« Ritrovandomi in termine di dover da me stessa la propria ragion difendere e sostenere » : Urania by Giulia Bigolina · Giulia Bigolina (c. 1518 - c. 1569), pioneer in writing on the female question in Italy, is the lately-unearthed author of a prose romance Urania, the Story of a Young Woman’s Love. Bigolina is a leading name concerning the protofeminist movement with Urania, which is the first fiction in prose written by a female author in Italian. Although there is scarce information as to her oeuvre, it can be deduced from her two extant works, Urania and The Novella of Giulia Camposanpiero and Thesibaldo Vitaliani, that Bigolina was attentive to meditate on women’s independence, their problems, their experiences, and their willpower. Indeed, Urania, the topic of this study, constitutes the first entry into the debate on a woman’s proper place, politically, culturally, and philosophically in Italian Renaissance culture. In her first dedicatory letter, Bigolina engages explicitly with the problems faced by women writers of romance and addresses the issues of philosophy of love. Bigolina re-examines the contemporary rhetorical debates on the arts in an original way, and she turns them into the very substance of a work of art that depicts the triumph of the written word over painting.
"Ritrovandomi in termine di dover da me stessa la propria ragion difendere e sostenere": Urania di Giulia Bigolina
sandra plastina
2021-01-01
Abstract
« Ritrovandomi in termine di dover da me stessa la propria ragion difendere e sostenere » : Urania by Giulia Bigolina · Giulia Bigolina (c. 1518 - c. 1569), pioneer in writing on the female question in Italy, is the lately-unearthed author of a prose romance Urania, the Story of a Young Woman’s Love. Bigolina is a leading name concerning the protofeminist movement with Urania, which is the first fiction in prose written by a female author in Italian. Although there is scarce information as to her oeuvre, it can be deduced from her two extant works, Urania and The Novella of Giulia Camposanpiero and Thesibaldo Vitaliani, that Bigolina was attentive to meditate on women’s independence, their problems, their experiences, and their willpower. Indeed, Urania, the topic of this study, constitutes the first entry into the debate on a woman’s proper place, politically, culturally, and philosophically in Italian Renaissance culture. In her first dedicatory letter, Bigolina engages explicitly with the problems faced by women writers of romance and addresses the issues of philosophy of love. Bigolina re-examines the contemporary rhetorical debates on the arts in an original way, and she turns them into the very substance of a work of art that depicts the triumph of the written word over painting.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
