The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy by Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Rebecca Messbarger, Paula Findlen

Abstract

MLR, I0 I .3, 2006 867 many of the issues she is concerned with have been dealt with in those more northerly traditions that have preoccupied recent emblem studies. The book also contains a dismaying number of typographic widows, and its publishers urgently need to review their policy for the final editing of camera-ready copy. All future work, however, not just on these Italian theorists themselves but on the wider use of emblematic forms both within and beyond Italy, will need henceforth to be grounded in a thorough knowledge of this book. UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW MICHAEL BATH The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy. By MARIA GAETANA AGNESI and others. Ed. and trans. by REBECCA MESSBARGERand PAULAFINDLEN. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. xxxi+i8Ipp. $45 (pbk $i8). ISBN 0-226-OI054-6 (pbk 0-226-O0055-4). The eighteenth century in Italy witnessed a significant increase in both women's writing and writing about women, with women's education the most frequent topic of debate. Should women be educated at all? If so, inwhat fields and towhat extent? Would the education of women undermine the family as one knew it?Would they in fact still be 'women' once they acquired an education? Are women's minds up to the task anyway? These were the concerns that dominated both men's and women's writings on the subject. While some men were against women's education, those who upheld its validity did so for the sake of something else, be itmaking them better home-makers and mothers or improving their defective judgement. Similar lines of argument were adopted by women, generally accompanied by a host of self legitimation techniques. The present volume contains translations of texts by both women and men on the topic of women's education spanning the century in its Enlightenment period, from Neapolitan philosopher Eleonora Barbapiccola's introduction to her transla tion of Descartes's Principia philosophiae (I722) to philosopher and mathematician Diamante Medaglia Faini's I763 oration Quali studi convengano alle donne, via the dispute held in 1723 at the Accademia de' Ricovrati in Padua with the specific remit 'se debbano ammettersi le donne allo studio delle scienze, e delle belle arti', which was the most visible episode in this continuing debate. Although the Padua dispute began as a debate among men, in its published version (I729) it included two con tributions by women, Aretafila Savini de' Rossi's Apologia in favore degli studii delle donne, and an Oratio, qua ostenditur artium [not 'atrium', p. 120] liberalium studia a femineo sexo neutiquam abhorrere by the nine-year-old Maria Gaetana Agnesi, later to become one of the most distinguished mathematicians of the century. The writings by Barbapiccola, Savini de' Rossi, Agnesi, and Medaglia Faini are translated here in their entirety, while the original male participants in the Padua dispute are whittled down to two, Antonio Vallisneri, who defended women's education, and Giovanni Antonio Volpi, who attacked it. The volume opens with a general introduction by Rebecca Messbarger. This be gins with a contrastive analysis in both diachronic and synchronic terms. It situates the eighteenth-century debate on women's education within the context of the age old querelle des femmes, highlighting its specificity and innovations with regard to the tradition, and also within the context of contemporary women's contribution to in tellectual activity and scholarship, and male views of this. It then focuses on women's own contribution to the debate, highlighting the ambivalences and nuances of their ar gumentative strategies. It concludes with a survey of the studies so far on the subject. This is very informative and stimulating. One minor inaccuracy: Eleonora Fonseca 868 Reviews Pimentel's journal was called Monitore napoletano (Monitore repubblicano by Croce), not Monitore partenopeo (p. io). The translations, which are each preceded by very useful introductions on the authors, read well on the whole. I especially liked the renditions of Agnesi (no mean feat, as her Latin is often hard to unravel) and Barbapiccola, which read as if they were not translations at all. On the other hand, the versions of Volpi, Vallisneri, and Savini de' Rossi are occasionally...