Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 04-09-08
Arcangela Tarabotti /Elena Cassandra
Tarabotti (1604-1652)
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"...FREE WILL, BESTOWED ON MEN AND WOMEN ALIKE."
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Elena Cassandra Tarabotti was the eldest of nine children of
a Venetian merchant family; she had four younger sisters, of
whom the two youngest married while the others remained at home.
When she was 12 years old, she was sent to a local Benedictine
monastery as a boarding student. At 16 she became a member of
that community, taking the name of Arcangela; three years later
she made her vows.
Her writings indicate that Tarabotti had entered the monastery not by choice, but rather under the coercion of her family. She is careful, however, to voice her objections not as personal complaint, but rather as defense of the whole group of those who had not been allowed to freely choose their future.
Venice was certainly not the only Italian city in which superfluous young women were sent to monasteries, but because it was a republic and prided itself on its concern for the liberty of its citizens and their families, the problem was discussed more openly than elsewhere. In 1629 the Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo had justified his relaxation of rules governing women's monasteries by saying that the women had given their liberty "not only to God, but for the sake of their country, the world, and their parents" (Cox, p.540, n.72). Tarabotti's objection would be that the liberty had not been given but taken away, and that therefore the actions of the parents and the leaders of church and state had been unjust.
Although unable to leave the monastery, Tarabotti was allowed visitors: her friends came, bringing news of the outside world and, more importantly, books that allowed her to make up for her limited education. From the 1630s her visitors began to include members of the new Accademia degli Incogniti, a group of prominent free-thinkers influential in Venetian cultural life; its founder, Giavan Francesco Loredan, would arrange for the publication of at least two of her works. Other Incogniti with whom she visited or corresponded included Giovanni Businello, librettist for Monteverdi and others, as well as the novelist Girolamo Brusoni. From these contacts in the world of literature and philosophy grew Tarabotti's willingness to circulate, and later publish, unpopular views.
By 1643 Tarabotti had written and circulated among her friends two works: La tirannia paterna (Paternal tyranny), and L'inferno monacale (The monastic hell). In the same year came her first publication, Il paradiso monacale (The monastic paradise), praise of monastic life for those who had freely chosen it. Together with L'inferno monacale and another planned (but apparently unwritten) work, Il purgatorio delle mal maritate (The purgatory of unhappily married women), the three would have made a Dantean trilogy on women's lives.
In the following year, Tarabotti published Antisatira in risposa al lusso donnesco, a response to a humorous satire mocking women's vanity, by Francesco Buoninsegni, which had been published six years earlier. Tarabotti's response defended a woman's right to adorn herself. Antisatira resulted in several written attacks on the author, in part because Venice was always concerned with enforcement of its sumptuary laws, and in part because the text had identified the author as a nun, who, the critics said, should oppose vanity in all its forms.
Tarabotti published nothing more until 1650; then a collection of her letters appeared (Lettere familiare e di complimento, the only work to be published under her own name, not anonymously or under a pseudonym). In the next year she published another polemic, Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomani (That women are of the human species), in response to a recent Italian translation of a 1595 Latin treatise.
A year later Tarabotti died, but in 1654 La semplicita ingannata (Simplicity deceived) was published; it is a revision of her very first attempt at writing, La tirannia paterna, but since little of the earlier work survives, we can't know how much the later work resembles the earlier. Semplicita harshly criticizes civic and ecclesiastical leaders for allowing the coercion of women, but it also presents an argument that those leaders could understand: the need to acknowledge God's gift of free will to women as well as men.
So far, only Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomani and most of La semplicita ingannata have been translated into English, but from these, Tarabotti's passionate voice can be heard.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Che le donne siano della spezie degli homine
La semplicita ingannata /La tirrania paterna
Information about secondary sources.
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1. From La semplicita ingannata:
(a) Click on "The feminine perspective" for a substantial excerpt from Book 1 (but with omissions that are not noted) on woman's superiority to man, translated by Brendan Dooley.
(b) Near the start of Mary Springfels' essay, "Behind Cloister Walls: Nun's Music," another passage from a later section of the first book, on why "the majority of nuns cannot attain perfection"
(c) Use your browser's search function to go to "Tarabotti" for excerpts from Book 1 and (the last two passages) from Book 2, on the creation of man and woman and on Eve. The translation is by by Letizia Panizza.
(d) Go to "Tarabotti" for a brief quotation from Book 2 on the reaction to a woman "seen with pen in hand."
2. In Italian:
(a) Half way down the page, three excerpts from the 1650 Lettere familiare e di complimento, including part of a letter to Giavan Francesco Loredan which suggests a disagreement between Tarabotti and her patron.
(b) At this alphabetical list from the University of Chicago's "Italian Women Writers" site, go to Tarabotti and click on "Texts Available"for a link to each of the three books of the posthumously published La semplicita ingannata, by "Galerana Baratotti." You can also link to Tarabotti's prefatory material: the dedication of the work to God; and "Lettore," in which the reader is asked to defend the work and its author against impertinent critics.
3. Essays, etc.:
(a) Elissa B. Weaver's entry on Tarabotti from the 1991 Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers is a useful introduction.
(b) "Letters from the cloister: Defending the literary self in Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari e di complimento" (2004), by Meredith Kennedy Ray, discusses Tarabotti's defense against the attacks of those who criticized those works --- or worse, said that she had not written them.
(c) "The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice" (1995), by Virginia Cox, includes a discussion of Tarabotti's reaction to Venice's policy of marriage limitation.
(d) "Suor Arcangela's Inferno" (1992) by Marcella Diberti-Leigh, describes the content and discusses the purpose of L'inferno monacale.
(e) An English-language review by Nancy Canepa of Weaver's 1998 edition of Satira e Antisatira, Buoninsegni's 1638 "satira menippea" and Tarabotti's 1644 response (neither yet available in English).
4. Other reviews (for information on the books' treatment of Tarabotti, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Beth L. Glixon on Wendy Beth Heller's 2003 study, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women's Voices in Seventeenth-century Venice.
(b) Sally Parkin on Satya Brata Datta's 2003 study, Women and Men in Early Modern Venice: Reassessing History.
(c) Weaver on the 2000 essay collection, Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society.
(d) Anne Jacobson Schutte on Jutta Gisela Sperling's 1999 study, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice
5. A bibliography of editions of Tarabotti's works; and elsewhere, a timeline of her life.
6. A new disputation against women, in which it is demonstrated that they are not human beings, a translation of the 1595 treatise by "Valens Acidalius" that led to Tarabotti's writing Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomani. You can also link to the Latin original, Disputatio nova contra mulieres, qua probatur eas homines non esse.
7. For historical background on the discussion about women's humanity that took place during the 1500s and 1600s, a 1997 essay by Michael Nolan, "The Myth of Soulless Women."
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Che le donne siano della spezie degli homine
[Theresa M. Kenney has translated the Latin of a 1595 treatise that mocked Anabaptist beliefs and a response of the same year by a Lutheran writer. These are followed by Tarabotti's 1651 response to a 1647 Italian translation by "Horatio Plata" of the original treatise. An appendix gives later poetry that illustrates the spread of the debate over women's humanity. Kenney's introduction is detailed and her notes helpful. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
"Women are not human": an anonymous treatise and
responses / edited and translated by Theresa M. Kenney. New York:
Crossroad Pub., 1998. (ix, 174 p.)
LC#: BS680 .W7 W545 1998; ISBN: 082451775X
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
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"Your kindness will not be shocked by such extravagant words."
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[The opening, subtitled "Against Horatio Plata, the translator...." After justifying her use of invective, Tarabotti makes the standard disclaimer that she will not reproach the virtuous, a group that will of course include those men who chose to read her work:]
It will perhaps amaze you, reader, to hear me exaggerate my case against the male sex, desiring to make you realize that women are of the human species by means of the most solid foundations of the Scripture. But your kindness will not be shocked by such extravagant words, because I do not intend to vilify man, formed by God with such great privilege. I detest his vice and corrupt human nature....
Rest assured that I always exclude from my reproaches, with heart and pen, the good and the virtuous. [p.89]
[And, after saying that she will respond "word for word, reason for reason, conceit for conceit," Tarabotti conclude her introduction with the equally standard appeal to her reader's generosity:]
If I should, however, stray a few steps from the path, pity me, dear reader, for I deserve it, not being in the habit of traveling through the world. God be with you. [p.90]
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"I will gird myself to defend the worthier cause."
