„Sempre s’è visto, e vede“

Abstract Against the background of epistemic change in the early modern period, the article examines the literary staging of experience in the epic works of Moderata Fonte ( Tredici canti del Floridoro , 1581), Margherita Sarrocchi ( La Scanderbeide , 1623) and Lucrezia Marinella ( L’Enrico, ovvero Bisanzio acquistato , 1635). With cross-references to Fonte’s and Marinella’s treatises on gender theory, the analysis of exemplary passages shows that the three women authors exploit the evidential quality of the agonistic scenes in their epic poems in order to rebalance the relationship between experience and habit in the context of gender issues. By doing so, they use evidentia (gr. enárgeia ) in its entire spectrum as a rhetorical, epistemological, visual and also legally connoted dispositive.