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This research aims to explore how the cultural phenomenon of collecting and compiling folklore and fairy tales was influenced by nineteenth-century ideologies, national identities and linguistic thought by focusing on the works of women writers and folktale collectors in Italy and Ireland. Sharing a mutual interest in reviving the culture and traditions of their native islands, women such as Laura Gonzenbach (1842-1878) in Sicily, Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) in Sardinia, Lady Jane Wilde (1821-1896) and Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) in Ireland, were interested in folklore and ethnographic research and produced works that, beyond their geo-cultural contingencies, are concerned with gender issues. The objective of this study is therefore to examine the influence of these women writers and collectors on the perpetuation of folkloric insular narratives in Italy and Ireland by relocating them within a broader transcultural and transnational framework. By focusing on Italian and Irish insular contexts, this research investigates the conceptions of 'the folk' underpinning these women's folkloric writings, the use they make of the folk material at their disposal and their attitudes towards vernacular languages. This thesis ultimately seeks to unveil the peculiarities as well as the commonalities between folk imaginations from dissimilar islands and to retrace the trajectories through which women's folkloric narratives emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. Such a comparative approach aims to create an intertextual dialogue between diverse patrimonies of European traditions that have been mostly studied in isolation and helps to shed light on the collection of folklore through a gender perspective, in a crucial historical phase when the process of nation-building was taking shape.

Margherita Costa (c. 1600-after 1657) was one of the most prolific female authors of seventeenth-century Europe. As a singer and rumoured courtesan, she made her way in the courts and theatres of Rome, Florence, Turin, Paris, Venice, and perhaps even Germany. Costa was a virtuosa performer on both stage and page: between 1630 and 1654, a period marked by a decline in secular women's writing in Italy, she produced fourteen full-length printed works across a remarkable range of genres, topics, and registers. Her unique position on the margins of courtly society allowed Costa to move more freely across the literary stage than any other female writer of her generation, switching easily between high and low style, decorous elegance and erotic allusions, encomiastic speeches and satirical parody. This literary versatility, combined with her talent as a performer, earned her the support of an enviable collection of elite patrons, including the Medici, the Barberini, the French royal house, and the Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. Though this charismatic virtuosa inspired admiration in her contemporaries and left behind an astounding literary legacy, her oeuvre remains understudied. This dissertation is the first study to take a more comprehensive approach to Costa's trajectory as a virtuosa on the literary stage of the Seicento, from her early works in Florence in the 1630s to her last full-length publication in Venice and final printed poems in the 1650s. Rather than only focussing on one period of her literary career, the central aim is to give readers an understanding of her extraordinary adaptability in different cultural and patronage contexts. Costa's journey opens a window onto the society and culture of a travelling musician and woman writer with a striking ability to succeed in an environment increasingly hostile to female public engagement.

My thesis examines the sociolinguistic notion of prestige in the context of sixteenth-century Italy, with reference to the dynamics which arose between Tuscans and non-Tuscan learners over the ownership and nature of the literary variety based on fourteenth-century Florentine that was being codified and promoted. The notion of prestige is investigated by focusing on the relationship between: prestige and standard; prestige and context; prestige and social networks. My thesis brings together investigation of metalinguistic sources to reconstruct language attitudes (chapters 1 and 2) and the analysis of a corpus of correspondence to reconstruct actual usage (chapters 3 and 4). Chapter 1 employs a ‘new speaker’ paradigm borrowed from the field of endangered languages to explore the dynamics between Tuscan and non-Tuscan writers in early modern Italy, and the prominent role played by the latter in the codification of the literary variety. Focus is placed on the different prestige targets of non-Tuscan learners, on the problematic reception of the archaising ‘standard’ in Florence, and on the way prestige came to be attributed to the standard through a process of interaction between different groups of language users. Chapter 2 focuses on the importance of context when it comes to assessing the prestige or stigma attributed to the codified Florentine variety. Chapters 3 and 4 move to the analysis of usage, focusing on a corpus of Tuscan correspondence produced by the network surrounding the artist Michelangelo Buonarroti and his family members (1496–1585). The diachronic and diastratic analysis presented in chapter 3 reveals the gradual emergence and the social embedding of a range of codified, archaic Florentine features in the informal written language of a group of Tuscans in the course of the sixteenth century. In chapter 4, this macro-analysis is complemented by a micro-level approach which examines the language of individual members of one generation of the Buonarroti family. The network structure of each writer is reconstructed and related to their acceptance or resistance of archaic Florentine features. This chapter aims to integrate prestige explanations within a social network model. My project aims to offer a contribution both to our knowledge of the history of Italian and to the field of historical sociolinguistics. The rich metalinguistic documentation, the relatively high literacy rates and the abundance of written sources documenting usage make early modern Italy fertile ground for historical sociolinguistic investigations. Moreover, Italian is an interesting case-study as it appears to stand out from other linguistic traditions for the prominent role that has often been attributed to normativity in the development of the language.

In the context of a changing political landscape, where shifts in state boundaries and socio-economic structures deeply affected the Italian peninsula and its people, this thesis analyses women and the law in action in the years from the Restoration up to the enactment of the Pisanelli code (1815-1865). It does so with particular reference to the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. These years also saw a number of changes in the legal system with various new laws instituted. The quick succession of these legal acts testified to the new ideas, behaviours and perceptions that began to take form in the period in question, but which the patriarchal and hierarchical nineteenth century society - so reliant on strict class stratification to perpetuate its status quo - resisted fully accepting. Within this context, women began to redefine their sense of self and to think of themselves as having an identity which went beyond their traditional domestic roles of mother, wife or daughter. This work aims to describe this process by focusing on women's attitudes towards the law and their interactions with the legal system. The thesis is structured in the following way: the first part focuses on the Ottocento context, the ideals promulgated about women in public discourse and the legal framework of the Italian peninsula. In the second part attention turns to relevant case studies from the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, brought to light by first-hand examination of archival documents and court proceedings preserved in legal journals of the time. Each part is subdivided into three chapters. After an examination of the social, political and economic context of the nineteenth-century Italian peninsula (Chapter one), the discussion presents a picture of contemporary views about women according to scientists, theorists, moralists and jurists (Chapter two). Chapter three is devoted to the law in force in the pre-unification states with regard to women, paying close attention to the institution of dowry. Chapter four deals with a selection of case studies concerning marriage promises, seduction, and extramarital relations. What emerges from the investigation is the intrusiveness of authorities and the reach they extended into people's private lives in an effort to maintain social order and exercise power within a society founded on hierarchy, immobility, and obedience. Chapter five examines lawsuits questioning dowries and wills. These acts show the families' choices to preserve their wealth, often inevitably paving the way to future discord, with women initiating lawsuits to obtain more money from their relatives. Finally, Chapter six analyses widowhood and separation, two possible moments in a woman's existence that had important implications in terms of both their intimate sphere and the devolution of wealth. In particular, the chapter traces widows' actual access to inheritance, and women's requests for separation, focusing on the reasons that drove them before a court to relate issues pertaining to their very intimate lives, such as contracting diseases. Through the analysis of the law in action and women's use of the law itself, this thesis will recover the forgotten voices and lives of those ordinary women, who, in their everyday life, reacted against the limitations and constraints imposed upon them by society and decided not to passively accept their status.