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Updated 02-03-12
Gaspara Stampa
(c.1523-1554)
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"DESTINY'S IMPRESSED UPON MY HEART A SWEET NEW STYLE"
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Gaspara Stampa was born in Padua. By the early 1530s, her father, a successful merchant, had died and her mother had moved the family to Venice. By the early 1540s, Gaspara's brother was a university student and earning praise as a poet. The family home became a salon for the Venetian literati, at which Gaspara and her sister, Cassandra, presented musical performances. In 1544 Gaspara's brother died, but his fellow-poets continued to visit, and by the late 1540s Gaspara was part of one or more of the Venetian groups that met in various homes to discuss and practice the arts. At one of these she met Count Collaltino de Collato; her affair with him produced some of the poems for which she is best known.
Only three of her poems were published in Gaspara's lifetime, although many circulated among her literary friends and she was apparently preparing a book for publication. Soon after her death, at the urging of those friends, her sister published Stampa's Rime, containing 310 poems, most of which are sonnets, and most of those about Collaltino. In these poems Stampa uses Petrarchan convention by assuming Petrarch's role: as Petrarch had described his suffering for love of a silent Laura, so Stampa details her love and loss of a generally unresponsive count. As with Petrarch, the poetry is perhaps more important to the poet than the person who inspired it.
Critics have often discussed whether Gaspara was a courtesan. There is no external evidence, as there is for Tullia d'Aragona or Veronica Franco, but the question is probably irrelevant. In Venice, more than in the other Italian cities, "respectable" unmarried women lived in near seclusion. By her musical performances before mixed audiences, by going to salons in men's homes, and especially by writing openly about a love affair, Stampa became a member of the demi-monde. If this marginality bothered her, it does not appear in her poems.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from a translation in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. In English (the numbers given follow the 1913 Salza edition; see # 2a. below):
(a) Six sonnets (Rime #s 51, 83, 113, 128, 155, 192), translated by Jessica Harkins; each is accompanied by the Italian original.
(b) Four sonnets (#s 32, 4, 104, 123), translated by A. S. Kline.
(c) Another four (#s 34, 101, 111, 161), translated by Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie, and followed by commentary by Ellen Moody.
(d) Two poems (#s 7 & 311), translated by Lorna de' Lucchi: the originals are also given.
(e) "All the planets in heaven, all the stars" (# 4), translated by Sally Purcell.
(f) "If I, who am an abject, low-born woman" (# 8), from Stortoni and Lillie.
(g) "Heavenly angels, I don't envy you" (# 17), translated by Adam Elgar (a literal translation and the original are also given).
(h) "Harsh is my fortune, but harsher still is the fate" (# 43), translated by Stortoni and Lillie; the original is also given.
(i) Also from Stortoni and Lillie, "I have become so weary of my waiting" (# 47)
(j) Another version of the above,"By now so sick of waiting,," translated by Leonard Cottrell, with a link to the original.
(k) "O night to me more splendid and more blessed" (# 104), translated by Frank J. Warnke.
(l) "Ah set me where the angry sea wails and breaks" (# 111), followed by the first eight lines of #208, "Love has made me such that I live in fire"; both are translated by Fiora A Bassanese.
(m) Near the bottom of the page, "When that soul whose inflamed desire" (# 303).
2. In Italian:
(a) At this alphabetical list from the University of Chicago's "Italian Women Writers" site, go to Stampa and click on "texts available" for two links to Gaspara's Rime: (1) a 1913 edition by Abelkader Salza, which gives Stampa's prose dedication to Collaltino, reorganizes the poems into 245 "Rime d'amore" and 66 "Rime varie," and is followed by an appendix that gives poems by others to or about Stampa; (2) a 1738 edition arranged by Antonio Rambaldo di Collalto, a descendant of Gaspara's lover; it gives the poems mostly in their original order (but adding two not given in the1554 edition) and, among other material, includes Cassandra Stampa's letter of dedication to Giovanni della Casa (who had been papal nuncio to Venice and active in the city's literary life).
(b) A hypertext version of Rime (in which the poems are given in the order of the 1738 edition above); here, by clicking on a highlighted word, you can find all Stampa's uses of it.
3. Essays, etc.:
(a) A biographical /critical introduction from the 2003 Poetry Criticism.
(b) The opening of Gordon Braden's 1996 article, "Gaspara Stampa and the Gender of Petrarchism" (for infomation on the whole article. see "Secondary sources").
