Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 11-14-08
Isotta Nogarola (c.1418-1466)
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"DOES NOT THEIR LEARNING LETTERS WARRANT RESPECT FOR WOMEN?"
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In the early 1400s the interest in classical learning that would come to be called "humanism" spread from Florence to the north of Italy: to the princely courts and to republican Venice and the mainland cities it controlled. Isotta Nogarola was born into a noble Veronese family which shared that interest: her father's sister, Angela, was a poet of some repute. With her own brothers and sisters (of ten children, seven survived to adulthood), Isotta was educated by a tutor who had himself been a student of Guarino of Verona, the most respected humanist scholar in the north. Two of the four girls, Isotta and her older sister Ginevra, were skillful enough in the studia humanitatis (Latin grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy) that their reputation spread through the area and they began to write letters in classical Latin to other scholars. Ginevra would marry in 1438 and apparently cease to write, but Isotta would continue her studies and her Latin writing throughout her life.
When she was about 18, Nogarola's letters came to the attention of Guarino of Verona; his interest in her abilities brought her acquaintance and correspondence with other humanists throughout northern Italy. Her letters were copied and distributed; a collection of these was circulating in Venice by 1441 and in Rome by the early 1450s.
In 1438, some years after the death of her father, Nogarola went with her family to Venice in order to escape the plague and the recurring conflict between Venice and Milan over control of Verona. In the middle of 1439, an anonymous satire, signed "Pliny," circulated in Verona and Venice, attacking the morality of Venetian women (and Veronese women living there), with accusations of decadence. Named in the satire were Isotta's sister Bartolommea and Isotta herself; Isotta was accused of promiscuity and of incest."Pliny" acknowledged Isotta's reputation for learning by declaring his rage that she "dares to engage so deeply in the finest literary studies" and by presenting her as evidence that "an eloquent woman is never chaste" (King & Robin, pp.68-69).
The purpose of the satire may have been political: in the current conflict between Milan and Venice, the Nogarolas sided with Venice. The accusations are never mentioned in Nogarola's extant writing, but the satire's circulation was wide enough that that a Venetian humanist (one of Nogarola's correspondents) felt obliged to respond to the "Pliny" letter before the end of the year.
It is tempting to associate the 1439 satire with the fact that after the Nogarolas returned to Verona in 1441, there is a 10-year period from which nothing written by Isotta survives; the truth is that we simply do not know the reason. During the 1440s she apparently lived quietly in her Verona home and in the family's villa outside the city, but she was by no means a recluse --- she continued to receive visitors and letters from fellow humanists. We do know that during these years Nogarola began to study scripture and other religious works as well as continuing her reading of classical literature. In the 1450s and early 1460s her work again circulated, but now she had moved from letters to other humanist genres: the dialogue (1553), the oration (1553, 1559), the consolatio (1561). Her later works illustrate what would come to be called "Christian humanism," an incorporation of the sacred with the secular.
In 1551 Nogarola met Ludovico Foscarini, a Venetian diplomat who had come to Verona as governor. They began a friendship that lasted until Nogarola's death. It was Foscarini who was given the role of interlocutor in Nogarola's major work, De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato (Of the equal or unequal sin of Adam and Eve). The 1453 dialogue probably grew out of a conversation or correspondence with Foscarini, but the whole work is Nogarola's. She uses a conventional debate topic --- whether Adam or Eve had greater responsibility for their expulsion from Paradise --- to assert that women are the equal of men. She does this by appropriating for her own purpose the old arguments for women's inferiority. The debaters, "Ludovico" and "Isotta," engage in both logical sparring and witty exchange, and by the end, the honors are distributed equally --- although it is "Isotta" whose underlying argument prevails.
Nogarola's writing continued to circulate after her death:
manuscripts at Rome and Vienna as well as at Verona contain De
pari aut impari, and individual letters are found in humanist
collections of the next two centuries. In 1563 a great-nephew
had De pari aut impari printed in Venice, with some revisions;
he included the one poem by Nogarola known to be extant, Elegia
de laudibus Cyanei ruris, praising the countryside around
her family's villa for its ability to inspire her to study and
to write. In all of her work these are her two goals --- study
and writing.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Prose
PoetryInformation about secondary sources.
