Letters New

Paola De Santo and Caterina Mongiat Farina’s critical edition and translation of Isabella Andreini’s Lettere (1607) is a long-awaited resource for English readers and scholars of Renaissance and early modern studies. This monumental volume showcases De Santo and Mongiat Farina’s strong translation skills, as well as their deep knowledge of Andreini’s work and the rich trove of classical and Renaissance sources from which she drew her copious allusions. Their erudite notes contextualize the letters well for the modern reader. On the whole, the volume provides an eminently readable and enjoyable translation of this work that found enduring fame in Italy and abroad during the seventeenth century.
-Julie D. Campbell, Professor of English, Eastern Illinois University

The Letters of the commedia dell’arte diva Isabella Andreini (1562–1604) is a collection of epistles in fictional, anonymous, male and female voices, a “hermaphroditic” alternation of gender hitherto exceptional in letter writing. In her Letters Andreini reinvents the humanistic epistolary genre into a distinctive fusion of literary and dramatic performance. The guise of epistolary intimacy cedes to a knowing artificiality, which allows for the emergence of Andreini’s modern critique of the gendered self as a uniform entity. The collection centers on love, reminiscent of innamorati voices, and examines — from surprising perspectives — pertinent issues including death, the birth of a girl, prostitution, patriarchal marital practices, love in old age, courtiership, country and city life, human nature, and defenses and critiques of both sexes.

PAOLA DE SANTO is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Georgia. In her current book project, she examines the formation of cultural subjects in Renaissance Italy at the intersection of political and literary discourse by focusing on the ambassador and the courtesan.

CATERINA MONGIAT FARINA is Associate Professor of Italian at DePaul University. She is the author of Questione di lingua: L’ideologia del dibattito sull’italiano nel Cinquecento (Longo 2014) and the translator with Geoff Farina of Umberto Eco’s classic manual How to Write a Thesis (MIT 2015).