The Hybrid Identities of Isabella Andreini’s Lettere

• In Event: Learned and Literary Women in Italy and France: Academies, Epistolarity

Abstract

Isabella Andreini’s Lettere (Venice, 1607) are a collection of over 150 letters that bear no date and place, and often no addressee suggesting their fictional nature. Andreini discusses the theme of love and its corollaries such as jealousy, pain, desire, fear, sincerity, and dissimulation; she redefines beauty, virtue, prostitution, and marriage; and she examines men’s freedom and their restless lives and women’s wisdom and astuteness. Through the linguistic and stylistic analysis of selected letters and in light of contemporary feminist theory, we will show how Andreini’s studied performance of both female and male voices in her collection allows her to assume hybrid identities and redefine gender roles without overtly challenging the traditional feminine values of purity and virtue. The linguistic and stylistic choices of her letters mirror those of her Rime (1601) and confirm her coherent and enduring poetics.

Authors

• Caterina Mongiat Farina, DePaul University

• Paola De Santo, University of Georgia