The Devotional Works of Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1652)

FAIN: RQ-230596-15

University of Delaware (Newark, DE 19711-3651)
Meredith Kennedy Ray (Project Director: December 2014 to December 2019)
Lynn Lara Westwater (Co Project Director: September 2016 to December 2019)

Preparation for publication of an edition and translation of Convent Paradise (1643) and Lament for the Death of Regina Donati (1650), devotional works written in early-modern Italian by Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1654). (24 months)

Arcangela Tarabotti was the most radical female writer in Counter-Reformation Italy. Tarabotti's stunningly modern thought has been the object of intense critical interest, but an important element of her oeuvre -- her devotional writing -- has been almost entirely ignored. We propose to produce, in English translation, the first modern editions of Tarabotti's Paradiso monacale (Convent Paradise, 1643) and Le lagrime per la morte di Regina Donati (Lament for the Death of Regina Donati, 1650). The volumes will show that Tarabotti's radical social thought cannot be separated from the broader context of religious life in 17th-century Venice. Our study of the interaction between early modern religious culture and Tarabotti's protofeminism will change the understanding of this foundational writer as it more broadly investigates the essential role devotional writing -- long ignored by critics -- played in women's wider intellectual life.