Margaret L. King and Diana Robin, trans. Isotta Nogarola: Complete Writings. Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations

Italica, Summer, 2006 by Meredith Kennedy Ray

Margaret L. King and Diana Robin, trans. Isotta Nogarola: Complete Writings. Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004.

Isotta Nogarola: Complete Writings is a recent and welcome addition to the University of Chicago Press series "The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe," which now includes over thirty editions of works by or pertaining to women in the early modern period. Ina lucid translation framed by concise commentary, eminent feminist scholars Margaret L. King (co-editor of the series) and Diana Robin bring their formidable combined expertise to Isotta Nogarola's Latin texts, previously unavailable in an English edition (or indeed in a modern edition). The result is a comprehensive presentation of the complete body of Nogarola's extant works that will make this important voice accessible to scholars as well as to students. Nogarola's forays into a range of humanist genres as well as her lively contribution to the querelle desfemmes are highlighted in this translation, reminding us why she is such an important figure for the tradition of early modern women's writing as well as for Italian humanism.

Isotta Nogarola (1418-66), part of what King has called elsewhere the "first generation of Quattrocento women humanists" (King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand [Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983] 16), is of great interest both for her literary production--which included letters and orations as well as a famous dialogue on the relative sin of Adam and Eve--and for her position as a woman intellectual in the early Renaissance. Greatly admired in her time--she was praised by the eminent humanist scholar and teacher Guarino Guarini and eulogized in a celebratory poem by Giovanni Maria Filelfo--Nogarola left an important legacy for the women who would follow in her footsteps, including the humanist writers of the late fifteenth century Cassandra Fedele and Laura Cereta, whose literary activity must certainly be interpreted with Nogarola's precedent in mind. A learned and highly regarded figure, Nogarola was quite unusual, for she neither married nor took vows, but instead lived alone in the households of her brothers, where she devoted herself to the study of humanist works and Biblical and patristic texts, eventually earning the reputation of a holy woman (although it is not known whether she in fact entered any kind of religious retreat) (102). Nogarola was also unusual in that she was educated in Latin by a humanist tutor, Martino Rizzoni--a student of Guarini whose services were engaged, as the editors note, not by Nogarola's father but rather by her mother Bianca, who was probably illiterate (4). Through Rizzoni, Nogarola gained access to the Humanist circles with which her tutor was associated, impressing their members with her eloquence and erudition. Yet although she was admired by her male contemporaries, her position, as King and others have shown, was always a tenuous one, for she had to negotiate her way as an aspiring humanist in an elite, male literary culture that feared and scorned intellectual women even as it encouraged them. An example of the kind of obstacles Nogarola faced can be found in the anonymous pamphlets that circulated accusing her of criminal and incestuous sexual activity--certainly a testament to the deep-seated cultural link that has been frequently noted between female chastity and female silence and, conversely, female eloquence and sexual promiscuity in early modern Italy. Nogarola, who never married and repeatedly emphasized her own virginity--which in turn became a centerpiece of her public image--embodies the paradox of the learned woman. If her anonymous detractor insisted that "an eloquent woman is never chaste" (68), then Nogarola, an acclaimed intellectual, had to work even harder to maintain an impeccable reputation for sexual and spiritual rectitude.

King and Robin's translation presents all of Nogarola's known extant works, which, as the editors point out, include experiments in virtually all the humanist genres: from the letterbook, which traced the writer's literary and social connections, to the dialogue, to public orations and a letter of consolation. The translation is based on Eugenius Abel's 1886 edition and the editors provide a concordance (Appendix A) between their translation and Abel's edition. King and Robin divide Nogarola's literary production into three stages: an early period from 1434-40, to which her letter collection belongs; a middle period of intellectual awakening from 1441-49 that marks new readings in classical, biblical, and patristic texts; and finally the period from 1450-61 (the last date for which we have evidence of her literary activity), when she experimented with new genres and with "her new syncretism of pagan and Christian thought" (9). A chronological list of sources cited by Nogarola throughout these three stages is supplied in Appendix Band supports this tripartite division of her intellectual development. The editors impart further divisions on Nogarola's work by separating the first period, comprising her letterbook, into four thematically and chronologically organized chapters: "Kin, Friends, and Books (1434-37)," "Guarino's Circle (1436-38)," "Venice and Beyond (1438-39)," and "Damiano (1438-41)," respectively. This arrangement is helpful for understanding the various aspects of Nogarola's correspondence, but it would be interesting to know how the letters might have been ordered when they originally circulated as a manuscript volume. The second period, for which none of Nogarola's own writings survive, is represented by a letter from the Venetian nobleman Lauro Quirini advising Nogarola on an advanced course of studies; the editors have chosen not to include four other letters written to Nogarola during this period, including one by her fellow humanist Costanza Varano, perhaps because it has been translated by King elsewhere (King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand 55-56). Chapters 6-10 are devoted to works belonging to the third stage of Nogarola's career, including her Dialogue on the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve (Chapter 7), which features Ludovico Foscarini (the Venetian governor whose correspondence with Nogarola appears in Chapter 6) as her interlocutor. This important text, as the editors point out, constituted an early and fundamental volley in the nascent querelle desfemmes that would continue to gain force in Italy over the next century. Indeed, echoes of Nogarola's Dialogue can be found in Moderata Fonte's discussion of the same subject in The Worth of Women some 150 years later, as well as in Arcangela Tarabotti's Paternal Tyranny, which circulated in the early seventeenth century (both of these texts have also been translated for the "Other Voice" series). Chapters 8 and 9 are dedicated to Nogarola's public orations, including two addressed to Ermolao Barbaro and one--a call to arms against the Turkish threat--directed to Pope Pius II at the Congress of Mantua. Nogarola's last known major work, a Consolation Letter written for a Venetian nobleman on the death of his eight-year old son, is contained in Chapter 10 and, as the editors note, exemplifies the syncretism of classical and biblical sources that Nogarola made use of in this final stage of her career (190).