MLRy ioo.i, 2005 233 fora lifeofself-effacement and narrow domesticity, this [Annibal's] is an astonishingly far-sighted view' (p. 2). By ordering 'solicitude', 'diligence', 'reverence', 'humility', and 'grace' (Part 111 and p. 27), it seems to me that Annibal Guasco does nothing other than prepare his daughter fora life of 'self-effacement' and 'domesticity'. Where is the far-sightedness? Osborn's is, none the less, a deft and lively translation of a unique, enjoyable text. For this, and for framing it within a rich historico-literary context, anglophone readers of Renaissance literature will be very thankful. University of Durham Ita MacCarthy Moderata Fonte, Women and Life in Sixteenth Century Venice. By Paola Malpezzi Price. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 175 pp. ?32- ISBN 0-8386-3998-4. This is a good moment to present the life and works of Moderata Fonte (pseudonym for Modesta da Pozzo), as in the last twenty-five years she has been the object of several studies which help the understanding of her activities and context. In 1988 Adriana Chemello (who writes the foreword to the present monograph) produced her edition of // merito delle donne (Mirano: Eidos), which was preceded by a full introduction in which she reassessed Niccolo Doglioni's 1600 Vita of his protegee. In 1995 Valeria Finucci published an edition of Fonte's unfinished epic Tredici canti del Floridoro (Modena: Mucchi). Patricia Labalme ('Venetian Women on Women: Three Early Modern Feminists', Archivio Veneto, 117 (1981), 81-109) and Margaret King (Women of the Renaissance (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991)) have analysed aspects of her work, and then there have been the important studies by Virginia Cox, both her survey of The Renaissance Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) and her excellent annotated translation The Worth of Women (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Paola Malpezzi Price was able to build on the biographical, critical, and ecdotic material offered by her predecessors to situate Moderata Fonte in her cultural context. As the title of the volume implies, the emphasis of this study is on Fonte's position as a woman in the Venice ofthe Cinquecento. But Malpezzi Price ranges more widely around her subject, using earlier historical material on the defence of women, start? ing with Christine de Pizan's Le Livre de la cite des dames and drawing from modern feminist critics, in particular Luce Irigaray ('Pouvoir du discours: subordination du feminin', in Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un (Paris: Minuit, 1977)) and Patricia Yaeger ('"Because a fire was in my head": Eudora Welty and the Dialogic Imagination', PMLA, 99 (1984), 955-73), foran analysis of Fonte's discourse, which give her study a broader historical, geographical, and critical dimension. The main sections of her discussion are focused on 'Growing up Female and Literate in Sixteeth-Century Venice' (Chapter 2), in which she uses both pre-Tridentine (Ludovico Dolce's L'institutione delle donne) and Counter-Reformation treatises (for instance, Silvio Antoniano's DelVeducazione cristiana). The particular situation in Venice is discussed using wide documentation, from studies such as those of Paul Grendler (Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) and Vittorio Baldo (Alunni, maestri e scuolein Venezia alla finedel XVI secolo (Como: New Press, 1977)), to Fonte's own ex? perience and its later expression in //merito. As Corinna recites in one of her sonnets in the dialogue: 'Poiche fallacia d'uom non m'interrompe | Fama e gloria n'attendo in vita, e in morte' (p. 49). From the education of women in Venice Malpezzi Price passes to 'Cultural and Social Life in Sixteenth-Century Venice' (Chapter 3), which looks in particular at the lives of the cittadini, to which class Fonte belongs, the role 234 Reviews the Scuole played in their lives, and the activities of the cittadine within their homes and as voluntary workers outside. This chapter is mosaic-like, passing from class distinctions to the roles of Doge and Dogaressa, to political power in Venice, the relation between Venice and the outside world, the role of religion and the Venetian Inquisition, and then back to...