Selected poetry and prose
Chiara Matraini was a member of the great flowering of poetic imitators and innovators in the Italian literary heritage begun by Petrarch, cultivated later by the lyric poet Pietro Bembo, and supplanted by the epic poet Torquato Tasso. Though without formal training, Matraini excelled in a number of literary genres popular at the time - poetry, religious meditation, discourse, and dialogue. In her midlife, she published a collection of erotic love poetry, but later in life her work shifted toward a search for spiritual salvation. Near the end of her life, she published a new poetry retrospective. Mostly available in only a handful of rare book collections, her writings are now adeptly translated here for an English-speaking audience and situated historically, which allows the poet to finally take her place as one of the seminal authors of the Renaissance, next to her contemporaries Vittoria Colonna and Laura Battiferra
Print Book, English, 2008
A bilingual ed View all formats and editions
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2008
xxx, 275 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780226510842, 9780226510859, 0226510840, 0226510859
171150620
1555/56 volume (book A)
Spiritual meditations
Considerations on the seven penitential psalms of the Great King and Prophet David
A brief discourse on the life and praise of the Most Blessed Virgin and Mother of the Son of God
1597 volume (book C)
Spiritual dialogues
English and Italian