Convent Paradise (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies: The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 73)

The radical Venetian writer Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652), compelled against her will to become a nun, is well known for her scathing attacks on patriarchal institutions for forcing women into convents. Convent Paradise (1643), Tarabotti’s first published work, instead invites the reader into the cloister to experience not only the trials of enclosure, but also its spiritual joys. In stark contrast to her other works, Convent Paradise aims to celebrate the religious culture that colored every aspect of Tarabotti’s experience as a seventeenth-century Venetian and a nun. At the same time, this nuanced exploration of monastic life conveys a markedly feminist spirituality. Tarabotti’s meditative portrait of the convent enriches our understanding of her own life and writing, while also providing a window into a spiritual destiny shared by thousands of early modern women.

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe - The Toronto Series volume 73

Meredith K. Ray is Professor of Italian at the University of Delaware. She is co-editor with Lynn Lara Westwater of Arcangela Tarabotti’s Letters Familiar and Formal (2012) in The Other Voice Series.

Lynn Lara Westwater is Associate Professor of Italian at The George Washington University. For The Other Voice Series she is co-editor with Meredith K. Ray of Arcangela Tarabotti’s Letters Familiar and Formal (2012) and with Diana Robin of Ippolita Sforza, Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations (2017).