Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa and Louise Labe: Their contribution to the development of the Renaissance sonnet

This dissertation studies three Renaissance women poets, Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa and Louise Labe, who share an adherence to the conventions of Petrarchism. My analyses of these poets' works contribute to the fields of Women's Studies and Feminist Criticism by focusing on how the Renaissance women writers thematically modify male-oriented Petrarchan conventions, and how these modifications enable evaluation of the Petrarchan tradition from a female perspective. These poets' uses of Petrarchism reveal, however, that except for a common emphasis on one theme--the women's enforced confinement and passivity in relationship to men--their writings differ markedly from each other in literary and ethical purpose, and in degree of gender-consciousness.;Divergences from tradition in these women's texts are based more on personality or beliefs than on gender. My reading of Stampa's poetry indicates that she used a self-conscious female "pose", not to comment on oppression of women by men, but to further her ambitions as an innovative Petrarchist. This contradicts critical assumptions about Stampa's work that label it either "feminine" or "Petrarchan", without considering that combining the two styles might have produced a new kind of Petrarchism. Colonna, on the other hand, transgressed few gender dictates. Yet, her poetry is not characterized by a female voice, but by religious conviction. Labe is more aware of the potential socio-political importance of her role as a woman writer. But even Labe does not emphasize criticism of the patriarchy; she writes to fulfill her talent and intellect, and incites other women to pursue male-dominated fields of endeavor.;Therefore, more than attempting to discover a difference of gender in this poetry, my study looks critically at the problem of applying Feminist Criticism to women writers who wrote prior to the 19th Century, before the advent of modern feminist awareness. I conclude that, for Feminist Criticism to be successfully used in studying 16th Century poetry, it must be combined with traditional criticism; this entails reading the texts according to Renaissance poetic theory, which obliged the Renaissance writer to conform to rules of a strictly governed literary tradition.