Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 05-07-09
Moderata Fonte
/Modesta Pozzo Zorzi (1555-1592)
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"IT'S GOOD FOR US TO LEARN ABOUT THESE THINGS, SO WE CAN
LOOK AFTER OURSELVES WITHOUT NEEDING HELP FROM MEN."
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Modesta Pozzo was born to a wealthy, though not aristocratic, Venetian family. After her parents died within a year of her birth, she and her brother were raised by their grandparents. Modesta was briefly at a convent school, but from the age of nine, her education was chiefly in the hands of a learned grandfather. When she was about 21, she went to live with an aunt and the aunt's husband, Giovanni Doglioni, who would become her mentor and first biographer.
Pozzo's first work was published at Venice in 1581 under the name "Moderata Fonte" (the name used in all her published work); it was the first part of a chivalric romance, titled Tredici canti del Floridoro (Thirteen cantos of the Floridoro). Doglioni later wrote that more of Floridoro had been written, and recent research shows that some 50 cantos were intended; all but the original 13 cantos are lost. In the following year two other works were published: La feste (Celebration), a dramatic dialogue on the purpose of human life that had been performed before the Doge of Venice in 1581; and a narrative poem, La passione di Christo (The passion of Christ), which presented the biblical story as a chivalric romance. In the year of her marriage, 1583, four other poems were printed in an anthology, the only works by a woman to be included.
At 27 Fonte married Filippo Zorzi, a government attorney. The marriage was unusual in that Zorzi was three years younger than his wife and in that he gave her control over her dowry. The couple had four surviving children; it would be shortly after the birth of the fourth that Fonte would die. As a married woman, Fonte continued to write: a poem on the death of the Doge was published in 1585, and a second biblical romance, La resurretione di Giesu Christo (The resurrection of Jesus Christ), appeared in 1592, the year of her death.
Just before she died, Fonte completed Il merito delle donne: oue chiaramente si scuopre quanto siano elle degne e più perfette de gli huomini (The worth of women: wherein is clearly revealed their nobility and their superiority to men), a prose work on which she may have been working for years. It presents a witty discussion among seven Venetian women on the relations between men and women but also on all those things that a woman should know. Il merito was published in 1600; to date, it and Tredici canti del Floridoro are Fonte's only works to have been translated into English.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Tredici canti del Floridoro
Il merito delle donne
Information on secondary sources.
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1. From Virginia Cox' 1997 translation, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men:
(a) After excerpts from Cox' introduction, nine passages on the relative status of men and of women.
(b) At the same site, a description of the book and a group of passages, including two not given above, on Adam and Eve.
2. In Italian:
(a) An excerpt from the early part of Il merito. Virginia is the naive young girl whose questions are the catalyst for many of the opinions expressed by the characters; here Corinna explains to her why men see themselves as superior to women.
(b) At this alphabetical list from the University of Chicago's "Italian Women Writers" site, go to Fonte and click on "Texts Available" for links to the original editions of five other works: (1) the 13 cantos of the 1581 Tredici canti del Floridoro, the brief argomento that precedes each canto (at these, see "page image" for the original illustrations), and dedicatory sonnets to Francesco de Medici and to his wife, the Venetian Bianca Capella; (2) the 1582 La passione di Christo, (115 stanzas of ottava rima), a dedication and a concluding canzone; (3) the 1582 Le feste: rappresentatione avanti il serenissimo prencipe di Venetia Nicolo da Ponte il giorno di S. Stefano 1581, a dialogue on the purpose of human life; (4) the 1585 Canzon nella morte del ser.mo princ. di Venetia Nicolo da Ponte, commemorating the death of the Doge; (5) the 1592 La resurretione di Giesu Christo, (152 stanzas of ottava rima) and a dedicatory letter.
3. Essays:
(a) A 2004 biographical /critical essay by Cox, with a bibliography of secondary sources; you can also link to a list of editions of Fonte's works, and to an portrait-etching published in the first edition (1600) of Il merito.
