Chapter One. Contexts: The female writer in context: opportunities, attitudes, models -- Women's writing and the counter-reformation -- Religious writing in post-Tridentine Italy: a poetics of conversion -- Secular writing in post-Tridentine Italy: the new sesualism and the misogynist turn -- Chapter Two. Lyric Verse: Women's lyric output, 1580-1630 -- Pietosi affetti: spiritual lyric and the female poet -- The dwindling muse: female-authored secular lyric in post-Tridentine Italy -- Chapter Three. Drama: Drama for the doge: Moderata Fonte's Le feste -- Arcadian adventures: women writers and pastoral drama -- The challenge of tragedy: Valeria Miani's Celinda -- Chapter Four. Sacred Narrative: Women writers and the new sacred narrative -- Refashioning the Gospels: New Testament narrative in Moderata Fonte and Francesca Turina -- Hagiographic epic: Lucrezia Marinella's Lives of Saints Columba and Francis -- Hagiographic epic remade: Marinella's Lives of Mary and Saint Catherine of Siena -- A Medicean sacred epic: Maddalena Salvetti's David perseguitato -- Chapter Five. Secular Narrative: Women writers and the literature of chivalry -- Ideology and history in female-authored chivalric epic -- Gender, arms, and love in female-authored chivalric fiction -- The fortunes of female-authored chivalric fiction -- Beyond chivalry: Lucrezia Marinella's experiments in mythological epic and pastoral romance -- Chapter Six. Discursive Prose: Output and principal trends - Authorizing women: the problem of Docere -- Preachers in print: religious Institutio in Maddalena Campiglia and Chiara Matraini -- Proclaiming women's worth: Fonte, Marinella, and the Querelle des femmes -- Coda -- Appendix: Italian women writers active 1580-1635.