Coming to terms with ‘the other eighteenth century’: Luciano Guerci’s studies on women’s education and reading

Journal title SOCIETÀ E STORIA
Author/s Lodovica Braida
Publishing Year 2024 Issue 2024/186
Language Italian Pages 11 P. 830-840 File size 152 KB
DOI 10.3280/SS2024-186009
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Between 1987 and 1988 Luciano Guerci published two books concerning the discussion on women in 18th century Italy now collected in a single volume Per una storia delle donne nell’Italia del Settecento, edited by Elisa Strumia(Alessandria, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2023). They constituted a point of reference for the study of what Guerci called «the other 18th century», that is, the one that was not shaped by the thought of the Enlightenment, but in many cases by a reflection of a Catholic matrix, with more or less marked anti-­Enlightenment traits. The historian, for the first time, identified the characteristics of an editorial production that had invaded Italian bookshops in the 18th century, in some cases producing bestsellers, in which readers from different social backgrounds had found considerations and prescriptions on marriage, education and women’s behaviour. This article reconstructs one part of these discourses: the one that Guerci dedicates to Catholic moralists’ reflections on women’s education and the effects of reading on their behaviour. Luciano Guerci was an extraordinary precursor of the theme of reading, identifying in the attraction that certain books novels in particular exerted on women the real reason why «devout writers» feared its effects on their behaviour and obedience to their fathers and husbands. From the analysis of that rich and varied editorial production, he brought out, in some cases, the contaminations with the thought of the Enlightenment, discovering that many of the so-­called ‘illuminists’, when they spoke about the education of women, revealed attitudes not far removed from the more retrogressive Catholic moralists.

Keywords: Enlightenment, Anti-­Enlightenment, women’s history, history of publishing, women’s reading, women’s education

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Lodovica Braida, Fare i conti con «l’altro settecento». Luciano Guerci e i discorsi sull’educazione e sulle letture delle donne in "SOCIETÀ E STORIA " 186/2024, pp 830-840, DOI: 10.3280/SS2024-186009