Making and Unmaking Woman:Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris [Famous Women] in its medieval and Renaissance contexts

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Making and Unmaking Woman:Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris [Famous Women] in its medieval and Renaissance contexts. Giovanni Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, [Famous Women] composed in the 1360s is the first attempt at female biography in the history of post-classical Western literature. It over-writes medieval misogyny with a humanistic vision of women. Contemporary criticism has generally treated the text contemptuously. Famous Women, it will be argued, is an example of the ideological complexities of humanism in its formative stages. It is the aim of this project to show that the text played a pivotal role in reassessing the conception of woman in early modern Europe. The project will produce the first major monograph on Famous Women.