«Non battere la donna, ma quando si ribella…». Misoginia e ginofobia nel romanzo persiano medievale

In this paper the author analyzes the passages of misogynist content detectable in the medieval Persian mathnavi, especially in four verse romances: the Vis and Rāmin of Gorgāni, the Khosrow and Shirin of Neẓāmi, the Hasht Behesht of Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and the Homāy and Homāyun of Khwāju Kermāni. In particular, the author examines some negative statements about women, discerning between authorial statements and those uttered by various characters, but also distinguishing between gynophoby as a collective cultural attitude and mostly unconscious and misogyny as an individual attitude and often stated. The author concludes that, rather than misogyny in such poets -who show in general a major consideration of the woman- it would be appropriate to speak, with respect to the analyzed passages, of a clear reflection of the gynophobic background of a culture or an era