- Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy by George McClure
In this informative and fascinating exploration, George McClure focuses on what he defines as a new social space, “between learned and popular culture,” in Italy, particularly Siena, from the 1500s to the 1800s – the parlour game. He raises a number of questions about what these games reveal about intellectual discourse, cultural activity, challenges to social structures, and the interactions between men and women within a ludic environment. McClure’s specific interest is the role of women in these games, especially those non-noble women who are the wives and daughters of the “urban patriciate,” women who are usually invisible. In focusing on women, the book raises questions about the gendered rules of the games, how the games resemble courtship rituals, whether men should be courteous and let women win, and whether women can be assertive, as well as the dynamics between men and women in a competitive activity and, most particularly, the definition, scope, and limits of female agency and autonomy.
Parlour games, played between men and women, could be centred on a wide variety of ludic activities, including discussions, devices, emblems, and mottoes. McClure focuses on a number of central events and individuals that contributed to a role for women. The early chapters of the book give background and context with a chapter on theories of play, examining such texts from the 1500s, including Torquato Tasso’s Il Romeo overo del giuoco and Girolamo Bargagli and the Intronati’s Dialogo de’ giuochi, that argue that the purpose of parlour games is for “edification and social control,” or a means of entertainment and social freedom, respectively.
McClure traces the link between parlour games and the rise of academies in the sixteenth century, as well as the crucial role the academy of the Intronati played in the cultural and ludic life of Siena for many years, creating comedies, moral dialogues, and orations directed to and intended for women. The Intronati continued the traditional discussions of philosophy, law, and poetry common in academies but also privileged the creative use of the vernacular in literary studies with mottoes and devices. They wrote game books, marking the importance of parlour games in Siena’s cultural life while advocating “for the glory of Sienese games and women.”
The advocacy for women was a theme again in the late 1560s, when the Florentine dominance of Siena resulted in a suppression of Sienese academies, thought to be male centres of heresy and rebellion. One response to this repression was the establishment of a group called a “court,” not an academy, of the Ferraiuoli (the heavy cloaks), who hoped to avoid Florentine suspicions with the goal of “innocently serving women.” [End Page 210] One of the main events of the Ferraiuoli court was a game based on the Querelle des femmes, a debate between a “Foreign Knight” and a “Ferraiuolo Knight” around the virtues of women.
Although the Querelle was centred on the female question, men conducted it, while women watched from the audience. But what grew out of this was the Assicurate, the first female academy in Italy, which took place in Siena from 1654 to 1704. However, as McClure carefully lays out, establishing a clear and prominent role for women was a struggle, and some of the games in the Assicurate were based on the debate about what women were capable of doing. And while men continued to play dominant roles, a woman such as Giulia Turamini, nicknamed “La Saputa,” was able to deliver a lecture on the “Excellence of Women over Men,” introduced by the Principessa of the Assicurate, Lucrezia Santi Bandinelli.
McClure ends the book with a consideration of the influences and legacy of the games and the women of Siena promoted by Girolamo Gigli, who endeavoured to expand the model of a female academy throughout Italy. McClure’s book is well researched, packed with important and useful information about parlour games, the long-lasting influence of the Intronati in Siena, and the role women...