Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This essay traces parallel developments in the myths and legends associated with the historical noblewoman Marfisa d’Este (1554–1608) and her literary counterpart Marfisa, the warrior knight from chivalric romance epic poetry. Through the Este princess’s embrace of her cross-dressing fictional double in courtly performance, alongside the evolution of the figure “Marfisa bizzarra” in Italian mock epic, the intermedial afterlives of these two figures reinterpreted the women’s brazen, autonomous agency as nefarious, destructive desire. Fantasies of decadent-turned-grim Ferrara, Marfisa’s native city in poetic and historical terms, guided overlapping acts of reception and transmission between the fifteenth and twenty-first centuries.
Source: Renaissance Quarterly
DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2024.432
Author: Kate Driscoll
Institution: Duke University
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,450
OpenAlex ID: W4410070148