Letters from the Cloister: defending the literary self in Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari e di complimento

Italica, Spring, 2004 by Meredith Kennedy Ray

Initially, however, the members of the Incogniti seem to have had great admiration for the outspoken Benedictine nun, based largely on her Tirannia paterna, which circulated in manuscript, and on her Paradiso monacale, her first published work. We know from archival evidence that she sent both to Aprosio, whom she designated as her "defender" prior to their later falling out. (43) The Tirannia must have appealed to the anticlerical sentiments of the Incogniti, who would have admired the nun's bold criticism of coerced monachization (especially those Incogniti who, like Brusoni, were themselves unhappily consigned to the monastery). The Paradiso, too, the least polemic of Tarabotti's writings, elicited an initially positive reaction. Indeed, some of the most important writers of the period contributed poems to it, including Lucrezia Marinella, who had left her mark some years before on the querelle des femmes. Loredano, too, spoke admiringly of the Paradiso in his letters and wrote a letter of presentation for the text; Tarabotti repeatedly calls attention in her Lettere to Loredano's contribution, casting him as a champion who protects it against its foes (17). Other letters in Tarabotti's epistolario, moreover, show that the nun, confident of the good reception of her Paradiso, used the work as a means of introduction, sending copies of it to to the Doge of Venice, Francesco Erizzo, his future successor Francesco Molin, and others.

Yet from the beginning, accusations flew that Tarabotti lacked the erudition and education necessary for authorship, or, conversely, that the erudition of her works was such that someone had surely helped her to compose them. In the case of the Paradiso, Tarabotti's opponents--including former allies such as Brusoni and Aprosio--would eventually go so far as to accuse her of not having authored the work at all. Such allegations infuriated Tarabotti, who felt she understood the motivations behind them. As she would write in the Antisatira, men, not content to exclude women systematically from learning, were so threatened by women's intellectual potential that they could not believe women could write without male assistance. This, she continues, is precisely what happened with regard to the Paradiso:

   Percio e avvenuto che molti maligni o ignoranti asseriscano che 'l
   Paradiso monacale non possa esser dettame dell'ingegno mio, o volo
   della mia penna, o pur, che, essendo, sia anche necessita ch'abbia
   ricevuto ornamento, fregi, e ricchezze di tratti di filosofia e
   telogia da spiriti elevati e intelligenti. (Antisatira 74)

Tarabotti's consciousness of her vulnerability to such allegations is constantly reflected in her Lettere. Removed from the literary world not only by sex but by her physical confinement within the convent of Sant'Anna, Tarabotti had only her pen with which to defend her name and her work. Her discomfort with this position is evident throughout her letters, which she uses as a forum in which to confront and dismantle negative claims about all of her works, from the unpublished Tirannia paterna to the Paradiso and the Antisatira, all of which were in danger of being marked as "imposters." Tarabotti understood that she could use the public space of her Lettere to turn the tables on her literary foes, re-presenting key episodes such as her falling out with Aprosio from her point of view and shaping her readers' interpretation of events. By providing in the Lettere glimpses into the conception, composition, circulation, and reception of her other works, Tarabotti invokes the first-person authority of letters to persuade readers of her authorial authority and to set the parameters for any debate over her works.