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Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in Renaissance Italy investigates the evolving role of the widow in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, from Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to women poets including Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara, as a key model demonstrating to readers how to mourn and how to live well after devastating loss.
List of contents
Acknowledgments Introduction
Part I: Widowhood and the
tre corone 1 Dante, Petrarch, and the Ethics of Widowhood
2 Boccaccio’s Many Merry Widows
Part II: Context: Model Widows, Holy and Historical
3 Sacred Role Models from Judith and Anna to Birgitta of Sweden
4 Dido, Death, and Exemplarity: Public Widowhood from Petrarch to Vittoria Colonna
Part III: The Widow’s Voice
5 Widowed Verse: Christine de Pizan, Vittoria Colonna, and Francesca Turina
6 “Widowhood for its Own Sake”: Widows in Two Dialogues of the Counter-Reformation
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
ANNA WAINWRIGHT is an associate professor of Italian studies and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is coeditor of the volumes
Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation (Delaware, 2020, with Shannon McHugh),
Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide (2023, with Matthieu Chapman), and
The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden: Women, Politics and Reform in Renaissance Italy (2023, with Unn Falkeid).
