Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets

by Irma B. Jaffe

Overview

This book presents the life stories of twelve extraordinary women who lived passionately and recorded in poetry their happiness and heartbreaks. Our English translations of their poetry are intended to make their poems seem to speak their thoughts, and we have included a CD with sixty-eight of their poems recorded in Italian literature, so that we do in fact hear their thoughts. In addition, several chapters take up some controversial art-historical problems centered on one or another of the women, suggesting possible solutions. This copiously illustrated, interdisciplinary book of 239 poems-poetry-in-context—- is not an anthology; together with the CD of readings, and the challenging art-historical discussions of several paintings, it is unique. There is no other similar book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823221806
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2002
Edition description:	2
Pages:	429
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

IRMA B. JAFFE's books include Joseph Stella; Baroque Art and the Jesuit Contribution; The Italian Presence in American Art; Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets; and Giuseppe Betussi and Eleanora Falletti, Polygraph and Poet at the Dawn of Popular Literature. The recipient of many awards and grants, she founded the department of Art and Music at Fordham University, where she is Professor Emerita of Art History.

Editorial Reviews

. . . this is women's history in its most pure form

H-Net Reviews

Ambitious and satisfying...deeply relevant to the project of recovering the woman and the poem. The accompanying CD of selected poems read in Italian by various voices is a superb idea...opens the door to its subject better than any book this reviewer knows.

Choice

Art historian Jaffe profiles 12 women of 16th-century Italy and shows how their poetry continues to speak of their lives, loves, and ambitions. She finds that the triumph of Italian over Latin and the development of individualism contributed to women poets flourishing during the period. The disk contains recordings of poems and excerpts. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews