Introduction

This chapter has two aims. First, it traces the intellectual biography of Letizia Panizza, from her education in a bilingual family, to her undergraduate studies in California and her doctoral research at the Warburg Institute. We examine various aspects of Panizza’s interdisciplinary research, with a particular focus on her contributions to our understanding of Renaissance humanism and philosophy. We also highlight the rigorous textual analysis across a range of literary genres that has been a constant feature of Panizza’s intellectual career. Panizza played a pioneering role in the development of the field of women’s writing in the Italian Renaissance, and the social and cultural position of women in Italian society, and we assess her various contributions to this field and the influence which they continue to exert on scholars today. Secondly, we introduce the various contributions to the volume whose subjects reflect the range of Panizza’s interdisciplinary approach: women’s history, political literature, libertinism, Renaissance poetry and philosophy, art history and religious parody.