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[One of Plata's crimes had been to make the original Latin treatise available to "the people" by translating it into Italian; his greater crime had been to give ammunition to those already inclined to denigrate women:]
...[A] modern heretic --- most learned in his own eyes --- has tried to undermine Christianity with the testimony of Sacred Scripture itself, and to give the people to understand that women are not of the human species and that, consequently, they do not have a soul.
If we are to believe that or not, I leave it to those who have judgment to consider; meanwhile, I will gird myself to defend the worthier cause against the arrogant pretensions of men who in fact would also like to infect the Church with this heresy, too.... [p.90]
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"You find the means to kill the souls of the simple."
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[Tarabotti then addresses the pseudonymous author ("Valens Acidalius") of the original Latin work:]
You, with sophistical arguments, set yourself up to attack that very sex which, because it is deprived of the opportunity to study, cannot answer your malicious inventions. With the poison of your malicious inventions you find the means to kill the souls of the simple.... [p.91]
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"...even though you say it as a joke."
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[The original work by "Valens Acidalius" was quite consciously made up of "sophistical arguments" intended to ridicule his Anabaptist opponents. Tarabotti seems to have realized that his work was meant to be taken ironically, but for her it doesn't matter: even in jest, using Scripture to denigrate women is dangerous:]
We concede to your insanity that if the Anabaptists deny God, you can also deny that woman is of the human species.... But since you come to the field with the arms of the Sacred Scripture, we should not tolerate it. [p.97]
Take care then, not to offend God---even though you say it as a joke---in offending that creature which he has honored with the greatest prerogatives of his omnipotence. [p.105]
And it will not serve in your defense to say that these inventions of yours are jesting lies, because every lie is detestable. [p.106]
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"The materials are the same."
--------------------------------------
[Tarabotti quotes 57 passages ("Deceptions") from the original and then responds to each with "Undeceptions," based chiefly on biblical citations. Perhaps most interesting are those places where she strays "a few steps from the path," and gives her own examples. On the physical differences between men and women:]
Listen. If a goldsmith, after having refined in fire this vile excrement from the earth, which is adored with such eagerness by human greed, extracts the finest gold, he will make a ring, a bracelet, or a chain. Should we believe because of this that the variety of the work diversifies the material? No sir; for surely the different creations won't change the fact that the materials are the same....
I will add still more. To illustrate a story, a painter creates several different pictures. How could you ever say that different materials are there because the forms vary? God did the same thing when he differentiated the members of the man and the woman, but he still made them alike, in substance and essence, and of one and the same species. [p.109]
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"Tell me please, who makes these laws?"
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["Valens Acidalius" had given as a reason for laws against women in public office the belief that women "are deprived of discourse and a rational soul." Tarabotti responds:]
The laws don't want women to exercise public magistracies.... Tell me please, who makes these laws? Weren't they pretentious, proud, and tyrannical men?... Haven't they [women] been approved by divine law for those burdens that --- on the sly --- you others usurped for yourselves?... [p.151]
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"A tiny little confession doesn't make up for such a great
offense."
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[Near the end, returning to the original author's ironic purpose, and its insufficiency:]
...[Y]ou realize that your proofs are fallacious, and now you even confess as much.... You show that you are laughing at yourself, but such a tiny little confession doesn't make up for such a great offense....
...[I]t was not necessary for you to demonstrate to the world which such stupidities the manner in which the heretics are accustomed to explicate the Scriptures to destabilize their dogmas.... [pp.156-57]
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"Women judge that I have conquered and confused you."
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[And at the very end, Tarabotti, speaking for women, gives judgment on her own treatise:]
Women judge that I have conquered and confused you with your defective pretensions. It seems to me that I have sufficiently tamed this heretical hydra of your villainous opinions. My reasonings in their defense are very clear; they cannot be contradicted if you don't use perverse disputes.
