1 For a discussion of this paradoxical term, see di Villaviera, Rita Casagrande, Le cortigiane veneziane del Cinquecento (Milan, 1968), pp. 19–43 Google Scholar; Croce, Benedetto, Poetiescrittoridel pieno e tardo rinascimento (Bari, 1970)Google Scholar, pp. 318-19; Musatti, Eugenio, La donna in Venezia (Padua, 1892), p. 120 Google Scholar; Masson, Georgina, Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance (London, 1975), pp. 9–12 Google Scholar, 152; Larivaille, Paul, La vie quotidienne des courtisanes en Italie au temps de la Renaissance (Paris, 1975), pp. 32–40 Google Scholar. Each author speaks of the differences between the Venetian cortigiana onesta and the lower class cortigiana di lume, which designated those courtesans who lived in inns, most often in the region near the Rialto bridge called the Castelletto. (In the fifteenth century, prostitutes’ and courtesans’ activities and housing were restricted.) A further distinction is made for the lowest class of prostitutes or meretrici, who earned their living solely by selling sexual favors to men. On humanists’ injunctions against women's public status and speech, see King, Margaret L., “Caldiera and the Barbaros on Marriage and the Family: Humanist Reflections of Venetian Realities,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 6 (1976)Google Scholar: 19-50; idem, “Book-Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance,” in Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Labalme (New York and London, 1980), pp. 66-90; Anthony Grafton and Lisajardine, From Humanism to the Humanities. Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp. 29-57. See also the “Introduction” by the editors, pp. xv-xxxi, to a ground-breaking anthology of essays devoted to a revisionist reworking of Renaissance studies, Rewriting the Renaissance. The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, eds. Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago, 1986). In particular, see the essay included in this volume, Constance Jordan, “Feminism and the Humanists: The Case of Sir Thomas Elyot's Defense of Good Women,“ pp. 242-58 and 376-83 for a comprehensive bibliography. On humanist treatises that speak among other things of the virtue of female chastity, and the necessity of the woman's position as the protector of the moral welfare of her family, see the anthology and translations of representative humanist writers of the Renaissance by Kohl, Bernard G. and Witt, Ronald G., eds., The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society (Philadelphia, 1978)Google Scholar.

2 This reference to the “accademia degli uomini virtuosi” comes from letter XVII in Veronica Franco's Lettere familiari a diversi. Only one esemplare of this edition, most probably published in Venice in 1580, survives in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, which suggests that a limited number were originally printed. The name of the publisher is not recorded, and there is no privilegio. The dedicatory letter “All’ Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Monsignor Luigi d'Este Cardinale” is dated 2 August 1580. The first epistle, “AH’ Invittissimo et Christianissimo Re Henrico III di Francia et di Polonia,” constituted perhaps the original dedication to the volume. It is followed by two sonnets (“Come tal'hor dal Ciel sotto humil tetto” and “Prendi, Re per virtu sommo & perfetto“) which commemorate King Henry Ill's triumphal entry into Venice in 1574 and Veronica Franco's visit with him there. For King Henry Ill's entry into Venice, see the contemporary source by Buccio, Pietro, he coronationi di Polonia et di Francia del Christianiss. Re Henrico III, vol. 1 (Padua, 1576)Google Scholar, cc. 177-179. See also Yriarte, Charles, La vie d'un patricien de Venise au seizième siècle (Paris, 1874), pp. 46–51 Google Scholar; Nolhac, Pierre De and Solerti, Angelo , Il viaggio in Italia di Enrico III Re di Francia e lefeste a Venezia, Ferrara, Mantova e Torino (Turin, 1890)Google Scholar, pp. 110-12. On his visit with Veronica, see Giuseppe Tassini, Veronica Franco, p. 89 and Masson, Courtesans, p. 156. For a modern edition of her letters, together with a critical essay and a consideration of its textual history, see Croce, Benedetto, Letteredall'unica edizionedel MDLXXXconproemio enota iconografica (Naples, 1949)Google Scholar. For this quotation, see Lettere XVII, 28. I will refer only to this edition throughout this essay.

