Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:49:09.932Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Rediscovered Friendship in the Republic of Letters: The Unpublished Correspondence of Arcangela Tarabotti and Ismaël Boulliau*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lynn Lara Westwater
Lynn Lara Westwater*
Affiliation:
The George Washington University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The correspondence between the radical Venetian pro-female polemicist and nun Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–52) and the Copernican French astronomer Ismaël Boulliau (1605–94) — here published for the first time — shows how one of Tarabotti's most controversial works made it to press. She had long and unsuccessfully sought in Italy and in France to print the work, which was, puzzlingly, published two years after her death in Holland. It was subsequently placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Charting the explosive work's journey to France and its later arrival and reception in Holland, the Tarabotti-Boulliau correspondence provides a case study in the circulation of unorthodox ideas in seventeenth-century Europe. By showing Tarabotti's firm inscription in the well-connected scientist's intellectual circle, the letter exchange furthermore contributes to our expanding notions of women's participation in the Republic of Letters, while also suggesting a confluence of radical scientific and social views.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 67 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Elissa Weaver, Diana Robin, Michael Sherberg, Leah Chang, Masha Belenky, and the anonymous RQ readers for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also indebted to Diana Robin and John Ziolkowski for their help with the Latin and Greek translations, and to Joseph Levi and Elizabeth Fisher for advice on translation and transcription. Peter Prokop, Ingeborg Formann, and Friedrich Simader of the Austrian National Library provided invaluable help with the manuscript in their collection. The George Washington University helped me to complete this research with a University Facilitating Fund Award.

References

Anon, . Che Le donne non siano della specie degli huomini, discorso piacevole tradotto da Orazio Plata Romano [pseud.]. Lyon [Venice], 1647.Google Scholar
Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice. Ed. Weaver, Elissa. Ravenna, 2006.Google Scholar
Baschet, Armand. Les archives de Venise, Histoire de la chancellerie secréte. Paris, 1870.Google Scholar
Bittner, Ludwig, and , Gross, Lothar. Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter aller Länder seit dem Westfälischen Frieden (1648). 3 vols. Vol. 1, 1648– 1715. Oldenburg, 1936.Google Scholar
Bortot, Simona. “Introduzione. La penna all'ombra delle grate.” In Tarabotti (2007a), 21– 152.Google Scholar
Bortot, Simona. “Nota al testo.” In Tarabotti (2007b), 153– 67.Google Scholar
Bots, Hans. “Ismael Boulliau, ses voyages en Hollande.” Lias 1 (1974): 29– 62.Google Scholar
Bots, Hans, and , Waquet, Françoise. La république des Lettres. Paris, 1997.Google Scholar
Boulliau, Ismaël. De Natura Lucis. Paris, 1638.Google Scholar
Boulliau, Ismaël. Philolai, sive, Dissertationis de vero systemate mundi. Amsterdam, 1639.Google Scholar
Boulliau, Ismaël. Astronomia Philolaica. Opus nouum, in quo motus planetarum per nouam ac veram hypothesim demonstrantur. Paris, 1645.Google Scholar
Brockliss, L. W. B. Calvet's Web: Enlightment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France. Oxford, 2002.Google Scholar
Brown, Harcourt. Scientific Organizations in Seventeenth Century France (1620–1680). 1934. New York, 1967.Google Scholar
Bruni, Roberto L., and , Evan, D. Wyn. Italian Seventeenth-Century Books: Indexes of Authors, Titles, Dates, Printers and Publishers Alphabetically and By Place, Based on the Libreria Vinciana's Autori Italiani del ‘600. Exeter, 1984.Google Scholar
Bruzzone, Gian Luigi. “L'amicizia fra due letterati seicenteschi: Gio. Francesco Loredano e P. Angelico Aprosio.” Atti del Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 152.2 (1995): 341– 74.Google Scholar
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Trans. Buckley, Theodore Alois. London, 1851.Google Scholar
Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society. Baltimore, 2000.Google Scholar
