Women have had a long and active role in Italian letters. This reference work contains biographical, critical, and bibliographical profiles of 51 writers from the 14th century to the present day. The entries are written by contributors knowledgeable of the historical period in which their chosen writers lived, and reflect both the literary tradition that conditioned their works and the modern gender issues that have shaped contemporary critical interpretation. For easy reference, the entries in this volume are organized alphabetically and have a uniform format. The first section of each entry is a biographical outline that places primary emphasis on the writer's career and her literary contributions. The second section analyzes recurrent themes, with special regard to the writer's major works. The third section surveys her critical fortune and includes a bibliography, which lists primary works, English translations, and critical studies of the writer. The writers included represent different periods in Italian cultural history and offer the greatest possible variety in women's literary experience.

Over the last 20 years, there has been an increasing interest in feminist views of the Italian literary tradition. While feminist theory and methodology have been accepted by the academic community in the U.S., the situation is very different in Italy, where such work has been done largely outside the academy. Among nonspecialists, knowledge of feminist approaches to Italian literature, and even of the existence of Italian women writers, remains scant. This reference work, the first of its kind on Italian literature, is a companion volume for all who wish to investigate Italian literary culture and writings, both by women and by men, in light of feminist theory. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for authors, schools, movements, genres and forms, figures and types, and similar topics related to Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and summarizes feminist thought on the subject. Entries provide brief bibliographies, and the volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography of major studies. This volume covers eight centuries of Italian literature, from the Middle Ages to the present. Included are entries for major canonical male authors, such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as for female writers such as Lucrezia Marinella and Gianna Manzini. These entries discuss how the authors have shaped the image of women in Italian literature and how feminist criticism has responded to their works. Entries are also provided for various schools and movements, such as deconstruction, Marxism, and new historicism; for genres and forms, such as the epic, devotional works, and misogynistic literature; for figures and types, such as the enchantress, the witch, and the shepherdess; and for numerous other topics. Each entry is written by an expert contributor, summarizes the relationship of the topic to feminist thought, and includes a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a selected general bibliography of major studies.

The first historical heroic epic authored by a woman, "Scanderbeide" recounts the exploits of fifteenth-century Albanian warrior-prince George Scanderbeg and his war of resistance against the Ottoman sultanate. Filled with scenes of intense and suspenseful battles contrasted with romantic episodes, "Scanderbeide" combines the action and fantasy characteristic of the genre with analysis of its characters' motivations. In selecting a military campaign as her material and epic poetry as her medium, Margherita Sarrocchi (1560?-1617) not only engages in the masculine subjects of political conflict and warfare but also tackles a genre that was, until that point, the sole purview of men.
First published posthumously in 1623, "Scanderbeide" reemerges here in an adroit English prose translation that maintains the suspense of the original text and gives ample context to its rich cultural implications.

The Partridge Hunt chronicles a hawking party organized by young Lorenzo de' Medici for his closest friends on a fine summer day of 1473. In forty-four engrossing stanzas, we look on the preparations for the hunt, the antics of the participants, and on their skillful and, at times, ridiculously awkward actions. The poem gallops from the idyllic lines of the opening to the tense, agitated sequences of the center, and on to the convivial description of the closing. Rinaldina Russell's introduction and list of characters illustrate the historical background of Lorenzo's milieu, thus opening our vista on the cultural and political subtext of this delightful little work.