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...Mary Prentice Lillie have given us a volume of poetry by women of the Italian Renaissance, a period of exceptional development in the arts, generally considered to have occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries, as part of the great Renaissance that swept through all Europe. This paper considers this collection with regard to the common themes the poets explored, and how they compare with today's society and women's place in it.
Discussion
The first thing that we might want to consider is the book's subtitle: Courtly ladies and courtesans. Immediately we might wonder if the poems will consider the eternal Madonna/whore dichotomy; that is, the idea that women are of only two types, good and bad. It appears that there might be some thinking along these lines, but the real split appears to be between spiritual and romantic poetry, sometimes by the same writer. Perhaps the best thing to do is to take two poems at random and look at them in detail. Before we do that,...