It Renaissance Women Writers

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

“Did women have a Renaissance?” Joan Kelly polemically asked in 1977, only to answer in the negative: “there was no ‘renaissance’ for women, at least not during the Renaissance.” The extraordinary amount of scholarship conducted in the last forty years, however, allows us to provide a more nuanced answer. While women’s status did not improve dramatically during the Renaissance, it is now clear that many factors—from the development of the printed press to the rediscovery of Plato—led to a more positive view of women’s role in society and of their very nature. One particularly fascinating aspect of this phenomenon is the unprecedented emergence of women writers, a distinctive feature of early modern Italian culture. Women also explored other forms of creativity and affirmed themselves as composers, painters, and actresses. This course explores some of the protagonists of this extraordinary season, from writers to painters, from the humanists of the late fifteenth century—such as Isotta Nogarola and Cassandra Fedele—to Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia who in 1678 became the first woman in the world to receive a university degree. Conducted in Italian.