630 linda l. carroll
already evident early in the century in the works of the Vicentine noble
gian giorgio trissino. it gained momentum in the 1540s and reached its
apogee with the publication of aristotle’s Poetics in Latin in 1548, followed
swiftly by vernacular versions, and the choice of aristotelian norms as the
basis for educational programs, particularly that of the Jesuits.
Women Writersthe signal literary innovation of this period was the rise of works by
Venetian women, no longer confined to characters created by men. the
earliest participants in the trend were courtesans such as gaspara stampa
and Veronica Franco who wrote lyric poetry, often in praise of their male
patrician beloveds, an amplification of the cultured accomplishments
distinguishing their category. soon women of the citizen classes such
as Modesta Pozzo (also known by her pseudonym Moderata Fonte) and
Lucrezia Marinella and even the nun arcangela tarabotti were composing
arcadian pastorals, epics, and treatises.
it was the pastoral’s status as the lowliest literary genre that permit-
ted it to women writers, while its theme of longing for a lost love and
its idealized environment appealed to women authors as well as readers.
they found in its rural setting a respite from the hurly-burly of city life
and in its world of fantasy and its traditional function as the genre in
which complaints against established norms could be expressed a libera-
tion from restrictions on their conduct. the epics written by women fea-
ture important and active female characters. Plot twists require them to
dress as men, and they excel at the male activities in which they engage;
some, as sole heirs, became regents of states. they are not lacking in amo-
rous desires, though they express them within the moral framework of
chastity, marital fidelity and patriotic imperatives. at the conclusion of
the works, the heroines are not reintegrated into the patriarchal social
structure through marriage but remain alone or die.15 another genre in
which women wrote was the Christian novella; in theirs, men underwent
a conversion to virtue but women were already virtuous.
Preceded by a male tradition of treatises defending women, at least
two women authors, Pozzo and Marinella, penned their own, Marinella
in response to a treatise vilifying women by a male author. Marinella
15 Paola Malpezzi Price and Christini ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des
Femmes” in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Madison, n.J., 2008), pp. 25–37, 84–104.