Lucrezia Marinella’s Exhortations to Women and to Others if They Please
Lecture di Laura Benedetti
The Embassy of Italy/Italian Cultural Institute, in collaboration with the National Organization of Italian American Women (NOIAW), presents a lecture by Laura Benedetti highlighting the role of women in literature between Renaissance and Baroque.
This is our first event celebrating Women’s History Month.
The Renaissance witnessed an extraordinary outpour of women’s literary production, ranging from erudite Latin compositions to epic poems to devotional works. Venice, the publishing capital of the time, was home to a particularly impressive cohort of women of letters. In the 1400s, Cassandra Fedele composed the ornate Oratio pro Bertucio Lamberto; the 1500s marked the emergence of lyrical poets such as Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco; finally the 1600s produced the personalities of Lucrezia Marinella, Moderata Fonte, and Arcangela Tarabotti, as well as that of the erudite Jewish poet Sarra Copia Sulam. This extraordinary season would come to an end around the middle of the 17th-century. By the time yet another Venetian, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, became the first woman in the world to be granted a university degree in 1678, women had virtually withdrawn from the literary scene.
LAURA BENEDETTI is the “Laura and Gaetano De Sole” Professor of Contemporary Italian Culture and Chair of the Italian Department at Georgetown University. She is the author of La sconfitta di Diana. Un percorso per la Gerusalemme Liberata, 1996, and The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy, 2007 (winner of the 2008 Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies).
Music Intermission
The duo Barbara Hollinshead (mezzo-soprano) and Howard Bass (lute) will perform early music intermissions.
I. Frottolas and Fantasias
L’amor, donna, ch’io te porto
Giacomo Fogliano, 1468 – 1548
Ostinato vo’ seguire
Bartolomeo Tromboncino, ca. 1470 – 1535
Che debbo far, che mi consigli amore
Tromboncino
2 Fantasias*
Francesco Canova da Milano, 1493 – 1543
Amando e desiando
Benedetto Cariteo, 1450 – 1514
Non è tempo
Marchetto Cara, ca. 1470 – 1525
II. Madrigals and Dances
Amarilli mia bella
Giulio Caccini, 1551 – 1618
Sospiri di foco
Francesco Cavalli, 1602 – 1676
Tremulo spirito
Cavalli
Ballo detto “il Conte Orlando”*
Simone Molinaro, ca. 1570 – after 1633
Corrente terza*
Alessandro Piccinini, 1566 – ca. 1638
Sì dolce è il tormento
Claudio Monteverdi, 1567 – 1643
Voglio di vita uscir
Monteverdi
* (indicates lute solo)
This event is presented in collaboration with
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Embassy of Italy/Italian Cultural Institute
3000 Whitehaven st Street NW
Washington, DC 20008