Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice

Abstract

In recent years, ample scholarly attention has been devoted to the intersection of women's religious vocation and the lay community in early modern Italy.Women's imposed religious devotion was determined in many cases by the inheritance system.It was common practice for young women to join convents in the seven- teenth century, but this was not necessarily an expression of their religious beliefs, but rather a strategic and economic decision taken in most cases by parents or guardians to secure an attractive dowry for a particular daughter and to render her more attractive financially to a potential future husband.In her writings, Elena Cassandra Tarabotti (1604-52) made her voice heard in spite of many layers of patriarchal voices and vehemently argued for broadening women's educational opportunities.The Benedictine nun, who acted as a staunch defender of women, decried their impossibility to openly express their concerns with regard to forced monachization in her work Inferno monacale {Convent Helt), a treatise that she could not pubnsh during her life time.In fact, it appeared in a modern edition by Francesca Medioli in 1990.Nonetheless, her works should be read as a process of struggle and literary accommodation to social realities and textual culture, rather than a tragic story of individual suffering.This book is the first collection of essays dedicated exclusively to Arcangela Tarabotti.It also represents an important and valuable work of scholarship, which is an important step in the direction of understanding the world inside the con- vent's walls in seventeenth-century Venice.The twelve essays in this volume were originally presented at a conference held in 1997 at the University of Chicago.The conference and this publication were intended to celebrate the literary achieve- ments of Tarabotti in her pioneering works.Paradiso monacale {Convent Paradise), 1643, Antisatira {Antisatirè), 1644, Che le donne siano della spetie degli uomini {Women Are Not Human), 1651, and Semplicità ingannata {Innocence Betrayed), originally entitled Tirannia paterna {Paternal Tyranny), 1654.Her epistolary writ- ings.Lettere familiari e di complimento {Letters, Personal and Public), 1650 are also instrumental in contextualizing and historicizing women's role in early modem Venetian convents.

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