L'opre del Zerbinar: l'effeminatezza nelle opere fiorentine di Margherita Costa

This paper focuses on an effeminate masculine type that is satirized in several works by the seventeenth century author and performer Margherita Costa. It focuses on comic references to Zerbini in three of her Florentine volumes, namely, La chitarra (1638), Lo stipo (1639), and the Lettere amorose (1639). Costa repeatedly pits these disempowered men against strong female voices in these publications, mocking them for their feminine clothing, cosmetics, and affectations. Costa’s Zerbini are further emasculated by their conspicuous consumption and excessive devotion to the opposite sex. I contend that when read together, Costa’s use of satire to police this comic male figure allows her to claim a degree of literary authority otherwise denied to her gender.