(b) A 1995 article by Cox, "The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice," discusses how the realities of women's lives are revealed in the work of Fonte and of Lucrezia Marinella; quoted passages are given in Cox' translation.
(c) An English-language review by Stephen Kolsky of Valeria Finucci's 1995 Italian edition of Tredici canti del Floridoro.
4. Other reviews (for excerpts from the translations, see "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of Fonte, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Holly S. Hurlburt on Julia Kisacky's 2006 translation, Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance; elsewhere, another review, by Nathalie Hester; and yet another, by Alison Taufer.
(b) On p.4 of a review of several works in the "The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe" series, Constance Jordan on Cox' 1997 translation, The Worth of Women.
(c) Laura Lepschy on Paola Malpezzi Price's 2003 study, Moderata Fonte: Women and Life in Sixteenth-century Venice.
(d) Patricia Phillippy on Janet Levarie Smarr's 2005 study, Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women; and, starting on p.2, another review, by Reinier Leushuis.
(e) Sally Parkin on Satya Brata Datta's 2003 study, Women and Men in Early Modern Venice: Reassessing History; and another review, by Stanley Chojnacki.
(f) Maria Galli Stampino on Irma B. Jaffe's 2002 study, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets; and another review, this by Jana Byars.
(g) Fiora A. Bassanese on the 2000 essay collection, A History of Women's Writing in Italy; and another review, by Laura A. Salsini.
(h) Anita Pachero on the 1998 collection, Attending to Early Modern Women; and another review, by Suzanne Trill.
5. The publisher's description of Paola Malpezzi Price's 2003
study, Moderata
Fonte: Women and Life in Sixteenth-century Venice; at
another site, a
brief article by Price about her book (for more information,
see "Secondary sources").
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[Julia Kisacky has translated Floridoro from Valeria Finucci's 1995 edition and the original 1581 edition (available online). For Fonte's dedicatory sonnets and two poems addressed to Fonte by others, as well as for a 1580 letter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Italian original is given on facing pages; in addition, two cantos and parts of four others are given in Italian in an appendix. Finucci's introduction includes a description of chivalric romances written by Italian women and how they differ from those written by men. The notes and bibliography are detailed. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Floridoro: a chivalric romance / Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo);
edited with an introduction by Valeria Finucci; translated by
Julia Kisacky; annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky
(The other voice in early modern Europe). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2006. (xxx, 493 p.)
LC#: PQ4623.F36 F5613 2006; ISBN-13: 0226256771, 0226256788
Includes bibliographical references (p. 475-488) and index
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"...under the imagined name of Moderata Fonte."
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[In her November 1580 letter to Francesco de Medici, Modesto Pozzo tells why she will publish her first work under a pseudonym:]
...I have done this under the imagined name of Moderata Fonte, since my own true name I have not judged it well to expose to public censure, being a young marriageable woman and, according to the custom of the city, obligated in many respects. [p.49]
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"Her design was clear and sublime."
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[At one point in the poem, several of the characters are at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where they see the sculptured figures of, among others, the major Venetian literary figures of Fonte's time. Among the sculptures is that of an unidentified woman (the canto and octave are given so that you can see the original online):]
On the last facade, which was sculpted
in back where there was little light,
a solitary young woman stayed.
She did not dare come out with the others into the light,
quite ashamed that she, too bold,
aspired to the way which leads to heaven,
having as low and dull a mind
as her design was clear and sublime.
She wore a long white skirt,
as for the virginal state is appropriate,
and she seemed at an early and youthful age
to have lofty thoughts kindled in her heart.
This damsel had no caption
to make her plain to the other senses,
for the sculptor who fashioned her portrait
did not wish that her name be known. [Canto
10, Octave 36-37; p. 288]
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"...who of diverse flowers intends to form a beautiful garland."
