Introduzione
Giorgia Alessi, Marina Caffiero, Dinora Corsi
Diritti / privilegi. Inseguendo un confine mobile
Giorgia Alessi
Rights and Privileges: The History of Shifting Meaning in
Legal Language
This essay begins by examining the similar meanings of the words right,
privilege, and liberty in the legal language of the late Middle Ages. As political
and intellectual developments led to the modern notion of egalitarian
citizenship based on individualism, right and privilege increasingly took on
divergent connotations. This introduction traces that development and asks a
final question: does the study of different legal cultures and traditions logically
lead to extreme and perhaps dangerous relativism? Is it true that «The
rightfulness of an act cannot be judged if not on the basis of the values of the
societies which it refers to?».
I diritti che annullano i privilegi. Storia e storia delle donne secondo Arnold Toynbee
Anna Beltrametti
Rights that Cancel Privileges: History and Women’s
History in the Works of Arnold Toynbee
Having examined the relation between a recently published Toynbee’s
paper and his greater works, this article explores the applicability of his historiographical
method to women’s history, the relation between rights and
privileges in Toynbee’s logic and the examples provided in his works. It argues
that he fell back on nostalgia for traditional societies in his warnings
against women’s campaign for increased rights.
Famiglia, donne e diritto nella Firenze quattrocentesca: ambiguità di un //Consilium//
Thomas Kuehn
Reflections on Family, Women, and Law in Fifteenth-
Century Florence: Ambiguities of a Consilium
In Renaissance civic contexts, law was a device allowing forms of
agency to men and women while also serving as an ambiguous realm of
meaning in which women were depicted as subordinate or incapacitated. Law
mattered; its ambiguity was functional. A Florentine case from the early 15th
century shows how four prominent jurists struggled over an inheritance and
decided that it went to the deceased’s mother, despite statutory law’s clear
preference for agnate males. The case’s consequences can be taken as indicative
of a functional ambiguity regarding family and gender.
La casa delle regine. Uno spazio politico nella Castiglia del Quattrocento
Angela Muñoz Fernández
The House of the Queen: A Political Space for
Women in Fifteenth-Century Castille
This essay explores the House of Queen, a political institution for
women of the Castilian royal family that developed gradually during the 14th
and 15th centuries. This institution provided an effective platform for the
queen, princesses and infante to participate actively in politics. This study
shows that the role of royal women as political and cultural agents within
medieval and Renaissance monarchies was wider and more important than
has been previously recognised.
Donne e miserabili. Le trasformazioni di un privilegio nel Piemonte dell’età moderna
Simona Cerutti
Women and the Poor: The Transformation of a Privilege in
Early Modern Piedmont
This essay analyzes a curious and inexplicable incident that occurred in the
Piedmont Senate in 1724, which led to the revival of the concept of ‘female
imbecility’. During a debate over the right of women to dispose of their own
property, women were equated legally with the ‘mentally ill’. The author
analyses this episode from different viewpoints beginning with social behavior,
asking whether women in Piedmont were allowed to manage their
property in daily life. She then explores the transformation of the legal category
of “miserable persons”, which included women. At the beginning of the
18th century this group of people still enjoyed legal privileges. During the
1720’s, however, this group was redefined as legally “irresponsable” and in
need of protection rather than privilege. The author argues that it was this
transformation that made it possible to restrict the rights of women and label
them as “imbeciles”.
La cittadinanza delle donne fra diritti e riconoscimento
Claudia Mancina
The Conflict between Universal Rights and Group Rights:
The Case of Women
Universal rights are undergoing a crisis in Western societies. The recognition
of group identity, with its privileging of difference, is challenging and
threatening to subvert the principle of equality. To a certain extent, recognition
of group identity is not inconsistent with universal equality, provided
that we consider the maximization of individual liberty as the main criterion
for evaluating political theory and policy. In other words, a request for group
recognition is acceptable in a democratic society when it is necessary for the
individuals who share that group identity to feel free and be free. The mere
conservation of group identity is not a sufficient aim, and perhaps a bad aim,
if it conflicts with individual liberty. Women present a special case. Though
women are not a homogeneous group, there is a female identity that has been
historically and socially constructed and which largely influences the life and
fortune of the individual. Women need social recognition of their identity to
enjoy true liberty.
Figure femminili. La profetessa e la maga nella letteratura dell’antica Roma
Loretta Baldini Moscadi
Figure femminili. La profetessa e la maga nella letteratura dell’antica Roma
Loretta Baldini Moscadi
Female prophets and sorcerers
This work analyses several female religious figures – prophetesses and
sorceresses – in Roman epic literature of the Augustan Age and of the first
century A.D. (from Virgil to Stace). It argues that women in these texts related
differently to male gods and male priests. Although they were submissive and
obediant to the gods, they were transgressive in challenging the authority of the
male priests.
Antropologia, genere e schiavitù (Granada, XVI secolo)
Aurelia Martín Casares
Anthropology, Gender and Slavery (Granada,
16th Century)
The aim of this article is to show the androcentrism of those studies on
slavery that have presented slave populations as being composed basically of
men and that ignore the important role played by female slaves. It analyzes,
as a case study, the slave population of the city of Granada during the 16th
century in relation to the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Atlantic slave trade from a
gender perspective. This essay explores the proportion of men to women, the
productive and reproductive relationships, the sexual division of work, and
kinship relationships in the slave population of Granada.
Eleonora d’Arborea e la Carta de Logu
Maria Teresa Guerra Medici
marzo 2003, 250 p. ISBN-10: 88-8334-086-8 ISBN-13: 978-88-8334-086-4 € 21,00