Virginia Cox

Professor Of Italian

Education

Ph.D. 1989 (Italian literature), B.A. 1985 (modern and medieval languages), Cambridge.

Areas of Research/Interest

Sixteenth-century Italian literature and intellectual history; early modern women’s writing; history of rhetoric (medieval/early modern).

Authored/edited books

  • Moderata Fonte, The Merits of Women, Wherein is Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men. Translated and abridged, with an introduction by Virginia Cox. Foreword by Dacia Maraini. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
    Moderata Fonte, The Merits of Women, Wherein is Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men
  • A Short History of the Italian Renaissance. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015.
    A Short History of the Italian Renaissance. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015.
  • Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana. Percorsi critici e gender studies, ed. Virginia Cox e Chiara Ferrari. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012.
    Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana. Percorsi critici e gender studies, ed. Virgin
  • Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
    Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
  • The Prodigious Muse: Women's Writing in Counter-Reformation. Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.
    The Prodigious Muse: Women's Writing in Counter-Reformation. Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univers
  • The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Traditions, ed. Virginia Cox and John O. Ward. Leiden: Brill, 2006 (Paperback edition 2011).
    The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Traditions, ed. Virginia Cox
  • Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400-1650. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
    Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400-1650. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
  • The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 (Paperback edition 2008).
    The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Gal
  • Maddalena Campiglia, Flori, a Pastoral Drama. A Bilingual Edition. Translated by Virginia Cox. Edited, with an introduction and notes by Virginia Cox and Lisa Sampson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
    Maddalena Campiglia, Flori, a Pastoral Drama. A Bilingual Edition. Translated by Virginia Cox. Edite
  • Modesta Pozzo [Moderata Fonte], The Worth of Women (Il merito delle donne), translated, with an introduction and notes by Virginia Cox. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997.
    Modesta Pozzo [Moderata Fonte], The Worth of Women (Il merito delle donne), translated, with an intr

Journal articles/book chapters

“An Unknown Early Modern New World Epic: Girolamo Vecchietti’s Le prodezze di Ferrante Cortese (1587-88).” Renaissance Quarterly, 71/4 (Winter 2018): 1351-90.

“Rhetoric and Medieval Politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, ed. Michael MacDonald, 329-40. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

“Dialogue.” In A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature, edited by Victoria Moul, 289-307. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

 “The Exemplary Vittoria Colonna.” In A Companion to Vittoria Colonna, ed. Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli, and Maria Serena Sapegno, 467-501. Leiden: Brill, 2106.

“Cicero at Court: Martino Filetico’s Iocundissimae disputationes (1462).” In The Afterlife of Cicero, edited by Gesine Manuwald. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2016.

"Members, Muses, and Mascots: Women and the Italian Academies,"  in The Italian Academies, 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation, and Dissent, ed. Jane Everson, Denis V. Reidy and Lisa Sampson, 132-67. Cambridge and Abingdon: MHRA and Routledge, 2016.

“The Exemplary Vittoria Colonna” in A Companion to Vittoria Colonna, ed. Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli Spetiale, and Maria Serena Sapegno, 467-501. Leiden: Brill, 2016

'The Laurel and the Axe: Petrarchist Execution Lyrics in Late-Renaissance Italy.' Renaissance Studies, 29/5 (2015), 720-748

'The Female Voice in Italian Renaissance Dialogue' and 'Italian Dialogues Incorporating Female Speakers.' MLN, 128/1 (2013): 53-78 and 79-83

'Declino e caduta della scrittura femminile nell’Italia del Seicento.' In Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana (cit. above), 157-84

'Introduzione. Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana' (co-written with Chiara Ferrari). In Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana (cit. above), 7-29

'Una scrittrice femminista del Seicento: Veneranda Bragadin Cavalli.' In Verona al femminile, ed. Paola Lanaro and Alison Smith, 163-77. Verona: Cierre, 2012

'Un microgenere senese: il commento paradossale.' In Il poeta e il suo pubblico: lettura e commento dei testi lirici nel Cinquecento, ed. Massimo Danzi, 329-56. Geneva: Droz, 2012

'Rhetoric and Ethics in Machiavelli.' In Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli, ed. John Najemy, 173-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010

'Gender and Eloquence in Ercole de' Roberti's Brutus and Portia.' Renaissance Quarterly, 62/1 (2009), 61-101

'Leonardo Bruni on Women and Rhetoric: De studiis et litteris revisited.' Rhetorica, 27/1 (2009), 47-75

‘Ciceronian rhetoric in late-medieval Italy’. In The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Renaissance Traditions, ed. Virginia Cox and John O. Ward, 109-43. Leiden: Brill, 2006 109-43

‘Sixteenth-Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy of Laura’. In Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, special edition, In the Footsteps of Petrarch:  Poetry, Music, Art, Culture, ed. Valeria Finucci, 2005. 583-606 (expanded Italian version, ‘Attraverso lo specchio: le petrarchiste del cinquecento e l’eredità di Laura’, in Petrarca : canoni, esemplarità, ed. Valeria Finucci. Roma: Bulzoni, 2006: 117-49)

‘Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth-century Italy: the Case of Vittoria Colonna’. In Strong Voices, Weak History? Women Writers and the Canon in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela J. Benson and Victoria Kirkham, 14-31. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005

‘Rhetoric and Humanism in Quattrocento Venice’. In Renaissance Quarterly, 56: 3 (2003), 652-94

‘Ciceronian Rhetorical Theory in the Volgare: a Fourteenth-century Text and its Fifteenth-century Readers’. In Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thompson. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003, 201-25

‘Fiction, 1560-1650’. In The Cambridge History of Italian Women’s Writing, ed. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 52-64

‘Seen but not Heard: the Role of Women Speakers in Cinquecento Literary Dialogue’. In Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000, 385-400

‘Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1250-1360’. In Rhetorica, Vol. 17/3 (1999), 239-288

‘Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Literature’. In Sguardi sull’Italia. Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari. Ed. Gino Bedani, Zygmunt Baranski, Anna Laura Lepschy, and Brian Richardson. Leeds: Society for Italian Studies, 1997, 134-45

‘Machiavelli and the Rhetorica ad Herennium: Deliberative Rhetoric in The Prince’. In Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28/4 (1997), 1109-1141

‘Tasso’s Malpiglio overo della corte: The Courtier Revisited’. In Modern Language Review, Vol. 90/4 (1995), 897-918

‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early-Modern Venice’. Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 48/3 (1995), 513-81 (abridged version in The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. John Martin. London and New York: Routledge, 2003: 159-95

‘Rhetoric and Politics in Tasso’s Nifo’. In Studi Secenteschi, Vol. 30 (1989), 3-98

Editions and Translations

Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, edited by Richard Bellamy, translated by Richard Davies, with Virginia Cox and Richard Bellamy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 (xlix + 177pp)

Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, translated by Sir Thomas Hoby (1561), with an introduction and notes by Virginia Cox. London: Everyman, 1994

Antonio Gramsci, Pre-Prison Writings, edited by Richard Bellamy, translated by Virginia Cox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 (lii+344pp)

Fellowships/Honors

Junior Research Fellowship, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (I Tatti) Fellowship; grants from British Academy, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, British School in Rome, National Endowment for the Humanities; Renaissance Society of America Nelson Prize 1996/2004/2018; Society for the Study of Early Modern Women; Josephine Roberts Award for Best Translation 2005; Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Best Book Award 2009 and 2012; American Association of Publishers Prose Award for Subject Category Language, Literature, Linguistics 2009.