Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies

Encyclopedia of

Italian Literary Studies 1 A–J INDEX

Gaetana Marrone G E N E RAL E ditor

Paolo Puppa Luca Somigli E ditorS

New York London

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© 2007 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 1‑57958‑390‑3 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑1‑57958‑390‑3 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation with‑ out intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Encyclopedia of Italian literary studies / [compiled by] Gaetana Marrone. p. cm. Includes bibliographical referenences and index. ISBN 1‑57958‑390‑3 1. Italian literature‑‑Encyclopedias. I. Marrone, Gaetana. PQ4006.E536 2006 850.9‑‑dc22 Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge‑ny.com

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CONTENTS

Editorial Staff

vi

Advisors

vii

Contributors

ix

Alphabetical List of Entries

xvii

Thematic List of Entries

xxvii

Introduction

xxxv

Entries A to Z

1

Index

I1

v

CO-EDITORS Maria DiBattista Jennifer Lorch Cormac O’ Cuilleanain Eduardo Saccone

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Elena Past Daniel Seidel

ASSISTANT EDITORS Nicholas Albanese Ileana Drinovan Barbara Garbin Simone Marchesi

vi

ADVISORS Franca Angelini Universita` di Roma ‘‘La Sapienza’’

Ben Lawton Purdue University

Albert Russell Ascoli University of California–Berkeley

Laura Lepschy University College, London

Daniela Bini University of Texas–Austin

Ernesto Livorni University of Wisconsin–Madison

Guido Bonsaver Pembroke College, University of Oxford

Romano Luperini Universita` di Siena

Gian Piero Brunetta Universita` di Padova

Millicent Marcus Yale University

Michael Caesar University of Birmingham

Giuseppe Mazzotta Yale University

Dino Cervigni The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Franco Musarra University of Leuven

Marinella Colummi Camerino Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Lino Pertile Harvard University

Teresa de Lauretis University of California–Santa Cruz

Olga Pugliese University of Toronto

Maria DiBattista Princeton University

Lucia Re University of California–Los Angeles

Robert S. Dombroski{ The City University of New York

Antonio Saccone Universita` di Napoli

Walter Geerts University of Antwerp

Anthony Julian Tamburri Florida Atlantic University

Amilcare Iannucci University of Toronto

Elissa Weaver University of Chicago

Victoria E. Kirkham University of Pennsylvania

Rebecca West University of Chicago

{

Deceased

vii

CONTRIBUTORS Stefano Adami Universita` per Stranieri–Siena

Gino Belloni Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Michael Aichmayr Universita¨t Salzburg

Ruth Ben-Ghiat New York University

Donatella Alesi Universita` di Roma

Alberto Bentoglio Universita` degli Studi di Milano

Beatrice Alfonsetti Universita` di Padova

Dirk Vanden Berghe Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Beverly Allen Syracuse University

Sandra Bermann Princeton University

Daniela Bisello Antonucci Princeton University

Diego Bertelli Yale University

Antonia Arslan Universita` di Padova

Giorgio Bertellini University of Michigan

Andrea Baldi Rutgers University

Maria Ida Biggi Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Giuseppina Baldissone Universita` del Piemonte Orientale ‘‘Amedeo Avogadro’’

Noemi Billi Universita` degli Studi di Bologna Daniela Bini University of Texas–Austin

Susanna Barsella Fordham University

Barbara Bird University of Wisconsin–Madison

Fiora A. Bassanese University of Massachusetts–Boston Shaul Bassi Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Anna Bogo Biblioteca Teatrale Casa di Carlo Goldoni, Venezia

Mattia Begali University of Wisconsin–Madison

Julia Conaway Bondanella Indiana University–Bloomington ix

CONTRIBUTORS

Peter Bondanella Indiana University–Bloomington

Carlo Celli Bowling Green State University

Guido Bonsaver Pembrole College, University of Oxford

Dino Cervigni The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Fabrizio Borin Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia Antonello Borra University of Vermont Andrea Bosello Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia Norma Bouchard The University of Connecticut–Storrs Cristina Bragaglia Universita` degli Studi di Bologna Boris Buia Johns Hopkins University Theodore Cachey University of Notre Dame

Remo Ceserani University of Bologna Gary P. Cestaro DePaul University Paolo Chirumbolo McMaster University–Hamilton Paolo Cianfrone University of Toronto Luigi Contadini Universita` degli Studi di Bologna Graziella Corsinovi Universita` di Genova Stefano Cracolici University of Pennsylvania

Ann Hallamore Caesar University of Warwick

Alessandro Croce Universita` di Torino

Marinella Colummi Camerino Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Roberto Cuppone Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Jo Ann Cannon University of California–Davis

Roberto M. Dainotto Duke University

Rocco Capozzi University of Toronto

Giuseppina Dal Canton Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Francesco Carapezza University of Palermo

Mariano D’Amora Royal Holloway, University of London

Carla Carotenuto Universita` di Macerata

Emanuele D’Angelo Universita` di Bari

Peter Carravetta The City University of New York

Giovanna De Luca College of Charleston

Olivia Catanorchi Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

Federica Brunori Deigan University of Maryland

x

CONTRIBUTORS

Barbara Del Mercato Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Barbara Garbin Yale University

Maria Pia Di Bella Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris

John Gatt-Rutter La Trobe University

Nicola Di Nino Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Giuseppe Gazzola Yale University

Sara Elena Dı´az New York University

Walter Geerts University of Antwerp Academia Belgica, Roma

Maria DiBattista Princeton University

Flora Ghezzo Columbia University

Andrea Dini Montclair State University

Nella Giannetto{ Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Antonio D’Isidoro Universita` di Macerata

Manuela Gieri University of Toronto and Universita` della Basilicata

Konrad Eisenbichler University of Toronto

Simon A. Gilson University of Warwick

Edoardo Esposito Universita` di Milano

Paolo A. Giordano University of Central Florida

Massimo Fabrizi Universita` di Macerata

Gian Paolo Giudicetti Universite´ Catholique de Louvain

Marcella Farina Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Paola Giuli Saint Joseph’s University

Joseph Farrell University of Strathclyde–Glasgow Lucio Felici Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani (Recanati) Valeria Finucci Duke University Vittorio Frajese Universita` di Roma Nicola Fuochi Biblioteca Ebraica, Venezia

Silvana Tamiozzo Goldmann Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia Manuele Gragnolati Somerville College, Oxford Emma Grimaldi Universita` di Salerno Elvio Guagnini Universita` di Trieste Lodovica Guidarelli University of Wisconsin–Madison {

Deceased

xi

CONTRIBUTORS

Angela Guidotti Universita` di Pisa

Antonia Lezza Universita` degli Studi di Salerno

Stefano Gulizia Colgate University

Ernesto Livorni University of Wisconsin–Madison

Nancy Harrowitz Boston University

Giancarlo Lombardi The College of Staten Island/CUNY

Brenda K. Hedrick Johns Hopkins University

Dennis Looney University of Pittsburgh

Angela M. Jeannet Franklin and Marshall College

Sara Lorenzetti Universita` di Macerata

Keala Jewell Dartmouth College

Stefania Lucamante The Catholic University of America

Victoria E. Kirkham University of Pennsylvania

Federico Luisetti The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Christopher Kleinhenz University of Wisconsin–Madison

Alfredo Luzi Universita` di Macerata

Charles Klopp Ohio State University

Joseph Luzzi Bard College

Patrizia La Trecchia University of South Florida

Armando Maggi University of Chicago

Marcia Landy University of Pittsburgh

Simone Marchesi Princeton University

Inge Lanslots University of Leuven

Anna Laura Mariani Universita` di Cassino

Gloria Lauri-Lucente University of Malta

Marina Marietti Universite´ Paris III–Sorbonne Nouvelle

Ben Lawton Purdue University

Gaetana Marrone Princeton University

Carol Lazzaro-Weis University of Missouri–Columbia

Renato Martinoni University of St. Gallen

Simone Lenzi Independent Scholar

Paola Martinuzzi Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Giulio Lepschy University College, London

Giuseppe Mazzotta Yale University

xii

CONTRIBUTORS

Erin M. McCarthy Yale University

´ ine O’Healy A Loyola Marymount University

Anna Meda University of South Africa

Frank Ordiway Princeton University

Alessandra Meldolesi Independent Scholar

Daniela Orlandi Dominican University

Grazia Menechella University of Wisconsin–Madison

H. Marie Orton Truman State University

Michela Meschini Universita` di Macerata Simona Micali Universita` di Siena Giuliana Minghelli Harvard University Lorenza Miretti Universita` degli Studi di Bologna Nelson J. Moe Barnard College, Columbia University Molly Morrison Ohio University, Athens Maria Laura Mosco University of Toronto

Michael Papio University of Massachusetts, Amherst Francesca Parmeggiani Fordham University Maria C. Pastore Passaro Central Connecticut State University Elena Past Wayne State University Eugenia Paulicelli Queens College, City University of New York Maria Nicolai Paynter Hunter College, City University of New York

Franco Musarra University of Leuven

Olimpia Pelosi State University of New York at Albany

Mariella Muscariello Universita` di Napoli ‘‘Federico II’’

Bernardo Piciche` Virginia Commonwealth University

Giuliana Muscio Universita` di Padova

Mark Pietralunga Florida State University

Thomas E. Mussio Iona College

Nicoletta Pireddu Georgetown University

Siobhan Nash-Marshall University of Saint Thomas

Gilberto Pizzamiglio Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Ellen Nerenberg Wesleyan University

Gian Filippo Pizzo Independent Scholar xiii

CONTRIBUTORS

Alessandro Polcri Fordham University

Arielle Saiber Bowdoin College

Gordon Poole Universita` degli Studi l’Orientale

Laura Salsini University of Delaware

Paolo Puppa Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Giuliana Sanguinetti-Katz University of Toronto

Paolo Quazzolo Universita` degli Studi di Trieste

Carlo Santoli Independent Scholar

Lucia Re University of California–Los Angeles

Alessandro Scarsella Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Eileen Adair Reeves Princeton University

Daniele Seragnoli Centro Teatro Universitario, Ferrara

Antonio Ricci York University, Toronto

Mario Sesti University of Rome

Alessia Ricciardi Northwestern University Ricciarda Ricorda Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia Christine M. Ristaino Emory University Diana Robin University of New Mexico Gabriella Romani Seton Hall University

Alfredo Sgroi Universita` di Catania Anna Sica Universita` di Palermo Paola Sica Connecticut College P. Adams Sitney Princeton University Janet Levarie Smarr University of California–San Diego

Bruno Rosada Scuola Interateneo di Specializzazione degli Insegnanti del Veneto

Jon Snyder University of California–Santa Barbara

Rocco Rubini Yale University

Luca Somigli University of Toronto

Patrick Rumble University of Wisconsin–Madison

Matteo Soranzo University of Wisconsin–Madison

Myriam Ruthenburg Florida Atlantic University

Giuseppe Stellardi Oxford University

Antonio Saccone Universita` di Napoli

Eleonora Stoppino Dartmouth College

xiv

CONTRIBUTORS

Giorgio Taffon Universita` degli Studi di Roma 3

Alessandro Vettori Rutgers University

Anthony Julian Tamburri Florida Atlantic University

Daniele Vianello Universita` degli Studi di Roma 3

Anna Tedesco Universita` degli Studi di Palermo

Valerio Vicari Universita` degli Studi di Roma 3

Roberto Tessari Universita` di Torino

Antonio Vitti Wake Forest University

Carlo Testa University of British Columbia

Giada Viviani Bern University

Stefano Tomassini Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

David Ward Wellesley College

Anna Mauceri Trimnell John Cabot University, Rome

Elissa B. Weaver University of Chicago

Sabina Tutone Universitario Teatrale di Venezia

John P. Welle University of Notre Dame

Anne Urbancic Victoria College, University of Toronto

Rebecca West University of Chicago

Mario Valente Universita` di Roma ‘‘La Sapienza’’

Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Franco Vazzoler Universita` degli Studi di Genova

Vito Zagarrio Universita` di Roma

Paola Ventrone Universita` Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano

Italo Zannier Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

Gabriella Veschi Universita` di Macerata

Teresa Zoppello Pe´ter Pa´zma´ny Catholic University, Budapest

Piermario Vescovo Universita` Ca’ Foscari di Venezia

xv

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES A

B

Academies Aganoor Pompilj, Vittoria Alberti, Leon Battista Alciato, Andrea Aleardi, Aleardo Aleramo, Sibilla (Rina Faccio) Una donna Alfieri, Vittorio Saul Mirra Algarotti, Francesco Alvaro, Corrado Amelio, Gianni Ammaniti, Niccolo` Andreini, Giovan Battista Andreini Canali, Isabella Angela da Foligno Angiolieri, Cecco Anglo-American Influences Animation Anthropology, Literature of Antonioni, Michelangelo L’avventura Arbasino, Alberto Arcadia (Accademia) Archibugi, Francesca Architecture, Literature of Aretino, Pietro La Cortigiana Ragionamenti Ariosto, Ludovico Cinque canti Comedies Orlando Furioso Satire Arpino, Giovanni Art Criticism Artusi, Pellegrino Autobiography

Bacchelli, Riccardo Balestrini, Nanni Bandello, Matteo Novelle Banti, Anna (Lucia Lopresti) Barbaro, Ermolao (The Younger) Baretti, Giuseppe Baricco, Alessandro Baroque. See Mannerism Bartoli, Daniello Basile, Giambattista Bassani, Giorgio Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Beccaria, Cesare Belcari, Feo Belgioioso, Cristina di (Alberica Trivulzio) Bellezza, Dario Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino Bellocchio, Marco Bellonci Villavecchia, Maria Bembo, Pietro Gli Asolani Prose della volgar lingua Bene, Carmelo Benelli, Sem Beni, Paolo Benigni, Roberto Benni, Stefano Berchet, Giovanni Bernari, Carlo (Carlo Bernard) Berni, Francesco Bernini, Gian Lorenzo Berto, Giuseppe Bertolazzi, Carlo Bertolucci, Attilio Bertolucci, Bernardo Bestiaries Betocchi, Carlo xvii

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Betti, Ugo Delitto all’Isola delle Capre Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia Bettinelli, Saverio Bevilacqua, Alberto Bianchini, Angela Bianciardi, Luciano Bibbiena, I1 (Bernardo Dovizi) Bigiaretti, Libero Bigongiari, Piero Bilenchi, Romano Biography Biondo, Flavio Blasetti, Alessandro Boccaccio, Giovanni Filostrato Filoloco Decameron Latin Works Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia Boccalini, Traiano Boiardo, Matteo Maria Orlando Innamorato Boine, Giovanni Boito, Arrigo Boito, Camillo Bologna Bolognini, Mauro Bompiani, Ginevra Bonaviri, Giuseppe Bontempelli, Massimo Bonvesin da la Riva Book Culture Borgese, Giuseppe Antonio Borghini, Raffaello Borghini, Vincenzio Maria Bracciolini, Poggio Bracco, Roberto Brancati, Vitaliano Il bell’Antonio Bruni, Leonardo Bruno, Giordano Il Candelaio Eroici furori Bufalino, Gesualdo Diceria dell’untore Buonarroti, Michelangelo Burchiello, I1 (Domenico di Giovanni) Busi, Aldo Buzzati, Dino Il deserto dei tartari

xviii

C Calasso, Roberto Calvino, Italo I nostri antenati Le cosmicomiche Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore Camerini, Mario Camilleri, Andrea Camon, Ferdinando Campana, Dino Canti orfici Campanella, Tommaso La citta` del sole Campo, Cristina (Vittoria Guerrini) Campo, Rossana Cannibali Cantastorie. See Oral Literature Cantautori. See Songwriters Capponi, Gino Capriolo, Paola Caproni, Giorgio Capuana, Luigi Cardarelli, Vincenzo Carducci, Giosue` Rime nuove Odi barbare Caro, Annibal Carrer, Luigi Casanova, Giacomo Cassola, Carlo Castelvetro, Ludovico Castiglione, Baldassare Il libro del cortegiano Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa) Cattaneo, Carlo Cavalcanti, Guido Cavalli, Patrizia Cavani, Liliana Cavazzoni, Ermanno Cecchi, Emilio Cederna, Camilla Celati, Gianni Cellini, Benvenuto Vita Censorship Cerami, Vincenzo Cereta, Laura Ceronetti, Guido Cesarotti, Melchiorre Chiabrera, Gabriello

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Chiarelli, Luigi Children’s Literature Cialente, Fausta Cinema and Literary Writers Cino da Pistoia Classicism Cola di Rienzo Collodi, Carlo (Carlo Lorenzini) Le avventure di Pinocchio Colonial Literature Colonna, Francesco Colonna, Vittoria Comics. See Fumetti Comisso, Giovanni Commedia dell’arte Communism Compagni, Dino Compiuta Donzella Consolo, Vincenzo Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio Corazzini, Sergio Corti, Maria Courts and Patronage Crepuscolarismo Croce, Benedetto Estetica Storia del Regno di Napoli Croce, Giulio Cesare Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa

D Dance and Literature D’Annunzio, Gabriele Il fuoco La figlia di Iorio Alcyone Dante Alighieri Vita Nova De Vulgari Eloquentia Convivio Monarchia Comedı`a Commentaries Da Ponte, Lorenzo D’Arrigo, Stefano Davanzati, Chiaro D’Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli De Amicis, Edmondo Debenedetti, Giacomo Decadentismo De Ce´spedes, Alba

De Filippo, Eduardo Natale in casa Cupiello Filumena Marturano Deledda, Grazia Cenere Canne al vento Delfini, Antonio Del Giudice, Daniele Della Casa, Giovanni Galateo Della Porta, Giambattista Della Valle, Federico De Luca, Erri De Marchi, Emilio De Roberto, Federico De Sanctis, Francesco De Santis, Giuseppe De Sica, Vittorio Ladri di biciclette Dessı`, Giuseppe Detective Fiction Dialects. See Italian Language Di Giacomo, Salvatore Dolce, Ludovico Dolce stil novo Dolci, Danilo Doni, Anton Francesco Dossi, Carlo Duranti, Francesca Duse, Eleonora

E Eco, Umberto Il nome della rosa Enlightenment Epic Epistolary Novel Erba, Edoardo Erba, Luciano

F Fabbri, Diego Faldella, Giovanni Fallaci, Oriana Fantastic and Literature Farina, Salvatore Fascism and Literature Fashion and Literature xix

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Fedele, Cassandra Fellini, Federico Otto e mezzo Feminist Theory and Criticism Fenoglio, Beppe Il partigiano Johnny Ferrara Ficino, Marsilio Film Theory and Criticism Il fiore Firenzuola, Agnolo Flaiano, Ennio Florence Fo, Dario Mistero buffo Fogazzaro, Antonio Piccolo mondo antico Folengo, Teofilo (Merlin Cocai) Folgo´re da San Gimignano Folgore, Luciano (Omero Vecchi) Fonte, Moderata (Modesta Pozzo de’ Zorzi) Food, Culture of Fortini, Franco (Franco Lattes) Foscolo, Ugo Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis Dei sepolcri Fotoromanzo Frabotta, Biancamaria Francis of Assisi Franco, Veronica Frederick II of Hohenstaufen French Influences Fucini, Renato Fumetti Futurism

G Gadda, Carlo Emilio Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana La cognizione del dolore Gay Writing. See Lesbian and Gay Writing Galilei, Galileo Ga`mbara, Veronica Garboli, Cesare Gatto, Alfonso Gelli, Giovan Battista Genoa Genres Gentile, Giovanni German Influences Germi, Pietro Giacomino da Verona xx

Giacomino Pugliese Giacomo da Lentini Giacosa, Giuseppe Giallo. See Detective Fiction Giambullari, Pier Francesco Ginzburg, Natalia Le voci della sera Lessico famigliare Gioacchino da Fiore Gioberti, Vincenzo Giordani, Pietro Giovio, Paolo Giraldi, Giambattista (‘‘Il Cinzio’’) Giudici, Giovanni Giusti, Giuseppe Gobetti, Piero Goldoni, Carlo La Locandiera Il campiello I Rusteghi Govoni, Corrado Gozzano, Guido I colloqui Gozzi, Carlo Gozzi, Gasparo Graf, Arturo Gramsci, Antonio Quaderni del carcere Gravina, Gian Vincenzo Grazzini, Anton Francesco (‘‘Il Lasca’’) Grossi, Tommaso Gruppo 63. See Neo-Avant-Garde Guareschi, Giovanni Guarini, Battista Guazzo, Stefano Guerra, Tonino Guerrazzi, Francesco Domenico Guglielminetti, Amalia Guicciardini, Francesco Storia d’Italia Ricordi Guidacci, Margherita Guiducci, Armanda Guinizzelli, Guido Guittone d’Arezzo

H Hermeticism Heroic-Comic Poetry Hispano Latin-American Influences Historical Novel Historiography

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Holocaust Literature Humanism

I Iacopone da Todi Imbriani, Vittorio Invernizio, Carolina Italian-American Literature Italian Language, History of the

J Jaeggy, Fleur Jahier, Pietro Joppolo, Beniamino Journalism Journals, Literary Jovine, Francesco

L La Capria, Raffaele Lagorio, Gina Landino, Cristoforo Landolfi, Tommaso Racconto d’autunno Latin, Literature in Latini, Brunetto Ledda, Gavino Leonardo da Vinci Leone Ebreo Leone, Sergio Leonetti, Francesco Leopardi, Giacomo Canti Operette morali Zibaldone di pensieri Lesbian and Gay Writing Levi, Carlo Cristo si e` fermato a Eboli Levi, Primo Se questo e` un uomo La tregua Liala (Amaliana Cambiasi Negretti) Libraries Libretto Linguistics and Philology Literary Criticism, History of Literary History Literary Prizes

Liturgical Drama Loi, Franco Longhi, Roberto Lonzi, Carla Loy, Rosetta Lucini, Gian Piero Lussu, Emilio Luzi, Mario Lyric Poetry

M Machiavelli, Niccolo` La mandragola Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio Il Principe Maffei, Scipione Mafia Maggi, Carlo Maria Magrelli, Valerio Magris, Claudio Malaparte, Curzio (Kurt Erich Suckert) La pelle Malerba, Luigi (Luigi Bonardi) Manetti, Giannozzo Manfridi, Giuseppe Manganelli, Giorgio Mannerism and Baroque Manuscripts. See Book Culture Manzini, Gianna Manzoni, Alessandro I promessi sposi Tragedies Maraini, Dacia Donna in guerra La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrı`a Marchesa Colombi (Maria Antonietta Torriani) Marin, Biagio Marinella, Lucrezia Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso Marinisti Marino, Giovanbattista L’Adone Martoglio, Nino Masino, Paola Mastronardi, Lucio Masuccio Salernitano (Tommaso Guardati) Matraini, Chiara Contarini Mazzini, Giuseppe Medici, Lorenzo de’ Comento de’ miei sonetti Meli, Giovanni xxi

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Meneghello, Luigi Merini, Alda Metastasio, Pietro (Pietro Trapassi) Didone abbandonata Michelstaedter, Carlo Mieli, Mario Migration Literature Milan Monicelli, Mario Montale, Eugenio Tutte le poesie Monti, Vincenzo Morandini, Giuliana Morante, Elsa L’isola di Arturo La storia Moravia, Alberto Gli indifferenti Racconti romani Morazzoni, Marta Moretti, Marino Moretti, Nanni Morra, Isabella Morselli, Guido Moscato, Enzo Muraro, Luisa Muratori, Ludovico Antonio Music and Literature Music Criticism Mussato, Albertino Muzio, Girolamo

N Naples Neera (Anna Zuccari) Negri, Ada Neo-Avant-Garde Neoclassicism Neoplatonism Neorealism Niccolai, Giulia Niccolini, Giovanni Battista Nievo, Ippolito Le confessioni d’un italiano Novella Il Novellino Noventa, Giacomo (Giacomo Ca’ Zorzi)

O Ojetti, Ugo Olmi, Ermanno xxii

Onofri, Arturo Opera Oral Literature Orelli, Giorgio Oriani, Alfredo Ortese, Anna Maria Il mare non bagna Napoli L’iguana Ottieri, Ottiero Oxilia, Nino (Sandro Camasio)

P Pagliarani, Elio Palazzeschi, Aldo Il codice di Perela` Palermo Panzini, Alfredo Paolini, Marco Papini, Giovanni Parini, Giuseppe Il giorno Parise, Goffredo Sillabari Pascarella, Cesare Pascoli, Giovanni Myricae Canti di Castelvecchio Pasolini, Pier Paolo Ragazzi di vita Le ceneri di Gramsci Una vita violenta Cinema Passavanti, Jacopo Pastoral Pavese, Cesare Lavorare stanca Dialoghi con Leuco` La luna e i falo` Pazzi, Roberto Pea, Enrico Pellico, Silvio Penna, Sandro Percoto, Caterina Petito, Antonio Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) Canzoniere Triumphi Latin Works Commentaries Petrarchism Petrignani, Sandra Petroni, Guglielmo

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Philosophy and Literature Photography Piccolo, Lucio Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Pius II) Pico Della Mirandola, Giovanni Pier delle Vigne Pierro, Albino Pindemonte, Ippolito Piovene, Guido Pirandello, Luigi Il fu Mattia Pascal Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore I giganti della montagna Novelle per un anno Poliziano, Angelo Stanze Fabula di Orpheo Pomilio, Mario Pontano, Giovanni Pontecorvo, Gillo Pontiggia, Giuseppe Popular Culture and Literature Porta, Antonio (Leo Paolazzi) Porta, Carlo Pozzi, Antonia Praga, Emilio Praga, Marco Pratolini, Vasco Praz, Mario Pressburger, Giorgio Prezzolini, Giuseppe Printing and Publishing Psychoanalysis and Literature Pulci, Antonia (Antonia Tanini) Pulci, Luigi Il Morgante Puppa, Paolo

Ramat, Silvio Rame, Franca Ramondino, Fabrizia Rasy, Elisabetta Ravera, Lidia Rea, Domenico Rebora, Clemente Redi, Francesco Regional Literature Religion and Literature Renaissance Re`paci, Leonida Resistance, Literature of the Rigoni Stern, Mario Risi, Dino Risi, Nelo Risorgimento Romano, Lalla Romanticism Romanzo rosa Rome Rosi, Francesco Salvatore Giuliano Rossanda, Rossana Rosselli, Amelia Rossellini, Roberto Roma, citta` aperta Rosso di San Secondo, Pier Maria Marionette che passione! Rovani, Giuseppe Roversi, Roberto Rovetta, Gerolamo Russian Influences Rustico di Filippo (Rustico Filippi) Ruzzante, I1 (Angelo Beolco) La Moscheta

S Q Quasimodo, Salvatore Lirici greci Ed e` subito sera Questione della lingua. See Linguistics Questione meridionale

R Raboni, Giovanni Ragazzoni, Ernesto

Saba, Umberto (Umberto Poli) Il canzoniere Sacchetti, Franco Sacra rappresentazione Salgari, Emilio Salimbene da Parma (Ognibene de Adam) Salons, Literary Salutati, Coluccio Salvatores, Gabriele Salvemini, Gaetano Salviati, Lionardo Sanguineti, Edoardo Laborintus xxiii

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES Sannazaro, Jacopo Arcadia Sanvitale, Francesca Sarfatti, Margherita Sarpi, Paolo Satta, Salvatore Savinio, Alberto (Andrea De Chirico) Savonarola, Girolamo Sbarbaro, Camillo Scapigliatura Scarpetta, Eduardo Scholasticism Sciascia, Leonardo Il giorno della civetta L’affaire Moro Science and Literature Science Fiction Scola, Ettore Scotellaro, Rocco Screenwriters Serafino Aquilano (Serafino de’ Ciminelli) Serao, Matilde Sercambi, Giovanni Sereni, Clara Sereni, Vittorio Gli Strumenti umani Serra, Renato Settembrini, Luigi Sgorlon, Carlo Sicilian School of Poetry Silone, Ignazio (Secondino Tranquilli) Fontamara Simoni, Renato Sinisgalli, Leonardo Sla`taper, Scipio Socialism Soffici, Ardengo Soldati, Mario Solmi, Sergio Sommi, Leone de’ Songwriters Southern Question. See Questione Meridionale Spaziani, Maria Luisa Speroni, Sperone Sports Writing Stage Directing Stampa, Gaspara Strozzi, Alessandra Macinghi Stu´parich, Giani Svevo, Italo (Aron Hector Schmitz) Una vita Senilita` La coscienza di Zeno xxiv

T Tabucchi, Antonio Notturno indiano Tamaro, Susanna Tansillo, Luigi Tarabotti, Arcangela (Galerana Baratotti) Tarantino, Antonio Tarchetti, Iginio Ugo Tarozzi, Bianca Tasso, Bernardo Tasso, Torquato Aminta Gerusalemma liberata Dialoghi Tassoni, Alessandro Taviani, Paolo and Vittorio Teatro Grottesco Tecchi, Bonaventura Technology and Literature Television Terracina, Laura Terrorism Tessa, Delio Testori, Giovanni Tiraboschi, Girolamo Tobino, Mario Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomizza, Fulvio Tommaseo, Niccolo` Tondelli, Pier Vittorio Tornabuoni, Lucrezia Tornatore, Giuseppe Toto` (Antonio De Curtis) Tozzi, Federigo Con gli occhi chiusi Tre croci Translation Travel Literature Trieste Trilussa (Carlo Alberto Salustri) Trissino, Gian Giorgio Tullia d’Aragona Turin Turoldo, David Maria

U Ungaretti, Giuseppe L’allegria Sentimento del tempo Universities Utopian Literature

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES

V Valduga, Patrizia Valeri, Diego Valla, Lorenzo Varchi, Benedetto Variety Theatre Vasari, Giorgio Vassalli, Sebastiano Venice Verga, Giovanni I Malavoglia Mastro-Don Gesualdo Novelle Verismo Veronesi, Sandro Verri, Alessandro Verri, Pietro Vico, Giambattista Principi di Scienza nuova Vigano`, Renata Villani, Giovanni Vinci, Simona Visconti, Luchino La terra trema

Visual Arts, Literature and Vittorini, Elio Conversazione in Sicilia Uomini e no Vivanti, Annie Viviani, Raffaele Volponi, Paolo Memoriale

W Wertmu¨ller, Lina Women’s History World War I, Literature of World War II, Literature of

Z Zanella, Giacomo Zanzotto, Andrea Il galateo in bosco Zavattini, Cesare Zeffirelli, Franco

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THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Overviews

French Influences Fumetti Futurism Genoa Genres German Influences Hermeticism Heroic-Comic Poetry Hispano Latin-American Influences Historical Novel Historiography Holocaust Literature Humanism Italian Language, History of the Italian-American Literature Journalism Journals, Literary Latin, Literature in Lesbian and Gay Writing Libraries Libretto Linguistics and Philology Literary Criticism, History of Literary History Literary Prizes Liturgical Drama Lyric Poetry Mafia Mannerism and Baroque Marinisti Migration Literature Milan Music and Literature Music Criticism Naples Neo-Avant-Garde Neoclassicism Neoplatonism Neorealism Novella Opera

Academies Anglo-American Influences Animation Anthropology, Literature of Arcadia (Accademia) Architecture, Literature of Art Criticism Autobiography Bestiaries Biography Bologna Book Culture Cannibali Censorship Children’s Literature Cinema and Literary Writers Cinema (Pasolini) Classicism Colonial Literature Commedia dell’arte Communism Courts and Patronage Crepuscolarismo Dance and Literature Decadentismo Detective Fiction Dolce Stil Novo Enlightenment Epic Epistolary Novel Fantastic and Literature Fascism and Literature Fashion and Literature Feminist Theory and Criticism Ferrara Film Theory and Criticism Florence Food, Culture of Fotoromanzo xxvii

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Oral Literature Palermo Pastoral Petrarchism Philosophy and Literature Photography Popular Culture and Literature Printing and Publishing Psychoanalysis and Literature Questione meridionale Regional Literature Religion and Literature Renaissance Resistance, Literature of the Risorgimento Romanticism Romanzo rosa Rome Russian Influences Sacra rappresentazione Salons, Literary Scapigliatura Scholasticism Science and Literature Science Fiction Screenwriters Sicilian School of Poetry Socialism Songwriters Sports Writing Stage Directing Teatro Grottesco Technology and Literature Television Terrorism Translation Travel Writing Trieste Turin Universities Utopian Literature Variety Theatre Venice Verismo Visual Arts, Literature and Women’s History World War I, Literature of World War II, Literature of

Persons Aganoor Pompilj, Vittoria Alberti, Leon Battista xxviii

Alciato, Andrea Aleardi, Aleardo Aleramo, Sibilla (Rina Faccio) Alfieri, Vittorio Algarotti, Francesco Alvaro, Corrado Amelio, Gianni Ammaniti, Niccolo` Andreini, Giovan Battista Andreini, Isabella Canali Angela da Foligno Angiolieri, Cecco Antonioni, Michelangelo Arbasino, Alberto Archibugi, Francesca Aretino, Pietro Ariosto, Ludovico Arpino, Giovanni Artusi, Pellegrino Bacchelli, Riccardo Balestrini, Nanni Bandello, Matteo Banti, Anna (Lucia Lopresti) Barbaro, Ermolao (The Younger) Baretti, Giuseppe Baricco, Alessandro Bartoli, Daniello Basile, Giambattista Bassani, Giorgio Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura Beccaria, Cesare Belcari, Feo Belgioioso, Cristina di (Alberica Trivulzio) Bellezza, Dario Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino Bellocchio, Marco Bellonci Villavecchia, Maria Bembo, Pietro Bene, Carmelo Benelli, Sem Beni, Paolo Benigni, Roberto Benni, Stefano Berchet, Giovanni Bernari, Carlo (Carlo Bernard) Berni, Francesco Bernini, Gian Lorenzo Berto, Giuseppe Bertolazzi, Carlo Bertolucci, Attilio Bertolucci, Bernardo Betocchi, Carlo Betti, Ugo Bettinelli, Saverio

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Bevilacqua, Alberto Bianchini, Angela Bianciardi, Luciano Bibbiena, Il (Bernardo Dovizi) Bigiaretti, Libero Bigongiari, Piero Bilenchi, Romano Biondo, Flavio Blasetti, Alessandro Boccaccio, Giovanni Boccalini, Traiano Boiardo, Matteo Maria Boine, Giovanni Boito, Arrigo Boito, Camillo Bolognini, Mauro Bompiani, Ginevra Bonaviri, Giuseppe Bontempelli, Massimo Bonvesin de la Riva Borgese, Giuseppe Antonio Borghini, Raffaello Borghini, Vincenzio Maria Bracciolini, Poggio Bracco, Roberto Brancati, Vitaliano Bruni, Leonardo Bruno, Giordano Bufalino, Gesualdo Buonarroti, Michelangelo Burchiello, Il (Domenico di Giovanni) Busi, Aldo Buzzati, Dino Calasso, Roberto Calvino, Italo Camerini, Mario Camilleri, Andrea Camon, Ferdinando Campana, Dino Campanella, Tommaso Campo, Cristina (Vittoria Guerrini) Campo, Rossana Capponi, Gino Capriolo, Paola Caproni, Giorgio Capuana, Luigi Cardarelli, Vincenzo Carducci, Giosue` Caro, Annibal Carrer, Luigi Casanova, Giacomo Cassola, Carlo Castelvetro, Ludovico Castiglione, Baldassare

Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa) Cattaneo, Carlo Cavalcanti, Guido Cavalli, Patrizia Cavani, Liliana Cavazzoni, Ermanno Cecchi, Emilio Cederna, Camilla Celati, Gianni Cellini, Benvenuto Cerami, Vincenzo Cereta, Laura Ceronetti, Guido Cesarotti, Melchiorre Chiabrera, Gabriello Chiarelli, Luigi Cialente, Fausta Cino da Pistoia Cola di Rienzo Collodi (Carlo Lorenzini) Colonna, Francesco Colonna, Vittoria Comisso, Giovanni Compagni, Dino Compiuta Donzella Consolo, Vincenzo Corazzini, Sergio Corti, Maria Croce, Benedetto Croce, Giulio Cesare Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa D’Arrigo, Stefano Da Ponte, Lorenzo D’Annunzio, Gabriele Dante Alighieri Davanzati, Chiaro D’Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli De Amicis, Edmondo Debenedetti, Giacomo De Ce´spedes, Alba De Filippo, Eduardo Deledda, Grazia Delfini, Antonio Del Giudice, Daniele Della Casa, Giovanni Della Porta, Giambattista Della Valle, Federico De Luca, Erri De Marchi, Emilio De Roberto, Federico De Sanctis, Francesco De Santis, Giuseppe De Sica, Vittorio Dessı`, Giuseppe xxix

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Di Giacomo, Salvatore Dolce, Ludovico Dolci, Danilo Doni, Anton Francesco Dossi, Carlo Duranti, Francesca Duse, Eleonora Eco, Umberto Erba, Edoardo Erba, Luciano Fabbri, Diego Faldella, Giovanni Fallaci, Oriana Farina, Salvatore Fedele, Cassandra Fellini, Federico Fenoglio, Beppe Ficino, Marsilio Firenzuola, Agnolo Flaiano, Ennio Fo, Dario Fogazzaro, Antonio Folengo, Teofilo (Merlin Cocai) Folgo´re da San Gimignano Folgore, Luciano (Omero Vecchi) Fonte, Moderata (Modesta Pozzo de’ Zorzi) Fortini, Franco (Franco Lattes) Foscolo, Ugo Frabotta, Biancamaria Francis of Assisi Franco, Veronica Frederick II of Hohenstaufen Fucini, Renato Gadda, Carlo Emilio Galilei, Galileo Ga`mbara, Veronica Garboli, Cesare Gatto, Alfonso Gelli, Giovan Battista Gentile, Giovanni Germi, Pietro Giacomino da Verona Giacomino Pugliese Giacomo da Lentini Giacosa, Giuseppe Giambullari, Pier Francesco Ginzburg, Natalia Gioacchino da Fiore Gioberti, Vincenzo Giordani, Pietro Giovio, Paolo Giraldi, Giambattista (‘‘Il Cinzio’’) Giudici, Giovanni Giusti, Giuseppe xxx

Gobetti, Piero Goldoni, Carlo Govoni, Corrado Gozzano, Guido Gozzi, Carlo Gozzi, Gasparo Graf, Arturo Gramsci, Antonio Gravina, Gian Vincenzo Grazzini, Anton Francesco (‘‘Il Lasca’’) Grossi, Tommaso Guareschi, Giovanni Guarini, Battista Guazzo, Stefano Guerra, Tonino Guerrazzi, Francesco Domenico Guglielminetti, Amalia Guicciardini, Francesco Guidacci, Margherita Guiducci, Armanda Guinizzelli, Guido Guittone d’Arezzo Iacopone da Todi Imbriani, Vittorio Invernizio, Carolina Jaeggy, Fleur Jahier, Piero Joppolo, Beniamino Jovine, Francesco La Capria, Raffaele Lagorio, Gina Landino, Cristoforo Landolfi, Tommaso Latini, Brunetto Ledda, Gavino Leonardo da Vinci Leone Ebreo Leone, Sergio Leonetti, Francesco Leopardi, Giacomo Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Liala (Amaliana Cambiasi Negretti) Loi, Franco Longhi, Roberto Lonzi, Carla Loy, Rosetta Lucini, Gian Piero Lussu, Emilio Luzi, Mario Machiavelli, Niccolo` Maffei, Scipione Maggi, Carlo Maria Magrelli, Valerio

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Magris, Claudio Malaparte, Curzio (Kurt Erich Suckert) Malerba (Luigi Bonardi) Manetti, Giannozzo Manfridi, Giuseppe Manganelli, Giorgio Manzini, Gianna Manzoni, Alessandro Maraini, Dacia Marchesa Colombi (Maria Antonietta Torriani) Marin, Biagio Marinella, Lucrezia Marinetti, F. T. Marino, Giovanbattista Martoglio, Nino Masino, Paola Mastronardi, Lucio Masuccio Salernitano (Tommaso Guardati) Matastasio, Pietro (Pietro Trapassi) Matraini, Chiara Contarini Mazzini, Giuseppe Medici, Lorenzo de’ Meli, Giovanni Meneghello, Luigi Merini, Alda Metastasio, Pietro Michelstaedter, Carlo Mieli, Mario Monicelli, Mario Montale, Eugenio Monti, Vincenzo Morandini, Giuliana Morante, Elsa Moravia, Alberto Morazzoni, Marta Moretti, Marino Moretti, Nanni Morra, Isabella Morselli, Guido Moscato, Enzo Muraro, Luisa Muratori, Ludovico A. Mussato, Albertino Muzio, Girolamo Neera (Anna Zuccari) Negri, Ada Niccolai, Giulia Niccolini, Giovanni Battista Nievo, Ippolito Noventa, Giacomo (Giacomo Ca’ Zorzi) Ojetti, Ugo Olmi, Ermanno Onofri, Arturo Orelli, Giorgio

Oriani, Alfredo Ortese, Anna Maria Ottieri, Ottiero Oxilia, Nino (Sandro Camasio) Pagliarani, Elio Palazzeschi, Aldo Panzini, Alfredo Paolini, Marco Papini, Giovanni Parini, Giuseppe Parise, Goffredo Pascarella, Cesare Pascoli, Giovanni Pasolini, Pier Paolo Passavanti, Jacopo Pavese, Cesare Pazzi, Roberto Pea, Enrico Pellico, Silvio Penna, Sandro Percoto, Caterina Petito, Antonio Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) Petrignani, Sandra Petroni, Guglielmo Piccolo, Lucio Piccolomini, Enea Silvio Pico Della Mirandola, Giovanni Pier delle Vigne Pierro, Albino Pindemonte, Ippolito Piovene, Guido Pirandello, Luigi Poliziano (Angelo Ambrogini) Pomilio, Mario Pontano, Giovanni Pontecorvo, Gillo Pontiggia, Giuseppe Porta, Antonio (Leo Paolazzi) Porta, Carlo Pozzi, Antonia Praga, Emilio Praga, Marco Pratolini, Vasco Praz, Mario Pressburger, Giorgio Prezzolini, Giuseppe Pugliese, Giacomino Pulci, Antonia (Antonia Tanini) Pulci, Luigi Puppa, Paolo Quasimodo, Salvatore Raboni, Giovanni Ragazzoni, Ernesto xxxi

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Ramat, Silvio Rame, Franca Ramondino, Fabrizia Rasy, Elisabetta Ravera, Lidia Rea, Domenico Rebora, Clemente Redi, Francesco Re`paci, Leonida Rigoni Stern, Mario Risi, Dino Risi, Nelo Romano, Lalla Rosi, Francesco Rossanda, Rossana Rosselli, Amelia Rossellini, Roberto Rosso di San Secondo, Pier Maria Rovani, Giuseppe Roversi, Roberto Rovetta, Gerolamo Rustico di Filippo (Rustico Filippi) Ruzzante, Il (Angelo Beolco) Saba, Umberto (Umberto Poli) Sacchetti, Franco Salgari, Emilio Salimbene da Parma (Ognibene de Adam) Salutati, Coluccio Salvatores, Gabriele Salvemini, Gaetano Salviati, Lionardo Sanguineti, Edoardo Sannazaro, Jacopo Sanvitale, Francesca Sarfatti, Margherita Sarpi, Paolo Satta, Salvatore Savinio, Alberto (Andrea De Chirico) Savonarola, Girolamo Sbarbaro, Camillo Scarpetta, Eduardo Sciascia, Leonardo Scola, Ettore Scotellaro, Rocco Serafino Aquilano (Serafino de’ Ciminelli) Serao, Matilde Sercambi, Giovanni Sereni, Clara Sereni, Vittorio Serra, Renato Settembrini, Luigi Sgorlon, Carlo Silone, Ignazio (Secondino Tranquilli) Simoni, Renato xxxii

