Boccaccio's Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance SocietyIn 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 brings needed clarification to the text by demonstrating 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. |
Contents
Authorial Intent | 23 |
A Bad Example | 31 |
Famous Women in Renaissance Tuscany | 57 |
Boccaccio and | 115 |
Conclusion | 164 |
Other editions - View all
Boccaccio's Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society Margaret Franklin Limited preview - 2017 |
Boccaccio's Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society Margaret Franklin Limited preview - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
Aeneas Aeneid Alberti Andrea Andrea Mantegna Antonio Cornazzano Artibus et Historiae Battista behavior Biblioteca biography Cassone cassoni century chastity Chicago classical Cloelia contemporary court Culture Cumaean Sibyl cycle daughter death depicted Dido Dido's donne illustri dowry edited Eleonora Eleonora d'Aragona Ercole Ercole's exemplars Famous Women female feminine Ferrara fifteenth-century Figure Florence Florentine Francesco Gender Giovanni Boccaccio Goggio Gonzaga Gynevera heroines History honor humanist husband Isabella d'Este Italian Renaissance Italy King Kolsky Latin literary Livy London Lucretia male Mantegna manuscript marriage masculine Medici Medieval Milan Minyan moral mulieribus claris Museum narrative Oxford painted paragon Plutarch political Portia portrait praise Princeton Quattrocento queen Renaissance Florence Renaissance Italy Rinascimento role Roman Rome Sabadino secolo Semiramis sexual Siena storico story Strozzi Studi sul Boccaccio Tamyris trans Translated Tuscan Uomini Famosi Valerius Maximus Vespasiano Villa Carducci Virgil's virginity virtues visual widowed widowhood wife wives woman York