The way that women are portrayed in media and literature is a longstanding issue that has seen constant changes over time. We see much more representation for women in literature now, and this is thanks to many […]

A portrait of Machiavelli

“The Prince” is a text by Machiavelli, an Italian poet, philosopher and diplomat. This text has a common theme of morality amongst the chapters. It often discusses the role that the […]

While reading Angela da Foligno’s Memorial, I noticed a common theme of pain being brought up throughout the thirty steps of cleansing oneself of a sin. As each step continued on, Angela seemed to deal with m […]

The Decameron is a series of stories written by Giovanni Boccaccio. These stories are told by three men and seven women in the year 1348, during the rise of the Black Plague. In these texts, there are many […]

Italian (Venetian) School; Petrarch and Laura de Noves; The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/petrarch-and-laura-de-noves-141634

Poem 61 has an evident theme of love, […]

Inferno, a poem written by Dante Alighieri, was one of the most revolutionary works of literature of it’s time for various reasons, such as it’s inclusion of women in its story. Dante mentions characters such a […]

Dante first meets Virgil when lost in “a dark wood” (Canto 1, lines 1-2), and is then surrounded by leopard and a ‘she-wolf’. Dante begins to feel hopeless, until he sees the figure of a man in the forest and cri […]