eBook

Widow City

Wainwright, Anna

2025

Overview

Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in the Italian Renaissance investigates the ever-evolving role of the widow in medieval and early modern Italian literature, from canonical authors such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to the numerous widowed writers who rose to prominence in the sixteenth century—including Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, and Francesca Turina—and radically changed the conversation on public mourning. Engaging with broader intellectual discussions around gender, the history of emotions, the politics of mourning, and the construction of community, Widow City argues that widows served as key models demonstrating to readers not just how to mourn, but how to live well after devastating loss. At the same time, widows were figures of great anxiety: their status as unattached women, and the public performance of their grief, were viewed as very real threats to the stability of the social order. They are thus key to broader intellectual understandings of community and civic life in the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance.

• Publisher: University of Delaware Press
• Subject: anxiety / Boccaccio / citizenship / civic life / community / construction of community / cultural citizenship / Dante / Dante Alighieri / early modern Italy / early modern studies / emotional communities / European / exemplarity / female authors / female widows / Francesca Turina / French medieval literature / gender / gender performance / gender studies / grief / history of emotions / history of religion / history of rhetoric / Italian / Italian literature / Italian literatures / Italian medieval studies / Italian Middle Ages / Italian Renaissance / Italian Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance, early modern Italy, sixteenth-century Italy, early modern studies, Italian medieval studies, sixteenth-century studies, Literary Studies, gender studies, Renaissance literature, Italian literatures, French medieval literature, Women's Studies, widow, widows, widowhood, female widows, women authors, female authors, widowed writers, Italian widows, widowhood in Italy, widowed identity, unattached women, poetics of widowhood, Dante Alighieri, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, gender performance, public mourning, politics of mourning, grief, history of emotions, emotional communities, community, construction of community, citizenship, cultural citizenship, social order, exemplarity, religious history, history of religion, history of rhetoric, Renaissance Italy, medieval Italy, Italian literature, Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, Francesca Turina, gender, key models, mourning, living after loss, anxiety, public grief, civic life, Italian Middle Ages / Italian widows / key models / LITERARY COLLECTIONS / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Italian / LITERARY CRITICISM / General / LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory / Literary Studies / living after loss / medieval Italy / mourning / Petrarch / poetics of widowhood / politics of mourning / public grief / public mourning / religious history / Renaissance / Renaissance Italy / Renaissance literature / sixteenth-century Italy / sixteenth-century studies / social order / the Italian Renaissance / unattached women / Veronica Gambara / Vittoria Colonna / widow / widowed identity / widowed writers / widowhood / widowhood in Italy / widows / Women Authors / Women's Studies
• ISBN: 9781644533611, 1644533618, 9781644533604, 9781644533628, 1644533596, 164453360X, 9781644533598, 1644533626