Un Livre du Courtisan au féminin : notes sur la Ginipedia de Vincenzo Nolfi, dramaturge vénitien

Abstract

This paper focuses on Vincenzo Nolfi’s treatise Ginipedia ovvero avvertimenti civili per donna nobile, published in Venice in 1631. The treatise belongs to the long tradition of manuals of manners, but as it is dedicated for the first time to women – more precisely to the writer’s wife – it reveals the particular, rather favourable, status of women in the Serenissima Republic. Its circulation also coincided with the development and golden age of opera, which gave women a prominent place in musical theatre. The author, who was also a dramatist, belonged to the Accademia degli Incogniti, which played an important role in this development. The last chapters of the treatise, devoted to the behaviour of the lady in banquets, concerts and theatres, bear witness to this and emphasize it by the metatheatrical dimension of the Favola d’Imeneo, inserted in the middle of the treatise, as an allegorical dramatisation of the writer’s wedding. More generally, the aim will be to analyse the particular relationship that the female audience has with the theatrical world in general, and with opera in particular, especially through an interesting parallel between the female portrait painted by the playwright in his treatise and the heroines of Venetian operas.

Keywords

• Venice
• women
• seventeenth century
• treatise
• pedagogy
• conduct books