Medieval and Humanist Misogyny: Alberti’s Translation of Walter Map

One of Alberti’s less well-known works is his vernacular translation of the famous medieval misogynistic text, Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii, one of the most widely diffused parts of Map’s De nugis curialium (c. 1190). Cecil Grayson proved, back in 1955, that the short vernacular invective was not an original work by Alberti but in fact a translation of this section of Map’s treatise, dating the version to 1436–37. This chapter, which reflects Letizia’s interests in Renaissance misogyny and in Quattrocento humanism, illustrates Alberti’s translation technique as he makes typical and also atypical humanist changes and substitutions, both in the anti-feminist discourse and in its style. In terms of content, Alberti eliminates almost all the Christian, religious echoes and allusions in Map’s text, while in stylistic terms the Welsh writer’s ‘baroque’, allusive and alliterative Latin is systematically reworked into a much briefer, clearer, more streamlined Tuscan version. As for the text’s anti-feminist values, Alberti’s translation is still deeply misogynistic but it belongs to the humanist misogynistic tradition not Map’s medieval one. Because of a number of surprising misunderstandings of Map’s Latin, illustrated in the chapter, it is suggested that this volgarizzamento was a youthful work, written earlier than Grayson’s date of 1436–37, possibly one of Alberti’s first works in the language and thus one of the first steps in his trail-blazing campaign in favour of the vernacular.