Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: Origins (1400-1500) 1. The "Learned Lady" in Quattrocento Italy: An Emerging Cultural Type 2. The "Learned Lady" in Theory: Models of Gender Conduct and Their Contexts 3. The "Learned Lady" as Signifier in Humanistic Culture 4. Renaissance Particularism and the "Learned Lady" Chapter Two: Translation (1490-1550) 1. Women, the Courts, and the Vernacular in the Early Sixteenth Century 2. Sappho Surfaces: The First Female Vernacular Poets 3. Bembo, Petrarchism, and the Reform of Italian Literature 4.

"So Dear to Apollo": Veronica Gambara and Vittoria Colonna after 1530 5. Founding Mothers, First Ladies: Gambara and Colonna as Models and Icons Chapter 3: Diffusion (1540- 1560) 1. Manuscript and Print in the "Age of the Council of Trent" 2. Virtù Rewarded: The Contexts of Women's Writing 3. Women Writers and Their Uses: Case Studies 4. Literary Trajectories: Continuity and Change 5. Women Writers and the Paradox of the Pedestal Chapter Four: Intermezzo (1560-1580) Chapter Five: Affirmation (1580-1620) 1. Women's Writing in the Age of the Counter-Reformation 2.

Chivalry Undimmed: The Contexts of Women's Writing 3. A Literature of Their Own? Writing, Ownership, Assertion 4. The Twilight of Gallantry Chapter 6: Backlash (1590-1650) 1. The Rebirth of Misogyny in Seicento Italy 2. Misogyny and the Woman Writer: The Redomestication of Female Virtù 3. Women's Writing in Seicento Italy: Decline and Fall Coda Appendix A: Published Writings by Italian Women, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries Appendix B: Dedications of Published Works by Women Notes Bibliography Index.