Clarke, Jack A. “A Book Buying Tour in 1645: A Note on Ismael Boulliau in Italy.” Journal of Library History 4 (1969): 330– 36.Google Scholar
Clarke, Jack A. Gabriel Naudé 1600–1653. Hamden, 1970.Google Scholar
The Collection Boulliau (BN, FF. 13019–13059): An Inventory. Ed. Hatch, Robert. Philadelphia, 1982.Google Scholar
Costa, Margherita. La selva di Diana. Paris, 1647a.Google Scholar
Costa, Margherita. La tromba di Parnaso. Paris, 1647b.Google Scholar
Costa-Zalessow, Natalia. “Tarabotti's La semplicità ingannata and Its Twentieth-Century Interpreters, with Unpublished Documents Regarding Its Condemnation to the Index.” Italica 78.3 (2001): 314– 25.10.2307/3656020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa-Zalessow, Natalia. “La condanna all'Indice della Semplicità ingannata di Arcangela Tarabotti alla luce di manoscritti inediti.” Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 1 (2002): 97– 113.Google Scholar
Cox, Virginia. Women's Writing in Italy 1400–1650. Baltimore, 2008.Google Scholar
Davies, David William. The World of the Elseviers, 1580–1712. Westport, 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeJean, Joan E. Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
De Rubeis, Flavia. “La scrittura forzata. Le lettere autografe di Arcangela Tarabotti.” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 32.1 (1996): 142– 45.Google Scholar
Dibon, Paul. “Communication in the Respublica Literaria.” Res publica litterarum 1 (1978): 21– 56.Google Scholar
Diefendorf, Barbara, and , Reinburg, Virginia. “Catholic Reform and Religious Coexistence.” In Renaissance and Reformation France, 1500–1648, ed. , Holt, Mack P., 176– 201. Oxford, 2002.Google Scholar
Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters. Ed. Campbell, Julie D. and , Larsen, Anne R.. Surrey, 2009.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. Le Opere di Galileo Galilei. Ed. , Saragat, Giuseppe. 20 vols. Florence, 1968.Google Scholar
Goldgar, Anne. Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1705. New Haven, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmid, Edmund. Bibliotheca Curiosa: A Complete Catalogue of All the Publications of the Elsevier Presses at Leyden, Amsterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1885.Google Scholar
Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca, 1994.Google Scholar
Hatch, Robert A. “Biographical Introduction.” In The Collection Boulliau (1982a), xxii– lxviii.Google Scholar
Hatch, Robert A. “Preface.” In The Collection Boulliau (1982b), xvii– xx.Google Scholar
Hatch, Robert A. “Coherence, Correspondence, and Choice: Gassendi and Boulliau on Light and Vision.” In Quadricentenaire de la naissance De Pierre Gassendi, 1592–1992: Actes du Colloque International Pierre Gassendi, Digne-Les-Bains 18–21 Mai 1992, 365– 85. Digne-les-Bains, 1994.Google Scholar
Hatch, Robert A. “Between Erudition and Science: The Archive and Correspondence Network of Ismaël Boulliau.” In Archives of the Scientific Revolution: The Formation and Exchange of Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. , Hunter, Michael, 49– 71. Woodbridge, 1998.Google Scholar
Hatch, Robert A. “Boulliau, Ismaël (1605–1694).” In Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus to Newton, ed. , Applebaum, Wilbur, 98– 99. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
Hatch, Robert A. “The Tarabotti Page.” http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/sr-women/05-SR-WOMEN-TARABOTTI-PAGE-chron.html (accessed 25 August 2010).Google Scholar
Heller, Henry. Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France. Toronto, 2003.10.3138/9781442670891CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laven, Mary. Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent. London, 2002.Google Scholar
Laven, Mary. “Cast Out and Shut In: The Experience of Nuns in Counter-Reformation Venice.” In At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, ed. , Milner, Stephen J., 93– 110. Minneapolis, 2005.Google Scholar
Lougee, Carolyn C. Le Paradis Des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France. Princeton, 1976.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, David. A Manual of Manuscript Transcription for the Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language. 4 th ed., , Burrus, Victoria A.. Madison, 1986.Google Scholar
Maclean, Ian. Women Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature 1610–1652. Oxford, 1977.Google Scholar
