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Accusations of sexual perversion, of defying both the statutes of man and the laws of the almighty, have since Antiquity been a staple of heresiographic discourse. They had pride of place in Muslim heresiology as well, which charged many a heretical sect with engaging in group sex, incest, wine-drinking, as well as the shunning of the obligatory rituals such as prayer and pilgrimage. One group has fared particularly badly at the hands of Muslim heresiographers – the so-called Shiʿi 'extremists' (Ghulāt), who lived in Iraq in the eighth and ninth centuries. Scholarship has mostly taken a simplistic approach to accounts about their alleged antinomianism, by either rejecting them as hostile propaganda or, more frequently, by accepting them wholesale as accurate. Meanwhile the historical, polemical contexts in which such accusations were made have been ignored. This article evaluates within a broad historical context two bodies of evidence: the heresiographical accusations on the one hand, and the Ghulāt's own writings on the other. My contention is that while the most hair-raising accusations are nothing by hostile polemics, others do reflect the Ghulāt's actual beliefs and practices. I conclude by examining the cultural meanings which antinomianism had among the Ghulāt – namely, as boundary markers and tools for identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, focusing on the Venetian context, aims to provide an overview of atheism, particularly of a 'popular' nature, with a special emphasis on the seventeenth century. By analyzing a few cases and the evolution of historiographical developments on early modern Italy, it seeks to demonstrate that unbelieving and openly atheistic points of view were indeed present in popular, non-academic circles, and that the dynamics of contamination between levels of culture were constant and not always linked to top-down acculturation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the eighteenth century, Julius Caesar Vanini was considered a precursor of Lamarck and Darwin for his transformative view of biology, which is expressed in particular in Dialogo XXXVII of De admirandis (Paris 1616), where, through a game of simulation and dissimulation based on ambiguity and mischief, he presents radical theses on the origin of man, in stark contrast to creationism and fixism.

This article argues that The Libertine by Thomas Shadwell, one of the earliest examples of the Restoration comedies, has one of the pioneering roles in portraying the philosophy of the time’s courtiers, libertinism. It is obviously seen in Shadwell’s play that the characteristics of libertinism are not given entirely truly in this Don Juan adaptation, but rather in an exaggerated and criminalised way. In this light, the paper will first discuss the playwright’s socio-political position during the upheaval of the Restoration of Charles II. Secondly, it will set out to explore the play’s position in terms of its exemplary nature in the genre of comedy of manners. Last but not least, libertinism and its characteristics will be analysed through their illustration in the play by means of male characters, particularly Don John, the protagonist.

Copyright of Dacoromania Litteraria is the property of ACADEMIA ROMANA Filiala Cluj-Napoca Institutul de Lingvistica si Istorie Literara "Sextil Puscariu" and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The text aims to show how in the firts installment of what we would call now a "trilogy", Justine ou les Infortunes de la vertu (1787), Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu (1791) and La Nouvelle Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu, suivie de l'Histoire de Juliette, sa soeur (1797), Sade became the last protagonist of the great philosophical and moral debate that ran through the Enlightenment, from its beginnings to its end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family is one of humanity's most important values and an exceptional school of moral perfection, with each new generation growing up and forming within a family. However, as a consequence of secularisation and other trends in society, we are currently witnessing a painstaking and assiduous attempt to destroy this holy institution by distorting and devaluing its meaning, by promoting alternatives to the family and by trying to redefine or even recreate this millenary and holy institution in order to make it as appropriate as possible to the trends of the present age. All these realities have to some extent disrupted the Family. The present study aims to outline all the reasons why the family is in a state of crisis today, while at the same time demonstrating the acute need for society and the Church to revive the family in the depths of its primordial meaning [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses libertine themes and authors of 17th century in articles, critical notes and reviews of three major Italian journals of the 20th century – Rivista di filosofia, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana and Rivista critica di storia della filosofia (since 1984 titled Rivista di storia della filosofia). The category of ‘libertinism’ refers to various disciplinary fields: philosophy, politics, literature, modern history or religious history. This ambiguity influences the analyses of libertinism in the Italian historic-philosophical debate. The last two decades of the 20th century show a renewed interest of the three journals on libertine themes and on the relationship between libertinism and philosophy. Research on libertine thought focuses mainly on French libertinism (i.e. libertinage érudit) and on the philosophical clandestine literature: the journals discuss or review clandestine texts, as the Theophrastus redivivus (1659), whose critical edition was published in Italy in 1981–1982.

