ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which Laura Cereta integrated the qualities in her letters, altering masculine humanist style to thereby carve out a role for herself as a learned woman. The use of a mythological comparison attempts to excuse what society would have seen as a refusal of the proper female characteristics: chastity, silence, piety and obedience. It also demonstrates the strength of liberal studies and humanists' own merit in promoting them, since women who diligently took up humanist study were able to transcend the characteristics traditionally believed to have plagued women, such as an overabundance of emotion, or passion, which was in turn linked to a diminished intellect. The use of Amazonian imagery is one example of male writers reliance on martial and political tropes themes rooted in the masculine realm to reinforce the abnormality of a female scholar.