Sinisgalli, Leonardo Sla`taper, Scipio Soffici, Ardengo Soldati, Mario Solmi, Sergio Sommi, Leone de’ Spaziani, Maria Luisa Speroni, Sperone Stampa, Gaspara Strozzi, Alessandra Macinghi Stu´parich, Giani Svevo, Italo (Aron Hector Schmitz) Tabucchi, Antonio Tamaro, Susanna Tansillo, Luigi Tarabotti (Galerana Baratotti) Tarantino, Antonio Tarchetti, Iginio Ugo Tarozzi, Bianca Tasso, Bernardo Tasso, Torquato Tassoni, Alessandro Taviani, Paolo and Vittorio Tecchi, Bonaventura Terracina, Laura Tessa, Delio Testori, Giovanni Tiraboschi, Girolamo Tobino, Mario Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomizza, Fulvio Tommaseo, Niccolo` Tondelli, Pier Vittorio Tornabuoni, Lucrezia Tornatore, Giuseppe Toto` (Antonio De Curtis) Tozzi, Federigo Trilussa (Carlo Alberto Salustri) Trissino, Gian Giorgio Tullia D’Aragona Turoldo, David Maria Ungaretti, Giuseppe Valduga, Patrizia Valeri, Diego Valla, Lorenzo Varchi, Benedetto Vasari, Giorgio Vassalli, Sebastiano Verga, Giovanni Veronesi, Sandro Verri, Alessandro Verri, Pietro Vico, Giambattista Vigano`, Renata

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Villani, Giovanni Vinci, Simona Visconti, Luchino Vittorini, Elio Vivanti, Annie Viviani, Raffaele Volponi, Paolo Wertmu¨ller, Lina Zanella, Giacomo Zanzotto, Andrea Zavattini, Cesare Zeffirelli, Franco

Works Adone, L’ (Adonis) Affaire Moro, L’ Alcyone (Halcyon) Allegria, L’ Aminta Arcadia Asolani, gli Avventura, L’ Avventure di Pinocchio, Le (The Adventures of Pinocchio) Bell’Antonio, Il Campiello, Il Candelaio, Il (The Candle-Bearer) Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind) Canti Canti di Castelvecchio (Songs of Castelvecchio) Canti orfici (Orphic Songs) Canzoniere Canzoniere, Il (The Songbook) Cenere (Ashes) Ceneri di Gramsci, Le (The Ashes of Gramsci) Cinque Canti (Cantos) Citta` del sole, La (City of the Sun) Codice di Perela`, Il (Man of Smoke) Cognizione del dolore, La (Acquainted with Grief) Colloqui, I (Colloquies) Comedia (The Divine Comedy) Comedies (Ariosto) Comento de’ miei sonetti (Autobiography) Commentaries Con gli occhi chiusi (Eyes Shut) Confessioni d’un italiano, Le Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversation in Sicily) Convivio (The Banquet) Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia (Corruption at the Courthouse) Cortegiano, Il (The Book of the Courtier) Cortigiana, La (The Courtesan)

Coscienza di Zeno, La (Confessions of Zeno) Cosmicomiche, Le (Cosmicomics) Cristo si e` fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli) De Vulgari Eloquentia Decameron Dei sepolcri (On Sepulchres) Delitto all’Isola delle Capre (Crime on Goat Island) Deserto dei tartari, Il (The Tartar Steppe) Dialoghi (Dialogues) Dialoghi con Leuco` (Dialogues with Leuco`) Diceria dell’untore (The Plague-Sower) Didone abbandonata Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio Donna in guerra (Woman at War) Donna, Una (A Woman) Ed e` subito sera (And Suddenly It Is Evening) Eroici furori Estetica Fabula di Orfeo (Orpheus) Figlia di Iorio, La (The Daughter of Iorio) Filocolo Filostrato Filumena Marturano Fiore, Il Fontamara Fu Mattia Pascal, Il (The Late Mattia Pascal) Fuoco, Il Galateo (A Renaissance Courtesy-Book) Galateo in bosco, Il Gerusalemma liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, Il (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) Giganti della montagna, I (Mountain Giants) Giorno della civetta, Il (Mafia Vendetta) Giorno, Il (The Day) Iguana, L’ (The Iguana) Indifferenti, Gli (The Time of Indifference) Isola di Arturo, L’ (Arturo’s Island) Laborintus Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) Latin Works (Boccaccio) Latin Works (Petrarch) Lavorare stanca (Hard Labor) Lessico famigliare (Family Sayings) Lirici greci (Greek Poets) Locandiera, La (Mirandolina) Luna e i falo`, La (The Moon and the Bonfires) Lunga vita di Marianna Ucria, La (The Silent Duchess) Malavoglia, I (The House by the Medlar Tree) Mandragola, La (The Mandrake) Mare non bagna Napoli, Il (The Bay Is Not Naples) xxxiii

THEMATIC LIST OF ENTRIES Marionette che passione! (Puppets of Passion) Mastro-Don Gesualdo Memoriale (My Troubles Began) Mirra (Myrrha) Mistero Buffo (Comic Mysteries) Monarchia (On World Government) Morgante, Il Moscheta, La Myricae Natale in casa Cupiello (The Nativity Scene) Nome della rosa, Il (The Name of the Rose) Nostri antenati, I (Our Ancestors) Notturno indiano (Indian Nocturne) Novelle (Bandello) Novelle (Verga) Novelle per un anno Novellino, Il Odi barbare (Ancient Odes) Operette morali (The Moral Essays) Orlando Furioso Orlando Innamorato Otto e mezzo (8 1/2) Partigiano Johnny, Il (Johnny, the Partisan) Pelle, La (The Skin) Piccolo mondo antico (Little World of the Past) Principe, Il (The Prince) Principi di scienza nuova (The New Science of Giambattista Vico) Promessi sposi, I (The Betrothed) Prose della volgar lingua (Writings in the Vernacular Language) Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks) Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio) Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana) Racconti romani (Roman Tales) Racconto d’autunno Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi) Ragionamenti (Dialogues)

xxxiv

Ricordi (Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman) Rime nuove (New Lyrics) Roma, citta` aperta (Open City) Rusteghi, I (The Rusteghi) Salvatore Giuliano Satire (Ariosto) Saul Se questo e` un uomo (If This Is a Man) Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler) Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) Senilita` (As a Man Grows Older) Sentimento del tempo (Feeling for Time) Sillabari Sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio, Il (The Smile of the Unknown Mariner) Stanze Storia d’Italia (History of Italy) Storia del Regno di Napoli (History of the Kingdom of Naples) Storia, La (History: A Novel) Strumenti umani, Gli Terra Trema, La (The Earth Trembles) Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia Tragedies (Manzoni) Tre croci (Three Crosses) Tregua, La (The Truce) Triumphi, I (Triumphs) Tutte le poesie (Collected Poems) Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis) Uomini e no (Men and Not Men) Vita (Autobiography) Vita nova (The New Life) Vita violenta, Una (A Violent Life) Vita, Una (A Life) Voci della sera, Le (Voices in the Evening) Zibaldone di pensieri (Pensieri)

INTRODUCTION

Altogether, this encyclopedia contains 591 critically substantial entries. Embracing the whole of Italian literature from the thirteenth century to the present, it presents the notion of modernity and critical approaches that have a cultural, aesthetic, or socio-historical dimension. Thus, unlike similar and more narrowly defined literary reference works, which strictly limit the selection of authors and fields to "major" figures, or which offer essentially introductory descriptions, this encyclopedia contains a wide variety of approaches that defines Italian studies both in Italy and in the Anglo-American critical and scholarly communities. Any project of this kind, no matter how broad its scope, cannot be exhaustive or all-inclusive. Italian literature is a universe in constant expansion; as it continues to develop in a number of vital directions, the number of subjects, as well as their variety, proliferate also. We have tried in our selection of authors, works, and movements to represent fully the traditional literary canon, but also to pay special attention to contemporary culture and literature, women’s voices, theatre, philosophical and historical writing, and similar topics of interdisciplinary interest. We are especially pleased to present in these pages those writers and subjects that traditionally have been neglected or overlooked by critics because they did not seem to meet the standards associated with the traditional literary canon of the traditional literary establishment. Importantly, in addition to covering hundreds of writers and their works, the encyclopedia also gives broad and generous representation to genres and literary fields to encompass the rich variety of literary expression in the Italian language. Articles focusing on authors describe an individual’s contribution to Italian literature and culture and are followed by detailed examinations of specific works that require greater attention. Ample space is devoted to canonical figures from Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Bruno, Metastasio,

The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is the first comprehensive reference work on Italian literature and culture to be published in English that offers a synoptic overview of the present state of the field through a wide array of critical perspectives. Although there are some notable dictionaries and literary companions that contain useful biographical and cultural information on Italian authors and their works, there is currently no encyclopedia that informs readers about Italian literature—its writers, its various schools and styles, movements, critical traditions, and historical contexts—in a series of substantive essays that describe and analyze the importance of the subject for students and scholars of Italian literature. This encyclopedia honors the figures and the legacy of canonical Italian literature, while also accommodating new developments in genre, media, and interdisciplinary writing, in its survey of the many forms literary creativity has taken over time, and of the various critical approaches by which this creativity might be understood. In our choices, we have been guided by the principles of representativeness and inclusiveness. As a result, the reader will find a broad and eclectic array of critical perspectives in the presentation of writers, individual works, literary movements, literary critics and critical schools, and more general literary topics. To realize this complex research project, we have enlisted the help and expertise of many scholars and critics. The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies represents the authoritative work of 221 scholars and critics from Italy, Europe, and the Anglo-American countries. These contributors share the responsibility of providing expert evaluations of their subjects, which represent the current state of research in their designated fields. The editorial team has worked to eliminate possible overlaps and inconsistencies among individual entries, but it has not attempted to enforce uniformity of style or to dictate a single critical approach. xxxv

INTRODUCTION and Goldoni to Montale, Quasimodo, Calvino, Morante, and Primo Levi and lesser known figures outside the specialized areas such as Laura Ammanati Battiferri, Andrea Alciato, Antonio Petito, Luigi Meneghello, Bianca Tarozzi, and Franco Loi. Individual essays provide a comprehensive analytical framework placing authors in their historical and cultural contexts, including information about critical reception and important scholarship. Thematic essays comment on national, regional, intellectual, gender, and artistic traditions. The inclusion of these far-ranging essays will give those who consult these pages—whether generalist or specialist—a fuller as well as better understanding of the multiple and overlapping contexts which Italian literature reflects and out of which it emerged. These thematic entries thus serve two main purposes: to introduce the reader to Italian literary history and to provide information on writers or groups of writers who do not have individual entries in the encyclopedia. In addition, the entries on women writers, artist-writers, and filmmakers will give readers a sense of the artistic affinities and collaborations that more conventional literary histories, dominated by the example of canonical authors, have often completely overlooked. In recent times, there has been an attempt to re-write the literary and cultural history of Italy. New fields of study have emerged; many figures have been re-evaluated, others have been discovered. Cultural globalization has led to a different distribution of authors and movements across the literary and cultural landscape. Thus we have included a number of authors who traditionally were relegated to more specialized or less visible fields but who today have become familiar names due to international exposure and translation of their works (Arbasino, Cerami, Moscato). While acknowledging the rapidly expanding horizons of contemporary literary criticism and working to ensure that the discoveries and rediscoveries of scholars and critics have been included, we also kept in mind authors unanimously recognized as dominant figures and shapers of the Italian literary tradition and its contemporary offshoots in regional studies, gender studies, film, and other media. Our board of editorial advisors, selected to represent the broadest spectrum of diversified literary and ideological backgrounds, voted on the inclusion of particular authors, works, and topics; they also provided many creative suggestions. The encyclopedia reflects this collaborative approach xxxvi

within and between various fields and so provides a sensible solution for negotiating the conflicting demands of various specialized groups. In setting the categories representing our thematic entries, we chose topics that would group together writers with more specialized, often extra-literary concerns, authors who could beneficially be studied together (Castellani in sacra rappresentazione, Magalotti in science, or Montanelli in journalism). On the other hand, women authors, who have historically been relegated to ‘‘period’’ or group histories, are represented by individual entries rather than under the general rubric of ‘‘women writers.’’ Filmmakers were selected because of their relation to literature, because of the nature and scope of their literary adaptations, or because of their connections to literary and cultural trends, not because of their place or importance in the history of Italian or world cinema. We have also included essays that address innovative tendencies in the field, treating such topics as feminist theory, lesbian and gay writing, migration literature, Holocaust literature, fashion, television, technology, terrorism, and photography that represent the complexity of Italian studies today. These recent developments have not been included at the expense of more traditional topics, such as Neoplatonism, linguistics and philology, or genres. Cities, like Rome, are included only if they have given birth to and are associated with major cultural and literary traditions. Without pretending to cover every author, work, and cultural development, the Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is both informative and critical. It is a significant reference source that provides both a rich description of tradition and a useful account of more recent literary and multicultural developments. Although we assume most readers may have some previous knowledge of Italian literature and culture, we also serve the needs of a wider audience by translating all passages cited in Italian and clarifying words, including titles, that are idiomatic or obscure. Criticism is normally quoted only in English. Titles of Italian works are followed by their date of publication and a translation of the title in parentheses. Wherever possible, we have adopted and cited known published translations. We have also noted the date of composition of works whose publication was delayed and provided the date of first performances of theatrical pieces. The Further Readings section appended to each entry is designed both to elucidate the critical approach of each essay and to reflect the current state of international scholarship in the field.

INTRODUCTION This encyclopedia represents a unique international venture. We hope its readers share our enthusiasm and appreciate the efforts of its many contributing scholars. Most importantly, we trust that general readers as well as students and specialists will benefit from a work in which they can learn about writers and movements enshrined in the traditional literary canon, but also satisfy their interest in those less canonical or more recent figures whose contributions to Italian literature and culture, both classical and contemporary, deserve to be recognized.

How to Use This Book Entries in the encyclopedia are of three main types (authors, works, and topics) and are arranged alphabetically, as listed in the Alphabetical List of Entries in the front matter of each volume. Because entries devoted to individual works or groups of related works by the same author follow immediately after and as part of the author’s entry, a separate Alphabetical List of Works is also provided in the front matter of each volume. Within the works entries for a given author, these entries are listed alphabetically where appropriate. For critical cohesion, entries on authors and their respective works are written by the same contributor. In the case of those authors who are primarily remembered for one specific production (e.g., Belli and his Sonetti romaneschi), the contributing scholar may have opted to discuss the work within the context of the author entry. Each of the three main types of entry consists of a critical essay followed by a Further Reading list. In addition, author entries contain a short intellectual Biography and a Selected Works section, and entries on specific works include an Editions section, in which bibliographical information for the first editions, selected critical editions, and selected translations is provided. In the encyclopedia, the first time a work is referred to in an essay, the first date of publication (or date of composition if publication was delayed) and an English translation of the title are given in parentheses. Wherever a translation has been published, the translation title has been selected, even if it is not a literal one. As for filmographies, titles of films are provided in translations only for worldwide English releases. With regard to biographical information, we provide a full disclosure of major events and dates whenever possible. For contemporary

authors we opted to respect their privacy, if so requested. For ease of use, cross references in the form of Blind Entries and See Alsos are provided, as is a thorough analytical Index. The blind entries direct readers to an entry that is listed under a different word or spelling. At the end of many entries, there are See Also listings, which refer the reader to entries on related topics. These have been kept to a meaningful minimum. The Index includes authors, works, and topics found throughout the encyclopedia. This index is particularly useful for locating references to individuals, works, and topics that do not have entries of their own. For the user’s convenience, an index appears in each volume of this Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies.

Acknowledgments From its inception, the Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies was envisioned as an intellectual journey, not a mere compilation manual. For first commissioning me to undertake the encyclopedia and making me believe in the feasibility of such a challenging long-term project, I wish to thank Lorraine Murray. At Routledge, I am most indebted to Kate Aker, director of development, and Mark Georgiev, editor, who have guided me in every way and at every stage of this publication. For their assistance and support I am most grateful. This project would not have been possible without the help of Paolo Puppa and Luca Somigli; the co-editors, Maria DiBattista, Jennifer Lorch, Cormac O’Cuilleanain, and Edoardo Saccone; and our extraordinary editorial Advisory Board. I would especially like to express my appreciation to Albert Ascoli, Guido Bonsaver, Gian Piero Brunetta, Peter Carravetta, Victoria Kirkham, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Letizia Panizza, Lino Pertile, Olga Pugliese, Lucia Re, and Anthony Tamburri for their assistance on various occasions, supervising entries and providing critical advice during the last phase of this project. I want also to thank Letizia Allais, Marina Petrova, and Thomas Rothenbach for their help at various stages, and also Barbara Garbin and Simone Marchesi, who also assisted in the editorial work. I would like to express my appreciation to Princeton University for providing me with a generous editorial research grant. To Daniel Seidel, Elena Past, Nicholas Albanese, and Ileana Drinovan, who have been devoted and tireless translators and editors on this project, I am indebted more than I can say. xxxvii

INTRODUCTION Maria DiBattista, Luca Somigli, and Jennifer Lorch especially worked tirelessly for many months to keep us on schedule. I would also like to acknowledge the many distinguished contributors who responded with enthusiasm to our invitation and who have remarkably shaped this encyclopedia in an international cooperative venture. Finally,

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the editors would like to record their sadness at the passings of our advisor Robert Dombroski and of contributor Nella Giannetto only days after completing her entry on Dino Buzzati. Gaetana Marrone Professor of Italian, Princeton University

A ABECEDARY See Sillabari (Work by Goffedo Parise)

ACADEMIES The first Renaissance academies were selfconsciously modeled on ancient examples of the coterie. Consistent with this allegiance to antiquity, these academies sought to recover a notion of knowledge, achieved mainly through dialogue, as the supreme value of human life, and their program of learning was eclectic, even encyclopedic. Among the most renowned early gatherings are those that flowered in fifteenth-century Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice. These assemblies were similar to the academies, properly so-called, and have long been labeled so by historians. Recent criticism has convincingly argued, however, that they were distinct, more informal in organization, and less structured than the later academies. The term academia was used in the 1400s with various connotations loosely connected to the school of Plato and to Cicero’s practice and writings. It did not convey the idea of a fixed institution, with rules, a governing structure, membership, and a signature style or cultural program. For instance, in 1463 Marsilio

The academy is an Italian cultural institution of great historical significance. It originated in the early cinquecento in various Italian city-states, from Rome to provincial towns like Siena, rapidly taking hold with effects that reverberated throughout Europe. In simple terms, an academy was conceived as a place where humanists could gather and hold learned discussions, and these scholarly congregations provided the first blueprint and rules of order for many later scientific, artistic, and ecclesiastical organizations. Going through a chain of transformations, this seminal phenomenon reached its peak of importance and prestige in the 1600s, but its influence extended well into the nineteenth century. In their various forms, academies permeated much of the Italian peninsula, touching even smaller courts and municipalities. Notwithstanding this wide-reaching influence, most academies were unstable, ephemeral assemblies of individuals, sometimes at the mercy of politics. Many closed within a couple of years of being established. 1

ACADEMIES Ficino (1433–1499), under the aegis of Cosimo de’ Medici, purportedly established a Platonic academy, also known as the Florentine or the Careggian academy. Scholars have shown this to be, rather than a true academy, more a construct created by inferences of later historians. In fact, the definition probably refers metaphorically to a rustic house Cosimo gave Ficino, or, in other contexts, the scholarship on Plato that Ficino was collecting, or perhaps his lectures. David S. Chambers concludes, ‘‘there is no reason to take Ficino’s activities and utterances, whether in retreat at Careggi or in Florence, his lectures...or his other involvements in teaching, as evidence of his referring to a formally constituted early Florentine ‘Platonic academy’’’ (‘‘The Earlier ‘Academies’ in Italy,’’ 1995). So the term ‘‘academy’’ at this early date would have suggested only a common gathering of learned divulgation, not a structured organization with clearly defined goals and a distinct character. Along these lines, the printer Aldus Manuzio (ca. 1452–1515) established the Accademia Aldina in Venice in 1500, but this was probably little more than a fanciful title for his officina, given to promote scholarly camaraderie among his employees and proof-correctors. Also, among these protoacademies is the Sodalitas (brotherhood) founded by Cardinal Bessarion in Rome after 1443. The proceedings of the so-called Roman Academy (also known as Accademia Pomponiana) that gathered around Giulio Pomponio Leto (1428–1498) in the mid-1460s are somewhat obscure. It was suppressed by Pope Paul II in 1468 because it was suspected of paganism and republican inclinations (while, more likely, pursuing a skeptical academic and epicurean life) but soon reconstituted its ranks. The Accademia Pontaniana, led by the humanist Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503) and active in Naples during the last decades of the 1400s, was probably nothing more than his circle of disciples. Unlike most contemporary institutions, it advocated the use of the vernacular as well as Latin; fostered interests beyond traditional literary subjects, to include philosophy and the natural sciences; and reenacted some curious peripatetic rituals (reportedly, his members would discuss ethical issues while strolling through the countryside). Starting in the early cinquecento, academies appear to have followed more rigorous institutional patterns and practices. Notwithstanding the variety and complexity of these congregations, some common features emerge that are assembled in various combinations. First, the academy functions as, to use Amedeo Quondam’s label, a ‘‘collective 2

subject’’ whose members are engaged in a dialogue, often leading to the composition and printing of communal works (‘‘L’istituzione Arcadia,’’ 1973). In the most prominent of these organizations, a specific cultural strategy seems to have been at work. The members chose a collective name, and they invented an impresa (an emblem that represented their aims, usually a picture inspired by the heraldic tradition, with a motto from Latin or Italian poetry). Imbued with cryptic allusions, this custom combined refined literary knowledge with a playful spirit. In fact, the academies’ titles often exhibit a self-deprecating humor or irony, as shown by the Intronati (Stupefied) of Siena, the Ortolani (Gardeners) of Piacenza, the Sdegnati (Indignant) of Rome, the Oziosi (Idle) and Gelati (Frigid) of Bologna, and the Addormentati (Sleepy) of Genoa. The implications of these titles may convey more than just whimsical levity. The Intronati of Siena insisted on the polemical weight of their logo, which, in their self-serving reading, intended to capture an attitude of disdain and resistance, at a time of considerable political turmoil. Individual members often refashioned their identities by selecting a pseudonym consistent with the overall enterprise. For instance, in the Accademia degli Umidi (Humid) we find such names as Cigno (Swan), Frigido (Frigid), and Spumoso (Foamy). Members of the Florentine Accademia della Crusca, an institution founded in 1583 under the patronage of the Medici and still operating today, gave themselves aliases evocative of the gristmill or bakery, such as the Infarinato (Covered with Flour), the Impastato (Kneaded), the Riscaldato (WarmedUp), and the Avvampato (Inflamed). As these names suggest, these gatherings often expressed escapist and utopian longings or, at least, aspired to create a self-enclosed space insulated from mundane concerns and worldly obligations. Common, though by no means universal, operational features of these institutions are the formalization of their internal structures, a hierarchy of officials charged with administrative duties, and laws regulating their proceedings. The mostly spontaneous nature of their beginnings bears testimony to their prevailing detachment from contemporary politics. Sheltered from external scrutiny, the academy’s position facilitated the expression of political indifference, dissent, and unorthodox beliefs. Their proceedings, being secret, sometimes provoked distrust among local authorities, as was the case when, in 1547, the Viceroy of Naples, Pedro of Toledo, placed a cease and desist order on such groups. Church officials made inquiries, too, suspecting

ACADEMIES the Intronati of heresy in the late 1550s. Reformist tendencies circulated among the Venetian Pellegrini (Pilgrims) and Dubbiosi (Doubtful), the Argonauti (Argonauts) of Mantua, and the Grillenzoni of Modena. In its most fully realized form, the academy was a ‘‘literary republic’’ whose ‘‘citizens’’ engaged in a humanistic pursuit of knowledge. Members and affiliates could study outside of the more rigid university structure. A meticulous curriculum, formal disputations, and technical rhetoric were replaced, though not entirely, with far more uninhibited conversations and more casual lectures. In a vein of friendly emulation, the members’ collaboration seems to have largely superseded social and professional differences. Interestingly, this led to the empowerment of minor figures otherwise marginalized, if not excluded from the cultural arena, who could participate in communal projects, such as theatrical plays and collections of poems. This setting also fostered cross-fertilization of theories and dissemination of literary trends. Often scholars were active in various institutions, driven by their search for patronage, intellectual stimuli, prestige, and fame. Neo-Platonic tenets at the core of some academies are revealed in official statutes that claimed a rebirth of members under the sovereign of reason, thus renouncing the weight of corporeality and escaping worldly impediments. The creation of this realm protected from external controls gave free rein to controversy. In some instances, subverting the high moral standards Baldassare Castiglione predicated in Il cortegiano (Book of the Courtier, 1528), the members indulged in salacious conversations and erotic games rife with sexual innuendos (as happened among the Ortolani and the Virtuosi [Virtuous]). Traditional criticism has tended to ignore or dismiss this aspect of academies, regarding such output as a literary trifle symptomatic of cultural decadence. Recently, though, the significance of this component has been reassessed, and scholars see it as following the ancient principle of serio ludere, or serious fun, and argue that it has genuine cultural significance. For example, among the Intronati the prerequisite of erudition was not as demanding, and this allowed some noble women (envisioned as a coterie of femmes savantes flanking the learned academicians) to participate in evening games, filled with literary references. The same Intronati played a pivotal role in overseeing civic entertainments and organizing performances to celebrate public festivities, as well as encouraging scientific translations and other pedagogical advances.

A rigorous and very influential cultural enterprise was initiated around the mid-sixteenth century. Several academies, partaking in the debate on the questione della lingua, contributed to the strengthening of the Italian vernacular. Their erudite members translated classical works in order to make them more accessible and extol the communicative potential of the volgare. This was a central project of the Accademia degli Infiammati, established in 1540. Echoing the theories of their most prominent member, Sperone Speroni (1500–1588), the Infiammati wanted to see the vernacular used not only for poetry but also for philosophy. In Florence, linguistic concerns and a patriotic spirit coalesced with power strategies: The Accademia degli Umidi (founded in 1540) was soon forced under the terms of Cosimo I de’ Medici’s plan of cultural hegemony to reestablish itself as the Accademia Fiorentina. After some subtle political maneuvering by the prince’s associates, this latter congregation abandoned the former purpose of escaping boredom through some ‘‘honest pastime’’: Instead, it would be committed to celebrating and propagating the Tuscan language. Thus the academy became an effective means to control intellectual production in Florence and was charged with supervising the university and the local press. As the sixteenth century progressed, the academies’ independence from local authorities came under threat, as the power structure of principalities grew increasingly suspicious of secluded, and worse, secret meetings. On the other hand, the state could provide an academy with protection and financial and political support, at a time when literati could not prosper outside of court, church, or university. For this reason, the Accademia Veneziana (1557–1561) sought to secure the patronage of the republic. In fact, the ambitious if ill-fated project of its founder, Federico Badoer (1519–1593), intended to provide the Venetian state with ‘‘a vehicle for the expression of its cultural politics’’ (Lina Bolzoni, La stanza della memoria, 1995). A shift to a new phase in the life of Italian academies occurred in the late 1600s, according to most scholars. While such institutions continued to flourish even in smaller cities like Mantua, by the seventeenth century most were concentrated within major centers of political power. Rome, with its abundance and variety of such gatherings, became the undisputed cultural center of the peninsula. While the number of academies grew, their autonomy lessened, and they were subjected to stricter controls by state and local authorities. They had to 3

ACADEMIES exhibit a more official profile, complying with strategies of municipal propaganda. The last monumental event in the history of these literary institutions occurred at the turn to the eighteenth century, when a new academy was born, the Arcadia, one that would have great vitality and cultural impact. Founded in 1690 by 14 literati previously gathered around Queen Christina of Sweden, this academy included some renowned neoclassicists, such as Giovan Mario Crescimbeni (1663–1728) and Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664– 1718), who in his later years adopted and mentored Pietro Metastasio. Its seat was Rome, and its rituals and practices were complicated and, to modern eyes, sometimes rather artificial or precious. Its members chose pastoral names, selected Pan’s pipe as their symbolic device, and honored the child Jesus as their protector. In 1696, Gravina drafted its laws in Latin, modeling them on the Twelve Tables. In restoring well-honored customs of the pastoral tradition, the Arcadia instituted a principle of equality among its members. Its poetics exerted a pervasive influence in advocating a restoration of Petrarchism and rejecting what was seen as the excesses of Baroque poetry. The Arcadians encouraged mild literary hedonism but also exhibited impressive erudition and antiquarian interests. Crescimbeni, for instance, wrote the Istoria della volgar poesia (History of Italian Poetry, 1698), one of the first histories of Italian literature. Complex and multifaceted, the Arcadia sustained fierce internal conflicts and momentous changes but rose to national and international acclaim. Although it fostered the rise of regional branches (referred to as ‘‘Colonies’’) that assured its profound influence, the Arcadia had a strictly centralized structure. Its autocratic and hierarchical order was modeled on the Roman Curia, which helps account for its cultural positions. Its wide range of interests, however, allowed also the discussion of philosophical and scientific theories inspired by rationalism and in conflict with theological tenets. After this illustrious episode, in the course of the 1700s academies underwent a deep structural change, losing their former encyclopedic aims and specializing in addressing specific areas of study. In keeping with the spirit of the Enlightenment, they often pursued projects of public improvement, especially in the agrarian, economic, and civic fields, as shown by the so-called Accademia dei

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Pugni (Academy of the Fists), established in Milan in 1761. Among its most influential members, it included distinguished intellectuals, such as Pietro Verri (1728–1797), his brother Alessandro (1741–1816), and Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794), who vented political theories and social activism in the periodical Il caffe` (1764–1766). ANDREA BALDI See also: Arcadia (Accademia) Further Reading Boehm, Laetitia, and Ezio Raimondi, Universita`, accademie e societa` scientifiche in Italia e in Germania dal Cinquecento al Settecento, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1981. Bolzoni, Lina, La stanza della memoria: Modelli letterari e iconografici nell’eta` della stampa, Turin: Einaudi: 1995; translated as The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Chambers, David S., ‘‘The Earlier ‘Academies’ in Italy,’’ in Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century, edited by David S. Chambers and Franc¸ois Quiviger, London: The Warburg Institute, 1995. Chambers, David S., and Franc¸ois Quiviger (editors), Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century, London: The Warburg Institute, 1995. Cochrane, Eric, ‘‘The Renaissance Academies in Their Italian and European Setting,’’ in The Fairest Flower: The Emergence of Linguistic National Consciousness in Renaissance Europe. International Conference of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 12–13 December 1983, Florence: Presso l’Accademia, 1985. Di Filippo Bareggi, Claudia, ‘‘Per esser intellettuali: L’Accademia,’’ in Il mestiere di scrivere: Lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1988. Hankins, James, ‘‘The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence,’’ Renaissance Quarterly, 44 (1991): 429–475. Maylender, Michele, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, 5 vols., Bologna: Cappelli, 1926–1930; anastatic reprint: Bologna: Forni, 1976. Quondam, Amedeo, ‘‘L’Accademia,’’ in Letteratura italiana, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, vol. 1, Il letterato e le istituzioni, Turin: Einaudi, 1982. Quondam, Amedeo, ‘‘L’istituzione Arcadia. Sociologia e ideologia di un’Accademia,’’ Quaderni storici, 23 (May–August 1973): 389–438. Samuels, Richard S., ‘‘Benedetto Varchi, the ‘Accademia degli Infiammati,’ and the Origins of the Italian Academic Movement,’’ Renaissance Quarterly, 29 (1976): 599–634. Yates, Frances A., ‘‘The Italian Academies,’’ in Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution, vol. 2, London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.

VITTORIA AGANOOR POMPILJ

ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF See La Cognizione del Dolore (Work by Carlo Emibo Gadda)

THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO See Le Avventure di Pinocchio (Work by Carlo Collodi)

VITTORIA AGANOOR POMPILJ (1855–1910) Like Contessa Lara and Luisa Giaconi, Vittoria Aganoor was a woman writer who recognized a crisis in the tradition of male-dominated Romantic poetry. She responded by developing a lyrical language that evoked an intimate voice through secret analogies and hidden relationships between sounds and sense. Like many aristocratic women of letters who began to write poetry after the Unification, Aganoor was trained and educated in Greek, Latin, and Italian classical literature but was also exposed to European contemporary authors. Her teacher and mentor, Giacomo Zanella, was an esteemed literary critic, poet, and translator. He introduced her to recent developments in French, German, and English poetry and metrics and influenced her literary taste. Aganoor’s apprenticeship was slow, as her many letters to Zanella and Antonio Fogazzaro, the authors who guided her in her early poetic experiments, attest. The fact that she published her first collection, Leggenda eterna (Eternal Legend) in 1900, after the death of her

parents, also suggests how difficult it might have been for a literary woman of Aganoor’s time to reconcile her classical education with her awareness of contemporary literary trends such as Symbolism. The perceived inadequacy of her early verse, patiently ‘‘corrected’’ by Zanella and Fogazzaro, as well as Enrico Nencioni and Domenico Gnoli, convinced the young poet to put off its publication for years. Her letters reflect Aganoor’s literary concerns and poetic development through these years: the increasing freedom from classical models, the growing concern with gender, the relationship with contemporary Italian men of letters. Aganoor composed semiautobiographical love poems, tinged with pessimistic dreams and inner tensions: Passion and feverish activity are celebrated in verses evoking images of splendour and emptiness. She represents human anxiety as a modern condition of alienation and death. The discovery of such a condition from the point of view of a woman, sensitive and well educated, characterizes 5

VITTORIA AGANOOR POMPILJ Leggenda eterna, which signals a kind of poetic independence from the Petrarchist form of ‘‘love book.’’ The symbolic figures of women (the witch and Abene`zer) stand out in the Leggenda eterna. They invite young girls to assert their independence and freedom of speech against dominant points of view, as in ‘‘La strega’’ (The Witch): ‘‘Fanciulle, udite / la parola che salva, e uccide i folli / sogni che costan lagrime... Perche´ / fidate voi nell’uomo, e poi piangete, / piangete?... Ecco, io vi dico la parola / ch’io stessa udii per un prodigio’’ (Girls, listen / to the word which redeems, and kills the crazy / dreams which cost tears... Why / do you trust men, and then cry, / don’t you cry?... Here is the word / I heard by chance). Aganoor’s poetic voice manifests itself in the form of either interrogation or direct statement, a voice empowered by both its own poetic intentions and the contingencies of chance. Aganoor’s second collection, Nuove liriche (New Lyrics, 1908) possesses a double character as both meditative and civic poetry. Praised by Benedetto Croce as a remarkable work of ‘‘un’anima di donna che ha sperimentato la liberta` nella semplicita`’’ (the soul of a woman who has experimented with freedom in simplicity) (‘‘Vittoria Aganoor,’’ 1973), it contains texts written after her marriage to Guido Pompilj. Reflecting her experience of living in Perugia (her husband’s hometown), Aganoor celebrates the landscapes, colours, and fruits of Umbria in verses that are ultimately concerned with expressing a vision of nature. Her vision represents places through the perspective of a mind at peace. Aganoor was by then a famous poet, the wife of an influential politician, and a philanthropist working in league with her friends Maria Pascolato, Antonietta Giacomelli, Alice Hallgarten Franchetti, and Felicitas Bu¨chner. Her new attention to biblical figures such as Esau´ and Agar reflects the influence of a contemporary religious debate on reform in the Catholic Church, which inspired Fogazzaro’s novel Il santo (The Saint, 1905) and Paul Sabatier’s activity in Umbria. At first Aganoor’s reputation was not determined by readers and literary critics. She rose to popularity after the tragic death of her husband, who shot himself after she died. Before World War I, her poetry figured prominently in Croce’s survey of representative women writers and poets of the ‘‘new’’ Italy. In 1958, Luigi Baldacci broke a long critical silence on her work and included her in his nineteenth-century poetry anthology. Baldacci focused on Aganoor’s poetic art, her investigations of meaning and communication through rhythm 6

rather than on the themes of love, desire, and spontaneous poetic speech that are traditionally associated with women poets. In undermining the stereotypes advanced by male critics, he anticipated the feminist readings of Biancamaria Frabotta in 1983 and the pioneering work by Antonia Arslan, whose conference on Vittoria Aganoor in 1986 renewed efforts to assess the position of the Armenian-Paduan poet in Italian literature at the turn of the century.

Biography Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj was born in Padua on 26 May 1855 to Edoardo and Giuseppina Pacini, of noble Armenian extraction. Her first teacher and literary mentor was Giacomo Zanella, who frequented her aristocratic family circle. Her correspondence with preeminent poets and critics such as Enrico Nencioni, Antonio Fogazzaro, Domenico Gnoli, and Angiolo Orvieto attest to her long literary apprenticeship. She spent most of her adult life with her beloved mother, residing in Padua until ca. 1876, then in Naples, Venice, and Basalghelle; in 1901, at the age of forty-six, she married Guido Pompilj, a well-known member of the Italian Parliament and rich Umbrian landowner. Aganoor spent the last nine years of her life in her husband’s palace in Perugia and in Rome. Following surgery, she died of cancer in Rome, on 8 May 1910. After her death, Guido Pompilj shot himself. DONATELLA ALESI Selected Works Collections Poesie complete, edited by Luigi Grilli, Florence: Le Monnier, 1912; rpt. 1927.

Poetry ‘‘Leggenda eterna,’’ 1900. ‘‘Nuove liriche,’’ 1908.

Letters Lettere a Domenico Gnoli, edited by Biagia Marniti, 1967. Lettere a Giacomo Zanella, edited by Adriana Chemello, 1996. Aganoor, la brezza e il vento: Corrispondenza a Guido Pompilj, edited by Lucia Ciani, 2004. ‘‘Lettere a Antonio Fogazzaro,’’ edited by Adriana Chemello and Donatella Alesi, in Tre donne d’eccezione: Vittoria Aganoor, Silvia Albertoni Tagliavini, Sofia Bisi Albini: Dai carteggi inediti di Antonio Fogazzaro, 2005.

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI Further Reading Alesi, Donatella, ‘‘Lettere a Domenico Gnoli,’’ in Letteratura italiana. Dizionario delle opere, edited by Giorgio Inglese, vol. 1, Turin: Einaudi, 1999. Arslan, Antonia, ‘‘Un’amicizia tra letterate: Vittoria Aganoor e Neera’’ and ‘‘Le ultime lettere di Guido Pompilj,’’ in Dame, galline e regine: La scrittura femminile italiana fra ‘800 e ‘900, edited by Marina Pasqui, with an Introduction by Siobhan Nash-Marshall, Milan: Guerini, 1998. Baldacci, Luigi, ‘‘Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj,’’ in Poeti minori dell’Ottocento, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1958. Costa-Zalessow, Natalia, Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al XX secolo. Testi e critica, Ravenna: Longo, 1983. Croce, Benedetto, ‘‘Vittoria Aganoor’’ (1910) in Letteratura italiana della Nuova Italia, Bari: Laterza, 1973. Fiocchi, Stefania, ‘‘Vittoria Aganoor,’’ in Le stanze ritrovate, edited by Antonia Arslan, Adriana Chemello, and Gilberto Pizzamiglio, Mirano (Venice): Eidos, 1991. Frabotta, Biancamaria, ‘‘Alle soglie di una perduta femminilita` poetica: Contessa Lara e Vittoria Aganoor,’’ in

La donna nella letteratura italiana del ’900: Atti del convegno, Empoli maggio, 1981, Empoli: Litografia Zanini, 1983. Mancini, Franco, La poesia di Aganoor, Florence: Le Monnier, 1959. Marola, Barbara, et al., Fuori norma: Scrittrici italiane del primo novecento, Ferrara: L. Tofani, 2003. Moretta, Paola, Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj, Teramo: Il Risveglio, 1921. O’Brien, Catherine, ‘‘Poetry 1870–2000,’’ in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, edited by Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ortolani, Tullio, La poesia di Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj, La Spezia: Casa Editrice dell’Iride, 1900. Russi, Antonio, ‘‘Aganoor, Vittoria,’’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 1, Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Treccani, 1960. Sanguinetti-Katz, Giuliana, ‘‘Aganoor, Vittoria,’’ in Italian Women Writers, edited by Rinaldina Russell, Westport, CT-London: Greenwood Press, 1994.

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI (1404–1472) Alberti is a genuine rediscovery for the contemporary scenario of Renaissance studies: Since the 1970s, studies have remarkably increased on this atypical humanist who escapes the narrow definition of writer. His undying bent for addressing the most varied issues and for using a wide range of different genres and literary codes (love poems, eclogues, moral treatises, biographies, artistic treatises, moral fables, and the like), his direct involvement in many architectural works, and his interest in cryptography and cartography have won him the name of ‘‘universal man of the Early Renaissance’’ (Joan Gadol, Leon Battista Alberti, 1969), thanks mainly to Jacob Burckhardt’s famous description of him. Following Eugenio Garin’s studies, the traditional, idealized image of an ‘‘Apollonian’’ Alberti was replaced by the image of a complex intellectual man, whose vision of the world was imbued with a vein of radical antihumanistic pessimism. The latest critical contributions tend to overcome such radical split between a ‘‘sunny’’ Alberti, the author of committed and constructive treatises, and the ‘‘nocturnal’’ Alberti of the Intercenales (Dinner Pieces, ca. 1441) and Momus (Momus, 1450), in the attempt to encompass his philosophy and the corpus of his

writings into one general vision. This bipolar characterization of Alberti’s contributions has suggested the notion that such texts as the Intercenales and Momus might be a sort of pessimistic counterpoint to his moral treatises in the vernacular. Alberti’s versatile work defies, however, such oversimplification: His ideas—often so distant from the prevailing ideology of his age—and his forms of expression shed light into the innovative program of Alberti’s experimentalism and, at the same time, classicism. His accomplishments in the vernacular and in Latin exemplify his theoretical scope in language or content. From the linguistic point of view, Alberti’s oeuvre is basically duplicitous, reflecting different social types of audiences for whom the two texts were intended and the nature of the subject matter—his underlying models were Lucian of Samosata and Cicero. Alberti’s meditations reflect his interest in moral issues and in every dimension of human life. His stern Stoic ethics owe little to Christianity, and his thought develops through the analysis of such key concepts as Nature, Virtue, and Fortune, the greatness and the meanness of mortals. Alberti is fully aware of the important role played by the linguistic 7

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI and stylistic components in the success of a literary or artistic work; hence his firm stance in supporting the vernacular within the humanistic debates on its suitability as a literary language. According to Alberti, the vernacular is endowed with its own nobility and field of applicability. With regards to the controversy on the nature and use of Latin in ancient Rome, an issue that had a direct impact on the status of the vernacular during the fifteenth century, he displayed his eloquence in the preamble to the third book of the Libri della Famiglia (The Family in Renaissance Florence, 1433–1441) as well as in the Grammatichetta (ca. 1438–1441; the very first Tuscan grammar), in the Protesta (A Protest; anonymous, but attributed to Alberti by many scholars), which comments on the certame coronario held on 22 October 1441 in Florence, a poetry contest Alberti himself helped organize under the sponsorship of Piero de’ Medici, and in the dedication of the Theogenius (Theogenius, ca. 1441). It is significant that Alberti decided to write his moral dialogues in the vernacular. Though the genre was already widespread in the early fifteenth century and was bound to meet more and more favor with time, the use of Latin in this type of text was virtually a necessary choice. Among his dialogues, the Libri della famiglia (the first three books date 1433–1434; the fourth, 1441) address three generations of the Alberti family and their civic and mercantile values: the upbringing of children (Book I), married life (Book II), household goods and mercantile banking (Book III), and friendship, a bond more important than family or marital ties (Book IV). They are treated in accordance with the psychological traits of each featured character, so that the discussion comprises the opinions of the scholar, the old patriarch, the man of the world, the young generations, and so forth. Introduced as an exemplary model of a family institution, as well as the ideal place for a ‘‘civilized conversation’’ about different but always important issues, the Albertis appear as wise, educated, and experienced individuals who can master together any subject of discussion. The writing of the Libri della famiglia served a personal and public scope. In the light of some of Alberti’s biographic events, the dialogue is an attempt to achieve a compromise between the intention to celebrate the Alberti family and the author’s desire to be accepted by them, due to his decision to devote himself to the arts instead of politics or trade. The remaining moral dialogues, which include the Theogenius, the Profugiorum ab aerumna libri III (Plight for 8

Hardship, 1441–1442), and the De iciarchia (On Governing a Household, 1470), discuss, once again, Alberti’s favorite subjects: the analysis of man’s soul and behavior, the search for possible remedies to unhappiness, devotion to one’s family and country; but they also reflect a Stoic rigor or, conversely, pragmatism, and they are written either in a didactic and pedagogical mode or with disillusioned and bitter tones. The Intercenales and the Momus reveal a darker pessimistic streak. They are ambitious contributions to Renaissance Latin literature in Italy. Alberti wrote the Intercenales over many years, and the satirical dialogues that have reached us seem to be organized in 11 books. The topics of this collection (mostly short fables) range from love, friendship, and family to the vanity of human beliefs, aspirations, and actions. Human endeavors are often impaired by fate or rather by people’s stultitia (stupidity). The reasoning is frequently semiserious, mockingly witty: The fierce condemnation of the world’s rampant injustice and contemporary mores is expressed in grotesque and irreverent tone; serious subjects, put into the mouths of gods and other fictional characters, are often treated with a ludicrous but not frivolous approach. The Momus is a satire with allegorical nuances, an account of the tragicomic events of the title character, the God of Blame. The protagonist’s adventures take place between a parodic Olympus and an earthly world ruled by folly and ambition. Alberti emphasizes the difficulty of writing in the shadow of antiquity and concludes by urging to be original in language and content. Among Alberti’s artistic treatises, the De pictura (On Painting, 1435), with a dedicatory prologue to Filippo Brunelleschi, is important for the birth and development of perspective. It was first written in Latin and later in the vernacular in order to interest architects and painters who could not read Latin. His second treatise, De statua (On Sculpture) was also written around this time. Alberti recommends the use of live models and the imitation of nature. De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building), which was begun in 1449 but not printed until 1485, is comprised of ten books that were intended to be a continuation and an alternative to Vitruvius’s De architectura. These technical works exerted a longlasting influence on the theoretical guidelines of Italian architecture, also thanks to the canonization they received during the Council of Trent. For Alberti, architecture is essentially an intellectual quest: His profound analysis of Virtruvius’s treatise is based on his parallel investigations both on

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI ancient texts and products, two kinds of witness that he considered as reliable as literary ones. Beyond the lessons in design methods it offers, Alberti’s work is still prized by architects today— especially because it contributes to shape their professional role in society. Alberti was a theorist and a designer, but he never closely attended the practical accomplishment of his designs. His most important works, strongly anchored to the exempla of antiquity but also deeply influenced by the most modern works of Brunelleschi, Michelozzo, and Rossellino, include the churches of S. Sebastian and S. Andrew in Mantova, the Malatesta Temple in Rimini (all left unfinished on account of problems that arose with the patronage), the facade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and the Holy Sepulchre in the Church of Saint Pancras in Florence. Alberti actively participated in the literary debates of his time in support of the vernacular. Several of his texts, such as the Libri della famiglia and the Intercenales, provide answers to the theoretical questions that engaged his contemporaries. Capable of capturing the stimuli coming from the surrounding cultural scenario and of developing several solutions, Alberti excelled in argumentative dialogues: For him there are no universal truths, and things should be investigated from different perspectives. Thus, since Alberti’s discoveries ‘‘had no sanctioned models’’ (Rosario Contarino, Leon Battista Alberti moralista, 1991), they would not become models for the later writers: Leon Battista, who was the boldest humanist in terms of speculation and versatility, and who, throughout his lifetime, felt haunted by slandering critics, had no immediate followers. His theoretical writings, however, are of fundamental importance for the history of art and architecture.