As your paradoxes are more despoiled of truth than trees are of leaves by the great rigors of the winter, he who does not know the prerogatives, the graces, and the preeminences of women is blind. He who does not confess them is obstinate. And he who spreads the opposite opinion does well to declare himself a heretic, with the added adjectives "audacious" and "shameless." [p.158]
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La semplicita ingannata /La tirannia paterna
[Letizia Panizza has translated most of La semplicita ingannata, but gives her translation the title of Tarabotti's early work, Paternal Tyranny (La tirannia paterna); she has omitted "a short section in Book 3" (p.30) but does not indicate in the text wher the omission occurs (in fact, 13 pages are omitted, in which Tarabotti praises Mary, the mother of Jesus; you can see the original of the whole Semplicita online). Panizza's introduction and notes are valuable, in part because they give passages from Tarabotti's letters and Il paradiso monacale; appendices give another part of Paradiso and part of one of the anti-woman tracts that Semplicita rebuts. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Paternal tyranny; edited and translated
by Letizia Panizza (The other voice in early modern Europe).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. (xxix, 182 p.)
LC#: BX4220.I8 T3713 2004; ISBN: 0226789659, 0226789667
Includes bibliographical references (p. [163]-171) and index
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"Pour into men's hearts a belief in the sincerity of my
words."
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[The original dedication to La tirannia paterna was a harsh letter to the Venetian Republic; in the revision that became La semplicita ingannata Tarabotti dedicates her work to God:]
O most merciful Lord of Lords, You are well aware that my Innocence Betrayed, dictated by a simple heart, will not be well received in this treacherous world. That is why I dedicate it to You, whose gaze is not arrested by outer appearances, but pierces right through to the marrow of my good intentions....
With the aid of the most Holy Spirit's rays, pour into men's hearts a belief in the sincerity of my words; they are not pronounced lightly, are not spoken out of self-interest, and do not lie. [pp.38-39]
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"May I awaken remorse in the consciences of wicked men."
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[After the dedication. a letter to the reader:]
You must decide, dear Reader, if the complaints of the present author ring true or deserve blame. If you count yourself among the number I berate, consider my writings as worthy of your attention and not mere pinpricks against the male sex....
So please put aside, kind Reader, any suspicion about me; and if you do not want to be counted among the betrayers, make sure that your daughters or any other female relatives of yours who have no wish to become nuns enjoy a true Christian education at home accompanied by modest retirement from the world. Do not enclose their bodies in a repulsive prison in order for their wretched souls to be cast subsequently into the infernal tomb....
If I accomplish nothing else of good, at least may I awaken remorse in the consciences of wicked men. [pp.40-42]
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"Men dare to endanger free will."
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[The opening of Book 1. For Tarabotti the great crime in coercing a woman into entering a monastery lies in the denial of her right to choose:]
Men's depravity could not have devised a more heinous crime that the wanton defiance of God's inviolable decrees. Yet day in and day out, men never cease defying them by deeds dictated by self-interest.
Among their blameworthy excesses, pride of place must go to enclosing innocent women within convent walls under apparently holy (but really wicked) pretexts. Men dare to endanger free will, bestowed on men and women alike by the Divine Majesty....
...Divine Providence, after all, has granted free will to his creatures, whether male or female, and bestowed on both sexes intellect, memory and will! By means of these three faculties they are able to shun avoidable evil and pursue the good of their choice by their own voluntary inclination, not servile fear. [pp.43-44]
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"...brought up by their families to exercise their free
will."
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[As Tarabotti had written earlier in Il paradiso monacale, if monastic life is freely chosen by an adult, it is praiseworthy --- but only then:]
...[W]omen who voluntarily withdraw to a solitary cell after experiencing the world's vanities and men's deceptions are truly praiseworthy and full of prudence.... These are the nuns worthy of our praise and admiration, but in our age such privileges are granted to few and only to those brought up by their families to exercise their free will and who have therefore chosen such a life prompted by the breath of the Holy Spirit alone. [p.49]
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"Remember that your daughters are also your flesh and blood."
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[To fathers, Tarabotti offers her solution to the financial problems that lead them to incarcerate some of their daughters:]
If you would not accompany your daughters to wealthy and noble wedding rites with high-ranking and wealthy spouses, as your vainglory requires, then join them at least in more modest marriages. Divide up your estates and wealth among them without preference, for that is the will of God. Do not aim at raising one of them to the summit of worldly pomp by casting the others down into a chaos of wretchedness and damnation's abyss. Temper the wealth of your sons, and remember that your daughters are also your flesh and blood; do not wish to constrain the feelings that God has left free to all His creatures. [p.54]
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"...not only the "interests of state," but the
salvation of souls."
