Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (review)

210 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) and there is also a chronological outline of events and texts. This section groups the publications of the more prolific figures together, in an unusual but ultimately serviceable format. If there is any criticism that can be made of a volume which will set a standard for the future, it is the absence of any consideration of the influence of continental literatures. But then since the work of Mario Praz, so many decades ago, no-one seems willing to tackle the Spanish and Italian antecedents of much courtly and Cavalier verse. Another omission is the relationship of much of the poetry of the era to the fine arts and especially music. In both urban and rural settings music continued to be enjoyed during the Interregnum and provided an aural context for the production, reception and transmission of many texts that lose much of their character and meaning when read just as words on paper. Nevertheless, The Cambridge History of Early Modern Literature remains a thorough and indispensable guide to the era through the lens of the best literary and historical scholarship of the new millennium. Dosia Reichardt Department of English James Cook University Lowe, K. J. P., Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and CounterReformation Italy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003; hardback; pp. xvi, 437; 42 b/w illustrations; RRP £60, US$90; ISBN 0521621917. In this handsomely produced and richly illustrated book, K.J.P. Lowe brings together the fruits of her research over the last 15 years on nuns’ chronicles in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy, of which hitherto we have had only tantalising snippets in various book chapters and articles. The book discusses three convent chronicles: the chronicle of Santa Maria delle Vergini in Venice (Le Vergini), which was composed in 1523 by one or more anonymous chronicler/ compiler(s) from amongst Le Vergini’s Augustinian canonesses; the chronicle of the Benedictine convent of Santa Maria Annunziata (‘Le Murate’) in Florence composed by Suora Giustina Niccolini in 1598 and the Clarissan convent of Santi Cosma and Damiano (San Cosimato) in Rome, written by Suor Orsola Formicini in three versions between 1603 and 1613. This last convent still exists today, with a community of nuns observing strict enclosure on the Aventine. These core sources are ably supplemented by many additional archival sources relating to Reviews 211 Parergon 21.2 (2004) each of the convents and its members, as well as by useful comparisons with other known convent chronicles of the period. Lowe’s purpose in writing about nuns’ chronicles arose out of ‘a desire to investigate texts in which women explain how they make sense of their lives’(p. 1). Her methodology, using Robert Brentano’s concept of ‘connected differences’, is to understand the similarities and differences between the three chronicles through comparison (p. 2). Lowe’s ultimate goal is one familiar to many historians of women and gender, that is, to have the work of these nun-historians recognised, celebrated and, above all, taken seriously – as an example of the many and varied cultural activities with which nuns were involved and which helped to shape their particular community’s identity. She is right to point to the neglect of such sources by historians (p. 6). The writers’insights and information about the world in which they lived are fascinating, as is each nun’s self-fashioning as expressed through her writing style, choice of subject matter and approach to it. The book is divided into three parts and eight chapters. ‘Part I: History Writing and Authorship’consists of a lengthy chapter about the creation of the chronicles followed by a chapter giving as much biographical detail about the author(s) of the chronicles as Lowe is able to discover from the often sketchy details the nun writers provide about themselves (with the exception of Suor Orsola Formicini). In the case of the chronicle of Le Vergini, this is made even more difficult by the fact that the chronicle’s author(s) remain anonymous, although Lowe makes an educated guess based on the available evidence. The second part of the book focuses on the historical and cultural context...