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[Like all chivalric romances, Floridoro tells of a number of characters having a number of adventures, and moves mid-story from one adventure to the next and, later, back again. In Canto 3, Fonte describes her method:]
But because the subjects are varied, and the verses
varied, and they contend with each other over which will continue,
I am like a child who of diverse
flowers intends to form a beautiful garland,
and in order to take advantage of the beauty of each one
takes not always the lily or the violet,
but now one, now the other, and in varying the color
makes use in the end of his every plucked flower. [3:
9; p. 121]
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"...so that her many courtesies might accomplish her design."
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[Although there are many characters in these 13 cantos of Fonte's "garland," the chief one is not the title character, Floridoro, but the woman warrior Risamante, who had been taken by a wizard soon after her birth and who, because of this, had lost her claim to half the realm of Armenia. Raised by the wizard, Celidante, to be a warrior, at 17 Risamante went to her twin sister, now queen, to seek her inheritance. Her twin, Biondaura, sharply denied Risamante's claim "although from many she had heard the truth":]
From this harsh answer Risamante
was angry at her with a just anger,
and, valorous and with an excellent heart,
armed she seeks out every city, every realm,
and she helps people here and there so that her
many courtesies might accomplish her design.
She does good deeds for this and that lord,
so that in her need they might come to her aid. [2:36;
p. 99]
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"Just so in letters and in every endeavor that men undertake
and pursue."
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[The poem will show many instances of Risamante's skill as a warrior, but Fonte keeps pointing out that this skill is not a fluke of nature but rather due to Celidante's careful training. As Fonte says in the poem's most often anthologized lines, it is education that makes the difference, and not just for military skill:]
Women in every age were by nature
endowed with great judgment and spirit,
nor are they born less apt than men to demonstrate
(with study and care) their wisdom and valor.
And why, if their bodily form is the same,
if their substances are not varied,
if they have the same food and speech, must they
have them different courage and wisdom?
Always one has seen and sees (provide that a
woman wanted to devote thought to it)
more than one woman succeed in the military,
and take away the esteem and acclaim from many men.
Just so in letters and in every
endeavor that men undertake and pursue;
women have achieved and achieve such good results
that they have no cause at all to envy men....
If when a daughter is born the father
set her with his son to equivalent tasks
she would not be in lofty and fair deeds
inferior or unequal to her brother,
whether he placed her among the armed squads
with himself, or set her to learn some liberal art.
But because she is raised in other pursuits
for her education she is held in low regard.
If the magician had not proposed the military
to Risamante, not disposed her heart toward it,
she would not in the end have carried out with her own hands
so many glorious feats of valor. [4:
1-2, 4-5; pp.144-46]
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"I enjoy it more when it's held for an impossible thing."
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[Usually dressed as a man, Risamante explains herself to one of the few who know she is a woman. The more dangerous a task, the greater her pleasure:]
Said the lady, "When I find a way
to expose myself to some dangerous undertaking,
I don't draw back; rather I enjoy it more
when it's held for an impossible thing." [5:
71; p.187]
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"...a soft and humane heart."
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[But Risamante declines to carry out the traditional hero's
custom of killing the vanquished. After conquering most of Biondaura's
kingdom and defeating the one champion, a king, who could have
kept her sister from losing all:]
The woman warrior, who had a soft and humane heart,
seeing she has the better of that quarrel,
runs to him, and with a pitiful hand
she hurriedly frees his head from the bloody helm;
and she demonstrates to everyone her victory
in his deadly pale face, from which she gains triumph and glory. [13:63;
p.387]
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"What happened next elsewhere I'll sing."
----------------------------------------------------
[A few octaves later, at the end of the poem, Risamante continues to be generous, and Fonte promises to tell more of her "elsewhere" (our only hint of the future is that Canto 6 had said that Risamante would "become a wife and a queen"):]
With great pit the glorious woman warrior
had that king taken to the regal pavilion
and doctored (for he was severely wounded),
treating him like a king, not like a prisoner.
At this moment, out from the city in ranks
came the most honored and noble people.