Biography Leon Battista Alberti was born in Genoa, 18 (?) February 1404, the illegitimate son of a Florentine exile, Lorenzo, from an important family engaged in trade. He studied first in Padua under the guidance of Gasparino Barzizza and then in Bologna; he graduated in canon law, 1428; he was also interested in mathematics and physics, especially at a time when he was troubled by health and family problems. As his father died in 1421, some relatives stripped Leon Battista and his brother, Carlo, of their inheritance; he was helped by Tommaso Parentucelli (future Pope Nicholas V) and began working for Cardinal Albergati and then for the

patriarch of Grado, Biagio Molin. He was employed as an apostolic abbreviator in 1432, a post he would hold until 1464; was given the priorship of S. Martino in Gangalandi and the attendant ecclesiastic benefices, thereby gaining good economic stability. Alberti visited Florence shortly after the ban against his family was lifted, 1428; then in 1434–1436 to attend the works of the Council for the union with the Greek Church. Both in Florence and at the papal court, Alberti was in contact with Italian humanists, artists, and prominent personalities such as Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Dati, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. As an architect, he worked for Ludovico Gonzaga, Sigismondo Malatesta, and the Rucellai family. Alberti died in Rome, 20 April 1472. OLIVIA CATANORCHI Selected Works Collections Opere volgari, edited by Anicio Bonucci, 5 vols., Florence: Tip. Galileiana, 1843–1849. Opere volgari, edited by Cecil Grayson, 3 vols., Bari: Laterza, 1960–1973.

Treatises De iciarchia, in Opere volgari, edited by Anicio Bonucci, vol. 3, 1843–1849. De pictura praestantissima et nunquam satis laudata arte libri tres absolutissimi Leonis Baptistae de Albertis viri in omni scientiarum genere et praecipue mathematicarum disciplinarum doctissimi, 1540; Della pittura, critical edition by Luigi Malle`, 1950; as On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of ‘‘De Pictura’’ and ‘‘De Statua,’’ edited and translated by Cecil Grayson, 1972. De re aedificatoria, 1485; edited by Paolo Portoghesi and Giovanni Orlandi, 1966; as On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor, 1988. Descriptio Urbis Romae, edited and translated into French by M. Furno and M. Carpo, 1999. Grammatichetta, in Ciro Trabalza, Storia della grammatica italiana, 1908; as Grammatica della lingua toscana, in Opere volgari, edited by Cecil Grayson, vol. 3, 1960– 1973; as Grammatichetta e altri scritti sul volgare, edited by Giuseppe Patota, 1998. Intercenales, partially edited in Leonis Baptistae Alberti, Opera, Barlolomeo de’ Libri, 1499; Opera inedita et pauca separatim impressa, Hieronymo Mancini curante, Florentiae: J. C. Sansoni, 1890; Intercenali inedite, edited by Eugenio Garin, Florence: Sansoni, 1965; Intercenales, edited by Franco Bacchelli and Luca D’Ascia, 2003; as Dinner Pieces: A Translation of the ‘‘Intercenales,’’ translated by David Marsh, 1987. Libri della famiglia, in Opere volgari, edited by Anicio Bonucci, vol. 2, 1843–1849; in Opere volgari, edited by Cecil Grayson, vol. 1, 1960–1973; as I Libri della

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LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI famiglia, edited by Ruggiero Romano and Alberto Tenenti, 1969; revised edition by Francesco Furlan, 1994; as The Family in Renaissance Florence, translated by Rene´e N. Watkins, 1969; as The Albertis of Florence, translated by Guido A. Guarino, 1971; as The Family in Renaissance Florence: Book Three, translated by Rene´e N. Watkins, 1994. Momus, Rome: Iacopo Mazzocchi, 1520; as De Principe, Rome: Stephanus Guilleret, 1520; as Momo o del principe, critical edition by Rino Consolo, 1986; as Momus, translated by Sarah Knight, edited by Virginia Brown and Sarah Knight, 2003. Profugiorum ab aerumna libri III, as Della tranquillita` dell’animo, in Opere volgari, edited by Anicio Bonucci, vol. 2, 1843–1847; as Profugiorum ab aerumna, in Opere volgari, edited by Cecil Grayson, vol. 2, 1960– 1973; as Profugiorum ab aerumna libri, edited by Giovanni Ponte, 1988.

Further Reading Borsi, Franco, Leon Battista Alberti: The Complete Works, London and New York: Electa/Rizzoli, 1986. Boschetto, Luca, Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze: Biografia, storia, letteratura, Florence: Olschki, 2001. Cardini, Roberto, ‘‘Alberti o della nascita dell’umorismo moderno,’’ Schede umanistiche, n.s., 1 (1993): 31–85. Choay Franc¸oise, The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, edited by Denise Bratton, Cambridge (MA) and London: MIT Press, 1997. Contarino, Rosario, Leon Battista Alberti moralista, Caltanissetta-Rome: Sciascia, 1991. Convegno Internazionale indetto nel V Centenario di Leon Battista Alberti (Roma–Mantova–Firenze, 25–29 aprile 1972), Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974. Furlan, Francesco, et al. (editors), Leon Battista Alberti, Actes du Congre`s International de Paris (Sorbonne– Institut de France–Institut Culturel Italien–Colle`ge de France, 10–15 avril 1995), 2 vols., Paris–Turin: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin and Nino Aragno Editore, 2000. Gadol, Joan, Leon Battista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Garin, Eugenio, ‘‘Studi su Leon Battista Alberti,’’ in Rinascite e rivoluzioni: Movimenti culturali dal XIV al XVIII secolo, Rome–Bari: Laterza, 1975. Grafton, Anthony, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance, New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. Grafton, Anthony, ‘‘Leon Battista Alberti: The Writer as Reader,’’ in Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Grayson, Cecil, Studi su Leon Battista Alberti, edited by Paola Claut, Florence: Olschki, 1998. Leon Battista Alberti: Architettura e cultura, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Mantova 16–19 novembre 1994), Florence: Olschki, 1999. Leon Battista Alberti e il Quattrocento. Studi in onore di Cecil Grayson e Ernst Gombrich, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Mantova, 29–31 ottobre 1998), Florence: Olschki, 2001. Marsh, David, Lucian and the Latins: Humor and Humanism in the Early Renaissance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Marsh, David, ‘‘Leon Battista Alberti and the Volgare Dialogue,’’ in The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation, Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Press, 1980. Paoli, Michel, L’ide´e de nature chez Leon Battista Alberti, Paris: Honore´ Champion, 1999. Patetta, Luciano (editor), Disegni per il De re aedificatoria di Leon Battista Alberti, monographic issue, Il disegno di Architettura, 28 (2004). Ponte, Giovanni, Leon Battista Alberti umanista e scrittore, Genoa: Tilgher, 1981. Rinaldi, Rinaldo, Melancholia christiana: Studi sulle fonti di Leon Battista Alberti, Florence, Olschki, 2002. Tafuri, Manfredo, Ricerca del Rinascimento, Turin: Einaudi, 1992. Tavernor, Robert, On Alberti and the Art of Building, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. Westfall, Carroll William, In this Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti, Nicholas V, and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447–1455, University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974.

ANDREA ALCIATO (1492–1550) A Lombard jurist and humanist, Andrea Alciato enjoyed a long and influential career as a lawyer, a jurist, and a university professor. Today his fame rests primarily on his invention of the Renaissance emblem.

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A precocious youth, Alciato received his earliest education in Milan under the celebrated humanist Aulus Janus Parrhasius. Here, he also heard the lectures of the Greek scholar Janus Lascaris. Both were to make a lasting impact on his professional

ANDREA ALCIATO life. Alciato received his higher education at the universities of Pavia (1507–1510), Bologna (1511–1514), and then briefly Ferrara, where he earned a doctorate in civil and canon law. A practicing lawyer, Alciato also pursued an academic career, teaching law first in Avignon, then in Bourges, and then finally in Italy at all three of his alma maters—Pavia, Bologna, and Ferrara. His prestige as a jurist was such that at Ferrara his annual salary alone consumed 10 percent of the university’s budget. In 1522–1527, in the hiatus between his two teaching posts at Avignon, Alciato returned to Milan and dedicated himself to the study of the classics and to translating from Greek into Latin selections from the Greek anthology and from Aristophanes. During the course of his illustrious career as a lawyer and a scholar, Alciato published several influential treatises and commentaries that revamped legal studies by applying humanist methodologies to the study of Roman law. This quickly drew the attacks of traditional jurists who accused him of foregrounding literary interests and pursuing useless philological or historical interests at the expense of the true study of the law. Humanists, on the other hand, showered him with wholesome praise, chief among them Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, with whom Alciato actively corresponded in the 1520s and 1530s. His approach had a profound impact on Italian and French legal circles. In the latter, his many students from his years in Avignon and Bourges created a veritable school of law (the mos gallicus, or French method) that was highly influential in that country. In the history of Italian jurisprudence, Alciato is considered to be the founder of the ‘‘Scuola del Culto’’ and an opponent of the ‘‘Bartolisti,’’ that is, of medieval legal thinkers who followed the teachings of Bartolo da Sassoferrato. An excellent example of Alciato’s approach to the study of law is the De verborum significatione libri quattuor (Four Books on the Significance of Words, 1530), where Alciato uses the philological tools of the humanists to analyze and explicate the intended meaning of Roman law. Alciato’s Opera omnia, which included his commentaries on the corpus juris civilis, as well as other philological works on legal and nonlegal texts, was published twice by Michael Isingrin in Basel (1549 and 1558), by Thomas Guarinus (Basel, 1582), and by the heirs of Lazarus Zetzner (Frankfurt, 1617). There is no modern edition of his complete works. In spite of his brilliant career in the law and his profound impact on its practice, today Alciato’s fame rests primarily on his reinvention of the

emblem—a visual/literary device consisting of a title (or motto), an image, and an epigram. Breaking the emblem away from its medieval predecessor, Alciato classicized it by using a word or phrase taken from ancient Greek or Roman literature as the title, a simple engraving as the illustration, and an epigram often (but not always) referring to, or elucidating, the image. The three elements worked in tandem to deliver a moral lesson strongly imbued with Renaissance humanist ideals. Originally Alciato had not thought of including images in his emblems, but after they were added in the first, and unauthorized, edition of his Emblematum liber (Book of Emblems), published in Augsburg in 1531, he quickly accepted the innovation. The authorized edition (published by Christian Wechel in Paris in 1534) thus reaffirmed the use of images and established the standard format of the emblem book: one emblem per page, each consisting of a title, an image, and an epigram. During his lifetime, Alciato’s collection underwent many subsequent editions, revisions, and expansions. The work was soon translated into the major vernacular languages of Europe. With at least 170 editions before 1700, it was a runaway best seller, so much so that it spawned many imitations and led to the creation of a new genre, the emblem, which in turn profoundly influenced Mannerist and Baroque art and literature. The complete variorum edition (including the suppressed emblem No. 80 on the sin against nature) was prepared by Joannes Thuilius and published by Pietro Paolo Tozzi in Padua in 1621 (Emblemata cum commentariis). It contains one of the earliest biographies of Alciato and commentaries by Claude Mignault, Francisco Sa´nchez de las Brozas, Lorenzo Pignoria, and Fe´de´ric Morel.

Biography Andrea Alciato was born on 8 May 1492 in Alzate Brianza, near Como. His father, Ambrogio Alciato, was a wealthy Milanese merchant who had also served as ambassador to the Republic of Venice. His mother, Margherita Landriani, was of aristocratic stock. Educated first in Milan, Alciato then studied at the universities of Pavia (1507–1510), Bologna (1511–1514), and Ferrara (1515–1516), where he received a doctorate in civil and canon law on 18 March 1516. He moved to France and taught law in Avignon (1518–1522), then returned to Milan to pursue private studies in the classics and to translate from the Greek anthology and Aristophanes (1523–1526); he taught law again in Avignon 11

ANDREA ALCIATO (1527–1529) and then in Bourges (1529–1533, on the invitation of King Francis I who attended some of his lectures); returned to Italy to teach law at the universities of Pavia (1533–1537), Bologna (1537–1542), Ferrara (1542–1546, on the invitation of Ercole d’Este), and then again Pavia (1546–1550). In 1520 Alciato met Bonifacius Amerbach, who connected him with Desiderius Erasmus. He was made count palatine by Pope Leo X in 1521 and appointed to the Senate of Milan by Duke Francesco Sforza. In 1546 he declined the cardinalate offered to him by Pope Paul III and accepted, instead, only the title of Apostolic Protonotary. Alciato died in Pavia on 12 January 1550. His funeral monument was first erected in the Church of the Epiphany in Milan but in 1773 was transferred to the University of Pavia, where it remains today. KONRAD EISENBICHLER Selected Works Collections Opera omnia, Basel: Thomas Guarinus, 1549, 4 vols.; republished 1582. Opera omnia, Frankfurt: heirs of Lazarus Zetzner, 1617.

Emblem Books Omnia emblemata, Cvm commentariis ... per Clavdivm Minoem, Antwerp: Ex officina C. Plantini, 1577; republished 1583. Emblemata cum commentariis, Padua: Apud Petrum Paulum Tozzium, 1621; rpt. New York: Garland, 1976; as Emblemata, translated and annotated by Betty I. Knott, Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1996 (with facsimile of the Lyons, 1550 edition); as A Book of Emblems: The Emblematum liber in Latin and English, translated and edited by John F. Moffitt, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2004. Les emble`mes: facsimile de l’e´dition lyonnaise Mace´Bonhomme de 1551, introduction by Pierre Laurens,

concordance Florence Vuilleumier. Paris: Klincksieck, 1997.

Other De verborum significatione libri quattuor, 1530. Le lettere di Andrea Alciato, giureconsulto, edited by Gian Luigi Barni, 1953.

Further Reading Abbondanza, Roberto, ‘‘Alciato, Andrea,’’ in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 2, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1973. Abbondanza, Roberto, ‘‘A proposito dell’epistolario dell’Alciato,’’ Annali di storia del diritto 1 (1957): 467–500. Abbondanza, Roberto, ‘‘Jurisprudence: The Method of Andrea Alciato,’’ in The Late Italian Renaissance, edited by Eric Cochrane, London: Harper & Row, 1970. Andrea Alciato and the Emblem Tradition: Essays in Honor of Virginia Woods Callahan, edited by Peter M. Daly, New York: AMS Press, 1989. Callahan, Virginia W., ‘‘Andrea Alciato,’’ in The Contemporaries of Erasmus, vol. 1, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Callahan, Virginia W., ‘‘The Erasmus–Alciato Friendship,’’ in Acta Conventus Neo-latini Lovaniensis, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1973. DeGiacomi, H., Andreas Alciatus, Basel: Oppermann, 1934. Green, Henry, Andrea Alciato and His Book of Emblems. A Biographical and Bibliographical Study, London: Tru¨bner, 1872; reprinted, New York: B. Franklin, 1965. Grendler, Paul F., ‘‘Alciato, Andrea,’’ in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, vol. 1, edited by Paul F. Grendler, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999. Kelly, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970. Selig, Karl-Ludwig, Studies on Alciato in Spain, New York: Garland, 1990. Viard, P. E. Andre´ Alciat, 1492–1550, Paris: Socie´te´ Anonyme du Recueil Sirey, 1926.

ALEARDO ALEARDI (1812–1878) After the failure of the liberal revolutions of 1848, and the defeats of the Italian patriots in their attempt to free Italy from Austrian and Bourbon control, the spirit of Italian independence, which had been a great part of the literary production 12

until then, underwent a period of crisis and disillusionment. Along with his friend Giovanni Prati, Aleardo Aleardi was one of the most representative poets of this crisis. The biography of Aleardi is an exemplary case of the late Romantic generation.

ALEARDO ALEARDI Born Gaetano Maria into an aristocratic family of Verona, he changed his name into the more heroic Aleardo (from the Germanic Alhard or Adelhard, ‘‘courageous’’) when he became sympathetic to Italian revolutionaries. Educated in the Republicanism that animated nearby Venice and deeply influenced by Alessandro Manzoni’s brand of Catholic patriotism, Aleardi betrayed his class allegiance to the Austrians and joined the revolutionary Italian underground, participating actively in the insurrections of 1848–1849. By this time, the revolutionary Count had several volumes of poetry: the madrigal Il matrimonio (The Wedding, 1842), the historical poem Arnalda di Roca (1844), and, most notably, the successful Lettere a Maria (Letters to Maria, 1846), all typical examples of the sentimental and patriotic poetry, reminiscent of Ugo Foscolo and characteristic of Italy’s early Romanticism. However, his revolutionary fervor was mitigated in these early works by a fundamentally antipopular sentiment and the conviction that an Italian revolution should have been led by the moderate wing of the middle class—the same moderate bourgeoisie that found its own sentiment expressed in Aleardi’s poetry. In 1848, after the proclamation of the Republic of Venice, Daniele Manin, president of the shortlived Republic, sent Aleardi to Paris to negotiate for French military help against the Austrians, who were trying to regain control of Venice. In 1849, when the Austrian army reconquered the city, Aleardi was under close police control for his past revolutionary activities and was arrested twice, in 1852 and in 1859. In this dramatic period of his life, Aleardi created his most intense poetic production, marked by the publication of the poems Il monte Circello (The Circello Mountain, 1856); Le antiche citta` marinare e commercianti (The Ancient Naval and Trading Cities, 1856); the Biblical Le prime storie (The Early Histories, 1857), based on the Book of Genesis; the idyll Raffaello e la Fornarina (Raphael and the Fornarina, 1858); and the memorial Un’ora della mia giovinezza (One Hour of My Youth, 1858). The themes of defeat, despair, and even impotence dominated these poetic efforts. The fierce passion for a free Italy (and distrust for its populace) is present, especially in the Le antiche citta` marinare e commercianti, which celebrates the past glories of the maritime republics of Venice, Amalfi, Genoa, and Pisa. However, since they cannot be realized in the present, patriotic passions and the idealization of past Italian virtues often became languorous and melancholic sentimentalism or an escape into a world of aesthetic consolations, or, at

best, nostalgia for a bygone time contrasted to the vision of a decayed, corrupted present. Il monte Circello, the masterpiece of this period, compares for instance the ominous landscape of the Pontine marshes with an ideal prehistoric Italy painted in the classicist tone of the Parnasse. Another leitmotiv of Aleardi’s poetry emerges in Un’ora della mia giovinezza: the poet autobiographically depicted as a Don Juan—or, more precisely, as the Jacopo Ortis of Ugo Foscolo’s famous epistolary novel, who combines and confuses his sentiment for the country with that of an idealized woman. Aleardi’s love affairs were transfigured into symbols of patriotism: They appeared as Muses of the Nation who consecrate Aleardi as the poet of Italy. After 1860, Aleardi wrote more poetry of civic engagement and disillusionment: I sette soldati (Seven Soldiers, 1861), Canto politico (Political Song, 1862), and I fuochi sull’Appennino (Fires on the Apennines, 1864). Called to Florence to teach aesthetics at the Istituto di Belle Arti, he published in Switzerland a volume of Poesie complete (Collected Poems, 1863) and started preparing the more ambitious edition of his Canti (Songs), published in 1864. The selection of mostly blank verses in hendecasyllabic meter offered a literary language still close to the model of Foscolo and a typical sampling of Italian Romantic topics—beloved mothers, longing for women, and the overarching sentiment for the country—painted with the hues of pathetic sentimentalism. In the autobiographical Preface to the Canti, Aleardi presented himself as a new Vittorio Alfieri—the artist who, against a world of subterfuge and petty calculations, found in poetry a space of rebellion against tyranny. Not unaware of his own stylistic limits, Aleardi apologized for his artificial and veiled style, blaming the necessity to get around Austrian censorship for his obscure style. He also refused to take position in the querelle between Classicists and Romantics, arguing that such disputes only divided Italy for the benefit of the enemy. He advanced, instead, an ideal of poetry capable of reuniting Romantic passion with classicist roots in the local tradition. Aleardi’s simplistic reduction of Romanticism to passion and of Classicism to civic engagement was representative of the superficial and provincial level of the debate in Italy but was also a symptom of the ultimate affirmation of Romanticism—or, at least, of a romanticized classicism—in the peninsula. Devoted to the cult of Italian independence, the Canti balanced Aleardi’s much-frustrated love for country with his impossible love for Woman—an almost mythical creature that, from one poem to another, took the 13

ALEARDO ALEARDI changing shape of virginal youngsters, ephemeral ladies, dead ‘‘Michelangiolas,’’ and virtuous mothers. Like Italy, Aleardi’s women, in a tribute perhaps to the Stil Novo, always remained immaterial and unreachable for the poet. In this sense, Aleardi’s could be considered the Italian poetry of wanderlust, lack, nostalgia, and homelessness—the poetry of the Romantic wanderer with neither a country nor a family to call ‘‘home.’’ An interesting trait of Aleardi’s sensibility, in fact, is the way in which the political dimension of the search for Italy doubled into the private search for familial happiness. Aleardi’s last works are in prose: Sullo ingegno di Paolo Calliari (On the Genius of Paolo Calliari, 1872), Due parole di commemorazione sopra Paolo Emiliani Giudici (Some Words in Memory of Paolo Emiliani Giudici, 1872), and Discorso su Francesco Petrarca (On Francesco Petrarca, 1874). They were occasional works, suitable in tone and content to the new institutional status of Aleardi, professor of Belle Arti and deputy to the new Italian Parliament at the same time. United Italy initially celebrated Aleardi as one of the illustrious Risorgimento poets and as a bard of the new Italy. His strict adherence to the most Italian of meters, the hendecasyllable, was also praised as formal patriotism. Between 1864 and 1911, the Canti went through eleven reprints— quite an achievement in a small country with a high rate of illiteracy. However, his fortune declined with the decline of the myth of the Risorgimento, and his most compelling contribution to Italian literature remained his melancholic and often disillusioned aestheticism, which anticipated the tone of future writers such as Antonio Fogazzaro, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and the Italian crepuscolari poets.

Biography Aleardo was born Gaetano Maria Aleardi in Verona on November 14, 1812. He studied law at the University of Padua in 1829. He participated to the insurrections for Italian independence and worked as ambassador of the Republic of Venice in Paris around 1848. In 1852 he was arrested by the Austrian police and jailed in Mantua; in 1859 he was arrested again and sent to prison in Josephstadt, Bohemia. He returned to Italy and settled in Brescia in 1860. He was then nominated Professor

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of Aesthetics at the Istituto di Belle Arti of Florence in 1864. He became deputy at the Italian Parliament in 1866 and senator of the Italian Parliament in 1873. He died in Verona on July 17, 1878. ROBERTO M. DAINOTTO Selected Works Collections Le piu´ belle pagine di Aleardo Aleardi, edited by Giuseppe Citanna, Milan: Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, 1932. Poesie complete, Losanna: Presso la Societa` Editrice, 1863.

Poetry ‘‘Il matrimonio,’’ 1842. ‘‘Arnalda di Roca,’’ 1844. ‘‘Lettere a Maria,’’ 1846. ‘‘Il Monte Circello,’’ 1856. ‘‘Le antiche citta` italiane marinare e commercianti,’’ 1856. ‘‘Le prime storie,’’ 1857. ‘‘Raffaello e la Fornarina,’’ 1858. ‘‘Un’ora della mia giovinezza,’’ 1858. ‘‘I sette soldati,’’ 1861. ‘‘I fuochi sull’Appennino,’’ 1864. ‘‘Canti,’’ 1864.

Essays Sullo ingegno di Paolo Calliari, 1872. Due parole di commemorazione sopra Paolo Emiliani Giudici, 1872. Discorso su Francesco Petrarca, 1874.

Other Epistolario di Aleardo Aleardi, edited by G. Trezza, 1879.

Further Reading Comes, Salvatore, ‘‘Aleardo Aleardi,’’ Letteratura 2, no. 72 (1964): 20–29. Gallotti Giordani, Luisa, and Rosa Maria Monastra, Niccolo` Tommaseo e la crisi del Romanticismo, Bari: Laterza, 1976. Giuliano, Giuseppina, Aleardo Aleardi nella vita e nell’arte (1812–1878), Verona: La Tipografica veronese, 1934. Mazzini, Ubaldo, Amori e politica di Aleardo Aleardi, 2 vols., Aquila: Vecchioni, 1930. Scolari, Antonio, Scritti di varia letteratura e di critica: Machiavelli, Fracastoro, Ariosto, Leopardi, Aleardi, Settembrini, Carducci, Pascoli, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1937. Staltari, Vincenzo, Aleardo Aleardi: Poeta scaligero, Modica: Gugnali, 1968. Vallone, Aldo, ‘‘Aleardo Aleardi,’’ in Letteratura italiana. I minori, Vol. 4, Milan: Marzorati, 1962.

SIBILLA ALERAMO (RINA FACCIO)

SIBILLA ALERAMO (RINA FACCIO) (1876–1960) Sibilla Aleramo’s name appears again and again in the history of twentieth-century Italian letters. A legend in her own right, she is also connected to many of the country’s leading poets, artists, activists, and intellectuals. Equally known for her groundbreaking writing and her scandalous life, she is a familiar subject of feminist critics and cultural historians. Active in the women’s emancipation movement from early in her career, she participates in social and cultural reform movements throughout her long life. More than most writers, Aleramo merges fiction and reality, whether it be in her autobiographical novels, lyric poetry, or drama. She herself repeatedly notes that all her creative writing is essentially lyrical, focused on the subjective venture of constructing a self-image and achieving self-awareness. Her first book, Una donna (A Woman, 1906) realistically tells the story of Rina Faccio’s early life, rape, loveless marriage, motherhood, intellectual blossoming, search for authenticity, and eventual desertion of husband and son. Il passaggio (The Passage, 1919) is a revised version of the same events presented in a more intimate way, with changes and additions made to the plot. Amo dunque sono (I Love Therefore I Am, 1927) is an account of the first phase of Aleramo’s affair with the young Giulio Parise; the novel borrows freely from the couple’s actual letters. Il frustino (The Whip, 1932) fictionalizes one of the author’s past emotional crises: her concurrent romantic entanglements with writers Giovanni Boine, Michele Cascella, and Clemente Rebora and the resultant psychological quandary. This ‘‘novel’’ also cites excerpts from their extensive epistolary and Aleramo’s journals. After Una donna, Aleramo’s subjective writing, including her many letters and voluminous diaries, tends toward narcissism and self-celebration. Whether in the first or third person, the novels are inherently exaltations of the female protagonist, a thinly veiled rendering of Aleramo herself. Throughout her career, the writer constructs a mythic identity based on her ‘‘truth,’’ a term she often uses to signify utter sincerity in self-representation, adhering to the Romantic aesthetic that posits art and life as an

indissoluble whole. The author believes that the intensity of her emotions and experiences nourish her creativity and enrich her writing. Nevertheless, Aleramo’s most memorable contribution to literature is her first and least lyrical book, Una donna. Having been urged to tell her story anonymously as everywoman’s by journalist and writer Giovanni Cena, her companion at the time, Aleramo’s fictionalized biography succeeds as an exemplary tale about woman’s need and struggle for self-fulfillment and validation. Both confession and manifesto, the work is acknowledged as an essential text of European feminism and as the first Italian feminist novel. Besides the overtly biographical elements, the novel deals with the political as well as the personal, touching on typical issues found in feminist fiction: the inferior legal and social status of women, marriage as oppression, maternity as self-abnegation, the physical and mental decline of unhappy wives. At the time of its publication, the book was greeted with cheers and jeers, adding to its author’s notoriety. Its detractors considered it a degenerate account of female selfishness that threatened family values. Its supporters hailed it as a second A Doll’s House (1879) that, like Ibsen’s play, challenges the social role of women and asserts the rights of the individual to self-determination. Although all of Aleramo’s later fiction and poetry deal with the definition of feminine identity, none achieved the same universal appeal as Una donna. Aleramo’s break with Cena in 1910 initiates a new phase in both her life and writing. As she explains it, in their time together ‘‘divenni libera amante, divenni scrittrice, imposi alla societa` la mia ribellione e la mia audacia’’ (I became a free lover, I became a writer, I imposed my rebellion and my daring on society) (Dal mio diario, 1945). Drawn to the idealization of absolute liberty, individualism, and self-affirmation preached by Nietzsche, Aleramo comes to a new ‘‘truth’’ for herself, realized artistically in her second novel, Il passaggio. A woman, she holds, has the right to explore erotic love, experience sensuality, and follow her instinctual drives. 15

SIBILLA ALERAMO (RINA FACCIO) Inevitably, Aleramo is compared to another literary voluptuary, Gabriele D’Annunzio, although she persistently refutes any suggestion that her work is imitative or artificial. While adamantly rejecting D’Annunzio’s tendency to view art as virtuosity or as a refined verbal game, she nevertheless shares his egoism and Dionysian drive. When compared to the realistic tones of Una donna, Il passaggio appears verbose; its penchant for effusive language, imagery, and emotion envelops the plot and stifles narrative logic, accentuating aestheticism and introspection. Aleramo’s unconventional and unrepressed attitudes translate into prose and verse that is erotically explicit, unlike most women’s writing in the 1920s and 1930s. The author insists that the genesis of her creativity resides in her sexual identity, distinguishing ‘‘womanly genius’’ from male intellect. Aleramo postulates gender difference and believes her art to be the product of a uniquely female spirit. In a controversial essay, ‘‘Apologia dello spirito femminile’’ (Apology for the Feminine Spirit, 1911), Aleramo states that women become true poets and discover a fresh creative voice only when they believe in their otherness, understood in psychological as well as biological terms. Inevitably, her own femaleness becomes a recurring theme in her writing, often viewed through the lens of love, an existential state Aleramo considers intrinsic to the emergence of her personal authenticity. Through the years, the writer’s themes remain exceptionally constant in both fiction and verse: the myth of the self, the beauty of nature and youth, the glorification of erotic and sensual love, the active quest for fulfillment, the examination of emotional states. Sibilla Aleramo’s poetry is contained in two anthological collections: Selva d’amore (Woods or Treasury of Love, 1947), which includes her poems from l912 to l946, while Luci della mia sera (My Evening Lights, 1956) covers her final lyric production. These anthologies integrate several earlier volumes: Momenti (Moments, 1920), Poesie (Poems, 1929), Sı` alla terra (Yes to the Earth, 1924), Imminente sera 1936–1942 (Imminent Evening, 1947), and Aiutatemi a dire: Nuove poesie (1948–1951) (Help Me Speak: New Poems, 1951). In terms of style, Aleramo’s verse is traditional rather than avant-garde. Her sources are primarily Italian Romantics and Decadents, especially Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D’Annunzio. Like them, she is a poet of sensations, feelings, symbols, and nature; unlike them, she is not a trained craftsman. Her lyric idiom is direct and approachable, 16

very different from the innovative verse produced by her poet-lovers Dino Campana, Vincenzo Cardarelli, and Salvatore Quasimodo. Aleramo generally opts for the open quality of free verse, preferring rhythm and phonic repetition to formal rhyme schemes and meters. Like her novels. Aleramo’s lyrics are autobiographically inspired. Her view of love as passion and sensual abandon is highly lyrical, and erotic tension is at the core of her finest verse. Aleramo’s lyric persona is represented as a vivifying life force for the beloved. At times she is transformed into an animist divinity who affords sensual delight and communion with nature. As Earth goddess, she generates love and, by extension, art: Aleramo transfigures the erotic experience into a literary maternity as a part of her ‘‘feminine spirit.’’ The poet’s images render the female body emblematic, often fusing the physical being with nature (woman as plant, flower, rose) in an Ovidian metamorphosis. Nature also serves as a mirror of the poet’s inner life in a symbiotic rapport in which femaleness is rendered through elemental metaphors such as sun, flames, moon, sea, water, air. Sı` alla terra marks a shift in the poet’s themes as her emphasis moves away from narcissistic self-description toward a growing sense of human solidarity, fostered in part by the darker motifs of aging, melancholy, death, and loss. Typical of Aleramo’s muse, the events of her life are transformed into art. As a living legend in physical decline, her fears and disheartenment become poems. Inspired by her decade-long liaison with the very young poet Franco Matacotta, even her final love poems reiterate Aleramo’s self-depiction as a life force in their unusual merging of desire and maternal tenderness for the beloved. In her last years, Aleramo replaced erotic love with an all-consuming passion for the ideology and solidarity of Italy’s Communist Party. Returning to the intense social activism of her youth, she shared her gifts and considerable skills with the comrades who offered her affectionate support. Her writing turned to political and socialist themes and took on some ideologically inspired rhetorical embellishments. The poetry of Luci della mia sera celebrates her new credo, the value of the proletariat working class, and the companionship of those committed to changing the face of postwar Italy. Leaning toward political panegyric, these poems nevertheless capture some of the epic spirit of the proletarian ranks committed to the Revolution. A special mention goes to Aleramo’s diaries, which provide an intimate yet eloquent portrait of the

SIBILLA ALERAMO (RINA FACCIO) woman and her adventurous life from youth to old age, thereby affirming her status as an archetypal confessional writer.

See also: Women’s History

Biography

Fiction

Aleramo was born Rina Faccio on 14 August 1876 in Alessandria. In 1888, the Faccio family moved to the Marches region. Although not formally educated, as an adolescent she contributed articles to regional newspapers; Aleramo continued writing on social issues throughout her long life. She was married at 16 to Ulderico Pierangeli, her father’s clerk, who had raped her a year earlier. Aleramo’s beloved son Walter was born in 1895. In 1899, she was offered a position as director of a new woman’s magazine, L’Italia femminile, in Milan, where the Pierangeli family transferred briefly. After a short, undesired return to the Marches, she deserted her abusive husband and moved to Rome in 1902. There she met Giovanni Cena, director of the prestigious literary journal La nuova antologia. Aleramo cohabited with Cena for seven years, developing intellectually and writing her major work, a fictionalized autobiography titled Una donna (1906). She took the name Sibilla Aleramo at this time. Aleramo turned to social activism, including the struggle for suffrage, working with Cena in establishing clinics and schools in the Agro romano. After 1910, she began a series of failed love affairs and wanderings across Italy and Europe. She became involved with avant-garde groups in Florence and Milan and was notably connected with the journal La Voce and Futurism; she wrote prolifically for numerous periodicals and edited the popular La Grande Illustrazione magazine. In 1925, Aleramo moved to Rome permanently. She was often destitute, due in part to being blacklisted by the establishment press for signing the anti-Fascist manifesto issued by Benedetto Croce. Her second volume of poetry, Poesie, was awarded a monetary prize by the Accademia d’Italia, 1929. Although never a regime supporter, Aleramo received a regular government subsidy after 1933. She enrolled in the Italian Communist Party in 1946, attracted to its sense of solidarity. She worked tirelessly for the Party, giving lectures and public readings as well as writing articles and a column for L’Unita`, the Communist daily. In 1948, the lyric collection Selva d’amore received the Viareggio Prize. Ever a prolific writer, Aleramo continued working until her death in Rome on 13 January 1960. FIORA A. BASSANESE

Selected Works Una donna, l906; as A Woman at Bay, translated by Mary Lansdale, 1908; as A Woman, translated by Rosalind Delmar, 1979. Il passaggio, l919. Amo dunque sono, l927. Il frustino, l932.

Poetry ‘‘Selva d’amore,’’ 1947. ‘‘Luci della mia sera: Poesie (1941–1946),’’ l956.

Diaries Dal mio diario (1940–1944), l945. Diario di una donna: Inediti 1945–1960, 1978–1980. Un amore insolito: Diario 1940–1944, l979.

Other Andando e stando, 1921. Gioie d’occasione, l930–1954. Orsa minore: Note di taccuino, 1938. Lettere (with Dino Campana), l958. Lettere d’amore (with Vincenzo Caldarelli), edited by G. A. Cibotto and Bruno Blasi, 1974. La donna e il femminismo: Scritti l897–1910, l978. Carteggio, 1915–1955, 1997. Lettere d’amore (with Salvatore Quasimodo), edited by Paola Manfredi, 2001.

Further Reading Bassanese, Fiora A., ‘‘Sibilla Aleramo,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth-Century Italian Poets, vol. 114, edited by Giovanna Wedel De Stasio, Glauco Cambon, and Antonio Illiano, Detroit & London: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1992. Bassanese, Fiora A., ‘‘Sibilla Aleramo: Writing a Personal Myth,’’ in Mothers of Invention: Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture, edited by Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Buttafuoco, Annarita, and Marina Zancan (editors), Svelamento. Sibilla Aleramo: Una biografia intellettuale, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1988. Conti, Bruna, and Alba Morino (editors), Sibilla Aleramo e il suo tempo: Vita raccontata e illustrata, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981. Contorbia, Franco, Lea Melandri, and Alba Morino (editors), Sibilla Aleramo: Coscienza e scrittura, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1986. Federzoni, Marina, Isabella Pezzini, and Maria Pia Pozzato, Sibilla Aleramo, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980. Folli, Anna, Penne leggere. Neera, Ada Negri, Sibilla Aleramo. Scritture Femminili italiane fra Otto e Novecento, Milan: Gerini Studio, 2000. Guerricchio, Rita, Storia di Sibilla, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, l974. Gu¨nsberg, Maggie, ‘‘The Importance of Being Absent: Narrativity and Desire in Sibilla Aleramo’s Amo dunque sono,’’ The Italianist, 14 (1993): 138–160. Jewell, Keala Jane, ‘‘Un furore d’autocreazione: Women and Writing in Sibilla Aleramo,’’ Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, 7 (l984): 148–162.

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SIBILLA ALERAMO (RINA FACCIO) Luciano, Bernadette, ‘‘The Diaries of Sibilla Aleramo: Constructing Female Subjectivity,’’ in Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present: Revising the Canon, edited by Maria Marotti, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Morino, Alba, L’analista di carta: Sibilla Aleramo, un’esperienza, un metodo, Imola (Bologna): La Mandragola, 2003. Morosoff, Anna Grimaldi, Transfigurations: The Autobiographical Novels of Sibilla Aleramo, New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Pickering-Iazzi, Robin, Politics of the Visible. Writing Women, Culture, and Fascism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Wood, Sharon, Italian Women’s Writing 1860–1994, London: Athlone, 1995.

UNA DONNA, 1906 Novel by Sibilla Aleramo

In Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna (A Woman), autobiography and fiction blend to produce a book that is both personal and universal. Evolving from journal entries for June 1901, this confessional novel takes episodes from the writer’s biography and recasts them into an exemplary tale of female oppression and liberation. Early on the literary critic Alfredo Gargiulo understood Una donna’s groundbreaking contribution to women’s writing, declaring it ‘‘nella bibbia del femminismo, al posto della genesi’’ (in the Bible of feminism, in the place of Genesis) (‘‘Una donna,’’ Il Giornale d’Italia, 10 May 1907). Generally acknowledged as Italy’s first feminist novel and acclaimed as a classic, Aleramo’s most celebrated book is equal parts paradigm and self-revelation. Told in the first person, in keeping with its confessional nature, Una donna resonates with the sincerity typical of a journal. At the same time, the book is explicitly written as a manifesto for women’s rights or, in keeping with the naturalist literary traditions of the time, as a thesis novel whose protagonist is proposed as an ‘‘everywoman.’’ Specific authorial choices underscore the universality of the individual life story being told: For example, Aleramo eschews proper names for social functions, so characters are simply 18

known as ‘‘father,’’ ‘‘mother,’’ ‘‘sister-in-law,’’ ‘‘doctor,’’ ‘‘friend,’’ ‘‘editor,’’ and so on. Similarly, few exact locations or dates are given, in part to focus on the tyranny of patriarchal conventions in the nation’s backwaters. The plot chronicles the coming of age of a girl whose autonomous androgyny is suppressed by societal gender norms and biology. Violated in adolescence, the girl marries her rapist, endures years of marital discord and abuse, finds temporary solace in maternity and romantic fantasies, saves herself and her sanity by studying and writing, and escapes her provincial prison for a time thanks to her own skills and intellect and a providential job offer, only to be forcibly returned to her husband’s domestic jail. Needing to choose between motherhood and self-affirmation, at the book’s end the heroine abandons the past and moves into an unknown and open-ended future. Aleramo’s central motifs are recurrent throughout women’s fiction, ranging from the pitfalls of romantic illusions to the powerful pull of cultural indoctrination, from marriage as imprisonment to the representation of the mad housewife. As part of the novel’s thesis, social institutions, the law, family and maternity, the treatment of women as the second sex, and their physical and mental abuse are all explored not as mere sociological issues but as part of the heroine’s lived experience. As a confessional novel, Una donna traces the physiological, psychological, and social development of the protagonist in her own impassioned words, so that the universal is given a human voice. At the time of its publication, Una donna was received with antithetical opinions. While some reviewers praised its feminist stand, others condemned the work on moral grounds, scandalized by its critique of marriage but more so by the protagonist’s desertion of her child. Even today, Aleramo’s emotional yet controlled fictional depiction of her early years has the power to move readers deeply for, as she herself declared, Una donna is ‘‘il capolavoro equivalente ad una vita’’ (the masterpiece that equals a life). FIORA A. BASSANESE Editions First edition: Una donna, Rome-Turin: STEN, l906. Other editions: Una donna, Milan: Treves, l919; Florence: Bemporad, l921; Milan: Mondadori, l930; Milan: Feltrinelli, l973.