3 The literature on the socio-historical context of Renaissance Venice has grown quite large. Among recent works useful for this study, see Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973); Pullan, Brian, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice. The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, 1580 to 1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)Google Scholar; and with specific regard to the sexual relations between men and women, see Ruggiero, Guido, The Boundaries of Eros. Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York and Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

4 Why the edition of the Terze rime was changed at some uncertain stage in its production has not been determined. A detached frontispiece, housed in the manuscript collection of the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, bears an engraved medallion portrait of Veronica Franco, and a circular inscription “Veronica Franco/Ann./xxiii/MDLXXVI“ surrounds the frame. For a reproduction of this portrait medallion, see Masson, Courtesans. All references in this essay to Franco's Terze rime are to Salza, Abdelkedar, Rime: Gaspara Stampa e Veronica Franco (Bari, 1913)Google Scholar. For the textual history of the Terze rime and other poetic anthologies that Franco contributed to or acted as the editor for, see Salza, Rime, pp. 380-86.

5 Abdelkedar Salza, in his modern edition of the Terze rime, includes a discussion of the three esemplare editions that Emmanuele Cicogna recorded in his Delle iscrizioni veneziane (Venice, 1824-63) 5:421, two of which (now lost) registered Marco Venier's name as the author of the first capitolo. On Marco Venier's identity and his relationship to the Venier family, see Zorzi, Alvize, Cortigiana veneziana. Veronica Franco e isuoipoeti (Milan, 1986)Google Scholar, pp. 115-33. For some hypothetical suggestions regarding the removal of Marco Venier's name from the edition, see ibid., pp. 116-19, 125-26.

6 Domenico Venier, the crippled brother of the scurrilous dialect poet Lorenzo (the author of the Trentuno de la Zaffeta), was the leading exponent of Venetian Petrarchism. Pietro Aretino speaks in one of his letters of the grandeur of Venier's literary salon: “In dispetto della sorte, che li persegue con gli accidenti delle infermità, ha fatto della ornata sua stanza un tempio, non che un ginnasio.” See also Marcellino, Marco Valerio, II diamerone (Venice, 1565)Google Scholar for a discussion of Venier's salon. In addition, the connection between Venier and Badoer is alluded to in a letter by Anton Francesco Doni in his / Marmi (1520), in which Venier is exalted, together with Girolamo Molino and Federico Badoer, as the principal figures responsible for establishing a distinctly Venetian grandeur, in contrast to an already much heralded Florentine magnificence. For the full citation of these letters and quotations, see Bolzoni, Lina, “L'Accademia Veneziana: Splendore e decadenza di una Utopia enciclopedia,” in University, accademie e societi scientifiche in Italia e in Germania dal Cinquecento al Settecento (Bologna, 1982), p. 119 Google Scholar. For Domenico Venier's biography, the only comprehensive, but outdated work is Serassi, Pierantonio, La vita di Domenico Venier (Bergamo, 1751)Google Scholar. A recent dissertation further clarifies the connections of the Venier salon to the literary activities of the Accademia della Fama. See Martha S. Feldman, “Venice and the Madrigal in the Mid-Sixteenth Century,” 2 vols. (University of Pennsylvania, 1987), 442-55. The most recent discussion of Domenico Venier's literary salon and his relationship with Veronica Franco is Alvise Zorzi, Cortigiana veneziana, pp. 57-65, 69-90, and 163-64 for further bibliography.

7 Franco's interaction with members of the Venier family will be discussed at greater length in my book, presently in preparation, on the cortigiana onesta and Veronica Franco's literary activities in sixteenth-century Venice. Not all of the capitoli in the Terze rime require a response. Capitoli 19-25, which constitute the second part of the edition according to my division, do not receive any responses, and they are all the poems of Veronica Franco.

