ABSTRACT
This conclusion employs motherhood as an analytical category that examines the gendered assumptions, attitudes, and identities of Renaissance patriarchal ideology. Indeed, it is arguable that the prominent absence of mothers from these staged representations of reality derives from the inherent patriarchal need for the erasure of the mother as an object of desire. For, as the central thesis of this study argues, the patriarchal formation of masculine identities revolves around the image of the mother. Almost, in last comedy, where a father's love for his son is described as feminine, the signifier of patriarchal masculinity and paternal identity is femininity. Yet the women's ability to satisfy male needs is their virtù, since it gives them access to their own desires. The analysis has aimed to recover the complexity of Renaissance Italian discourse on gender and identity formation by approaching erudite comedies not so as mirrors of their audiences, but as their vehicles for ideological, psychological, and emotional expression.
