Original scientific paper
Intertextual Dynamics in Maria Gondola’s Dedicatory Epistle
Francesca Maria Gabrielli
; University of Zagreb
Abstract
The dedicatory letter to the dialogue on Aristotle’s Meteorology by the philosopher Nicolò Vito di Gozze (Nikola Vitov Gučetić) was authored by his wife, the Ragusan noblewoman Maria Gondola (Marija Gundulić). The paratext – dated July 15, 1582 – thematizes Gondola’s dedication of her husband’s dialogical treatise to her friend Fiore Zuzori (Cvijeta Zuzorić), who was at the time experiencing animosity in Ragusa. Gozze’s dialogue, first published in 1584, was reissued a year later with a curtailed version of the dedicatory letter. Indeed, the section in which Gondola articulated her invective against Ragusan society to defend her friend was expunged from the second edition, while the rest of the paratext, consisting of the woman writer’s philogynist intervention in the querelle des femmes, remained intact. It is the aim of this essay to investigate the intertextual strategies detectable in the first, uncensored version of the dedicatory letter. The first part of this essay offers an analysis of Gondola’s careful selection and recontextualization of passages from Camerata’s 1567 Questione dove si tratta chi più meriti honore o la donna, o l’huomo, and Guevara’s Libro llamado Relox de Príncipes en el qual va encorporado el muy famoso libro de Marco Aurelio as translated by Alfonso Ulloa to show the subtle ways in which she revised the ambivalently philogynist male-authored argumentation. The second part explores some possible sources in the Italian vernacular for Gondola’s catalogue of brave women. The third part concentrates on Gondola’s invective to point out that this section of the dedicatory letter is equally characterized by a dense presence of intertextual elements, which, unlike the recycled passages from Guevara’s and Camerata’s works, are meant to be recognized by the reader. On that account, this essay offers a reading of the invective that considers its multiple echoes of Sannazaro’s pastoral novel Arcadia (1504).
Keywords
Maria Gondola (Marija Gundulić); Fiore Zuzori (Cvijeta Zuzorić); Nicolò Vito di Gozze (Nikola Vitov Gučetić); Iacopo Sannazaro; Girolamo Camerata; Antonio de Guevara
Hrčak ID:
322260
URI
Publication date:
11.11.2024.
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