Rinaldina Russell

Letters to Her Father, Galileo Rinaldina Russell

Confidential letters written by Galileo's illegitimate daughter Maria Celeste to her father during the most difficult period of his life. Respectful and chiding, entertaining and suspenseful, oftentimes emotionally wrenching, these letters reveal the dynamics of a tense father/daughter relationship played against the lively backdrop of Maria Celest's convent enclosure, Galileo's domestic life, and the not too distant background of contemporary intellectual milieus and of Florentine middle-class society. As the correspondence develops, a drama of cross-purposes comes to the fore: those of Maria Celeste, unwittingly pinning her reason for living on her father's prestige and her love of him, of Galileo, ready to wager his future on the approval of the religious authorities, and of the Roman clergy, determined to uphold the letter of Catholic dogma. Translated into modern American English in a style faithful to the spirit of the author by a scholar of Italian literature and culture, with an introduction and extensive notes on the Renaissance world, on religious women's writing, and on Sister Maria Celeste's life.