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[And to the rulers of Venice, a plea. As a republic, Venetians saw the sound financial condition of its citizens' families as essential to good government; therefore, those families needed to dispose of their surplus members for the "interests of state." For Tarabotti, this was not a good enough reason:]
For private individuals to commit such enormity through self-interest --- cursed be self-interest --- is an abominable abuse of power, but for religious superiors and rulers to allow it makes one reel in horror at their insensitivity. The prince's eye, we know, guards not only the "interests of state," but the salvation of souls as well; he ought not to allow so many to perish wretchedly by thus subordinating their salvation to those same interests.
Most eminent, Serene, and Illustrious Lords, how greatly, how greatly should your souls be moved to compassion by the streams of tears from these desperate prisoners! [pp.60-61]
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"I am only able to have an imperfect and shadowy knowledge."
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[Tarabotti asserts her own disinterest; the book has identified its author as one "Galerena Baratotti." After naming heroic nuns like Teresa of Avila:]
Our age is not worthy of such exemplars; nor can I speak about them. I can only relate what I have heard or read, since even when it comes to the modern condition of religious forced to take vows, I am only able to have an imperfect and shadowy knowledge, as I myself am a layperson. [pp.64-65]
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"...trapped in a treacherous net, robbed of precious liberty."
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[To describe the condition of unwilling nuns, Tarabotti uses the image of a captured bird:]
Whenever I see one of these hapless young girls, betrayed by their very own parents, I am reminded of what happens to a pretty little bird: from within the tree's foliage or along riverbanks, it delights the ear with sweet chirping and charming song, soothing the hearts of its audience---when suddenly it's trapped in a treacherous net, robbed of precious liberty. [p.59]
[And later, when speaking of liberty as more important than a superficially comfortable life:]
If a treacherous hand captures a bird and imprisons it --- even in a golden cage, fed on dainty morsels, it nonetheless is always watching, seeking with its beak to create a gap for an escape to freedom. If it ever succeeds, it gladly abandons its morsels and cage adornments and jubilantly returns to enjoy solitude and windy currents, risking death rather than safe in a cage, its liberty compromised. [p.80]
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"...souls ready to fall into into Hell's abyss."
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[Perhaps the saddest aspect of Tarabotti's book is that, unlike the bird, she saw no possibility of "escape to freedom," even after death. She apparently believed that vows taken under duress were binding; therefore, the nuns who could not willingly accept them would go to Hell --- in which Tarabotti also believed:]
They despair of finding an escape and live dying, if they live at all, tormented by a thousand rages and anxieties---their bodies bound up in religious habits and their souls ready to fall into into Hell's abyss. They cannot attain Paradise because their inner hearts are in contrast to their outer garments; they are whitened sepulchers, similar to the hypocrites of whom Christ spoke.... [p.71]
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"...not through lack of native intelligence but lack of
schooling."
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[In Book 2, Tarabotti moves to the subject of the education denied to women. This is not extraneous to her subject because one of the arguments for disposing of surplus women in monasteries was that their ignorance would keep them from contributing to the welfare of the state:]
But now I hear their voices resounding in my ears: "Just look at this shameless woman who dares to enter the debating arena and accuse us of ignorance. Is it not the case that women are guilty of massive ignorance, shrouded as they always are in a thousand foolish errors? Is it not the case that we deceive them just as we please?"
In this I do not disagree; I would make a great mistake were I to attribute learning to women when they are so wondrously stripped of it, not through lack of native intelligence but lack of schooling. [p.97]
---------------------------
"I can bear witness."
---------------------------
[More on education, and one of the few spots in the work where Tarabotti speaks explicitly of her own experience:]
So shameless are you that while reproaching women for stupidity you strive with all your power to bring them up and educate them as if they were witless and insensitive. You give them as a governess another woman, also unlettered, who can barely instruct them in the rudiments of reading, to say nothing of anything to do with philosophy, law, and theology. In short, they learn nothing but the ABC, and even that is poorly taught. (I know from experience, so I can bear witness at length.)
