Boccaccio's heroines
Subtitle: power & virtue in Renaissance society
By: Margaret Franklin.
Series: Women and gender in the early modern world
Publisher: Ashgate
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Burlington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 205
Subjects: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375; Women -- Biography; Women in literature; Women -- History -- Renaissance, 1450-1600
Genres: Biography.
Description: In contrast to earlier scholars who have seen Boccaccio's "Famous Women" as incoherent and fractured, Franklin argues that the text offers a remarkably consistent, coherent and comprehensible treatise concerning the appropriate functioning of women in society. In this cross disciplinary study of a seminal work of literature and its broader cultural impact on Renaissance society, Franklin shows that, through both literature and the visual arts, "Famous Women" was used to promote social ideologies in both Renaissance Tuscany and the dynastic courts of northern Italy. Speaking equally to scholars in medieval and early modern literature, history, and art history, Franklin demonstrates that the moral criteria Boccaccio used to judge the lives of legendary women - heroines and miscreants alike - were employed consistently to tackle the challenge that politically powerful women represented for the prevailing social order.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Text and its critics; title: Lauds and libraries; title: Art of virtue; title: Authorial intent; title: Dedication: the nature of virtue; title: Preface: a book for men about women; title: Bad example; title: Overstepping the boundaries; title: Action/reaction; title: Dangerous minds and bodies; title: Calculated anomalies; title: Famous women in Renaissance Tuscany; title: Boccaccio's heroines; title: Woman's place; title: Daring but decorous; title: Famous women and famous women; title: Eleonora d'Aragona d'Este; title: Isabella d'Este and Mantegna.