Laura's laurels: Re -visioning Platonism and Petrarchism in the philosophy and poetry of Tullia d'Aragona

This dissertation is a comparative study of the oeuvre of the Italian poet-philosopher Tullia d'Aragona (1510--1556), divided into the three genres in which she works---philosophical dialogue, lyric poetry, and chivalric epic. I read her works in terms the influence of Platonism (and Renaissance Neoplatonism) and Petrarchism. Using the theoretical paradigms of dialogism, intertextuality, and intersubjectivity, I demonstrate how in all of her work, Aragona engages with others: poets, canonical or contemporary; other philosophers and interpreters of Plato; and even her imagined diverse audience of men---and women---readers. This awareness of readers' subjectivities corresponds to a contemporary concept called Rezeptionaesthetik , or reader-response theory.;Aragona can be considered a Petrarchist, a paradoxical condition for a woman poet. Rather than considering the female "Petrarchist" an oxymoron, I propose reading Renaissance women poets in relation to traditions with which they consciously engaged. Although Tullia d'Aragona's literary "ancestors" have largely been male, she nevertheless utilizes their discourses in modes of negotiation, appropriation, and creative imitation. In addition to situating Aragona in relation to tradition, I examine what makes her work unique: her contribution to theoretical feminism the querelle des femmes (the questione della donna in Italian). I look both to Aragona's own writings to find the public "self" she constructed, and also to period sources for provide literary and historical context.;In sum, I attempt to demonstrate how Aragona makes her mark upon literary and philosophical traditions not created specifically for women, traditions that viewed them as either inferior or as a passive object of worship, and how, in her own work, she plays with gender, rhetoric, and formal features of the discourses she appropriates. In her dialogue, Aragona even suggests, humorously, the possibility of Petrarch's mute but adored Laura speaking: hence the title "Laura's Laurels." Currently, no book in English focuses upon Tullia d'Aragona as a central author, and Aragona's poems are mostly untranslated. In my dissertation and my translations of her poetry, I attempt to rectify both of those conditions.