Elena Lombardi graduated from the University of Pavia, with a thesis in nineteenth-century philology, and received her Ph.D. from NYU with a thesis on Dante and the medieval theory of language. She was Assistant Professor in Italian Studies at McGill University, then Senior Lecturer in Italian at Bristol, and now is Associate Professor at Oxford. She is the author of The Syntax of Desire: Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae and Dante (2007) and The Wings of the Doves: Love and Desire in Dante and Medieval Culture (2012), has co-edited volumes on Dante and medieval culture. She has published several essays on medieval literature and on the Renaissance epic poem, d'Annuzio and De Sica.

There is much more in this very well-thought-out book, and Lombardi does try to encompass the various and multifaced themes of women reading, from different perspectives. The result is a text that is rich in all of its parts, that does not limit the study to one single tradition but tries to tie the connections between what was a shared cultural space. Imagining the Woman Reader is therefore an ally for all those scholars and enthusiasts interested in the complexity of a dense yet necessary discourse on entangled genders.

• Preface: On a Portrait of a Woman Reader Introduction. The Making of the Woman Reader in the Italian Trecento Addressees and Readers in Lyric Poetry Women as Text, Text as Woman Beata Lectrix Francesca and the Others Epilogue. Boccaccio's Women Readers

Elena Lombardi graduated from the University of Pavia, with a thesis in nineteenth-century philology, and received her Ph.D. from NYU with a thesis on Dante and the medieval theory of language. She was Assistant Professor in Italian Studies at McGill University, then Senior Lecturer in Italian at Bristol, and now is Associate Professor at Oxford. She is the author of The Syntax of Desire: Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae and Dante (2007) and The Wings of the Doves: Love and Desire in Dante and Medieval Culture (2012), has co-edited volumes on Dante and medieval culture. She has published several essays on medieval literature and on the Renaissance epic poem, d'Annuzio and De Sica.

There is much more in this very well-thought-out book, and Lombardi does try to encompass the various and multifaced themes of women reading, from different perspectives. The result is a text that is rich in all of its parts, that does not limit the study to one single tradition but tries to tie the connections between what was a shared cultural space. Imagining the Woman Reader is therefore an ally for all those scholars and enthusiasts interested in the complexity of a dense yet necessary discourse on entangled genders.

• Preface: On a Portrait of a Woman Reader Introduction. The Making of the Woman Reader in the Italian Trecento Addressees and Readers in Lyric Poetry Women as Text, Text as Woman Beata Lectrix Francesca and the Others Epilogue. Boccaccio's Women Readers

Elena Lombardi graduated from the University of Pavia, with a thesis in nineteenth-century philology, and received her Ph.D. from NYU with a thesis on Dante and the medieval theory of language. She was Assistant Professor in Italian Studies at McGill University, then Senior Lecturer in Italian at Bristol, and now is Associate Professor at Oxford. She is the author of The Syntax of Desire: Language and Love in Augustine, the Modistae and Dante (2007) and The Wings of the Doves: Love and Desire in Dante and Medieval Culture (2012), has co-edited volumes on Dante and medieval culture. She has published several essays on medieval literature and on the Renaissance epic poem, d'Annuzio and De Sica.

There is much more in this very well-thought-out book, and Lombardi does try to encompass the various and multifaced themes of women reading, from different perspectives. The result is a text that is rich in all of its parts, that does not limit the study to one single tradition but tries to tie the connections between what was a shared cultural space. Imagining the Woman Reader is therefore an ally for all those scholars and enthusiasts interested in the complexity of a dense yet necessary discourse on entangled genders.

• Preface: On a Portrait of a Woman Reader Introduction. The Making of the Woman Reader in the Italian Trecento Addressees and Readers in Lyric Poetry Women as Text, Text as Woman Beata Lectrix Francesca and the Others Epilogue. Boccaccio's Women Readers