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Online
1. Excerpts in English:
(a) At Wikipedia, a biography that includes lines from a 1437 letter to Guarino of Verona, beginning "Why...was I born a woman, to be scorned by men in words and deeds?" (for more from the letter, see below, under "In print").
(b) After excerpts from the introduction to the anthology, Her Immaculate Hand: Selected Works by and about the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy, about one-half of the 1453 De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato, translated by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. The two speeches assigned to "Isotta" are given, but those assigned to "Ludovico" are not (nor are the notes that are given in the print version). For information on the book, which contains the whole work, see "In print."
(c) The brief opening of De pari, in which "Ludovico" sets out the three points to be debated. This is followed by the first speech of "Isotta" (given on two pages), in King's and Rabil's translation.
2. Links to the texts of the two volumes of the 1886 Isotæ
Nogarolæ Veronensis, opera quæ supersunt omnia, edited
by Eugenius (Jeno) Abel at the request of a Nogarola descendant:
Volume
I includes letters written by Isotta and those written to
her; Volume
II continues with correspondence, and includes De pari
aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato (pp.187-216) and Isotta's
two orations (pp.267-89). See "Tabula Libri" at the
end of Volume II for the page number of each letter, etc. You
can also download a PDF file of each volume.
3. A bibliography
of editions of Isotta Nogarola's writings. (And at # 6, a
link to the originals of poems by Isotta's aunt Angela and of
letters written by Ginevra between 1436 and 1441; these are
available in # 2 above, but more easily accessible here.)
4. Early portraits:
(a) A woodcut showing Nogarola reading, made in 1497 in Ferrara thirty years after her death. About a third of the way down the page at another site, the full page on which the woodcut is found, in Jacopo Foresti da Bergamo's De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus.
(b) From Giacomo Filippo Tomasini's 1644 book on illustrious women, a portrait of Isotta and Angela. Some of Tomasini's pictures are based on portraits made when the women were alive; we don't know if this is the case with the two Nogarola women.
5. Reviews (for excerpts from the translation, see below, under "In print"; for more on the other books' treatment of Nogarola, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Meredith Kennedy Ray on King's and Diana Robin's 2004 translation of Nogarola's Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations.
(b) Patricia Phillippy on the 2005 essay collection, Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, & Italy.
(c) Natalie Bennett on Jane Stevenson's 2005 study, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century; elsewhere, another review, this by Brenda M. Hosington.
(d) Phillippy on Janet Levarie Smarr's 2005 study, Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women; and, halfway down the page, another review, by Reinier Leushuis.
(e) Anna Dronzek on Prudence Allen's 2002 second volume of The Concept of Woman series, The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500; and another review, by Patricia Z. Beckman.
6. For historical background:
(a) An essay on humanism and the studia humanitatis by Richard Hooker.
(b) In this outline of the growth of humanism by Albert Rabil, Jr., see the section (half way down the page), "The Spread of Humanism Throughout Italy."
(c) After an introduction by the translator, Leonardo Bruni's letter to Baptista Malatesta of Montefeltro, titled De studiis et litiris, written in the early 1400s and translated in1912 by William Harrison Woodward. Bruni describes a course of study suitable for women, and illustrates the early humanist belief that classical studies are "worthy to be pursued by men and women alike."
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[Margaret L. King and Diana Robin have translated all of Nogarola's extant prose: 26 letters, the dialogue De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato, and two orations. The introduction and notes are detailed, the bibliography is thorough, and an appendix lists the classical and religious sources used in each work. (See the book's table of contents online; it lists the dates and recipients of the letters.):]
Nogarola, Isotta. Complete writings: letterbook, dialogue
on Adam and Eve, orations; edited and translated by Margaret
L. King and Diana Robin (The other voice in early modern Europe).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2004. (xxi, 226 p.)
LC#: PA8555.N6 A25 2004; ISBN: 0226590070, 0226590089
Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-220) and index
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"My sex itself will provide the greatest excuse for me among
some men."
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[In her earliest extant letter, written when she was about 16, Nogarola writes to a young Venetian nobleman and cleric, a student at the University of Padua and a friend of her brother. In the opening she mocks herself for both her youth and her gender --- while simultaneously illustrating her skill at Latin and her familiarity with the Roman writers, the satirist Petronius and the comic playwright Plautus:]
Petronius Arbiter, a most learned man, seems truly to have made the greatest fun of certain men... who thought that they themselves were the sons of Minerva when they listened to to an oration of Cicero or some verses of Virgil.... I am afraid that the same could be said of me... who, although I have barely sampled a taste of the study of the humanities, would not hesitate to expose my own writings---or really my foolishness---to be examined by critics and even to write to an accomplished man such as you....