(c) In City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (1995), by Martha Feldman, see Chapter 4, "Ritual Language, New Music Encounters in the Academy of Domenico Venier," which includes a section (pages 104-115) on the musical settings of Stampa's songs. In the process, Feldman gives her translation of lines from various poems. Also look at the first half of Chapter 1, "Flexibility in the Body Social," for useful historical background. (At another site, a review of Feldman's book, by David Schoenbaum.)
(d) A link to the text of the 1989 volume of Annali d'italianistica; there, on pp. 104-15, you will find Bassanese's essay, "What's in a Name? Self-Naming and Renaissance Women Poets," which looks at the poems of Stampa, Tullia d'Aragona, and Veronica Franco to see the effects of the pseudonyms the poets ascribe to themselves (in Stampa's case, "Anassilla" and "Echo"). (For information on Bassanese's 2004 essay and 1982 full-length study of Stampa, see below, under "Secondary sources").
4. Other reviews (for excerpts from or information on the translations, see under "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of Stampa, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Inga Pierson on Jane Tylus' 2010 translation of Stampa, The Complete Poems: the 1554 Edition of the Rime....
(b) Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum on Stortoni's and Lillie's 1994 translation, Selected Poems.
(c) C. Fantazzi, et al., on the 1997 anthology of translations by Stortoni and Lillie, Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies & Courtesans.
(d) Janet Levarie Smarr on Virginia Cox' 2008 study, Women's Writing in Italy, 1400-1650.
(e) Elizabeth S. Cohen on the 2006 essay collection, The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-cultural Perspectives.
(f) Patricia Phillippy on the 2005 essay collection, Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, & Italy.
(g) Carol Lazzaro-Weis on the 2003 collection, Italian Women and the City: Essays.
(h) 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.
5. A bibliography of editions of Stampa's work.
6. A portrait of Stampa, a 1738 engraving by the Venetian artist Felicita Sartori, believed to be based on a painting done in Stampa's lifetime.
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[Jane Tylus has translated the original edition of Rime, published by Cassandra in 1554, with the Italian original given on the facing page (for the two prose dedications as well as the poems). Tylus' introduction provides a account of Stampa's life, her poetic style, and the history of her book. Notes are detailed and the bibliography covers studies through 2009. Appendices include a concordance comparing the order of the poems in 1554 with those in Salza's 1913 edition (valuable because most translations use Salza's order). (See the book's table of contents online.):
Stampa, Gaspara. The complete poems: the 1554 edition of the
rime, a bilingual edition; edited by Troy Tower and Jane Tylus;
translated and with an introduction by Jane Tylus (Other voice
in early modern Europe).Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2010. (xxix, 443 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ4634 .S6513 2010; ISBN:9780226770710, 9780226770727
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
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"Why... can't it make my pen and pain the same?"
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[For Stampa, the existence of the poems often seems the most valued outcome of the love, whether for Collaltino de Collato or others. For the original, see online, "Se cosi come sono abbietta e vile":]
If, a lowly, abject woman, I
can carry within so sublime a flame,
why shouldn't I draw out at least
a little of its style to show the world?
If love has lit a new and unheard-of spark
to raise me up to a place I'd never gained,
why, with equally uncommon skill,
can't it make my pen and pain the same?
And if the force of sheer nature's not
enough, why then some miracle that often
conquers, breaks, and ruptures every limit.
How this could be, I can't exactly say;
I know only that my great destiny's
impressed upon my heart a sweet new style. [#
8; p.65]
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"Take up the pen for poems."
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[See online, "Su
speranza, su fe, prendete l' armi":]
Up, hope, onward, faith---and arm yourselves
against this cruel enemy of mine,
pitiless and importunate jealousy,
who tries to end my life as best she can.
Give way to sighs, take up the pen for poems,
so that such evil pain can find release;
seek out companions, sweet and pleasing,
so that this sorrow will hurt me less.
And it that's not enough, another love
we'll take, and leave this one for which I burn,
and so one grief will defeat another.
A beast trapped in the wood, a pasture,
a field, will use its natural force and strength
to find any way that it can to escape. [#
127, p.173]
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"Hardly was that first passion spent when Love lit another."
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[The salamander was believed to live in fire; the second animal is probably the phoenix. See online, "Amor m' ha fatto tal, ch' io vivo in foco":]
Love has fashioned me so I live in flame.
I'm some new salamander in the world,
and like the animal who also lives and dies
in one and the same place, no less strange.