This article surveys the reception of the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia in esoteric milieus in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. The first part of the article contains an overview of the text and scholarship on it. Then follows a study of the reception of Pistis Sophia in a broader array of esoteric circles. It becomes clear that the text was hailed as an example of ancient and great spiritual wisdom, although seldom discussed in detail theologically. Next, this is compared to the academic reception at the same time where it was, as previous scholars have made clear, discarded due to what was understood as a discrepancy with "Gnostic" characteristics. This article shows that Pistis Sophia was not discarded in esoteric circles but rather read in light of already established esoteric trajectories, for example Blavatsky's, Krumm-Heller's, or Papus' particular spiritual evolutionary perspectives. Lastly, it is argued that the understanding of Gnosticisms that both these receptions reflect is still very much active today: academics and esoteric groups are guided by similar trajectories vis-à-vis Gnosticism, seeing it as a representative of a "universal religious essence" associated with progressive attitudes (for example regarding sex and gender), which allows/forces them to renegotiate the ancient sources themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reflects on the history of the origins of atheism in the late sixteenth century through an analysis of the Inquisition proceedings against Flaminio Fabrizi, which began in Siena in 1587 and ended in Rome in 1591 with the accused being sentenced to death at the stake. This is a very intriguing case because Fabrizi, not a learned man, mixed different forms of heterodoxy and unbelief that surprised and disturbed the judges of the Holy Office. This essay aims to contribute to the history of religious nonconformism in Counter-reformation Italy and in Europe during the so-called "confessional era". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a writing of the Venetian area of ​​the first half of the seventeenth century entitled L’Anima by Ferrante Pallavicino. It is an anonymous pamphlet made by the Accademia degli Incogniti in which the protagonist Ferrante Pallavicino, a libertine writer beheaded in 1642 due to his polemical interventions against Urban VIII. Pallavicino is presented as a martyr who paid with his life his views against the “tyranny of the Barberini”. Pallavicino had sided against the pope on the occasion of the Castro war. Among the various reasons of interest in this writing we note the revival of typical themes of Paolo Sarpi: anti-Jesuitism, the controversy against Rome, the superiority of the council over the pope, the criticism of the customs and external religiosity of the Italians. In the article, various themes are examined that put this writing in communication with the libertine tradition, furthermore some possible sources of the libellus are identified, in particular “The Benefit of Christ”.

This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir's reading of the eighteenth century writer and libertine Marquis de Sade, in her essay "Must we Burn Sade?"; a difficult and bewildering text, both in pure linguistic terms and philosophically. In particular, Beauvoir's insistence on Sade as a "great moralist" seems hard to reconcile with her emphasis, in The Ethics of Ambiguity, on the interdependency of human beings and her exhortation to us to promote other people's freedom, as well as the aspiration of The Second Sex to equal relations between the genders. While earlier scholars addressed the ethico-political implications of Beauvoir's essay, they insisted that the ambiguity so fundamental in her philosophy is denied by the Sadean hero, and that the Other can never be attained in his system. In this essay, I argue that Sade paradoxically emerges as an ethical model in Beauvoir's text: as a writer, he assumes the ambiguity of the human condition in the extreme. Further, Sade reveals the potential of sexuality if it is explored in a form of eroticism that largely transgresses behavior constructed as normal: his writings open up new forms of existence, where, contrary to prevailing ideas, woman's sexual freedom is claimed as equal to man's, where genders are unstable and heterosexuality no longer the standard. Beauvoir's fascination with Sade in this essay can be linked with the seemingly unresolvable asymmetry in the relation between men and women in The Second Sex: in his writings is revealed sexuality's potential to subvert patriarchal norms and