Un episodio della querelle des femmes nella Sicilia del Settecento: l’Apologia filosofico-storica di Vincenzo Di Blasi

"Apologia filosofico-storica in cui si mostra il sesso delle donne superiore a quello degli uomini", published in 1737 by the Palermitan nobleman Vincenzo Di Blasi, is a collection of examples – taken from myth, history and literature – of feminine values and virtues, composed in support of the superiority of the “womanish sex” over the virile one. The work is closely linked to the Sicilian cultural context of that time, suspended between a fossilized scholastic philosophy and a slow reception of the secular and modern Cartesian thought. But it confirms – also in Sicily – the growing cultural and disseminating function acquired by the so called “art of conversation”, alongside the already institutionalized model proposed by the academies.