remarkably unchanged. The fact of this patriarchal equilibrium presents, in my view, a critical feminist problem that only historians – and, indeed, only feminist historians who take a long view of women’s past – can unpack.” Ibid., 4.

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equilibrium”, and the enduring reality of women’s inequality. This analysis of Marinella’s

Essortationi and her alibi for subversion is intended as a step in that direction.

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Bibliography

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Sinclair, Amy Ellen

Title: Pretext and subversion: Lucrezia Marinella's Essortationi alle donne (1645)

Date: 2018

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/214587

File Description: Pretext and subversion: Lucrezia Marinella's Essortationi alle donne (1645)

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