But my sex itself will provide the greatest excuse for me among some men, since it may be very difficult to find a silent woman, as our comic playwright says. [p.34]
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"...although woman is considered the origin and source of
evil?
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[About two years later she wrote to her uncle, a Paduan nobleman, sending him some of the things she had written; he, she is sure, will not be one of those ignorant men who disapprove of women's study:]
I had often planned to send you my unpolished and unworthy writings, but when I thought of how many men there are --- if they deserve to be called men --- who consider learning in women a plague and public nuisance, this deterred me from the task. But it seems to me that these men --- who approve of nothing except what they themselves do and think --- are themselves a different kind of plague, that of men envious of others' glory, which comes from ignorance and baseness of spirit.
I know for a certainty that they have not read with how much fame and renown those illustrious and remarkable women are celebrated, who each in her own era spent all her energy, care, and effort in study.
[After listing examples of women who had studied and written:]
And so, does not learning exist among women --- although woman is considered the origin and source of evil? Does not their learning letters warrant respect for women? Has it not made them more worthy of admiration that these women have surpassed not only other women in learning, but men as well? [pp.38-39]
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"There is an amazing shortage of such books here."
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[In the same letter to her uncle, Nogarola begs for money to buy a manuscript of a work of the Roman historian Livy. The passage is a reminder of the expense involved in owning books in these years before the European use of the printing press:]
It remains to be said that by these crude works I hope to impress upon you that I am in need of your help.... The lovely, the most beautiful Decades of Livy of Padua are in my hands and offered to me for purchase. To buy it I would need to raid fifty gold florins from my money chest, which I cannot do; and so I fly to you and humbly beg for your assistance....
And so I beg you, if it is possible, to take care to send it, since there is an amazing shortage of such books here and those that are here are much sought after, they say. If you do this, I shall be most grateful to you, both because the book is useful to me and because it will give me extraordinary delight. [p.39]
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"You would help me... if you lend your great dignity to
my style."
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[By the time Nogarola was 18, her writing (and Ginevra's) had come to the attention of Guarino of Verona, the most respected humanist scholar in the north of Italy, who was teaching at Ferrara. Guarino circulated her letters to his students (in part to shame them by showing them what mere women could do), and a correspondence began between Nogarola and members of Guarino's circle. In one letter to Guarino himself, she complains that his delay in answering an earlier letter has left her open to public mockery (Guarino would respond by telling her to be more "manly"):]
Since I often ponder what the worth of women is, it occurs to me to bemoan my fate since I was born female and women are ridiculed by men in both word and deed....
I was glad when I sent you that letter. Indeed, I thought it followed directly from your praise of me, since there was nothing in your report that I felt misunderstood me. Now, however, sorrow eclipses all my joy, since I know that things have turned out differently. I made use of your friendship, although it was useless and you have no more regard for me than if I had never been born. For I am ridiculed throughout the city....
And so, if you judge me worthy of your kindness, I beg you to help me in this distress of mine and also --- if I can speak more frankly --- in the matter of my reputation. ...[Y]ou would help me, since I am lacking in literary skill, if you lend your great dignity to my style, and if you put a stop to those cruel tongues that call me a tower of audacity and say that I should be sent to the ends of the earth for my boldness. [pp.53-55]
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"Great rewards have been planned for you in your studies."
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[By the age of 20, Nogarola was not only asking guidance from scholars but giving it. She begins a response to a letter from a young Venetian, who, as a male, could look forward to a full participation in civic life:]
The letters I recently received from you delighted me enormously, for they display your excellent nature, your literary talent..., and your craftsmanship and discipline---in other words, your diligence and hard work....
Therefore, be alert, please, accumulate and add something to your accomplishments every day and reflect on the fact that great rewards have been planned for you in your studies---for the trajectory of your life and career and for the glory and renown of your name. [p.73]
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"I shall congratulate you for having surrendered."
