"Maruša Gundulić (Maria Gondola) – a Renaissance female ‘Socrates.’"
Abstract: The earliest known Croatian woman philosopher whose philosophical works have been preserved was Maruša Gundulić (in Italian: Maria Gondola), born around 1557 in Dubrovnik. She is mostly known as the author of a dedicatory letter from 1584 in which she argues that women are more virtuous, more intelligent and, generally, better human beings than men. But this short text is not everything we have from her. Her husband, Nikola Gučetić (in Italian: Nicolò Gozze) composed two dialogues, both published in 1581: Dialogo della bellezza and Dialogo d’amore. The traditional interpretation of these dialogues states that Gučetić, for some not quite clear reason, used the personae of his wife (Maruša) and her friend (Cvijeta Zuzorić, in Italian: Fiore Zuzori/Zuzzeri) to exhibit his eclectic ideas on love and beauty. However, this traditional paradigm is not only ideologically suspect, but it also neglects some important traces and contexts which shed a different light on the dialogues. With the correction of the perspective, I will argue that the dialogues for the most part represent philosophical thoughts and arguments of the interlocutors, that is, Maruša Gundulić and Cvijeta Zuzorić. Read through this lens, the role of Maruša Gučetić in the dialogues can be understood as that of a “female Socrates”.
