ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an examination of the group’s state of being perpetually “infatuated” [invaghiti] with the Neoplatonic ideal of female beauty and virtue, as well as the academy members’ self-fashioning as chivalric knights duty-bound to protect and praise women who embodied this model. Next is an analysis of gendered representations in Orfeo, including comparisons to the academy members’ other works, as seen, for example, in Orpheus’s actions as an “invaghiti” poet-musician in his Act I recitation “Rosa del ciel,” Eurydice’s expressions of female gratitude in her response to Orpheus, his imitation of her irrational (ergo, female) thoughts and words, and his eventual enslavement to the type of insanity suffered by the ungoverned female Bacchantes. Also addressed is the ideal example of marital love offered in the interactions between the infernal king and queen in Act IV. The chapter closes with a consideration of how certain messages on male virtues were hidden from female listeners on the basis of the limitations of female education on certain topics, in particular oratorical argumentation.