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[While Nogarola and her family were in Venice from 1438 to 1441, a frequent correspondent was Damiano dal Borgo, a Veronese patrician to whom she wrote in a less "scholarly," more familiar, way. In one letter --- written after the attack by "Pliny" --- she mockingly challenges him for a remark on the talkativeness of women:]
Your letter yesterday disturbed me a great deal, for I learned
from it that you trust the words of our comic poet [Plautus]
who claims a silent women has never been found in any age, since
you say that women are more loquacious than men.... This is something
I thought you would never say: first because you were writing
to me when you surely knew I would take offense, and second because
night and day you are reading about how many women surpass not
only other women but also men in every kind of virtue and excellence
and, we claim, in eloquence.
[After identifying eloquent women and women warriors from classical
history:]
But since these things are true, I must ask you to tell me whether women are superior to men in verbosity or rather in eloquence and virtue? For if you confess yourself beaten, I shall rejoice and I shall congratulate you for having surrendered to me --- a not insignificant victory. [pp.98-100]
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"The inconstancy of Eve... was not an inconstancy of nature."
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[After ten years of study in what one correspondent called her "book-lined cell," Nogarola wrote her best known work, De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato. The argument of "Isotta" (part of which you can see online) is that if Eve was (as a woman) naturally defective, then she can't be blamed for having made defective decisions. Her argument puts"Ludovico" in the position of having to admit Eve's equality "of nature"; in his words:]
"The inconstancy of Eve that has been condemned was not an inconstancy of nature but of habit. For those qualities that are in us by nature we are neither praised of blamed, according to the judgment of the wisest philosophers....
[And having to grant her equal responsibility:]
"Your argument about Adam's transgression of God's commandment does not acquit Eve of responsibility because she did not keep them either....
[And having to agree that, as humans, women and men are alike:]
"I agree with what you say concerning free will and the essential goodness of human nature...." [pp.156-57]
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"You... always more learned and more ready....."
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[At the end of the dialogue,"Ludovico," a well-read diplomat but no professional scholar, concedes diplomatically:]
..."[A]lthough others may find that my writing suffers from the defect of obscurity, if you... accept them and join them to what you and I have already written, our views will become known and will sparkle and shine amid the shadows.
And if what I have written is clumsy, by your skill you will make it worthy of your mind, virtue, and glory, you who march forward ever to new battles to the sound of sacred eloquence (as soldiers do to the clamor of trumpets), always more learned and more ready. And you march forward against me, who has applied the whole sum of my thinking to my reading and in the same spirit to my writing, that I might present my case and defend myself against yours, although the many storms and floods of my obligations toss me about at whim. Farewell." [p.158]
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"...necessary for the stimulation and instruction of the
intellect."
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[In 1453, apparently at the request of the bishop of Verona, Nogarola prepared an oration on Jerome, an early Christian scholar and saint. Those who in the 1400s feared that humanist studies would turn people from religion frequently cited in argument Jerome's move in middle age from classical to sacred studies; Nogarola doesn't deny his move, but rather emphasizes the value of his initial interest in classical literature:]
For he understood that this study, with the inspiration of a divine spirit, was necessary for the stimulation and instruction of the intellect; and to this he added a sweet and eloquent companion: the art of discipline of public speaking, which I call rhetoric. He undertook this study with such ardor, such delight, that he spent a great part of his life and energy in this way; and in this study, it is generally agreed that he worked with such extraordinary energy that he focused all his attention on obtaining for his own use all the works, in Greek as well as Latin, worthy of an eloquent and learned men....
Finally, since he knew that wisdom of this sort was foolishness to God, with whom he had chosen to ally himself, taking the Holy Spirit as his guide, he cast aside secular books and abandoned the books of the pagans.... In doing so, he imitated Moses who did not come to the contemplation of God until he discovered his purpose in the teachings of the Egyptians, He also imitated Daniel, who, they say, only attained a knowledge of things divine after he had absorbed the wisdom of the Chaldaeans through the teaching of the Babylonians. [pp.169-70]
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"How great an occasion is readied for your praise and glory!"
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[In 1459 Pope Pius II called for a meeting of Christian leaders at Mantua to discuss an attempt to retake Constantinople from the Turks. Nogarola sent him an oration exhorting him to free Europe from the Turkish threat. Her appeal to the humanist Pius (elected pope in the previous year) is to the leader of the Church, but even more to a man desirous of earthly glory:]
How great an occasion is readied for your praise and glory! Embrace it in gladness and rejoicing. Thus did all your predecessors before you make their entrance into the Roman Church with the greatest of gifts.
