WGST 433: Writing Women In Renaissance

Course Description

This course will be taught in English, and will focus on the influence of Italian literary models for the construction of female literary types as well as female voices in France and Italy from 1300 to about 1600. Italian authors studied include three very influential Florentines, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, as well as Castiglione and Asiosto. We will read women poets, patrons, prostitutes and queens from Italy and France such as Veronica Gambara, Isabella di Morra, Vittoria Colonna, Christine de Pizan, Louise Labe and Marguerite de Navarre. At issue will be women's roles and women's images in city and court culture during the early modern period and the interaction of their writings with the literary canons of Italy and France.