Veronica Franco's Terze Rime: the Venetian Courtesan's Defense*

Abstract

Against a system of gender ideologies that defined a woman's social position and intellectual pursuits as private, devoted to domestic concerns and the moral welfare of her family, the emergency of thecortigiana onesta, the intellectual courtesan, dramatically calls into question the humanists’ injunction against women's public status and speech. How did Veronica Franco, the foremost example of thecortigiana onestain sixteenth-century Italy, succeed in infiltrating the “academy of learned men“? Were any restrictions placed upon her professional activities when she vied with men for public recognition and literary commissions? How did social forces contain or compel the courtesan's cultivation of a literary identity in Venetian society? And finally, what were the maneuvers, both personal and professional, that thecortigiana onestaadopted when she obtained entrance into an elite literary circle and allied herself with powerful male patrons and intellectuals?