The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice

by Margaret F. Rosenthal

Book Overview

The Venetian courtesan has long captured the imagination as a female symbol of sexual license, elegance, beauty, and unruliness. What then to make of the cortigiana onesta--the honest courtesan who recast virtue as intellectual integrity and offered wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life? Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was such a woman, a writer and citizen of Venice, whose published poems and familiar letters offer...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226728129
• ISBN13: 9780226728124
• Release Date: February 1993
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, but a little slow

I greatly enjoyed this book, but I found that wading through 16th century Venetian dialect was difficult. If you are looking for an entertaining story biography, look elsewhere, but if you want a dissertation-style biography, you will enjoy this, as I did.

Excellent portrait of a lady

Veronica Franco was a magnificent woman, and I was ecstatic to find this book after seeing the film based on her life, 'Dangerous Beauty'. Sometimes this biography is slow and verbose, but exciting nonetheless to learn all about this fascinating woman. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about 16th century Venice, women, courtesans, or someone who just wants to broaden their views.

One smart cookie, that Veronica

Veronica Franco was a scholar, a skillful poet, a prostitute--and one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from Renaissance Venice. Given the current climate--in which a dim-faced bimbo can bring down a president--this book is refreshing in that it tells how Franco used sex to further the political and economic causes of her beloved home, Venice. Though the author wrote this as an academic biography, the character, personality, and wit of Franco comes through. The whole story is set in the lushly atmospheric and decadent days when Venice was on the verge of losing its dominance as an empire. Highly recommended, as is the volume of Franco's poetry just released by the University of Chicago Press.

A compelling portrait of an amazing woman.

In a society where courtesans were considered to be prime specimens of beauty and immorality, Veronica Franco dared to be virtuous. Her highly cultivated intellect made her a woman who was simultaneously desired and feared. Rosenthal brings Franco to life in this incredible consideration of the "honest courtesan's" impact on the world around her.