Gaspara Stampa as Salamander and Phoenix: Reshaping the Tradition of the Abandoned Woman

Gaspara Stampa's narrative in the "Rime" (Venice, 1554) evokes the literary tradition of abandoned female lovers (i. e. Ovid's "Heroides" and Boccaccio's "Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta"). The essay explores the way in which Stampa challenges this tradition, substituting the inconsolable despair or the ultimate death of classical and modern heroines with a new enthusiasm towards love. Once abandoned by her first lover, Collaltino di Collalto, the poet finds another man to love, Bartolomeo Zen, to whom she dedicates a number of sonnets in which she describes her new passion and identifies herself with two emblems of rebirth: the salamander, which lives in fire, and the phoenix, which dies and rises again from its ashes. By doing so, Stampa reshapes the abandoned women literary tradition and also, significantly, the Petrarchan model of a canzoniere devoted to a single beloved.