8 No comprehensive study exists on the capitoio in terza rima in Italian poetic practice. There is a brief discussion, however, in Elwert, W. Theodore, Versificazione italiana. Dalleoriginiaigiorninostri (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar, pp. 143-44, and Previtera, Carlo, Lapoesiagiocosa e l'umorismo (Milan, 1939)Google Scholar. On Franco's reworking of the Renaissance love lyric to suit her own designs, see Ann R.Jones, “City Women and Their Audiences: Louise Labe and Veronica Franco,” in Rewriting the Renaissance, pp. 299-316.

9 The poetic tenzone, derived mainly from the Provencal tradition, was incorporated into Italian poetic practice in the thirteenth century. In Italian poetry, beginning with Giacomo da Lentini and Jacopo Mostacci, the tenzone was elected for personal poetic exchanges. In two separate poems, the first author proposed the theme and established the rhyme scheme and the second author responded in like rhyme or theme. This tradition continued with Dante and Petrarch. For a definition of the term “tenzone” as derived from “tenso,” see Elwert, Versificazione 133. In early Sicilian poetry, the “contrasto“ was a “tenzone” in “canzone” form. On the specifically Italian “tenzone,” there are very few critical studies. For the most notable, see Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, “De' commentari intorno all'istorica delta volgar poesia. “Di Varie stravaganti maniere circa la quantità delle rime de’ sonetti,” in L'lstoria delta volgar poesia, 6 vols. (Venice, 1730-31) 1:178-182; Santangelo, Salvatore, Le tenzoni poetiche nella letteratura italiana delle origini (Geneva, 1928)Google Scholar; Carlo Previtera, La poesiagiocosae I'umorismo, pp. 178-180. For further bibliography on the “tenzone” as a popular form during the Duecento and Trecento, see Previtera, Poesia, pp. 183-184, nn. 1-24. On the influence of the Provencal “tenso” in Italian literature, see Debenedetti, Santorre, Cli studi provenzali in Italia nel Cinquecento (Turin, 1911)Google Scholar.

10 For a fascinating although outdated biography of Maffio Venier, see Ruggieri, Nicola, Maffio Venier (Udine, 1909)Google Scholar. See also Zorzi, Cortigiana veneziana, pp. 93-111, and for further bibliography, pp. 164-65. Recently all of Maffio Venier's dialect verses have been critically attributed and catalogues by Nordio, Tiziana Agostini in “Rime dialettali attribuite a Maffio Venier. Primo regesto,” Quaderni veneti (Ravenna, 1985)Google Scholar, pp. 7-23; idem, “ ‘La Strazzosa,’ di Maffio Venier, Canzone. Edizione Critica,” in Contributi rinascimentali. Venezia e Firenze (Padua, 1982)Google Scholar, pp. 9-131. For an extensive selection of Maffio Venier's verses compiled by Venier's friend Ingegneri, Anzolo, together with other Venetian dialect poets, see Versi alia venitiana, zoè Canzon, satire, leltere amorose, matinae, canzonette … (Vicenza, 1613)Google Scholar, pp. 58-141. On his relation to his father, Lorenzo, and to the other members of his family, see Richter, Bodo L. O., “Petrarchism and Anti-Petrarchism among the Veniers,” Forum Italicum, 3 (1969)Google Scholar: 20-43.

11 Many of Franco's letters in her Lettere familiari a diversi, published five years after her poems, comment retrospectively upon the content of the capitoli which the letterwriter now understands more clearly. In letter XLVII, she refers to this poetic debate with the incerto autore and to the satirical poetic attacks directed against her, and she excuses herself for mistakenly thinking that her addressee was “chi ha scritto que’ versi contro di me.” She thanks him for his offer to protect her from her vicious attacker, and although she decided to discontinue her poetic duel with this man “cesso con lei dall'- occasione del duello e del cartello,” she expresses an interest in continuing to exchange poems with him in order to exercise her poetic skills in literary debate; “Tra tanto, per non lasciar di continuar nell'essercizio per cio a me bisognoso dell'armi, prego Vostra Signoria, si come perfetto maestro, ad insegnarmi alcun segreto colpo.” See Lettere, pp. 64-66.

