Tullia d'Aragona, "The Wretch, Otherwise Known As Guerrino" (Iter Press, 2024)

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network — Italian Studies Channel
Episode Title: Tullia d'Aragona, "The Wretch, Otherwise Known As Guerrino" (Iter Press, 2024)
Date: December 15, 2025
Host: Kate Driscoll
Guests: Julia Harston and John McLucas
Theme:
A deep dive into the new bilingual edition and translation of Tullia d'Aragona’s epic poem The Wretch, Otherwise Known As Guerrino, recently published by Iter Press. The episode explores the literary, historical, and cultural significance of this 16th-century work, its place in the epic tradition, the challenges of translation, and Tullia’s importance as a trailblazing woman writer.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. Discovering and Researching Tullia d'Aragona

[02:19 – 05:40]

• Julia Harston’s Journey:

  • Began with a 1998 conference on Women in Papal Rome, searching for a prominent female figure connected to Rome in the 16th century.
  • Chose Tullia over the more widely recognized Vittoria Colonna due to a personal draw to her life and work.
  • Emphasizes the importance (and challenge) of archival research and credits significant collaborations and archival tips from scholars Philippa Jackson and Marcelo Simonetta.

• John McLucas’s Background:

  • Came from a classical background, with deep study in Latin and narrative poetry, especially Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.
  • Notes the scarcity of early female authors in Italian literary history.
  • The Tullia project fit both his interest in epic and in women’s writing, only just emerging as a field in Italian studies in the 1970s-80s.

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2. Genre Context: Tullia’s Move into Epic

[08:28 – 15:11]

• Historical Significance:

  • Tullia d'Aragona is best known for her philosophy (Dialogue on the Infinity of Love) and lyric poetry, with her move into epic being highly unusual for women of her time.
  • The decision appears to coincide with the death of her benefactor Filippo Strozzi in 1537, a turning point that saw her increase her public literary activity.

• Support and Resources:

  • Evidence suggests Tullia sought and may have received financial support from influential figures (e.g., the Farnese family) to enable dedicated time for writing.
  • Her epic commentary is engaged with the major literary debates of the day (especially those regarding Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso) and the translation of Aristotle’s Poetics into Italian.

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3. Translation Approach and Challenges

[16:22 – 22:35]

• John McLucas’s Experience:

  • Describes the translation process as a “camino” (journey), prioritizing clarity in prose to make the story accessible to English readers.
  • Tullia’s style: Treatment of subject/object in Italian syntax and pronouns made direct intelligibility difficult, especially pre-critical editions of her sources.
  • Decision to do a bilingual edition allowed for reduction of explanatory notes and gave scholars direct access to Tullia's Italian alongside the English.

• Notable Insight:

  • “There were times when frankly...I am improving this book. A person can read this octave and understand the literal meaning much better than if they were reading the Italian, even with native Italian. And then you think, if I clarify, am I falsifying?”
    — John McLucas [18:13]

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4. Plot and Thematic Richness

[23:36 – 35:26]

• Structure and Ambition:

  • The poem rivals Ariosto in length, stretching to 28,000 lines over 36 cantos.
  • Main hero Guerino undertakes epic travels, emblematic of displacement, self-discovery, and the search for belonging—traversing locations from Constantinople through India, Mecca, Ethiopia, and Ireland to the underworld.

• Treatment of Religiosity and Difference:

  • Guerino is noted as a “thoroughly religious hero,” sometimes unlikably so for always making the right (moral) choice—possibly reflective both of Tullia’s place in Counter-Reformation Italy and her own identity as a former courtesan.
  • Tullia directly grapples with sources, notably handling different biographies of Muhammad and condemning Islam—especially in relation to women, but also offers nuanced “comparativist” glances at customs and societies.

• Narrative Innovation:

  • Tullia innovates by deploying an omniscient third-person narrator (contrasting Andrea Barberino’s frequent switches to first person), maintaining tragic tone and gender oscillation in the narrative voice—systematically shifting between masculine and feminine across the 36 cantos.

    “Her narrator oscillates genders between being a male and being a female. And it is a systematic...it goes back and forth throughout the entire text, which is very interesting.” — Julia Harston [32:00]

    “Compared to our modern concept of what travel is for, he [Guerrino] does not change. The Guerino on page one is identical to the Guerrino on page million. And he doesn’t learn from the Muslims or develop sympathy for the giants.” — John McLucas [33:36]

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5. Paratext: Tullia’s Address to Readers

[35:26 – 37:41]

• Tullia’s introduction is unusually direct, democratic, and aspirational in its vision of reading:

  "In reading, we can direct ourselves independently, following our own will entirely, whether alone, in company, briefly or at length, without expense, risk, harm or fatigue, and to our own full satisfaction and happiness...I am confident that I have produced for the world a book which will be very welcome on all sides, such as can be read with delight and usefulness by every kind of honorable and virtuous person." — (Tullia d'Aragona’s address, read by Kate Driscoll [35:26])

• This address forecasts a universal vision of readership, stressing pleasure, utility, and accessibility across gender and status.

