Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples – Letters and Orations: Volume 55 (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) - Softcover

Sforza, Ippolita Maria; Robin, Diana; Westwater, Lynn Lara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0866985743 ISBN 13: 9780866985741

Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies,US, 2017

Synopsis

This volume presents in translation 100 previously unknown letters of Ippolita Maria Sforza (1445–1488), daughter of the Duke of Milan, who was sent at age twenty to marry the son of the infamously brutal King Ferrante of Naples. Sforza’s letters display the adroit diplomacy she used to strengthen the alliance between Milan and Naples, then the two most powerful states in Italy, amid such grave crises as her brother’s assassination in Milan and the Turkish invasion of Otranto. Still, Ippolita lived as a hostage at the Neapolitan court, subject not only to the threat of foreign invasion but also to her husband’s well-known sexual adventures and her father-in-law’s ruthlessness. Soon after Ippolita’s mysterious death in 1488, the fraught Naples-Milan alliance collapsed.

About this title

About the Author

Diana Robin is professor emerita of classics at the University of New Mexico and a scholar in residence at the Newberry Library. She has written, edited, and translated several books, most recently Isotta Nogarola's Complete Writings, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies,US
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0866985743
• ISBN 13: 9780866985741
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 230