Dalla devozione popolare ai modelli colti nella poesia spirituale femminile

Between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, a poetic production develops in
the St. Clare’s monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna, which will be a model for
verses composed in other female convents. These compositions are still linked to
the tradition of Franciscan laude, from which they draw the most popular images,
with a predilection for the features that best represent the feminine sensibility.
During the sixteenth century the composition of poems in the female convents
increases and is opened to the poetic forms of Petrarch. These new compositions,
for the choice of themes and the way to treat them, are almost a bridge between
the religious verses produced by women in the fifteenth century. and the new
reality of secular and noble poetesses.