Moderata Fonte, Women and Life in Sixteenth Century Venice

Modern Language Review, The, Jan, 2005 by Laura Lepschy

Moderata Fonte, Women and Life in Sixteenth Century Venice. By PAOLA MALPEZZI PRICE. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 175 pp. 32 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-8386-399-4.

This is a good moment to present the life and works of Moderata Fonte (pseudonym for Modesta da Pozzo), as in the last twenty five years she has been the object of several studies which help the understanding of her activities and context. In 1988 Adriana Chemello (who writes the foreword to the present monograph) produced her edition of Il merito delle donne (Mirano: Eidos), which was preceded by a full introduction in which she reassessed Niccolo Doglioni's 1600 Vita of his protegee. In 1995 Valeria Finucci published an edition of Fonte's unfinished epic Tredici cantidel Floridoro (Modena: Mucchi) Patricia Labalme ('Venetian Women on Women: Three Early Modern Feminists', Archivio Veneto, 117 (1981), 81-109) and Margaret King (Women of the Renaissance (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991)) have analysed aspects of her work, and then there have been the important studies by Virginia Cox, both her survey of The Renaissance Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) and her excellent annotated translation The Worth of Women (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Paola Malpezzi Price was able to build on the biographical, critical, and ecdotic material offered by her predecessors to situate Moderata Fonte in her cultural context.

As the title of the volume implies, the emphasis of this study is on Fonte's position as a woman in the Venice of the Cinquecento. But Malpezzi Price ranges more widely around her subject, using earlier historical material on the defence of women, starting with Christine de Pizan's Le Livre de la cite des dames and drawing from modern feminist critics, in particular Lute Irigaray (Pouvoir du discours: subordination du feminin', in Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un (Paris: Minuit, 1977)) and Patricia Yaeger ('"Because a fire was in my head": Eudora Welty and the Dialogic Imagination', PMLA, 99 (1984), 955-73), for an analysis of Fonte's discourse, which give her study a broader historical, geographical, and critical dimension.

The main sections of her discussion are focused on Growing up Female and Liter ate in Sixteenth-Century Venice' (Chapter 2), in which she uses both pre-Tridentine (Ludovico Dolce's L'institutione delle donne) and Counter Reformation treatises (for instance, Silvio Antoniano's Dell' educazione cristiana). The particular situation in Venice is discussed using wide documentation, from studies such as those of Paul Grendler (Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) and Vittoria Baldo (Alunni, maestri e scuole in Venezia alla fine del XVI secolo (Como: New Press, 1977)), to Fonte's own experience and its later expression in Il merito. As Corinna recites in one of her sonnets in the dialogue: 'Poiche fallacia d'uom non m'interrompe | Fama e gloria n'attendo in vita, e in morte' (p. 49). From the education of women in Venice Malpezzi Price passes to Cultural and Social Life in Sixteenth Century Venice' (Chapter 3), which looks in particular at the lives of the cittadini, to which class Fonte belongs, the role the Scuole played in their lives, and the activities of the cittadine within their homes and as voluntary workers outside. This chapter is mosaic like, passing from class distinctions to the roles of Doge and Dogaressa, to political power in Venice, the relation between Venice and the outside world, the role of religion and the Venetian Inquisition, and then back to more gender oriented sections, on the Venetian economy and women's work, on prostitutes, courtesans, and sumptuary laws, while the section on intellectual life also draws on material from Ponte's Il merito, as a dialogue representative of the informal meetings held by women. The chapter ends with a section on festivities and carnival, in which women's participation was minimal. From this informative but somewhat disjointed chapter, we pass to topics which are more directly related to the role of women and to Ponte: Chapter 4 is on 'The Myth of Venice and Sixteenth-Century Women', Chapter 5 on 'The Woman Warrior', which makes good use of Floridoro, as does Chapter 6, which looks at the myth of Circe. The last two chapters contain interesting discussions of the rhetorical strategies of Il merito compared with other dialogues of the time, and on the nature of Fonte's discourse, using Irigaray's and Yaeger's notion of flexibility in language.

This is an ambitious study combining a presentation of Moderata Fonte's life and works with a detailed picture of sixteenth century Venetian life as its background (or its foreground?). The vast bibliography on Venice seems to have been well used, as also the recent works on Fonte. What remains somewhat problematic is the structure of the work, as the relationship is sometimes unclear between the preponderance of historical material and the analysis of the literary works.