READING LITERATURE IN CONTEXT – PROFEMINIST AND ANTIFEMINIST RHETORIC IN MACHIVELLI’S "FAVOLA DI BELFAGOR ARCIDIAVOLO"
READING LITERATURE IN CONTEXT – PROFEMINIST AND ANTIFEMINIST RHETORIC IN MACHIVELLI’S "FAVOLA DI BELFAGOR ARCIDIAVOLO"

Summary/Abstract: Generally considered one of Machiavelli’s lesser works, Favola di Belfagor arcidiavolo may well be viewed as one in a fairly long line of writings about women in the European Western tradition. Yet placed against the backdrop of any possible analysis centred around perceptions of womanhood in Italian Renaissance literature, the merit of Belfagor does not reside in the female image penned in the portrait of Roderigo’s wife, nor in that of the women possessed by the devil. An important element of the text, universally ignored by literary criticism since this is mostly interested in an analysis of Roderigo’s adventures on earth, is the rhetoric at the beginning of the novella, present in the description of the dilemma and later of the council of the devils. This rhetoric explains more than just a simple figuration of femininity specific to one single author; through Machiavelli’s linguistic choices and his crafted organization of the inciting incident, it casts a light upon a literary phenomenon typical of Renaissance culture in Italy in the second half of the 15th century and throughout the 16th, that of literary defenses of women. This essay shows the levels on which Machiavelli’s novella mirrors, both rhetorically and structurally, writing practices of Italian Renaissance so-called ‘defenders of women’; at the same time, it identifies antifeminist and profeminist rhetoric nestled in the language of the text.

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