12 For a general history of women's fashions in Italy, and with specific reference to courtesans in Venice during the Renaissance, see Rosita Levi Pizetsky, Storia del costume in Italia, 5 vols. (Turin, 1964-69). For the sixteenth century, see vol. 3. For Venice, see Poli, Doretta D., “Lamodanella VeneziadelPalladio, 1550-1580,“ in ArchitetturaeUtopia nella Venezia del Cinquecento (Milan, 1980)Google Scholar, pp. 219-22.

13 Veronica Franco, Lettere, pp. 12-14.

14 See Seneca, , Letters from a Stoic, trans. Robin Campbell (London, 1969)Google Scholar, especially letter IX, pp. 47-54. Seneca's letters (L'Epistoledi Seneca) were translated into Italian by Anton Francesco Doni and published in Venice in 1549.

15 See Whigham, Frank, “Interpretation at Court: Courtesy and the Performer- Audience Dialectic,” New Literary History, 14 (1983): 623-41; idem, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley, 1984)Google Scholar.

16 de Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, Journal de voyage en Italie, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris, 1955), P- 72 Google Scholar.

17 On this, see Muir, Edward, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1980)Google Scholar, pp. 147-56. For a contemporary account, see the chronicle of the English traveler, Coryat, Thomas, Coryat's Crudities, rept. of 1611 ed. (New York, 1905)Google Scholar 1:403, who in 1608 writes “For the Gentleman do even coope up their wives alwaies within the Walles of their houses.” Two recent studies argue, respectively, that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century aristocratic and lower-class Venetian women found refuge from patriarchal ideological strictures by gaining increased economic independence. The wives of artisans, both Catholic and non-Catholic, found refuge in a variety of religious devotions and heretical practices outside the home that afforded them a measure of autonomy. For interesting discussions of patrician Venetian women's wills and dowries, albeit of an earlier period, as evidence of female bonding, see Chojnacki, Stanley, “Patrician Women in Early Renaissance Venice,” Studies in the Renaissance, 21 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 18-84;idem, “Dowries and Kinsmen in Early Renaissance Venice, “ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (1975): 571-600; idem, “Kinship Ties and Young Patricians in Fifteenth-Century Venice, “Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1986): 240-70; Martin, John, “Out of the Shadow: Heretical and Catholic Women in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Family History, 10 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 21-33.

18 For a discussion of the Venetian civic myth of the Republic, see Gaeta, Franco, “Alcune considerazioni sul mito di Venezia,” Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance, 23 (1961)Google Scholar: 58-75; Fasoli, Gina, “Nascita di un mito,” in Studi storici in onore di Gioacchino Volpe (Florence, 1958)Google Scholar, pp. 445-479; Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and London, 1968)Google Scholar, p. 52; Myron P. Gilmore, “Myth and Reality in Venetian Political Theory,“ in Renaissance Venice, ed. Hale, pp. 431—43; Muir, Civic Ritual, pp. 310-42. For a recent and comprehensive discussion of this myth and for extensive bibliography, see King, Margaret L., Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 174-78.

19 Veronica Franco, Terze rime, p. 271.

20 On this choice, see Ruggiero, Boundaries of Eros, pp. 152-54 and 162-63. On the importance, however, of protecting a young girl's virginity in order for her to be able to marry honorably, see ibid., pp. 17-18, 23-24, 36-39, 42-44, 154, 162-63. See also Lucia Ferrante, “L'Onore ritrovato. Donne nella casa del soccorso di S. Paolo a Bologna,“ QuaderniStorici, 53:2 (1983):499-527; Cohen, Sherrill,“ConvertiteeMalmaritate. Donne ‘irregolari’ e ordini religiosi nella Firenze rinascimentale,” Memoria. Rivista distoria delledonne, 5 (1982)Google Scholar: 46-63.