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6. Teaching and Reception: Then and Now

[37:41 – 44:31]

• Classroom Reflection:

  • John McLucas describes teaching segments of the Moschino at Towson University to undergraduates, often as an introduction to early female authorship and Renaissance literature. Students appreciated its declared themes and the novelty of female authorship.
  • Julia Harston has taught it mainly within the context of autobiography and women’s writing; she argues for full engagement with large texts (e.g., reading The Book of the Courtier in its entirety).

• Pioneering Impact:

  • Tullia is almost certainly the first woman to have written a work of this scale—“maybe the first in the world to sit down and write a book of this length.”
    — John McLucas [44:31]
  • Her immediate impact on successors (e.g., Moderata Fonte, 1581) is suggested but not fully documented, leaving fertile ground for future scholarship.

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7. Future Directions and Research

[45:22 – 50:32]

• Julia Harston:

  • Planning an intellectual biography of Tullia, The Thorny Laurel: Tullia d'Aragona as Woman of Letters, and continues archival research, especially in Florence and Ferrara—areas still rich with unexplored materials.

• John McLucas:

  • Retired, not undertaking further formal research, but suggests fruitful areas for future scholars: the editorial history of the manuscript, textual discontinuities, and comparison with source texts.

“There are two noticeable discontinuities in the plot towards the end of the book...There might be clues that could be teased out of the existing text as to the ur text.”
— John McLucas [47:53]

• Final Recommendations:
  • Julia recommends John’s novels for those who enjoy his prose, with a lighthearted warning: “You have to be over 21 to read most of them!”
    — Julia Harston and John McLucas [50:32]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the rarity of women in 16th-century Italian literary lists:

  “We already noticed in 1976 that there was one female author, let's say one and a half prior to the late 19th century...Computa Donzella was on the list. But...many scholars thought that she was not a woman...”
  — John McLucas [05:53]

• On translation choices and compromises:

  "If I clarify, am I falsifying? Am I depriving the reader of the pleasure of deciphering the meaning with the tools which Tullia's first readers would have had?"
  — John McLucas [18:13]

• On gender-fluid narration:

  “Her narrator oscillates genders...And it goes back and forth throughout the entire text, which is very interesting.”
  — Julia Harston [32:00]

• On Guerino’s unchanging character:

  “Compared to our modern concept of what travel is for, he does not change. The Guerino on page one is identical to the Guerrino on page million.”
  — John McLucas [33:36]

• Tullia’s vision for all readers:

  "I am confident that I have produced for the world a book which will be very welcome on all sides, such as can be read with delight and usefulness by every kind of honorable and virtuous person.”
  — Tullia d'Aragona (translated and quoted by Kate Driscoll) [35:26]

• On Tullia’s trailblazing scope:

  “It’s not like, oh, well, there were 17 epics by women in Poland already, but she was the first in Italy. It’s like, no, she was maybe the first in the world to sit down and write a book of this length.”
  — John McLucas [44:31]

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Key Timestamps

• 01:29-02:18 — Host and guests introductions
• 02:19-05:40 — Julia Harston’s discovery of Tullia
• 05:53-08:28 — John McLucas’s entry into the project and reflections on women in literary history
• 09:31-15:11 — Context of epic genre and Tullia’s pivot to epic
• 16:22-22:35 — Translating Tullia: strategy, innovations, bilingual edition
• 23:36-35:26 — Plot structure, themes of travel and difference, characterization of Guerino
• 35:26-37:41 — Tullia’s preface to readers and her vision of literary audience
• 37:41-44:31 — Teaching the poem: classroom experiences and impact
• 44:31-45:22 — Pioneering impact and comparative scale in women’s literature
• 46:18-50:32 — Future research: biography, archival work, lingering scholarly questions
• 50:32-51:00 — Closing, lighthearted recommendation of John’s novels

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Concluding Notes

This vibrant episode underscores Tullia d’Aragona’s status as a literary pioneer—one who occupies a unique and understudied place in both early modern Italian literature and women’s literary history. Harston and McLucas’ new bilingual edition opens this challenging, rewarding text to students and scholars, illuminating Tullia’s skillful negotiation of epic form, gender, and cultural difference. The conversation closes with calls for further research, especially in archives, and hopes for a new generation of readers to continue turning on Tullia’s literary “light bulbs.”

