Reviews for Virgins of Venice

The average rating for Virgins of Venice based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-10 00:00:00 Sandra Shaver Despite the rather tongue-in-cheek title (I was slightly embarrassed reading this on the tube!) this is an excellent 'alternative' history uncovering the simultaneous autonomy and constraint of Venetian convent women in the C16th-C17th. Far from being merely incarcerated as popular fiction would have us think, women in convents (and this is also the case outside of Venice) were able to function with, sometimes, more social authority than they had outside. Based on the author's PhD thesis, this straddles perfectly the divide between rigorous scholarship and popular social history: the notes and bibliography give scholars the evidence and references they need, but the narrative is never broken up by footnotes and academic paraphenalia. One of the most interesting things for me was the extent of similarity between convent women and the famous Venetian courtesans. Both were nominally marginalised and excluded from contemporary social structures and yet carved out their own autonomy in a kind of shadow-society that mirrored the overt one. This isn't at all a salacious or scandalous read, though some women do manage to conduct a sexual life - and we should remember that Casanova had various convent lovers. Scholars working on early modern women have been doing some excellent work on uncovering convents as sites of female agency: social, scientific, artistic. Fascinating, enlightening, human and gently amusing, this is a great read.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-26 00:00:00 Ramon Cubas Brilliant! Accessibly written but in no sense dumbed down, full of fascinating stories dug from the Venetian State Archives and told as far as possible in the nuns' own words. A crucial inspiration for An Imperial Concubine's Tale: Scandal, Shipwreck, and Salvation in Seventeenth-Century Japan.