Did prior centuries ever see or will future generations ever see anything more fortunate than this sanctified and glorious work? Anything more magnificent? Anything more useful to the Christian religion? Because of this---because of these gifts---the whole world, finally, will affirm that it owes the greatest debt to your holiness. [p.183]
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"...so that we might both embrace moderation."
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[When Nogarola was 20, she had urged a friend to be stoical about the death of a brother and a daughter during a plague in Verona. Twenty-three years later, more mature and now mourning the death of her own mother, she writes with considerably more compassion in her last extant work, the Consolatio ad marcellum, commissioned by a Venetian noble to be published in a funerary collection in honor of his 8-year-old son :]
But how shall I console you when I am in need of this consolation myself, when I have seemed to retreat, forgetful of all philosophy and religion, a prisoner of the sorrow and mourning that overwhelmed me when my dearest and most pious mother died, since which time I have suffered incredible sorrow, more profound than any I ever imagined.
But since in order to be strong I strive to be a Christian in both fact and deed, I have decided to write you, although in words perhaps awkward and ill-composed, so that we might both embrace moderation. [p.192]
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[Volume 3 of the Women writing Latin anthology includes Holt N. Parker's "Angela Nogarola (ca.1400) and Isotta Nogarola (1418-1466): Thieves of Language," which contains the Latin and Parker's translation of Nogarola's one extant poem, the 74-line "Elegia de laudibus Cyanei ruris" (Elegy on the countryside around Cyanum), as well as four of the extant poems of Isotta's aunt, Angela. Parker's introduction comments on each of the poems; his notes explain classical references. (See online the tables of contents of all three volumes.):]
Women writing Latin: from Roman antiquity to early modern
Europe / edited by Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and
Jane E. Jeffrey (Women writers of the world). New York: Routledge,
2002. (3 v.)
LC#: PA8030.W65 W66 2002; ISBN: 0415942470 (set);
0415941830 (v. 1); 0415941849 (v. 2); 0415941857 (v. 3)
Includes bibliographical references. Contents v. 1. Women writing
in Latin in Roman antiquity, late antiquity, and early modern
Christian era -- v. 2. Medieval women writing Latin -- v. 3.
Early modern women writing Latin
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"...when I have been seeking learned songs."
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[Nogarola gives the name "Cyanum" to her family's country retreat outside Verona. Her poem was probably written in the later 1450s or early 1460s: The humanist writer Giovanni Pontano had begun his rise to fame in 1448 in Naples ("Parthenope"); the Gonzaga referred to here is probably Federigo, Marquis of Mantua at the death of his grandfather in 1444. (The "Boeotian sisters" and the "Pierides" are the nine Muses, the inspirers of poetry):]
Hail springs of Cyanum and the sweet recesses
and in the midst of the lake a wood grown dense with alders.
Hail places beloved by the choruses of the Boeotian sisters
where Phoebus and Bacchus are accustomed to come.
How often, when I have been seeking learned songs, has it helped
me
to have discovered the Muses in your bosom....
How often has this house opened its doors to men endowed with
virtue
and to guests sprung from noble families.
How often has Gonzaga, joined to me by love and blood,
in whose protection Mantua rejoices, come under this roof.
Here too Pontano, the comrade of the Muses, has come---
not just once!---captured by love for this pleasant spot,
Who called back the Pierides when they wandered
from the shores of Latium, the glory of great Parthenope. [lines
1-18; pp. 26-27]
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"May each woman born from Nogarola blood...."
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[The poem tells the story of Cyane, one of Persephone's nymphs, who after the rape of the goddess, sheds so many tears that she is turned into a spring which finds its way to Verona. Near the end of the poem, Nogarola speaks to Cyane:]
O may it flourish surviving throughout the long ages,
The family of Nogarola entrusted to your protection.
May each woman born from Nogarola blood
be emulous of your life and modesty.
I pray that you will guard this house, its children and grandchildren.
