Francesco Buoninsegni and Suor Arcangela Tarabotti. Satira e Antisatira.

Francesco Buoninsegni and Suor Arcangela Tarabotti. Satira e Antisatira. Ed. Elissa Weaver. Rome: Salerno, 1998.

This slim but precious volume edited by Elissa Weaver is comprised of two seventeenth-century treatises. Contro 'l lusso donnesco satira menippea (1638), by the Sienese man of letters Francesco Buoninsegni, is a semiserious harangue against what the author considers to be the excesses of extravagant female fashion. Antisatira in risposta al Lusso donnesco satira menippea (1644), a caustic reply to Buoninsegni's criticisms, was written by the Venetian nun and writer Arcangela Tarabotti, better known for her impassioned decrial of forced monachation that appears in works such as Inferno monacale (1643) and Semplicita ingannata (1654).

These two seemingly minor texts are valuable for several reasons. First, they constitute significant contributions to the early modern querelle des femmes. Tarabotti is part of the "second wave" of Renaissance feminism that was centered in Venice and included Lucrezia Marinelli and Moderata Fonte; indeed, in the Antisatira her defense of female fashion quickly becomes a defense of women in general. Second, the satires are a source of fascinating "anthropological" information, since both of them focus on what constituted contemporary vogues in fashion. Finally, they are classic examples of baroque scrittura ingegnosa, with its extravagant metaphor and taste for hyperbole and rhetorical fireworks. Weaver does a splendid job of editing; the introduction insightfully situates these two works in seventeenth-century culture, and the notes supply pertinent recent bibliography as well as clarifying the numerous obscure textual passages.

Buoninsegni's Contro 'l lusso donnesco, addressed to a female audience, is, in Weaver's words "una critica moralistica volta a deridere gli eccessi della moda femminile, l'ignoranza delle donne che la seguono, e il grande spreco di denaro che questo richiede" (16). In her Antisatira, Tarabotti directly responds to Buoninsegni in the spirit of a "rhetorical contest," using some of his same discursive strategies (paradox, digression, abundant citation of authorities, and so forth) and revisiting his points of argument one by one. Tarabotti takes a number of different tacks: she defends women of many, but not all, of Buoninsegni's criticisms, in some cases simply pointing out that the faults that Buoninsegni finds in women are just as present in men. She is at her most forceful when she admits women's shortcomings while at the same time asserting that those who maintain social control over women and deny them the possibility of acquiring an education--men--are ultimately the ones to blame. These two works are by no means tedious moralistic tracts, though; in both of them we are offered delectable portraits of the woman (in Buoninsegni) and, especially, the man (in Tarabotti) of fashion. In particular, Tarabotti's meticulous, head-to-toe description of a dandy reads as a parody of the technique of descriptio personae typical of the courtly love lyric, where the male figure that emerges is, much as the Petrarchan "lady," a rarefied and almost abstract objectification of a human being.

Buoninsegni begins his criticism of luxurious garments with a reference to the expulsion from the Garden of Eden: "Altro non sono [clothes] che illustre testimonianza della vostra schiavitudine e mertitata pena dell'antico peccato" (41). This solemn introduction soon gives way, though, to flashy conceit. The definition of silk as "vomito e sepolcro d'un verme" leads, for example, to the conclusion that "la donna altro non e che un verme che rode il cuore agli amanti, un vomito delicato della natura, ed un sepolcro indorato de cuori umani' (41-42). Tirades against women's desire to enhance their appearance and, in general, female vanity are standard fare in Renaissance anti-feminist discourse; Buoninsegni does not fail to mouth the commonplace that "ornamenti donnesehi" mask true beauty, which derives from the spirit. Nor does he fail to fall into the trap of a rather banal misogynistic humor: "chi non ha nel cervello cosa alcuna preziosa va rimediando di fuore al mancamento di dentro" (49). But the most noteworthy moments of this satire are found more in the fancifully described details of dress and ornament than in moralizing platitudes; Buoninsegni orchestrates a rhetorical trunk show of well-known articles of seventeenth-century dress, such as the notorious pianelle or platform shoes, wigs, hair ornaments, makeup, and other accessories. Of hair dyes, for instance, he comments that "con ingegnosissima alchimia fissano in oro ondeggiante l'argento vivo d'una chioma canuta" (53). Finally, there is a certain humorous paradox inherent in Buoninsegni's own abundant use of rhetorical embellishment, which apparently occurred to him, too, as he feels the need to conclude that "il discorso e finito senza aver dato pure un'occhiata allo specchio ed al liscio ... segno evidente che 'l mio discorso non s'e lisciato ne specchiato con il liscio dell'artifico allo specchio dell'eloquenza. Conveniva che il discorso contro le pompe comparisse senz'ornamento" (54).

