Boccaccio's Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society

by Franklin,Margaret

• ISBN13: 9780754653646
• ISBN10: 0754653641
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In 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. Further, the author brings to light the significant influence of Boccaccio's text on the representation of classical heroines in Renaissance art. By examining several paintings created in the republics and principalities of Renaissance Italy, Franklin demonstrates that Famous Women was employed as a conceptual guide by patrons and artists to draw the teeth from the challenge of unconventionally powerful women by co-opting their stories into the service of contemporary Italian standards and mores.

Author Biography

Margaret Franklin is Assistant Professor of Art History at Wayne State University, USA.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(3)
The Text and its Critics	4	(5)
Lauds and Libraries	9	(4)
The Art of Virtue	13	(10)
Authorial Intent	23	(8)
Dedication: The Nature of Virtue	23	(4)
Preface: A Book for Men about Women	27	(4)
A Bad Example	31	(26)
Overstepping the Boundaries	31	(10)
Action/Reaction	41	(3)
Dangerous Minds and Bodies	44	(10)
Calculated Anomalies	54	(3)
Famous Women in Renaissance Tuscany	57	(118)
Boccaccio's Heroines	57	(10)
A Woman's Place	67	(18)
Daring but Decorous: Donne Illustri in the Art of the Tuscan Republics	85	(30)
Famous Women and Famous Women: Boccaccio and the
Court Consorts	115	(3)
Eleonnora d'Aragona D'este	118	(30)
Isabella d'Este and Mantegna	148	(27)
Conclusion	175	(2)
Select Bibliography	177	(24)
Index	201