British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

BA PDF Symposium 2006

26 April 2006

Abstracts

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Dr Helena Sanson

Women and grammar in the Italian linguistic tradition (16th-19th century)

This paper will discuss the role and the implications of women as writers, addressees and readers of grammar books in the Italian linguistic tradition between 16 th-19 th century, that is, from the codification of 14 th-century Tuscan as the common literary language of the peninsula to Italian becoming the spoken national language of the newly-created state.

The technical-scientific nature of 16 th century Questione della Lingua vast literary production seems to imply a male-only territory. But the prefaces of some grammars of the time also indicate women as their addressees - such as Liburnio’s Tre fontane (1526), Rinaldo Corso’s Fondamenti del parlar thoscano (1549) or Ruscelli’s Commentarii (1581) - in a period when the increasing spread of the printing press and the search for a wider market of readers, the expansion of the vernacular and the opening up of the literary world to previously-excluded parts of society, saw a rich and varied number of women writers come to the foreground.

From occasional addressees of some of the first vernacular grammars, later in the late 18 th-early 19 th century, amidst lively debates on the scope and appropriateness of female education, women became the specific targets of grammars (but also of scientific and literary texts), written ‘per le Dame’, that aimed at expounding grammatical knowledge of Italian, and of foreign languages, in an easy and simple manner.

It is only in Post-Unification Italy - when the Questione della lingua took on a more social and less literary connotation, with a renewed emphasis on the role of women, mothers or teachers, as linguistic educators - that women started participating as authors in the new national grammatical production.

Dr Helena Sanson is a University Lecturer in Italian Studies and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. Between 2003-2005 she held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Italian Department in Cambridge and was a Research Fellow at New Hall. Before coming to Cambridge, she taught at University College London while also completing her PhD at the University of Reading. Her first degree was in Modern Languages and Comparative Philology (IULM, Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne, Milan). Her book, Donne, precettistica e lingua nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Per un contributo alla storia del pensiero linguistico, based on her PhD, will be published by the Accademia della Crusca, Florence.