SOURCE: Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Feminine Pastoral as Heroic Martyrdom.” In The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620, pp. 118-41. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Jones discusses how Stampa and Mary Wroth–both of whom occupied marginal social positions—used the pastoral mode to write histories of unrequited love.

Two women poets who used the pastoral mode to write histories of unrequited love occupied similarly marginal social positions, close to the highest aristocracy of their time but excluded from its inner circles. By birth Gaspara Stampa was a member of the rich mercantile class of Padua. Her father, Bartolomeo Stampa, was a jewel merchant who designed a nobleman's education for his children, Gaspara, Cassandra, and Baldassare: he had them taught Greek and Latin as well as modern languages and music. After her husband's death about 1530, Cecilia Stampa moved the family to Venice, her...