Medioli, Francesca. “Chiave di lettura.” In Tarabotti (1990), 109– 92.Google Scholar
Medioli, Francesca. “Monacazioni forzate: Donne ribelli al proprio destino.” Clio: Rivista Trimestrale di Studi Storici 30.3 (1994): 431– 54.Google Scholar
Medioli, Francesca. “Alcune lettere autografe di Arcangela Tarabotti: Autocensura e immagine di sé.” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 32.1 (1996): 133– 41, 146–55.Google Scholar
Medioli, Francesca. “‘De Monialibus’ (Secoli XVI–XVII–XVIII); Monache e monacazioni nel Seicento.” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 33.3 (1997): 670– 93.Google Scholar
Medioli, Francesca. “The Dimensions of the Cloister: Enclosure, Constraint, and Protection in Seventeenth-Century Italy.” In Time, Space, and Women's Lives in Early Modern Italy, ed. , Schutte, Anne Jacobson, , Kuehn, Thomas, and , Menchi, Silvana Seidel, 165– 80. Kirksville, 2001.Google Scholar
Medioli, Francesca. “Arcangela Tarabotti's Reliability About Herself: Publication and Self-Representation (Together with a Small Collection of Previously Unpublished Letters).” Italianist 23 (2003): 54– 101.10.1179/ita.2003.23.1.54CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miato, Monica. L'Accademia degli Incogniti di Giovan Francesco Loredan, Venezia (1630–1661). Florence, 1998.Google Scholar
Middleton, W. E. Knowles. The Experimenters: A Study of the Accademia del Cimento. Baltimore, 1971.Google Scholar
Miller, Peter N. Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven, 2000.Google Scholar
Molmenti, Pompeo. Curiosità di storia veneziana. Bologna, 1919.Google Scholar
Muir, Edward. The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera. Cambridge, MA, 2007.10.4159/9780674041264CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naudé, Gabriel. Lettres de Naudé a Grémonville. Ed. , Wolfe, Kathryn Willis and , Wolfe, Phillip J. Paris, 1986.Google Scholar
Nellen, Henk J. M. Ismaël Boulliau (1605–1694), Astronome, épistolier, nouvelliste et intermédiaire scientifique. Amsterdam, 1994.Google Scholar
Nellen, Henk J. M., and , Wolfe, Philippe J.. “Un exchange epistolaire de la ‘Republique des Muses’: Onze lettres de Gabriel Naudé a Ismael Boulliau (1639–1646).” Lias 13.2 (1986): 235– 84.Google Scholar
Pal, Carol. “Forming familles d'alliance: Intellectual Kinship in the Republic of Letters.” In Early Modern Women (2009), 251– 80.Google Scholar
Panizza, Letizia. “Introduction.” In Tarabotti (2004a), 1– 31.Google Scholar
Panizza, Letizia. “Note on the Text.” In Tarabotti (2004b), 29– 31.Google Scholar
Panizza, Letizia. “Reader over Arcangela's Shoulder: Tarabotti at Work with Her Sources.” In Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun (2006), 107– 28.Google Scholar
Pelosi, Olimpia. “Arcangela Tarabotti (Galerana Baratotti) (1604–1652).” In Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies , ed. , Marrone, Gaetana, 1823– 24. New York, 2007.Google Scholar
Piantanida, Sandro, Lamberto, Diotallevi, and Giancarlo, Livraghi. Autori italiani del ‘600. Milan, 1948–51.Google Scholar
Pintard, René. Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du six-septième siècle. Paris, 1943.Google Scholar
Rapley, Elizabeth. “Women and Religious Vocation in Seventeenth-Century France.” French Historical Studies 18.3 (1994): 613– 31.10.2307/286686CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, Meredith K. “Letters from the Cloister: Defending the Literary Self in Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari e di complimento.” Italica 81.1 (2004): 24– 42.10.2307/27668873CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, Meredith K. “Making the Private Public: Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari.” In Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun (2006), 173– 89.Google Scholar
Ray, Meredith K. “Letters and Lace: Arcangela Tarabotti and Convent Culture in Seicento Venice.” In Early Modern Women (2009a), 45– 73.Google Scholar
Ray, Meredith K. Writing Gender in Women's Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance. Toronto, 2009b.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robin, Diana. Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Chicago, 2007.Google Scholar
Ross, Sarah Gwyneth. The Birth of Feminism: Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England. Cambridge, 2009.Google Scholar
