Women in the Early Modern Italian Utopia

Abstract

This thesis investigates the role and place of women in the early modern Italian utopian tradition between 1552 and 1625. Where previous research has read utopian texts as either upholding or dismantling traditional patriarchal structures, this thesis offers a new perspective by arguing that women play an active role in the creation of the ideal state, and that ideal spaces are also gendered spaces.To support these claims, the first part of the thesis explores the definition of women’s space in utopia in relation to the Vitruvian architectural tradition that influenced Italian representations of ideal cities. After establishing the connections between space, gender and corporeality, it moves on to consider the role that women occupy in the body-politic of the state by studying how their organisation into families
or ‘communities of bodies’ shapes the political construction of the new society. The second part applies the macro themes identified in the first one to the case studies of Doni, Campanella and Fonte, the latter a female author whose utopian text challenges the all-male canon and calls for its revisitation. From the analysis, it emerges that the underlying male model, the epitome of rationality and order, which underlies the urban blueprint of the ideal city, is not the only one for utopian spatial creation, and it is indeed rejected in Fonte’s feminist response. Through the adaptation of classical sources, the utopists conceive new social systems which challenge the traditional structure of society: the organisation of women shapes the creation of the utopian world by altering the foundations on which the new society is built. By changing the critical lens through which utopias are normally examined, this thesis reveals a much broader engagement of women with utopian literature, breaking binary interpretations and proposing a more inclusive canon.