21 The coat of arms of the Franco family consists of an orange field with a blue band in the upper portion decorated with three yellow stars. The charge in the lower portion of the shield has a green mountain with three peaks. See Teodoro Toderini, Genealogie dellefamiglie venete ascritte alia cittadinanza originaria, vol. 2, c. 6. The same coat of arms appears as the frontispiece to Veronica Franco's Terze rime which is reproduced in Masson, Courtesans, p. 87. For a definition of what constitutes the cittadino class in Venice, see Beltrami, Daniele, Storia delta popolazionedi Venezia dalla fine del secolo XVI alia caduta della Repubblica (Padua, 1954)Google Scholar, p. 65; Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, p. 100; Finlay, Robert, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, 1980)Google Scholar, pp. 45-47; Muir, Civic Ritual, pp. 38-44.

22 Many of the courtesans listed in this catalogue—a kind of sixteenth-century telephone book—are associated with their mother's trade insofar as prospective clients are requested to pay the required fee directly to the mother, who acts as a go-between for her daughter. This is the case, as well, for Veronica Franco, and it suggests that she was not yet married at the time of the conception of this catalogue, as she is recorded as living in her mother's house. A rare edition of this Catalogo exists in the Museo Civico Correr in Venice. For a discussion of the publishing history of this catalogue, see Tassini, Giuseppe, Veronica Franco, Celebre poetessa e cortigiana del secolo XVI (Venice, 1888)Google Scholar, p. 9, n. i, and p. 56, n.2. Zorzi, Cortigiana veneziana, p. 20, discusses the clandestine nature of this catalogue. It is also possible that this book was conceived as a satire, which would help explain why Veronica's fee is indicated as only 2 scudi.

23 Paola Franco is listed as zpieza or go-between. For a definition of this and other Venetian dialect words, see Boerio, Giuseppe, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, 2d ed. (Venice, 1856)Google Scholar, p. 509.

24 On a woman's education in a sixteenth-century Italy, see Zannini, Gian Ludovico Masetti, Motivi storici della educazione femminile 1500-1650 (Bari, 1980)Google Scholar. On a young woman's possibilities for an education in Renaissance Venice and on the crucial importance of a father or father-figure to promote a young girl's schooling or private education, see Labalme, Patricia, “Venetian Women on Women: Three Early Renaissance Feminists,” Archivio veneto, 152 (1981)Google Scholar:81-109. See also Schutte, Anne Jacobson, “Teaching Adults to Read in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Giovanni Antonio Tagliente's Libro Maistrevole,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 17 (1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 3-16; Grendler, Paul F., “What Zuanne Read in School: Vernacular Texts in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Schools,“ Sixteenth Century Journal, 13 (1982): 41–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 The principal sources of Veronica Franco's biography are Agostini, Giovanni degli, Notiziestorico-critiche intomoalle vita e le opere degli scrittori veneziani (Venice, 1754)Google Scholar 2:615- 622; Cicogna, Iscrizioni veneziane, 5:421; Tassini, Franco; Casagrande di Villaviera, Cortigiane veneziane, pp. 235-272; Masson, Courtesans, p. 145-168; Alessandra Schiavon, “Per la biografia di Veronica Franco. Nuovi documenti,” Atti dell'Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere, edarti, 137 (1978-1979): 243-256. For the most important critical literature on her poems and letters, see Graf, Arturo, “Una Cortigiana fra mille,” in Attraverso il Cinquecento (Turin, 1888)Google Scholar, pp. 174-284; Scrivano, Riccardo, “La poetessa Veronica Franco,“ in Cultura e letteratura del cinquecento (Rome, 1966)Google Scholar; Francesco Flora, Storiadella letteratura italiana 3:517; Frugoni, A. Giovanni, “I capitoli della cortigiana Veronica Franco,” Belfagor, 3 (1948)Google Scholar: 44-59.

