Arcangela Tarabotti and the ‘Missing Years’ (1617–1643)

Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652) was a literary nun and a proto-feminist. During her lifetime and soon after her death she published five books, which were all rather controversial. Although it is well-known that she was an active participant in the Respublica Literarum of the time, what is less well known is how Tarabotti managed to become a writer and gained enough education to write her political pamphlets, which required her to quote the relevant auctoritates and the ability to argue in accordance with the rules of rhetoric. In this chapter I shall demonstrate, providing some palaeographical evidence, how Tarabotti learnt to write (reading was an independent skill from writing, at the time, and the first requirement for any would-be nun). Contrary to her own claims, she did so at home and under her mother’s supervision, before entering Sant’Anna convent in 1617. I shall also demonstrate that, thanks to the families and connections of her fellow sisters in Sant’Anna nunnery, even within the cloister and despite the law of strict enclosure, she enlarged her circle of acquaintances and possibly had covert friendships with eminent cultivated men, who owned large private libraries, from which she could borrow the books she needed. Finally, I shall demonstrate how her decision to publish was supported by the patronage of individuals that were not the ones she openly declared. All this took place in the period, after entering Sant’Anna in 1617, between her vestition in 1620 and the publication of her first book in 1643: there is very little documentation concerning this period of her life, but this chapter makes use of what little has survived to present a picture of her activities and achievements at this time.