Veronica Franco’s Strategic Indirectness

Abstract

Abstract: In the final decades of the twentieth century, the sixteenth-century Veronica Franco emerged as a proto-feminist model, frankly vehement in her repudiation of misogynistic behavior and social injustices. In this essay, I analyze poems 23 and 24 of Franco’s 1575 Terze rime ( Poems in Terza Rima ) to reveal the rhetorical strategies—indirectness and indecisiveness—that Franco utilizes when direct aggression might trigger negative repercussions.