VITTORIO ALFIERI Translations: as A Woman at Bay, translated by Mary Lansdale, New York-London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908; as A Woman, translated by Rosalind Delmar, London: Virago, 1979.

Further Reading Angelone, Matilde, In difesa della donna: La condizione femminile in ‘‘Una donna’’ di Sibilla Aleramo, Naples: Fratelli Conte, 1990. Bassanese, Fiora A., ‘‘Una donna: Autobiography as Exemplary Text,’’ Quaderni d’italianistica, 9, no.1 (1990): 41–60.

Caesar, Ann, ‘‘Sybilla Aleramo’s A Woman,’’ Feminist Review, 5 (1980): 79–88. Drake, Richard, ‘‘Introduction’’ to Sibilla Aleramo, A Woman, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, l980. Folli, Anna, ‘‘Con Sibilla Aleramo,’’ Otto/Novecento, 2 (May/August 2003): 75–97. Gargiulo, Alfredo, ‘‘Una donna,’’ Il Giornale d’Italia, 10 May 1907. Kroha, Lucienne, ‘‘Strategies of Intertextuality in Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna,’’ in The Woman Writer in Late Nineteenth Century Italy: Gender and the Formation of Literary Identity, Lewiston and Lampeter: Mellen Press, 1992.

VITTORIO ALFIERI (1749–1803) Acclaimed during his lifetime as a new Sophocles, Vittorio Alfieri is the greatest tragedian of the Italian theatrical tradition. His Tragedie (Tragedies, 1783–1785), published in Siena and then, in a polished and expanded version in Paris (1788–1789), created a new dramaturgical tradition. Departing from the restrictions of tragic theater in force from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which imposed the avoidance of the representation of death, Alfieri developed a new practice of action and vision. If the prohibition against the display of certain events was a long-standing practice in Western theater, Alfieri can be considered the author of the eighteenth-century rupture. Breaking with the topos of ‘‘sweet death’’ or death by poison, his tragedies feature heroes and heroines who stab themselves and thus become icons of virtue (Cleopatra, Charles and Isabella, Haemon, Saul, Myrrha). Besides representing the more generally accepted suicide, Alfieri did not hesitate to portray even the most violent deaths inflicted by others. A fatal embrace covers the fratricide in Polinice (Polynices, 1783); Garzia is stabbed in the eye by the father-tyrant Cosimo dei Medici in Don Garzia (1788); Virginio stabs his daughter to spare her the lust of the consul Appius Claudius in Virginia (1783). Although he did not show Orestes’ matricide, he did, however, show Brutus’s parricide, which is also a tyrannicide, the outcome of the most grandiose conspiracy of all time. This was indeed a daring gesture, since, with the exception of

Shakespeare, no playwright had ever shown on stage the conspirators who kill Caesar. Although fascinated by the story, even Voltaire in his Mort de Ce´sar (1731) limited himself to showing the already-dead body of the dictator. Having surpassed the visual prohibitions respected in his earlier work Congiura dei Pazzi (The Pazzi Conspiracy, 1788), in Bruto secondo (Brutus the Second, 1789), written in 1786–1787, Alfieri restored visual action to the dramaturgy of the conspiracy. A tragic emblem of the eighteenth century, Alfieri’s theatrical works condense questions of political change and assume the form of a new tragic genre. The subjects are historical, the conflicts political, and the action is conspiracy itself. Thanks to their urgent rhythm, Alfieri’s tragedies seem to fly toward catastrophe, substituting a linear movement for the circular endings of Baroque theater. The catastrophe must arrive suddenly in order to surprise the spectator, who is caught up in the suspense of the action. Above all, in a departure from the lengthy unfolding of Seneca’s tragedies, in Alfierian theater, events must happen quickly: Alfieri does not tolerate protracted narration and favors horror and a macabre vision. The revolution of tragic language theorized by Voltaire is realized in Alfieri’s drama. Every narrative delay is eliminated with the eruption onto the scene of the topos of the oath, a consecration to pagan divinities in ancient source-texts that returns insistently in eighteenth-century painting 19

VITTORIO ALFIERI and stagings, and culminates in the great canvases of Johann Heinrich Fu¨ssli and Jacques-Louis David. Theatrical sets and scenes in painting influence one another. Finding himself in Paris in 1771, Alfieri most likely saw in the Salon of the Louvre the painting by Jacques-Antoine Beaufort of Brutus who swears to vindicate Lucretia, a painting commonly associated by contemporary journals to Shakespearean theater. In Paris again in the years 1787–1792, with his Bruto primo (Brutus the First, 1789), he influenced David, who met the Italian writer in the literary salons of the city. The oath, already used in a melodrama by Pietro Metastasio in considering the qualities of friendship and loyalty to the king, assumed in Alfieri the value of an indissoluble tie of the hero to his destiny. A fundamental sequence in the dramaturgy of conspiracy, the oath returned in the tragedies as a condition from which there is no means of escape. The contraposition between positive and negative characters is delineated in the opposition between giving and breaking trust. On stage are thus played out the rituals that ideally unite brothers in the Masonic coniuratio of the second half of the eighteenth century (the writer belonged to Freemasonry). Bitter and broken, Alfieri’s unrhymed hendecasyllables, in the tradition of Italian free verse, clear the effects of musicality and require a delivery based on meaning and pauses, not on the ends of verses. Style, structure, and language respond to the ideological choice of radical Enlightenment, expressed in Alfieri’s political treatises. The tragedies dramatize, in problematic fashion, the author’s reflections on despotism and on the possibility of the end of the ancien regime. The classical republicanism of his dramatic works soon became the emblem of the antityrannical spirit of the early years of the French Revolution. This coincidence enabled the birth of the myth of Alfieri as a writer with great political and patriotic weight. He was favored by Italian Jacobins, initially engaged in supporting France in the struggle against the sovereigns of the Italian states. The cult of Alfieri as father of a free homeland was then strengthened during the Risorgimento, when men of letters united in the struggle for unification, and was again taken again up by anti-Fascist intellectuals. Two important critical profiles written in the early 1940s, Walter Binni’s Vita interiore dell’Alfieri (1942) and Giacomo Debenedetti’s Vocazione di Vittorio Alfieri (written in 1943 but published in 1977), inaugurated a new wave of criticism on the 20

author, more attentive to his pre-Romantic preoccupations and to what Debenedetti called his romanzo familiare (family romance). The model of the hero’s unbounded fight against the tyrant does not wholly describe the complex theatrical and political experimentation of Alfieri’s theater. Twentieth-century criticism, fascinated by the titanism of his characters or by their Oedipal impulses, has privileged the existential conflicts of Saul (1788) and Mirra (Myrrha, 1789), the two works considered his tragic masterpieces. As an expression of forte sentire (strong feeling), his antityranny is often interpreted as a metaphor for a revolt against limits, in which there prevail instead a magma of sentiments and a dark sense of death. In this perspective, his tragic characters seem to share an overpowering subjectivity in which the discovery of the self as an individual (often a selfdestructive one) prevails, together with the realization of his inalienable tragic destiny. The question of Alfieri’s placement between Enlightenment and Romanticism is still open. On the one hand, the playwright would seem to belong to the changing culture of Enlightened thought (a revival of the category of pre-Romanticism), on the other, to that of radical Enlightenment. The most recent research on his network of relationships moves in this latter direction. Prone to introspection and to the self-portrait, as demonstrated by the Giornali (Journals, 1874–1875), written in his youth, and the posthumous Vita scritta da esso (The Life of Vittorio Alfieri Written by Himself, 1806), Alfieri had a strong personality characterized by contrasting attitudes and directions: There is the fiery sensibility and his fascination for solitude, uncovered in the lyrical voice of the Rime (Poems, 1788–1789); the satirical attitude that returns in the late Commedie (Comedies, 1807); the radical nature of the political themes brought to light in the tragedies about freedom; the search for poetic glory and a personal style; the competition with other great writers; and his dedication to the cult of the classics in his premature old age. A dandy, an aristocrat, and a rebel, he lived great passions (chocolate, women, horses) and painful separations (as a child from his sister Giulia, as an adult from his dear friend Francesco Gori Gandellini and from Luisa Stolberg, his degno amore, whom he met in Florence in 1777 and loved until her death). Immortalized in the Vita scritta da esso, the passions of his youth are re-evoked to mark the sudden shift to the literary and theatrical professions, after the irregular studies of his

VITTORIO ALFIERI squandered youth. The masterpiece of his life work, alongside the Tragedie, the Vita scritta da esso is a novel of poetic formation. Its greatness resides in its modernity and in its analysis, sometimes ironic, of the will and the exceptional destiny of the protagonist. The work of his beloved Montaigne is its closest antecedent. This tendency to create self-portraits was already manifest in the first part of the Rime, which can be considered his lyrical diary, his secret book. The poet portrayed himself as a character gifted with a heightened sensibility, in conflict with his times but also as pervaded by boredom and an unnatural melancholy. The noted verse in which he depicted himself as an ardent poet and unhappy lover captures the fascination he exerted on the Romantic generation, attracted by the new alpine or maritime landscapes in which the solitary poet of the wounded soul wanders about, rebellious and unhappy. Tragedy is codified in the eighteenth century as a political genre that must speak to the heart of the spectator (Voltaire). Alfieri, too, proposed a tragic system in his political writings in which the opposition between ‘‘passionate’’ and ‘‘cold’’ tragedy is directed toward the teaching of virtue. As self-critic, in the ‘‘Parere sulle tragedie’’ (Opinion on the Tragedies) published in the fifth volume of the Tragedie (1789), he distinguished between tragico vero (true tragedy) and vero sublime (true sublime). The first is achieved in the most passionate tragedies, in which contrasts, even when political, explode between kinsmen; the second instead is achieved by tragedies where conflicts derive from burning political passions, as in Bruto secondo. Having read the treatise on the sublime by the pseudo-Longinus, Alfieri saw freedom as a passion that kindles the soul and gives the hero a divine nature. The hero is inflamed, becoming an orator similar to a god. As such, all heroes of freedom, modeled on the Brutus of Plutarch’s Vitae parallelae, have divine stature. And just as Caesar in Voltaire’s Mort de Ce´sar affirms that he would have wanted to be Brutus, had he not been Caesar, Alfieri’s Caesar repeats this to Brutus. This reciprocal recognition is part of the culture and the heroic imaginary of the prerevolutionary eighteenth century, and tragedy is the theatrical practice delegated to incarnate it. In his youthful travels Alfieri came into contact with the culture of the French philosophes. He then discovered Machiavelli and Plutarch, whom he read along with French novels, and was a devoted attendee of the Parisian theaters. As a spectator, he

was familiar with English and French drama and with the different theatrical genres of the eighteenth century, from comic opera to melodrama, staged from London to Venice. This life as spectator is fundamental to understand his ability to draft and finish more than 14 tragedies in a short span of years (1775 –1782), followed by the five added to the Parisian edition, which consecrates the author’s status as a classic. Having acquired direct experience, his sense of theater guided him in reforming tragedy (passionate and brief, simple and bare, free of secondary characters and of informers, visual and fierce). In realizing this form of tragedy, Alfieri paid constant attention to the reactions of his public and to the delivery of the actors, about which he wrote the Parere sull’arte comica in Italia (Opinion on Comic Art in Italy, 1787). Before printing the tragedies, in fact, they had to be read, and he used a private circle of amateur actors to stage Antigone (Antigone, 1783). The set design in the theater of the Palazzo di Spagna, the residence of Duke Grimaldi, convinced Alfieri to modify the conclusion of the play: After having made the cadaver of the heroine appear on stage, slaughtered by order of the tyrant Creon, Alfieri intervened in the text and rewrote the resolution. The event, performed again over many evenings, saw the Roman nobility among the spectators together with artists and men of letters, waiting for the new Sophocles. Alfieri was thus recognized as the founder of Italian tragedy. His acting in the part of Creon was compared with the performances of other major European actors, Garrick and Lekain. Even after the work was printed, Alfieri cemented his role as actor, personally leading the performances held in his various Florentine residences. From these performances and the public ones during the Jacobin period (1796–1799), the tradition of the great Italian actor of the nineteenth century began, with Mirra and Saul forcefully taking place in the theatrical repertory. In his tragedies, Alfieri alternated between historical subjects (ancient and modern) and mythical ones. His first works were interwoven with the political discussions that took place in Masonic and literary societies, according to the custom of the time. After his first tragedy, Cleopatra (1814), written in 1775 and never printed by the author in his lifetime, Alfieri chose a subject from modern history, following the examples of Shakespeare and Voltaire. Criticized for his fierce portrayal of a Catholic sovereign, Filippo (Philip, 1783) tendentiously dramatizes the noted episode of the Spanish 21

VITTORIO ALFIERI king who, according to tradition, was the murderer of his son Charles. Alfieri’s point of view was not naı¨ve. Already a reader of Machiavelli and Montesquieu, of D’Holbach and Helve´tius, he followed the Huguenot and Protestant perspective. The legend of the parricide was born in this context, adopted from Abbot Saint-Re´al’s historical novel Don Carlos (1672), which mixed political and sentimental motivations. Charles, as in Alfieri’s version, is in love with his stepmother, Elisabeth of Valois. Suspicious and astute, able to simulate and merciless in his final vendetta, Philip inaugurates the gallery of Alfierian tyrants. He has his son condemned on false charges of parricide and then forces him to give himself up to death under his implacable gaze. After a series of less risky tragedies on classical subjects—Polinice (Polynices, 1783) and Antigone, on the Theban cycle and Agamennone (Agamemnon, 1783) and Oreste (Orestes, 1783) on the cycle of the Atreides—Alfieri returned to modern subjects. Fundamental was the discovery of the antidespotic tradition in Florence, his knowledge of which is documented by the books in his library. The controversial history of the Medici offered, in the 1770s, several subjects for tragedies, novellas, and theatrical peageants (feste teatrali). In fact, even Alfieri allowed himself to be tempted by the antidespotic value of this tradition and composed a cycle of works on the Medici: the plays La congiura dei Pazzi and Don Garzia and the poem L’Etruria vendicata (Etruria Vindicated, 1788). La congiura dei Pazzi dramatizes the conspiracy against Lorenzo and Giuliano dei Medici, depicted as tyrants and usurpers of the republican institutions of Florence. The plot involves the plan’s execution, only half achieved with the death of Giuliano. Altering history, Alfieri conceded Raimondo dei Pazzi an exemplary suicide, with which the tragedy of liberty ends bitterly. Don Garzia depicts the tyranny of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo dei Medici, who kills his son Garzia, who in his turn is the involuntary fratricide of his brother Diego. Alfieri took the narratives of Titus Livy and Plutarch as starting points for his sketches of events and exemplary gestures widely diffused in the tragic tradition, both French and Italian. From the former he took the subject for Virginia, in which the consul Appius Claudius opposes the marriage of the tribune of the people Icilius to Virginia, forcing the heroic Virginius to kill his daughter. From Plutarch, he took the tyrannicide of Timoleon in Timoleone (1783), who in the face of 22

the usurpation by his brother Timophanes gives the signal for his brother to be stabbed. Called ‘‘tragedies of freedom,’’ these works dramatize the argument made by Alfieri in the treatise Della tirannide (Of Tyranny, 1790) in which Alfieri expressed a radical position on tyrannical power, offering as solutions tyrannicide, conspiracy, and revolution. Other tragedies, such as Merope (1785) or Sofonisba (Sophonisba, 1789), seem to stem from a strongly competitive streak with regard to other tragedians who measured themselves by their portrayals of these subjects, from Scipione Maffei to Voltaire. His last tragedies, which feature two great heroes of Roman history, Junius Brutus, founder of the republic, and Marcus Brutus, killer of Caesar, sprang from the desire to compare himself to Voltaire. In these works, however, Alfieri expressed authentic tension and gave life to the highest example of antityrannical writing. In his second treatise, Del principe e delle lettere (The Prince and Letters, 1789), he resolutely negated that princely protection can favor art and poetry. The argument verges on utopianism in its delineation of a republic of letters, unanchored from any political power. In it, the few, free writers can teach virtue, in the hopes of forming an enlightened public. The trauma of the French Revolution seriously affected Alfieri. Already the cantor of the American Revolution in L’America libera (Ode to America’s Independence, 1788) and of the French in Parigi sbastigliato (Paris De-Bastilled, 1789), he summarized his pungent anti-French sentiments in the Il Misogallo (The Anti-Frenchman, 1814). He returned to his satirical vein by finishing six comedies, in which the great heroes of antiquity reveal their low, quotidian sides. The most successful is Il divorzio (The Divorce, 1807), which shifts its satirical intent from politics to aristocratic habits. Lucrezia breaks her engagement with the young Prosperino, in search of a husband disposed to tolerate the infidelities of his future wife. Old and toothless, the new betrothed is the prototype of the lady’s escort, at whom he takes aim. In denouncing the indissolubility of Catholic marriage, Alfieri found, without meaning to, that his own intentions were in tune with the changes effected by the Revolution.

Biography Vittorio Alfieri was born in Asti, 16 January 1749, to an aristocratic family. He took courses at the Royal Academy of Turin. In 1766 he began a grand

VITTORIO ALFIERI tour of Italy and Europe. He read Montesquieu, Voltaire, Helve´tius, Rousseau; attended theater; and frequented high society. Alfieri staged Cleopatra at the Teatro Carignano, 1775. He read Antigone to the society of the Sampaolina, 1776. He left Piedmont for Tuscany, where he met Luisa Stolberg, the wife of Carlo Edoardo Stuart. To be free, he gave his sister his property in exchange for a life income. He lived in Rome and acted in Antigone, 1781–1783. He was nominated a member of Arcadia with the name of Filacrio Eratrastico, 1783. Alfieri began to travel again and to circulate the tragedies. He lived in Paris, 1787–1792, where he printed the tragedies, 1788–1789. Alfieri enthusiastically followed the outbreak of the Revolution, then fled. He established himself in Florence and composed various works against the French. He completed his Vita scritta da esso, learned Greek, and translated Greek tragedies. Alfieri died in Florence, 8 October 1803. Antonio Canova sculpted his funerary monument in Santa Croce. BEATRICE ALFONSETTI Selected Works Collections Opere di Vittorio Alfieri da Asti, edited by Luigi Fasso et al., 39 vols., Asti: Casa d’Alfieri, 1951–1985. The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri: Complete, Including His Posthumous Works, translated by Charles Lloyd and Edgar Alfred Bowring, 2 vols., London: G. Bell, 1876.

Plays Tragedie, vol. 1, 1783 (Filippo, Polinice, Antigone, Virginia). Tragedie, vol. 2, 1783 (Agamennone, Oreste, Rosmunda). Tragedie, vol. 3, 1785 (Ottavia, Timoleone, Merope). Tragedie, vol. 4, 1788 (La congiura dei Pazzi, Don Garzia, Saul, Agide, Sofonisba). Tragedie, vol. 5, 1789 (Bruto Primo, Mirra, Bruto Secondo). Commedie, 1807 (La finestrina, Il divorzio, L’uno, L’antidoto). Cleopatra, 1814.

Poetry ‘‘L’America libera,’’ 1788; as ‘‘Ode to America’s Indipendence,’’ translated by Adolph Caso, 1976. ‘‘Parigi sbastigliato,’’ 1789. ‘‘L’Etruria vendicata,’’ 1789. ‘‘Rime,’’ 1788–1789. ‘‘Il Misogallo,’’ 1814.

Essays Parere sull’arte comica in Italia, 1787. Panegirico di Plinio a Trajano, 1787; revised edition, 1789. La virtu´ sconosciuta, 1788. Del principe e delle lettere, 1789; as The Prince and Letters, translated by Julius A. Molinaro and Beatrice Corrigan, 1972. Della tirannide, 1790; as Of Tyranny, translated by Julius A. Molinaro and Beatrice Corrigan, 1961.

Other Vita scritta da esso, 1806; as The Life of Vittorio Alfieri Written by Himself, translated by Sir Henry McAnally, 1953; as Memoirs, edited by E. R. Vincent, 1961. Vita, lettere, giornali di Vittorio Alfieri, edited by Emilio Teza, 1861.

Further Reading Alfonzetti, Beatrice, Congiure: dal poeta della botte all’eloquente giacobino, Rome: Bulzoni, 2001. Betti, Franco, Vittorio Alfieri, Boston: Twayne, 1984. Binni, Walter, Studi alfieriani, 2 vols, edited by Marco Dondero, Modena: Mucchi, 1995. Binni, Walter, Vita interiore dell’Alfieri, Bologna-Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1942. Buccini, Stefania (editor), Alfieri beyond Italy, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004. Cerruti, Marco et al. (editors), Alfieri e il suo tempo, Florence: Olschki, 2003. Debenedetti, Giacomo, Vocazione di Vittorio Alfieri, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1977. Di Benedetto, Arnaldo, Le passioni e il limite. Un’interpretazione diVittorio Alfieri, Naples: Liguori, 1994. Fubini, Mario, Ritratto dell’Alfieri e altri studi alfieriani, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1951. Lindon, John, L’Inghilterra di Vittorio Alfieri e altri studi alfieriani, Modena: Mucchi, 1995. Meldolesi, Claudio, and Ferdinando Taviani, Teatro e spettacolo nel primo Ottocento, Bari: Laterza, 1991. Raimondi, Ezio, Le pietre del sogno. Il moderno dopo il sublime, Bologna: il Mulino, 1985. Starobinski, Jean, 1789, les emble`mes de la raison, Paris: Flammarion, 1973. Tellini, Gino, and Roberta Turchi (editors), Alfieri in Toscana, 2 vols., Florence: Olschki, 2002. Trivero, Paola, Tragiche donne. Tipologie femminili nel teatro italiano del Settecento, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000.

MIRRA, 1789 Tragedy by Vittorio Alfieri

Mirra (Myrrha) occupies an unusual place in the history of Alfierian theater, as it violated his decision not to write any more tragedies after Saul (1788). If tragedy is equivalent to bollore (ardor) and ardor is in turn equivalent to giovinezza (youth), the poet then feared that, at 35 years of age, he had forever lost his youthful impetus. He rediscovered it in the mountains of Alsace together with his beloved Luisa, to 23

VITTORIO ALFIERI whom he dedicated the tragedy of the ‘‘horrible’’ but ‘‘innocent’’ love of Myrrha for her father Cinyras. Written upon reading the passage of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the young girl implores her nurse to help her to consume her devouring passion, Mirra upends the long tradition of the characterization of the girl as guilty and evil. Passion burns and consumes the heroine who, however, does her best not to confess this love. This prohibition translates into her cries and her deathly pallor, from which transpires her incomprehensible anguish, the ‘‘inesplicabil cosa’’ (unexplainable thing). Her mother, her father, her betrothed, and the nurse try in vain to discover her secret, but Myrrha is silent or speaks of other things, adopting a contorted, enigmatic language, speaking for instance of death just a few hours before the wedding that she herself wanted in order to distance herself definitively from the object of her forbidden love. Thus she renews to the stunned Pereo her wedding promise, in order, it seems, to constrain herself to the mortal separation from her father. Prey to her obsession, however, she falls into a delirium during the wedding ceremony, when the choir sings celebratory songs in lyric verses. By then her destiny is settled. Alfieri’s Myrrha, too, loses her innocence and confesses her guilt, as if there is no escape from a love against the law. ‘‘Fuori di se´’’ (Out of her mind), Myrrha implores death, first to her father, then to her mother, in a confrontation that becomes increasingly more bitter. Left alone with her mother, Cenchreis, she explodes in an accusatory delirium; her reasons escape her dismayed mother, although the hate and jealousy of Myrrha do not. The final act finally places father and daughter in direct confrontation. Myrrha can no longer escape the increasingly close inquiries of her father, and pronounces his name, indicating him as the object of her revolting love. At the same time, without hesitation, she strikes herself with her father’s sword. In tormenting, almost syllabic and suspended verses, she implores him to distance himself from her disgraceful sight. A sign of her guilt, her broken body, is damned and abandoned by everyone, with the exception of the kind nurse. Myrrha directs her final words to her, and in these lines lies the antithesis at the core of the action of the play: In silence resides innocence, and in words, Myrrha’s transgression. Mirra had an impact on many exceptional readers and spectators, from Massimo D’Azeglio to Lorenzo da Ponte, from Stendhal to Byron. Her greatest nineteenth-century interpreter, Adelaide Ristori, won triumphal success, especially in Paris. 24

In the twentieth century, after being played by Anna Proclemer, directed by Orazio Costa (1949), the part was performed by the young Galatea Ranzi under the direction of Luca Ronconi (1988–1989). BEATRICE ALFONSETTI Editions First edition: in Tragedie, vol. 5, Paris: Didot, 1789. Critical edition: Mirra: testo definitivo e redazioni inedite, edited by Martino Capucci, vol. 23 of Opere, Asti: Casa d’Alfieri, 1974. Translations: as Myrrha, in The Tragedies, vol. 2, translated by Charles Lloyd and Edgar A. Bowring, London: G. Bell, 1876.

Further Reading Azzolini, Paola, ‘‘La negazione simbolica della ‘Mirra’ alfieriana,’’ Lettere italiane, 32 (1980), 289–313. Binni, Walter, ‘‘Lettura della ‘Mirra,’’’ in Studi alfieriani, edited by Marco Dondero, vol. 2, Modena: Mucchi, 1995. Davico Bonino, Guido, ‘‘Introduction,’’ to Vittorio Alfieri, Mirra, Turin: Einaudi, 1988. Di Benedetto, Arnaldo, ‘‘L’‘orrendo a un tempo ed innocente amore’ di Mirra,’’ La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 2(2003), 738–747. Fabrizi, Angelo, ‘‘Introduction,’’ to Vittorio Alfieri, Mirra, Modena: Mucchi, 1996. Ferrone, Siro, ‘‘Fortuna di Alfieri nell’Ottocento: dall’autobiografia al repertorio,’’ Annali alfieriani, 4 (1985), 185–198. Guglielminetti, Marziano, Saul e Mirra, Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1993. Joly, Jacques, Le de´sir et l’utopie. E`tudes sur le the´aˆtre d’Alfieri et Goldoni, Clermont-Ferrand: Blaise Pascal, 1978. Pandolfi, Vito, Antologia del grande attore, Bari: Laterza, 1954. Schiavo Lena, Alessandra, Anna Fiorilli Pellandi una grande attrice veneziana tra Sette e Ottocento, Venice: Il Cardo, 1996.

SAUL, 1788 Tragedy by Vittorio Alfieri

After writing tragedies centered on heroes of ‘‘certainty,’’ Alfieri yielded to the temptations of the poetic, fantastical possibilities of the Old Testament and wrote Saul, a tragedy of ‘‘perplexity’’ and

VITTORIO ALFIERI madness. The author drew the subject from the first Book of Kings, a source of inspiration for a long musical and theatrical tradition, and read the work in public for the first time in April of 1783, during the ceremony in which he was proclaimed a shepherd in the Roman Arcadia. He performed the work, playing the part of the protagonist, in Tuscany in the years 1793–1795, staging simple, bare performances without a stage. At the same time, the work was also staged in various theaters by Antonio Morrocchesi. In the nineteenth century the part of Saul was played by Gustavo Modena and Tommaso Salvini, and in the twentieth century by Ermete Zacconi, Salvo Randone, and Renzo Giovampietro. The tragedy concerns four main characters: Saul, the first king of Israel; his children Jonathan and Michal; and David, Michal’s husband, a figure tied by fraternal love to Jonathan. The relationship between the two men is consolidated by an oath, superior to any ties of natural affection. David is thus dearer to Jonathan than his own father, his wife, his sons, or his kingdom. This introduces the central theme of succession and of the kingdom that, according to the will of the prophet Samuel, will pass to David. The king’s counselor, Abner, incites the by-then elderly Saul to hate the young, beautiful, and valiant David, but the hero’s sword protects him and his song cheers him, before Saul is devoured by the gnawing of implacable jealousy and the conviction that David will usurp his throne. The action begins with David’s return from exile. Without the king’s knowledge, David enters Saul’s camp in order to be with him in the final battle against the Philistines, but when he is identified by the king, the conflict erupts once again. Saul, who is affected by senile dementia, is inconstant and ambivalent about everything he encounters. Tragically alone, impotent in the face of his decline, rebellious against religious power, obsessed by guilt, attached to the scepter and the sword (which are also phallic symbols of his power), Saul stabs himself while his victorious enemies advance. In 1803, Franc¸ois-Xavier Fabre, a friend and portraitist of Alfieri and of his companion, Luisa Stolberg, completed a painting of Saul. The painting

represents the fifth act, when Saul, after having the priest Achimelech slain, is delirious. His hallucinations result from his fear of death and his sense of guilt at the crimes and transgressions he has committed. The specters of Samuel and Achimelech, described in verses of extraordinary intensity in the play, materialize in the painting, which shows Saul with the crown on his head, while the ghost of Samuel is about to hit him with the sword of God. On the left lies the priest with a dagger driven into his chest. In managing to dramatize the drama of regality and of old age, of love and hate, of guilt and disobedience, of knowledge through madness, Alfieri owed much to Shakespeare, especially King Lear. BEATRICE ALFONSETTI Editions First edition: in Tragedie, vol. 4, Paris: Didot, 1788. Critical edition: Saul: testo definitivo e redazioni inedite, edited by Carmine Jannaco and Angelo Fabrizi, vol. 31 of Opere, Asti: Casa d’Alfieri, 1982. Translations: as Saul, in The Tragedies, vol. 2, translated by Charles Lloyd and Edgar A. Bowring, London: G. Bell, 1876.

Further Reading Angelini, Franca, ‘‘Saul di Vittorio Alfieri,’’ in Letteratura italiana. Le opere. Dal Cinquecento al Settecento, vol. 2, Turin: Einaudi, 1993. Barsotti, Anna, Alfieri e la scena. Da fantasmi di personaggi a fantasmi di spettatori, Rome: Bulzoni, 2001. Binni, Walter, ‘‘Lettura del ‘Saul,’’’ in Studi alfieriani, edited by Marco Dondero, vol. 2, Modena: Mucchi, 1995. Forthomme, Bernard, La folie du roi Sau¨l, Paris: Empeˆcheurs de penser en rond, 2002. Frye, Northrop, The Great Code. The Bible and Literature, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. Ghidetti, Enrico, ‘‘Saul,’’ La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 2 (2003), 637–655. Guglielminetti, Marziano, Saul e Mirra, Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1993. Guglielminetti, Marziano, ‘‘Saul,’’ in Letture alfieriane, edited by Gino Tellini, Florence: Ed. Polistampa, 2003. Herr, Mireille, Les trage´dies bibliques au XVIII sie`cle, ParisGeneva: Champion-Slatkine, 1988.

25

FRANCESCO ALGAROTTI

FRANCESCO ALGAROTTI (1712–1764) Francesco Algarotti, a typical eighteenth-century literary figure and intellectual, occupies a position of undisputed importance among exponents of Illuminist culture in Italy. He authored numerous writings diverse in nature, the first of which was the celebrated essay on optics entitled Neutonianesimo per le dame (Newtonism for Ladies, 1737), or Dialoghi sopra la luce e i colori (Dialogues on Light and Colors), which earned him fame throughout Europe. Algarotti wrote with acumen about many subjects: poetry, philosophy, philology, the visual arts, physics, economics, political and military history, theater, and music. His writings are relevant to the most varied fields of knowledge in an eclectic way that was not uncommon in the eighteenth century, from mathematics to geometry, from military science to the visual arts, from literature to the Greek and Latin classics. Many of his works have been translated into a number of other languages, and all have been collected by the author in eight volumes, printed first in Livorno, then in Venice in 1764 and later published by Aglietti in 17 volumes, in Venice, from 1791 to 1794. Algarotti’s interests led him to engage with literary criticism: In 1744 he wrote the essay entitled Lettere sulla traduzione dell’Eneide del Caro (Letters on Caro’s Translation of the Aeneid) in which he affronted the difficulties associated with the translation of poetic works and with Caro’s style with respect to Virgil’s Classicism. His friendship with Voltaire stimulated him to reflect upon the Italian cultural situation in relationship to the various national cultures; in one of his Epistole in versi (Verse Epistles, 1758), sent to the French philosopher in 1746, Algarotti, following an amateurish eclecticism, underlined the cultural decadence in Italy. He even arrived at hypothesizing, in reaction to the provincial fragmentation of Italian culture, the idea of ‘‘one true Academy’’ composed of a large city, a capital where the most open and ingenious minds of humanity could meet and inspire one another. In the following years, Algarotti continued to produce works in which the historical and erudite content is evident and in which the echo of discussions of fashion in the cultural circles of the time is found. Particular attention must be given to the Saggio sopra la lingua francese (Essay on the French 26

Language, 1750) for the clarity with which the different histories of the French and Italian languages were established and for having compared the function of the French Academy with that of the Florentine Accademia della Crusca when it comes to language. Thanks to his numerous cultural interests, Algarotti became a collector and critic of eighteenth-century art by way of his writings on the visual arts: He published, in fact, Lettere sopra la pittura (Letters on Painting) and Lettere sopra l’architettura (Letters on Architecture), to which were added the two treatises, Sopra l’architettura (On Architecture, 1756) and Sopra la pittura (On Painting, 1762), where he took up the ideas of his Venetian master, Father Lodoli, attacking the decorative excesses of the Baroque style in defense of the principle of pure functionality of architecture. Of a wider scope are the writings dedicated to painting, which unite a didactic component regarding the education of a good painter to a discussion on the very essence of this art, defining its most general aesthetic problem, tied to the classical taste and to the principle of ideal imitation of the truth, which is typical of Illuminist thought. Algarotti also cultivated interests for musical theater, in which he participated firsthand by working on stage scenery; this is a recurring theme in many of his writings, especially in his Saggio sopra l’opera in musica (Essay on Opera in Music, 1755), published in Livorno and later expanded in Venice in 1763, as well as in the letters sent to Frederick II of Prussia and to the poet and librettist Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni. An evident result of his European experiences in the theaters of Berlin and Dresden, this volume represents one of the most coherent stances taken in favor of the reformatory tendencies of lyric opera that were making headway with the composer C. W. Gluck. Algarotti conceived of opera as a unitary and complete performance, at the base of which is found the literary text, but where all the components must collaborate to its overall outcome, from the music to the acting and singing, from the stage scenery to the choreography, even the taking into consideration of the architecture of the theater, in which Algarotti supported the necessity of good visibility of the stage to all spectators and the polemic against the

FRANCESCO ALGAROTTI indiscriminate use of the proscenium. Algarotti placed emphasis also on the importance of the lighting of scenes and above all invited a departure from the Baroque stage tradition by introducing new concepts of verisimilitude into the scenery and the costumes together with the necessity of coherence with the historic styles and respect for the stylistic unity in every single staging. Algarotti also wrote widely in verse, joining with Frugoni and Saverio Bettinelli in the Versi sciolti di tre eccellenti moderni autori (Blank Verses of Three Distinguished Modern Authors, 1757), prefaced by the Lettere virgiliane of Bettinelli. He was a typically eighteenth-century combination of classical taste and encyclopedic culture, an acute observer of the contemporary society, as his Viaggi di Russia (Travels in Russia, 1751), written in 1739, also shows.

Biography Born in Venice on 11 December 1712, Francesco Algarotti was the son of a rich merchant, Rocco. At the age of 13, he attended Greek lessons with his master Carlo Lodoli and the following year, after the death of his father, moved to Bologna, where he finished his education, studying art history, literature, and science. He occupied himself with experimental physics and medicine, and in his first publication, which dealt with optics and astronomy, he demonstrated a rigorous adhesion to Newton’s theories. He later went to Padua and Florence in order to deepen his classical taste and to be closer to the Arcadian society. In 1735, he was in Paris, where he met Voltaire and later in London, England, and then in Russia. From 1740 to 1742, Algarotti lived in the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia in Berlin. From 1742 to 1746, he was given the task by Augusto III of Saxony of collecting paintings for the Gallery of Dresden and of staging several musical operas. He returned to Berlin in 1746, where he was named Frederick’s chamberlain, knight of the Order of Merit, with a considerable pension, and declared a count with the right of conferring his title to his heirs. During

these years, he wrote much and consolidated his friendship with Voltaire. He returned to Italy definitively in 1753, for health reasons. He resided in Venice, then from 1757 to 1762 in Bologna, where he attempted to establish an academy named ‘‘of the Untamed’’ (degli Indomiti), and finally in Pisa, where he died on 3 March 1764. MARIA IDA BIGGI See also: Science and Literature

Selected Works Collections Opere del Conte Algarotti Cavaliere dell’Ordine del Merito e Ciambellano di S. M. il Re di Prussia, Livorno: Marco Coltellini, 1764. Saggi, edited by Giovanni Da Pozzo, Bari: Laterza, 1963.

Essays and Letters Dialoghi sopra l’ottica neutoniana, 1733. Lettere sulla traduzione dell’Eneide del Caro, 1744. Saggio sopra la lingua francese, 1750. Viaggio di Russia, 1751; edited by P. P. Trompeo, 1942. Saggio sopra il Cartesio, 1754. Saggio sopra l’opera in musica, 1755; enlarged edition, 1763. Sopra l’architettura, 1756. Epistole in versi, 1758. Sopra la pittura, 1762.

Poetry ‘‘Versi sciolti di tre eccellenti moderni autori’’ (with Bettinelli and Frugoni), 1757.

Further Reading Arato, Franco, Il secolo delle cose: scienza e storia in Francesco Algarotti, Genoa: Marietti, 1991. Berardi, Cirillo, Studi critici, Bozzolo: Tip. Arini, 1914. Fubini, Mario, Dall’Arcadia all’Illuminismo, Milan: Goliardica, 1951. Mazza Boccazzi, Barbara, Francesco Algarotti: un esperto d’arte alla corte di Dresda, Trieste: Societa` Minerva, 2001. Petrobelli, Pierluigi, ‘‘Tartini, Algarotti e la corte di Dresda,’’ Analecta musicologica, 2(1965), 71–84. Siccardi, Margherita, L’Algarotti critico e scrittore di belle arti, Asti: Tip. Paglieri e Raspi, 1911.

27

CORRADO ALVARO

DANTE ALIGHIERI See Dante Alighieri

CORRADO ALVARO (1895–1956) Corrado Alvaro is particularly renowned for his collection of short stories, Gente in Aspromonte (Revolt in Aspromonte). Published in 1930, the book was praised by critics as a powerful return to realism in Italian fiction. In many respects, it represents the climax of Alvaro’s literary production and has often been hailed as a precursor of the neo-Realist movement. Of equal importance is the overall trajectory of Alvaro’s literary and intellectual career, which provides an example of the tensions and preoccupations of Italian intellectuals during the years of the Fascist regime and in the early postwar period. A decorated officer in WWI, Alvaro began his career as a journalist, working among other papers for Giorgio Amendola’s Il mondo, one of the few periodicals openly critical of the Fascist movement. In 1925, Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti was published in Il mondo, and Alvaro joined the group of signatories. The following year, however, with the establishment of Mussolini’s dictatorship, Alvaro refrained from openly criticizing the regime. He concentrated on his literary work and was employed as editor in Massimo Bontempelli’s journal, 900, which was attempting to establish a more cosmopolitan vision of culture in Fascist Italy. Alvaro also continued to work as a journalist for national papers such as Il corriere della sera, publishing short stories and often reporting from foreign countries such as Germany, Turkey, Greece, and Russia. His frequent trips were also the subject of a number of travel books: Viaggio in Turchia (A Journey to Turkey, 1932), Itinerario italiano (Italian Itinerary, 1933), and I maestri del diluvio: Viaggio nella Russia sovietica (The Masters of Deluge: A Journey to Soviet Russia, 1935). 28

Alvaro’s fictional production gradually lost the mixture of D’Annunzian, Pirandellian, and Expressionist influences of his early works, such as Poesie grigioverdi (Greygreen Poems, 1917), La siepe e l’orto (The Hedge and the Orchard, 1920), and L’uomo nel labirinto (The Man in the Labyrinth, 1926), and developed in the direction of a fictional exploration of his Calabrese roots through a stark form of realism. This is best exemplified by the 13 tales of Gente in Aspromonte, where Alvaro reconnected with the achievements of Italy’s verismo in the previous century and produced a powerful fresco of the social struggles in poverty-stricken Southern Italy. The story that gives its title to the entire collection tells of the rebellion of a young shepherd, Antonello Argiro`, against the brutal humiliation and exploitation suffered by his family. It contains a powerful cry against social injustice that, because of its setting in a primitive, lyrically described and almost fablelike southern countryside, was not perceived as an open critique of the political and social failings in Mussolini’s Italy. In parallel with his realistic works, Alvaro continued to produce fiction that was closer to the surreal ‘‘magic realism’’ of his friend Massimo Bontempelli. In this vein are works such as Misteri e avventure (Mysteries and Adventures, 1930) and L’uomo e` forte (Man Is Strong, 1938). The latter is a dystopian, psychological novel tracing the nightmarish life of a young man who naively decides to return and live in a totalitarian society. When the proofs of the books were submitted for approval, the Fascist Ministry of Popular Culture required Alvaro to introduce the novel with a short preface in which he clarified that the book had been inspired by his travels through Russia. Alvaro

CORRADO ALVARO and his publisher Mondadori complied with the request. The book’s positive reception was partly due to the fresh anti-Bolshevik sentiment deriving from Mussolini’s closer alliance with Hitler’s Germany. What seemed to have escaped the censor’s attention is the fact that it was not difficult to read L’uomo e` forte as an expression of Alvaro’s disillusionment with any form of totalitarian power. Soon after the fall of the regime, in the summer of 1943, Alvaro took up the editorship of one of Rome’s newspapers, Il popolo di Roma. As a consequence of this public expression of anti-Fascism, when the Nazis reinstated Mussolini at the head of a new puppet government, Alvaro had to leave the capital and live under a false name. In the early postwar years, he emerged as a militant intellectual, a founder of the Sindacato degli scrittori (together with fellow southern author Francesco Jovine) and a prolific journalist and fiction writer. He collaborated on various left-wing initiatives such as Emilio Sereni’s Alleanza della cultura and wrote for the Communist periodical Rinascita, although he never joined the Italian Communist Party. Alvaro’s fiction became more and more informed by the author’s moral and intellectual preoccupations, to the point that some of his works have been read as fictional essays dominated by the moralistic views of the narrative voice. In these years, Alvaro also published his intellectual diary, Quasi una vita (Almost a Life, 1950), which was awarded the prestigious Strega prize in 1952 and was followed by the posthumously published Ultimo diario (1948–1956) (The Last Diary, 1959). A recurrent theme in Alvaro’s fiction is the difficulty with which his protagonists integrate in a new social environment. The fact that these inhibited protagonists are often male and of southern Italian extraction adds strong autobiographical resonances to his work. These are particularly present in the trilogy Memorie del mondo sommerso (Memories of the Underworld) of which only the first volume, L’eta` breve (The Brief Era, 1946), was published in Alvaro’s lifetime. Together with the following two, Mastrangelina (1960) and Tutto e` accaduto (Everything Has Happened, 1961), the trilogy follows the life of a young man from his adolescent life in provincial Calabria to his discovery of the hypocrisies and moral corruption of urban life in Fascist Italy. Posthumously published was also an unfinished novel, Belmoro (1957). Set in a futuristic post-World War III world, the novel is to some extent a dystopian sequel to L’uomo e` forte, revealing Alvaro’s pessimism toward modern society. However, fully fledged novels were not the

media through which Alvaro’s artistic gifts were expressed at their best. His capacity to evoke realistic and at the same time lyrical atmospheres, as well as his tendency to create symbolic, more than three-dimensional characters, were more suited for the different pace offered by the short story. That is the field in which his most influential legacy lies. Alvaro also wrote some plays, among which his most renowned, La lunga notte di Medea (The Long Night of Medea, 1949), which takes its inspiration from the ancient Greek myth. It was first staged by Russian actress and director Tatiana Pavlova, with metaphysical artist Giorgio De Chirico providing the scenography. Critics agree in acknowledging the pivotal role played by Alvaro’s work in the revival of the Realist tradition during the Fascist period. Together with Francesco Jovine and Ignazio Silone, Alvaro has also contributed to the development of the literary tradition of narrativa meridionalista, or narrative about Southern Italy.

