Francesco Buoninsegni and Suor Arcangela Tarabotti. Satira e Antisatira

Italica, Autumn, 2004 by Nancy Canepa

Francesco Buoninsegni and Suor Arcangela Tarabotti. Satira e Antisatira. Ed. Elissa Weaver. Rome: Salerno, 1998.

This slim but precious volume edited by Elissa Weaver is comprised of two seventeenth-century treatises. Contro 'l lusso donnesco satira menippea (1638), by the Sienese man of letters Francesco Buoninsegni, is a semiserious harangue against what the author considers to be the excesses of extravagant female fashion. Antisatira in risposta al Lusso donnesco satira menippea (1644), a caustic reply to Buoninsegni's criticisms, was written by the Venetian nun and writer Arcangela Tarabotti, better known for her impassioned decrial of forced monachation that appears in works such as Inferno monacale (1643) and Semplicita ingannata (1654).

These two seemingly minor texts are valuable for several reasons. First, they constitute significant contributions to the early modern querelle des femmes. Tarabotti is part of the "second wave" of Renaissance feminism that was centered in Venice and included Lucrezia Marinelli and Moderata Fonte; indeed, in the Antisatira her defense of female fashion quickly becomes a defense of women in general. Second, the satires are a source of fascinating "anthropological" information, since both of them focus on what constituted contemporary vogues in fashion. Finally, they are classic examples of baroque scrittura ingegnosa, with its extravagant metaphor and taste for hyperbole and rhetorical fireworks. Weaver does a splendid job of editing; the introduction insightfully situates these two works in seventeenth-century culture, and the notes supply pertinent recent bibliography as well as clarifying the numerous obscure textual passages.

Buoninsegni's Contro 'l lusso donnesco, addressed to a female audience, is, in Weaver's words "una critica moralistica volta a deridere gli eccessi della moda femminile, l'ignoranza delle donne che la seguono, e il grande spreco di denaro che questo richiede" (16). In her Antisatira, Tarabotti directly responds to Buoninsegni in the spirit of a "rhetorical contest," using some of his same discursive strategies (paradox, digression, abundant citation of authorities, and so forth) and revisiting his points of argument one by one. Tarabotti takes a number of different tacks: she defends women of many, but not all, of Buoninsegni's criticisms, in some cases simply pointing out that the faults that Buoninsegni finds in women are just as present in men. She is at her most forceful when she admits women's shortcomings while at the same time asserting that those who maintain social control over women and deny them the possibility of acquiring an education--men--are ultimately the ones to blame. These two works are by no means tedious moralistic tracts, though; in both of them we are offered delectable portraits of the woman (in Buoninsegni) and, especially, the man (in Tarabotti) of fashion. In particular, Tarabotti's meticulous, head-to-toe description of a dandy reads as a parody of the technique of descriptio personae typical of the courtly love lyric, where the male figure that emerges is, much as the Petrarchan "lady," a rarefied and almost abstract objectification of a human being.

Buoninsegni begins his criticism of luxurious garments with a reference to the expulsion from the Garden of Eden: "Altro non sono [clothes] che illustre testimonianza della vostra schiavitudine e mertitata pena dell'antico peccato" (41). This solemn introduction soon gives way, though, to flashy conceit. The definition of silk as "vomito e sepolcro d'un verme" leads, for example, to the conclusion that "la donna altro non e che un verme che rode il cuore agli amanti, un vomito delicato della natura, ed un sepolcro indorato de cuori umani' (41-42). Tirades against women's desire to enhance their appearance and, in general, female vanity are standard fare in Renaissance anti-feminist discourse; Buoninsegni does not fail to mouth the commonplace that "ornamenti donnesehi" mask true beauty, which derives from the spirit. Nor does he fail to fall into the trap of a rather banal misogynistic humor: "chi non ha nel cervello cosa alcuna preziosa va rimediando di fuore al mancamento di dentro" (49). But the most noteworthy moments of this satire are found more in the fancifully described details of dress and ornament than in moralizing platitudes; Buoninsegni orchestrates a rhetorical trunk show of well-known articles of seventeenth-century dress, such as the notorious pianelle or platform shoes, wigs, hair ornaments, makeup, and other accessories. Of hair dyes, for instance, he comments that "con ingegnosissima alchimia fissano in oro ondeggiante l'argento vivo d'una chioma canuta" (53). Finally, there is a certain humorous paradox inherent in Buoninsegni's own abundant use of rhetorical embellishment, which apparently occurred to him, too, as he feels the need to conclude that "il discorso e finito senza aver dato pure un'occhiata allo specchio ed al liscio ... segno evidente che 'l mio discorso non s'e lisciato ne specchiato con il liscio dell'artifico allo specchio dell'eloquenza. Conveniva che il discorso contro le pompe comparisse senz'ornamento" (54).