Women and the Politics of Play in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Torquato Tasso's Theory of Games

• Published in: Renaissance quarterly Vol. 61; no. 3; pp. 750 - 791
• Main Author: McClure, George W
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge The Renaissance Society of America 22.09.2008; Renaissance Society of America; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Beliefs, opinions and attitudes; Carnivals; Chess; Criticism and interpretation; Encyclopaedias; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Encyclopedists; Games; Garzoni, Tomaso; Gender equality; High culture; Historical text analysis; History; Husbands; Men; Nonfiction; Poets; Politeness; Politics; Pythagoras (570?-490 BC); Renaissance period; Studies; Tasso, Torquato; Tasso, Torquato (1544-1595); Theory; Treatises; Violence against women; Women; Womens rights; Womens studies; Italy

In the early 1580s, Torquato Tasso (1544–95), hospitalized (or imprisoned) in Ferrara's Sant'Anna, wrote two versions of a dialogue on the theory of games in which a female interlocutor complains that men commonly lose to women out of an artificial sense of courtesy. In the second and much...