Famous Women
Giovanni Boccaccio author Virginia Brown translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Published:30th May '03
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women, Famous Women affords a fascinating glimpse of a moment in history when medieval attitudes toward women were beginning to give way to more modern views of their potential. Virginia Brown's acclaimed translation, commissioned for The I Tatti Renaissance Library, is the first English edition based on the autograph manuscript of the Latin.
In a pungent new translation by Virginia Brown, [Boccaccio's] famous women hold up very well indeed...The success of Famous Women suggests that [Renaissance] ladies read their Boccaccio as we are invited to read him: with forbearance for his foibles and delight in the tales he tells with such gusto and skill. -- Ingrid D. Rowland * New York Times Book Review *
For good or evil, as wife, mother, or whore, these women have the splendor of clarity; their individual destinies are sharply defined. -- Tim Parks * New York Review of Books *
Whatever his intentions--and it may be that feminism was a long-term outgrowth of the humanism that he pioneered--Boccaccio launched a lasting genre that urged women, as well as men, to reach for glory, and gave them examples to live by. -- David Quint * The New Republic *
ISBN: 9780674011304
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 358g
320 pages