Heiress of Fiction: Marfisa and the Macabre Legacy of Chivalric Ferrara

dc.contributor.author

Driscoll, Kate

dc.date.accessioned

2025-05-08T18:34:22Z

dc.date.available

2025-05-08T18:34:22Z

dc.date.issued

2024

dc.description.abstract

<jats:p>This essay traces parallel developments in the myths and legends associated with the historical noblewoman Marfisa d’Este (1554–1608) and her literary counterpart Marfisa, the warrior knight from chivalric romance epic poetry. Through the Este princess’s embrace of her cross-dressing fictional double in courtly performance, alongside the evolution of the figure “Marfisa bizzarra” in Italian mock epic, the intermedial afterlives of these two figures reinterpreted the women’s brazen, autonomous agency as nefarious, destructive desire. Fantasies of decadent-turned-grim Ferrara, Marfisa’s native city in poetic and historical terms, guided overlapping acts of reception and transmission between the fifteenth and twenty-first centuries.</jats:p>

dc.identifier.issn

0034-4338

dc.identifier.issn

1935-0236

dc.identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/32379

dc.language

en

dc.publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

dc.relation.ispartof

Renaissance Quarterly

dc.relation.isversionof

10.1017/rqx.2024.432

dc.rights.uri

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

dc.title

Heiress of Fiction: Marfisa and the Macabre Legacy of Chivalric Ferrara

dc.type

Journal article

duke.contributor.orcid

Driscoll, Kate|0000-0001-6434-3182

pubs.begin-page

1134

pubs.end-page

1183

pubs.issue

4

pubs.organisational-group

Duke

pubs.organisational-group

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

pubs.organisational-group

Romance Studies

pubs.publication-status

Published

pubs.volume

77

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