| In an attempt to nuance two models of the courtesan offered by recent literature, this dissertation examines the writings of three Renaissance courtesans, Camilla Pisana, Tullia d'Aragona, and Veronica Franco, bringing together published and archival sources. Through the investigation of their exercise of self-fashioning, that is, their attempts to improve their circumstances by defining their place within social interactions, this work demonstrates that the courtesan was neither a proto-feminist nor a passive purveyor of conventional gender strictures. Rather, the courtesans are shown to have exercised individual agency, enacted through writing, but to have had limited success in influencing positively the way they were imagined and treated by contemporaries.;In order to elucidate the nature of the courtesans' self-definition, the dissertation examines various aspects of their exercise, laying out both the common difficulties these women faced and the differing strategies they pursued in response. The first chapter details each of the women and their works, and offers a brief overview of general contemporary views of the courtesan in law and literature. Chapter 2 connects generalized views of the courtesan to the particularized notions and actions of these women's closest acquaintances. The chapter also elucidates each courtesan's perception of these attacks, which ultimately engendered the particular strategies each employed in her redefinition. The third chapter argues that each courtesan's immediate aim shaped the particular definition she embraced. Most importantly, it contrasts d'Aragona's and Franco's self-definition as poets, and thus public figures, with Pisana's characterization of herself as a perfect wife. This dichotomy problematizes current understandings of the courtesan as always seeking public acclaim and thus challenging the public/private gender divide characteristic of Renaissance patriarchy. These issues are then complicated in Chapter 4 by a study of the courtesan's patronage ties and friendship claims, contrasting the hierarchical nature of patronage with the egalitarian ideals of friendship, and the ways in which Pisana and d'Aragona, particularly, negotiated between the two. Their claims elucidate the complex nature of the courtesans' relationship to their addressees and how these intricate associations compelled them to define themselves in a variety of ways, never allowing for a single definition. |