Transcript

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[Kate Driscoll]

Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome to the New Books Network, the Italian Studies Channel. I'm your host, Kate Driscoll, Assistant professor of Italian at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. I have the special pleasure today to be joined by two guests on today's episode, Julia Harston and John McLucas, who've just completed a monumental bilingual edition, the Wretch, otherwise known as Guerino, by 16th century poet Tullia Darragona. The work was just published this year with Iter Press, part of the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe theory. It's a pleasure to be with both of you this morning, the full collaborative team. So, John and Julia, welcome and thank you so much for being here.

[Julia Harston]

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[John McLucas]

Thank you.

[Kate Driscoll]

So, Julia, I want to start with you because you mentioned in the introduction that this has been a project in the making for quite some time. 20 years, you name it. So it's really an extraordinary achievement in patience and perseverance. And I know that you've worked on Tullia for quite some time and in other respects too, on her lyric poetry, on her letters. So I'm wondering if you could give us an introduction to how Tulia first landed on your desk and what your journey with her has been like over these 20 plus years.

[Julia Harston]

Okay, great. Well, Tullia really was born out of a project for a conference that I co organized with Franca Cammies at the American Academy in Rome in 1998. And the topic of the conference was Women in Papal Rome. I did not present a paper at that conference, but in the aftermath we were planning on doing an edited collection. And so I started looking around for a woman, A and B, someone who was related to Rome. And quite frankly, at least in that period that I was interested in, which was mostly the 16th century, the choices were to women at two very different spectrum. One was Tullia Darragona, the courtesan poet, later poet, and the other was Vittoria Colonna. And looking at the two, although Vittoria really has probably wielded, not probably, but has definitely wielded much more influence in the world of Italian letters, I was drawn to Tullia. So in the aftermath of that, the book actually never came to fruition. But then I applied for a fellowship at the Velietati, which I won. And not being on the tenure track, I continued to work on the fellowship proposal that I had made, which was Tulia. Also, I should mention at the time there was a very important institute, a summer institute that had been organized by Albert Rabel, and I participated in that. And that was, I think, very important to me. And it was. I actually wrote the proposals for both her sonnet sequence as well as her epic poem the Wretch, and received instructions from them that we had to do first the sonnet sequence, her songbook, heri. So that's what happened. And over time, I have to say that I believe very much in working in archives, which is and requires also talents that I really don't have, such as incredible paleography skills. But it has been really fruitful so far in terms of reconstructing Tullia's life, which is also something that. And also I've had a number of different scholars who have generously passed along information to me. And I have to mention Philippa Jackson and Marcelo Simonetta have been wonderful. And anytime they come up Datulia in the archives, they just send me an email. And that has been very fruitful.

[Kate Driscoll]

That's so fantastic. I love that the story both starts and ends with collaboration, these conferences that lead to lingering questions for decades with new interlocutors. So, John, I'll ask you the same question. Right. What really brought you to Tullia's work?

[John McLucas]

Well, I was a Latin major in college, Latin Classics. And so when I decided to pursue a graduate degrees in Italian. It was natural for me to have kind of an attraction to, let's say, long form poetry. I'd written a thesis about the Aeneid as an undergraduate, and when I got to Yale graduate School in 1976 and almost immediately realized I would be working with Paolo Valencio as my supervisor, he liked my conversancy with Latin classics and he liked my interest in narrative poetry, let's put it that way, the author of my heart, if you want to call him that, is Ariosto. So I had a very fruitful several years of study of Ariosto, leading to my dissertation on gender roles in the Orlando Furioso. And that, I think instinctively put me in sympathy and solidarity with what was then a very, very new reality in Italian literary studies. The the reading list of Italian authors which my cohort made members and I were expected to start studying the first day we enrolled to prepare for our comprehensives four years later. We already noticed in 1976 that there was one female author, let's say one and a half prior to the late 19th century. I say half because the Computa Donzella was on the list. But if you looked at literary histories at that time, many, many scholars thought that she was not a woman, thought that that was a male poet mimicking the female voice. And Vittoria Colonna obviously was a great canonical poet. And people in my cohort were already starting to research women authors, especially in the Renaissance, Tita Rosenthal and Veroni Hasranko and so forth. So when the Tulia project came along, I found it fascinating and it matched my interest in epic and my not professional interest in women's writing. But it was a good match for things I cared about.

[Kate Driscoll]

That's so fantastic too, thinking about how the people that you met in graduate school contributed early on to the same series that is still so thriving today with the Other Voice that now it's under like we will. We don't have one and a half. We have 100 and a half, 100 half plus of women writers and still more to be worked on. And your volume just allows that to happen and it's in a particular genre. So with the second question, I'll go back to you, Julia. Because epic is so particular for a genre, John was just giving us the long literary history of it back to the classical period. So it's really rare that an early modern woman of the 16th century would have these resources and the time to dedicate it to it. So I'm wondering if, for Our listeners. You could contextualize historically what this means. What is she doing in epic? She spent so long, as you were telling us, right up in the lyric tradition, the epistolary tradition. And this pivot is both unique and how does she make it her own? Does she make it her own?

