LUDICA

The LUDICA project aims to investigate female humour in Early Modern Italian literature from the early 1400s to 1641, the year of the first regular comedy written by a woman in Italy, Margherita Costa's Li buffoni. The research objective is to trace a new literary history of humour through a gender perspective, exploring various literary representations of women's laughter and the rhetorical mechanisms of laughter adopted by women writers. The examination of humour in Italian Renaissance women’s writings is a path less taken, if not entirely untrodden. While humorous elements in Renaissance literature written by men have been meticulously analyzed, contributions of female authors in this domain have long been overshadowed. My research seeks to address this gap, providing a fresh perspective on the different forms, functions, and expressions of humor in the works of Renaissance Italian women. The LUDICA project commits to a dual exploration. Firstly, it focuses on analyzing comedic elements in works published by women, examining different forms of humor through the lenses of specific literary genres, target audiences, and the intentions of the female writers. Secondly, the project aspires to unveil the wealth of literary treasures still hidden in the reserves of European libraries, emphasizing the discovery of unpublished humorous compositions. By combining these two research strands, the project aims to contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of the role of women's humor in the Renaissance literary landscape. The ultimate goal is to create an open-access online platform, providing the opportunity to explore and appreciate this rich literary tradition.