Silence and Dissent: Tasso’s Challenge to the Discourse of Oikonomia in Il padre di famiglia (1580)

Abstract

WRITINGS ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT of the household and the family flourished in Renaissance Italy. Writers such as Leon Battista Alberti with his Libri della famiglia (Books on the family; 1433–41), Sperone Speroni with his Dialogo della cura familiare (Dialogue on family care; 1542), and Torquato Tasso with Il padre di famiglia (The father of the family; 1580) commented on housekeeping (governo della casa) or family care (cura familiare). Relying on the tradition of ancient oikonomia, that is, the art of household management, these writers drew from famous works such as Xenophon’s Oikonomikos (The householder), the pseudoAristotelian Oikonomika (Economics) and even the Aristotelian Politics. In premodern oikonomia not only economic aspects in the modern sense of the word (i.e., the treatment of goods and financial questions) were at stake but also the social relationships between family members. That is why major questions driving premodern economic texts are concerned with how a good pater familias should treat his wife, children, and servants and how he should administer the goods of his household—a familymore inclusive than today’s, comprised of all who live together in a household. The following essay will analyze in detail an example from Tasso’s Il padre di famiglia in order to demonstrate how this dialogue challenges traditional economic