Biography Corrado Alvaro was born in San Luca d’Aspromonte (Reggio Calabria), 15 April 1895. The son of an elementary school teacher, he attended the Jesuit seminary of Villa Mondragone, near Frascati, 1906–1909. He was drafted in World War I and fought in the Carso region, 1914–1916, where he was wounded in both arms and decorated with a silver medal. Alvaro married Laura Babini in Bologna, 8 April 1918, and their son Massimo was born in 1919. He was awarded a degree in literature and philosophy at Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria of Milan, 1920; from 1916 onward, Alvaro worked as a journalist and critic for several newspapers, including Il resto del carlino, Il corriere della sera, Il mondo, Il Risorgimento, La fiera lettearia, and La stampa. He moved to Rome in 1922 and participated in the activities of the Teatro d’Arte founded by Pirandello, 1925–1928. He was editor of Bontempelli’s journal 900, 1926; traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, 1926–1931; and directed Il popolo di Roma, 1943, and Il Risorgimento, 1947. He founded the Sindacato degli scrittori (National Writers Union) with Francesco Jovine and Libero Bigiaretti in 1945. Alvaro won the Accademia d’Italia Prize for literature in 1940 and the Strega Prize for Quasi una vita in 1951. He died of an abdominal tumor in Rome, 20 April 1956. GUIDO BONSAVER 29

CORRADO ALVARO See also: Verismo

La lunga notte di Medea, 1949; as The Long Night of Medea in Plays for a New Theater, translated by Frances Frenaye, 1966. Bellezza per vivere, 1953.

Selected Works

Essays

Collections Cronache e scritti teatrali, edited by Alfredo Barbina, Rome: Abete, 1976. Opere, edited by Geno Pampaloni, 2 vols., Milan: Bompiani, 1990. Scritti dispersi, Milan: Bompiani, 1995.

Poetry ‘‘Poesie grigioverdi,’’ 1917.

Calabria, 1931. Viaggio in Turchia, 1932. Itinerario italiano, 1933. I maestri del diluvio: Viaggio nella Russia sovietica, 1935. L’Italia rinunzia?, 1945. Quasi una vita: Giornale di uno scrittore, 1950. Roma vestita di nuovo (Itinerario italiano II), 1957. Un treno nel Sud (Itinerario italiano III), 1958. Ultimo diario (1948–1956), 1959.

Fiction La siepe e l’orto, 1920. L’uomo nel labirinto, 1926. L’amata alla finestra, 1929. La signora dell’isola, 1930. Gente in Aspromonte, 1930; as Revolt in Aspromonte, translated by Frances Frenaye, 1962. Vent’anni, 1930. Misteri e avventure, 1930. L’uomo e` forte, 1938; as Man Is Strong, translated by Frances Frenaye, 1948. L’eta` breve, 1946. Settantacinque racconti, 1955. Belmoro, 1957. Mastrangelina, 1960. Tutto e` accaduto, 1961.

Plays Il paese e la citta`, 1923. Caffe` dei naviganti, 1939.

Further Reading Balduino, Armando, Corrado Alvaro, Milan: Mursia, 1965. Bo, Carlo, Realta` e poesia di Corrado Alvaro, Rome: Edizioni di Cultura e Documentazione, 1958. Cara, Domenico, Corrado Alvaro, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968. Fontanelli, Giuseppe, L’ultimo Alvaro, Messina: Sicania, 2000. Mauro, Walter, Invito alla lettura di Alvaro, Milan: Mursia, 1973. Morace, Aldo Maria, and Adriano Zappa, Corrado Alvaro. Atti del Convegno Letterario di Mappano Torinese, Reggio Calabria: Falzea, 2002. Paladino, Vincenzo, L’opera di Corrado Alvaro, Florence: Le Monnier, 1968. Reina, Luigi, Cultura e storia di Alvaro, Naples: Guida, 1973.

AGNOLO AMBROGINI See Angelo Poliziano

GIANNI AMELIO (1945–) Considered among the few contemporary Italian filmmakers of the same caliber as the generation working during the postwar years and in the 1970s, 30

Gianni Amelio was molded on the sets of 1960s genre cinema, at the same time as apprenticing in cinematic endeavors tailored for television. It is

GIANNI AMELIO certainly true he is unique in that, with the aforementioned background, he soon established himself as an auteur of great depth and was also known to successfully target audiences outside Italy. His films are characterized by a vision that strips mainstream conventions as well as by a tendency to free each frame of any trace of authorial subjectivity. Amelio is preoccupied with experimenting with film forms and language. His style evolves with his investigation into the actor’s craft to exceptional effect: The director charges each shot with subtle tension expressed through the actor’s body, a technique that, particularly in the eyes of some critics, links him directly to the masters of neo-realism. Amelio’s films are intrinsically centered on an autobiographical trait, which is imperative to understanding his entire body of work. His childhood was profoundly marked by the absence of a father figure: His father abandoned his family, including 2-year-old Gianni, and emigrated from povertystricken Calabria to Argentina. Amelio did not see his father again for 20 years. Such a traumatic event affected the director not only on a personal level but also because of the social stigma associated with emigration in the Italian south. This conflict is prominently displayed in his work, which often focuses on marginalized youth and highlights dislocated characters in constant motion. He emphasizes the confrontation between fathers and sons—with the father being shown in weak retreat and escape when confronted with the issue of authority. But it is Amelio’s troubled childhood that steered him toward the world of cinema, whose mesmerizing presence upon its discovery was developed into a refined appreciation and knowledge of the art of filmmaking. He confessed during an interview: ‘‘Ho detestato davvero molto le persone che mi stavano accanto, la societa` nella quale ero costretto a vivere. Ma quando invece entravo in un cinema, eravamo tutti seduti e uguali. Se dovessi fare un film dalla mia adolescenza, anche se interpretata da un altro personaggio, non penso riuscirei a tirare fuori una, dico, soltanto una, immagine di felicita`’’ (I truly detested the people that were close to me, the society in which I was forced to live. Each time I entered a movie theater, however, we were all seated as equals. If I ever were to make a movie about my youth, even as a fictional character, I don’t think I could retrieve one, I mean only one, image of happiness) (Mario Sesti, Regia di Gianni Amelio, 1992). Amelio made his directorial debut in 1970, with a film commissioned by RAI (Italian National Television), La fine del gioco (The End of the

Game), which immediately identified one of his central themes: the unmediated and unhindered face-off between an ‘‘adult’’ and a ‘‘young man.’’ The former role was played by a well-known director and intellectual, Ugo Gregoretti (who remembered the all-too-vivid and real dislike he bore the boy with whom, in his role of television journalist, he entertains a tumultuous relationship); the latter was played by a nonprofessional actor. Amelio’s avoidance of star actors became a choice laden with aesthetic implications. His films situate young people in a barren landscape that exemplifies their dead-end lives. The story takes place in a railroad car, which will later be the main set of what most consider his best film, Il ladro di bambini (Stolen Children, 1992). The following films, from La citta` del sole (City of the Sun, 1973), dedicated to Calabrian philosopher Tommaso Campanella, and Bertolucci secondo il cinema (Bertolucci According to Cinema, 1976), a documentary on the making of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Novecento, to La morte al lavoro (Death at Work, 1978) and Effetti speciali (Special Effects, 1979), two thrillers based on the original score by Alfred Hitchcock’s composer Bernard Herrmann, are each a significant step in the development of Amelio’s cinematic language, which spans historical representation to documentary modes of production to the intellectual tradition of cine´ma d’essai. Amelio oftentimes makes use of literary sources, as exemplified by Il piccolo Archimede (Young Archimedes, 1979), on the life and work of Aldous Huxley; I velieri (Sailboats, 1983), based on a novel by Anna Banti; Porte aperte (Open Doors, 1990), an unflinching examination of the law and the way of life in a Sicilian town under Fascism (from Leonardo Sciascia’s homonymous novel); and Le chiavi di casa (The House Keys, 2004), adapted from Nati due volte by Giuseppe Pontiggia. Nonetheless, it is with his first original feature film, Colpire al cuore (Blow to the Heart, 1982) that he was able to map his personal thematic and imaginary paradigms, as he reflects on the unsettling social and cultural state of contemporary Italy. This film displays, with a tremendous tension, the opposite point of view of the societal realities of the 1970s in Italy: the anticipated scenario of a conservative father versus his revolutionary son is reversed. Thus, Amelio draws from a collective political conflict that of terrorism and transforms it into an unexpected territory of intimate obsessions, dealing with the father–son relationship. The film is compelling in its ambiguity and dramatic tension, a combination that becomes 31

GIANNI AMELIO a frequently used technique for the narrative and emotional vehicle of Amelio’s best cinematic work. However, despite its accurate and powerful portrayal of terrorism, the film did not have much success. Throughout the 1980s, Amelio directed important projects for television, such as I ragazzi di Via Panisperna (The Guys of Panisperna Street, 1988), which reconstructs the character of scientist Enrico Fermi and his experiments in the 1930s. After Porte aperte was rereleased in 1990, he began Il ladro di bambini. Amelio had already established himself as a sensitive observer of the desolate world of preadolescent kids, but not to the chilling understanding and empathy with which he endows the main character of this film, Antonio, a carabiniere who is assigned to escort the 11-year-old Rosetta and her 10-year-old brother Luciano to an orphanage after their Sicilian mother is arrested for pimping her daughter in the tenement section of Milan. Amelio focuses on the failure of traditional familial relations, projected onto isolated or abandoned spaces (waiting rooms, benches in police stations, toilets), before introducing those psychological nuances of a normal interaction between the young police officer and the children. Once the orphanage turns the girl away because she is a recognizable childprostitute, the carabiniere’s natural dignity and goodness allow him to provide for Rosetta and Luciano a temporary support in place of the father figure they never had. Without authorization, he decides to take the girl back to her birthplace in Sicily, and the film becomes a moving account of this journey. Nonetheless, in the end, the children return to the starting point, that is to once again survive on their own (as the ‘‘young kids’’ of Amelio are always forced to). The film’s final shot attests to their internalized encounter with Antonio, the only trace of human solidarity in their lives. Il ladro di bambini gained Amelio international critical recognition (the film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes). The films that followed, Lamerica (America, 1994), the impressive adventure of a young Italian man in the post-Communist chaos of Albania, and Cosi ridevano (The Way We Laughed, 1998), on the relationships of two immigrant Calabrese brothers from the 1950s to the present, continued to explore the cultural and social problems of Southern Italy as well as beginning to question traditional national boundaries. A visually powerful tale of moral dilemma and the journey that leads to atonement, Lamerica bridges the destiny of Albania to that of Italy and 32

the myth of America (as the title implies). These themes reverberate with issues on the international immigrant front, exemplified mainly in the personal uprooting conflicts between poverty and comfort caused by prevalent demographical shifts. Amelio’s more recent film, Le chiavi di casa, describes the difficult relationship between a young father and his disabled son, yet another testament to the director’s ability to broach contemporary issues by looking within the intimacy of family bonds.

Biography Gianni Amelio was born in the mountain village of San Pietro Magisano (Catanzaro), 20 January 1945, to a family of emigrants: His grandfather went to Argentina and never returned, and his 20-year-old father also emigrated when Gianni was nearly 2. Amelio lived with his grandmother, who supported the family as a nurse and took him to the movies once a week. He studied philosophy for two and a half years at the University of Messina; worked as a film critic for the review Giovane critica, 1964; then dropped out of school and went to Rome to work as production assistant on the set of Un uomo a meta` by Vittorio De Seta, 1965. He began a long period of apprenticeship working as assistant director in advertising and the film industry with directors such as Anna Gobbi, Gianni Puccini, Andrea Frezza, Ugo Gregoretti, and Liliana Cavani; directed his first ad spot for Smarties, 1969; and made his television debut with a film commissioned by RAI, La fine del gioco, 1970. His film La citta` del sole was selected for the Quinzaine des Realisateurs, 1973; La morte al lavoro was presented at the Cannes Film Festival, 1978; Laura Betti was awarded the ‘‘best actress’’ award for Il piccolo Archimede at the San Sebastian Festival, 1979; Colpire al cuore won two silver ribbons (best original script and best upcoming actor to Fausto Rossi, who also received the David di Donatello), 1982. Amelio taught directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Italian National Film School), 1983–1986. His Porte aperte won the Felix (the Europena Oscar), 1990; Il ladro di bambini was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, 1992; Cosı` ridevano won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, 1998; and Le chiavi di casa was recognized with the Pasinetti prize, 2004. Since 1965, Amelio has lived and worked in Rome. MARIO SESTI

` AMMANITI NICCOLO Selected Works Films La fine del gioco, 1970. La citta` del sole, 1973. Bertolucci secondo il cinema, 1976 (documentary). La morte al lavoro (adapted from a short story by Hans H. Ewers), 1978. Effetti speciali, 1979. Il piccolo Archimede (adapted from a short story by Aldous Huxley), 1979. Colpire al cuore, 1982. I velieri (adapted from a short story by Anna Banti), 1983. I ragazzi di Via Panisperna, 1988 (television serial). Porte aperte (Open Doors) (adapted from a novel by Leonardo Sciascia), 1990. Il ladro di bambini (Stolen Children), 1992. Lamerica (America), 1994. Non e` finita la pace, cioe` la guerra, 1996 (documentary). Cosı` ridevano (The Way We Laughed), 1998. Poveri noi, 1999 (documentary). L’onore delle armi, 2000 (documentary). Le chiavi di casa (The House Keys) (adapted from the novel Nati due volte by Giuseppe Pontiggia), 2004. Le stella che non c’e` (The Missing Star), 2006.

Screenplays Il ladro di bambini, 1992 (with Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli). Lamerica, edited by Piera Detassis, 1994. La fine del gioco, in Gianni Volpi (editor), Gianni Amelio, 1995. Il piccolo Archimede, 1996. Colpire al cuore, edited by Alberto Cattini, 1996 (with Vincenzo Cerami). I ragazzi di via Panisperna, 1996 (with Alessandro Sermoneta).

Cosı` ridevano edited by Franco Prono, 1999. Le chiavi di casa, 2004 (with Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli).

Other Il vizio del cinema: Vedere amare, fare un film, 2004.

Further Reading Cattini, Alberto, Le storie e lo sguardo: Il cinema di Gianni Amelio, Venice: Marsilio, 2000. Fofi, Goffredo, Amelio secondo il cinema, Rome: Donzelli, 1994. Marcus, Millicent, ‘‘The Gaze of Innocence: Lost and Found in Gianni Amelio’s Stolen Children,’’ in After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Marrone, Gaetana (editor), New Landscapes in Contemporary Italian Cinema, Annali d’Italianistica, 17 (1999). Martini, Emanuela, Gianni Amelio, Milan: Il Castoro, 2004. Montini, Franco, and Piero Spila (editors), Il cinema di Gianni Amelio, special issue of Cinecritica, nos. 19–20 (October–March 1990–1991). Rais, Alessandro, Gianni Amelio: Conversazione in Sicilia, Palermo: Regione Sicilia, 1999. Ranvaud, Donald (editor), The Films of Gianni Amelio, Edinburgh: An Other Cinema Dossier, 1983. Sesti, Mario, Regia di Gianni Amelio, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1992. Volpi, Gianni (editor), Gianni Amelio, Turin: Edizioni Scriptorium, 1995. Vorauer, Markus, and Michael Aichmayr (editors), Gianni Amelio: Festschrift, Reihe Europa¨ischer Film/Band 3, 1999.

` AMMANITI (1966–) NICCOLO Niccolo` Ammaniti published his first novel, Branchie (Gills), in 1994, at the age of 28. The novel was published by Ediesse, a small Italian publisher, and even though it was not distributed well, it became a cult novel. Afterwards, Einaudi—a major Italian press—decided to publish the novel in their series Stile Libero (1997). In the preface to the 1997 edition, Ammaniti explained that Branchie derives from the project of his university thesis on ‘‘The Release of Acetilcolinasterasis in Neuroblastomas’’ (he never completed the dissertation or his university degree in biology). Ammaniti wrote: ‘‘Branchie was born as a

tumor (malignant?) of a dissertation in biology.’’ Set in Rome, it narrates with humor the adventures of a young man, Marco Donati, and how he deals with his tumor and with his mother, girlfriend, and friends. A great deal of attention is devoted to such interests as fish, music, parties, and so forth. In the opening of Branchie, the protagonist, drunk, sick, with a strong urge to vomit, comes back ‘‘home’’: a former fish store, still inhabited by some fish, a television set, a refrigerator, a broken couch, a folding bed. Marco Donati whispers his secret to the readers: ‘‘I have a tumor of the lungs. Don’t tell anybody.’’ The humor, the language, the mixture 33

` AMMANITI NICCOLO of different genres, the portrayal of Rome, the way the story unfolds, are all original and refreshing. In the conclusion, the author informs the reader that the story has a happy ending, and that the reader should therefore be pleased: ‘‘Are you happy? The story is finally concluded and you can start looking for another book to read. But be patient a little longer, let me add couple of things. This is not like one of those novels with a bad ending, so that you close the book full of anxiety and a handkerchief drenched with tears. Actually, I believe that you will be satisfied with how things end up.’’ In the radio play Anche il sole fa schifo (Even the Sun Is Disgusting), recorded in November 1996 and published in 1997, Angelo Rosati, like Ammaniti, studies biology at the university. He is 26 years old and is about to defend his dissertation on ‘‘The Development and Reproduction of the Sferictus pallidum in the Toro Grotto in Calcata’’—a thesis based on long field research spent studying the Sferictis pallidum, an ‘‘albino worm.’’ In 1996 Ammaniti participated in the annual Ricercare (Research) event held at the Hall of Mirrors at the Valli Theatre in Reggio Emilia. Traditionally, this meeting brings together a group of writers and critics and offers young, promising writers the opportunity to read their work. The invitation to Ricercare was a sign that Ammaniti’s talent as a writer had already been discerned by the writers and critics of Ricercare. In 1996, Ammaniti published the collection of short stories Fango (Mud) and the short story ‘‘Seratina’’ (with Luisa Brancaccio) in Gioventu´ cannibale (Cannibal Youth). The critical attention to both books and the excitement in the media for the new so-called giovani cannibali (young cannibals)—a group of writers that included Ammaniti—made Ammaniti very popular. These writers (among them Niccolo` Ammaniti, Aldo Nove, Simona Vinci, Isabella Santacroce, and Tiziano Scarpa) all shared an interest in mass culture, consumerism, American popular culture, British and American music, violence, the representation of the body, and so forth. Clearly Ammaniti is not just a ‘‘cannibalistic’’ writer. His stories are shocking because of the use of the fantastic: He pushes the reader to go into risky and unusual literary places. Branchie and Fango (1996) both have a very strong comic, hilarious tone. ‘‘L’ultimo capodanno dell’umanita`’’ (The Last New Year’s Eve of Humanity), the long short story that opens Fango, blends comedy and tragedy. Through parallel stories, the countdown to midnight and to the fireworks is a countdown toward shooting, explosions, fire, and 34

death in Rome—but while the violence is growing, the reader is laughing. His most successful book was his most traditionally plotted novel, entitled Io non ho paura (I Am Not Afraid). There is little left of the ‘‘cannibal’’ style in this work. In 2001, this bestseller confirmed Ammaniti as one of Italy’s most talented and original writers, both in Italy and abroad. Gabriele Salvatores’s film adaptation of the novel was very successful at the box office. The novel relates the story of Michele, a 9-year-old boy struggling, by force of imagination, to make sense of the rather unruly world around him. During what appears to be a summer spent with friends riding his bicycle and playing games (often brutal games), he happens upon the hiding place of a kidnapped boy around his age. The beautiful sun-drenched landscape of southern Italy clashes with the horrid dark cave in which the kidnapped child is kept. The story of young Michele intertwines with local legends, the stories from his readings, the stories from his family, and the story of the kidnapped boy (he learns part of this story from the news on television). Slowly Michele puts all the pieces of the puzzle together, and the solution of the mystery coincides with his confrontation of the crime and evil in which his family and his entire community are involved. The story has a double ending: a happy ending for the kidnapped boy and a less than happy ending for the other boy, Michele, who is brutally forced to grow up. Ti prendo e ti porto via (I’ll Come and Take You Away), published in 1997 and set in Ischiano Scalo, an unpleasant village swarming with mosquitoes, narrates the love stories of several of the locals. Again, Ammaniti structures this work into parallel stories in order to give us a close-up of his fictional characters. Fa un po’ male (It Hurts a Little), published in 2004, collects three comic stories: ‘‘Bucatini e pallottole’’ (Bucatini and Bullets), ‘‘Fa un po’ male’’ (It Hurts a Little), and ‘‘L’ultimo capodanno’’ (The Last New Year). Ammaniti provided the written texts, while the illustrators Daniele Brolli and Davide Fabbri provided the drawings and the illustrations. Again, Ammaniti seemed interested in experimenting with different genres, always resisting constraints on the possibilities of artistic creation and collaboration.

Biography Ammaniti was born in Rome on 25 September 1966; he studied at the University of Rome for a degree in biology, but never completed his Laurea (B.A.). He

` AMMANITI NICCOLO cowrote Nel nome del figlio (In the Name of the Son) with his father, a professor of psychology at the University of Rome, 1994. Ammaniti appeared, with his sister, in Fulvio Ottaviano’s film Cresceranno i carciofi a Mimongo (The Artichokes Will Grow in Mimongo), 1996. His radio play Anche il sole fa schifo was performed on RadioRai in 1997. A film adaptation of ‘‘L’ultimo capodanno dell’umanita`’’ (in Fango) was done by Dino Risi in 1998 and a film adaptation of Io non ho paura was done by Gabriele Salvatores in 2003. Ammaniti now lives in Rome, where he works as a freelance journalist. GRAZIA MENECHELLA See also: Cannibali Selected Works Fiction Branchie, Roma: Ediesse, 1994 [Torino: Einaudi, 1997]. Fango, Milano: Mondadori, 1996. Ti prendo e ti porto via, Milano: Mondadori, 1999. Io non ho paura, Torino: Einaudi, 2001.

Nonfiction Nel nome del figlio (with Massimo Ammaniti), Milano: Mondadori, 1995. Anche il sole fa schifo, Roma: Rai Eri, 1997. Fa un po’ male (with Daniele Brolli and Davide Fabbri), Torino: Einaudi, 2004.

Other ‘‘La figlia di Siva’’ in La giungla sotto l’asfalto, Roma: Ediesse, 1993. ‘‘Seratina’’ (with Luisa Brancaccio) in Gioventu´ cannibale (edited by Daniele Brolli), Torino: Einaudi, 1996. ‘‘Alba tragica’’ in Tutti i denti del mostro sono perfetti, Milano: Urania Mondadori, 1997. ‘‘Enchanted Music and Light Records’’ (with Jamie D’Alessandro) in Il fagiano Jonathan Livingstone, Rome: Minimum Fax, 1998. ‘‘L’amico di Jeffrey Dahmer e` l’amico mio’’ in Italia odia, Milano: Mondadori, 2000.

Further Reading Balestrini, Nanni, and Renato Barilli (eds.), Narrative invaders, Special Issue of La Bestia, Genova 1997. Bianchi, Alberto, ‘‘L’autenticita` dell’immagine: lo specchio catodico di Niccolo` Ammaniti,’’ in Narrativa, 20–21, June 2001. Cardone, Raffaele, Franco Galato, and Fulvio Panzeri (eds.), Altre storie. Inventario della nuova narrativa italiana fra anni ’80 e ’90, Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 1996. Ferme, Valerio, ‘‘Note su Niccolo` Ammaniti e il fango di fine millennio’’ in Narrativa, 20–21, June 2001. Lucamante, Stefania (ed.), Italian Pulp Fiction, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. Magni, Stefano, ‘‘Voci e punti di vista in Fango di Ammaniti,’’ in Narrativa, 20–21, June 2001. Pomilio, Tommaso ‘‘Le narrative generazionali dagli anni ottanta agli anni novanta,’’ in Storia generale della letteratura italiana, edited by Nino Borsellino and Walter Pedulla`, volume 12, Sperimentalismo e tradizione del nuovo, Milan: Federico Motta Editore, 1999. Venuti, Lawrence, ‘‘Tom, Huck and Michele,’’ The New York Times Book Review, February 16, 2003.

ANCIENT (BARBARIC) ODES See Odi barbare (Work by Giosue` Carducci)

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GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI

GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI (1576–1654) Giovan Battista Andreini was the most important Italian playwright of the seventeenth century. The scion of a famous theatrical family, he was also among the most prominent of his generation of professional arte (commedia dell’arte) actors in Italy. After performing with the La Compagnia dei Gelosi in the first years of the seventeenth century, Andreini formed his own company, La Compagnia dei Fedeli, of which he was actor and director and which became internationally renowned. La Compagnia dei Fedeli played both arte scenarios and his own works, which drew on Italian popular comic traditions as well as on the Renaissance revival of ancient comedy (known as commedia erudita) but sought to go in a new direction. The arte plays, based on improvisation, and Italian players were greatly in demand throughout Europe during most of Andreini’s lifetime. Productions were sometimes extravagant, but the scenarios could be performed by itinerant troupes almost anywhere or at any time that a stage could be set up and a public assembled, whether in piazzas or palaces, at carnival or court. Among the arte masks and stock characters, Andreini chiefly played the sincere young innamorato, Lelio, given to flights of poetic fancy and rhetorical bravura. However, he also played (among others) Harlequin, the greatest and most complex clown that Western theater has known, and, late in life, Pantaloon. The arte scenarios used by the Fedeli were probably very similar to those published by Flaminio Scala in his pathbreaking collection of 50 of the Gelosi’s scenarios, Il teatro delle favole rappresentative (The Theatre of Representative Fables, 1611). In an age of increasing prestige for products that exploited art’s capacity for illusion, nothing could compete with the theater. The rapid development of the professional theater in early modern Europe provided Andreini with the opportunity, as a playwright, to reach beyond the arte tradition and to explore the limits of the art form from both a technical and aesthetic perspective. Twelve years younger than Shakespeare, he was intimately familiar not only with the intricate Renaissance court 36

spectacle of the opera regia but with the new multimedia opera that had emerged in Italy around the turn of the century. Music played a role in most of Andreini’s comedies, for example, and La Ferinda (1622) is clearly modeled on the first early modern operas of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) and Jacopo Peri (1561–1633). Andreini’s late works, which often employed mythological and pastoral themes, in turn inspired the French neoclassical grand opera. His mastery of stagecraft and lighting, like his firsthand knowledge of new theatrical modes of representation, fed into his ‘‘Marinist’’ aesthetics of meraviglia (wonder), which sought to seduce the public through daringly inventive concepts that would astound and delight with their skillful artifice. The best of Andreini’s plays are built around a concept that pushed traditional representational practices of the theater to the breaking point. In Le due comedie in comedia (The Two Comedies within the Comedy, 1623), there are two competing plays within a play, performed by two separate troupes. In Li due Leli simili (The Two Look-Alike Lelios, 1613), identically named identical twins appear and speak together on stage in the final act and thus cannot be played by the same actor. In Amor nello specchio (Love in the Mirror, 1622), female characters knowingly make love to one another on stage in defiance of patriarchy (roles originally played by Andreini’s wife and lover, who in real life were bitter rivals). In La centaura (The Centauress, 1622), each part of the same play belongs in a different genre— comedy, pastoral, tragedy—and there are two pairs of identically named male–female fraternal twins. In La Ferinda, at least nine distinct languages and dialects are spoken extensively on stage, far outstripping even the multilingual arte plays. Doubles are common in Andreini’s works for the stage, including La Turca (The Turkish Woman, 1620) and Li duo baci (The Two Kisses, 1634), although there is often little psychological depth to the characters involved. His theatrical writing strove self-consciously for the status of a complex cultural artifact through formal experimentation at the level

GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI of plot and language, rather than through analysis of motive and emotion. Andreini’s most productive years as a writer for the comic stage were undoubtedly 1620–1623, in which he published eight comedies, mostly in Paris. Some or most of these may have been composed years earlier and may have already been part of the standard repertory of the Fedeli. They all belonged to what Andreini called la commedia nuova, or ‘‘new comedy.’’ In his prefaces and treatises on comedy—including Teatro celeste (Celestial Theatre, 1624) and Lo specchio (The Mirror, 1625)—Andreini argued for a reformed postTridentine comic theater that would amuse and instruct the public with a socially and morally constructive message, rather than the salacious language and frank, often amoral sexuality of earlier Italian comedy. As Andreini remarked in the prologue to Lelio bandito (which he termed a pastoral tragicomedy), ‘‘benche´ nelle comedie molte volte si veggano atti lascivi, & azzioni profane, non son introdotte per insegnarle: ma per mostrar il modo con cui ce ne possiamo guardare’’ (although in comedies we often see lascivious acts and profane actions, they are not put there in order to teach us [how to perform] them, but in order to show us the way in which we may avoid them). He even argued in his theoretical works that far from being damned for immorality, many devout comedians had become saints and martyrs. Andreini’s sacred writings display a deeply felt religiosity consonant with the main currents of Counter-Reformation culture. Of his sacred plays (sacre rappresentazioni) and poetic compositions, the most memorable remain three revisions of the story of Mary Magdalene, whose figure held such powerful resonance in early modern Italian art and to whom he was especially devoted: La Maddalena (Mary Magdalene, 1610), a dramatic poem; La Maddalena, sacra rapresentatione (Mary Magdalene, Sacred Play, 1617); and La Maddalena lasciva e penitente (The Lascivious and Repentant Magdalene, 1657). His L’Adamo (Adam, 1613) has been identified by some critics as a source for Milton’s Paradise Lost. Most of Andreini’s output was published in his lifetime (circa 20 full-length theatrical plays, along with more than 20 collections of verse and criticism and circa 15 sacred works) but was largely forgotten after his death. None of his works were reprinted until the nineteenth century, and even today there are only a handful of modern editions. Andreini’s reputation has been revived in Italy in recent decades: The director Luca Ronconi has staged several

plays, and a motion picture based on Amor nello specchio and directed by Salvatore Maira was released in 1999. Andreini’s plays cannot be ranked with the greatest European theatrical texts of the age (Shakespeare, Molie`re, Lope de Vega), for they rely too greatly on rhetorical set pieces and stock characters that do not offer penetrating psychological or social critique. His inexhaustible experimentalism, on the other hand, seemed to anticipate trends in modern and postmodern European theater and cinema.

Biography Andreini was born in Florence on February 9, 1576, to Francesco Andreini, leading actor in the renowned comic troupe La Compagnia dei Gelosi, and Isabella Andreini, soon to be a noted actress, poet, and woman of letters. He spent his formative years in Bologna, but by circa 1594 he was acting with the Gelosi. In 1601, Andreini married Virginia Ramponi, an actress-singer, with whom he had several offspring. Circa 1601 he founded his own troupe, La Compagnia dei Fedeli. Although reorganized numerous times, the Fedeli were to endure for about half a century. In 1604 the Fedeli became a resident company at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Andreini was director and leading man. The troupe worked throughout Po Valley, 1605–1613, taking part in spring 1608 in the festivities in Mantua for the marriage of Prince Franc¸ois to Marguerite de Savoie, where Virginia Ramponi sang the title role in Monteverdi’s new opera Arianna. Following a royal invitation, the Fedeli played in Paris in 1613–1614 at the The´aˆtre de Bourgogne and at court. After returning to Mantua, Andreini purchased a residence nearby in 1616 (Ca’ di Mandraghi). He traveled with the Fedeli across Northern Italy, 1614–1620, a period marked by dissension in the ranks of the company. On January 31, 1620, he signed an act of emancipation from his father, providing proof of some financial success. He likely began a liaison at about this time with the actress Virginia Rotari, a member of the company who would become his second wife. In autumn 1620, the Fedeli departed for Paris via Turin, remaining there until 1622. There were further sojourns in Paris in late 1622 and early 1623 and in late 1623– 1625. After returning to northern Italy, Andreini and the troupe went to the court of Emperor Ferdinand II in 1627–1628, with stays in Prague and Vienna. The War of the Mantuan Succession devastated the city of Mantua and surrounding countryside in 1630, and Andreini’s property was 37

GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI sacked. Virginia Ramponi died in 1631, perhaps of plague. From 1629–1642 Andreini traveled widely with his company throughout Northern and Central Italy, struggling with legal and economic problems while continuing to write and publish. He returned to Paris, 1643–1647, apparently without his company, and acted with other Italian troupes. Andreini was back in Northern Italy by 1648 and in Rome by 1651 (where he played Pantaloon for another company at carnival). The Fedeli were formally disbanded in 1652. Andreini remained in the Po Valley, 1652–1654, continuing to work in the theater. He died on June 7, 1654, in Reggio Emilia. JON SNYDER Selected Works Plays La saggia Egiziaca, 1604. Lo schiavetto, 1606. Le due comedie in comedia, 1623. Li due Leli simili, 1613. L’Adamo, 1613. La Maddalena, 1617. La Veneziana, 1619. La Turca, 1620. Lelio bandito, 1620. Amor nello specchio, 1622. La centaura, 1622. La Ferinda, 1622. Li duo baci, 1634. L’Ismenia, 1639.

Lella piangente, 1634.

Poetry ‘‘Il pianto d’Apollo,’’ 1608. ‘‘La Maddalena,’’ 1610. ‘‘La Tecla vergine e martire,’’ 1623. ‘‘La divina visione,’’ 1623. ‘‘L’olivastro, ovvero il poeta sfortunato,’’ 1642. ‘‘Il Cristo sofferente,’’ 1651.

Letters Comici dell’Arte. Corrispondenze (G.B. Andreini, N. Barbieri, P.M. Cecchini, S. Fiorillo, T. Martinelli, F. Scala), edited by Siro Ferrone et al., 2 vols., 1993.

Essays Teatro celeste, 1624. Lo specchio, 1625.

Further Reading Carandini, Silvia and Luciano Mariti (editors), Don Giovanni o l’estrema avventura del teatro: Il nuovo ‘‘Risarcito convitato di pietra’’ di Giovan Battista Andreini, Rome: Bulzoni, 2003. Cohen, Judith, ‘‘Giovan Battista Andreini’s Dramas and the Beginnings of Opera,’’ in La Musique et le rite sacre´ et profane, edited by Marc Honegger, Christian Meyer, and Paul Pre´vost, 2 vols., Strasbourg: Association des publications pre`s les Universite´s de Strasbourg, 1986. Ferrone, Siro, Attori mercanti corsari: La Commedia dell’Arte in Europa tra Cinque e Seicento, Turin: Einaudi, 1993. Quarta, Daniela, ‘‘Lettura delle ‘Due comedie in comedia’ di Giovan Battista Andreini,’’ Abaco, 1 (2002): 103–143. Rebaudengo, Maurizio, Giovan Battista Andreini tra poetica e drammaturgia, Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1994.

ISABELLA CANALI ANDREINI (1562–1604) Unrivaled as an actress since late adolescence, in fact already by 30 the most famous actress of the Italian Renaissance, Isabella Andreini was a versatile, multiform artist who excelled not only in acting heartfelt parts of young women in love but was also a writer of polished letters and of refined Petrarchan poems. Given her extensive humanist education, it has been suggested that Andreini was perhaps raised as an ‘‘honest courtesan,’’ like the Venetian contemporary poet and renowned 38

beauty, Veronica Franco. In one of her published letters Andreini explains, however, that her humanist education was the result of a personal thirst for knowledge as well as of a need to use productively whatever intellectual gifts she had. Be as it may, Andreini was able to avoid the route of sexual commerce, no matter how high-class, by marrying at 16 a fellow actor of some renown, Francesco Andreini. Francesco was already famous for his comic role of Capitan Spaventa, a braggart

ISABELLA CANALI ANDREINI captain, and was instrumental in making the traveling troupe of which he was the most distinguished member, the Compagnia dei Gelosi, one of the most thriving and successful commedia dell’arte groups of all times. By playing repeatedly on stage her signature part of the chaste young inamorata, Andreini was soon able to construct for herself the image of the virtuous actress with a comic talent while projecting offstage the figure of chaste wife and solicitous mother. We know little of how Andreini enthralled her audience as an actress, even though there are scenarios published by Flaminio Scala, the nobleman who directed the Compagnia dei Gelosi until her husband took over, in which she is represented in her customary part of inamorata. She must have had a remarkable and most pliable voice, because that part of her acting has often been remarked upon. Her range was wide by all means: She played comedies, tragicomedies, intermedi, and pastorals, both in fully scripted parts, like those necessary for the courtly commedia erudita, and in the improvised, or partially scripted, folios that commedia dell’arte groups favored. She often displayed her knowledge of different languages by using made-up foreign words when sweetly ranting her part of dejected damsel. Just as well, she could imitate many dialects by appearing to speak in tongues in scenes of feigned madness. The effect must have been wildly comic as well as thoroughly subversive. At a time in which only in Italy were women allowed on stage, Andreini acted not only the female parts that had just become available but, surprisingly, male parts as well. In Tasso’s pastoral Aminta, she seems to have played, in fact, the melancholic main male character, Aminta, leaving the part of the female protagonist, Silvia, to another known actress of her company, the divina Vittoria Piissimi, known at the time for virtuoso dramatic performances and ‘‘gypsy’’ parts. This belies the notion that Andreini was a jealous prima donna of the stage rather than a practical one. As she understood very well, the strategy of dividing prestigious roles among women was a good one for the bottom line, since it allowed all performers to play according to the needs of the stage, the desire of the audience, or even the vagaries of the day. What after all sealed the success of the commedia dell’arte companies in Italy (and soon in France) was the presence of women on stage, rather than any dramatic change in performance. Andreini referred only once in her writing to her profession of comica, when in the introductory sonnet to her collection of Rime (Rhymes, 1601) she recalled

her transvestite roles on stage and tied the necessary falseness of an actress to the finti ardori, or fake passions, needed by a love poet. Andreini’s most accomplished and original publication is her pastoral, Mirtilla (La Mirtilla, 1588), which was the first published play of a woman playwright, together with Maddalena Campiglia’s Flori (1588). The success of the tragicomedy Mirtilla was remarkable by all standards: The book enjoyed nine editions and was soon translated into French. In fact, just ten years after its publication, the influential critic Angelo Ingegneri categorized it as a founding text of the new popular pastoral form and placed it next to the output of Torquato Tasso and Giambattista Guarini, who, respectively in Aminta and Pastor Fido, had established the rules of the genre. Fully knowledgeable of Tasso’s theatrical lesson to the extent that some characters in both Aminta and Mirtilla have the same name—Tirsi and Filli—Andreini makes a point of displaying in her happy, careless Arcadia her knowledge of classical authors, such as Virgil and Ovid, as well as her thorough familiarity with Petrarch and Sannazaro. When Mirtilla was first staged, Andreini played the role of Filli, whom she constructed as an intelligent and sociable nymph, and left the part of Mirtilla to her fellow actress Piissimi. The lyric effusions of the pastoral were typical of the genre, and Andreini lavished in her play even more artificiality than usual to conform to public expectations. But in the thematic change of the scene most often repeated in any pastoral play—the threatened ravishment of a nymph (as in Tasso’s Aminta)—Andreini shows forcefully how much the presence of women as playwrights and actresses ultimately was changing the stage. Responding to the implied violence against women of contemporary plays that often staged the topos of the damsel in distress in titillating ways, Andreini cast lyricism aside and constructed instead a scene in which female shrewdness and ingenuity—practical virtues—overcome male strength and crassness and save the day. Mirtilla concludes with a hymn to female friendship and implies that women can surmount the pains of unrequited love by constructing a world of togetherness and sharing. Andreini also wrote Fragmenti (Fragments, 1617) an ensemble of 31 contrasti (contrasts) that allows us to get a sense of what kinds of performance all’improvviso a woman could give on stage. These are rough stage compositions that actors used with ad hoc embellishments according to the circumstances of the representation. The supple, 39

ISABELLA CANALI ANDREINI partially scripted monologues, which Andreini could play in any direction she needed, exemplify the kind of recitation women favored in commedia dell’arte representations. As it was often the case at the time, Andreini too has a collection of Lettere in print (Letters, 1601). This text is made up of 148 fictional pieces written to kings, such as Henry IV of France; to princes, such as Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua; and to other moneyed patrons and friends. It displays rhetorical flourishes and erudite asides, and it enjoyed six editions in the decades immediately following her death. Andreini’s tone is polished and courtly, and she consistently keeps the high ground, conscious that a woman whose profession is the public one of acting is always on the verge of losing her reputation and thus her favor with patrons. She therefore consistently fosters the image of herself as a chaste woman of letters, whose ambitions are well within the unscripted boundaries of her sex. Andreini’s work as a poet is well reflected in her Rime, a collection of 359 poems upon which, she hoped, her reputation as a female Petrarchist would rest. Using varying poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the eclogue, and the madrigal, as well as the lesser-known form of scherzo, Andreini employs with intelligence her humanistic education and her talent for sweetly delicate compositions. Her purpose is to foster the image of the dejected woman in love who at times, thanks to her pain, is able to find an impressive lyrical voice, like her fellow Paduan, Gaspara Stampa.

Biography Andreini was born in Padua in 1562 as Isabella Canali from a Venetian family; she was carefully educated and was able to speak a number of languages. She belonged to the Academy of the Intenti in Pavia with the nom de plume of l’Accesa; at 14, in 1576, she joined the commedia dell’arte group of I Gelosi and became known for playing the part of the young woman in love, often comically. She married Francesco Andreini, a playwright and known actor of 30, in 1577. Andreini was not only the leading actress of her compagnia, under the title of prima donna inamorata, but also an extraordinary appealing presence in the group; she performed a highly acclaimed role in Florence on the occasion of the marriage of Duke Ferdinando I of the Medici and Christine of Lorraine, in 1589. She traveled with her company throughout Italy, especially Venice, Rome and Mantua; invited to France by Henry IV, she 40

performed at his court with great acclaim in 1599. She had four daughters and three sons and died while pregnant with her eighth child in Lyon, France, on 10 July 1604. At her death the husband disbanded the Gelosi and spent the rest of his life celebrating his wife as a virtuous and learned woman through the publication of her poetry and letters. Andreini’s son Giovan Battista became a leading actor and playwright and performed to great acclaim in Italy and France. VALERIA FINUCCI See also: Commedia dell’Arte Selected Works Poetry ‘‘Mirtilla, pastorale d’Isabella Andreini, comica gelosa,’’ 1588; modern reprint edited by Maria Luisa Doglio, 1995; as ‘‘La Mirtilla: A Pastoral,’’ translated by Julie Campbell, 2002. ‘‘Rime d’Isabella Andreini Padovana,’’ 1601. ‘‘Rime d’Isabella Andreini comica gelosa & academia intenta detta l’Accesa: Parte seconda,’’ 1605.

Other Lettere d’Isabella Andreini Padovana, comica gelosa, 1601. Frammenti d’alcune scritture della Sign. Isabella Andreini comica gelosa e accademica Intenta, 1617. Lettere aggiuntovi di nuovo li ragionamenti piacevoli, 1638.

