A Portrait Of A Renaissance Feminist. Lucrezia Marinella's Life And Works

In every work of the great Venetian writer Lucrezia Marinella it is possible to detect her complex and wide knowledge related to different cultural fields (history, literature, philosophy, religion), quite unusual for an Italian woman living in the XVIIth century. Moreover, the deep analysis put forth by Lucrezia Marinella on some relevant authors, both ancient (such as Plato and Aristotle) and modern (Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso) is aimed at creating new gender categories in order to start a debate about stereotypes and prejudices on women’s identity in early modern Italian culture, and fighting against misoginy and patriarchy. The essays in the volume analyse the life and the works of Lucrezia, considering her a ‘Renaissance feminist’.