[Julia Harston]

Thank you. I think the pivot in her Life occurs in 1537, which is also an important year in terms of Italian history. And that is when her then I don't want to say supporter or but certainly someone who had helped her along the way. Filippo Strozzi was captured at the Battle of Montemurlo and imprisoned. And within a year and a half he was dead. It seems that he committed suicide. And it's that point that Tullia actually pivots from being what Georgina Masson had always called her, the intellectual courtesan, and bec from what I call a woman of letters. Although we know she wrote poetry before that, there are many instances of people referring to it. It's only after that point that she becomes more significantly involved in writing and in writing in different genres, as you had said. So I think probably most of the people who are listening here today know her as a woman philosopher because of her Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, which was published in 1547. And even the Medici court and the Medici, the Duke of Florence, Cosimo. I recognized her as both a poet and a philosopher. And that is written plain and clear in a document in the archives in Florence. So as she pivots in this regard, she publishes in 1547 both those works that you mentioned, her songbook and her dialogue. And at the end of her songbook, it's divided into different sections. And the last section includes not poems by her, but a number of poems by other people writing to her, praising her naturally. And one of them talks about her turning her desire towards Calliope and Cleo, so the muses of Epica and history. And soon after this. So that's in 47. We're assuming that it was before then that this event had occurred. We don't really have besides have many records of people referring to her writing an epic poem. So recently a letter has surfaced which talks about in which she wrote to Margherita d', Austria, who was the first wife of Alessandro de Medici, who was then murdered. And she later went on to marry and move to Piacenza. But her brother in law is Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. And there is a letter that exists somewhere in the world. And my appeal to whoever hears this, if they happen to know where it is, to let me know. And it was mentioned in an auction catalog in the early part of the 19th century, of the 20th century. And it had been in the hands of the Corvisieri, who was a paleographer and a man who worked in the State Archive in Realm. And the catalog says that in this letter, Tullia writes to Margherita Daustria asking her to thank her brother in law, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, for allowing her to leave the adventurous life. So the idea is that she had a stipend of some sort and she knew very well a number of people that he was in fact promoting, although the Farnese are very famous for being stingy. But at any rate, it would have allowed her the time and the space in order to write, which, in fact, that letter was from January of 1551. She died in. In March of 1556. She had already started the poem. So we're talking about a good number of years that she had to write the poem. And of course, it's a time that is incredibly interesting because it's really, it's in the midst, it's in the beginning of when there's a huge debate surrounding the text that John mentioned earlier, the Ludovico Ariostos, Orlando Furioso, complaints about it, people writing in favor. But there were many years before Tasso actually published. And so she's writing right at a time when there is a great deal of discussion regarding what an epic poem should be, how it should, you know, what kind of hero it should have. This is also at the same time when the works of Aristotle, the Poetics, is being reproposed in translation. Now we actually know that Tullia did know Latin. But, you know, I think it also, even those of us who do know Latin, it's a whole lot easier to read it in her own language than it is. So in that regard, I think she was struggling to find a place. And, you know, I think literary history assumes that the epic poem is the highest of writing that one aspires to. So it only makes sense that having experimented in other genres, she then took on the epic poem.

[Kate Driscoll]

So that brings to mind too just how much Ariosto, and this is a tribute also to John's dissertation and how rich the field the subfield is of women's and gender studies in Ariosto's poem really opened up a lot like a floodgate for women to intervene. And then it sounds like also in this time, to Laura Terracina's commenting and working through Ariosto Right, so there's a lot of entry points into Epic for women after 1532, as early as 1537, as you mentioned with that letter. So with how women reached Epic, I'm curious, John, in your translation of 28,000 lines of poetry, I think that rivals Adiostas quite admirably, 36 cantos a little bit less than his 42. This is no small feat. So many congratulations both to you and to Tullia on that matter. So, Julia just gave us this great overview of how Tullia found Epic. And I'm curious, in your own life, how did you find the translation? What were your goals as you approached it, and did it change over time as you were working on it?

