Abstract
AbstractThis article considers Venetian author Arcangela Tarabotti's dependence upon, and ambivalent reception of, Dante's Commedia in her Semplicità ingannata (1654). Through close reading and intertextual analysis, Tarabotti's engagement with the Commedia is situated in contemporary pro‐woman discourse, and post‐Tridentine textual criticism of imaginative literature. From within the convent Tarabotti entered the querelle des femmes, building on the pro‐woman texts of Venetian authors Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella. She clothed her text in the authority of the Commedia, through quotation and literary allusion, while manipulating that work to put her own case against women being placed in convents without religious vocations.
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