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

While the editors' division of Nogarola's literary career into three parts is generally useful in thinking about her literary career, the chapter divisions in the translation can be confusing. Although the intent is clearly to orient the reader to Nogarola's work by breaking it down into thematic units ("Guarino's Circle," "Damiano," "The Great Gender Debate," etc.), the reader who is unfamiliar with Nogarola's works and their context may be unsure in which chapter to find each of her specific texts; chapter headings that more clearly identify the works addressed might have been helpful. This is a minor complaint, however, and, overall, the volume is well-organized. Especially useful are the brief introductions to each chapter that situate Nogarola's writing in its historical and social context and help bring out its richness and depth. Footnote references are appropriately comprehensive and provide important general sources on humanism, women's writing, female literacy, and other related problems, while a general index allows the reader to search easily for Nogarola's various correspondents and interlocutors.

With Isotta Nogarola: Complete Writings, King and Robin have made accessible to the modern reader a Latin text previously available only to specialists. The translation--and the reader--benefit enormously from the combined strengths of the editors, from King's fundamental work on Renaissance Italian women writers, to Robin's expertise in classical literature and as translator of two of Nogarola's literary descendants, Cassandra Fedele and Laura Cereta (published in the same series), Isotta Nogarola: Complete Writings is an important contribution to the gradually increasing library of modern editions and translations of works by early modern women, and will be of great use not only to Italianists but to anyone interested in gender studies, humanism, and Renaissance history and literature.

MEREDITH KENNEDY RAY

University of Delaware