Interlocutoras femeninas y filosofía del amor en el Dialogo d’amore de Lodovico Domenichi

Abstract

The XVI Century is a fundamental epoch for the introduction of the female character in the dialogic genre. In the midst of the century, a type of dialog relative to love and female beauty is spread, taking place in a freer and less elitist environment that the ones proposed in the examples by Bembo and Castiglione. This study aims to analyze Dialogo d´amore (1562) by the renowned humanist and women´s advocate Lodovico Domenichi. It is a lesser known text, but a highly representative one of the poetic antinomy physical love – spiritual love, which imbued the cultural debate of the era, hinting a more down-to-earth style than the amorous neo-platonism of Leon Hebreo. Similarly, the protagonism of the woman stands out, inusual both in her preponderance in the dialogue as much as in the application of her philosophical and poetic knowledge in the analysis of the different aspects of the theory of love.