Genealogies of Fiction: Women Warriors and the Dynastic Imagination in the 'Orlando furioso' - Hardcover

Stoppino, Eleonora

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823240371 ISBN 13: 9780823240371

Publisher: Modern Language Initiative, 2011

Synopsis

Genealogies of Fiction is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and renaissance chivalric epic, focused on Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. Relying on the direct study of manuscripts and incunabula, this project challenges the fixed distinction between medieval and early modern texts and
reclaims medieval popular epic as a key source for the Furioso.

Tracing the formation of the character of the warrior woman, from the Amazon to Bradamante, the book analyzes the process of gender construction in early modern Italy. By reading the tension between the representations of women as fighters, lovers, and mothers, this study shows how the warrior woman is a symbolic center for the construction of legitimacy in the complex web of fears and expectations of the
Northern Italian Renaissance court.

About this title

About the Author:

Eleonora Stoppino is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Illinois.

Review:

“A groundbreaking study of Ariosto’s medieval sources that benefits from a vision that brings together gender
criticism and source criticism in heretofore unseen ways.”

(―Dennis Looney University of Pittsburgh)

Examines the figure of Bradamante in the chivalric tradition and in Ariosto's Renaissance-era epic. (―The Chronicle Review)

This impressive study of the 'Furioso' as illuminated by its little-known medieval sources is thorough and well argued. It forms an important contribution to scholarship on early modern narrative, and will doubtless interest scholars of gender studies as well. (―Renaissance Quarterly)

“Establishing contrasts and parallels with little-known works of the vernacular narrative romance tradition, Stoppino displays impressive erudition and performs a service for the critical
discussion on Ariosto’s poem and on early modern narrative.”

(―Ronald Martinez Brown University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Language Initiative
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0823240371
• ISBN 13: 9780823240371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 282