Laura Terracina (1519-c. 1577) was an Italian poet from

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

during the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

. She was the most published Italian poet of the sixteenth century.

Life

Terracina was born in Chiaia, a suburb of Naples. Her mother, Diana Anfora of Sorrento and father, Paolo Terracina, had at least one more daughter and two sons. She may have received encouragement from the famous poet

Vittoria Colonna Vittoria Colonna (April 149225 February 1547), marchioness of Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet. As an educated, married noblewoman whose husband was in captivity, Colonna was able to develop relationships within the intellectual circl ...

, who possibly sent her a brief poem praising her talents. In 1545, she became a member of the Academia of the Incogniti in Naples, and knew and corresponded with several literari figures. Despite the suppression of the academy in 1547, she continued to be known by her academy pseudonym of Febea. She married her relative Polidoro Terracina and sometimes addressed poems to him. She had befriended many influential people of her day, like the patroness Giovanna d'Aragona and the writer Angelo di Costanzo.

Work

She published nine volumes of poetry, in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

and

Lucca Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one ...

between 1548 and 1567. In Venice, she published the chivalric romance ''Discorso sopra il Principio di Tutti I Canti di Orlando Furioso'', a poem linked to Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was reprinted thirteen times. In it she defended women from their detractors, but laments that not more have literary pursuits. Sometimes she dedicated poems to those she had met at the Academia of the Incogniti. In the many poems she wrote in praise of others, she generally spoke of her unworthiness as a poet. She exchanged poems of praise with

Laura Battiferri Laura Battiferri (1523–1589), also called Laura Battiferri Ammannati, was an Italian poet during the Renaissance period. She was born in Urbino, Marche, Italy as the illegitimate daughter of Giovanni Antonio Battiferri from Urbino and Maddal ...

, in which the two women praised the other, but trivialized their own talents. During her lifetime she was lauded for her work. In some of her works she deplores social disturbances and political turmoil. She also insisted that women should pursue fame for their work and addressed her seventh book to the widows of Naples. The National Library of Florence holds more than two hundred of her uncollected poems in a manuscript dated 1577.

Notes

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Terracina, Laura Italian women poets 16th-century Italian women writers 16th-century Italian writers Italian Renaissance writers 1519 births