Fraught relations in the letters of Laura Cereta: marriage, friendship, and humanist epistolarity.
Laura Cereta is unique among Quattrocento female humanists in directly addressing the position of women as wives and as friends in her substantial corpus of erudite Latin epistolary prose. Questioning the ideals that governed intellectual, social, and personal expectations of matrimony, Cereta's letters reflect her self-consciously double status as humanist and spouse. Her fierce critique of marriage as a site of female oppression and complicity implies an alternative that requires of humanists, husbands, and wives a radical rethinking of marriage in terms of friendship, as well as of the very project of humanist epistolarity.
Gill
Amyrose McCue
AM
Cornell Univ.
D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D015709:Correspondence as Topic / Q000266:history; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005195:Family Relations / Q000208:ethnology / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D033062:Friends / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D006608:Hierarchy, Social; D049668:History, 15th Century; D006808:Humanism / Q000266:history; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008393:Marriage / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology; D012924:Social Conditions / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D012945:Social Values / Q000208:ethnology; D018454:Spouses / Q000193:education / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology; D014930:Women / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D016387:Women's Health / Q000191:economics / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014933:Women's Rights / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence