‘Fashioning Renaissance Literary Femininity’. Percorsi della memoria. Percorsi dall’oblio alla canonizzazione

My paradigms in this respect were Lady Anne Clifford and Alice Anne Thornton. They produced texts that have not even been mentioned or considered for centuries, but that have recently been partially rediscovered and appreciated by critics. My intent was to show how cultural factors and ideologies of the time influenced literary production, and to analyse the reasons that led these authors and their texts, first to oblivion, and later to recovery and canonization. When attempting to give a coherent answer to these questions, I kept in mind the background of Renaissance cultural memory and ideology, with particular regard to notions of femininity. Women writers are “mothers of the text”, creators of new horizons, expert connoisseurs of the ideologies of their time, but also lonely, isolated, subjected women, ready to record their memories in voices that try to rise above a thousand other voices.