The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Chicago Series

by Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini

At a time when women were generally excluded from scholarly discourse in the intellectual centers of Europe, four extraordinary female letterate proved their parity as they lectured in prominent scientific and literary academies and published in respected journals. During the Italian Enlightenment, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola, Diamante Medaglia Faini, and Aretafila Savini de' Rossi were afforded unprecedented deference in academic debates and epitomized the increasing ability of women to influence public discourse.

The Contest for Knowledge reveals how these four women used the methods and themes of their male counterparts to add their voices to the vigorous and prolific debate over the education of women during the eighteenth century. In the texts gathered here, the women discuss the issues they themselves thought most urgent for the equality of women in Italian society specifically and in European culture more broadly. Their thoughts on this important subject reveal how crucial the eighteenth century was in the long history of debates about women in the academy.

Genres: Philosophy, Womens

181 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2005

About the author

Analytical Institutions (1748), influential textbook of noted Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi, summarized existing knowledge about algebra and calculus.

Pietro Agnesi, her wealthy father, made his money as a silk merchant and perhaps also a mathematics professor and produced this child with Anna Fortunata Brivio, his first wife. The best tutors taught her; recognized early as a child prodigy, she could speak Italian and French at five years of age in 1723 and also learned Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German, and Latin before her eleventh birthday in 1729. She studied ballistics and geometry before fourteen years of age in 1732. Her father in 1733 began to host gatherings in his house of learned men at which his fifteen-year-old daughter ably displayed her knowledge. Charles de Brosses gives records of these meetings in Lettres sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which the father published in 1738. After the death of mother of Maria, the father remarried twice, and Maria responsibly taught her many younger siblings. Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini, clavicembalist and composer, was her sister.

Agnesi wanted to enter a convent, which her father refused, but he eventually agreed to let her devote herself to the study of mathematics. She became the first woman in Italy to write a mathematics handbook, Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth, 1748), a comprehensive and systematic treatment of algebra and analysis, including both differential and integral calculus. In 1750, she was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna, only the second woman ever to be granted professorship at a university, but she never took it up. Near the end of her life, she spent her time studying theology and doing charitable work for the poor and sick.

Reviews

[Anna Storgato · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deep and truly curated work about Women's studies, it could be used as a handbook about the Italian Enlightenment and how the Querelle des Femmes was structured and perceived in 18th century Italy (or, more correctly, the no longer existing Italian States).
It could be a difficult read, in particular in the parts concerning translations from the women's treatises, but the edition could be read on several occasions and seen as a little encyclopedia about that particular historical age.

I think that anyone who is interested in Women's history and the History of education should try this book, along with other essays of the collection published by Chicago Press. It's good to see other female names, besides the ones already known from the Anglosphere, getting the recognition they deserve, considering also that such ladies like Aretafila Salvini de' Rossi or Diamante Medaglia Faini (this last one was a friend of another learned woman of her time, Cristina Roccati) are still unknown well in Italy or just became recently subject of interest and deeper alanysis.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very specific and gives exactly what the summary claims. I struggled to maintain focus a little while reading and found myself skimming quite a bit. However, it does provide some interesting information on the four women of focus.

[Allegra]

Giuseppa Barbapiccola MLCS400