26 Franco competed with male writers for public commissions and thereby clearly overstepped the limits assigned to her by male poets. It is likely that she planned to edit an encomiastic anthology of poems commemorating King Henry Ill's entry into Venice. She refers to a “libro” that she hopes to dedicate to him in her dedicatory epistle to the King in her Lettere: “Ne posso con alcuna maniera di ringraziamento supplire in parte all'infinito merito delle sue benigne e graziose offerte fattemi nel proposito del libro, ch'io sono per dedicarle.” Such an edition was prepared and published in Venice, but not by Franco, Veronica. The editor is unknown. See Compositioni volgari, e latinefatte da diversi nella venuta in Venetia di Henrico III Re di Francia (Venice, 1575)Google Scholar. There are numerous references to Franco's editorial activities throughout her Lettere, and a few editions, some unpublished and still in manuscript form, are housed in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. She collaborated on a commemorative anthology, never printed, entitled “Dal Canzoniere del sig. Bartolomeo Zacco ‘gentiluomo padovano’ “ (Cod. Marciano MS Ital. XI. 14, cc. 77-82), See also the collection of sonnets entitled Panegirico nelfelice dottoratodell'Iltustre, et Eccell.mo Sig. Spinelli, Gioseppe, Digniss. Rettordelegisti, etcavalier splendidissimo (Padua, 1575)Google Scholar, published 12 May 1575, which includes Franco's sonnet “Alia tua ceda ogni regale insegna.” Finally, she acted as the compiler for an encomiastic anthology entitled Rime di diversi eccellentissimi auttori nella morte dell'Illustr. Sig. Estor Martinengo Conte di Malpaga. Raccolte e mandate … dalla Signora Veronica Franco. This volume is without date, place, or name of publisher, although it most certainly dates to 1580. She refers to this collection in letter XXXII. This edition includes nine sonnets by Franco and seventeen by a group of poets who frequented Venier's salon, as well as seventeen by Domenico Venier and two by Marco Venier. On this edition, see Salza, Terze rime, pp. 380-86.

27 For the most recent article on Veronica Franco's trials, seen from within a larger context of trials brought against women in Venice during the latter half of the sixteenth century, see Milani, Marisa, “L'incanto di Veronica Franco,” Giomalestoricodella letteratura italiana, 262 (1985)Google Scholar: 250-63. See also Alessandra Schiavon, “Per la biografia di Veronica Franco. Nuovidocumenti,” ibid., 246, n. 8, who indicates that she found both the document and the subsequent trials to which Tassini refers in the Archivio di Stato in Venice, register “Processi del Sant'Uffizio,” anno 1580, busta 46. Zorzi, Cortigiana veneziana, pp. 145-53 takes issue with both Schiavon and Milani's transcription of the trials which he has retranscribed.

28 In both of Veronica Franco's wills it is evident that she associated with, and entrusted the management of her family's legacy to, some of the most influential patrician and citizen families of Venice, such as the Bernardo, Tron, Venier, di Benedetti, Ramberti, and Morosini. For a record of her wills, see Tassini, Franco, pp. 107-18.

29 Veronica Franco, Lettere, pp. 49-50.

30 On the political importance of “clans” in Venice during the Cinquecento, see Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, pp. 82-3; Chojnacki, “Kinship Ties and Young Patricians,“ 245, n.12. On the Venier family, see Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, p. 84.

