Women and the Politics of Play in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Torquato Tasso's Theory of Games

In the early 1580s, Torquato Tasso (1544–95), hospitalized (or imprisoned) in Ferrara's Sant'Anna, wrote two versions of a dialogue on the theory of games in which a female interlocutor complains that men commonly lose to women out of an artificial sense of courtesy. In the second and much...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Renaissance Quarterly 2008-09, Vol.61 (3), p.750-791
Main Author: McClure, George W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beliefs, opinions and attitudes
Carnivals
Chess
Criticism and interpretation
Encyclopaedias
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Encyclopedists
Games
Gender equality
High culture
Historical text analysis
History
Husbands
Men
Nonfiction
Poets
Politeness
Politics
Pythagoras (570?-490 BC)
Renaissance period
Studies
Tasso, Torquato (1544-1595)
Theory
Treatises
Violence against women
Women
Womens rights
Womens studies
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Summary:In the early 1580s, Torquato Tasso (1544–95), hospitalized (or imprisoned) in Ferrara's Sant'Anna, wrote two versions of a dialogue on the theory of games in which a female interlocutor complains that men commonly lose to women out of an artificial sense of courtesy. In the second and much longer version, the Gonzaga secondo overo del giuoco (1582), he shifts the direction of his response to this condescending mannerism, offering a vision of women with the determination and potential to be true players. This article examines how Tasso made this change and speculates as to why, tying his treatment to the larger discourse on gender and play in sixteenth-century Italy and proposing that his solution represents a timely intersection of the theory of games, the agency of women, and the plight of a captive poet in Renaissance Italy.
ISSN:0034-4338
1935-0236
DOI:10.1353/ren.0.0141