Writing Beloveds: Humanist Petrarchism and the Politics of Gender (Toronto Italian Studies)

Covering a period from the late-fourteenth to mid-sixteenth century, Aileen A. Feng’s engagingly written work identifies and analyzes a Latin humanist precursor to the poetic movement known as Renaissance Petrarchism. Though Petrachism is usually read solely as a vernacular poetic tradition, in Writing Beloveds , Feng recovers the initial political purposes in Latin prose and traces how poetry set the terms for gender, agency, and power in early modern Italy. By revealing the literary motifs in men’s and women’s writing about gender she maps how certain figures in Petrarch’s writing transmitted gendered ideas of power and reflected a growing anxiety about women as public figures. This work includes nuanced analyses of poetry, linguistic treatises, debates on imitation, representations of gender and epistolary correspondence in Latin and Italian. Writing Beloveds is a landmark study that highlights the new social reality of women writers in early modern Europe. This Study Considers The Way In Which A Poetic Convention, The Beloved To Whom Renaissance Amatory Poetry Was Addessed, Becomes Influential Political Rhetoric, An Instrument That Both Men And Women Used To Shape And Justify Their Claims To Power. The Author Argues That Petrarchan Poetic Conventions Were Part Of A Social Discourse That Signaled Anxiety Concerning The Rising Place Of Women As Intellectual Interlocators, Public Figures, And Patrons Of The Arts.-- Women Of Stone : Gender And Politics In The Petrarchan World -- In Laura's Shadow : Gendered Dialogues And Humanist Petrarchism In The Fifteenth Century -- Laura Speaks : Sisterhood, Amicitia, And Marital Love In The Female Latin Petrarchist Writings Of The Fifteenth Century -- Theorizing Gender : Nation Building And Female Mythology In Ciceronian Quarrel -- Politicizing Gender : Bembo's Private And Public Petrarchism. Aileen A. Feng. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "This study considers the way in which a poetic convention, the beloved to whom Renaissance amatory poetry was addessed, becomes influential political rhetoric, an instrument that both men and women used to shape and justify their claims to power. The author argues that Petrarchan poetic conventions were part of a social discourse that signaled anxiety concerning the rising place of women as intellectual interlocators, public figures, and patrons of the arts."-- Provided by publisher Writing Beloveds considers the way in which a poetic convention, the 'beloved' to whom Renaissance amatory poetry was addressed, becomes influential political rhetoric, an instrument that both men and women used to shape and justify their claims to power.