31 For an overview of this academy and others during the Renaissance and throughout Italy, see Michele Maylender, Storia delle accademie d'ltalia, 5 vols. (Bologna, 1926- 1930), and for this academy in particular, see 5:36-43. Important, too, for a discussion of the Venetian academy, are Pompeo Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vitaprivata, esp. ch. 9, pp. 308-10; Pellegrini, Domen Maria, “Breve dissertazione previa al Sommario dell'Accademia Veneta della Fama,” Giornale della italiana letteratura (Padua, 1808)Google Scholar, pp. 3-32, H3-38;Cicogna, Iscrizioni veneziane 3:50-5; Renouard, A. A., Annates deI'imprimeriedes Aides, on histoiredes troisManuce, 3“ded. (Paris, 1843)Google Scholar, pp. 267-79,434- 42. For more recent contributions, see Guido Benzoni, “Aspetti della cultura urbana nella societa veneta del Cinquecento e Seicento. Le Accademie,” Archivio veneto (1977): 87-159; Ulvioni, Paola, Accademie e cultura in Italia dalla Controriforma all'Arcadia. II caso Veneziano (Milan, 1979)Google Scholar; Lowry, Malcolm, The World of Aldus Manutius. Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979)Google Scholar, pp. 180-216. The most recent discussion of the history and function of the Venetian academy are Pier Pagan, “Sulla Accademia'Venetiana'o della'Fama,’ “ Atti dell'Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere edarti, 132 (1973-1974): 359-92; Rose, Paul L., “The Accademia Venetiana. Science and Culture in Renaisance Venice,” Studi veneziani, 2 (1968)Google Scholar: 191-242; Bolzoni, Lina, “II ‘Badoardo’ di Francesco Patrizi e l'Accademia Veneziana della Fama,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 158 (1981)Google Scholar: 77-101.

32 The only woman writer other than Veronica Franco to write capitoli is Gaspara Stampa, who composed five capitoli which were included in the 1554 posthumous edition of her Rime d'amore. See Bellonci's, Maria edition and introduction to Stampa's Rime (Milan, 1954)Google Scholar, pp. 230-41.

33 Ruscelli, Girolamo, Del modo di comporre in versi nella lingua italiana (Venice, 1582)Google Scholar, attests to the difficulty in using the “terzetto” form. The edition I refer to in this essay includes two other books, the Rimario della lingua italiana (first published in 1559) and Il vocabolario delle voci latine.

34 Ruscelli, Modo, p. 74.

35 Ruscelli writes in ibid, that “molto vagamente pur in quest'anni stressi hanno il mio Signor Domenico Veniero et altri nobilissimi ingegni hanno introdotto di scrivere in versi sciolti e di Terze Rime, alcuni soggetti piacevolissimi, et principalmente volendo contrafar la pedanteria.“

36 Seecap. 15, “Signor, ha molti giorni, ch'iononfui,“in which she explicitly refers to the gathering of friends for the purposes of literary exchange and conversation. The only studies on Domenico Venier's literary activities and the group of poets that surrounded him are Taddeo, Edoardo, Il Manierismo letterario e i lirici veneziani del Cinquecento (Rome, 1974)Google Scholar and Elwert, , Studi di letteratura veneziana (Venice, 1958)Google Scholar. Benedetto Croce, Poeti e scrittori, p. 223, recognized the significance of Veronica Franco's departure from a traditional Petrarchan discourse on love, signalled by her use of the capitolo in terza rima, but he never connected this to her involvement in the poetic activities of the Venier academy and salon.

37 For an analysis of the relation between her familiar letters and her epistolary capitoli, together with a discussion of the interest in classical elegiac forms in the Venier academy and later in his salon, see my essay “A Courtesan's Voice: Epistolary Self-Portraiture in Franco's, Veronica Terze Rime” in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, ed. Elizabeth Goldsmith (Boston, 1989)Google Scholar.

38 The allusions to the Orlando furioso are numerous throughout the Terze rime. Ruscelli, Girolamo, a member of the Venier circle, published a commentary, Le Annotationi, gliavvertimentietledichiarationi… sopra iluoghidifficiliet important! del Furioso (Venice, 1556)Google Scholar, and Alberto Lavezuola, in his Le osservationi (included in his edition Orlando furioso … nuovamente adomato [Venice, 1584], p. 9.), focuses on the moral and ethical implications of “il tenzonare con donna.” This moralizing approach to the Orlando furioso, informed by Horatian theories, is also evident in many of the commentaries and theoretical studies by the Venetian writers who frequented the Accademia della Fama. In the Somma delle opere, the academy's list of projected works, a study of Ariosto focuses on “delle bellezze dell'Ariosto, sotto ‘1 qual titolo s'intendono le allegorie morali.” Bolzoni is the first critic who refers to their Somma delle Opere (1558) for an understanding of the literary activities and projects proposed by this academy.