As soon as you men catch sight of a woman with pen in hand, you start ranting and raving; you order them under penalty of death to put aside their scribbling and attend to "feminine" tasks like needlework and spinning.... (As if our intellects could find no more appropriate occupation than spinning!) [p.99]
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"...political bodies... management and public service...
universities...."
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[A little later, a more activist view on the study of "philosophy, law, and theology":]
How on earth can women's intelligences be stimulated when they are denied entrance to political bodies such as our Venetian Senate? When they are denied the chance to develop practical skills to do with management and public service? When they are deprived totally of of enlightenment, as well as the freedom men have to attend lectures at famous universities like Padua, Bologna, Rome, Paris, and Salamanca? We have never even been granted permission to attend lectures in Venice's state schools. [p.102]
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"...with truthful tongue and faithful pen!"
----------------------------------------------------
[Much of Book 3 is praise of the women in the New Testament and rebuttal of contemporary attacks on women; neither praise nor rebuttal would be necessary if women like Tarabotti were properly equipped to respond to male writers:]
...[Y]ou have buried some of us within a convent's four walls, knowing that had we been free and assisted by an education, we would have made known to the world all your tyranny's treacheries with truthful tongue and faithful pen! [p.133]
---------------------------------------------
"...my plain, unpolished sentences."
---------------------------------------------
[At the close of the work, the laywoman, "Galerena Baratotti," defends to her male readers her writing style, and foresees the publication of another of her books, probably L'inferno monacale (which would, in fact, not be published until 1990):]
I am a young woman reading books for my own edification, without any previous schooling in letters. It is impossible for a person like myself to describe your waywardness and evils when I have always led a life far from such practices. What marvel, therefore, if mistakes abound in my plain, unpolished sentences?...
I may not have carefully selected thoughts, but they are at least genuine and sincere. There is another book of mine, soon forthcoming, where they will appear with their same native simplicity to prove to you that in those places constructed by your fraudulent self-interest reign all the pains of Hell. [pp.152-53]
=======================================================================
[The dozen essay in this collection are all of interest. Two, on Tarabotti's 1650 letter collection, Lettere familiare e di compliemento, may be of most value to the general reader: (1) Lynn Lara Westwater's "The Trenchant Pen: Humor in the Lettere of Arcangela Tarabotti" describes the letters' use of humor as a literary tool of persuasion; (2) Meredith Kennedy Ray's "Making the Private Public: Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari" discusses the ways in which Tarabotti goes about creating a public persona. Both essayists give the original and their translation of passages from the Lettere. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Arcangela Tarabotti: a literary nun in Baroque Venice / edited
by Elissa B. Weaver (Il portico; 134). Ravenna: Longo, 2006.
(236 p.: ill.)
LC#: BX4705.T277 A73 2006; ISBN: 8880634925
Includes bibliographical references
----------------------
[Ray's 2004 article (available online) develops in more detail
one of the points of her essay in the above collection. She sees
in the Lettere Tarabotti's defense against the attacks
of those who criticized those works --- or worse, said that she
had not written them. Here, quotations from the letters are not
translated, but their meaning is usually made clear in the discussion.
(See the issue's table of contents online.):]
Ray, Meredith Kennedy. Letters from the cloister: Defending
the literary self in Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari
e di complimento. Italica, 81 (2004), 24-43.
LC#: PC1068.U6 I8; ISSN: 0021-3020
---------------------
[ Francesca Medioli's article looks at the as-yet-untranslated L'inferno monacale and at Tarabotti's letters, both published and unpublished, to determine the works' reliability. Medioli finds L'inferno accurate in its description of Venetian monastic life and the published letters generally similar to their originals. An appendix gives the originals of the entire correspondence between Tarabotti and the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, who had been asked (unsuccessfully) by Tarabotti to sponsor the publication of La tirannia paterna. Medioli's detailed notes provide useful historical background:]
Medioli, Francesca. Arcangela Tarabotti's reliability about
herself: Publication and self-representation (together with a
small collection of previously unpublished letters). The Italianist,
23 (2003), 54-101.
