ror.org/01y64my43
Abstracts
Abstract
This article analyzes Veronica Franco’s use of the language of battle and swordsmanship in her Terze Rime, paying particular attention to the poems she wrote in response to a literary attack from an anonymous male writer (usually identified as Maffio Venier). In these texts, Franco describes the act of writing as a sword fight and represents herself as a skilled fencer. I consider Franco’s language of battle and her self-identification as a fighter in relation to the figure of the woman warrior popularized by Renaissance chivalric epics. Moreover, I explore the connections among Franco, her Terze Rime, and the Venetian cult of female figures—most significantly Saint Justina and the Virgin Mary—often represented as defenders of Venetian freedom. More broadly, this article investigates how Franco’s image of the pen as a weapon relates both to contemporary reflections on the position of women in society, as well as on the role and function of the writer in Renaissance Italy.
Appendices
Bibliography
- Adler, Sara Maria. “Veronica Franco’s Petrarchan Terze Rime.” Italica, vol. 65, no. 3, 1988, pp. 213–33.
- Aquilecchia, Giovanni. “Aretino’s Sei giornate: Literary Parody and Social Reality.” In Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. Edited by Letizia Panizza, Legenda, 2000, pp. 453–62.
- Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Edited by Sergio Zatti and Remo Ceserani, UTET, 1997.
- Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Translated with an Introduction by Guido Waldman. Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1998.
- Ascoli, Albert Russell. “Erichtonius’s Secret: Body Politics in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.” In Ascoli, A Local Habitation and a Name: Imagining History in the Italian Renaissance. Fordham UP, 2011, pp. 243–81.
- Bianchi, Stefano. La scrittura poetica femminile nel Cinquecento veneto: Gaspara Stampa e Veronica Franco. Vecchiarelli, 2013.
- Crimi, Giuseppe. “Uno scontro tra flagelli: le rime di Franco contro Aretino.” In Le scritture dell’ira. Edited by Giuseppe Crimi and Cristiano Spila, RomaTre-Press, 2016, pp. 67–82.
- Crivelli, Tatiana. “A un luogo stesso per molte vie vassi: Note sul sistema petrarchista di Veronica Franco.” In “L’una et l’altra chiave.” Figure e momenti del petrarchismo femminile europeo. Edited by Tatiana Crivelli et al., Salerno Editrice, 2005, pp. 79–102.
- Doni, Antonfrancesco. Le dimostrationi de gli animi de gli huomini. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Ms. Palat. E.B.10.8, Striscia 1392, fol. 27v.
- Fenlon, Iain. The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice, Yale UP, 2007.
- Ferrini, Roberto. “Donne, cavalieri e tiranni: una lettura di Orlando Furioso XXXVII.” Women Language Literature in Italy / Donne Lingua Letteratura in Italia no. 1, 2019, pp. 43–58.
- Franco, Veronica. Rime. Edited by Stefano Bianchi, Mursia, 1995.
- Franco, Veronica. Lettere. Edited by Stefano Bianchi, Salerno Editrice, 1998.
- Franco, Veronica. Poems and Selected Letters. Trans. and ed. by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret Rosenthal, U of Chicago P, 1998.
- Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Eros Equalized: Literary Cross-Dressing and the Defense of Women in Louise Labe and Veronica Franco.” In Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620, Indiana UP, 1990, pp. 155–200.
- Leigh, Marcella Diliberti. Veronica Franco. Donna, poetessa e cortigiana del Rinascimento. Priuli e Verlucca, 1988.
- Longhi, Silvia. Lusus. Il capitolo burlesco nel Cinquecento. Antenore, 1983.
- Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman. Cambridge UP, 1980.
- Migiel, Marlyn. “Gender Studies and the Italian Renaissance.” In Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives. Edited by Antonio Toscano, Forum Italicum, 1991, pp. 29–41.
- Migiel, Marlyn. “Veronica Franco’s Gendered Strategies of Persuasion: Terze rime 1 and 2.” Modern Language Notes, vol. 131, no. 1, 2016, pp. 58–73.
- Migiel, Marlyn. Veronica Franco in Dialogue. U of Toronto P, 2022.
- Milligan, Gerry. Moral Combat. Women, Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature. U of Toronto P, 2018.
- Muir, Edward. Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton UP, 1981.
- Paternoster, Annick. “‘Le Sei Giornate’ di Pietro Aretino: L’urbanitas parodiata.” In Traités de savoir-vivre italiens. Edited by Alain Montandon. Association des publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Clermont-Ferrand, 1993, pp. 225–36.
