| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Anthony F. D'Elia. The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy. (Harvard Historical Studies, number 146.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. 262. $49.95.
This book views marriage, gender, and power politics in Renaissance Italy from a previously overlooked vantage point: that of the wedding orations composed by humanists for the rulers and nobility of the Italian courts. The ancient genre of the prose epithalamium, revived by Guarino Guarini for his Este patrons in the early 1420s, spread beyond Ferrara to other courts, especially Naples, Milan, and Rimini, where it remained popular until the early sixteenth century, when music, dance, and theater became the favored wedding entertainments. According to Anthony F. D'Elia, nuptial oratory not only expressed the new values and aspirations of the courtly class but also provided a framework for the Reformation debates on marriage and celibacy in the following century.	1
Of particular interest are D'Elia's findings with regard to the treatment of women. He notes that "while there were clearly different expectations for men and women in Italian courts, brides and grooms were often praised in surprisingly similar ways," and they were both ideally "wealthy, powerful, beautiful, learned, and passionate" (pp. 115–116). Moreover, "some courtly orators praise specific women for their political acumen, humanist learning, and rhetorical ability" (p. 108). Such representations are in tune with defenses of women and catalogues of illustrious women written in court circles during the same period, attesting to the greater agency and influence of elite women in the Italian Renaissance courts, especially Ferrara, compared to the republican centers of Florence and Venice (see also Stephen Kolsky's The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy [2005]).	. . .

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