The feminist reader would appreciate The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Faults and Vices of Men by Lucrezia Marinella, written in 1600. In her work, Marinella ridicules the arguments of men on defects and vices. women by presenting equally absurd arguments that women are actually superior to men and that it is men who are flawed and vindictive – even more so than women. She effectively and continually turns men's words against themselves, using the same sources and authorities. Most importantly, this work is a direct attempt to enlighten the misogynistic reader and empower the female reader; In short, Marinella wrote this article in hopes of achieving social change. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay To highlight the intensity of Marinella's efforts, one could compare this work to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, written two centuries ago. . De Pizan is less concerned with the behavior of men than with the representation of female virtue as a universal phenomenon. Although she alludes to several vices and hypocrisies of men, de Pizan focuses on listing as many virtuous women as possible. Marinella, in some places, makes similar lists, often using the same examples as Boccaccio and de Pizan. But these are brief sections, because his goal is to completely refute arguments against the goodness of women rather than presenting what might seem like exceptions to a general rule. Additionally, Marinella writes in response to a particular work: Dei deonnschi difetti (1599) by Giuseppe Passi. His work is one of many in the philosophical and literary tradition of misogyny. Although this work inspired Marinella to compose her The Nobility and Excellence of Women, it also addressed many other authorities, including Aristotle. Marinella's treatise surpasses all others of its kind; No woman before Marinella had been able to create such complex arguments using so many sources, nor successfully attack men for the same accusations they make against women. Additionally, Marinella determines how exactly men form their arguments and uses the exact same method. to form his own, with delicious results. This is how Marinella is trying to make a change. By using the ridiculous form of argumentation, the men cannot claim that her arguments are fallacious without turning into hypocrites, because they are using the same reasoning that she uses throughout the book. So they must either give in to Marinella's conclusions or find another way or basis on which to base their claims. Through her arguments and evidence, Marinella shows that the attack on women's vices is unfounded and hypocritical; thus, she "wins" the debate if no one can refute her treatise as completely as she refutes Passi's. Furthermore, like the men she opposes, Marinella adjusts references to her own ends, seemingly by deliberately mistaking certain sources. Essentially, Marinella selects her sources only for good women and their actions, and “understands” the metaphors and actions. allegories using female figures to be real women (e.g. Plato's Hydra). Marinella divides her work into two parts, the first to refute allegations against femininity and the second to attack men. It's a very long job. She writes that the first part will be divided into six chaptersmain, the fifth of which alone will contain enough for eleven distinct sections... She divides the second part into thirty-five chapters. Although this book review covers a selected translation, the passages are salient and reveal much about Marinella's style of attack. Its main method is to reverse the arguments. As a rule, male writers of this era did not praise men, taking it for granted that any vituperation of women actually highlighted masculine excellence without saying so. Marinella refutes the binary, or rather reverses it, making no distinction between good and bad men – the same negligence that men have shown. In fact, Marinella writes that "it is very reprehensible for a man to jump from the particular to the universal" and that an appropriate title would be "the faults of wicked women." And yet the title of the second part of his work is The faults and vices of men, not of evil men. All of this is at the heart of Marinella's methodical proofs. She continues, throughout the book, by making three main arguments: the first is etymological; the second concerns poetic beauty; and the third is a long list of wicked and defective men. Marinella argues for the superiority of women by drawing attention to several respectable and noble titles: Donna, Femina, Eva, Isciah and Mulier. For each, she discusses the etymology and meanings, and even discusses how some men appropriate and masculinize terms (e.g., donna to don). One of his most salient etymological arguments concerns femina, which, according to Marinella, "denotes reproduction or generation...which of all human acts is one of the most worthy, and it can only be accomplished by perfect beings such as women. To summarize her argument, she equates each term, respectively, to “Life, Fertility, Fire, Mercy, and Dominion.” In connection with this appeal to the title, men honor women who hold titles such as “lady”, “madam”, etc. Marinella writes that “the object of such honor is always nobler than the person who honors it.” Although she conveniently leaves out the fact that there are women who honor men, I struggle to find an example that does not stem from expected and forced obedience, except perhaps reverence towards a lord. The Petrarchan tradition inspires Marinella's second argument. It emphasizes that God created everything, each having different degrees of perfection. Interestingly, Marinella takes this idea further and argues that souls are not equal, that is, some souls are superior to others. In another inversion of the binary, Marinella places women's souls above men's, asserting that outer beauty directly reflects inner beauty (i.e., the soul). As proof, Marinella uses great poets as authoritative sources, writing that "the greatest poets teach us...the more beautiful the woman is, the more they affirm that it is her soul which gives grace and beauty to her body." She asks: “If women are more beautiful than men, who…are generally crude and ill-formed, who can deny that they are remarkable? Marinella answers her own question thus: “compared to women, all men are ugly”; therefore, women are more noble than men. But Marinella doesn't stop there. To be sure that her argument is strong and irrefutable, she reminds her audience that beauty, which comes from the soul, is divine and that divine attributes cannot lend themselves to evil. Although logically Marinella's argument is not sound, it follows the same pattern used by.