Arcangela (The Rebel Nun Who Defied the Vatican and Set the Renaissance World Ablaze)

The fascinating, never-before-told story of Arcangela Tarabotti, the late-Renaissance Venetian nun who set the European literary world alight, advocating for women and combatting misogyny in her time.

Set amid the extravagance of 17th-century Venice, Arcangela unearths the story of an iconoclastic nun who became a literary sensation when she took on the most powerful forces of her society, only to be completely sidelined from history. Forced into the cloister at age thirteen-a fate she understood as life imprisonment-Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1652) spent her life fighting against the wrongs done to her and other women.

Through her own creativity and political savvy, Arcangela cultivated a robust intellectual and social network that brought her into dialogue with some of the most influential people of her day. She refused to be silenced as Venice slid from its former glory into decline, and religious authorities expanded their crackdown on books and ideas throughout Italy.

In defiant books with titles such as Convent Hell, The Tyranny of Fathers, and Women Are Human, Arcangela developed a bold, proto-feminist critique of patriarchy and wrestled with the legacy of Augustine, Dante, and Machiavelli. Her ideas were hotly debated at the time and later suppressed by the Vatican and discarded by a philosophical lineage oriented toward men.

Her lifelong project of writing women into the mainstream was forgotten. Until now.

Here, the world's leading experts on Arcangela offer a gripping reconstruction of her life and hard-fought literary battles. Ray and Westwater's story bursts from the page and restores the rebel nun to her rightful place in history.