The woman narrator's voice: The case of Lucrezia Marinella's Enrico

This essay explores the rhetorical strategies and the functions bestowed on specific characters that Lucrezia Marinella utilizes in her 1635 epic poem Enrico and proposes that the narrative voice is choral and gendered in subtle but important ways. It concentrates on rhetorical questions and indirect references to the narrator in the course of the plot as well as to one female character who becomes a spokesperson for the narrator. By building on the parallel between the gender of the city of Venice and of the narrator, Marinella enriches traditional rhetorical and narrative topoi, achieving a plural voice which is simultaneously male and female, and consequently neutral.