A Veil of Silence
Women and Sound in Renaissance Italy
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Published:26th Jul '24
£45.95
This title is due to be published on 26th July, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
An illuminating study of early modern efforts to regulate sound in women’s residential institutions, and how the noises of city life—both within and beyond their walls—defied such regulation.
Amid the Catholic reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the number of women and girls housed in nunneries, reformatories, and charity homes grew rapidly throughout the city of Florence. Julia Rombough follows the efforts of legal, medical, and ecclesiastical authorities to govern enclosed women, and uncovers the experiences of the women themselves as they negotiated strict sensory regulations. At a moment when quiet was deeply entangled with ideals of feminine purity, bodily health, and spiritual discipline, those in power worked constantly to silence their charges and protect them from the urban din beyond institutional walls.
Yet the sounds of a raucous metropolis found their way inside. The noise of merchants hawking their wares, sex workers laboring and socializing with clients, youth playing games, and coaches rumbling through the streets could not be contained. Moreover, enclosed women themselves contributed to the urban soundscape. While some embraced the pursuit of silence and lodged regular complaints about noise, others broke the rules by laughing, shouting, singing, and conversing. Rombough argues that ongoing tensions between legal regimes of silence and the inevitable racket of everyday interactions made women’s institutions a flashpoint in larger debates about gender, class, health, and the regulation of urban life in late Renaissance Italy.
Attuned to the vibrant sounds of life behind walls of stone and sanction, A Veil of Silence illuminates a revealing history of early modern debates over the power of the senses.
A Veil of Silence takes us into the rich sonic worlds of female enclosures—nunneries, charity homes, reform houses—in late Renaissance Florence. Rombough skillfully reconstructs the purifying regimes of silence, the sonic intrusions of sex work, and the rowdy sociability of male youths to illuminate how and why sound mattered to the health and governance of these communities. An original, imaginative study that captures the gendered nature of sensorial experience in Italian Renaissance cities. -- Sharon Strocchia, author of Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy
In this original and deftly argued study, Rombough meticulously traces the acoustic strategies that Florentine authorities used to regulate and discipline cloistered women. Synthesizing a wide range of archival sources, she exposes the legal, moral, and economic contradictions at work in policing the auditory world of girls and women—while also revealing the ways in which they resisted these efforts through the sound of their own voices. Deeply engaged with current scholarship on sound and the senses, this book will also be a welcome addition for those interested in early modern histories of women, the church, architecture, and urban space. -- Niall Atkinson, author of The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life
This book makes a significant contribution to the emerging field of sonic history, as well as the voluminous scholarship in convent studies. Focusing on authorities’ attempts to curate disciplined soundscapes, Rombough shows how 'sonic reform' was central to the post-Tridentine project of subjecting women to strict enclosure. And yet, many women took to laughter, singing, and chatting as a form of resistance against these oppressive norms. Likewise, urban noise—the laughter of prostitutes, the racket of youths, and the howling of drunkards—could not but reach their ears. Rombough brings to life an important part of the lived experience of early modern women. -- Jutta Gisela Sperling, author of Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice
A meticulous and valuable study of cloistered women in Renaissance Italy, where the discordant sounds of the street punctuated regimes of quiet piety in convents, charity homes, and reformatories. Rombough listens carefully to both distant echoes and confined whispers, showing how the rhythms of life outside disrupted, shocked, and amused those within the walls of these institutions. In so doing, she deftly draws our attention to the sounds of conflicting lifestyles, hopes, and expectations. -- Emily Cockayne, author of Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600–1770
ISBN: 9780674295810
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages