Ethos and Self in three speechesin defense of women in the Renaissance

Abstract

It is widely recognized within the studies of Humanities, especially in the field of Philosophy, the gap left over the understanding of the role of women and their intellectual production in philosophical thought. This concern is largely due to the production disseminated by other areas of study, such as gender and feminist theory. In the case of the philosophical field, it is about recognizing that the history of philosophy was never made only by men, especially when it came to the defense of women's freedom and their struggle for intellectual insertion and recognition. In this sense, this work aims to analyze comparatively three speeches in defense of women's freedom, written by two young women and one man, at different times. First, we have the speech of a young professor of rhetoric, Lorenzo Valla, contained in his dialogue On Pleasure, from 1431; secondly, we have the dialogue Il Merito delle Donne, by the Venetian writer Moderata Fonte, published posthumously in 1600; and, finally, the text of Tirannia Paterna, by another Venetian writer, the philosopher Arcangela Tarabotti, published posthumously in 1654. In all three cases, these are speeches addressed to men, in repudiation for their crimes committed against women's freedom and free will in general. Thus, taking as an axis of analysis the thematic similarity between such texts, it will be of our interest to observe the relationship between the ethos of the speakers with the self of the authors in these three different speeches, taking into account also the gender of discourse, audience, rhetorical effects and the context in which the works were inscribed.