Veronica Gambara: Widowhood, poetry, and power in Italian Renaissance court culture

This dissertation investigates how the poetry produced by Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) throughout her reign as the governing widow dowager Countess of Correggio (1519-1550) related in a meaningful way to her political status as a ruling widow dowager. Gambara's poetry has been relatively overlooked by contemporary study. This is partly the result of past critical approaches to Petrarchism, and especially to early modern female lyricists within the tradition, which generally disfavored a poet of Gambara's attributes. This dissertation addresses the need for a critical study of Gambara's poetry by presenting the first historically contextualized analysis of a selection of Gambara's verse. Specifically, this study draws on the theoretical model provided by Ann Rosalind Jones, who argues that early modern female poets must be examined with an awareness of the cultural systems within which they operated. This dissertation sheds light on the social milieu within which Gambara functioned---that is, under a system of widowhood ideologies, and within a set of ideologies specific to women as political agents in the Northern Italian princely court---and examines how Gambara negotiated, and even advanced, her status within the political and cultural realms of sixteenth century Italy through her lyric production. My analysis comprehensively investigates the connection between Gambara's literary activity and her political status, and points the way toward a critical study of Gambara's complete oeuvre.