Part one of term paper
Renaissance ideas of women were strongly shaped by the writers of the time and by the conceptions of femininity that had existed since the Middle Ages. No one more strongly affected the early Renaissance idea of what a woman was than Petrarch, he idealized women and heterosexual love in such a way that its power would resonate into love as w ...

Part two of term paper
... removed from a real person that it was no wonder Shakespeare was to mock it in one of his most famous sonnet's. However more important criticism of the Petrarchan ideal of femininity came from the women writers of the Renaissance because they fully addressed not only the absurdity of the Petrarchan woman but also the desperation of the true Renaissance woman. Writers like Mary Sidney refuted the ideal of Petrarch and retold it to reflect the true suffering that the real woman of the Renaissance wa ...