Epistolary Networks: Elite Women as Cultural Agents in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy

This article examines the role of elite women’s networks in the early dissemination of the Spanish chivalric romances Tirant lo Blanc (1490) and Amadís de Gaula (1508) across the Italian peninsula in the early sixteenth century. My analysis is underpinned by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the cultural field and particularly his acknowledgement that cultural agents are guided by their appreciation for cultural artefacts, as well as by their collaborative but competitive endeavours to obtain them. Through analysis of epistolary correspondence between Isabella d’Este, Antonia del Balzo and their cultural mediators, it demonstrates how elite women wielded significant cultural agency through literary patronage and strategic networking and helped shape the development of the chivalric genre in Italy. This study advocates for a networked approach to literary studies that moves beyond nation-based frameworks to view literary texts as multilayered products of dynamic transnational exchanges.