Lisa Sampson is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Reading (UK), the author of Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre (2006) and co-editor (with Virginia Cox) of Maddalena Campiglia’s Flori, a Pastoral Drama (OV Chicago series, 2004). Barbara Burgess-Van Aken is a SAGES Fellow in the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she completed her PhD in 2007: “Partenia: A Bilingual Critical Edition.”

"Partenia is unusual within the spectrum of Italian pastoral drama for its moral austerity and its spiritual overtones; a strange, haunting work, it well exemplifies the new directions Italian literature was taking at this time under the influence of Counter-Reformation religious fervor, and provides a fascinating counterpoint to the better-known pastorals of Isabella Andreini, Maddalena Campiglia, and Mary Wroth. Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken’s superb introduction, the fruit of intensive archival research, contains much new information on Torelli and her literary and intellectual context in Parma, and expertly locates Partenia within the traditions of pastoral drama and of late-Renaissance Italian literature as a whole."

• Acknowledgments ixKey to Abbreviations xiList of Illustrations xiiiIntroduction 1Note on the edition of Partenia 53Illustrations 65Partenia, a Pastoral Play 69Appendix A 289Appendix B 315Bibliography 327Index 347

Lisa Sampson is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Reading (UK), the author of Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre (2006) and co-editor (with Virginia Cox) of Maddalena Campiglia’s Flori, a Pastoral Drama (OV Chicago series, 2004). Barbara Burgess-Van Aken is a SAGES Fellow in the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she completed her PhD in 2007: “Partenia: A Bilingual Critical Edition.”

"Partenia is unusual within the spectrum of Italian pastoral drama for its moral austerity and its spiritual overtones; a strange, haunting work, it well exemplifies the new directions Italian literature was taking at this time under the influence of Counter-Reformation religious fervor, and provides a fascinating counterpoint to the better-known pastorals of Isabella Andreini, Maddalena Campiglia, and Mary Wroth. Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken’s superb introduction, the fruit of intensive archival research, contains much new information on Torelli and her literary and intellectual context in Parma, and expertly locates Partenia within the traditions of pastoral drama and of late-Renaissance Italian literature as a whole."

• Acknowledgments ixKey to Abbreviations xiList of Illustrations xiiiIntroduction 1Note on the edition of Partenia 53Illustrations 65Partenia, a Pastoral Play 69Appendix A 289Appendix B 315Bibliography 327Index 347

Lisa Sampson is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Reading (UK), the author of Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre (2006) and co-editor (with Virginia Cox) of Maddalena Campiglia’s Flori, a Pastoral Drama (OV Chicago series, 2004). Barbara Burgess-Van Aken is a SAGES Fellow in the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she completed her PhD in 2007: “Partenia: A Bilingual Critical Edition.”

"Partenia is unusual within the spectrum of Italian pastoral drama for its moral austerity and its spiritual overtones; a strange, haunting work, it well exemplifies the new directions Italian literature was taking at this time under the influence of Counter-Reformation religious fervor, and provides a fascinating counterpoint to the better-known pastorals of Isabella Andreini, Maddalena Campiglia, and Mary Wroth. Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken’s superb introduction, the fruit of intensive archival research, contains much new information on Torelli and her literary and intellectual context in Parma, and expertly locates Partenia within the traditions of pastoral drama and of late-Renaissance Italian literature as a whole."

• Acknowledgments ixKey to Abbreviations xiList of Illustrations xiiiIntroduction 1Note on the edition of Partenia 53Illustrations 65Partenia, a Pastoral Play 69Appendix A 289Appendix B 315Bibliography 327Index 347