Complete Poems

Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) was one of the most celebrated lyric poets of early sixteenth-century Italy. Equally significant to Gambara's literary repute was her political standing as the dowager Countess of Correggio. Though she never published a collected edition of her poetry, Gambara produced an extensive oeuvre of vernacular verse that has been extensively anthologized. This book presents the first complete bilingual edition of Gambara's verse. It sheds light on the unique interrelationship between Gambara's cultural currency and her political power, as she drew on her literary talent to participate in the political arena to emerge as one of the first women poet-rulers of the Early Modern Italian tradition.