Schurman, Anna Maria van. Dissertatio de ingenii muliebris ad doctrinam, & meliores litteras aptitudine. Accedunt quaedam epistolae eiusdem argumenti. Leiden, 1641.Google Scholar
Schurman, Anna Maria van. Opuscula hebraea, graeca, latina, gallica, prosaica & metrica. Leiden, 1648.Google Scholar
Schutte, Anne Jacobson. “The Permeable Cloister.” In Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun (2006), 19– 36.Google Scholar
Shelford, April G. Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650–1720. Rochester, 2007.Google Scholar
Sperling, Jutta Gisela. Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice. Chicago, 1999.Google Scholar
Spinelli, Giovanni. “I religiosi e le religiose.” In La Chiesa di Venezia nel Seicento, ed. , Bertoli, Bruno, 173– 209. Venice, 1992.Google Scholar
Spini, Giorgio. Ricerca dei libertini: La teoria dell'impostura delle religioni nel Seicento italiano. 1950. Florence, 1983.Google Scholar
Tannery, Paul. “Notes sur les manuscrits français de Munich 247 à 250 e de Vienne 7049–7050.” Annales internationales d'histoire. Congrès de Paris 1900, 297– 310. Paris, 1901.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. “Antisatira.” With Contro il lusso donnesco, satira menippea con L'antisatira di D.A.T. in risposta, by Francesco Buoninsegni. Venice, 1644.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Le Lagrime . . . per la morte dell'illustrissima signora Regina Donati. Venice, 1650a.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Lettere familiari e di complimento. Venice, 1650b.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela [Galerana Barcitotti, pseud.]. Che le donne siano della spetie degli uomini. Difesa delle donne. Nuremberg [false], 1651.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela [Galerana Barcitotti, pseud.]. La semplicità ingannata. Leiden, 1654.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Paradiso monacale. Venice, 1663 [but 1643].Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. L'inferno monacale. Ed. , Medioli, Francesca. Turin, 1990.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini. Women Are No Less Rational Than Men. Ed. , Panizza, Letizia. London, 1994.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. “Antisatira.” In Satira e Antisatira, ed. , Weaver, Elissa, 56– 105. Rome, 1998a.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. “Women Are of the Human Species.” In “Women Are Not Human”: An Anonymous Treatise and Responses, ed. , Kenney, Theresa M., 89– 159. New York, 1998b.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Paternal Tyranny. Ed. and trans. , Panizza, Letizia. Chicago, 2004.10.7208/chicago/9780226789675.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Lettere familiari e di complimento. Ed. , Ray, Meredith K. and , Westwater, Lynn Lara. Turin, 2005.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. La semplicità ingannata. Ed. , Bortot, Simona. Padua, 2007.Google Scholar
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Letters. Ed. and trans. , Ray, Meredith K. and , Westwater, Lynn Lara. Toronto, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Trenkler, Ernst. “History of the Austrian Nationalbibliothek.” The Library Quarterly 17.3 (1947): 224– 31.10.1086/617359CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, Elissa B. Convent Theater in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women. Cambridge, 2002.Google Scholar
Westwater, Lynn Lara. “A Cloistered Nun Abroad: Arcangela Tarabotti's International Literary Career.” In Women Writing Back / Writing Women Back: Transnational Perspectives from the Late Middle Ages to the Dawn of the Modern Era, ed. , Gilleir, Anke, , Montoya, Alicia C., and , van Dijk, Suzan, 283– 307. Leiden, 2010.Google Scholar
Willems, Alphonse. Les Elzevier: Histoire et annales typographiques. Brussels, 1880.Google Scholar
Zanette, Emilio. Suor Arcangela, monaca del Seicento veneziano. Rome, 1960.Google Scholar
Zarri, Gabriella. “Monasteri femminili e città (Secoli XVI–XVII–XVIII).” In Storia d'Italia. La Chiesa e il potere politico dal medioevo all'età contemporanea, ed. , Chittolini, Giorgio and , Miccoli, Giovanni, 359– 429. Turin, 1986.Google Scholar
Zarri, Gabriella. Recinti: Donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna. Bologna, 2000.Google Scholar
Zarri, Gabriella. “Venetian Convents and Civic Rituals.” In Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun (2006), 37– 56.Google Scholar