Venetian feminist and author of a chivalric poem, a dialogue for women speakers only, a play, and religious poetry
Born to a wealthy family of urban Venice, Moderata Fonte received acclaim throughout the late Renaissance era for her erudite vernacular compositions. Although she wrote in Italian, her works nonetheless attest to a thorough knowledge of classical literature. Fonte is best known today for her dialogue in praise of the female sex, Il Merito delle donne (The Worth of Women, published posthumously in 1600), but in her own era she was celebrated more as a poet than as a contributor to the debate on women. A master of the difficult ottava rima meter, Fonte most often directed her talent toward arcadian and religious poetry. And, much as her fellow Venetian author and feminist Lu-crezia Marinella (1571-1653), had balanced household responsibilities as a wife and mother with a successful career as an author, Fonte also succeeded as a “working mother.” In 1583, two years after her debut in print, Fonte married the tax lawyer, Filippo di Zorzi, with whom she had four children. She died in 1592, probably from complications in the birth of her fourth child.
Fonte and her brother Leonardo, orphaned in their early childhood, were adopted by their maternal grandmother and her husband, Pros-pero Saraceni. A connoisseur of literature, Saraceni was well connected to members of the literary elite, one of whom was a prominent Venetian intellectual and author, Niccolo Doglioni. When Fonte was sixteen years old, her adoptive sister, Saracena, married Doglioni, and Fonte accompanied the young bride into Doglioni’s household. Fonte’s second adoptive family proved to be a crucial source of support for her career. Doglioni took an active role as Fonte’s patron and promoter, and the short biography that he wrote as a preface to his publication of her Worth of Women underscores the range and depth of his protegee’s learning.
Doglioni attests that Fonte received some of her early education at the convent of Santa Marta in Venice. Recognizing her talent, however, Fonte’s grandfather augmented this convent education by providing her with Latin primers and a constant supply of reading material. Doglioni also notes that Fonte actively supplemented her studies by making her brother recite for her what he had learned at the public grammar school each day. He also emphasizes Fonte’s competence in Latin as well as her mastery of vernacular literature, mathematics, music, art, and the quintessentially “feminine” accomplishment of fine needlework.
Fonte’s first published work was her Tredici Canti del Floridoro (The Thirteen Songs of Floridoro, Venice, 1581). Following in the tradition of the chivalric romance, this arcadian poem is also rich in classical allusions. The Floridoro does not announce itself as a defense of women. Yet Fonte uses one of her central characters, the warrior heroine Risamante, to make the case that male and female capabilities are equal and that differences between men’s and women’s social roles are therefore not “natural,” but rather the result of education.
The link between women’s education and their social roles moves from the periphery to the center of her dialogue for seven female speakers: The Worth of Women. This work owes a debt to the dialogues of Baldassare Castiglione (The Courtier) and Pietro Bembo (The Asolani). Fonte revolutionized the dialogic genre, however, by making all of her speakers women (Cox 1997, 18). Her characters, who represent each stage in a woman’s life cycle from adolescence to widowhood, engage in a sustained critique of the patriarchal order and offer an innovative vision of a secular female community.
Fonte’s other publications include an occasional poem written for the Venetian doge, Le feste: rappresentatione avanti il Serenissimo Prencipe di Venetia (The Celebrations: Performed in the Presence of the Most Serene Doge ofVenice, Venice, 1582) and two lengthy religious poems: La Passione di Christo (The Passion of Christ, Venice, 1582) and La Resurrentione di Giesu Christo (The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Venice, 1592).
Scholars have long recognized Fonte’s written contributions to Renaissance feminism. No less important than her literary work, however, Fonte herself provoked widespread admiration among contemporary biographers and defenders of women, who touted her as an example of excellence in both “masculine” (literary) and “feminine” (domestic) terms. One encomiast characterized her as “glorious and famous in our era for her writings, which equaled anything written by women of the classical past,” while at the same time praising her conduct as a wife and mother (Ribera, sig. Pp3r—v). Fonte demonstrated that the accomplished woman was not ipso facto a transgressor “beyond her sex” but might be culturally normal despite her exceptional intellect. Fonte and her admirers helped to create a more tenable representative category for learned women in literary society—a category that women writers of subsequent eras would increasingly occupy.
Sarah Ross
See also Education, Humanism, and Women; Marinella, Lucrezia.
Bibliography
Primary Works
Fonte, Moderata. Il Merito delle donne, ove chiara-mente si scuopre quanto siano elle degne e piu per-fette de gli uomini. Edited by Adriana Chemello. Mirano: Eidos, 1988.
Fonte, Moderata. Tredici Canti del Floridoro. Venice: 1581.
Secondary Works
Cox, Virginia. Introduction to The Worth of Women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Cox, Virginia. “The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 513-581.
Labalme, Patricia. “Venetian Women on Women: Three Early-Modern Feminists.” Archivio Veneto 5th Series, 117 (1981): 81-109.
Ribera, Pietro Paolo di. Le glorie immortali de’tri-onfi, et heroiche imprese d’ottocento quarantacinque Donne Illustri antiche, e moderne. Venice: Evangelista Deuchino, 1609.
World History