Keep this race unharmed, O shining nymph. [lines
81-86; p.29]
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[The 1981 anthology of translations by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. includes the translation of De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato that is partially available online; it also includes three letters written to Nogarola (one, from Costanza Varano, not given in the King and Robin Complete Writings). The book's introduction and the writings found in it will allow you to see Nogarola's work against the background of her humanist contemporaries. In this 1997 edition the content is unchanged, the notes and bibliography updated. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Her immaculate hand: selected works by and about the women
humanists of Quattrocento Italy / edited by Margaret L. King
and Albert Rabil, Jr. Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, c1997. (x,
173 p.)
LC#: PA8163 .H47 1997; ISBN: 0866981241
Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-166) and index.
[Reprint of revised 1992 edition.]
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[One chapter, "Dialogue & Letter Writing," of Janet Levarie Smarr's study of Italian and French writers between 1450 and 1600 includes a discussion of Nogarola's De pari aut impari (and of the 1563 revision by her great-nephew). The book's first chapter explains Smarr's conception of "dialogue," and the last looks at the relationship among the writers discussed. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Smarr, Janet Levarie. Joining the conversation: dialogues
by Renaissance women. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
c2005. (312 p.)
LC#: PN1551 .S55 2005; ISBN: 0472114352
Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-303) and index
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[Thelma S. Fenster's essay, "Strong Voices, Weak Minds?: The Defenses of Eve by Isotta Nogarola and Christine de Pizan, Who Found Themselves in Simone de Beauvoir's Situation," includes an analysis of De pari aut impari, which Fenster sees as similar to the work of Christine and Beauvoir in the effort to write not solely as women but also as humans. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Strong voices, weak history: early women writers & canons
in England, France, & Italy / Pamela Joseph Benson &
Victoria Kirkham, editors. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, c2005. (viii, 380 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN715 .S76 2005; ISBN: 0472098810, 0472068814
Results of a conference held at the University of Pennsylvania
in March 2000. Includes bibliographical references and index
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[Jane Stevenson's detailed survey includes a brief but useful section on the Nogarola family and on Isotta (pp.156-65); Stevenson gives her own translation of lines from "Elegia de laudibus Cyanei ruris." The preceding pages (pp.152-56) provide background on the situation of those women who wished to write in Latin. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Stevenson, Jane. Women Latin poets: language, gender, and
authority, from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Oxford;
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. (xiv, 659 p.)
LC#: PA8050.S74 2005; ISBN:0198185022
Includes bibliographical references (p. [596]-616) and index
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[This second volume of Prudence Allen's study on the philosophy of gender includes a useful section on Nogarola (pp. 944-969; 1046-48). Allen closely analyzes De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato, in which she finds original philosophical speculation; she also discusses the other works, and gives her own translation of substantial parts of Nogarola's correspondence. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Allen, Prudence. The concept of woman. Volume 2, The early
humanist reformation, 1250-1500. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans
Pub., c2002. (xxiv, 1161 p.: ill.)
LC#: BD450 .A4725 2002; ISBN: 0802847358
Includes bibliographical references (p. 1091-1129) and index
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[This collection includes Lisa Jardine's 1983 essay, "Isotta
Nogarola: Women Humanists - Education for What?" which describes
the humanist belief of the 1400s that study of humane letters
should lead to a life of civic participation as well as to personal
virtue, and discusses the effect that belief had on male humanists'
description of and advice to Isotta Nogarola. Jardine gives her
own translations of quoted passages. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
The Italian Renaissance: the essential readings / edited by Paula
Findlen (Blackwell essential readings in history). Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2002. (xii, 354 p.: ill., maps)
LC#: DG445 .I78 2002; ISBN: 0631222820, 0631222839
Includes bibliographical references and index
[Jardine's essay was originally published in History of Education,
12 (1983), 231-44 (See
the issue's table of contents online.)]
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[In this study's first chapter, "The School of Guarino: Ideals and Practice," Jardine and Anthony Grafton provide a detailed description of the education received by those, like the Nogarolas' tutor, who had studied with the humanist Guarino of Verona (the education which, it appears from Nogarola's letters, the tutor then passed on to the Nogarola children):]
From humanism to the humanities: education and the liberal
arts in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe / Anthony Grafton
& Lisa Jardine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1986. (xvi, 224 p.)
LC#: LA106 .G73 1986; ISBN: 0674324609
Includes bibliographical references and index
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Updated 11-14-08