Urania.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-04

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association

Urania. By GIULIA BIGOLINA. Ed. by VALERIA FINUCCI. Rome: Bulzoni. 2002. 196 pp. 20 [euro]. ISBN 88-8319-705-4.

Giulia Bigolina, the first known female author of a prose romance in Italy, provides yet another instance of a woman whose creative work has remained virtually unrecognized in the critical literature. In a substantial introduction to her edition, Valeria Finucci does an admirable job of scholarly detection, adding to the small sum of biographical information concerning Bigolina with a clear presentation of the surviving archival and other evidence: not least, she succeeds in clearing up the confusion caused by a contemporary relative of the same name.

Born into an aristocratic Paduan family, probably in the second decade of the Cinquecento, Bigolina followed the traditional path of marriage, motherhood, and finally widowhood in the later 15508. She was, however, well connected to the intellectual and cultural milieux of...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.