Introduction: Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on Stampa’s engagement with notions of the sublime and Cinquecento Neoplatonism. Federico Schneider examines Stampa’s reformulation of love pains in sublime terms, and the transformation of the Petrarchan poet-lover into a figura Christi. Ann Rosalind Jones analyzes the interplay of objective social challenges, amorous longing, jealousy, and compensatory strategies in Stampa’s poems for and against her inaccessible aristocratic lover, Collaltino di Collalto. Angela Matilde Capodivacca re-examines the famous poetic exchange between Gaspara Stampa and Hyppolita Mirtilla one of the first known exchanges between women poets. Kennedy shows how in the company of the literary men named in her Rime Stampa comes to represent a precocious professionalism all her own, disowning their amateur status and reinforcing the seriousness of her career aspirations. In the sense, Stampa has consistently been defined as part of a virtual community of women writers.