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

Famous Women cover

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