Love Enamored and Driven Mad by Lucrezia Marinella

Reviewed by: Love Enamored and Driven Mad by Lucrezia Marinella Amy Sinclair Love Enamored and Driven Mad. By Lucrezia Marinella. Ed. and trans. by Janet E. Gomez and Maria Galli Stampino. (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 72, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 567) Toronto: Iter Press; Tempe, AZ: ACMRS Press. 2020. xviii+ 209 pp. $41.95. ISBN 978–0–86698–625–0. Janet E. Gomez and Maria Galli Stampino’s translation presents, for the first time in English, one of Lucrezia Marinella’s less familiar yet no less significant works: Amore innamorato et impazzato (1618). Its publication in 2020 alongside translations of Valeria Miani’s Amorous Hope and Arcangela Tarabotti’s Convent Paradise and Antisatire—all part of The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series—has spotlighted the dynamism and diversity of women’s writing in seventeenth-century Venice. Marinella’s importance within this milieu and early modern literary history more broadly is brought to the fore with this English translation of Amore innamorato. An allegorical poem written in ottava rima, the work is a novel revisioning of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche. By the time of its publication in 1618, Marinella had already published a number of hagiographic works, her ground-breaking feminist treatise La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne, co’ diffetti et mancamenti de gli huomini (1601), and the pastoral romance Arcadia felice (1605). In keeping with her eclectic œuvre, Amore innamorato is underpinned by Marinella’s erudition in classical and contemporary literature and marked by innovations in the representation of gender. As Gomez and Stampino argue in their Introduction, Marinella’s rewriting of the story of Cupid and Psyche ‘turns this plot—and its gendered character traits—upside down’ (p. 1). The introduction to the translation includes an overview of Marinella’s biography and diverse corpus, and an accessible summary of key sources (including Dante’s Divine Comedy and Ovid’s Metamorphoses) and their influences on Amore innamorato. Particularly helpful is the detailed description of the work’s relationship with the principal source text (the Cupid and Psyche myth in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses; or, The Golden Ass). The editors highlight Marinella’s maternal and devoted Venus, and violent and narcissistic Cupid, as key subversions of Apuleius’s overly emotional, belligerent, and self-centred Venus and more favourable depiction of Cupid. Gomez and Stampino also note the significance of Marinella’s allegory in which male characters represent concupiscence (Cupid) and irascibility (Iridio) while the female character Ersilia represents rationality: ‘Marinella bestows the most prestigious allegorical role on the only female human character’ (p. 20). The editors also point to exciting opportunities for further research with their identification of the notable breadth of knowledge of the natural world exhibited in Amore innamorato—about comets and astronomy, flowers, trees, animals, and geography (pp. 44–45). Such analysis would extend our understanding of Marinella’s significance, as argued by Meredith Ray, among women at the vanguard of early modern scientific culture (Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)). Similarly, [End Page 722] the editors’ suggestion of Amore innamorato’s possible influence on Giovan Battista Marino’s L’Adone (1623) deserves further investigation, as does the broader reception and influence of Marinella’s text within Seicento academic and literary circles. Gomez and Stampino’s translation is a pleasure to read. The ten cantos are neatly formatted to parallel the original, with clear distinctions between the argument and allegory which introduce each canto and the poem itself. The editors’ notes elucidate the text’s extensive references, particularly to classical mythology. Amore innamorato is arguably one of Marinella’s most engaging works, and this translation will be of interest to scholars (including non-specialists) and students alike. Its central themes of emotion, ego, the pursuit of power, and unrequited love are enriched by Marinella’s revisionist approach to classical and early modern paradigms of gender. With Venus and Ersilia steadfast in their virtuousness, it is Cupid’s subjection to fiery emotions and narcissism that drives the destruction in the narrative. Cupid crafting his malicious arrow in...

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