mystifications, and perhaps, in the end, even gender itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents religious attitudes of Humanists acting in the environment of Padua University in the middle of 16th century. At this background it follows development of religious beliefs of Jan Kochanowski during his studies in Padua (1552-1559), then his strategy of coexistence with various confession groups in Polish Res Publica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines 'Qinglie ji' ... (A Story of Sacrificing Love), 'Qingqi ji' ... (A Story of Extraordinary Love) and 'Yueji' ... (The Moon) written by the author known as Zui xihu xinyue zhuren ... (Moon-heart Master of the Drunken West Lake) in the seventeenth century. The analysis considers how the physical body of the passive partner is exploited as both emotional and moral sites in which gender norms and orthodox sexual morality are upheld. I use the yin-yang ... paradigms, as conceptualised by Confucianised and traditional Chinese medical discourses, as my analytical tools to examine gender representation in these three stories. My study aims to illuminate the convergence of these two theories, both of which drive a conservative literary discourse on the morality of homoeroticism in late imperial China. The discussion shows that the representation of homoeroticism in these three stories duplicates the binary perception of gender and sexuality that is typical of a patriarchal society by revealing a predominance of the Confucianised yin-yang order over the traditional Chinese medical theory of bodily gender. In this way, same-sex desire is regulated and homoerotic pleasure is contained within social boundaries and a moral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparison between A Carne [The flesh] (1888), by Júlio Ribeiro, and O Homem [The man] (1887), by Aluísio Azevedo, has been recurring since its release. In the twentieth century, Miguel Pereira, assimilating the discourse of nineteenth-century critics, such as Pujol and Veríssimo, schematized the influence of Aluísio's novel on other novels, which was perpetrated by literary historiography. O aborto [The abortion] (1893) (by Figueiredo Pimentel), which mentions A carne and O homem as pornographic books, would be accused of copying the former. Clearly, these approximations between the novels are intended to disparage them. The three of them were reproached for the falsification of characters and even of Naturalism, but, chiefly, for having exaggerated sexual representations, being branded as pornography. Indeed, all of them were read and sold as "books for men" in the nineteenth century. However, this does not disqualify them. By showing several points of contact with each other (not just textual ones) and a link with eighteenth-century libertinism, these books point to the functioning of Naturalism as one of the manifestations of pornography in Brazil and to its libertarian potential. After all, the main cause of detractors' discomfort was the sexual freedom of the protagonists, Magdá, Lenita and Maricota. These women, more than hysterics, go back to the figure of the libertine, typically pornographic, having been compared with prostitutes. By re-dimensioning these "scientific novels" as popular and pornographic literature - taking exactly what was considered failure or excess -, their innovative character is revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Lettre Clandestine is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Lettre Clandestine is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this interview, landscape architect and author Céline Baumann explores how to design spaces that take into account the sexuality of plants and allow humans to consider their own desires in more vegetal ways. In conversation with this issue's editors, Baumann shows that an attention to the interconnectedness of plant and human bodies can become a means of promoting gender diversity, generating alternative narratives of plant/human exchange, and revising longstanding colonialist and nationalist ideas about the 'proper' place of plants in human history and human cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the construction of postcolonial womanhood through an ecocritical lens in Taos Amrouche's Solitude ma mère. I focus on the three main ways the protagonist, Aména, considers vegetal being as a metaphor for womanhood: first, as a form of pure potential; second, as a mode of failure when blooming does not occur; and finally, as a re-appropriation of this failure, a feminist and indigenous form of refusal in a colonial context. Amrouche's use of