SOURCE: Adler, Sara M. “Strong Mothers, Strong Daughters: The Representation of Female Identity in Vittoria Colonna's Rime and Carteggio.” Italica: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian 77, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000): 311-30.

In the following essay, Adler argues that Colonna's poems and letters reveal pride in her gender and an intention portray it favorably. Adler also shows how Colonna presents attractive images of herself and other women, and examines how her positive sense of female identity serves as a model for contemporary women writers.

In her essay “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” Joan Kelly answers her question in the negative with a compelling argument about women's subordination and silencing during this period by the dominant male order. While to be sure her essay represents a benchmark view, over the years feminist thinkers have modified Kelly's vehement “no” by taking note of Renaissance women who overcame, to some degree...