These are all my delights, and this my joy:
to live in burning and never notice pain,
nor do I ask him who reduced me to this state
to pity me, much or a little.
Hardly was that first passion spent
when Love lit another, and what I've sensed thus far
suggests this one's more alive, more forceful.
Of this consuming love I won't repent,
as long as he who's newly taken my heart
is satisfied with my burning , and content. [#206,
p.241]
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"So will I....?
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[Some of the (apparently later) poems consider religion. See online, "Dunque io potro, fattura empia ed ingrata":]
So will I, wicked creature and ungrateful,
really be able to love a human's beauty---
fragile as glass---and leave behind that
celestial and eternal Good that created me,
then liberated me from death
and saved me from a dark and shadowy hell---
if I repent my failures, as did Peter
after he denied his Lord three times?
So will I be able to see my Maker
laced with wounds, suspended from the cross
for me, and not faint from love and holy zeal?
So, with every earthly human passion spent,
will I not direct my words and thoughts
to his torments alone, his terrible suffering? [#282,
p.311]
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"...a sickness that both soothes and wounds."
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{The opening and close of a capitolo, a verse epistle, one of six in Rime. See the complete poem online, "Donne voi, che fin qui libere e sciolte":]
Ladies, you who until now yourselves find
free and untrammeled by the amorous noose
in which I and so many women are entwined,
if you're eager to know something of
Love, who made himself lord and god
not only of our age but of the ancients:
he's a burning affliction, a vain desire
for fictitious shadows, a willful deceit
for whom you forgot yourself and your good;
a relentless search for something that either
eludes you or with it brings
only penitence and destruction....
to suffer, and not to complain of who
it is that hurts you---better to turn
against yourself your wrath and disdain:
seeing only one face wherever you gaze,
fixed on him though he's far from you.
It's a soul that fills with joy when it sighs,
a sickness that both soothes and wounds. [#
286, pp.313-15]
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"...in spoken words or writing?"
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[And a madrigal, one of nineteen. See online, "Beato sogno, e caro":]
Blessed dream, and dear,
that under a dark veil have revealed to me,
my state, so happy,
what lively wit will ever here
praise you as much as I should, and would,
in spoken words or writing?
So I'll give you my faith:
wherever my voice can be heard,
thanks alone to your grace,
I remain on this earth. [#
302, pp.341-43]
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[Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie have translated 113 of the poems in Stampa's Rime. The translations and the Italian originals are on facing pages. The introduction is helpful, though brief; instead, the reader is referred to Fiora A. Bassanese's 1982 study (for information on that, see below under "Secondary sources"). (See the book's table of contents online.) :]
Stampa, Gaspara. Selected poems / edited and translated by
Laura Anna Stortoni & Mary Prentice Lillie. New York: Italica
Press, 1994. (xxxiv, 237 p.)
LC#: PQ4634.S65 A27 1994; ISBN: 0934977372
Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-233) and index.
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[An anthology includes poems by Stampa, translated by Stortoni and Lillie; nine of the poems are not in their 1994 selection above. As in the above, the original is given on the facing page. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Women poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly ladies &
courtesans. Edited by Laura Anna Stortoni. Translated by Laura
Anna Stortoni & Mary Prentice Lillie. NY: Italica Press,
1997.
LC#: PQ4225 .E8 S838 1997; ISBN: 0934977437
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[Fiora A. Bassanese's 1982 study is still a useful place to start, giving a comprehensive introduction to Stampa and her work. Bassanese translates a number of the poems and gives the original of each:]
Bassanese, Fiora A. Gaspara Stampa (Twayne's world authors
series; 658). Boston: Twayne, c1982. ([v], 144 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ4634.S65 B3 1982; ISBN: 0805765018
Includes index. Bibliography: p. 137-140.
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[This later article by Bassanese analyzes four of Stampa's
sonnets (#2, 155, 209, and 221 in Salza's numbering) to show
the poet reworking and "assimilating Petrarch's voice"
(p.167) to allow her own self-presentation. (See
the volume's table of contents online.):
Bassanese, Fiora A. Gaspara Stampa's Petrarchan commemorations:
validating a female lyric discourse. Annali d'Italianistica,
22 (2004), 155-167.
LC#: PQ4001 .A6; ISSN: 0741-7527
Special issue of Annali d'italianistica: Francis Petrarch
& the European lyric tradition.