LC#: PQ4001 .I893; ISSN: 0261-4340
---------------------
[One chapter in Wendy Beth Heller's study, "Bizzarrie
Feminile: Opera and the Accademia degli Incogniti ,"
includes a substantial discussion (pp. 57-72) of the complex
relationship between Tarabotti and the influential Venetian group
which both supported and attacked her writing. Heller gives her
own translation of passages from Tarabotti and provides the original
in the notes. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Heller, Wendy Beth. Emblems of eloquence: opera and women's voices
in seventeenth-century Venice. Berkeley: University of California
Press, c2003. (xix, 386 p.: ill., music )
LC#: ML2100 .H45 2003; ISBN: 0520209338
Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-369) and index
---------------------
[Natalia Costa-Zalessow's article reviews the Italian-language
studies on Tarabotti during the 1990s and then translates those
documents (written between 1654 and 1659) that led to La
semplicita ingannata being placed on the Vatican's Index
Librorum Prohibitorum in 1661. It is interesting to compare
the report of the first reviewer, who had obviously read the
work carefully and who accurately sums up its chief points, to
the superficial --- but fearful --- reports of later reviewers:]
Costa-Zalessow, Natalia. Tarabotti's La semplicita ingannata
and its twentieth-century interpreters, with unpublished
documents regarding its condemnation to the Index. Italica,
78 (2001), 314-25.
LC#:PC1068.U6 I8; ISSN: 0021-3020
---------------------
[This collection includes Daniela De Bellis' essay, "Attacking Sumptuary Laws in Seicento Venice: Arcangela Tarabotti," which gives a detailed summary of the as- yet-untranslated Antisatira, with several passages translated and the original usually given in the notes. The essay's focus in on the historical context of Tarabotti's defense of women's dress. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Women in Italian Renaissance culture and society / edited
by Letizia Panizza (Legenda). Oxford: European Humanities Research
Centre, 2000. (xxi, 523 p: ill, facsims, ports)
LC#: HQ1149.I8 W66 2000; ISBN:1900755092
Includes bibliographical references
---------------------
[Nancy L. Canepa's article studies the themes (deception,
reasons of state) and the images (hell, burial, theater) of L'inferno
monacale. Quoted excerpts are not given in English, but their
meaning is frequently made clear in the discussion. (Halfway
down the page, see the issue's table of contents.):]
Canepa, Nancy L. The writing behind the wall: Arcangela Tarabotti's
Inferno monacale and cloistral autobiography in the seventeenth
century. Forum Italicum, 30 (1996), 1-23.
LC#: PC1001 .F6; ISSN: 0014-5858
---------------------
[One chapter in Satya Brata Datta's study is "Visible Women: The Feminist Experiences of Three Venetian Writers," in which she looks at the polemical works of Tarabotti, Marinella, and Fonte. Datta discusses why the three writers came to the fore when they did and where they did, as well as what their limitations were. Passages from Tarabotti's works are given in the author's own translation. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Datta, Satya Brata. Women and men in early modern Venice:
reassessing history. Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Burlington,
VT.: Ashgate, c2003. (xv, 256 p.: ill.)
LC#: DG678 .D37 2003; ISBN: 0754633470
Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-248) and index
---------------------
[The chief focus of Virginia Cox' article (available online) is on Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella, but Cox also discusses Tarabotti (see especially pp.535-43). The article describes what the works reveal of the situation of women living in Venice during the period. Cox translates passages from L'inferno monacale and from Semplicita; she gives the Italian originals of all translated excerpts. (See the issue's table of contents online.):]
Cox, Virginia. The single self: Feminist thought and the marriage
market in early modern Venice. Renaissance Quarterly,
48 (1995), 513-81.
LC#: CB361 .R45; ISSN:0034-4338
---------------------
[Jutta Gisela Sperling's study deals only briefly with Tarabotti (see the book's index), but gives useful background information on the situation in 1600s Venice which resulted in so many women being forced into monasteries. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Sperling, Jutta Gisela. Convents and the body politic in late
Renaissance Venice (Women in culture and society). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1999. (xxi, 415 p.: ill.)
LC#: BX4220.I8 S64 1999; ISBN: 0226769356,
0226769364
Includes bibliographical references (p. 379-399) and index
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Updated 04-09-08