What happened next elsewhere I'll sing,... [13:70;
p. 389]
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Il merito delle donne
[Virginia Cox has translated Il merito delle donne, including
Giovanni Doglioni's dedicatory letter/biography; Cox also gives
a bit of Floridoro (Canto 4, octaves 1-4, in the original
and in a prose translation). The introduction is helpful, and
the bibliography thorough. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
The worth of women: wherein is clearly revealed their nobility
and their superiority to men / Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo);
edited and translated by Virginia Cox (The other voice in early
modern Europe). Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, c1997.
(xxvii, 290 p.)
LC#: HQ1148 .F6513 1997; ISBN: 0226256812, 0226256820
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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"They would speak freely on whatever subject they pleased."
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[After an opening section in praise of Venice. The term "dimmesa" was usually used to describe a young woman who chose to live modestly and remain celibate, though without religious vows:]
Well then in this truly divine city, abode of all celestial graces and perfections, there was once not long ago (and indeed there still is) a group of noble and spirited women, all from the best-known and most respected families of the city, who, despite their great differences in age and marital status, were so united by breeding and taste that a tender bond of friendship had formed between them.
These women would often steal time together for a quiet conversation, and on these occasions, safe from any fear of being spied on by men or constrained by their presence, they would speak freely on whatever subject they pleased---sometimes, their womanly labors; sometimes, their seemly diversions....
The women were seven in number. The first was Adriana, an elderly widow; the second, a young daughter of hers, of marriageable age, called Virginia; the third, a young widow called Leonora; the fourth, an older married woman called Lucretia. The fifth, Cornelia, was a young married woman; the sixth, Corinna, a young dimmesa; and the seventh, Helena, a young bride.... [pp. 44-45]
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"Women aren't as aware of men's failings as they should
be."
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[The women meet and agree to have a thorough discussion of the merits and failings of men and of women. Much of the first day is spent on the subject of love and on men's treatment of women. But on the second day, Lucretia says:]
"....I'd rather listen to Corinna and learn something new rather than talk about men's flaws, which are something of which we are all only too aware."
"I'm not sure about that," said Corinna. "Women aren't as aware of men's failings as they should be, or else they'd know how to protect themselves from men better than they do." [p.161]
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"It would be a good thing if there were women who knew about
medicine."
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[When Corinna talks about what women should know about various diets and their effect on the body, Leonora objects:]
"What have the kinds of things we've been talking about got to do with us, may I ask? Are we doctors, by any chance? Leave it up to them to talk about syrups and poultices and all that kind of thing. It's absurd for us to be talking about them."
"You're quite wrong," said Lucretia. "On the contrary, it's good for us to learn about these things, so we can look after ourselves without needing help from men. In fact, it would be a good thing if there were women who knew about medicine as well as men, so men couldn't boast about their superiority in this field and we didn't have to be dependent on them." [pp.180-181]
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"We may still feel some pricking of the senses, but...."
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[Arguing that all women should be taught to read and write, Leonora says:]
"For it's obvious that an ignorant person is far more liable to fall into error than someone intelligent and well read, and we see from experience that far more unlettered women slide into vice than educated women who have exercised their minds.
"How many illiterate maidservants, how many peasant girls and plebeian women give into their lovers without putting up much of a fight! And the reason is that they are more gullible than women like us, who have read our cautionary tales and have learnt our moral lessons and developed a love for virtue: we may still feel some pricking of the senses, but we know how to discipline our desires, and it's only very rarely that an educated woman allows herself to be carried away by her appetites." [pp.236-237]
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"What they would find ridiculous...."
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[Cornelia has objected to men's laughing at women for caring about clothes:]
"You make me laugh," said Helena, "with all this talk about how men jeer at us for our concern with dress. That's not my impression. What they would find ridiculous, I'd think, is hearing us talk about some of the things we've been discussing today, which they think only men should talk about." [p.238]
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"Since we must needs be subject to them...."