gardening tropes invokes Romanticism and the pathetic fallacy, yet, as I show, Aména's lived experience as a racialized woman complicates Amrouche's novelistic assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines eroticized woman-plant analogies within libertine texts and questions how becoming-plant both interfaces with, and enacts control over, feminine sexual subjects in and across Anglophone and Francophone contexts. First exploring feminine vegetal libertinism in Vincent Miller's The Man-Plant (1752) through Julien de la Mettrie's L'Homme-plante (1748), and then attending to the queerly desiring, plantlike body and the covert pleasures of its concealment in Anne Carson's poem "The Albertine Workout" (2014) through Marcel Proust's La prisonnière (1923), this article dwells upon a morbidly alluring becoming-plant that alternately espouses masculinist fantasies of possession and multiplies trajectories for oblique, feminine-vegetal sexual delights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between skepticism and sexual nonconformity in Italy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In the inquisitorial cases under examination, the praise of sexual freedom was supported by a heretical re-reading of the myth of the Fall from Grace. The criticism of religious deception is the link between sexual freedom and skepticism: these dissenters accused the elites of enforcing a morality based on a reward in the afterlife to keep people under control. Although these ideas have been mostly associated with seventeenth-century erudite libertines, this research shows them emerging almost a century before, in cross-class environments where forbidden books circulated widely. The article will explore how the written word was creatively re-appropriated in these composite social contexts, analyzing the influence of a Mediterranean tradition of radical doubt that cut across the boundaries dividing the three Abrahamic faiths. In particular, it will focus on the cultural exchanges between Christianity and Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of XVIIe Siècle is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article addresses how Hans Jonas's reconstruction of gnosticism as a historical movement in late antiquity gave rise to two parallel contemporary interpretations: Gershom Scholem's "metaphysical antisemitism" and Susan and Jacob Taubes's attempt at a revival of a Jewish—gnostic cultic revolt. While both reached very similar conclusions regarding the gnostic potential for modern Judaism, they could not be more different in the implications they drew from it. This, in turn, also explains the animosity that developed between all the people involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Définition de vrai amour par dizains , Marguerite de Navarre explores the nature of love. This cycle of twenty-six poems has received little attention from scholars, as for a long time the poems were only available in a fragmentary edition. It is only since Richard Cooper's 2007 edition that there is a basic text with which researchers can work. Nevertheless, the poems raise questions, for the writing style is sometimes so hermetic that the texts appear incomprehensible. According to our hypothesis, three factors are responsible for this. Firstly, the structure, which presents a dialogue between a lady and her lover, but which leaves the distribution of roles unclear, so that the reader often does not know which of the two interlocutors is speaking. Secondly, the nature of love itself, which is differentiated in the dialogue between eros and agape , but terminologically is always expressed by the word amour , so that the reader is often left confused. Thirdly, the writing style is particularly condensed and plays with ambiguities. Our thesis is that the poems are intentionally ambiguous in order to confuse the readers and show them the limits of their own intellect. Only "amitié naifve" allows the lover at the end of the dialogue to understand that the divine love of agape is true love; similarly, it is only at the end of the cycle that the reader realizes that religious themes are central to the poems. This paper analyses this technique of confusion as a "poetics of naivety." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the relationship of poet Pier Paolo Pasolini with Iberian translation and Catalan literature and culture to discuss topics like translations, minority languages and internationalism. Other topics include the anarchic spirit and vague libertinism of films like "Mamma Roma" and "Accattone," as well as Pasolini's views on culture and language.

