Ebook115 pages3 hours
Dialogue on the Infinity of Love
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this ebook
Celebrated as a courtesan and poet, and as a woman of great intelligence and wit, Tullia d'Aragona (1510–56) entered the debate about the morality of love that engaged the best and most famous male intellects of sixteenth-century Italy. First published in Venice in 1547, but never before published in English, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love casts a woman rather than a man as the main disputant on the ethics of love.
Sexually liberated and financially independent, Tullia d'Aragona dared to argue that the only moral form of love between woman and man is one that recognizes both the sensual and the spiritual needs of humankind. Declaring sexual drives to be fundamentally irrepressible and blameless, she challenged the Platonic and religious orthodoxy of her time, which condemned all forms of sensual experience, denied the rationality of women, and relegated femininity to the realm of physicality and sin. Human beings, she argued, consist of body and soul, sense and intellect, and honorable love must be based on this real nature.
By exposing the intrinsic misogyny of prevailing theories of love, Aragona vindicates all women, proposing a morality of love that restores them to intellectual and sexual parity with men. Through Aragona's sharp reasoning, her sense of irony and humor, and her renowned linguistic skill, a rare picture unfolds of an intelligent and thoughtful woman fighting sixteenth-century stereotypes of women and sexuality.
Sexually liberated and financially independent, Tullia d'Aragona dared to argue that the only moral form of love between woman and man is one that recognizes both the sensual and the spiritual needs of humankind. Declaring sexual drives to be fundamentally irrepressible and blameless, she challenged the Platonic and religious orthodoxy of her time, which condemned all forms of sensual experience, denied the rationality of women, and relegated femininity to the realm of physicality and sin. Human beings, she argued, consist of body and soul, sense and intellect, and honorable love must be based on this real nature.
By exposing the intrinsic misogyny of prevailing theories of love, Aragona vindicates all women, proposing a morality of love that restores them to intellectual and sexual parity with men. Through Aragona's sharp reasoning, her sense of irony and humor, and her renowned linguistic skill, a rare picture unfolds of an intelligent and thoughtful woman fighting sixteenth-century stereotypes of women and sexuality.
Related to Dialogue on the Infinity of Love
Related ebooks
Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems and Selected Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Paternal Tyranny Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZayde: A Spanish Romance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarina Tsvetaeva: The Essential Poetry Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Memoirs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems of Jane Austen, a Classic Collection Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen Artists, Women Exiles: "Miss Grief" and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vittoria Colonna Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Sonnets: A Bilingual Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lily Briscoe's Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury, Modernism, and China Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShakespeare as a Way of Life: Skeptical Practice and the Politics of Weakness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAphra Behn: A Secret Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poet's Tomb, The: The Material Soul of Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMedieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sand - Flaubert Letters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMen, Women and Ghosts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, Epic, and Transition in British Romanticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsActs of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night and Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Innocence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlesh Made Word: Medieval Women Mystics, Writing, and the Incarnation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPygmalion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Social Science For You
Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Get Ideas Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Close Encounters with Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lonely Dad Conversations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Dialogue on the Infinity of Love
Rating: 3.874999975 out of 5 stars
4/5
4 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Dialogue on the Infinity of Love - Tullia d'Aragona
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1