Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy

Abstract

Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy is a collection of essays on the flowering of women's participation in the religious and artistic life of Italy from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It brings together scholars of religious studies, history, literature, music, fine arts, and philosophy from both Italy and the United States. Several essays document and discuss new discoveries, such as the extraordinary collection of musical compositions written by women in Bologna and Milan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the convent theater of sixteenth-century Tuscany. Other essays, in contrast, offer new interpretations of well-known figures such as Catherine of Siena and Angela of Foligno, or radical new assessments of the early modern debates over concepts of women's sanctity and the boundaries between holiness and heresy. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley and the contributors to this volume richly demonstrate that women in the late Middle Ages and early modern period were able to carve out creative space, most successfully in the religious sphere. They show that women did indeed speak with a creative voice in this period, and furthermore, that they were not entirely defined and limited by their marginality.

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