When Jean-Paul Sartre reflects on intersubjectivity, he is often misunderstood. He is accused of grasping human relations essentially under the seal of duplicity and conflict. We thus put forward his thesis of the absolute and the infinite freedom of man to deduce the seeds of a notorious immorality in the communication of conscience. Based on this observation, the main objective of this reflection is to show, with Sartre that the unfortunate experience of which he refers in his works and particularly in Huis clos is consecutive to a degradation of freedom into debauchery. In other words, genuine freedom rhymes with morality and altruism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did Descartes not publish his chief physiology work during his lifetime? Descartes considered that the physiological and medical conclusions that could be drawn from his philosophy were fundamental to his intellectual project, and an apparently complete work was circulating among friends in 1641 but was only published more than a decade after his death, as De Homine (1662) and Traité de l'Homme (1664). This paper argues that Princess Elisabeth's careful consideration of his physiology raised questions about whether the common interpretation of his philosophy as dualistic was correct, implicating it in some of the most dangerous arguments of his generation. Her questions served as a warning, in a moment when the personal papers and even the liberty of the Frenchman were threatened. Descartes had no interest in becoming a medical Galileo, and listened to the princess, leaving the work unpublished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of XVIIe Siècle is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to explore LIBERTINISM as a discourse-generative concept of the English Restoration and its manifestations in the 17th century drama. In the focus of attention are: the dramatic discourse of the seventeenth century and social and historical conditions that predetermined the origin and development of libertinism in the Restoration drama. In this article, I argue that during the Restoration LIBERTINISM thrived along with such concepts as EMPIRE, HONOUR, LOVE, MODE, SCIENCE, TRADE, and WIT. It is stated that after years of bans and prohibitions libertinism began to develop as a reaction against an overly religious dominant worldview that was imposed on the English people during the Interregnum. It is confirmed that libertinism was widely disseminated in the play-houses which were reopened by Charles II after almost a twenty-year break. In this article, I argue that libertinism takes its ideas from the teachings of René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes; it viewed as extreme hedonism and rejection of all moral and religious dogmas. Charles II himself set an example which was emulated by his courtiers and therefore libertine modes of behaviour were demonstrated to the general public as role models by the aristocracy which regained power with the Restoration. I also claim that as during the English Restoration many play wrights either were libertines or wrote about libertine behaviour and adventures in their plays, the dramatic discourse of the seventeenth century gave rise to a new type of English identity–the English Restoration libertine-aristocrat. Accordingly, the dramatic discourse and dramatic performances of the seventeenth century were the means of establishment, reiteration, and dissemination of the libertine ethos.

The author examines an essay by Maurizio Torrini on the scientific revolution and libertinism. Studying the reception of Galileo’s discoveries in European philosophical culture, Torrini highlights the misunderstandings and instrumental uses that libertines made of Galilean astronomy. The scientific revolution and libertinism had independent paths and even when their paths crossed, no fusion emerged between the two components. Only at the end of the seventeenth century did apologetics unify libertinism and Galilean science into one doctrine to facilitate their condemnation. The essay shows the consequences that this interpretation produces on the historiographic categories with which modern philosophy is interpreted.

This chapter reconstructs the life of Jean-Baptiste Stouppe (1623–1692), a Huguenot of Italian origin who in the 1650s moved to England and was employed by Oliver Cromwell in important diplomatic / espionage missions. Passing into the service of Louis XIV as a soldier, he published some pro-French propaganda works aimed at Protestants, including a famous description of Dutch religious life, published in 1673, notorious for its negative portrayal of Spinoza's philosophy. While presenting himself as a defender of Protestant orthodoxy, Stouppe was in fact a libertine with magical-alchemical interests. An unscrupulous and ambiguous figure, his intellectual trajectory is clearly inserted in what has been defined as the crisis of the European conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite his reputation as a narcissistic Anabaptist messiah, after 1544 David Joris became an influential spiritualist who abandoned claims of a unique possession of the Holy Spirit and promoted the Spirit as active within the mind of all believers, just as he had already internalized demons and angels to the inner person. He only fully elaborated his mature pneumatology in the 1550s, and since none of those writings were printed in his lifetime, outside of correspondence and conversation it became known only when printers produced these late works starting in the 1580s. In the Dutch Republic, where spiritualism flowed freely, Joris's creative approach to the Spirit helped shape discourse on religion and philosophy among nonconformists such as the Doopsgezinden (baptism-minded people, i.e., Mennonites) and Collegiants. These in turn contributed to the conversations of early Enlightenment philosophers, such as Descartes and Spinoza. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the reflections on gender equality expressed in one of the most comprehensive and radical clandestine manuscripts, Theophrastus redivivus, dated 1659. First, I will try to reconstruct the theory of the state of nature and natural law that the anonymous author sets against the civil state, considered to constitute a break with original liberty and equality. Then, I will show that the intellectual protest against the injustice provoked by this break goes as far as to invoke the abolition of laws and the return to natural equality. In this context, the author notes that the institution of legal marriages was unfair to women and that sexual desire that should be free and equal for both sexes was confined within very narrow limits for women. Theophrastus redivivus bases equality on reason alone and on a materialistic conception of the law of nature. Therefore, I will first compare the text to Hobbes and then contrast it with Renaissance and early modern feminist writers, such as Fonte, Tarabotti, Suchon, Gournay, and De la Barre. This clandestine manuscript is shown to be the first to assert the right to sexual satisfaction, free and equal for both genders, as a pillar of an independent personhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Antispeciesism” is a concept forged in the twentieth century, but its polemical and paradoxical scope already emerged in the sixteenth and even more so in the seventeenth century, notably under the pen of Cyrano de Bergerac in Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil. Fiction, which is at the core of his imaginary journey, supported by a subversive imagination freed from any constraint, opens up the field of possibilities allowing us to meet talking birds. But here we are far from the apparently agreed framework of the apologue, for making animals true literary characters, like men, is meaningful. Indeed, conferring logos on an animal is a paradoxical and subversive act in the seventeenth century, as it calls into question commonly accepted opinions—inherited from Aristotelianism and Christianity—on the hierarchy of beings and the supremacy of man within the living world. Making the animal speak first leads the reader to shift his gaze. Fiction shows us what reality robs us of, that is, animal interiority: not only are animals gifted with speech, and therefore with reason, but they do also possess a soul, two attributes that men, since antiquity, have attributed to themselves exclusively. To have the animal speak like a man is first of all to push man to recognise that the animal is a man like any other. In this respect, Cyrano's animal discourse interweaves narrative, stylistic and enunciative issues on the one hand, with polemical, philosophical and ethical ones on the other.

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L'articolo presenta un documento del tutto inedito: una traduzione seicentesca del Satyricon di Petronio in italiano. La traduzione è anonima e ci è giunta in forma manoscritta, trasmessa da un unico testimone (Ang). Nell'articolo si sostiene l'ipotesi che Ang rappresenti un manoscritto clandestino destinato a fruitori popolari e che la traduzione possa aver conosciuto una certa diffusione, essendo stata copiata in luoghi e tempi diversi. Sulla base di documenti inquisitoriali, viene discussa la nozione di 'libro proibito' in riferimento al Satyricon e, in generale, alle opere dell'Antichità. Vengono quindi esaminati i motivi che verosimilmente hanno decretato la fortuna di Petronio nel Seicento presso il largo pubblico, individuati nei temi libertini dell'irreligiosità, della trasgressione sessuale e dell'ipocrisia sociale. Nelle conclusioni, si sottolinea l'estrema deperibilità delle pubblicazioni clandestine, fattore che potrebbe aver determinato la sopravvivenza di un unico esemplare della traduzione petroniana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferrante Pallavicino (1615–44) counts as one of the most controversial authors of his time. His manifold literary production includes many of the genres then en vogue, like poetic eulogies, novelle (short tales), polemical pamphlets, historiography and, above all, novels, of which he wrote around ten. Some of these novels may have been influential not only on other novelists, but also, indirectly, on a few opera libretti, although Ferrante himself did not author a single libretto. In fact, in many of his writings he airs a sharp contempt and antipathy towards singers and castrati in particular, the major protagonists of early opera. This aversion may have partly originated from a thwarted love affair and is clearly articulated in a few passages from his epistolary novel Il corriero svaligiato (1641) and, most provocatively, in his pseudo-rhetorical dialogue La retorica delle puttane (1642). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines both on stage and on page libertine performance of a cross-dressing female rake-hero in Thomas Southerne's Sir Anthony Love (1690). It argues that the libertine performance of a female rake-hero destabilises notions of gender identity and satirises Restoration representations of male libertinism. Bringing back the importance of knowing the actress in the role, Susanna Mountfort celebrated for the breeches role, this paper suggests that libertine performance of female cross-dressing rakes cannot be simply dismissed as a female version of a charming rake of Restoration comedy or a female libertine with robust sexual appetite. The heroine's excellent performance of masculinity and its appeal to both sexes enable the audiences to see how subversive their cross-dressing performance can be. By revealing ruptures in the cultural foundations of male-female differences and of heterosexuality that support patriarchal authority, Sir Anthony's performance continues to disrupt this order when it better represents Restoration libertine figures than any other men in the play do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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