Lynn Lara Westwater

The enduring "black legend" of the Italian Counter-Reformation, which has held sway in both scholarly and popular culture, maintains that the Council of Trent ushered in a cultural dark age in Italy, snuffing out the spectacular creative production of the Renaissance. As a result, the decades following Trent have been mostly overlooked in Italian literary studies, in particular.

The essays in Gendering the Renaissance offer a nuanced picture of gender in early modern Italian literature and culture through overlapping lenses that bring into focus myriad issues, from race and religion to schooling and storytelling. Read in dialogue with one another, these interventions provide a multifaceted view of currents in gender studies and early modern Italy.

The enduring "black legend" of the Italian Counter-Reformation, which has held sway in both scholarly and popular culture, maintains that the Council of Trent ushered in a cultural dark age in Italy, snuffing out the spectacular creative production of the Renaissance. As a result, the decades following Trent have been mostly overlooked in Italian literary studies, in particular.