[John McLucas]

Well, I'd like to start by contributing a couple observations on the question of genre, because as an Ariostista, I arrived at Tullia forgetting how unusual Ariosto was in his own terms, because he's now considered a canonical master. However, yes, he was highly controversial in his generation, and in fact, Tullia names him in her introduction. She mentions him with great admiration, but she objects to his occasional indecency and his not being a pure chaste work such as the one she's undertaking. That is intriguing to me, as I've mentioned in other contexts, because there's a lot of quite racy material in the Meschino. But what there also is, which is clearly a deviation from Ariosto, and of course Tasso didn't exist yet, so to speak, is the fact that she limits herself quite strictly to the tragic tone, that she doesn't have the overtly ribald or hilarious shifts of diction which make Ariosto so kind of quicksilver and dazzling. And she has, in particular, as a deviation from her immediate Italian language source, Andrea Barberino. By writing in poetry and dividing the text into canti, she gives herself almost the responsibility of writing a dignified proem to each canto. And her diction in those is extremely different from the narrative sections of each canto. That is, the canto begins with this very lofty, usually invocation of some kind, in which the verse is naughty. It's proto baroque in its complexity and sort of striving for effect and dignity. And then she goes into a much more discursive style in the. In the actual storytelling. What I did find very early on was that I had to translate her into prose. I needed to get the content across. And the content to me is extremely interesting, varied, rich, intriguing. And her actual compositional style would be an obstacle for most Readers in English, she plays very, very. I wouldn't say she plays fast and loose. I would say she takes extreme advantage of the ability of Italian poetry to reverse the subject and the direct object of a verb in the word order. And there were countless passages which were completely opaque to me until Corsier's critical edition of Andrea was published in 2005. And if you read Andrea's prose, it's obvious who's the subject of the verb and who's the direct object. I mentioned in my note also at the introduction of this volume, she's very free in her use of possessive pronouns. So the word sewall in all its forms might refer to any of seven people present in the episode she's talking about. If you read Andrea, it's obvious whose sword it is, but in Tulia, it's often not. And I think between footnotes and occasional bracketing, Julia and I have pretty well clarified that. The thing I faced as a translator, I guess my decision was I need to get the story across legibly. And there were times when, frankly, and I think any translator will understand my pain in this. There were times when I thought, I am improving this book. A person can read this octave and understand the literal meaning much better than if they were reading the Italian, even with native Italian. And then you think, if I clarify, am I falsifying? Am I depriving the reader of the pleasure of deciphering the meaning with the tools which Tullia's first readers would have had? So that was kind of my camino with the translation. I worked very methodically. I just started at the beginning and went straight through. And the most drastic revisions came first when cursieti came out and I was able to understand the literal meaning in some places where I had not previously. And then second, when Julia successfully negotiated for the book to be issued in a bilingual edition, which I think immensely, immeasurably increases its value to the academy. The knowledge that the reader would have the Italian on the left page made it possible for me to eliminate about 500 notes where I might have put. Might have quoted the Italian in my note, because I wasn't absolutely positive how to translate it. And that becomes unnecessary if the reader has access to the Italian text. So that was a really joyous process of eliminating notes that were no longer required.

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[Kate Driscoll]

Absolutely. And so congratulations Julia and John then, for getting more bilingual editions of Italian texts on the market. Because as you say, John, it just facilitates reading and going between the two languages much more easily. So I want to pivot on two words that you just said, John, to describe the plot. You said it's varied and that it's rich. So if we can speak for a little bit about the plot, this is a question for both of you. And this epic hero, Moschino, is on the move a lot throughout this story. And you describe him, Julia, as a thoroughly religious hero. And he does, as all good epic heroes do, which is go out in the world to try to find his sense of self channeled through his family origins. And he's participating in this tradition of epics that are about displacement and exile and the search for where does the individual fit in a broader community. And along the way, as you detail so carefully and as John you render so clear in the translation, is that Guarino has this massive appetite for travel. It's about self knowledge, but it's also about experience of the world and all of its latitudes and longitudes. So in this travel, he's also hungry to learn about customs and adventures kind of everywhere he goes, from Constantinople to India to Mecca to Ethiopia to Egypt to Rome and then onto Ireland, because he has to of course, descend into the underworld. And the list goes on and on. But for you both, I'm just curious. Guerino's what do Guarino's travels, how do they make the poem so rewarding? And given where we are right now in Italian studies, what do they reveal to us about these early modern encounters that Tullia is steeping herself right in with difference, with otherness, with alterity? How is that translated or facilitated through this ambitious travel.

[Julia Harston]

