Bibliography
Nov. 3rd, 2009 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilySacred Hearts - Sarah Dunant
See, it's a non-academic book! I promised I read them!
*hem*
I actually mentioned this book back in August (in a f'locked post), as I was lucky enough to hear the author speak about it, shortly after it was the Women's Hour Book of the Week. Unfortunately, it had been book of the week the same week that we went on holiday, so I heard the first four episodes, but not the concluding fifth, and was dying to hear how things ended! So I bought the book. *hem*
The novel is set inside a nunnery in 1570, in Ferrara, Italy. The convent has just taken in a novice who Really Does Not Want To Be There; she is placed under the wing of the dispensary mistress, the daughter of a doctor who came to the convent as there was nowhere for her to go other than the nuns. The commercial meat of the book comes from the love story (yes, obviously) that runs through it, but it's actually far more interesting than that. Dunant weaves in a hell of a lot of historical research - she trained as an historian, and it shows. She manages to incorporate the realities of life in these convents, the luxuries expected by women who belonged to families which had raised them for the veil yet were powerful within the city, the political machinations within the convent itself, the various ways women dealt with the isolation, the comparative freedom they enjoyed despite being confined... she also makes excellent use of the religious situation at the time, when the Catholic church was fighting against heresy post-Luther, and what that meant for nuns. The bishops effectively cracked down on convents as a way to impose orthodoxy and purity in a very obvious, clear way - and, of course, the poor nuns had no say in what happened. It's actually quite interesting that the current Pope is now sending out Apostolic Visitations to American nuns, in that he's replicating exactly the sort of crack-down that was going on back around the 1500s, when it really depended on a convent's luck in who happened to be bishop as to how long they got to continue making music, performing drama, and using medical knowledge.
This is the last in a series of three books exploring women's lives in the Renaissance; the other two are The Birth of Venus and In The Company of the Courtesan. Having enjoyed this quite as much as I have, I shall be giving those a go. Yes, it's not high literature, but it's well written, very detailed, and very enjoyable.
See, it's a non-academic book! I promised I read them!
*hem*
I actually mentioned this book back in August (in a f'locked post), as I was lucky enough to hear the author speak about it, shortly after it was the Women's Hour Book of the Week. Unfortunately, it had been book of the week the same week that we went on holiday, so I heard the first four episodes, but not the concluding fifth, and was dying to hear how things ended! So I bought the book. *hem*
The novel is set inside a nunnery in 1570, in Ferrara, Italy. The convent has just taken in a novice who Really Does Not Want To Be There; she is placed under the wing of the dispensary mistress, the daughter of a doctor who came to the convent as there was nowhere for her to go other than the nuns. The commercial meat of the book comes from the love story (yes, obviously) that runs through it, but it's actually far more interesting than that. Dunant weaves in a hell of a lot of historical research - she trained as an historian, and it shows. She manages to incorporate the realities of life in these convents, the luxuries expected by women who belonged to families which had raised them for the veil yet were powerful within the city, the political machinations within the convent itself, the various ways women dealt with the isolation, the comparative freedom they enjoyed despite being confined... she also makes excellent use of the religious situation at the time, when the Catholic church was fighting against heresy post-Luther, and what that meant for nuns. The bishops effectively cracked down on convents as a way to impose orthodoxy and purity in a very obvious, clear way - and, of course, the poor nuns had no say in what happened. It's actually quite interesting that the current Pope is now sending out Apostolic Visitations to American nuns, in that he's replicating exactly the sort of crack-down that was going on back around the 1500s, when it really depended on a convent's luck in who happened to be bishop as to how long they got to continue making music, performing drama, and using medical knowledge.
This is the last in a series of three books exploring women's lives in the Renaissance; the other two are The Birth of Venus and In The Company of the Courtesan. Having enjoyed this quite as much as I have, I shall be giving those a go. Yes, it's not high literature, but it's well written, very detailed, and very enjoyable.
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Date: 2009-11-03 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
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