SOURCE: Bassanese, Fiora A. “Male Canon/Female Poet: The Petrarchanism of Gaspara Stampa.” In Interpreting the Italian Renaissance, edited by Antonio Toscano, pp. 43-54. Stony Brook, N.Y.: Forum Italicum, 1991.

In the following essay, Bassanese explores the nature of Stampa's Petrarchism as well as her divergence from that tradition. She concludes that Stampa capitalized on her gender within the Petrarchan code to declare her rightful place in it.

In 1860, Jacob Burckhardt published his seminal study, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, which “would become the decisive interpretation of a great period in history”¹ for generations. In the short chapter dedicated to “The Position of Women,” the historian formulated a description of the female role in the culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which would color scholarship for years. “Women,” Burckhardt declared, “stood on a footing of perfect equality with men” (389), and equality founded on education and...