Further Reading Boggio, Maricia (editor), Le Isabelle: Dal teatro della Maddalena alla Isabella Andreini, Nardo`: Besa, 2002. Clubb, Louise, Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. De Angelis, Francesca Romana, La divina Isabella: Vita straordinaria di una donna del Cinquecento, Florence: Sansoni, 1991. Doglio, Maria Luisa, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in I. Andreini, La Mirtilla, Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1995. Ferrone Siro, Attori mercanti corsari: La commedia dell’arte in Europa tra cinque e seicento, Turin: Einaudi, 1993. Gilder, Rosamond, ‘‘Isabella Andreini,’’ in Enter the Actress, New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1960. Guardenti, Ezio, and Cesare Molinari, La commedia dell’arte, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1999. Ingegneri, Angelo, Della poesia rappresentativa e dell’arte di rappresentare le favole sceniche, edited by Maria Luisa Doglio, Modena: Panini, 1989. MacNeil, Anne, Music and Women of the Commedia dell’Arte in the Late Sixteenth Century, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Marotti, Ferruccio, and Giovanna Romei, ‘‘La professione del teatro,’’ in La Commedia dell’arte e la societa`

ANGELA DA FOLIGNO barocca, edited by Ferdinando Taviani, vol. 2, Rome: Bulzoni, 1991. McGill, Kathleen, ‘‘Women and Performance: The Development of Improvisation by the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell’Arte,’’ Theatre Journal, 43(1991): 59–69. Pandolfi, Vito, Isabella, comica gelosa: Avventure di maschere, Rome: Edizioni Moderne, 1960. Ray, Meredith, ‘‘La castita` conquistata:The Function of the Satyr in Pastoral Drama,’’ Romance Languages Annual, 9(1998): 312–321. Rebaudengo, Maurizio, G. B. Andreini tra poetica e drammaturgia, Turin: Rosenberg Sellier, 1994. Scala, Flaminio, Il teatro delle favole rappresentative, vol. 1, Appendix 2, Milan: Il Polifilo, 1976.

Stampino Galli, Maria, ‘‘Publish or Perish: An Early Seventeenth-Century Paradox,’’ Romance Languages Annual, 10(1998): 373–379. Taviani, Ferdinando, ‘‘Bella d’Asia: Torquato Tasso, gli attori e l’immortalita`,’’ Paragone, 35(1984): 3–76. Taviani Ferdinando, and Mirella Schino, Il segreto della Commedia dell’Arte: La memoria delle compagnie italiane del XVI, XVII e XVIII secolo, Florence: Usher, 1982. Tessari, Roberto, ‘‘Sotto il segno di Giano: La commedia dell’arte di Isabella e di Francesco Andreini,’’ in The Commedia dell’Arte from the Renaissance to Dario Fo, edited by C. Cairns, Lewinston: Edwin Mellen, 1989.

ANGELA DA FOLIGNO (CA. 1248–1309) Nearly everything we know about Angela, a mystic of the Franciscan tradition, is narrated in Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno (The Book of the Blessed Angela of Foligno). Angela’s Libro is regarded as a work of great importance in the literature of Christian mysticism. Her influence extended beyond the group of followers to whom she addressed several of her teachings. Many penitents came to Foligno, most likely seeking to benefit from her experience as spiritual mother. The most notable of these was Ubertino da Casale, leader of the Franciscan Spirituals. To her, he credits his conversion to a more radical ascetic life. Angela’s writings inspired several saints, including Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus Liguori, and the French philosopher Ernest Hello. Angela’s Libro consists of two parts. Between 1292 and 1296 she dictated the first part, Il Memoriale (Memorial) to a scribe known simply as ‘‘Brother A.’’ The Memoriale is the most widely read and studied part of Angela’s Libro. Of course, this is because it furnishes more information on her own inner world. Angela experienced intense visions and mystical raptures that she narrated to Brother A. She also underwent intermittent periods of agony and joy. Drawing from these personal experiences, Angela defines the transformations the soul makes as it travels along its spiritual journey. The first twenty steps outline the early phases of her spiritual development. It is a painful process toward purification that involves great struggle

and suffering. The remaining stages are divided into seven ‘‘supplementary’’ steps. These attempt to describe her greater mystical ascent and her mysterious experiences of the Divine. The Memoriale actually contains three narrators: God, Angela, and Brother A. God reveals himself to Angela, and she then attempts to communicate her experiences to Brother A., who then writes down what he hears. As Angela’s confessor, Brother A. exerted some influence over her life and thinking. However, as she became more spiritually advanced, it appears that their roles may have shifted. Brother A. became more of a disciple and she his spiritual mother. Despite the particular nature of Brother A.’s role, Angela’s own voice dominates the Memoriale. Steps one through twenty describe her gradual spiritual catharsis through suffering and her subsequent intimacy with God. The first seven steps are characterized by painful struggle and extraordinary anguish and distress. In steps eight through seventeen, we see the role that suffering plays in her purification and in her attempts to reorient her affections and rid herself of possessions. During steps ten through fifteen, she experiences visions of the Passion. Angela’s emphasis on the crucified Christ echoes that of other women mystics of the time. Influenced by the medieval diffusion of devotion to Christ’s humanity, many of them emphasized the most pathetic elements of Christ’s sufferings (bleeding wounds, anguish, and torment). All the steps demonstrate her progress 41

ANGELA DA FOLIGNO toward self-knowledge. Thus, Angela’s Memoriale is a kind of spiritual biography, like Augustine’s Confessions, where self-knowledge is presented as an important aspect in one’s pursuit of God. In the seventeenth step, Angela’s faith acquires a new dimension as she passes into a mystical state that alters her level of contemplation. In step eighteen, she exhibits intense physical manifestations as a result of her impassioned absorption into God. In step nineteen, these mystical consolations continue to the point that she loses her power of speech. At the beginning of the twentieth step, God fulfills an earlier promise made to Angela. He had told her that the Trinity would come into her when she had finished divulging herself of her possessions. Here Angela manages to dispossess herself of almost everything. By his own admission, Brother A. abandons the writing of the twentieth step, saying simply that it is filled with great divine revelations. At this point, there is an important break in the narrative structure of Angela’s Memoriale that underscores the importance of Brother A. in the organization of Angela’s text. The process of creating her Memoriale generally followed a pattern: Angela dictated her experiences in the Umbrian dialect to Brother A., who recorded and translated her words into Latin. He often had to reread to her what she had dictated in order to be sure he had copied it accurately. Angela had originally designated thirty steps in her spiritual journey, but due to the difficulty he experienced in describing them Brother A. decided to reorganize them into seven ‘‘supplementary’’ steps. The first five supplementary steps demonstrate Angela’s heightened understanding of Christ’s Passion and her deep penetration into the mystery of the cross. These steps illustrate her intense visions and experiences of Christ crucified, the Eucharist, the universe filled with the presence of God, and various other formless visions of the Godhead. Angela grows even more intimate with Christ, whom she calls the suffering ‘‘God-man.’’ Despite the nature of these ecstasies, she endures periods of emptiness, terrible doubts, and temptations from the devil. However, these periods are intermingled with feelings of joy and certitude of God’s love. It is here where Angela begins to enter in to the mystical life proper. In the sixth supplementary step, Angela feels a ‘‘darkness’’ in her soul. This stage of spiritual development is common among great mystics. The result is that Angela’s soul undergoes extreme purgation and purification, preparing her for her final union with the Divine. From the depths of despair 42

and anguish Angela is hurled into the highest point of her mystical ascent—the seventh and final supplementary step. Here she undergoes a lofty vision of God in darkness where she sees both ‘‘nothing’’ and ‘‘everything’’ simultaneously. God’s transcendence is beyond conceptualization, and any attempt to describe it seems to be blasphemy. The second part of Angela’s Libro, Istruzioni (Instructions), was dictated to anonymous disciples. In Angela’s later years, a group of devotees began to gather around her to listen to her teachings. The wisdom that Angela gained from her journey is offered to these followers in the Istruzioni for their spiritual benefit. We know very little about Angela’s immediate disciples, but it is likely that many of them were part of the Franciscan first and third orders. Additionally, it is not clear exactly to whom each of the Istruzioni were addressed. What we do know is that Angela wished to teach those disciples near her as well as those who extended beyond the boundaries of Umbria. It is this concern for their spiritual formation that serves to unify the Istruzioni. The scribes of her teachings remain anonymous, but differing styles indicate that there were many of them. Some of the writings are more than likely additions and glosses composed by various disciples. The themes developed in the various steps of Angela’s Memoriale are repeated and expanded in the Istruzioni. Although they are frequently amplified, the teachings are firmly grounded in the Memoriale. Recently Angela’s Memoriale has enjoyed a good deal of critical interest. Scholars have studied Angela in the framework of other medieval holy women. Angela appears in various discussions regarding the role of food, eating, the Eucharist, female imagery, and the body in women’s writings and religious devotional practices. They have also attempted to decipher the role of Brother A. in the transcribing of the Memoriale and the role of language in Angela’s narrations of her mystical visions to him. Finally, the way in which many of Angela’s visions were inspired by ceremonies and dramatizations common in the Middle Ages during Holy Week has also been explored.

Biography Angela was born ca. 1248 in Foligno, a small town near Assisi in Umbria. She married in 1270. In the 1280s, Angela underwent a dramatic conversion; shortly thereafter, she suffered the abrupt death of her children, husband, and mother. Her Libro implies that before her conversion she enjoyed the

CECCO ANGIOLIERI excessive pleasures of the wealthy. The only explicit motives for her conversion indicate that she felt great sorrow for her sins and feared damnation. Angela encountered a Franciscan friar who was chaplain to the local bishop and made a full confession to him. Although little is known about him, it is believed that ‘‘Brother A.’’ was most likely her relative. Angela’s new life of penance was a slow and painstaking process as she struggled to free herself from her sinful past. Against the counsel of religious advisors, Angela decided to follow the example of St. Francis. In 1290–1291 she became a Franciscan Tertiary and gave her possessions to the needy. Angela had a companion whom later manuscripts of the Libro refer to as Masazuola. It is thought that initially she may have been Angela’s servant. From numerous references to her in the Libro, it is probable that she became Angela’s constant companion and spiritual confidante. Passages in the Libro highlight Masazuola’s exceptional goodness and piety. Together Angela and Masazuola cared for the sick and poor. Angela was never canonized by the Church but was given the title of ‘‘Blessed’’ in 1701. She died in Foligno on 4 January 1309. MOLLY MORRISON Selected Works Liber sororis Lelle de Fulgineo or Liber de vera fidelium experientia (1292–1296); as Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno, edited by Ludger Thier and Abele Calufetti, Grottaferrata (Rome): Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1985; as Memorial, translated by John Cirignano, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999. Complete Works, edited and translated by Paul Lachance, New York: Paulist Press, 1993.

Further Reading Arcangeli, Tiziana, ‘‘Re-Reading a Mis-known and Misread Mystic: Angela da Foligno,’’ Annali d’Italianisica, 13(1995): 41–78. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, New York: Zone, 1991. Lavalva, Rosamaria, ‘‘The Language of Vision in Angela da Foligno’s Liber de vera fidelium experientia,’’ Stanford Italian Review, 11, nos. 1–2(1992): 103–122. Mazzoni, Cristina, ‘‘The Spirit and the Flesh in Angela da Foligno,’’ in Angela of Foligno: Memorial, translated by John Cirignano, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999. Mooney, Catherine M, ‘‘The Authorial Role of Brother A. in the Composition of Angela of Foligno’s Revelations,’’ in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Morrison, Molly, ‘‘Connecting with the God-Man: Angela of Foligno’s Sensual Communion and Priestly Identity,’’ Romance Languages Annual, 10(1999): 308–314. Morrison, Molly, ‘‘A Mystic’s Drama: The Paschal Mystery in the Visions of Angela da Foligno,’’ Italica 78:1 (2001): 36–52. Morrison, Molly, ‘‘Ingesting Bodily Filth: Defilement in the Spirituality of Angela of Foligno,’’ Romance Quarterly 50: 3(2003): 204–216. Morrison, Molly, ‘‘Christ’s Body in the Visions of Angela of Foligno,’’ Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History, 10:2(2004): 37–59. Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Petroff, Elizabeth (editor), Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Sagnella, Mary Ann, ‘‘Carnal Metaphors and Mystical Discourse in Angela da Foligno’s Liber,’’ Annali d’Italianistica, 13(1995): 79–90.

CECCO ANGIOLIERI (CA. 1260–1313) For his intensity of expression and stylistic consistency, Cecco Angiolieri is the leading exponent of the realistic (or comical, or burlesque) school of poetry, also known as poesia giocosa, probably initiated by Florentine rhymer Rustico di Filippo but practiced primarily in Siena between the end of

the thirteenth and the middle of the following century. Apart from Cecco, the manuscript tradition has conveyed the names of fellow citizens such as Musa or Muscia, Meo, and Iacopo dei Tolomei. Cecco’s high social rank (he belonged to a rich and aristocratic family of the Guelph party) and likely 43

CECCO ANGIOLIERI training in the Scholastic ‘‘arts of diction’’ (artes dictandi), explain his familiarity with medieval Latin and Romance literary traditions. Consisting exclusively of sonnets, his poetical work mainly survives in three anthological manuscripts (canzonieri, or songbooks) of the fourteenth century (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Chigiano L.VIII.305 [¼ Ch], copied in Tuscany; El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, Lat. e.III.23 [¼ E], probably copied in Padua; and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberiniano Lat. 3953 [¼ B], copied in Treviso), where the realistic poems of the Sienese circle are collected alongside those of the major exponents of the contemporary Stilnovo school of poetry. The synchronicity of Cecco’s manuscript tradition has been interpreted as an evident sign of his wide and immediate, though not enduring, success. Moreover, the anonymous transmission of a large part of the realistic sonnets (namely, in the substantial section of MS Ch) has complicated the exact definition of his proper work: in all, only 76 pieces bear Cecco’s name (in the rubrics of MSS E and B) or can be safely ascribed to him on the grounds of internal elements. After a thorough critical analysis, however, Mario Marti attributed to him 112 sonnets, besides another 16 of dubious authenticity. Traditionally divided into two hendecasyllabic quatrains with alternate or crossed rhymes (A B A B, A B A B or A B B A, A B B A) followed by two tercets usually with alternate rhymes (C D C, D C D), the sonnet was originally conceived as a dialogical metrical form and soon became a vehicle for comical and realistic poetry, in opposition to the courtly and sophisticated canzone, which typically dealt with love as a philosophical matter. Cecco’s sonnets display a wide range of rhetorical devices and figures of speech, especially hyperbole, adynaton (a declaration of impossibility, usually in terms of an exaggerated comparison), and oratio recta (direct speech). His rough syntaxis, bulging with complex hypothetical clauses, and his vocabulary, rich in dialectal forms and learned neologisms, also attest to consummate technical skills and literary awareness. According to medieval aesthetics, each of Cecco’s themes can actually be ascribed to a specific tradition, which he exploits with originality, molding it to his personal appeal. As he claims, ‘‘Tre cose solamente m’e`nno in grado, / le quali posso non ben ben fornire, / cioe` la donna, la taverna e ’l dado: / queste mi fanno ’l cuor lieto sentire’’ (I only care for three things, which I cannot perfectly accomplish, that is, the woman, the tavern, and the dice: These are the things that 44

make my heart rejoice). Sex, wine, and gambling were among the favorite subjects of Latin Goliardic songs, whereas misogyny and an anti-uxorial attitude, omnipotence of money, and condemnation of poverty all find a precedent in ancient burlesque literature. Another key word of Cecco’s poetry is malinconia (literally, ‘‘black humor’’), which has been defined by Marti as a ‘‘desire for pure pleasure, discontent, cupidity of life, and consequent bad mood’’ (Cultura e stile nei poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante, 1953). Less frequent, but likewise remarkable, are some irreverent portraits of fellow citizens, a typical genre of Cecco’s ‘‘realistic’’ predecessor Rustico di Filippo. On the contrary, the violent satire against his own father is a peculiar feature of Cecco’s work. Although they must be viewed within the Latin tradition of the vituperium (that is, vituperation or invective) and interpreted according to the concrete and down-to-earth sense of humor of the Middle Ages, these antipaternal sonnets make a strong impression on our modern sensitivity, imbued with psychological concepts: ‘‘Il pessimo e ’l crudel odio ch’i’ porto / a diritta ragione al padre meo, / il fara` vivar piu´ che Botadeo... E poi m’e` detto ch’io nol debbo odiare! / Ma
cchi
ssapesse ben ogni sua taccia, / direbbe: ‘Vivo il dovresti mangiare’’’ (The terrible and cruel hatred that I feel by just reason for my father will make him live longer than Botadeo [i.e., the Wandering Jew, reputedly immortal]... And people say I mustn’t hate him! But if they knew full well his reputation, they’d say: ‘You should eat him alive’). And also: ‘‘Ma in tale guisa e` rivolto il quaderno, / che sempre vivero` grolificato, / po’ che messer Angiolieri e` scoiato, / che m’afriggea d’estate e di verno’’ (But now the tables have turned, so that I shall always live in glory: now that Sir Angiolieri, who used to torment me all the time [literally: in summer and in winter], has kicked the bucket). A typical feature of Cecco’s comical style is his breathtaking theatricality, which also has its roots in medieval minstrelsy and carnival traditions. The poet always refers to his public as ‘‘uditori’’ (hearers), never as readers, and his poems actually sound like monologues to be acted on stage. Their dramatic force is frequently strengthened by the insertion of short and poignant direct-speech clauses. In some cases, such as the famous ‘‘contrasto’’ ‘‘— Becchin’ amor! — Che vuo’, falso tradito?’’, the whole sonnet is effectively turned into an agitated dialogue between two theatrical characters. The caustic intentions and crude materialism of the poet’s work reveal a radical departure from the lofty and idealistic Tuscan love lyrics of the period.

CECCO ANGIOLIERI Such a stylistic and ideological opposition is intensively expressed in a group of sonnets that deal with the unfortunate and grotesque love story with a woman called Becchina, who represents profane, physical love, the exact opposite of the angel-like lady sung by the Stilnovo poets. Accordingly, two of the three sonnets addressed to Dante Alighieri can be interpreted as an ongoing dispute between Dante, who first formalized the ‘‘sweet new style’’ in his Purgatorio (Canto XXIV, l. 57), and Cecco, an adamantine supporter of the ‘‘comical’’ style. The first, ‘‘Dante Allaghier, Cecco, tu’ serv’ amico,’’ finds fault with the last sonnet in the Vita nuova; the second, ‘‘Dante Alleghier, s’i’ so’ buon begolardo,’’ refers to the misfortunes of exile and sounds like a response to a lost invective by Dante. Starting from the theoretical opposition of styles established by medieval treatises and stressing Cecco’s destructive attitude toward the communicative function of the poetical word, Elena Landoni concludes that his ‘‘nihilistic conversion of traditional procedures and contents’’ transcends a mere stylistic controversy and disputes the very essence of literary creation (‘‘Note su Cecco Angiolieri: Antistilnovismo o antipoesia?’’, 1990). Although contemporary concepts like ‘‘refusal of poetry’’ or ‘‘antipoetry’’ can hardly be applied to a medieval writer, it is probably true that Cecco pursued an unprecedented and subversive poetical itinerary by his complete adherence to negative and materialistic themes. As a matter of fact, the Tuscan realistic current of the thirteenth century was soon overcome by the masters of the Stilnovo, who set the rules for subsequent Italian lyric tradition. However, Cecco’s stylistic and poetical achievements, above all his expressive caricatural mimesis and dialogue effects, survived in the flourishing narrative tradition of the following century: Giovanni Boccaccio even turned ‘‘Cecco di messere Angiulieri’’ into a literary character, recounting one of the poet’s misadventures in his Decameron (IX, 4). The modern appraisal of Cecco Angiolieri dates back to 1874, when ‘‘romantic’’ scholar Alessandro D’Ancona evaluated his poetry in the light of sparse biographical data (which supposedly confirm the stormy lifestyle of the poetic character) and advanced an autobiographical reading that defined Cecco as a fine ‘‘humorist’’ of the thirteenth century. So convincing was this anachronistic interpretation that generations of critics accepted it as truthful (Masse`ra, Momigliano, Maier, and Figurelli, among others). In his 1933 Poesia popolare e poesia d’arte, Benedetto Croce framed Cecco’s poetry within a more rigorous

historical and literary context, and finally Mario Marti undertook a sound philological reading of his complete work. Marti’s criticism was later epitomized by Giorgio Petrocchi, who viewed Cecco’s poetry as a ‘‘literary transposition’’ of realistically modified and magnified biographical elements, ‘‘in order to fully enjoy all the resources of the comical style’’ (‘‘I poeti realisti,’’ 1965). Petrocchi also stressed Cecco’s absolute primacy in creating a dialect-based poetic language and in conveying previous burlesque traditions into the forms of Romance lyric poetry, which employed the first person as a constitutive feature. Stylistic concerns were further investigated by Luigi Peirone, whose study bears the revealing title of La coscienza dello stile ‘comico’ in Cecco Angiolieri (1979). Modern interest in this unique and controversial figure of Italian medieval literature contributed to the enduring success of some of his sonnets, such as the anthology piece ‘‘S’i’ fosse fuoco, arderei ’l mondo’’ (If I were fire, I would burn the world), a staggering series of mysanthropic adynata, which rightly became an emblem of Cecco’s ‘‘subjectivity’’ and powerful art.

Biography Cecco was born in Siena, around 1260, to the rich banker Angioliero Sola`fica of the Order of the ‘‘Frati Gaudenti’’ and noblewoman Lisa dei Salimbeni. He took part in the military expedition against Ghibellini in Turri, Tuscany, 1281, where he was twice fined for illicit departure and fined for nighttime disturbances, 1282 and 1291. He also took part in the military campaign with Florence against Arezzo (during which he perhaps met Dante Alighieri in Campaldino), 1288–1289. He was involved in bloody brawls and accused of wounding one Dino da Monteluco, 1291, and banished from Siena, unknown date. Cecco sold a vineyard in Siena to one Neri Perini in 1302. He probably spent some years in Rome at the court of Cardinal Riccardo Petroni, after 1302. Cecco died in Siena, before 25 February 1313. Five of his six children renounced his mortgaged inheritance to avoid heavy debts. FRANCESCO CARAPEZZA Selected Works Editions I sonetti di Cecco Angiolieri, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1906.

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CECCO ANGIOLIERI Le rime di Cecco Angiolieri, edited by Domenico Giuliotti, Siena: Giuntini-Bentivoglio, 1914. Nuovi sonetti, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Perugia: Unione Tipografica Cooperativa, 1916. Sonetti burleschi e realistici dei primi due secoli, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Bari: Laterza, 1920 (revised edition by Luigi Russo, 1940). Il canzoniere, edited by Carlo Steiner, Turin: UTET, 1925. Poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante, edited by Mario Marti, Milan: Rizzoli, 1956. Rimatori comico-realistici del Due e Trecento, edited by Maurizio Vitale, vol. 1, Turin: UTET, 1956. Rime, edited by Gigi Cavalli, Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1959 (fifth edition, 2000). Poeti del Duecento, edited by Gianfranco Contini, vol. 2/1, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960. Le rime, edited by Antonio Lanza, Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 1990. Rime, edited by Raffaella Castagnola, Milan: Mursia, 1995. Sonetti, edited by Menotti Stanghellini, Siena: Il Leccio, 2003.

Translations The Sonnets of a Handsome and Well-Mannered Rogue, translated by Thomas C. Chubb, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1970. If I Were Fire: Thirty-Four Sonnets by Cecco Angiolieri, translated by Felix Stefanile, Iowa City: Windhover Press at the University of Iowa, 1987. Cecco, as I Am and Was: The Poems of Cecco Angiolieri, translated by Tracy Barrett, Boston, MA: International Pocket Library, 1994.

Further Reading Alfie, Fabian, Comedy and Culture: Cecco Angiolieri’s Poetry and Late Medieval Society, Leeds, U.K.: Northern University Press, 2001.

Bondanella, Peter, ‘‘Cecco Angiolieri and the Vocabulary of Courtly Love,’’ Studies in Philology, 69(1972): 55–71. Croce, Benedetto, Poesia popolare e poesia d’arte: Studi sulla poesia italiana dal Tre al Cinquecento, Bari: Laterza, 1933. D’Ancona, Alessandro, ‘‘Cecco Angiolieri da Siena, poeta umorista del secolo XIII’’ [1874] in Studj di critica e storia letteraria, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1912. Figurelli, Fernando, La musa bizzarra di Cecco Angiolieri, Naples: Pironti, 1950. Landoni, Elena, Il ‘‘libro’’ e la ‘‘sentenzia’’: Scrittura e significato nella poesia medievale: Iacopone da Todi, Dante, Cecco Angiolieri, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990. Maier, Bruno, La personalita` e la poesia di Cecco Angiolieri: Studio critico, Bologna: Cappelli, 1947. Marti, Mario, Cultura e stile nei poeti giocosi del tempo di Dante, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1953. Marti, Mario, ‘‘Sui sonetti attribuiti a Cecco Angiolieri’’ [1950] in Dal certo al vero: Studi di filologia e di storia, Rome: Ateneo 1962. Momigliano, Attilio, ‘‘L’anima e l’arte di Cecco Angiolieri,’’ Italia moderna, 4(1908): 678–684. Orwen, Gifford Phillips, Cecco Angiolieri: A Study, Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press, 1979. Peirone, Luigi, La coscienza dello stile ‘comico’ in Cecco Angiolieri, Savona: Sabatelli, 1979. Petrocchi, Giorgio, ‘‘I poeti realisti’’ in Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Le origini e il Duecento, directed by Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno, vol. 1, Milan: Garzanti, 1965. Sapegno, Natalino, ‘‘La lingua e l’arte di Cecco Angiolieri’’ [1929] in Letteratura e critica: Studi in onore di Natalino Sapegno, vol. 5, Rome: Bulzoni, 1979. Suitner, Franco, La poesia satirica e giocosa nell’eta` dei comuni, Padua: Antenore, 1983.

ANGLO-AMERICAN INFLUENCES Although Italy was a cultural model for England during the Renaissance, ‘‘before the eighteenth century, Italians do not seem to pay much attention to England, a country, according to Virgil, nearly outside the world.’’ Thus wrote Arturo Graf in his seminal study, significantly titled Anglomania e l’influsso inglese in Italia nel secolo XVIII (1911), where he described the marked change in attitude that occurred with the Enlightenment: Growing admiration for English political institutions created, in turn, interest for the culture and 46

literature of Great Britain. Yet, even this initial curiosity necessitated the mediation of French, which remained for long the most influential foreign language in Italy and gave way to English only in the second half of the twentieth century, mostly as a consequence of the increasing influence of the United States. A case in point was the mixed fortune of Shakespeare, ignored by Italians until the late eighteenth century. His works were often known primarily through their operatic versions by Gioacchino Rossini and, especially, Giuseppe

ANGLO-AMERICAN INFLUENCES Verdi (Otello, Macbeth, Falstaff); through idiosyncratic translations, such as Giulio Carcano’s 12 volume Opere di Shakespeare (Shakespeare’s Works, 1875–1882) or Arrigo Boito’s versions for Eleonora Duse; or because popular actors such as Tommaso Salvini performed them worldwide with great success. The impact of the anglomania of the eighteenth century was thus felt not so much at the level of individual writers but rather in the foundation of important periodicals such as Il Caffe` (1764–1766) and La Frusta letteraria (1763–1765), inspired by their British counterparts (most notably, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Spectator). In the next century, a number of significant episodes demonstrated the increasing influence of English culture. Ugo Foscolo translated Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey as Viaggio sentimentale di Yorick lungo la Francia e l’Italia (1813) and assimilated his style in his later works. The fame of Lord Byron, who lived in Venice, Ravenna, and Pisa, was enormous and created the vogue of byronismo, with an equal number of followers and detractors. Walter Scott enjoyed phenomenal success, and among the many historical novels influenced by his model was Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1827, 1840–1842). However, with the possible exception of Charles Dickens, Victorian literature failed to impress coeval Italian writers. Arrigo Boito and Carlo Dossi were among the few Italian literati who were interested in English literature. Only the twentieth century was characterized by a consistent policy of translation from and criticism of English literature, partially conditioned by the hostility to Britain and its liberalism on the part of the Fascist regime, which dubbed England la perfida Albione (the wicked Albion) and prohibited the use of the English language in mainstream culture (Mussolini even had a special version of Julius Cesar written for him by Giovacchino Forzano in place of Shakespeare’s dangerous representation of tyrannicide). The key figure in this period was the literary critic Mario Praz (1896–1982), who, besides his enormously influential Storia della letteratura inglese (History of English Literature, 1937), wrote several seminal studies on various aspects of English literature and noticeably La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica (The Romantic Agony, 1930), which traced the relationships among the English Decadent writers Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde and Gabriele D’Annunzio. Other important scholars of English literature were Emilio Cecchi and

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, whose notes on English literature based on private lessons he gave to a dedicated group of young pupils were published posthumously as Letteratura inglese (1990–1991). Modernist literature had a major, if somehow belated, influence on Italian culture. Virginia Woolf was a seminal figure for Italian feminism. T. S. Eliot was translated by Eugenio Montale, whose poetry he influenced. Joseph Conrad was fundamental for Italo Calvino’s development as a writer. The revolutionary style of James Joyce can be detected in experimental novels by Carlo Emilio Gadda and Stefano D’Arrigo, but his influence was paramount for the Gruppo 63, which included among others Umberto Eco, Nanni Balestrini, and Edoardo Sanguineti, and criticized the conservatism of Italian postwar literature. Amelia Rosselli (1930–1996) constituted a peculiar case: Born in France, she was the daughter of expatriated anti-Fascist activist Carlo Rosselli, murdered in 1937. She was then raised in England and the United States. Her experimental poetry is permeated by influences from Anglo-American literature and includes the use of the English language itself. In the second half of the twentieth century, Italian theater finally embraced Shakespeare with enthusiasm and produced memorable stagings by Giorgio Strehler and Leo De Berardinis as well as literary adaptations. Eduardo De Filippo translated The Tempest into the Neapolitan dialect and adapted The Merchant of Venice; the playwrightactor Carmelo Bene operated the most original deconstructive rewritings of Hamlet and Othello on page and on stage. Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter were also very popular on the Italian scene. The influence of English literature was particularly strong on writers such as Anna Maria Ortese, Giorgio Manganelli, and Alberto Arbasino, whose anglophile snobbery became a recognizable style. Luigi Meneghello drew on the lucid and ironical style of eighteenth-century English literature to reflect on his condition of Italian expatriate to England in Il dispatrio (The Expatriation, 1993) and translated Shakespeare, Coleridge, Hopkins, and Yeats into his native Vicentine dialect. Additionally, the dandyism of Oscar Wilde was a model for Aldo Busi, who has also skillfully translated Lewis Carroll and other English authors. Italian interest in American literature arose not only for literary reasons but also as a result of the shifting perceptions of the ‘‘new continent’’ and its culture. North America was consistently discussed on two levels in intellectual circles and in freemason 47

ANGLO-AMERICAN INFLUENCES lodges during the Enlightenment. First, following the War of Independence, there was great interest (particularly in Tuscany, Venice, and Naples) in the United States as a constitutional experiment. Benjamin Franklin was one of the most famous men of his time, known to Italians well before the first Italian edition of his Autobiography in 1830. In fact, in 1787, following a devastating earthquake in Calabria, the old town of Castelmonardo was rebuilt with the name of Filadelfia, in homage to the Pennsylvanian city. The second reason for interest was curiosity regarding North American geography, population, and crops. Peoples such as the ‘‘Indians’’ and the ‘‘Eskimos’’ and religious groups such as the Quakers provided the foundation for late eighteenth-century debates on the nature of humanity. America thus remained an eminently intellectual experience. Several eighteenth-century operas were set in the new continent, including Nicolo` Piccinni’s L’Americano (The American, 1760) and I Napoletani in America (The Neapolitans in America, 1768) and Pietro Guglielmi’s La Quakera spiritosa (The Witty Quaker Woman, 1783); and as late as the early twentieth century, America provided vivid characters and settings for Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904) and La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the West, 1910). Although Italian travellers began to arrive to North America in the early nineteenth century, the first important Italian travelogue on the United States, Giuseppe Giacosa’s Impressioni d’America (American Impressions), which devoted a section to the life of immigrants in large cities, appeared as late as 1892. The first American writer to enjoy wide success in Italy was James Fenimore Cooper, whose novels were published in Italy immediately after their release on the American market and who is also credited for the introduction of many neologisms of American origin into the Italian language. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851–1852) was published by two different Italian publishers and was serialized in three newspapers. The last chapter of Ippolito Nievo’s Le confessioni di un italiano (The Castle of Fratta, 1867) is set in the United States, where the protagonist’s son, Carlo, has emigrated after the failure of the revolutions of 1848. Enrico Nencioni (1837–1896), considered the first real Italian critic of American literature, studied and translated Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, whom he discussed with Giosue` Carducci and who subsequently influenced Gabriele D’Annunzio and Giovanni Pascoli. In the interwar period, North American literature found its most outspoken supporters in Carlo 48

Linati, Cecchi, and Praz, but the continent continued to be known almost exclusively through its books—a relevant exception being Mario Soldati’s memoir America primo amore, (America, First Love, 1934). The two literary figures that championed American literature from a distinctly antiFascist perspective were Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini, the editor of the two-volume anthology Americana (1941). Pavese explained retrospectively in the essay ‘‘Ieri e oggi’’ (Yesterday and Today, 1959): ‘‘Around 1930, when Fascism was beginning to be ‘the hope of the world,’ a few young Italians happened to discover America in its books—a pensive and barbaric America, happy and riotous, dissolute, fertile, burdened with all the world’s past and at once young and innocent.’’ The first edition of Americana was seized by censors because of the introductory historical profile by Vittorini, who argued for the political implications of literary history. This controversial piece was substituted by an essay by Emilio Cecchi in the second edition. The anthology included writers from Washington Irving to John Fante, as well as the Canadian Morley Callaghan. The list of the translators for this text reads as a ‘‘Who’s Who’’ of Italian culture of the time: Linati, Montale, Pavese, Guido Piovene, and Alberto Moravia, among others. American literature was especially important for the anti-Fascist authors who described the Resistance against Nazism and Fascism, from Vittorini and Pavese (particularly influenced by Hemingway) to Natalia Ginzburg, the early Calvino and Beppe Fenoglio. By 1947, such interest in American literature was by and large over. Pavese recalled: ‘‘Without Fascism to oppose, without, that is, a historically progressive thought to embody, even America, with all its skyscrapers, cars and soldiers, cannot be at the avant-garde of any culture. Without progressive thought and struggle, it is in danger of surrendering itself to a kind of Fascism, even in the name of its best traditions’’ (‘‘Ieri e oggi,’’ 1959). Post–World War II relations between Italy and the United States were deeply affected by the Cold War and the ensuing political polarization. During the Cold War, the anticapitalist impulses of both Communist and Catholic culture resulted in more critical perspectives on American culture and even a vocal form of anti-Americanism. Massive postwar aid contributed to the growth of consumerism and the popularity of the ‘‘American way of life.’’ In general, the presence of American literature on the Italian market became overwhelming: America was less a myth and a focus of cultural interest and

ANGLO-AMERICAN INFLUENCES more of a fashion or lifestyle. The diffusion of popular literary genres like science fiction and crime stories, alongside the boom of American cinema and television, make it extremely difficult to detect specific lines of influence and suggest a more pervasive presence of American culture. The critic who should be credited with making American popular culture a respectable object of critical examination is Umberto Eco with the essays collected in Diario minimo (Misreadings, 1963) and Apocalittici e integrati (Apocalypse Postponed, 1964), both informed by the theories of Canadian media critic Marshall McLuhan. The echoes of the Beat movement and counterculture showed that interest in America was not only academic and philological. Fernanda Pivano, who first became known as the translator of Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology, took up the role of spokesperson for the new trends of American literature and introduced Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen were role models for Italian cantautori such as Fabrizio De Andre´ and Francesco Guccini. Italian avant-garde theater was profoundly influenced by the Living Theatre, Chaikin-Open, and Bread and Puppet. In the ‘‘age of theory,’’ the lingering presence of semiotics, structuralism, and Marxism resulted in a limited presence of poststructuralism in Italy in comparison to its diffusion in the United States. The influence of American culture and literature, however, can be felt on a broad sociological level in the works of Italian journalists such as Vittorio Zucconi, Furio Colombo, Gianni Riotta, and Beppe Severgnini, who chronicle American society in broad strokes, but it can also be noticed on the level of pop culture, particularly in music, from jazz and blues to rock and hip-hop. In contemporary literature, authors such as Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don Delillo have been particularly influential for younger writers such as Tiziano Scarpa and Alessandro Baricco, but in general it is the minimalism of Raymond Carver that seems to have been absorbed most by the younger generation. The most impressive literary example of this fusion and influence is that of a Canadian, Mordecai Richler, whose last novel Barney’s Version (1997), with its satirical

conservatism, became in 2000 a mass phenomenon that invested both Italian culture and politics. SHAUL BASSI and BARBARA DEL MERCATO

Further Reading Barilli, Renato, La neoavanguardia italiana, Bologna: Mulino, 1995. Calvino, Italo, ‘‘Preface,‘‘ to Cesare Pavese, La letteratura americana e altri saggi, Turin: Einaudi, 1959. Caretti, Laura (editor), Il teatro del personaggio. Shakespeare sulla scena italiana dell’800, Rome: Bulzoni, 1979. De Marinis, Marco, Il nuovo teatro 1947–1970, Milan: Bompiani, 1987. Eco, Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati, Milan: Bompiani, 1964. Graf, Arturo, Anglomania e l’influsso inglese in Italia nel secolo XVIII, Turin: Loescher, 1911. Heiney, Donald, America in Modern Italian Literature, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964. Klein, Holger, and Michele Marrapodi (editors), Shakespeare and Italy, Lewiston: Mellen Press, 1999. Lombardo, Agostino (editor), Gli inglesi e l’Italia, Milan: Scheiwiller, 1998. Massara, Giuseppe, Americani. L’immagine letteraria degli Stati Uniti in Italia, Palermo: Sellerio, 1984. Pavese, Cesare, ‘‘Ieri e oggi,’’ in La letteratura americana e altri saggi, Turin: Einaudi, 1959. Praz, Mario, La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica, Milan and Rome: Societa` editrice la cultura, 1930; as The Romantic Agony, translated by Angus Davidson, London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Praz, Mario, Storia della letteratura inglese, Florence: Sansoni, 1937. Praz, Mario, ‘‘Gli studi di letteratura inglese,’’ in Cinquant’anni di vita intellettuale italiana: 1896–1946, edited by Carlo Antoni and Raffaele Mattioli, vol. 2, Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1950. Romano, Sergio (editor), Gli americani e l’Italia, Milan: Scheiwiller, 1993. Spini, Giorgio et al. (editors), Italia e America dalla grande guerra a oggi, Venice: Marsilio, 1976. Spini, Giorgio et al. (editors), Italia e America dal Settecento all’eta` dell’imperialismo, Venice: Marsilio, 1976. Sullam Calimani, Anna-Vera, Il primo dei Mohicani. L’elemento americano nelle traduzioni dei romanzi di J. F. Cooper, Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1995. Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe, Letteratura inglese, edited by Nicoletta Polo, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1990–1991. Vittorini, Elio (editor), Americana, Milan: Bompiani, 1941.

