Julie Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino have recently edited a volume for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe that will be useful for those teaching in English on the querelle des femmes or on sixteenth-century Italian literature more generally. The volume is comprised of two parts: scholarly essays, intended for undergraduates, that foreground the literary context in which the men and the women of sixteenth-century Italy were writing and translations of texts engaged in contemporary debates regarding women’s roles in society and in culture. The texts were authored by men, but Campbell and Stampino have selected those in dialogue with other texts in the querelle tradition. Some of the translations are of complete works whereas others are necessarily brief passages, chosen either for their relevance to the topic or for their relation to other texts that have already appeared in translation in previous volumes of the Other Voice series. With the exception of one, none of the texts have ever been translated into English before and all are prefaced by mini-introductions to the author and his milieu that contextualize the text in question and help students see the works in relation to one another.

The translated texts include, in the order in which they appear in the volume, two chapters from Silvio Antoniano’s Three Books on the Christian Education of Children (1584) by Julie D. Campbell; an excerpt from book 2 of Stefano Guazzo’s Civil Conversation (1574) also by Campbell; an extended passage from the beginning of Alessandro Piccolomini’s Raffaella (1539) by Maria Galli Stampino; Torquato Tasso’s Discourse on Feminine and Womanly Virtue (1582) in its entirety by Lori J. Ultsch; the preface and discourses 1, 6, and 16 of Giuseppe Passi’s The Defects of Women (1599) by Suzanne Magnanini with David Lamari; Speroni Speroni’s Dialogue on Love (1542) in its entirety by Janet L. Smarr; Francesco Andreini’s “On Taking a Wife” (1612) again by Campbell; burlesque poems by Antonfrancesco Grazzini, Nicolò Franco, and Maffio Venier (mid- to late sixteenth century) by Patrizia Bettella; three letters by Pietro Aretino to Giulia Bigolina (1549) by Christopher Nissen; and Bernardino Ochino’s “Sermon Preached in Venice … on the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalen” (1539) by Stampino.

One might always quibble over the selection of texts, yet these may be utilized in a variety of different courses and in relation to varied topics and genres; the translations are also of a high level. The apparatus is at times uneven. Some authors have done an excellent job of seeking sources and providing background information necessary to the undergraduate reader (the contributions of Ultsch and Magnanini, for example, are very useful, also for the scholarly reader) whereas a few offer scant guidance for students. This reader remained a little baffled as to what the criteria were for the overall organization of the volume, as it follows neither a thematic, nor a chronological order. Moreover, a more thorough explanation of Neoplatonism would have helped render this volume more complete, especially considering its undergraduate target, as it is referred to frequently and is an important element of the discourse on love around which much of the woman question circulates; yet a succinct summary of its development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is missing, and it is unfortunately largely ignored as an interpretative tool by some contributors. The usefulness in the classroom of this compendium will likely be piecemeal as the translated texts are generally in response to canonical texts of the Italian literary tradition — whether they be the classics such as Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, or Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo, or the newly conscripted such as Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, or Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women — and a yearlong course would be required to host both elements. It will, however, be productive to offer students more contemporary voices of the old voice, and this volume is a useful and welcome contribution to that end. Finally, the anthology is complemented by a convenient bibliography of selected texts in translation by male authors who engaged in the querelle des femmes.