This essay examines Giulia Bigolina's Urania, the only known prose romance by a woman author in the Italian Renaissance, as a space in which a female voice experiments with and combines different expressive models – the epistle, the dialogue, the novella – bending them to a narrative and argumentative design of her own. The analysis focuses on the insertions that lie outside the novella proper, notably the dedicatory letter to Bartolomeo Salvatico and Urania's farewell to Fabio, which are read as discursive thresholds through which the author asserts her own competence, engages with contemporary treatises on love, and at the same time reshapes their conclusions.

Il contributo esamina Urania di Giulia Bigolina, unico caso di romanzo in prosa d'autrice nel Rinascimento italiano, come spazio in cui una voce femminile sperimenta e combina modelli espressivi diversi – epistola, dialogo, novella – piegandoli a un disegno narrativo e argomentativo personale. L'analisi si concentra sugli inserti extra-novellistici, in particolare la lettera dedicatoria a Bartolomeo Salvatico e l'addio di Urania a Fabio, letti come soglie discorsive attraverso cui l'autrice dichiara le proprie competenze, dialoga con la trattatistica amorosa coeva e al tempo stesso ne ridefinisce gli esiti.

«Comporrai una qualche operetta e a qual raro giovine la manderai». Commistione di modelli e persuasione amorosa in "Urania" di Giulia Bigolina

Giada Tonetto
2026

Abstract

This essay examines Giulia Bigolina's Urania, the only known prose romance by a woman author in the Italian Renaissance, as a space in which a female voice experiments with and combines different expressive models – the epistle, the dialogue, the novella – bending them to a narrative and argumentative design of her own. The analysis focuses on the insertions that lie outside the novella proper, notably the dedicatory letter to Bartolomeo Salvatico and Urania's farewell to Fabio, which are read as discursive thresholds through which the author asserts her own competence, engages with contemporary treatises on love, and at the same time reshapes their conclusions.
2026
Voci della persuasione. Scrittrici e retorica nell'Italia del Rinascimento
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/5126411
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