49

ANIMATION

ANIMATION Freed from the presence of the human figure and based on single-frame exposure of its many compositional elements, the cinema of animation displays a range of technical and expressive modes. The technique of frame-by-frame exposure yields frames that, running at the rate of 24 per second (on television, the rate becomes 25 per second), produce the same sensation of movement as that of human figures filmed by a normal movie camera. The typological set of these films consists principally of cartoons, drawings, or animated cartoons of varying lengths that are structured into a ‘‘genre’’ above all ‘‘as regards the technique and the principal aesthetic on which the language of animation is based’’ (Gianni Rondolino, Storia del cinema d’animazione, 1974). Alongside these are educational materials, documentaries, and advertisements, with the use of photographs, molded plasticene, marionettes, puppets, and manipulations of shadows, which, even though there are fewer, have reached high levels with the Czechoslovakian Jirı´ Trnka´, the Soviets Ladislas Starewitch and Aleksandr Ptus˘ko, the Americans Willis O’Brien and Lotte Reiniger, a specialist in animated shadows. In the pioneering research leading to the birth of the ‘‘art without a future’’ (thus the Lumie`re brothers while, in 1894, Thomas A. Edison, with the demonstration of the Kinetoscope, was proposing film in cellulose nitrate), one certain antecedent is the Praxinoscope (1877) of the French photographer and inventor E´mile Reynaud. From this historic invention, which he patented by perfecting the Phe´nakistiscope (1832) of Joseph-Antoine-Ferdinand Plateau, who in 1829 articulated the principle of the persistence of images on the retina, Reynaud developed the famous The´aˆtre Optique. The development of the commercial approach to shoot one frame at a time moved through the works of the American Edwin S. Porter, the Spanish Segundo de Chomo´n (El hotel ele´ctrico, 1905), and the British Walter P. Booth and James S. Blackton. The latter, the inventor of ‘‘lightning sketches’’ (or ‘‘chalk talks’’), inspired E´mile Cohl’s (Courtet) Fantasmagorie (Phantasmagorias), which, projected in Paris at the The´aˆtre du Gymnase on August 17, 1908, marked the birth of cinematic animated drawing. 50

In the following decades, Winsor McCay, Raoul Barre´, Charles Bowers, John Randolf Bray (founder of the studios of the same name), Dave and Max Fleischer, Walt Disney, Alexandre Alexeieff, Ub Iwerks, Chuck Jones, Norman McLaren, George Dunning, Paul Frimault, Tex Avery, Hanna and Barbera, and Bruno Bozzetto, along with many others, created innovative ideas and optical techniques, up through the more recent introduction of computer graphics. From the traditional animation table or stand, in which the cells are filmed one at a time by a mobile camera, to Disney’s ‘‘multiplane,’’ which broadened the possibilities with the insertion of more planes in order to create depth, the use of new electronic procedures has replaced this entire apparatus. With the disappearance of animation cells, drawings scanned into computers allow teams of animators to work with extraordinary precision, simplicity, and speed. In turn, computer graphics have favored the combination of diverse technical processes and unprecedented syntheses, for example with the use of drawings of human figures, puppets, objects, settings, and virtual contexts in an immense set of solutions—from stop-motion to the new virtual frontier of MoCap (motion capture)—that range from realistic invention to the more fantastical sharp focus realism (hyper-realism). The situation has changed so radically since the bold experiments of the 1950s and 1960s that the simultaneity of ‘‘live’’ takes of animation techniques alongside those of electronic processing is now standard compositional practice. In Italy, the beginnings of animation related to children’s films or advertising. The year 1916 saw the first single frame exposures in a film by Giovanni Pastrone (1883–1959), entitled La guerra e il sogno di Momi (The War and Momi’s Dream), in which a young boy dreams of a battle of puppets. In 1920, on behalf of Turin’s Tiziano Film, Zambonelli (Carlo Amadeo Frascari, 1877–1956) produced several comic shorts for children, and, in the same year, under the influence of American animation, La cura contro il raffreddore (The Cure for the Common Cold) by Antonio Bottini (Jean Buttin, 1890–1981), which offered single-frame shots and drawings on transparent paper, just like

ANIMATION the later La rana dispettosa (The Mischievous Frog, 1933). Also in the same period, and also for young children, there stands out Il topo di campagna e il topo di citta` (The Country Mouse and the City Mouse) by the screenwriter Guido Presepi (1886–1955), who had also planned a featurelength animated film, Vita di Mussolini (Life of Mussolini), which was never finished. On the advertising front, the first experimenters include Luigi Pensuti (1907–1948), Ugo Amadoro (1908), and Gustavo Petronio, while the Carlo brothers (1907–1964) and Vittorio Cossio (1911–1984), along with Bruno Munari (1907–1998), imported rotoscoping (already used in the United States for many years), producing Zibillo e l’orso (Zibillo and the Bear, 1932). In these same years, three editors of the satirical magazine Marc’Aurelio, Attalo (Giacchino Colizzi), Mameli Barbara, and Raoul Verdini, attempted unsuccessfully, in 1935, to produce Le avventure di Pinocchio—the following year Verdini produced a version of it that met with little success—in a demonstration that the technique of Italian animation compensated for the historic absence of large personalities and schools, although it offered important results. These included, for instance, the experiments of the historical avantgarde or the Futurist-tinged experiences of Arnaldo Ginna (1890–1982) and Bruno Corra (1892–1976), as well as the works of Anton Gino Domeneghini (1897–1966), whose La rosa di Bagdad (The Rose of Baghdad, 1949), despite the characters invented by Angelo ‘‘Nino’’ Bioletto (1906–1987), the set designs of Libico Maraja (1912–1983), and the clear anti-Disney ambition, did not succeed in becoming the cinematic symbol of Italian animation. There were also the popular works of Nino Pagot (1908–1972) and his brother Toni (1921–2001), Lalla, piccola Lalla (Lalla, Little Lalla, 1946) and I fratelli Dinamite (The Dynamite Brothers, 1948); of Osvaldo Cavandoli (1920–); of Gibba (Francesca Maurizio Guido, 1925–), a collaborator of the painter Luigi Giobbe, who shot Hello Jeep (1944) based on a script by the 24-yearold Federico Fellini, and L’ultimo sciuscia` (The Last Shoeshine, 1947), a valuable synthesis of neo-Realism and animation. After the advent of television in Italy (1954), the production of animation itself gradually intensified, particularly promoted by the popular Carosello (TV spots). Among the most innovative and eclectic films, Antonio Rubino’s I sette colori (The Seven Colors, 1955); Guido Manuli’s Fantabiblical (1977), Solo un Bacio (Only a Kiss, 1983),

Incubus (1985), and +1 –1 (1987); Roberto Gavioli’s La lunga calza verde (The Long Green Sock, 1961), based on a treatment by Cesare Zavattini; Giulio Gianini’s I paladini di Francia (The Knights of France, 1960), La gazza ladra (The Magpie, 1964), and Il flauto magico (The Magic Flute, 1978); Manfredo Manfredi’s Sotterranea (Underground, 1973) and Dedalo (Dedalus, 1976); more recently, Maurizio Nichetti’s Volere volare (1991), which can be considered both a live action film and as a trick (or animated film), and Enzo D’Alo`’s La gabbianella e il gatto (The Cage and the Cat, 1998). But it is the incomparable Bruno Bozzetto (1938–) who, under the banner of irony and paradox, popularized the genre in Italy and abroad with West and Soda (1965) and inevitably affected the art of animation. Dubbed by John Halas, one of the world’s most famous creators of animated drawings (Computer Animation, 1976), Bozzetto creates characters that enter into the popular cultural imagination, such as the neurotic and sarcastic Signor Rossi, the (anti) hero of several shorts and of three feature films. His rich filmography includes such parodies as Vip, mio fratello Superuomo (Vip, My Brother Superman, 1968) and Allegro non troppo (1976), a great success at the box office for Italian animation. Bozzetto started off as an advertising designer, producing at 20 his first animated film, Tapum! La storia delle armi (Tapum! The History of Arms, 1959), which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was noted for the ingenious ‘‘vertical’’ (apparently built by Bruno’s father with an ironing board). In 1960 he founded Bozzetto Film, and, after a series of very successful films, he shot, in collaboration with Guido Manuli, Opera (1973), an effervescent distortion of the world of melodrama, and, three years later, Allegro non troppo, a sort of critical response to Fantasia, up through his direction, ‘‘from life,’’ of the feature film Sotto il ristorante cinese (Under the Chinese Restaurant, 1987). Also outstanding are his educational productions for Swiss television (Lilliput Put, 1980) and the many shorts of Quark (1981–1988) for RAI-TV. During the 1990s, Bozzetto distinguished himself with his short Help? (1995), part of What a Cartoon! produced by Hanna-Barbera. Between 1999 and 2003 he tried his hand at digital animation, authoring various shorts in collaboration with Macromedia Flash (Olympics, Europe & Italy, Yes & No), and completed the 26-episode television series The Spaghetti Family. In 2003, the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana released a DVD with the films produced in the 1960s and 1970s by Studio 51

ANIMATION Bozzetto, known over the years for quality in culture and marketing in the world of Italian animation and audiovisual communication. Bozzetto has moved on to experimenting with using a 2D computer in the production of digital animations expressly conceived for the Internet. Bruno Bozzetto’s work has received numerous national and international prizes, including the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion for Il Signor Rossi al mare in 1964, an Oscar nomination for Cavallette in 1991, and the prestigious lifetime achievement award at the Zagreb Festival of Film Animation in 1998. Ultimately, Bozzetto’s career exemplifies the relationship between cinema and the art of animation in the last century, as well as the drive toward mechanization, which in the twentyfirst century has muted into the drive to digitization. FABRIZIO BORIN Further Reading Aloi, Dino (editor), Bruno Bozzetto. Cinquant’anni di cartoni animati, Turin: Il Pennino, 2005. Bastiancich, Alfio, Bruno Bozzetto: les multiples visages de l’animation (catalogue), Annecy: Journales Internationales du Cine`ma d’Animation, 1985.

Beckerman, Howard, Animation: The Whole Story, Mattituck, NY: Amereon House, 2001. Bendazzi, Giannalberto, Cartoons. Cento anni di cinema d’animazione, Venice: Marsilio, 1988. Bendazzi, Giannalberto, and Raffaele De Berti (editors), La fabbrica dell’animazione. Bruno Bozzetto nell’industria culturale italiana, Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2003. Boledi, Luigi, editor, Grandi corti animati, Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2005. Cotte, Olivier, Il e`tait une fois le dessin anime`, Paris: Dreamland, 2001. Dovnicoviy, Borivoj, La tecnique du dessin anime´, Paris: Dreamland, 2000. Fara, Giulietta, and Andrea Romeo, Vita da pixel. Effetti speciali e animazione digitale, Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2000. Halas, John, Computer Animation, New York: Hastings House, 1976. Lutz, Edwin George, Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, Their Origin and Development, New York: Scribner’s, 1920. Maestri, George, Animazione digitale, Milan: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Rondolino, Gianni, Storia del cinema d’animazione, Turin: Einaudi, 1974; revised edition as Storia del cinema d’animazione: dalla lanterna magica a Walt Disney, da Tex Avery a Steven Spielberg, Turin: Utet, 2003. Williams, Richard, The Animator’s Survival Kit, London: Faber and Faber, 2001.

LITERATURE OF ANTHROPOLOGY After World War II, Italian anthropology was confronted by a past that a majority of its members wished to dismiss. Not that the scholarly results were all negative—names like those of Carlo Conti Rossini (1872–1949) or Enrico Cerulli (1898–1988), who worked extensively in Ethiopia, are until today serious references, demonstrating that the break between physical anthropology and ethnology that took place in 1911, during a congress in Rome, created the conditions for sound research. But since many scholars (including Cerulli) had collaborated with the Fascist regime and put ethnology in the service of colonization, new ways of defining the object of what is now called ‘‘cultural anthropology’’ became necessary in order to steer clear of this heritage (Maria Pia Di Bella, ‘‘Ethnologie et fascisme,’’ 1988). 52

Among these new ways of redefining anthropology, we enlist the pioneering studies of Ernesto De Martino (1908–1965), who focused on an original anthropological approach based on the study of Italy itself, leaving aside what a few years later Claude Le´vi-Strauss—in a famous book—labeled the ‘‘tristes tropiques.’’ De Martino’s interest in daily events and rituals that determine the rhythm of anonymous people characterized the anthropology he so daringly put into practice and his way of recreating it through a new form of literary writing. In fact, De Martino wished to present attitudes and beliefs that were practiced by a residual part of its population. He intended to show that these beliefs had their logic and a history and to translate them to his readers in what was not yet called ‘‘thick description’’ but anticipating already the concept

LITERATURE OF ANTHROPOLOGY (Clifford Geertz, ‘‘Thick Description,’’ 1973). He ‘‘gave a voice’’ to the people he interviewed and introduced, in the national culture, customs that were already waning. This new anthropological approach stems from a cultural trend called neo-Realism (neorealismo), dominant in Italy after World War II. On one side, the source was identified in the verismo of Giovanni Verga’s (1840–1922) Sicilian narratives—at least for anthropologists—while on the other, it seems closely linked to filmmaking as well. This new anthropological approach flourished in a very original cultural environment that contributed to its development, its standing, and its importance, but it turned out to be a phenomenon linked to the neo-Realist period and practically ended with it. Today, it is mainly apprehended historically. Clearly, some of the elements that characterized neo-Realist cinema were the same that contributed to the rise and development of this new anthropological approach. The main one is the fact that the focus was on Italy itself: People were encouraged to look at their own society with new eyes, in order to decipher the logic of its practices and meanings. Cultural anthropology was understood not just as a means to analyze ‘‘primitive societies’’ but as a tool for research into the neglected dimensions of Italian society and culture. The objective pursued was to integrate these neglected dimensions into the general consciousness. Thus, Italian anthropologists were the first to study the social life of their own society, long before the trend of studying a historical society was fully accepted in Anglo-Saxon anthropology, subsequent to the pioneering fieldwork of Julian Pitt-Rivers, published in The People of the Sierra (1954). The Italian anthropology of those years shared with the contemporary filmmaking the quest for ‘‘reality,’’ and the way of capturing and representing it was as important. In literature, cinema, and anthropology, the representation of ‘‘daily life’’ through its multifaceted forms allowed authors, scholars, and filmmakers to show their political and social commitment. The fall of Fascism gradually brought back themes elaborated by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) during his imprisonment from 1926 to 1937, which were published posthumously as Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks, 1949). Gramsci’s writings shaped Italy’s political thought and history until the late 1980s. He claimed that the intellectuals constitute a hegemonic social group that should play a vital role in bridging the dichotomy between town and country, workers and peasants, North and South.

Thus, the ‘‘life’’ of the poor urban or rural population became the target of Italian intellectuals. The ‘‘documentary’’ style seemed apt in cinema, while in anthropology thorough descriptions of specific popular key events became the norm. But the way Italians applied the ‘‘documentary’’ style to their neorealist cinema or to their anthropology, its richness and originality also depended on literary masterpieces to whom we owe profound reflections on firsthand witnessing of defining moments in personal and social life, such as Elio Vittorini’s Conversazione in Sicilia (Conversation in Sicily, 1941), Carlo Levi’s Cristo si e` fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli, 1945), Primo Levi’s Se questo e` un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz, 1947), Rocco Scotellaro’s Contadini del Sud (Southern Peasants, 1954) and L’uva puttanella (The Tarty Grapes, 1955), and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1958). Plots were based on news items (faits divers), for they exemplified events that revealed the specific culture of urban populations or peasants to the general public. In order to achieve these aims, neo-Realist cinema was shot mainly on location, where the action unfolded, and cast actors were ‘‘taken from the street,’’ that is, persons to whom these events could actually happen. Ernesto De Martino masterfully put these interests into anthropological practice. Initially he studied with philosopher Benedetto Croce and Raffaele Pettazzoni, a historian of religions, renowned for his original comparative methods; later, he turned also to psychoanalysis and to Martin Heidegger’s existentialism. He was an anti-Fascist and a member of the Italian Resistance; and soon after the war, he started his fieldwork in the South of Italy, following the credo that hegemonic intellectuals had to address the questione meridionale (southern question). But neo-Realist cinema also influenced the way of writing ethnography: De Martino became aware of the difficulty and the necessity of accessing the historical experience of others. His way of writing took into account the fact that anthropologists need to have recourse to ‘‘translation’’ and ‘‘reflexivity,’’ for they cannot reproduce firsthand experiences, not even as members of their own society, and that this incapacity distinguishes anthropology from literature. On these issues, De Martino’s major works are Morte e pianto rituale (Death and Ritual Lament, 1958) and La terra del rimorso (The Land of Remorse, 1961). The first one was based on the ritual of mourning still performed in Southern Italy during the late 1950s, while La terra del rimorso encompassed a multidimensional 53

LITERATURE OF ANTHROPOLOGY research that he carried out with a group of young colleagues and students in anthropology, ethnomusicology, history, sociology, and psychoanalysis. As Gramsci had suggested, De Martino listened attentively to the Mezzogiorno’s poor peasants and brought to Apulia a whole team of assistants, much like a film crew shooting outdoors. This type of research, his most important one, best illustrates all the potentialities that an Italian anthropology, concentrating on the Mezzogiorno, could bring to the discipline from a literary, historical, musical, and visual point of view. It studied women from the Salento region (Apulia) who experienced a tarantula’s bite, describing the way it was cured: The affected women danced for two or three days and nights their favorite tarantella, accompanied by a small orchestra, while wearing dresses having supposedly the colors of the tarantula. In the following years, they had to repeat the dancing ritual when the symptoms of the initial bite reappeared. Here De Martino suggests that the demise of these long-standing beliefs and practices was brought about by the lack of respect that the Catholic Church showed toward these frenzied dances. The association of a figure such as Saint Paul with these women, who once recovered used to visit his chapel in Galatina (Apulia), and the fact that they had to renounce their dancing while doing so, halted a tradition that had survived for centuries. The title of De Martino’s book underscores that if, on one hand, Apulia is the land of the rimorso (rebite), on the other, the Mezzogiorno is the land of the ‘‘remorse’’ of Italian intellectuals. Contrary to the Church, intellectuals need to show respect toward peasant traditions, and they should not—through their lack of real understanding—contribute to their decay. Ultimately, they have to learn from the peasants the place that these traditions hold in their cultures. With De Martino’s death in 1965, the ethnographical research he had pioneered came suddenly to an end. His reflexive method seemed by now too parochial, not in tune with what was happening internationally. Italians preferred to follow the French Structuralist school (mainly focused on kinship) or the Anglo-Saxon vade mecum for anthropologists (Notes and queries), as attested by works such as Adriana Destro’s L’ultima generazione (The Last Generation, 1984) or Maria Minicuci’s Qui e altrove (Here and Elsewhere, 1989). However, De Martino’s research indeed maintained a certain influence in anthropology: Clara Gallini’s I rituali dell’a`rgia (The Argia Rituals, 1967), which document a Sardinian ritual involving a local spider 54

named a`rgia, and Il consumo del sacro (The Consumption of the Sacred, 1971) bring useful comparative data to De Martino’s Apulia fieldwork. Also, Annabella Rossi published her correspondence with a tarantata in Lettere da una tarantata (Letters from a Tarantata, 1970), which was followed by Carnevale si chiamava Vincenzo (Carnival Was Named Vincent, 1977), relating a major group research on carnival in Campania that she coordinated with Roberto De Simone, perhaps the only research to date comparable in scope (literary, historical, musical, visual) to La terra del rimorso. Since the late 1970s, De Martino’s interest in women, so central in his work, has been taken up by a number of scholars, due also to the impact of the Italian feminist movement on anthropology. Among them, the most original literary anthropologist working today is Elsa Guggino, whose La magia in Sicilia (The Magic in Sicily, 1978), Un pezzo di terra di cielo (A Piece of Land of the Sky, 1986), and Il corpo e` fatto di sillabe (The Body Is Made of Syllables, 1993) adopt De Martino’s approach on reflexivity while examining Sicilian attitudes toward magic and illness. Finally, Mariella Pandolfi’s field research, carried out in the Sannio region (Campania) and published as Itinerari delle emozioni (Itineraries of Emotions, 1991), continues to uphold this trend. Ernesto De Martino’s La terra del rimorso left its mark on historians such as Piero Camporesi (1926–1997) and Carlo Ginzburg (1939–). Camporesi has written extensively on literature, popular myths, and food in the Middle Ages and early modern times, focusing particularly on vagabonds, hunger, and the body in works such as Il paese della fame (The Land of Hunger, 1978) and Il pane selvaggio (Bread of Dreams, 1980). His baroque style of writing, in which he displays erudition as well as the structural method he applied to his sources, turned his books into best sellers. Though his work is often considered ‘‘anthropological,’’ he instead stopped at the threshold of the discipline, lacking the capacity of ‘‘giving a voice’’ to the marginal people he wrote about. Not so Ginzburg, the main representative of the microstoria school. In his two fundamental books, I Benandanti (The Night Battles, 1966) and Il formaggio e i vermi (The Cheese and the Worms, 1976), he presents wellanalyzed historical research in which he never loses sight of the victims’ side. For example, he skillfully dug into the unpublished accounts of trials of witches and heretics, in order to recover personalities and speeches gone for centuries; and he was able to restore them with a rare empathy,

LITERATURE OF ANTHROPOLOGY thus continuing a civil tradition born in Turin between the two world wars. Today, the postwar legacy of a realistic, nonFascist concept of national culture is still upheld in Italy by scholars and intellectuals such as Mario Isnenghi, author of I luoghi della memoria (The Sites of Memory, 1996). Since the mid-1960s, mainstream anthropology has split up in several different directions, yet we are indebted to Ernesto De Martino for having introduced an anthropological practice that helped to establish—through his keen interest in the objects he tackled and the reflexive character of his approach—a complex, realistic, and non-Fascist image of Italian society and culture. MARIA PIA DI BELLA

Further Reading Camporesi, Piero, Il paese della fame, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1978; as The Land of Hunger, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press and Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Camporesi, Piero, Il pane selvaggio, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980; as Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press and Blackwell, 1989. De Martino, Ernesto, La fine del mondo: Contributo all’analisi delle apocalissi culturali, edited by Clara Gallini, Turin: Einaudi, 1977. De Martino, Ernesto, Morte e pianto rituale: Dal lamento funebre antico al pianto di Maria, Turin: Universale Scientifica Boringhieri, 1958; rpt. 1975. De Martino, Ernesto, Sud e magia, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1959. De Martino, Ernesto, La terra del rimorso: Contributo a una storia religiosa del Sud, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1961; as The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism, London: Free Association Books, 2005. Destro, Adriana, L’ultima generazione: Confini materiali e simbolici di una comunita` delle Alpi Marittime, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1984. Di Bella, Maria Pia, ‘‘Un culte pentecoˆtiste en Apulie,’’ Les Temps modernes, no. 435 (1982): 824–833. Di Bella, Maria Pia, ‘‘Ethnologie et fascisme. Quelques exemples,’’ Ethnologie franc¸aise, no. 2 (1988): 131–136.

Di Bella, Maria Pia, ‘‘From Future to Past: A Duce’s Trajectory,’’ in Death of the Father: An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority, edited by John Bornemam, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004. Di Bella, Maria Pia, ‘‘Mythe et histoire dans l’e´laboration du fait divers: Le cas Franca Viola,’’ Annales ESC, no. 4 (1983): 827–842. Gallini, Clara, Il consumo del sacro: Feste lunghe di Sardegna, Bari: Laterza, 1971. Gallini, Clara, I rituali dell’a`rgia, Padua: CEDAM, 1967. Geertz, Clifford, ‘‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,’’ Interpretation of Cultures (1973): 3–30. Ginzburg, Carlo, I Benandanti: Stregoneria e culti agrai tra Cinquecento e Seicento, Turin: Einaudi, 1966; as The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Ginzburg, Carlo, Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ‘500, Turin: Einaudi, 1976; as The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, London and New York: Penguin, 1992. Gramsci, Antonio, La questione meridionale, edited by Franco De Felice and Valentino Parlato, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1966. Guggino, Elsa, Il corpo e` fatto di sillabe: Figure di maghi in Sicilia, Palermo: Sellerio Editore, 1993. Guggino, Elsa, La magia in Sicilia, Palermo: Sellerio Editore, 1978. Guggino, Elsa, Un pezzo di terra di cielo: L’esperienza magica della malattia in Sicilia, Palermo: Sellerio Editore, 1986. Isnenghi, Mario, I luoghi della memoria: Simboli e miti dell’Italia Unita, Rome: Laterza, 1996. Le´vi-Strauss, Claude, Tristes Tropiques, Paris: Plon, 1955; Tristes Tropiques, New York: Modern Library, 1997. Minicuci, Maria, Qui e altrove: Famiglie di Calabria e di Argentina, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989. Pandolfi, Mariella, Itinerari delle emozioni: Corpo e identita` femminile nel Sannio campano, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1991. Pitt-Rivers, Julian Alfred, The People of the Sierra, introduced by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, New York: Criterion Books, 1954. Rossi, Annabella, Lettere da una tarantata, ‘‘Nota linguistica’’ by Tullio De Mauro, Bari: De Donato Editore, 1970. Rossi, Annabella, and Roberto De Simone, Carnevale si chiamava Vincenzo: Rituali di Carnevale in Campania, Rome: De Luca Editore, 1977.

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MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI

MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI (1912–) Michelangelo Antonioni is the modernist master of the Italian cinema. He was a crucial member of the second generation of Italian filmmakers to achieve distinction after World War II. His best-known contemporaries, Fellini and Rosi, had assisted Rossellini and Visconti respectively; Antonioni worked for both, and his work shows signs of that apprenticeship, inflected by an intense fascination with other modern arts—the painting of Giorgio Morandi, the Hermetic poets, the novels of Pavese, Camus, Fitzgerald. It was not until 1950 that he was able to make a feature film. The negative of his first work, an ambitious documentary, Gente del Po (People of the Po), was damaged during the war; so the version he finally released in 1947 hardly represents his original conception, although its moody evocation of the river and the landscape of its shores points to the poetic achievements of Antonioni’s mature work, especially Il grido (The Outcry, 1957), which he shot in several locations in the Po valley. Similarly, N. U. (1948), a documentary on the street cleaners of Rome, intimates the sensitivity to places and to gestures that would flourish in his portraits of Milano in La notte (The Night, 1961), Rome in L’eclisse (Eclipse, 1962), and London in Blow Up (1966). A third documentary, L’amorosa menzogna (The Amorous Lie, 1949), focused on the contrived production and frantic popular consumption of fumetti, anticipating by three years the ironies of Federico Fellini’s Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik, 1952). In its turn, it predicts the critique of photographic illusionism and the anxiety with which the filmmaker represents the reception and consumption of art and artifacts throughout his oeuvre. These three early films chart the contours of Antonioni’s world, in which consciousness is homeless but always haunted by a longing for a transcendental home. It is initially the Italy of displaced individuals, uprooted and relocated by the dictates of post–World War II economics. But whereas Luchino Visconti treated this phenomenon as a social problem, Antonioni reformulated it as an existential predicament. Gilberto Perez aptly characterized his cinematic perspective as ‘‘the point of view of a stranger’’ (The Material Ghost, 1998). 56

The young Alain Resnais and the film theorist Noe¨l Burch recognized Antonioni’s genius in his first feature film, Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950). The latter insisted, as late as 1969, that it was Antonioni’s greatest work, ‘‘an almost unparalleled achievement,’’ announcing the maturity of narrative cinema (Theory of Film Practice, 1993). The complexity of its camera movements, the sophistication of its interweaving of described and illustrated events from the past, and the brilliance of its jazz score (composed by Giovanni Fusco for saxophone and piano) distinguish it from other Italian films of the early 1950s. It also provides an unfamiliar insight into the upper bourgeoisie that would characterize most of the filmmaker’s work in Italy. In this ironical detective story, the inept investigation initiated by a jealous Milanese industrialist into his wife’s past actually brings her in contact with her former lover from Ferrara, rekindling the affair. But their failed attempt to murder him and his accidental death result in driving them apart. The uneasy displacement of the heroine from middle-class Emilia to affluent Lombardy, her lover’s failure to profit as a salesman of luxury cars, and their trysts in seedy hotels serve to stage their moral and romantic disintegration within the panorama of the slowly shifting economic and social vectors of Alcide De Gaspari’s Italy. Just as his first long film revealed Antonioni’s abiding interest in the tensions generated by class mobility, his second, I vinti (The Vanquished, 1952), evidenced the fascination with youth culture outside of his homeland that would characterize his films of the late 1960s and the 1970s. In each of its three independent stories, set in Paris, Rome, and London, a young man commits murder. Problems with the producers initially, and later censorship of the finished film, severely hampered the project. Even the most successful episode, the English story of a poet who first claims to have discovered a woman’s body, then later confesses to have killed her, driven by his obsessive desire to be featured in tabloids, lacks the originality and cogency of the episode Antonioni made soon afterward for Cesare Zavattini’s Amore in citta` (Love in the City, 1953): Tentato suicidio (Attempted Suicide). There he as-

MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI sembled many men and women who had tried to kill themselves; he interviewed three women who fell into erotic despair and had them reenact their failed suicides: One stepped into rushing traffic, another waded into the Tiber, and a third slit her wrists. In his major films of the mid-1950s, suicide became more and more central. The husband of the protagonist of La signora senza camelie (The Lady without Camelias, 1953), a film producer, tries to kill himself when both their marriage and his financial stability are in trouble. The film is a mordant view of the pretensions and moral insipidity of the Italian film industry. Suicide plays more prominent roles in Antonioni’s two subsequent films, Le amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Il grido. The former is an adaptation of Tra donne sole by Cesare Pavese, himself a suicide. The novel’s first person narrative ventriloquizes a woman who has been sent from Rome to manage an haute couture salon in Torino, where she had grown up in a working-class environment. She moves within an affluent milieu where one of her companions kills herself when her married lover drops her. Antonioni demonstrated remarkable subtlety in his combination of camera movement, editing, and posing of characters within the frame to analyze the tensions and fleeting affiliations of his estranged and bored protagonists. An 8minute-long episode, made up of some 20 shots, usually with meaningful reframings and figures passing into and out of the frame, of the protagonist, Clelia, and eight of her friends on the beach stands out as the most intricate the filmmaker had fashioned since Cronaca di un amore. It heralds the style of his last four black-and-white films. Aldo, the protagonist of Il grido, commits suicide. At the beginning of the film he leaves his job as a refinery mechanic when Irma, the woman with whom he lives and the mother of his daughter, leaves him for another man. He travels through the Po valley, at first with the little girl, moving from one erotic liaison to another, only to return to where we first saw him—the factory tower from which he falls or jumps. The plot and the psychology of Il grido reveal Antonioni’s debt to Visconti’s Ossessione (1942). It is as if in revisiting the locations and relationships of the earlier film Antonioni had divested his of Visconti’s melodrama, almost even of a plot, to concentrate on the relationship of human figures to the landscape. Just as Visconti’s Gino seeks refuge from his relationship to the innkeeper, Giovanna, whose husband he conspired with her to kill, with a gentle prostitute, Aldo falls in love with a whore after leaving Virginia, the gas

station owner whose father he helped put away in an old-age home. The scene that marks Antonioni’s stylistic signature occurs on the mud flats of the Po. To the accompaniment of Fusco’s offscreen piano solo, Aldo wistfully tells the prostitute of the day he met Irma. They decided not to go dancing with their friends but visit a museum instead. ‘‘What kind of a story is that?’’ she asks; ‘‘How does it end? I don’t understand you.’’ She might have been speaking for that large segment of Antonioni’s audience unsatisfied with the suspended, inconclusive stasis of his mature cinema. However, the international audience he would attract with his next film came to recognize a unique cinematic drama found in the placement of the two characters within the frame, in the distance Aldo keeps from her, in the reframing of the image as he turns away while he talks as if speaking to himself in the flat plain, utterly empty aside from but two duck decoys and a rowboat. The magisterial control the filmmaker showed in the beach scene of Le amiche and on the mud flats in Il grido articulates from beginning to end the next four films he made. Seymour Chatman calls them ‘‘the great Tetralogy,’’ for they are linked in theme and by the presence of the actress Monica Vitti. Perhaps no maker of narrative feature films since World War II has achieved such a string of masterpieces in so short a time: L’avventura (1960), La notte, L’eclisse, and Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert, 1964). One of the most remarkable distinctions of these films is their radical disavowal of melodrama. L’avventura begins as the story of a yachting excursion in which a wealthy young woman disappears and becomes the narrative of the affair between her closest friend and her lover. Antonioni divests La notte of even that dramatic situation: It depicts a day in the life of a Milanese couple, a successful but vapid novelist and his disillusioned wife. The ‘‘eclipse’’ of L’eclisse is both a brief affair between a translator and a stock jobber and the sudden slump for the Roman stock exchange the weekend they meet and separate. Pier Paolo Pasolini, who deplored the first three films for their bourgeois perspective, praised Il deserto rosso because Antonioni located the narrative within the sensibility of a neurotic, bourgeois woman. He wrote: ‘‘. . .Antonioni no longer hangs his vision of the world, as he had done in his previous films, on a vaguely sociological content (the neurosis of alienation): rather he looks at the world through the eyes of a sick woman’’ (‘‘Il cinema di poesia,’’ 1965). He called this narrative displacement soggettiva libera indiretta 57

MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI (free indirect subjective). In this first color film, Antonioni used chroma with great originality to emphasize the obsessive anxieties of his heroine, as she succumbs to the seduction of her husband’s employer, the owner of a factory he manages in Ravenna. Whereas each of the earlier films had crucial scenes in which the filmmaker gave evidence of his vision of how psychological depths are revealed by form, in the ‘‘tetralogy’’ such formal articulation of complexly shifting relationships spans each film from beginning to end. Naturally there are particularly impressive episodes—the search for the missing Anna on the island of Lipari in L’avventura; the aimless wandering of Lidia (the wife in La notte) through the nearly empty streets of Milan on the Saturday of an August holiday weekend; the extraordinary conclusion of L’eclisse, eight minutes of objects and strangers on the corner where the couple have agreed to meet but have stood up each other, a vivid Technicolor fantasy of a pubescent girl watching a rabbit, and ghost ships alone on a Sardinia beach in Il deserto rosso. But these extended passages are integral to the rhythmic fusion of architecture, landscape, and body language that marks the culmination of Antonioni’s art. In these four films he became the central cinematic analyst of the Italian economic miracle and its erotic malaise. Shifting his gaze from Italy to Britain, he made his most popular film, Blow Up, in which the ‘‘free indirect subjective’’ perspective is that of a stylish young fashion photographer who unwittingly photographs evidence of a murder, which is later stolen from his studio. The epistemological problematics of the plot devolve on the cognitive status of photographic images and processes. The protagonist’s furious quest to recover proof of the crime he had recorded both underlines and coarsens the psychoanalytic subtleties at play in his Italian films. Jacob Arlow, the American psychoanalyst, persuasively demonstrated how this film is rigorously structured around a primal scene fantasy. In his subsequent attempts to capture the mood and atmosphere of 1960s America (Zabriskie Point, 1970), Maoist China (Chung Kuo Cina, 1972), and both Saharan civil war and tourist Spain (Profession: reporter, also known as The Passenger, 1975), Antonioni abandoned the intense pictorial psychology and plotlessness of his Italian masterpieces for a nostalgic view of revolution. Then he experimented with electronic imagery in making Il mistero di Oberwald (The Oberwald Mystery, 1980), a historical drama based on a play of Jean Cocteau. 58

The video technology permitted him to return to the idea of using color as a key to meaning that had motivated Il deserto rosso. With Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman, 1981), he returned to his theme of the erotic dilemmas of contemporary Italy. After a debilitating stroke, he made Al di la` delle nuvole (Beyond the Clouds, 1995) with the help of his wife and Wim Wenders: It is a film of four stories of erotic passion. Although Antonioni’s preeminent achievement perhaps has been to have portrayed the beneficiaries of the Italian economic miracle to themselves and to the world, he is certainly also one of the cinema’s greatest poets of landscape and of how the spiritual elements of geography influence human interactions.

Biography Michelangelo Antonioni was born in Ferrara, 29 September 1912, into a middle-class family; he studied in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Bologna, 1931–1935, where he became interested in cinema and theater and started making 16 mm documentaries. He moved to Rome, 1939, and began contributing to the journal Cinema, directed by Vittorio Mussolini, the Duce’s son. He enrolled as a student of directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, 1940–1941, but dropped out after a few months. He collaborated on the script of Un pilota ritorna by Roberto Rossellini, 1942, and was hired by La Scalera production house and sent to Paris to work with Marcel Carne´, but he returned to Italy due to the war and began working on his first short, Gente del Po, 1943, which would be completed only in 1947. He shot N.U., which won a Nastro d’argento for best documentary, 1948; collaborated with Giuseppe De Santis, Luchino Visconti, and Federico Fellini, 1949–1950; and directed his first feature film, Cronaca di un amore, 1950. L’avventura premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, with great critical acclaim, 1960. Antonioni directed his first color film, Il deserto rosso, 1964; his success allowed him to work abroad in English, filming Blow Up in England, 1966, and Zabriskie Point in the United States, 1970. He traveled to China for an RAI documentary, 1972, and shot Il mistero di Oberwald in video and transferred it to film, 1980. He suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak, 1985. He married Enrica Fico, 1986. He directed his last film, Al di la` delle nuvole, in collaboration with Wim Wenders, 1995. He has won numerous awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the

MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI Cannes Film Festival for L’avventura (1960) and for L’eclisse (1962); Golden Bear for La notte, at the XI Berlin Film Festival, 1961; Golden Lion for Il deserto rosso, at the Venice Film Festival, 1964; Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival for Blow Up; and two Oscar nominations (for directing and screenplay). He was awarded an honorary Academy Award, 1995. Antonioni lives in Rome. P. ADAMS SITNEY Selected Works Films Gente del Po, 1943. N. U.—Nettezza Urbana, 1948. L’amorosa menzogna, 1949. Superstizione, 1949. Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair), 1950. I vinti (The Vanquished), 1952. Le signora senza camelie (The Lady without Camelias), 1953. Tentato suicidio (episode of Amore in citta` by Cesare Zavattini), 1953. Le amiche (The Girlfriends, based on Cesare Pavese’s Tra donne sole), 1955. Il grido (The Outcry), 1957. L’avventura, 1960. La notte (The Night), 1961. L’eclisse (Eclipse), 1962. Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert), 1964. Blow Up (based on the short story by Julio Corta´zar, ‘‘Las babas del diablo’’), 1966. Zabrinskie Point, 1970. Chung Kuo Cina, 1972. Professione: reporter (The Passenger), 1975. Il mistero di Oberwald (The Oberwald Mystery, based on Jean Cocteau’s play, L’Aigle a` deux teˆtes), 1980. Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman), 1981. Al di la` delle nuvole (Beyond the Clouds), 1995.

Screenplays Il grido, edited by Elio Bartolini, Bologna: Cappelli, 1957. L’avventura, edited by Tommaso Chiaretti, Bologna: Cappelli, 1960. L’eclisse, edited by John Francis Lane, Bologna: Cappelli, 1962. The Screenplays of Michelangelo Antonioni, New York: Orion Press, 1963 (includes Il grido, L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse). Il deserto rosso, edited by Carlo Di Carlo, Bologna: Cappelli, 1964. Sei film, Turin: Einaudi, 1964 (includes Le amiche, Il grido, L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse, Il deserto rosso). Blow-Up, Turin: Einaudi, 1968; edited by Sandra Wake, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971 Zabriskie Point, Bologna: Cappelli, 1970. Il primo Antonioni, edited by Carlo Di Carlo, Bologna: Cappelli, 1973 (includes Gente del Po, Nettezza

Urbana, L’amorosa menzogna, Superstizione, Cronaca di un amore). Chung Kuo Cina, edited by Lorenzo Cuccu, Turin: Einaudi, 1974. Professione: Reporter, edited by Carlo Di Carlo, Bologna: Cappelli, 1975; as The Passenger (with Mark Peploe and Peter Wollen), New York: Grove Press, 1975. Il mistero di Oberwald, edited by Gianni Massironi, Turin: Einaudi, 1981. Identificazione di una donna, edited by Aldo Tassone, Turin: Einaudi, 1983. Le amiche, in Cesare Pavese, tra donne sole, Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Cronaca di un amore: un film di Michelangelo Antonioni, edited by Tullio Kezich and Alessandra Levantesi, Turin: Lindau, 2004.

Other Tecnicamente dolce, edited by Aldo Tassone, Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Quel Bowling sul Tevere, Turin: Einaudi, 1983; as That Bowling Alley on the Tiber: Tales of a Director, translated by William Arrowsmith, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Il film nel cassetto, edited by Carlo Di Carlo and Giorgio Tinazzi, Venice: Marsilio, 1995; as Unfinished Business, translated by Andrew Taylor, New York: Marsilio, 1998. Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema, edited by Carlo di Carlo and Giorgio Tinazzi; American edition by Marga Cottino-Jones, New York: Marsilio-St. Paul, MN: Consortium Book Sales, 1996. Comincio a capire, Valverde, CA: Il girasole, 1999. L’aquilone, Cassina de’ Pecchi (Milan): Delfi, 1999. Sul cinema, edited by Carlo Di Carlo and Giorgio Tinazzi, Venice: Marsilio, 2004.

Further Reading Arlow, Jacob, ‘‘The Revenge Motif in the Primal Scene,’’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 28:3(1980), 519–541. Arrowsmith, William, Antonioni: The Poet of Images, edited with an introduction by Ted Perry, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Brunette, Peter, The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Burch, Noe¨l, Theory of Film Practice, translated by Helen R. Lane, introduced by Annette Michelson, New York: Praeger, 1973. Chatman, Seymour, Antonioni: or, The Surface of the World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Cuccu, Lorenzo, Antonioni: il discorso dello sguardo e altri saggi, Pisa: ETS, 1997. Cuccu, Lorenzo, La visione come problema: Forme e svolgimento del cinema di Antonioni, Rome: Bulzoni, 1973. Michelangelo Antonioni: Identificazione di un autore. Gli anni delle formazione e la critica su Antonioni, Parma: Pratiche Editrice, 1983. Orsini, Maria (editor), Michelangelo Antonioni: i film e la critica 1943–1995, with an essay by Lino Micciche`, Rome: Bulzoni, 2002.

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MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI Pasolini, Pier Paolo, ‘‘Il cinema di poesia’’ (1965), in Empirismo eretico, Milan: Garzanti, 1972. Perez, Gilberto, The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Perry, Ted, and Rene` Prieto, Michelangelo Antonioni: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Rohdie, Sam, Antonioni, London: BFI, 1990. Sitney, P. Adams, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Tinazzi, Giorgio (editor), Michelangelo Antonioni: Identificazione di un autore. Forma e racconto nel cinema di Antonioni, Parma: Pratiche Editrice, 1985. Tinazzi, Giorgio, Michelangelo Antonioni, Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 2002. Wenders, Wim, My Time with Antonioni: The Diary of an Extraordinary Experience, London and New York: Faber and Faber, 2000.

L’AVVENTURA, 1960 Film by Michelangelo Antonioni

The premiere of L’avventura at the 1960 Cannes festival caused such derision that the audience hostility provoked a declaration of support by filmmakers and critics attending the festival. Antonioni himself seized the occasion to publish his most famous text, La malattia dei sentimenti (The Disease of the Emotions) on the insufficiency of traditional morality and the sickness of eros in contemporary life. The confrontation symbolically marked the inauguration of a new mode of narrative filmmaking and of a new e´lite audience of cine´philes who would transform the reception of such films in the emerging decade. Presumably the Cannes audience could not tolerate the slow pace and the apparent inconclusiveness of L’avventura’s plot—the story of a woman (Anna) who disappears from a yachting party and of the love affair between her fiance´ (Sandro) and her best friend (Claudia) as they search for her in Sicily. Eventually the film had a considerable financial success in Italy and internationally; but, more significantly, it marked the beginning of Michelangelo Antonioni’s major phase of filmmaking while securing for him a reputation as one of the central filmmakers of the 60

1960s; likewise, the female star of the film, Monica Vitti, became an emblem of Italian beauty and intelligence. The action of the film quickly moves from Rome to the Lipari Islands and concludes with a series of episodes in Sicily. Italo Calvino declared, ‘‘Its Southern Italian setting. . . —the inferno of underdevelopment contrasted with the affluent inferno— is the most truthful and the most impressive that ever appeared on the screen, without the least indulgence to populism or local color’’ (‘‘Quattro domande sul cinema italiano,’’ 1961). With that concluding phrase he might have been thinking of Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (Voyage in Italy, 1953), where the historical richness of Naples and the piety of its citizens restore the marriage of an alienated British couple. Antonioni’s film revises and criticizes the ‘‘populism [and] local color’’ of Rossellini’s by marking the hiatus between the magnificence of the Italian past—in his case Baroque Sicily—and its erotically obsessed, morally ambivalent present. The filmmaker divested the film of melodrama, concentrating instead on figures in elegantly photographed landscapes. The long, nearly abstract choreography of the yacht party searching, singly and in small groups, the deserted island where they last saw Anna divides the film into an initial part in which Claudia is the mediator for the filmmaker’s observation of the tension between Anna and Sandro and the other couples, and a longer final part in which the unexplained disappearance seems to enliven the powers of observation of both Sandro and Claudia as they vainly follow up rumors of Anna’s movements. More than any film of its time, L’avventura was the cinematic expression of the philosophical and psychoanalytical concerns then current in Italian intellectual culture. Antonioni was the only filmmaker to receive repeated attention in Aut-Aut, the journal of the Italian phenomenologists. Like Alberto Moravia’s novel La noia (The Empty Canvas, 1960), to which it was often compared, Antonioni’s film owes a debt to Kierkegaard’s trenchant analysis of boredom and erotic questing. The very inconclusiveness of the film, and its minute dissection of the initial phases of an affair, opens the work to an unusual intensity of scrutiny. Thus psychoanalytic critics were enticed into reading the transformation of Claudia from an excluded observer to an erotic partner as a narrative of the primal scene in which fascination was fused with guilt for displacing Anna as the lover of Sandro. By depicting Sandro as a failed architect who

ALBERTO ARBASINO specializes in making cost estimates, the filmmaker has fashioned an observer of Sicilian baroque architecture who can confuse his erotic exuberance with enthusiasm for the Cathedral of Noto one day and deliberately ruin the meticulous drawing a younger man has made of a detail of the same building the next morning. Out of such elements Antonioni constructed the psychology of his protagonists. The conclusion epitomizes the antidramatic, intensely visual mode of Antonioni’s mature cinema. After an anxious night in which Claudia worries that Sandro did not return to her because he might have found Anna, she discovers him at dawn with another woman. Rather than confront him, she follows him from their hotel to an empty public square. In an exquisite composition with Sandro sobbing on a bench and Etna in the far background, Claudia stands behind him slowly caressing his head. Like the filmmaker she shows pity, comprehension, and no expectation of a resolution. P. ADAMS SITNEY

Further Reading Aristarco, Guido, ‘‘Cronaca di una crisi e forme strutturali dell’anima,’’ Cinema nuovo, 149(January–February, 1961), 43. Arrowsmith, William, Antonioni; the Poet of Images, edited with an introduction by Ted Perry, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. L’avventura. From the Filmscript by Michelangelo Antonioni, with Elio Bartolini and Tonino Guerra, New York: Grove Press, 1969. Brunette, Peter, The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Calvino, Italo, ‘‘Quattro domande sul cinema italiano,’’ Cinema nuovo, 149(January–February 1961), 33–34. Chatman, Seymour, Antonioni; or, The Surface of the World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Chatman, Seymour, and Guido Fink (editors), L’avventura: Michelangelo Antonioni, Director, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Eco, Umberto, ‘‘Antonioni ‘impegnato,’’’ in Michelangelo Antonioni, edited by Carlo Di Carlo, Rome: Edizioni di Bianco e Nero, 1964. Lesser, Simon O., ‘‘L’avventura: A Closer Look,’’ Yale Review, 54:1(1964), 41–50. Sitney, P. Adams, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

ALBERTO ARBASINO (1930–) One of the most prolific Italian writers of the second half of the twentieth century, Alberto Arbasino is generally known as a former member of the Gruppo 63, the name adopted by a group of artists of the neo-avant-garde who first met in Palermo in October 1963. Arbasino’s writing is highly cultivated, parodic, and imbued with literary and historical references. So begins one of his recent collections of committed and shrewd civic poetry: ‘‘La Musa civica / non sempre organica / o armonica / soffia quando e dove / puo`, non come si deve’’ (The civic muse / not always organic / or harmonious / blows when and where / it may, not as it ought) (‘‘Ciao,’’ in Rap 1, 2001). Although Arbasino’s writing can appear at times lighthearted and casual, he is a particularly attentive and harsh observer of the worst of the Italian national identity, in its difficult transition to a fuller civil consciousness, which remains in his view, however, servile and immature, pusillanimous, whining, and querulous.