Well, I think one thing that I would mention, and I was looking at this earlier, is I'm wondering to what degree, and it only occurred to me this afternoon, and you would think after 20 years, why hadn't this occurred to you earlier? But is to what degree he is also emulating Alexander the Great because he is so many times making references to Alexander the Great. I'm thinking also of the, you know, the Petrarchan reference as well. And so, I mean, there is something with that. There's also obviously the fact that she was following a plot that had been given to her by Andrea Barberino. So in one sense, it's really, as you put it, Kate, talking about the hero rather than talking about specific choices that Tullia made. One choice that Tulia did make. An issue that has to do with difference is that she differentiates from a couple of different instances, but one in particular regards her use of different biographies of Muhammad. And she says specifically that although her source text says one thing, she thinks another. And then she goes on to give two different versions of Muhammad's life, as one might expect in those years, a condemnation of Islam. And I should also say that she several times makes condemnations of Islam that have to do with its treatment as regards women. So there are some sort of feminist gestures on her part as regards the role of women and the fact that, you know, in Christianity you can only have one wife instead of two. I, you know, one thing that I would. That I would like to return just a little bit to what John said earlier. You know, he is thoroughly religious indeed, her character. And I have gone so far as to say almost that sometimes I find him a bit unlikable in that he never has moments of temptation. He always makes the right choice, the moral, right choice. Now, is this an indication of the time period that she was writing in? Is this an indication of, I mean, she's writing during Trent, basically, or is this an indication of a former courtesan who needs to be properly moral in some ways? And finally, the last aspect of this, that again, it's a difference between her text and Andrea's, is that she writes, except for the preface, she writes in the third person. And whereas Andrea writes in the first person, and I think it allows the reader to some degree to feel closer to him than we do with an omniscient narrator that she uses.

[John McLucas]

In that regard, she made an interesting choice in adapting Andrea. And of course, she doesn't name Andrea at any point, but you can prove Textually, that she was looking at his Italian text. She, unlike Andrea, sticks to one narrator. And Andrea has passages in which there's the omniscient narrator, who we might call Andrea. And then, almost without transition, he will quote directly from Guarino's memoirs. And so there are passages in the Guerino of Andrea which are in. In Guarino's own voice. And I think it's awkward. It makes it seem sort of like it wasn't written by a professional. He does say at one point early on, oh, and by the way, I have a manuscript here. But he doesn't say, and now, getting back to Guarino's voice, here's what he says. He just suddenly shifts voice. And that would be not only chaotic, but. But maybe less. It wouldn't fit with the tragic tone that she's adopting the seriousness of her text. And I would note also that she introduces two systematic thematic elements which are not present in Andrea. First of all, she constantly emphasizes the extraordinary beauty of Guerino. That is, you know, there's a passage I love where Andrea says the young woman admired Guerino because he was strong and his armor was very becoming to him. And Tullia says, because he had borne beauty since his cradle, just because he's very good looking. That's not what Andrea says at all. And then also, well, in an interesting woman's voice way. Tullia concentrates much, much, much, much more on the feelings of women in the story than Andrea does, and feelings in general. She's much more sentimental about epic friendship, like the relationships between Guerino and his three or four best friends that he travels with and journeys with. Emotionally, those descriptions are much more intense than in Andrea. But downside, she is harshly critical of women's immorality in ways that Andrija is not. That is really a sub theme that goes exactly with what Julia just said about her presentation as a woman who formerly led a different kind of life and who is in harmony with the Church.

[Julia Harston]

Great. If I might add here. So we've made Guarino out to sound like someone who's thoroughly unlikable, and I don't think that's true. Also, getting back to the question of the narrator, I think that we should say one is that she makes an. Although she has no ribald sort of events taking place or any kind of slapstick humor, but she does have an ironic voice, lots of prescription. She'll say something that is just a little. When you're reading it, you pause and you think, did she do that on purpose or not, but so it's very subtle. The other thing that is not subtle at all and is very interesting and has garnered quite a bit of discussion is the fact that her narrator oscillates genders between being a male and being a female. And it is a systematic. It occurs systematically of all 36 kanti. So she'll. And she at one point says that, you know, she's. She, although she's talked swords and blood, even though she's a woman. And other times, and a lot of times, of course, with the Italian, you can't tell what the gender is because it's being hidden either by a present tense or. But I mean, if you look at all Kanti, it is systematically one the other another. And it goes back and forth throughout the entire text, which is very interesting.

[John McLucas]

I think the teachable text is the Proem Tikanto 3 Do you agree, Julio? In which she literally embeds a masculine adjective between two feminine adjectives referring to herself. And I think that was very skillfully ambiguous in the writing. One thing about Guerrino that strikes me, he's not exactly likable or unlikable, but compared to our modern concept of what travel is for, he does not change. The Guerino on page one is identical to the Guerrino on page Million. And he doesn't learn from the Muslims or develop sympathy for the giants. And some of Tullia's comments that Julia just referred to are little freciatine. Sometimes, anthropologically, she, the narrator, will be sympathetic. For instance, if these people are eating dinner seated on the floor. In one context she might say, that's indecent. You can see the men's private parts if they're not careful. But in another context she'll say, well, that's similar to what we saw in Rome during the Jubilee or something like pilgrims in Rome, when they stay in inexpensive hostels, they eat on the floor sometimes. So there are things like that where she's very comparativist and pais equivalle kind of. And other places where she's quite strict and judgmental and Guerino is impervious to change. She's just Guerino always.