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[In the chapter called "Diffusion" in Virginia Cox's survey study, Stampa is one of the writers whose work (and its acceptance by readers) is viewed in the light of the immediate and long-term effects of the Council of Trent. 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 referen ces (p. 377-446) and index
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[Irma B. Jaffe's collection of biographies includes one on Stampa,
which offers both the Italian and translations by Jaffe and Gernando
Colombardo of 20 poems, whole or in part. With the book
is a CD that includes readings in Italian of eight of Stampa'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
Includes bibliographical references (p. [411]-415) and indexes
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[Mary B. Moore's study includes a chapter on Stampa's sonnets which uses detailed analyses of the poems to show the originality of Stampa's treatment of gender. Moore gives the original and her translation of several sonnets . (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Moore, Mary B. Desiring voices: women sonneteers and Petrarchism
(Ad feminam). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
c2000. (xiii, 290 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN1514 .M58 2000; ISBN: 0809323079
Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-282) and index
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[Gordon Braden's article provides a view of Stampa's relation
to Petrarch that differs from that of Phillippy or Jones (see
both below); in the process, Braden offers a useful primer on
Petrarchism. (See
the issue's table of contents online.):]
Braden, Gordon. Gaspara Stampa and the gender of Petrarchism.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 38:2 (Summer
1996), 115-139.
LC#:AS30 .T4; ISSN:0040-4691
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[Patricia Berrahou Phillippy's study of the Petrarchan palinode includes a chapter, "Gaspara Stampa's Rime d'amore: Replication and Retraction," which discusses the differences between the approaches of Petrarch and Stampa:]
Phillippy, Patricia Berrahou. Love's remedies: recantation
and renaissance lyric poetry. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University
Press; London: Associated University Presses, c1995. (261 p.:
ill.)
LC#: PR535.L7 P48 1995; ISBN: 0838752632
Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-248) and index.
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[This collection includes an essay by Ann Rosalind Jones, "New Songs for the Swallow: Ovid's Philomela in Tullia d'Aragona and Gaspara Stampa," which discusses three of Stampa's sonnets, in greater detail than in Jones' 1990 Currency of Eros (below). (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Refiguring woman: perspectives on gender and the Italian Renaissance
/ edited with an introduction by Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. (viii, 285 p.:
ill.)
LC#: HQ1075.5.I8 R44 1991; ISBN: 0801425387, 080149771X
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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[In a more recent essay, "Bad Press: Modern Editors versus Early Modern Women Poets (Tullia d'Aragona, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco)," Jones describes the various editions of the works of the three poets, showing how editors' textual revisions have changed the effects of the works from those intended by the authors. (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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[Jones' 1990 study includes a section on Stampa, focusing on her use of the pastoral reproach and on her persona, the shepherdess Anassilla. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Jones, Ann Rosalind. The currency of Eros: women's love lyric
in Europe, 1540-1620 (Women of letters). Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, c1990. (xi, 242 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN1181 .J66 1990; ISBN: 0253331498
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[This collection contains Diana Robin's essay, "Courtesans, Celebrity, and Print Culture in Renaissance Venice: Tullia d'Aragona, Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco," which discusses the writers' works in the light of the salons in which they participated and the growing Venetian publishing industry. The notes are especially valuable in reviewing earlier critical studies. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Italian women and the city: essays / edited by Janet Levarie
Smarr and Daria Valentini. Madison [N.J.]: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press; London; Cranbury, NJ: Associated University
Presses, c2003. (244 p.)
LC#: PQ4055.W6 I85 2003; ISBN: 0838639658
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[One essay in this collection, Dawn De Rycke's "On Hearing the Courtesan in a Gift of Song: the Venetian Case of Gaspara Stampa," deals not with Stampa's own writing but with the way the poet might have sung her own or others' poetry; De Rycke looks at this by analyzing the music of a contemporary, Perissone Cambio, who dedicated a collection of madrigals to Stampa. In another essay,"The Courtesan's Voice: Petrarchan Lovers, Pop Philosophy, and Oral Traditions," Martha Feldman includes a brief section (pp. 114-18) on Stampa's use and adaptation of Petrarchan verses in her songs. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
The courtesan's arts: cross-cultural perspectives / edited
by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006. (xxvii, 396 p.: ill.; 24 cm)
LC#: HQ111 .C68 2006; ISBN: 0195170288, 0195170296
Includes bibliographical references (p. 369-380) and index
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Updated 02-03-12