Antisatire: In Defense of Women, against Francesco Buoninsegni

Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652), Venetian nun and polemicist, was known for her protest against forced monachization and her advocacy for the education of women and their participation in public life. She responded to Francesco Buoninsegni’s Against the Vanities of Women (1638) with the Antisatire (1644), a defense of women’s fashions and a denunciation of men, but also a strong condemnation of men’s treatment of women and of the subordination of women in society. Both Buoninsegni and Tarabotti write with the exaggeration and absurd arguments typical of Menippean satire; they flaunt their knowledge of ancient and contemporary literature in a prose interspersed with poetry and replete with the astonishing Baroque conceits that delighted their contemporaries.

"With this edition by Elissa Weaver, internationally acclaimed as a distinguished scholar of early modern Italian women’s writing, Arcangela Tarabotti’s lively, polemical Antisatire (1644) joins several other translations of her works in the Other Voice series. It is published alongside the satire that provoked it, a witty reprise of the traditional moralizing discourse on feminine vanity by the Sienese poet and academician Francesco Buoninsegni. Weaver’s Introduction locates the dispute with Buoninsegni within Tarabotti’s trajectory as a writer, and traces the Antisatire’s complex reception history, and the circumstances of its composition. The editorial apparatus is excellent, and the translation of the two texts is fluent, clear, accurate, and historically sensitive."
- Virginia Cox, Department of Italian Studies, New York University

ELISSA B. WEAVER is Professor Emerita of Italian at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women (2002) and of numerous other works on Italian medieval and Renaissance literature. She edited the Italian edition of the Buoninsegni, Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira (1998) and is co-editor of the Italian Women Writers online database at the University of Chicago Library.

REVIEWS
Annali d'italianistica 39 (2021): 529–531. Reviewed by Maria Galli Stampino.
Modern Language Review 117.2 (2022): 302–303. Reviewed by Julie Robarts.
Quaderni d'italianistica 43.2 (2022): 259–261. Reviewed by Meghri Doumanian.
Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 44.4 (2021): 313–315. Reviewed by Laura Benedetti.
Renaissance Quarterly 76.2 (2023): 653–655. Reviewed by Shannon McHugh.
The Sixteenth Century Journal 53.3 (2022): 828–830. Reviewed by Claudia Antonini.
Women Language Literature in Italy / Donne Lingua Letteratura in Italia 3 (2021): 134–35. Reviewed by Francesco Lucioli.