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[After the women have talked about the way life should be, near the end of the book comes a reality-check --- a description of the way life is. Virginia, the yet unmarried daughter of Adriana (whom the others call the "Queen") has been listening carefully. After the following exchange with her mother, Virginia says no more:]
"Well, that's it!" said Virginia. "I've heard so many fine things about men yesterday, and I've heard so many more today, that I'm beginning to feel almost converted to the position of Leonora and her companions. They've made me inclined to think I'd prefer not to subject myself to any man, when I could be living in peace and liberty alone."
"Don't say that, daughter dear!" said the Queen. "Because I have no choice but to find a husband for you. But I do promise that... I shall strive to find someone noble, sensible, and virtuous, rather than someone rich, spoilt, and unreliable."
"Oh, but please, mother dearest!" said Virginia. "I'll be much happier staying with you. What if he turned out to be proud and arrogant man: what would I do then?"
"You'd be as humble as you could in return," said the Queen. "Because, since we must needs be subject to them, the only thing to do is to flatter them and spoil them.... [I]f women play their cards right, they can be brought around. And besides, if this husband we're talking about is noble, as I've said (I mean noble in his soul and his bearing, if not by birth), then there's nothing to worry about, because humility is the mark of true nobility."
"But what if he were stern and terrifying, what should I do then?" asked Virginia.
"You'd be patient and silent and long-suffering," said the Queen..... "But we've said that he's a sensible man..., so he will soon calm down and see reason---all the sooner if you don't stoke up the fires of his anger by answering him back."
"And what if he were jealous, how should I behave then?" her daughter asked.
"You wouldn't give him any occasion for jealousy," said the Queen. "And, since it wouldn't be your business to be attractive to anyone apart from him, if he didn't want you to dress up and adorn yourself, then you'd stop doing so; and if he didn't want you to leave the house, you'd stay in to please him. And by doing this, you'd win him over and gain his trust to such an extent that after a while he'd let you do just as you liked.... In any case, if he is a noble and a sensitive man, as we've said he is, he is bound to change, for the sake of his honor, and because good sense dictates it."
"But if he didn't," said Virginia, "then what a miserable life I'd have."
"If the thought of that life doesn't appeal to you," the Queen replied, "just imagine what will happen if I don't marry you off. You'll still have to stay within four walls all day and dress soberly, without any of the finery and fripperies you're allowed now, because that's what happens to young girls who don't want to get married. And, what's more, you'll be deprived of that companionship that could be the joy of your life."
"But what if my husband turns out to be given to vice, then what could I do about it?" asked Virginia.
"If that were the case," the Queen replied, "you'd have to try, as cautiously and tactfully as possible, to wean him away from his vicious habits, by reminding him of God's wrath and the world's judgment, offering the example of other men who behave decently, and reproaching his defects obliquely by criticizing them in other people.... If he's essentially a decent man..., then his vices will not be able to hold out against his basic decency, and... he will succeed in shaking off any vicious tendencies he may have in his nature. And if that's the case, and you end up a happy woman, then you can thank the Lord; if not, you have the consolation that a husband like yours may still be better than some others you could have had, and that you're better off than many wives." [pp.238-240]
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Secondary sources
[The first half of Paola Malpezzi Price's study provides a detailed study of Venetian political and social life in the later 1500s and the role of the city's women. Then Malpezzi Price discusses I tredici del Floridoro and Il Merito, showing the relationship of the two works to earlier chivalric romances and dialogues and to Venice's view of itself. Passages from Floridoro are given in Malpezzi Price's own translation. The book's notes provide a useful summary of earlier criticism. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Malpezzi Price, Paola. Moderata Fonte: Women and life in sixteenth-century
Venice. Madison [N.J.]: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press;
London; Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, c2003. (175
p.: ill.)
LC#: HQ1645.V45 M35 2003; ISBN: 0838639984
Note Includes bibliographical references (p.150-169) and index
--------------------
[Irma B. Jaffe's collection of biographies includes one on Fonte, which discusses and offers both the Italian and translations by Jaffe and Gernando Colombardo of part of I tredici del Floridoro and verses from Il Merito. With the book is a CD that includes readings in Italian from three of Fonte's poems. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Jaffe, Irma B. Shining eyes, cruel fortune: the lives and
loves of Italian Renaissance women poets / Irma B. Jaffe with
Gernando Colombardo. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002.
