The Androgyne
and the Phoenix
Marguerite de Navarre
and Gaspara Stampa:
Gendering Early Modern
Debates on Love
Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences, No. 758 Studies in Language and Culture No. 32
Johanna Vernqvist
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20
18
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences, No. 758 Studies in Language and Culture No. 32 Linköping University
SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden
This study explores Marguerite de Navarre’s and Gaspara Stampa’s literary strategies through a close examination of their appropriations of Neoplatonic ideals of love as well as of the figures of the androgyne and the phoenix. As this study demonstrates, against the backdrop of the cultural and literary canon of the sixteenth century, the two writers destabilize power relations within the discourses of love and gender, thus gendering early modern debates on love.