Authority, Religion, and Women Writers in the Italian Counter-Reformation
Teaching Diodata Malvasia's Histories
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3315491 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shannon Mchugh (University of Massachusetts Boston, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 120 |
| Publication date | 2018-04-09 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel9040120 |
| OpenAlex | W2797617625 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
Recent decades have seen the rediscovery of a significant number of texts authored by Italian women between 1560 and 1630. And yet the commonplace that the Counter-Reformation silenced women writers has persisted. One figure useful for teaching a more nuanced vision of post-Tridentine Italy is the Bolognese nun Diodata Malvasia (c. 1532-post-1617). She authored a pair of histories recounting her convent's efforts to maintain their way of life amidst an era of convent reform, employing strategies that capitalized on their education, familial and civic connections, and position of spiritual privilege. Malvasia's writings demonstrate the ways in which women not only published in this period but began to speak with increasing authority. I offer some possibilities for how Malvasia's chronicles can be used to teach students about women writers' agency in post-Tridentine Italy, as well as the complex thinking with which one must approach a regime like the Counter-Reformation
Aesthetics · Counter-Reformation · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Theology · Early Modern Women Writers · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
Women's Writing in Italy, 1400–1650
Nuns Behaving Badly
Sociability and its Discontents
"We Do Not Have It, and We Do Not Want It"
Se fossimo tante meretrici
Do Women Need the Renaissance
Female self‐portraiture in early modern Bologna
In praise of the ladies of Bologna’
Encountering the Counter-Reformation
| Highly cited | No |
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