Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University Marilyn Migiel collaborated with New Books Network to release a podcast about her book Veronica Franco in Dialogue.
Hosted by Assistant Professor of Italian and Romance Studies at Duke University Kate Driscoll, the podcast dives into the subject matter of Professor's Migiel's work on Veronica Franco, a sixteenth century Italian courtesan and writer who was embraced as a feminist icon in the late twentieth century.
Migiel's book received many positive reviews, and won the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award in 2021. The award committee stated her "analysis will have a substantial impact on the canonical interpretation of Franco and on future analyses of early modern women writers." It is the third MLA award collected by Professor Migiel who has been studying Veronica Franco since the 1980's, and began formal work on her manuscript about six years before winning the prize. Veronica Franco in Dialogue was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2022.
The book offers a nuanced approach to Franco's writing and rhetorical strategies through a close examination of her poetic work focusing on the first poems in Franco's collection Terze rime, published in 1575. Professor Migiel explores how Franco creates her own identity through a literary exchange with an unknown male author, and seeks to understand the parts of Franco's work left unaddressed by other scholars.
Per the NBN site Kate Driscoll is a specialist of early modern Italian and European literary and cultural history. She is interested in women’s and gender studies, performance history, and the histories of diplomacy and sociality. The Italianist and the Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World have published her work, and she has forthcoming research on the intersections across affect, masculinity, early modern poetics, and Baroque opera.
You can listen to the podcast and see a summary of Migiel's book here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/veronica-franco-in-dialogue