Tarabotti's treatise is significantly longer than Buoninsegni's (50 pages, in this edition, versus 18), and to its greater length corresponds a greater richness of argument and of representation, as well as a more pointedly polemical tone. She leads off by pointing out just how hypocritical and opportunistic the criticism of women's desire to adorn themselves is: "doppo aver con studiati mezzi procurata una ricca dote, si dolgono [husbands] poi di dover far le spese necessarie per quelle c'hanno fatto loro conoscer d'esser cosa preziosa, portando seco quantita di tesori; se prima ch'arrivassero ad ottenerle in mogli si professavano di loro ardenti e amanti, oro vorrebbero ch'elle vestissero all'uso della nostra prima madre, per piu agiatamente poter scialacqaure in adornar le meretrici" (61). She then goes on to accuse men of purposefully refusing women the "arms and letters" with which they could defend themselves from critiques such as Buoninsegni's, and stresses that excesses in fashion are trifling when compared to the 'insidie diaboliche" to which men subject women, or even to the vanity of men themselves. The importance of education and, conversely, the instrumental use of female ignorance is a recurring theme in Tarabotti's works, and she loses no opportunity throughout this satire for emphasizing that if women were given the same instruction as men they would equal them in ability. Perhaps the most important difference between the two treatises is, in fact, that even when Tarabotti does recognize women's excesses, she makes it clear that there are valid "sociological" reasons for them. Notwithstanding this protofeminist stance, at other moments Tarabotti embraces an essentialism more typical of her time, such as when she maintains that making themselves beautiful is women's "proprieta," just as men's is cultivating their "fortezza." But even this affirmation furthers her social critique: men are thus much more at fault when they spend enough on preening themselves to "solevar per la meta d'un anno qualche infelice dall'oppressione della poverta" (95).

Tarabotti offers many an ingenious defense of the accessories criticized in Buoninsegni's treatise. She justifies the height of pianelle, for example, by appealing to biblical authority: "e ragionevole c'ella altretanto si porti alta su le pianelle quanta distanza e dal piede virile alla costa, gia che la Natura e Dio l'ha creata con questo privilegio" (79). Pianelle, that is, situate women at the same distance that the substance of woman (Adam's rib) is separated from the substance of man (the earth), and thus concretely render women's greater dignity. Some of the most memorable passages of this work, too, are the actual descriptions of the "Adoni e Narcisi" of Tarabotti's time. We learn of their high heels, wigs (which she reveals are sometimes made of hair stolen from female cadavers), vogues in facial hair, and so forth; the centerpiece of this catalogue is a clever extended portrait of the young man of fashion as he prepares to go out. Overall, this is a world where the best energies of all seem to be spent in trying to appear what they are not; the reader comes away with the acute awareness that fashion, always based on the art of deception, found its most perfect incarnation during the baroque period.

The Satira and the Antisatira offer the reader snapshots of seventeenth-century gender politics, fashion, and literary style. Snapshots, however, that are taken from two very different angles: whereas Buoninsegni's essay seems above all an academic divertimento, Tarabotti's work, with its demysrifying contextualization of the conditions of women, impresses the reader of today with its modernity.

NANCY CANEPA

Dartmouth College