39 On the erotic nature of sixteenth-century Venetian painting as influenced by Venetian “volgarizzamenti” by such writers as Ludovico Dolce and Francesco Sansovino, see Ginzburg, Carlo, “Tiziano, Ovidio, e i codici della figurazione erotica del Cinquecento,“ Paragone, 339 (1978)Google Scholar, 3-24; Hope, Charles, Titian (New York, 1980)Google Scholar, pp. 135, 142, n. 18.

40 This echoes Castiglione's Il libro del cortegiano, Libro Terzo, where the Magnifico Giuliano quotes Saint Paul, “Si non caste, tamen caute,” in his larger denunciation of religious hypocrisy among friars who in turn corrupt women. For this, I refer to Singleton's, Charles S. English translation, The Book of the Courtier (New York, 1959)Google Scholar, p. 221.

41 On this proposed intersection of Maffio Venier's verses, see Dazzi, Manlio, Ilfiore della lirica veneziana. II libro segreto (chiuso) (Vicenza, 1956)Google Scholar 1:9-57. Another poem by Maffio Venier names Veronica Franco (in line 101) in the context of a hyperbolic and obscene anti-blason. See “An, Fia, Comuodo? A Che Muodo Zioghemo?”, as reproduced in Dazzi, Fiore della lirica, pp. 28-33.

42 On the transformation in Petrarca's sonnets 45 and 90 of an idolatrous icon of worship which has both human and divine attributes, and on the function of a proper name (Laura) in his lyrics, see Giuseppe Mazzotta, “The Canzoniere and the Language of the Self,” Studies in Philology, 75 (1978):271-96; Freccero, John, “The Fig Tree and the Laurel,“ Diacritics, 5 (1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 34-40; NancyJ. Vickers, “Diana Described: Scattered Women and Scattered Rhyme,” in Writing and Sexual Difference, ed. Elizabeth Abel (Chicago and London; 1980-82), pp. 95-109.

43 Dazzi, Fiore della lirica, pp. 37-40.

44 A “cartello di sfida” is defined in da Longiano, Fausto Sebastiano, Il Duello (Venice, 1552)Google Scholar, p. 14 and passim. See also Muzio, Girolamo, Il Duello (Venice, 1564)Google Scholar, Libro 1, cap. 13, “Delia forma de'cartelli,” 26-27, and cap. 15, “Del mandare i cartelli,” 27-28. For an overview of this literary phenomenon during the Cinquecento, see the recent study by Erspamer, Francesco, La biblioteca di Don Feirante, Duello e onore nella cultura del Cinquecento (Rome, 1983)Google Scholar.

45 The belief that her true adversary is someone other than Marco Venier is expressed not in the Terze rime but in letter XLVIII, 64-5 of her Letterefamiliari. Here she admits to her addressee (presumably Marco Venier) that she had incorrectly believed that “quella satira fusse fattura di Vostra Signoria,” and she reveals how she came to realize her mistake. She states that she composed a poem in response to her male attacker that was sent to him by mistake: “il capitolo del quale… sia stato mandato a lei per errore.“ She excuses herself for having thought that Marco Venier was capable of writing a poem so full of imperfections and so unworthy of his intelligence: “ … avendo risguardato all’ imperfezzione dell'opera piena d'errori e per altra causa non degno parto del nobile intelletto suo.“

46 On Aristotle’ s view of women, see Okin, Susan Moller, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar, pp. 73-96; Horowitz, Maryanne C., “Aristotle and Women,” Journal of the History of Biology, 9 (1979)Google Scholar: 183-213; Rogers, Katherine M., The Troublesome Helpmate (Seattle, 1966)Google Scholar; Maclean, Ian, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge and New York, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 8-9, 36-38, 41-42, 48-49 and passim.

47 It is not exactly clear to which “lingua selvaghesca” poem she refers, but it is probably that she is alluding to Maffio Venier's canzone “La Strazzosa.” On the recent critical edition of this poem, see n. 10 above.