[Kate Driscoll]

But it's so fascinating to think about these ways that she's exploiting, I think I hate to always bring her back to Adiosto. But it does seem so fascinating, this relationship between the ambiguous, ambivalent narrator and in Tullia's case, the author that wants to tell you, at least from the get go how to read the text and who she's writing it for. So I want to pivot now to kind of from the plot to the paratext and get into one of these elements that I think makes this text so, so delightfully unique and something that I really gravitate to selfishly, because of my own research. But this is Tullia's address to her readers at the very beginning. And I want to quote your translation itself in two parts. So in this address to the reader, Tullia reflects, quote, in reading, we can direct ourselves independently, following our own will entirely, whether alone, in company, briefly or at length, without expense, risk, harm or fatigue, and to our own full satisfaction and happiness. And then towards the end of the note, she continues assertively, I am confident that I have produced for the world a book which will be very welcome on all sides, such as can be read with delight and usefulness by every kind of honorable and virtuous person. So it seems interesting here that she's imagining this great every kind of honorable and virtuous person, this diversity and also kind of singularity, and whether or not her hero gets to participate in that mix. So I think we can say kudos to Tullio for imagining reading in this really capacious way, transformational way, and imagining kind of its universal applicability to all audiences. And I want to then bring this question to where you imagine this text, how it working with readers today. I can't help but think I teach always on Epic and on women writers, so I can't wait to bring it into my own class. Is that one space where you see this text functioning, its bilingual nature makes it accessible to readers of either Italian or of English, ideally of both. So have you brought this text into classrooms? Have students looked at it? How do you envision the readers the way that Tullia does?

[John McLucas]

Well, I have occasionally taught passages of the Moschino. My whole career was at Towson University, which is. Personally, I wish we could just wave a wand and change the name to Maryland State, but that's what it is. It's the second university in the public system of Maryland. But literally none of my students ever became an Italian professor. And I taught Italian 101 probably 40 or 50 times in the course of my career. And then in the junior or senior years of students who continued, we would do things like a literary survey 1 and 2. And at that time, of course, our text wasn't out, so my students would read photocopies of Passages of the 1561 edition, the Sessa edition, original edition of Tulia. And to my surprise, I would almost say they liked it better than I did. Places I would say, notice the word repetition in these octaves. And they would say, well, she's declaring a theme. She's, you know, it's not unartful, it's philosophical or its content. And the students also, they had fun because they were learning to decipher the 16th century print with the ligature on the double S and the use of V and U as capital or minuscule letters. So they were enjoying that. But the beginning of Kanto 3, you know, we all agreed was. Was more than playful. It was intriguing and kind of bold and it worked. Now I. I do have to say that I never in my teaching career because I did not have students who were majoring in Italian or planning to go to graduate school in Italian. I always dealt with questions of do you like this book or does this book affect your life? You know, when we read Dante, they would talk about their roommates having obsessions that they thought were unhealthy and that helped them understand Paolo and Francesca without saying that adultery is a sin. You know, things like that. So we were very what does this book mean to you? And given that they were reading only maybe two or three pages total out of the book because it would be part of a survey course and it was not focused on women. They loved the fact that it was written by a woman that they'd never heard of. They might have heard of Vittoria Colonna, even with their level of general reading, but they never heard of Tulia. And then they kind of thought of. They thought of as maybe her or her voice as being kind of a good sport. They thought it was fun or they thought it was intriguing or, you know, so it was. It teaches, you know, it. It works in the classroom. If my students had been more. Had had a broader, deeper bibliography, I think I would have taught it a completely different way. But it works as. And I sidebar about Ariosto, when I taught him in English in the English department one time, I was astonished at how carefully and graspingly these students read Orlando Furioso in the Barbara Reynolds translation. They knew every twist of plot more than I did after studying them for decades. And a friend of mine said, well, they read Harry Potter. And I went, duh. Yes. And I think Tullia benefits from that same world.

[Julia Harston]

My experience has been more teaching, as you preface, really in the context of an ego document and the expansion of life writing. And that just really happens to do. Happens to occur because of the particular classes that I have taught. I, too, have almost virtually always taught. And although I'm delighted to hear that you have taught entire epics, I can't say that I would ever take that on in the sense of one really. I feel I'm one of those people who feels like you need to read something in its entirety. And so for years were maybe teaching one or two books of Castiglione's, books of the Courtier. I would always have my students read the entire thing. Of course, they planned. They complained about it, but later said, you know, it was useful because I spoke to that. So I think that there is a possibility of teaching the text in an undergraduate context. I think it more likely, also because of the nature of the poetry itself, that it was useful to. In the context of courses on women's writing. And as we sort of delve more into the possibility of looking at issues of intertextuality between women writers, I mean, that's something, I think, that is occurring now, certainly with some, not always with others. Of course, we don't really have a lot of information about the reception of the Moschino or the Wretch. It was published once, as John said, in 1561. Although the frontispiece says 1560. Archival information has revealed that it was in 1561. And of course, it was almost 20 years before another woman wrote or tried to write epic, at least that we know of now, as we mentioned before, you head back into the archives and things begin to surface. But, you know, Floridoro is 1581, and we have a number of different examples since that. So Tullia was very much of a trailblazer in that regard, Although, you know, we don't really have a sense so far of how many. How many light bulbs she turned on in others.