(xxx, 429 p., 8 p. of plates: ill. (some col.), maps; 26 cm.
+ 1 CD (4 3/4 in.)
LC#: PQ4063 .J34 2002; ISBN: 0823221806, 0823221814
Accompanying CD contains poems in Italian. Includes bibliographical
references (p. [411]-415) and indexes
--------------------
[Stephen Kolsky's article analyzes in detail Fonte's treatment
of the romance epic, traditionally viewed as a "male"
genre because of its emphasis on combat. Kolsky sees Fonte rewriting
the genre to highlight the unequal power relations between men
and women. Quoted passages from the poem are not translated,
but their meaning is usually made clear in the discussion:]
Kolsky, Stephen. Moderata Fonte's Tredici Canti
del Floridoro: Women in a man's genre. Rivista di Studi
Italiani, 17 (1999), 165-84.
LC#: PQ4001R65; ISSN: 0821-3216
--------------------
[Kolsky's later article focuses on Lucrezia Marinella, but
it includes a brief and useful section (pp.979-81) on how Fonte's
use of the dialogue form in Il merito achieves a different
effect than the polemical treatise form used by her contemporaries.
(See
the issue's table of contents online.):]
Kolsky, Stephen. Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella,
Giuseppe Passi: An early seventeenth-century feminist controversy.
Modern Language Review, 96 ( 2001), 973-989.
LC#: PB1 .M682; ISSN: 0026-7937
--------------------
[Virginia Cox' 1995 article (available online) discusses Il merito in much greater detail than is done in the introduction to her 1997 translation (above). The article compares Fonte's work to that of Lucrezia Marinella and Arcangela Tarabotti and gives the Italian original of all translated passages (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
--------------------
[This later survey study by Cox includes a chapter called "Affirmation," in which Fonte is one of the writers whose work (and its acceptance by readers) is viewed in the light of the effects of the "Counter-Reformation. Cox's notes constitute a thorough review of early and recent critical views. An appendix gives all published writings by Italian women in the period covered. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Cox, Virginia. Women's writing in Italy, 1400-1650. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. (xxviii, 464 p.)
LC#: PQ4063 .C69 2008; ISBN:9780801888199
Includes bibliographical references (p. 377-446) and index
---------------------
[One chapter, "Many Voices," of Janet Levarie Smarr's study of Italian and French writers between 1450 and 1600 includes a discussion of Fonte's Il merito, discussing the characters' divergent views of the relations between men and women. 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
----------------------
[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 Fonte, Marinella, and Tarabotti. 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 Il merito 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
----------------------
[Two essays in this history deal with Fonte's writing: Lettzia Panizza's on Il merito and Cox's on I tredici del Floridoro. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
A history of women's writing in Italy
/ edited by Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood. Cambridge [England]
; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (xvi, 361 p.)
LC#: PQ4055.W6 H57 2000; ISBN: 0521570883, 0521578132
Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-350) and index
----------------------
[This collection contains an essay, "Apostrophes to Cities: Urban Rhetorics in Isabella Whitney and Moderata Fonte," by Ann Rosalind Jones, which includes discussion of Il Merito's use of scene-setting and rhetoric to both attack and persuade Venetian men. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Attending to early modern women / edited by Susan D. Amussen
and Adele Seeff ; advisory editors, Jane Donawerth ... [et al.]
( Center for renaissance and baroque studies). Newark: University
of Delaware Press; London; Cranbury, NJ: Associated University
Presses, c1998. (338 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN721 .A88 1998; ISBN: 0874136504
Papers and summary reports of workshops of a symposium held Apr.
21-23, 1994, at the University of Maryland at College Park. Includes
bibliographical references and index
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Updated 05-07-09