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A Rediscovered Friendship in the Republic of Letters: The Unpublished Correspondence of Arcangela Tarabotti and Ismaël Boulliau*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lynn Lara Westwater
Lynn Lara Westwater*
Affiliation:
The George Washington University
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Abstract

The correspondence between the radical Venetian pro-female polemicist and nun Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–52) and the Copernican French astronomer Ismaël Boulliau (1605–94) — here published for the first time — shows how one of Tarabotti's most controversial works made it to press. She had long and unsuccessfully sought in Italy and in France to print the work, which was, puzzlingly, published two years after her death in Holland. It was subsequently placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Charting the explosive work's journey to France and its later arrival and reception in Holland, the Tarabotti-Boulliau correspondence provides a case study in the circulation of unorthodox ideas in seventeenth-century Europe. By showing Tarabotti's firm inscription in the well-connected scientist's intellectual circle, the letter exchange furthermore contributes to our expanding notions of women's participation in the Republic of Letters, while also suggesting a confluence of radical scientific and social views.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 67 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Elissa Weaver, Diana Robin, Michael Sherberg, Leah Chang, Masha Belenky, and the anonymous RQ readers for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also indebted to Diana Robin and John Ziolkowski for their help with the Latin and Greek translations, and to Joseph Levi and Elizabeth Fisher for advice on translation and transcription. Peter Prokop, Ingeborg Formann, and Friedrich Simader of the Austrian National Library provided invaluable help with the manuscript in their collection. The George Washington University helped me to complete this research with a University Facilitating Fund Award.

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