The Buffoons, A Ridiculous Comedy. A Bilingual Edition

Honorable Mention - Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender's Prize for Best Translated Edition of a Work on Women and Gender Published in 2018

This translation makes The Buffoons, the first female-authored comedy printed in Italy, available to Anglophone readers for the first time. Published in 1641, this burlesque play depicts the mismatched sexual desires of a prince and princess. Although set in Northern Africa, the comedy satirizes the Florentine court of Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici, one of Costa’s several elite patrons. By featuring the clownish antics of an unconventional cast of dwarfs, hunchbacks, and buffoons, it reflects the bizarre appetites and grotesque entertainments of the day. Ribald puns and commedia dell’arte-inspired slapstick abound, presenting the reader with a comic alternative to decorous women’s writing in early modern Italy.

"Margherita Costa’s Li Buffoni, depreciated, misattributed or just simply forgotten through the centuries, has finally found some love. In the sensitive hands of Sara Díaz and Jessica Goethals, who cheerfully whip the complicated language of this commedia ridicolosa into shape while remaining attentive to the irreverent, rambunctious vocabulary of the text, we find another valuable voice to add to the ever-growing roster of early modern women writers from Italy. A poet, dramatist, historian, singer, librettist, 'widow and poor virtuosa with two daughters,' Costa produced fourteen works in which she managed to say something important through laughter about what court life was like for underlings of either sex, and what kind of Baroque poetics allow women to find their voice."

-Valeria Finucci, Professor of Romance Studies, Duke University

SARA E. DIAZ is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Italian at Fairfield University. Her research focuses on gender and comic discourses in medieval and early modern Italian literature.

JESSICA GOETHALS is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Alabama. She has published on early modern Italian literature and culture.

REVIEWS
Early Modern Women 14.1 (2019): 237–240. Reviewed by Alexandra Coller.
Quaderni d’Italianistica 40.1 (2019): 206–208. Reviewed by Patrizia Bettella.
Renaissance & Reformation 42.1 (2019): 378–380. Reviewed by Sheena Jary.
Renaissance Quarterly 72.4 (2019): 1546–1547. Reviewed by Julie Robarts.