[John McLucas]

I think we can brag about that more than we do because we say first Italian woman epic. And I think I'm not aware of books of any genre in any country written by women of this massive length. I mean, this is a huge, huge book. And it's not like, oh, well, there were 17 epics by women in Poland already, but she was the first in Italy. It's like, no, she was maybe the first in the world to sit down and write a book of this length.

[Julia Harston]

You are right. We are being careful, scholars, because some people have hypothesized that in the 13th century there was a German epic poem that was possibly written by a woman, although it was. You know, there's. We don't really know. So I vote for Tullia. I agree. Yeah, I do too.

[Kate Driscoll]

And as you say, Julia too, I mean, how many light bulbs she turned on. There are also these intertextual light bulbs. And John gave us that great anecdote about Tullia describing Guerrino with all of this language about how attractive he is. I mean, that is what gets eaten up by the women, starting with Fonte in 1581 on. And they're caught in the moment where those Tasso versus Ariosta debates are on fire. And so there's a light bulb. We don't know how bright, but it's there. And your volume will encourage those electricians, literary scholars, to. To dive in. So we've reached our last question, which is asking about the future in a way. So we know readers are going to dive into this book, classrooms are going to get to Tulia somehow. But I'm curious for you both, what lingers next? Does Tullia stay on your desks or do you sail onto other waters?

[Julia Harston]

Well, I am still working on Tullia, very much so. In fact, I was just before this planning a trip to the archives in Florence, because every time I go, I find something. It's really quite extraordinary and a lot of it has to do with. You were talking about the preface. I have an essay on her preface to the readers, which is coming out in a volume that I co edited with Milena Sabato, who's an Italian historian on women as readers in early modern Italy. And that will be out in the fall of 2020. And. And I look at length at her, at her preface, and kind of what she's trying to do with it and the sorts of advice she's giving to women readers in general. Project is to write an intellectual biography of Tullia. The title is the Thorny Laurel Tullia Darragona as Woman of Letters. There's some issues here that the archives in Ferrara have been closed now for five or six years because of architectural reasons. But I'm hopeful that there and find something because we know a lot of interesting things happened when she was in Ferrara and that was pretty much from 1537 to 1540 to 43. We're not quite sure, at any rate. Yeah. So I'm all about.

[Kate Driscoll]

With a great title, no less.

[John McLucas]

I love the title.

[Kate Driscoll]

Yeah.

[John McLucas]

Looking forward to reading the book. So I am fully retired from academics, so I'm not planning on working on Tulia or any author, certainly for publication. I do something that I wish we knew more about was Tullia's attitude to the manuscript at the time of her death. And I think there may be. I mean, did she leave a fair copy ready for the printer or did she. We know that Julia mentions in the introduction the possible redaction of the manuscript before it went to Sesa for to be set up. But some issues that intrigue me and that I would would be happy to have someone else study. There are two noticeable discontinuities in the plot towards the end of the book and I didn't do enough analysis from one octave to the next to see if there might be pages missing or if it's just that she chose not to do those episodes that are present in Andrea. Or possibly did she have a defective copy of the Quirino. But Alessandro, who is one of the best friend companions of Guerrino, is absent from the action and then suddenly is back without explanation. And he's been a companion of travels. But then he went home to Constantinople and then suddenly he's just like saying hi and nobody says where have you been? Or oh my God, we were so worried. Or how's your father? It's just like he's back. And you think that's explained in Andrea and the death of Vastiladoro, who's the wicked king who besieges Constantinople in the first books. His death in battle is described in Andrea and absent in Tullia. And I think there might be clues that could be teased out of the existing text as to the ur text, you know, the manuscript. So I think that's. There's some pending questions.

[Julia Harston]

So although John very modestly did not say so, he also has a life as a novel writer. And I would urge you, you can look on Amazon and buy one of his three novels that are published. And he continues to write. So if you like his prose, you know where to go.

[John McLucas]

You have to be over 21 to read most of them, but I think that that works with our book.

[Kate Driscoll]

There we might be there in this group. Those sound like such lively projects and such promising cues for future research. Thank you both so much. I have so loved learning about Tullia. I loved reading this poem. I look forward to spending more time with it. It has been a delight and pleasure speaking with you. So thank you so much for being here.

[Julia Harston]

Thank you. It's been lovely to talk about Tulip.