Widow City investigates the ever-evolving role of the widow in medieval and early modern Italian literature, from canonical authors such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to the numerous widowed writers who rose to prominence in the sixteenth centuryâ€"including Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, and Francesca Turinaâ€"and radically changed the conversation on public mourning.