- Pell, Gregory M. “Transcendence of Gender in Aretino and Franco: Cross-Dressing Literally and Literary Cross-Dressing.” Studi Rinascimentali, no. 5, 2007, pp. 111–26. http://digital.casalini.it/10.1400/83929.
- Phillippy, Patricia. “‘Altera Dido’: The Model of Ovid’s Heroides in the Poems of Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco,” Italica, no. 69, 1992, pp. 1–18.
- Quaintance, Courtney. “Defaming the Courtesan. Satire and Invective in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” In The Courtesan’s Art. Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon, Oxford UP, 2006, pp. 199–208.
- Quaintance, Courtney. “Women Writers Between Men: Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco.” In Quaintance, Textual Masculinities and the Exchange of Women in Renaissance Italy, U of Toronto P, 2015, pp. 134–68.
- Quondam, Amedeo. “La scena della menzogna: corte e cortigiano nel Ragionamento di Pietro Aretino.” Psicon, no. 3, 1976, pp. 4–23.
- Quondam, Amedeo. “‘Mercanzia d’onore / Mercanzia d’utile’: produzione libraria e lavoro intellettuale a Venezia nel Cinquecento.” In Libri, editori e pubblico nell’Europa moderna. Guida storica e critica. Edited by Armando Petrucci, Laterza, 1977, pp. 51–104.
- Ray, Meredith K. “Settling the Debt: Veronica Franco’s Literary Economics.” RLA: Romance Languages Annual, vol. 7, 1996, pp. 303–10.
- Regazzo-Thoms, Sabrina. “Una cortigiana intellettuale: Veronica Franco.” In Frauen der Italienische Renaissance. Edited by Dirk Hoeges, Peter Lang, 2001, pp. 139–67.
- Robin, Diana. “Courtesans Celebrity and Print Culture in Renaissance Venice.” In Italian Women and the City: Essays. Edited by Janet L. Smarr and Daria Valentini, Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2003, pp. 35–59.
- Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.
- Rosenthal, Margaret F. “Introduction: The Honored Courtesan.” In Veronica Franco, Poems and Selected Letters. Edited by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret Rosenthal, U of Chicago P, 1998, pp. 1–22.
- Rosenthal, Margaret F. “Veronica Franco’s Terze Rime: The Venetian Courtesan’s Defense,” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 2, Summer 1989, pp. 227–57.
- Ruggieri, Nicola. Maffio Venier arcivescovo e letterato veneziano del Cinquecento: studio storico-critico: con un’appendice di versi inediti e un indice di nomi. Tipografia Arturo Bosetti, 1909.
- Shemek, Deanna. “‘Mi mostrano a dito tutti quanti’: Disease, Deixis, and Disfiguration in the Lamento di una cortigiana Ferrarese.” In Medusa’s Gaze: Essays on Gender, Literature, and Aesthetics in Honor of Robert J. Rodini. Edited by Paul A. Ferrara et al., Bordighera, 2004, pp. 49–64.
- Stoppino, Eleonora. Genealogies of Fiction. Women Warriors and the Medieval Imagination in the “Orlando Furioso.” Fordham UP, 2011.
- Ugolini, Paola. “The Satirist’s Purgatory: ‘Il Purgatorio delle Cortigiane’ and the Writer’s Discontent.” Italian Studies, vol. 64, no.1, Spring 2009, pp. 1–19.
- Ugolini, Paola. “‘Il poter dir.’ Sincerity, Truth, and Faithfulness in Orlando Furioso 37.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, vol. 25, no.1, Spring 2022, pp. 69–88.
- Venier, Maffio. Il libro chiuso di Maffio Venier. La tenzone con Veronica Franco. Edited by Manlio Dazzi, Neri Pozza Editore, 1956.
- Weaver, Elisa. “Canto XXXVII.” In Lettura dell’Orlando Furioso, II. Edited by Guido Baldassarri and Marco Praloran, SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2019, pp. 366–84.
- Weaver, Elisa. “Filoginia e misoginia.” In Lessico critico dell’Orlando Furioso. Edited by Annalisa Izzo, Carocci, 2017, pp. 81–97.
- Wojciehowski, Dolora Chapelle. “Veronica Franco vs. Maffio Venier: Sex, Death, and Poetry in Cinquecento Venice.” Italica, vol. 83, no. 3, 2006, pp. 367–90.