Using the most recent reactionary cliche´s, which Arbasino renders with consummate precision in a narrative that sometimes reads like an essay, at other times like poetry, the difficult changes of contemporary life become a complex literary game in which the rules are always marked by a bright, redeeming irony concerning the deprovincialization of Italian culture that, in his analysis, is still waiting to happen. The truth he seeks and the language he uses to convey it are not to be found among the educated but are uttered by committed housewives and frivolous gurus of fashionable thought. Thus the denunciation of uniformity, the rising homogenization, and the imposture of the powers-that-be sound not as insincere, vain indignation or as the hypocritical clamor of a conformist outrage but as an inquiry. This eloquent, interpolated question mark is a striking characteristic of Arbasino’s writing. The reader is interrogated, but it is impossible to arrive at any answer that can 61

ALBERTO ARBASINO alleviate and resolve to what the question mark alludes. His first book, Le piccole vacanze (The Little Holidays, 1957), is a collection of five stories, which stand as independent works but are subtly linked by the clear style expressive of the author’s personality. The theme of summer or winter holidays, at the end of adolescence, becomes the experience of passing beyond the habitual confines of the average, rich Italian bourgeoisie and is taken here as the preferred backdrop for a new literature, lending itself to an implacable though tempered irony concerning the search for happiness and a more authentic life. A similar care for the setting of tragic stories, which are laid bare according to the ‘‘poetica del sale nella ferita’’ (poetics of pouring salt on wounds), with youth at their center, can be found in L’Anonimo lombardo (The Lost Boy), written in 1959 and revised in 1973. Through a fictional collection of letters, the writer attempted to revive a dormant homosexual passion, behind which are shamelessly exposed the literary presences of the great Lombards, from Alessandro Manzoni to Carlo Emilio Gadda. The language became increasingly erotic and cerebral as Arbasino revised the work for subsequent editions—a process to which he subjects all of his works, especially when he changes publishers. Arbasino’s most significant work is Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, 1963), rewritten many times—the last edition is dated 1993 and is 1,371 pages long. This important novel is representative of an entire era: Italy during the postwar years of economic recovery. Conceived in the 1950s and then first drafted between 1961 and 1962, ‘‘sulla spinta della scoperta entusiastica della ‘messa a punto del congegno narrativo’ secondo Slovskij’’ (in the wake of the enthusiastic discovery of the ‘‘development of narrative design’’ according to Slovskij), as Arbasino himself recalls, along with the theoretical suggestions of Roland Barthes and analyses of nineteenth-century models (especially French) by Jean Rousset and Jean Starobinski. The book recounts a trip throughout Italy during the summer period of the theatrical and music festivals and tells of nighttime encounters in various suburbs, in a kind of postmodern Grand Tour, which is no longer educational or formative but an ‘‘itinerario eminentemente libresco e risolto quasi del tutto in parlerie’’ (eminently bookish itinerary which comes down almost entirely to parlerie), as the author wrote in his 1977 ‘‘Afterword’’ to the novel. The protagonists are four young men (the Swiss narrator; an Italian, Andrea; a Frenchman, 62

Jean-Claude; and a German, Klaus), ‘‘frenetici come bambini e insonni come giocattoli’’ (as frenetic as children and tireless as toys), who are to make a film about Italy and who were described by Arbasino without any real psychological or situational development but rather as if they were placed in a zone free from moral and social obligations. The book takes the form of a novel-essay, in which the author consciously assembled, disassembled, and reassembled the traditional structures of the nineteenth-century novel, through the conspicuous inclusion of theoretical discussions on the nature of the genre, redefining or rather abolishing to conversation any debate about the value that literature has always recognized and through the abolition of the distinction between high and low genres and a strong propensity for the meta-novel as a ‘‘strumento buonissimo per tener lontanto il ridicolo’’ (an excellent tool to keep the ridiculous at bay). The meta-novel is also used to reveal the truth—all truths—about contemporary customs and the provincial habits of a society in crisis, in which the important work (whether it be a film, theatrical production, or novel)—in short, the masterpiece in the mode of Marcel Proust’s Recherche du temps perdu or Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus—cannot yet be completed, and hence the end of the book can only be funereal. In the different versions of the novel, it is above all its language, as well as, naturally, its nearly doubled size, that have earned it a more persuasive autonomy. The novel was written in a spoken language, which may be both erudite and multilingual but which can often simulate through the use of everyday language a flowing simplicity of discussion, resulting in the effect of an endless conversation, concerning ‘‘ambience’’ rather than ‘‘characters,’’ that is both fast-paced and unprecedented in Italian literature. Another important achievement is Super-Eliogabalo (Super-Heliogabalus, 1969), in which the youth movement of 1968 is interpreted through the exemplary lens of Roman decadence and is recounted in the structures typical of early-twentieth-century avant-garde experimentalism, perhaps alluding, after Ste´phane Mallarme´, to Antonin Artaud’s He´liogabale ou l’anarchiste couronne´ or to Alfred Jarry’s Le surmaˆle. The apparent defeat of the imagination by commodities and entertainment was here described by Arbasino in floating fragments, even as he celebrated its funeral and also performed a nostalgic lament for it. The long trip of Heliogabalus’s cortege for a weekend in Ostia, the Roman beach town, with which the novel opens, is also a wonderful tour de force through the catalogues

ALBERTO ARBASINO of the anticlassical (which had already been expounded by Ernst Robert Curtius’s pupil, Gustav Rene´ Hocke, or by the research of Eugenio Battisti), and through the Renaissance grotesques according to the idea that mannerism is the most authentic expression of modernity. Amid the dilapidated villa and the robbers’ raids at the temple, among thugs and victimized old ladies, the book is notable for a bewilderingly frenetic eulogy of the street urinal, along with the eventual abandonment of science and embrace of the anarchy of the imagination: ‘‘all’intelletto intollerabile sostituire l’aberrazione e l’immaginazione [...] Cioe`, la parola poetica’’ (to replace the intolerable intellect with aberration and imagination...that is, with poetic speech). In Italy, criticism (literary, dramatic, and moral) has not always forgiven, even while appreciating, Arbasino’s distancing of himself in horror and amusement from the mediocre and controlled tone of stylistic schools, or, even worse, of the academic style, which lacks the high notes, excesses, and excitement abundant in Arbasino’s writing. As a critic, as in his jottings on theater, La maleducazione teatrale (Theatrical Bad Manners, 1966), and particularly in Certi romanzi (Some Novels, 1964), in which can be found all of the authors who prepare the way for Fratelli d’Italia, Arbasino, deeply versed in the methods of formalism and structuralism of the central European school, freed himself from the twentieth-century Italian critical tradition, which he views as tattered and provincial, still in thrall to the most recent strand of Crocean idealism, along with the claustrophobic political-ideological debates of the 1960s. Arbasino’s militant criticism frequently turns into narrative, as in Sessanta posizioni (Sixty Positions, 1971), which brings together 60 critical stories, inspired by as many famous writers, without any distinction of genre; or La Belle ´ poque of the E´poque per le scuole (The Belle E Schools, 1977), a long tale of atmospheric narration, in which the essayistic inserts with didactic intent are indistinguishable and at the very edge of ‘‘letture passabilmente terroristiche’’ (tolerably terroristic readings). In all of these works, there is always the idea of criticism as a collaboration with literature and as capable of greatly expanding the boundaries of the definition of what is, or what ought to be, narrative. Arbasino’s most recent work, Marescialle e libertini (Marshals and Libertines, 2004), collects his accounts as a spectator of the great music of the twentieth century, ‘‘frutto di mezzo secolo, di irreprensibili presenze’’ (the fruit of half a century of irreproachable presences), expressed as a

continuous multilingual workshop through which there shines his desire to remake the history of post-Verdian operatic theater, during worldwide premieres and concerts, into a search for the pleasurable, a quality not always admitted by the most diligent adepts. As in other works, Arbasino’s style is sustained by the provisional language of the workshop, the only language now able to testify to the scattered and lost events and myths of history.

Biography Alberto Arbasino was born in Voghera (Pavia), on 22 January 1930, to a well-off family of professionals. In Voghera, he attended the Regio Liceo Ginnasio Severino Grattoni, and then, in 1947, he enrolled at the University of Pavia in the Faculty of Medicine and later at the Law Faculty of the Universita` Statale of Milan, where he received a degree in international law in 1955. He contributed to Il Mondo, Illustrazione italiana, Paragone, Tempo Presente, Il Verri, Il Ponte, and then beginning in 1960 to Il Giorno, in 1962 to L’espresso, in 1967 to Quindici and Il corriere della sera, and in 1976 to La Repubblica. In 1957, Arbasino moved to Rome. In 1959, he participated at Harvard in an international seminar on political science conducted by Henry Kissinger. In 1963, he participated in the first meeting in Palermo of Gruppo 63, of whose experiments Arbasino perhaps represents the communicative, playful aspect. In 1965, he staged Verdi’s La Traviata in Cairo, and in 1967 he staged Bizet’s Carmen, as well as, in the same year, John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence. He was a member of the Italian Parliament for the Republican Party, 1983–1987. Arbasino has been awarded many prizes, including the Bagutta for the revised version of Fratelli d’Italia, 1994; the Grinzane Cavour for Mekong, 1995; the Ennio Flaiano for Rap!, 2001; the Chiara for his career achievement, 2003; and the Viareggio for Marescialle e libertini, 2005. STEFANO TOMASSINI Selected Works Fiction Le piccole vacanze, 1957. L’Anonimo Lombardo, 1959; revised 1973; as The Lost Boy, translated by Bernard Wall, 1964. Fratelli d’Italia, 1963; revised editions in 1967 and 1993. La narcisata—La controra, 1964. Super-Eliogabalo, 1969; revised in 1978 and 2001. La bella di Lodi, 1972. Il principe costante, 1972.

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ALBERTO ARBASINO Specchio delle mie brame, 1974; reprinted, 1995. ´ poque per le scuole, 1977. La Belle E

Poetry ‘‘Matine´e. Un concerto di poesia,’’ 1983. ‘‘Rap!,’’ 2001. ‘‘Rap 2,’’ 2002.

Theater Amate sponde! Commedia italiana, 1974.

Reportage Trans-Pacific Express, 1981. Mekong, 1994.

Essays Parigi o cara, 1960. Dall’Ellade a Bisanzio, 1960; reprinted, 2006. Certi romanzi, 1964; reprinted, 1977. Grazie per le magnifiche rose, 1965. La maleducazione teatrale, 1966. Due orfanelle: Firenze e Venezia, 1968. Off-off, 1968. Sessanta posizioni, 1971. I Turchi, 1971. Fantasmi italiani, 1977. In questo stato, 1978. Un paese senza, 1980. Il meraviglioso, anzi, 1985. Passeggiando tra i draghi addormentati, 1997. Paesaggi italiani con zombi, 1998. Le Muse a Los Angeles, 2000. Marescialle e libertini, 2004.

Further Reading Barilli, Renato, La neoavanguardia italiana: Dalla nascita del ‘‘Verri’’ alla fine di ‘‘Quindici’’, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995. Belpoliti, Marco, and Elio Grazioli (editors), Alberto Arbasino, Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 2001. Bolla, Elisabetta, Invito alla lettura di Arbasino, Milan: Mursia, 1979. Curi, Fausto, La scrittura e la morte di Dio: Letteratura, mito, psicoanalisi, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996. Giuliani, Alfredo, ‘‘Le ‘riscritture’ di Arbasino,’’ in Letteratura Italiana. I Contemporanei, vol. 5, Milan: Marzorati, 1988. Gramigna, Giuliano, ‘‘Alberto Arbasino,’’ in Letteratura Italiana. I Contemporanei, vol. 11, Milan: Marzorati, 1988. Martignoni, Clelia, et al., La scrittura infinita di Alberto Arbasino, with a text by Alberto Arbasino, Novara: Interlinea, 1999. Panella, Giuseppe, Alberto Arbasino, Florence: Cadmo, 2004. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, ‘‘Alberto Arbasino, Specchio delle mie brame’’ (1975), in Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte, edited by Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude, Milan: Mondadori, 1999. Pieri, Marzio, Una stagione in Purgatorio: Schegge per una storia di scritture minimamente diversa, Parma: La Pilotta, 1983.

ARCADIA (ACCADEMIA) Founded in 1690 in Rome and still active today, the Accademia dell’Arcadia is best known as the most representative literary institution of eighteenthcentury Italy. At a time when academies and salons were at the center of cultural life, Arcadia’s membership outnumbered the cumulative membership of all other Italian academies. For this reason, Arcadia has been called the first cultural phenomenon to unify Italy. In his Breve notizia dello stato antico e moderno dell’adunanza degli Arcadi (Brief Account of the Present and Past Situation of the Academy of Arcadians, 1712), the academy’s leading figure and first Custode Generale, Giovan Mario Crescimbeni (1663–1728), acknowledged that it was founded in order to foster the study of science, restore good taste, and reclaim Italian cultural 64

preeminence in Europe. In its criticism of baroque extravagance, Arcadia proposed a taste for classical simplicity and directness. It called itself ‘‘Arcadia’’ after the region that Virgil had consecrated to bucolic poetry in his Eclogues: ‘‘By choosing the pastoral state it began to moderate . . . contemporary Italian poetry’s pomposity with the simplicity and spontaneity of the Pastoral style’’ (Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, L’istoria della volgar poesia, 1698). Arcadia’s ideal was that of producing, through a masterful use of technique, the impression of the natural poetry of a Virgilian golden age. Thus, enlightened reform, not pastoral vogue, was the motive behind the idea for the academy, which was originally inspired by the patronage of the selfexiled Christina, Queen of Sweden, who had settled

ARCADIA (ACCADEMIA) in Rome after converting to Catholicism. Upon her death in 1689, 14 admiring members founded Arcadia in order to promote the artistic and cultural ideals embraced by her circle. Pastoral poetry had long been part of Italian literary tradition, as Jacopo Sannazaro’s most successful vernacular work Libro pastorale nominato Arcadia (Arcadia, 1504) attests. Crescimbeni’s homonymous book (1708) recounts the foundation of the academy as a romance. However, the adoption of a pastoral fiction with members (who called themselves shepherds) taking on Arcadian names was a novelty, a ritual introduced in order to foster a literary republic where privileges of class and status were erased together with the members’ proper names. On 20 May 1696 the academy approved its charter as scripted in elegant Latin by Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664–1718), who taught civil and canon law in Rome. Although the study of Arcadian protocols reveals an attention to class (Atti Arcadia 1–7, Ms. Biblioteca Angelica; Arcadian Records), and while the academy had a centralized organization, Arcadia was a true literary republic, with an elected president and elected officers, and fostered the participation of ‘‘all the most intelligent and productive society of the time’’ (Benedetto Croce, La letteratura italiana del Settecento, 1949). Among the members were some of the most popular poets (Giambattista Felice Zappi, Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni, Tommaso Crudeli, Paolo Antonio Rolli). The egalitarian tendency favored the admission of women to Arcadia, where they soon flourished, especially as poets. Critics are divided over the extent of Arcadia’s literary prominence. Because of the academy’s complex development, its expansion into different cities (as far north as Milan, as far south as Palermo), and its diffusion into varied environments (from courts to salons to schools), it changed character over the course of the century. Arcadia was a meeting place for prominent and influential Italian writers and intellectuals and an entity that can only be understood taking into account the history of philosophy and of science. By choosing to focus on the pastoral and supposedly ‘‘effeminate’’ aspect of the academy, Enlightenment and Risorgimento critics polemically reacted to what they saw as a formal poetry and aesthetics, preferring instead a literature that promoted social and political reforms. Giuseppe Baretti considers Arcadia as a ‘‘very celebrated childish thing’’ (La frusta letteraria, 1932). Romantic writers, who fostered ideas of a secular state, identified Arcadia as a Papal Roman Academy and rejected what they

perceived as a structure that supported the ancien re´gime. Luigi Settembrini saw Arcadia as a forum for Jesuit propaganda, the ultimate expression of the eighteenth-century Italian spiritual and artistic decadence (Lezioni di letteratura italiana, 1927). As historian Michele Maylender has explained, because of its closeness to the Vatican following the Italian unification, political anticlerical sentiments prevailed against it (Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, 1926–1930). Twentieth-century assessments of Arcadia often present the image of a scarcely innovative (when not intellectually and morally vacuous) aristocratic academy, segregated in gardens, courts, and palaces, and controlled by the Church. A re-evaluation of Arcadia began at the end of the nineteenth century with Giosue` Carducci (Rime di Francesco Petrarca, 1905). What emerges is the picture of an erudite, eclectic, cosmopolitan, and relatively democratic institution that was a cradle of the arts and proponent of Enlightenment principles. Carducci maintained the literary, if not poetic, value of the academy: Arcadians’ refined forms of Italian prosody and poetic language developed a tradition that would influence authors such as Parini and Baretti. Benedetto Croce singled out Giambattista Vico and Gravina as the leading Arcadian thinkers, whose work embodied European rationalism. Arcadian poets did not produce great poetry, just exquisite ‘‘literature,’’ as was the case with Parini and its celebratory, didactic, satirical poetry (La letteratura italiana del Settecento, 1949). For Mario Fubini, Arcadians promoted not only a revival of the Italian literary tradition but also works by historians, philologists, and scientists such as Gravina, Antonio Conti, Eustachio Manfredi, Scipione Maffei, and Ludovico Muratori, who laid the ground for Enlightenment reformers (Dal Muratori al Baretti, 1954). Francesco Redi, Marcello Malpighi, Lorenzo Bellini, and Vincenzo Viviani were also members of Arcadia, as were the most significant representatives of the intellectual South (Francesco D’Andrea, Giuseppe Valletta, Gravina, Vico). In a new climate of free research, which marked the beginning of the Italian Enlightenment, Arcadians debated Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz, and Spinoza. Furthermore, Muratori’s Della perfetta poesia italiana (Concerning Perfect Poetry, 1706), Gravina’s Della tragedia (Concerning Tragedy, 1715), and Maffei’s De’ teatri antichi e moderni (Concerning Ancient and Modern Theatres, 1753) articulated a reform of the theater according to classical models, in response to aesthetic problems raised by Arcadian rationalism. Gravina wrote tragedies with Roman 65

ARCADIA (ACCADEMIA) subjects on strictly Aristotelian principles, quite undramatic and rhetorical; Muratori championed the reality of human feelings as intrinsic to the poetic language; Maffei defied the idea that Italy was a poor match for French drama. These authors aimed at finding a middle ground between what they saw as the necessary moral rigor of the theater and indispensable concessions to the public’s entertainment. In Rome, the Torlonia theater reopened in 1690 under the auspices of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, patron of Arcadia and host of oratorio performances in his Roman palace. According to religious tradition, sacred and moral plays were represented as well as musical pastoral dramas of the type of Alessandro Guidi’s cantata, Dafne (Daphne, 1692). Arcadia played an important role in unifying the literary and artistic spheres, which had never before been so complementary and interactive. Giovan Pietro Bellori and Carlo Maratti were the driving force of Arcadian reform in the arts. Several theorizations of the classical ut pictura poesis can be found in the Prose degli Arcadi (Prose Works by Arcadia Members, 1718). Although critics and historians have long noticed the leading role played by Arcadia in fostering women’s literary activity and providing it with a forum (beginning with Ginevra Canonici Fachini’s 1824 Prospetto), there have been few studies on the subject, and those have mostly focused on Faustina Maratti Zappi and Petronilla Paolini Massimi. Women’s involvement in Arcadia developed from a merely honorary mention, to active participation, to a privileged position of honor. Women devoted themselves to literature and science and debated about economic and political issues. The manuscript collections, containing works presented in Arcadia during public and private academies, reveal that their contribution began no later than 1695 (Ms. 4 d’Arcadia, Biblioteca Angelica). During the first 38 years of the organization’s history, under Crescimbeni’s directorship, 74 women were admitted (2.8 percent of Arcadia’s membership). They were highly published: Out of the 237 authors selected for the first eight volumes of the Rime degli Arcadi (Poems by Arcadian Members, 1716), 20 were women. The academy followed the deliberate strategy of holding literary women up as models for both intellectual and social fashion. Women played an influential role not only as sponsors and patrons (Teresa Grillo Pamphili, Maria Isabella Cesi Ruspoli, Prudenza Gabrielli), but also as poets and academicians. Most prolific were Gaetana Passerini from Spello, Maria Selvaggia Borghini 66

from Pisa, and the famous Petronilla Paolini Massimi and Faustina Maratti Zappi from Rome (Ms. d’Arcadia 4, 5, 7, 8). Arcadian women wrote in a variety of poetic forms, including madrigals, sonnets, eclogues, canzoni, cantate, elegies, and sestine. In addition to Petrarchan and occasional poetry, they wrote about maternal love and the gentleness of nature, as well as philosophic, religious, and autobiographical poems. Maratti and Paolini were also known for their academic disputes on the theme of Platonic love. During her lifetime, Borghini was internationally recognized for her knowledge of Latin and Greek and is especially remembered for her translation of Tertullian moral works, Opere scelte di Tertulliano (Tertullian’s Selected Works, 1821), which was published posthumously. PAOLA GIULI See also: Academies Further Reading Atti e memorie: Terzo centenario d’Arcadia, Rome: Arcadia, 1991. Baretti, Giuseppe, La frusta letteraria, edited by Luigi Piccioni, Bari: Laterza, 1932. Binni, Walter, L’Arcadia e il Metastasio, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1963. Calcaterra, Carlo (editor), I lirici del seicento e l’Arcadia, Milan: Rizzoli, 1936. Carandini, Silvia, Teatro e spettacolo nel seicento, Bari: Laterza, 1990. Carducci, Giosue`, Rime di Francesco Petrarca, Florence: Sansoni, 1905. Costa, Gustavo, ‘‘L’Arcadia: Movimento letterario o utopia?’’, Annali d’italianistica, 8(1990): 420–430. Crescimbeni, Giovan Mario, Breve notizia dello stato antico e moderno dell’adunanza degli Arcadi, Rome: De Rossi, 1712. Crescimebni, Giovan Mario, L’istoria della volgar poesia, Venice: L. Basegio, 1730. Croce, Benedetto, La letteratura italiana del settecento, Bari: Laterza, 1949. Croce, Benedetto, Nuovi saggi della letteratura italiana del seicento, Bari: Laterza, 1931. Donato, Maria Pia, Accademie romane: Una storia sociale (1671–1824), Naples and Rome: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000. Felici, Lucio, ‘‘L’Arcadia romana tra illuminismo e neoclassicismo,’’ Accademia degli Arcadi: Atti e Memorie, 5 (1969): 167–182. Fubini, Mario, Dal Muratori al Baretti: Studi sulla critica e la cultura del Settecento, Bari: Laterza, 1954. Giannantonio, Pompeo, L’Arcadia tra conservazione e rinnovamento, Naples: Loffredo, 1993. Graziosi, Maria Teresa Acquaro, L’Arcadia: Trecento Anni di Storia, Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1991.

FRANCESCA ARCHIBUGI Maylender, Michele, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, 5 vols., Bologna: Cappelli, 1926–1930. Meier, Bruno, Faustina Maratti Zappi, donna e rimatrice d’Arcadia, Rome: L’Orlando, 1954. Piromalli, Antonio, L’Arcadia, Palermo: Palumbo, 1975. Prose degli Arcadi, edited by Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, 3 vols., Rome: De Rossi, 1718. Quondam, Amedeo, ‘‘L’Arcadia e la repubblica delle lettere,’’ in Immagini del 700 in Italia, Bari: Laterza, 1980. Quondam, Amedeo, Cultura e ideologia di Gianvincenzo Gravina, Milan: Mursia, 1968.

Ricaldone, Luisa, La scrittura nascosta: Donne di lettere e loro immagini tra Arcadia e Restaurazione, Florence: Cadmo, 1996. Rime degli Arcadi, edited by Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, Rome: A. Rossi, 1716. Settembrini, Luigi, Lezioni di letteratura italiana, Turin: UTET, 1927. Tre secoli di storia dell’Arcadia, Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali, 1991. Vichi, Giorgetti A. M., Gli Arcadi dal 1690 al 1800: Onomasticon, Rome: Arcadia, 1977.

FRANCESCA ARCHIBUGI (1960–) As one of the few women film directors of the 1990s ‘‘New Italian Cinema,’’ Francesca Archibugi is compelled to confront the issues and topics related to gender, both in terms of the female characters found in her movies and of the role of women in film direction and other ‘‘production crafts.’’ Her career began in the years between 1982 and 1985 with a few short films: Riflesso condizionato (Conditional Effect, 1982), Lo stato delle cose (The State of Things, 1982), La guerra e` appena finita (War Has Just Ended, 1983), Il vestito piu´ bello (The Most Beautiful Dress, 1984), Un sogno truffato (A Swindled Dream, 1983), and La piccola avventura (The Little Adventure, 1985). Il vestito piu´ bello was broadcast by RAI (Italian National Television) as part of a TV series devoted to new filmmakers, titled ‘‘Passione mia.’’ La piccola avventura, sponsored by the city of Rome, addresses the issue of children with disabilities. Fame, however, came with her first featurelength film, Mignon e` partita (Mignon Has Come to Stay, 1988), a refined tale of comedy and feelings set in middle-class Rome. The protagonist, Giorgio, is a young boy who passes from childhood to adolescence through an encounter with the beautiful family houseguest, his French cousin Mignon, who at the end of the film is discovered to be pregnant. The film benefits from the excellent acting of the young male protagonist as well as that of Stefania Sandrelli and Massimo Dapporto. In addition, the great technical skill found in the photography of Luigi Verga, the editing by Alfredo Muschietti, and the screenplay of Gloria Malatesta and Claudia Sbarigia (regular collaborators of

Archibugi) increase the quality of the film. Critics responded well to this ‘‘excellent debut,’’ which immediately put Archibugi among the representatives of the new Italian cinematic trend, namely the cinema based on leggerezza, or ‘‘lightness,’’ as defined by Italo Calvino in his Lezioni americane. Archibugi’s first film appeared to be the manifesto of this new cinema that aspires to replace the ‘‘old’’ masters. Mignon e` partita won six David di Donatello Awards (the Italian equivalent of the Academy Awards), among which are included Best First-Time Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, as well as the San Sebastian Festival’s prize for the Best First Work. However, Archibugi’s second film, Verso sera (By Nightfall, 1990), divided critics because of its intensely ideological plot. An old staunchly Communist professor (Marcello Mastroianni) receives a visit from his daughter-in-law (Sandrine Bonnaire) and her daughter Papere, an event that disorients and fascinates him at the same time. Archibugi achieved a more unanimous success with Il grande cocomero (The Great Pumpkin, 1993), in which the protagonist is a young girl suffering from a psychological disorder and who is also at the center of conflicting family affections. The film is based on the book Una concretissima utopia by the psychiatrist Marco Lombardo Radice, and it is set in a neuropsychiatric hospital for children where the young girl, Pippi, is often hospitalized due to her frequent seizures and where she is subsequently treated by a psychiatrist named Arturo (superbly played by actor-director Sergio Castellito). The film offers a remarkable overview of the deficiencies of state-provided health 67

FRANCESCA ARCHIBUGI care and an interesting analysis of mental disease, which mirrors a broader social malaise. Roberto Missiroli’s editing is also noteworthy. The following film, Con gli occhi chiusi (With Closed Eyes, 1994), was adapted from the homonymous novel by Federigo Tozzi. Once more, Archibugi reflects on the difficulty of growing up. This story of lost innocence is set during the 1910s in the Tuscan countryside and follows, with melodramatic tones, the impossible love affair between its two young protagonists as they evolve from childhood to adulthood. In the end, though, Grisola becomes a prostitute, and Pietro still worships her with ‘‘closed eyes.’’ Archibugi’s subsequent movie was L’albero delle pere (Shooting the Moon, 1998), whose protagonist is again an adolescent, this time a 14-year-old boy named Siddartha. Together with his half-sister, Siddharta lives with his eccentric mother Silvia (Valeria Golino), who does not have a stable job but earns just enough to survive. The plot develops an intricate triangular relationship of love and parenthood: Siddartha’s father is Massimo, an experimental director with occasional jobs, while the young girl Domitilla is a product of the relationship between his mother and Roberto, the sole source of financial support for the family. The story reaches a tragicomic twist when Domitilla has been pricked with a syringe and Siddartha believes his mother has infected her with AIDS. The cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, who also works with Silvio Soldini, Gianni Amelio, Daniele Ciprı`, and Franco Maresco, is remarkably skillful at capturing the aura of nocturnal Rome, both lunar and lunatic. In 2000, Archibugi wrote and directed Domani (Tomorrow). The film dwells on the feelings characteristic of provincial Italy and on the tensions between adolescent and adult viewpoints. Domani began with the 1997 earthquake in Umbria and was shot without indulging in the fashionable trend of docudramas, that is, of the instant movie. In an imaginary town, Archibugi presents the deeds of a diversified group of people, which include a family (the vice-mayor husband, the beautiful wife saddened by the impending tragedy, and their two 16- and 11-year-old children), the teacher Betty, a foreign restaurateur, and an inseparable duo of girlfriends. Life proceeds according to the rhythms of the aftermath of the earthquake, from which emerge the pain of the adults, the anger of the youths, and the quick maturity of the children. It is a story depicted with touching melancholy, especially when Archibugi portrays the emotional tremors of childhood. A metaphor of growth closes 68

the film, one that is as strong and poetic as that which concludes Mignon e` partita: The young protagonist brutally realizes he has entered into adulthood when he is physically unable to pass through the bars of the house gate as he used to do as a child. It is the dramatic recognition of lost childhood, a topic very dear to the director. Archibugi’s most recent films include a TV adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni’s classic novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 2004), photographed by the talented Pasquale Mari, and Lezioni di volo (working title, Flying Lessons), still in production at this writing. The story is about two 18-year-old young men of very different social backgrounds (one is Italian, the other is an Indian adopted by an Italian family) who decide to travel to India following a scholastic misadventure. Lezioni di volo is both a road movie and bildungsroman that confirms the director’s interest in the difficult passage that marks the journey from adolescence to adulthood. The screenplay was written in cooperation with Doriana Leondeff, who has also collaborated with Soldini. Francesca Archibugi’s work reflects an important turning point in the history of Italian cinema, from the so-called cinema carino, or the cute cinema of good feelings (light and not aggressive in regards with social issues), to a cinema that mirrors a society of displaced individuals in search of an identity. As a director who is also a woman (and there are not many in the Italian cinema), she is committed to telling moral stories of childhood and adolescence with an original perspective and remarkable sensitivity. She explores the injustice endured by children and the difficulties of family life. As Mario Sesti puts it: ‘‘At the beginning it seems as if one is only aware of the solid traditional nature found in her films . . . yet soon one discovers beneath this, an ability to give life to an unedited and fascinating world . . . the strong connection and dialogue with the culture of the 1970s. . . that are aspects of an authorial personality among the most recognizable and interesting found in the panorama of the New Italian Cinema’’ (Nuovo cinema italiano, 1994).

Biography Archibugi was born in Rome, 16 May 1960, to a bourgeois family. She started at a very young age as an actress, after a few years in modeling. In 1979, she was selected to play Ottilia in a film made for television (RAI-Uno), directed by Gianni Amico and adapted from Goethe’s Elective Affinities. More interested in directing, Archibugi

LITERATURE OF ARCHITECTURE entered the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, 1980; graduated in directing, 1983; took courses in film production at the Ermanno Olmi’s Scuola di Bassano as well as some in screenwriting with Furio Scarpelli; and acted in a few films in the early 1980s, such as La caduta degli angeli ribelli by Marco Tullio Giordana in 1981. In 1989, she started as a screenwriter for Giuliana Gamba’s La cintura, the cinematic adaptation of a play by Alberto Moravia. For this film, Archibugi worked with Gloria Malatesta and Claudia Sbarigia, who later become her collaborators. She briefly returned to acting in a feature documentary directed by Laura Betti, entitled Pier Paolo Pasolini: La ragione di un sogno, presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. She has won prestigious awards, among them several David di Donatello prizes, for Mignon e` partita as best first film, 1989; for Verso sera exequo with Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo, 1991; and for Il grande cocomero, 1993. In October 2003, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted her first film retrospective in the United States. Married to the jazz musician Battista Lena, Archibugi has three children. She currently lives in Rome, following many years living in a villa in the Chianti region of Tuscany. VITO ZAGARRIO Selected Works

Verso sera, 1990. Il grande cocomero, 1993. Con gli occhi chiusi (adapted from the novel by Federigo Tozzi), 1994. L’albero delle pere, 1998. Domani, 2000. I Promessi Sposi (adapted from the novel by Alessandro Manzoni), 2004. Lezioni di volo, in post-production.

Screenplays Mignon e` partita (with Gloria Malatesta and Claudia Sbarigia), 1991. Il grande cocomero, 1996.

Further Reading Di Giammatteo, Fernaldo, Dizionario del cinema italiano, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1995. Laviosa, Flavia, ‘‘Archibugi’s Cinematic Representations of the Socio-Cultural Changes in the Italian Family’’, Italica, 80: 4(2003): 540–549. Martini, Giulio, and Guglielmina Morelli (editors), Patchwork Due: Geografia del nuovo cinema italiano, Milan: Il Castoro, 1998. ´ ine, ‘‘Are the Children Watching Us? The Roman O’Healy, A Films of Francesca Archibugi,’’ in New Landscapes in Contemporary Italian Cinema, edited by Gaetana Marrone, Annali d’Italianistica, 17 (1999). Proto, Carola (editor), Francesca Archibugi, Preface by Mario Sesti, Rome: Dino Audino Editore, 1994. Sesti, Mario, Nuovo cinema italiano: Gli autori, i film, le idee, Rome-Naples: Teoria, 1994. Zagarrio, Vito (editor), Il cinema della transizione: Scenari italiani degli anni novanta, Venice: Marsilio, 2000. Zagarrio, Vito, Cinema italiano anni novanta, Venice: Marsilio, 1998; new ed. 2001.

Films Mignon e` partita, 1988.

LITERATURE OF ARCHITECTURE A consideration of Italian architects from humanism to the present reveals a fascinating succession of individuals who worked, each in a unique way, to reconcile the practice of architecture with the production of literature. The architectural practice of each individual is of course embedded in the particular social and historical time in which he works and is influenced by the artist’s memory and experience and with the

literature, arts, and aesthetics of the epoch. The architect’s ability to transfer an idea, a mental itinerary, or a complicated concept into visible form in some cases can reveal, in the architectural project, the spirit of the times. Some artists discover, in this way, a true literary calling, whether metaphorical or literal. As various themes are confronted, this narrative ability allows the architect to juxtapose different genres and artistic forms; the results of 69

LITERATURE OF ARCHITECTURE such juxtapositions are sometimes abstract, utopian, and visionary, and the world that results can be rich with figurative significance. In some cases a given literary or aesthetic theme influences the architect directly, giving the project an allegorical meaning; in others, the artist composes a literary work that accompanies and inspires his architectural project or creation of a space. In the passage from late Gothic naturalism to humanist culture, the work of the individual artist is no longer subordinated to religious ends but instead is connected to the secular sphere of the new bourgeoisie. The unity of architectural space reflects the ultimate rationality of the cosmos and of the human microcosm. The representative figures of this transitional period are Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete (ca. 1400–1469). Brunelleschi was a technician who used the tools of science without elaborating a particular theoretical framework, privileging a classical repertoire and situating architecture within the new cultural system. He was the inventor of linear perspective and defined its rules in the realms of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Filarete helped diffuse Renaissance style with his Trattato di architettura (Treatise on Architecture, 1461–1464), the first theoretical work on the subject written in the vernacular, in which he described his complex plan for Sforzinda, an ideal city. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), a versatile and original architect also influential for his literary and cultural production, is considered to be the archetypal embodiment of the Renaissance man. Alberti’s architectural plans and constructions developed in symmetry with his literary production, and his ethical and philosophical thought thus developed through the physical form of the figurative arts. This transference of thought into form was made possible by his study of physics and mathematics and his profound knowledge of classical monuments. Alberti contributed to the ‘‘renaissance’’ in the humanist perspective by writing De pictura (On Painting, 1435), De statua (On Sculpture, ca. 1433–1437), and De re aedificatoria (On Architecture), published posthumously in 1485. The latter became a fundamental reference text for future generations, reflecting as it does Alberti’s concept of man as the architect and organizer of civil society. Alberti forged a path that many later treatise writers would follow, discussing art as a method of scientific enquiry. Among Alberti’s most prominent followers was Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), 70

who worked in the fields of painting, architecture, anatomy, nature, mechanics, and engineering. Leonardo’s connection with the written word was instinctive; his prose is filled with unique, poetic epiphanies that translate his vision of reality into lyrical terms. His vast encyclopaedic work, the Codice atlantico (Atlantic Code, facsimile ed. 1894–1904), unfinished and seemingly disorderly, forms an indissoluble connection between writing, drawing, and planning, elaborating the details of each subject with acute insight. Some of his other works discuss the influence of the Florentine literary milieu and of popular literature: This is the subject of the Bestiario (Bestiary) and of the Facezie (Jests), fragments found in his manuscripts, as well as of the Favole (Fables). Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was a painter, sculptor, architect, and poet. While planning the dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral late in life, he wrote his Rime (Lyrics, 1623), a collection that experimented with a variety of styles and themes: the love impulse, solitude and sleep, matter and spirit, death and eternity. In 1570, Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) published I quattro libri dell’architettura (The Four Books on Architecture), a rigorous theoretical description of Roman temples, the first treatise of its kind, which also served as a manifesto of the architect’s projects. Palladio’s work enjoys universal success; it is the summa of the architect’s thought, an impressive dossier describing his projects in the making. Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), another successful architect and painter, celebrated other great artistic personages in his literary work. His monumental Le vite de’ piu´ eccellenti architetti, pittori e scultori italiani da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri (Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors from Cimabue to the Present Day, 1550, rev. 1568) represents an impressive quantity of research developed into a text unparalleled for its technical information, historical descriptions, and literary merits. Vasari’s dedication to the arts and to the most important artistic figures in Italy guided him in the production of a literary work closely connected to his own professional practice. The strategic function of Renaissance architects in staging aristocratic ceremonies and rituals that involved the piazza, gardens, and palaces in their elaborate plans (and which anticipated the institution of the theater as an urban building), led to crucial changes in Baroque Rome. Since theatrical works developed thanks to a collaboration among all the performing arts, the reigning political power

LITERATURE OF ARCHITECTURE constantly called on the prominent figures working in these artistic fields. This fact was significant for the architect, as he entered into direct contact with theatrical performance: The ‘‘theatricality’’ of the piazza corresponded to the arrival of professional theater in noble palaces. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was a key figure in stimulating the development of the theater and in designing sets. He devised fantastic stage sets, acted, directed, and even composed several theatrical works, including Li due Covielli (The Two Coviellis), which he staged in 1637 with his brother Luigi, and the comedy La fontana di Trevi (The Trevi Fountain, 1643–1644). For the setting of the latter he developed the theme of the theater within the theater, taking the spectator behind the scenes to depict ‘‘how a show is made’’: The image was reflected and refracted, projecting his belief that the language of the stage forms part of the cultural quality of theater. Bernini’s work influenced Guarino Guarini (1624–1683), a cleric from Chieti who was a novice in Baroque Rome. An artist, scholar, and architect, Guarini pushed the language of architectural invention to surprising levels in such works as Architettura civile (Civic Architecture, posthumous, 1737); Placita philosophica (1665), which explains the connection between astronomy and architecture; and La pieta` trionfante (The Triumph of Pity, 1660), a moral tragicomedy staged in Messina, in which he developed a parallel between the plot and the baroque complexity of the Church of the Padri Somaschi. The birth and subsequent development of modern technology transformed the structures and functions of art; craftsmanship became dispensable, and artistic perspectives changed, leading to the condemnation of Baroque and Rococo excesses and to the reevaluation of the technical and scientific capabilities of engineers. During the Enlightenment the architect no longer imitated nature but rather captured and modified it: he adapted nature to reflect human feelings and the usefulness of social life, interpreting the natural world and inserting it in the new structure of the city. Within this context, the emblematic figure of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) is significant for his visionary architectural imagination. During the nineteenth century, Camillo Boito (1836–1914) was particularly central. Boito recognized the uncertainty in which his generation worked and condemned blind eclecticism, favoring instead choices in tune with the needs of society. Boito engaged his perspective as architect and art critic in the literature he wrote: He treated the

crisis of bourgeois conscience in Storielle vane (Vain Novellas, 1876), Senso: Nuove storielle vane (Senso: New Vain Novellas, 1883), and Il maestro di Setticlavio (The Teacher of the Seven Keys, 1891). There were frequent allusions to figurative arts, evoking the artistic or musical context in which the characters lived. Boito also published Architettura del Medio-Evo in Italia (Medieval Architecture in Italy, 1880) and Gite di un artista (An Artist’s Travels, 1884). In the early twentieth century, the European avant-garde movement brought a new perspective on ethical, philosophical, political, and cultural values, as well as a new conception of human life in the modern world. Futurism was especially important in the context of contemporary Italian art, given its influence on a number of creative fields. Traditional barriers between genres were overcome in the attempt to create works (even utopian works) that created or transmitted a global experience. The pioneers of the First Futurism established the common goal of moving toward the total reconstruction of the universe, toward the concurrence of life and art. Urban and architectural space as well as interior design became fundamental. The image of the futuristic city transmitted by the architect Antonio Sant’Elia (1888–1916) was linked to the idea of simultaneity, exalting macchinismo (machinism). He eliminated every trace of historical memory and concerned himself instead with exalting modern technology. He also devised theories and plans in which, by way of transfers, slides, and rotations, complex structures and masses interacted with one another in a form of virtual movement, as can be observed in the drawings for La citta` nuova (The New City, 1914). Sant’Elia’s was a utopian architecture and often proved impossible to construct. His architectural sensibility was nevertheless consistent with the theories of his own Manifesto dell’architettura futurista (Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, 1914) and was evident in his writings on theater and in the structure of theatrical pie`ces transformed by Futurist artists into ‘‘syntheses.’’ For Virgilio Marchi (1895–1960), to stage this new reality meant to practice a more rigorously defined lyricism, theorized in his work, Architettura futurista (Futurist Architecture, 1924). He compared architects to lyric artists par excellence (poets, musicians, painters, sculptors), defining his project as ‘‘dramatic architecture.’’ Giacomo Balla’s (1874–1958) inventive approach aimed to transform the human environment; to this end, he employed the visual arts but also interior decorating, stage planning (his 71

LITERATURE OF ARCHITECTURE 1915 Feux d’artifice by Stravinskij), performance texts, and ‘‘syntheses,’’ which foreshadowed the theater of the absurd. In this sense, Sconcertazione di stati d’animo (Disconcerting of Inner States, 1916) and Per comprendere il pianto (To Understand Weeping, 1916) were exemplary. Enrico Prampolini (1894–1956) and Fortunato Depero (1892–1960), on the other hand, favored the settings of dwellings, nightclubs, and ‘‘art houses,’’ places in which shows and debates came alive. The Futurist sphere, with its numerous manifestos, finds in theater a concrete but fictional setting in which to dramatize the poetic union between art, stage setting, and architecture. Later Futurist revolutionary projects transcended the theater to invade the piazza, even the metaphoric, political one. Under the Fascist regime, one of the most courageous architects and intellectuals was Giuseppe Terragni (1904–1943), whose interest in abstraction concerned both the reality around him and the formulation of his own work. His poetics was close to metaphysical painting, as if his buildings no longer belonged to a real place. His extraordinary project-emblem Danteum (1938) was representative of symbolic architecture: Through complex formal allusions and immediate literary references, it became the architectural equivalent of Dante’s Comedia, reducing every style, every temporal reference, and every material reality to zero. The plan for the Danteum overlapped Massentius’s basilica in Rome. Among Terragni’s unfulfilled plans, this was the purest and most complex, a pivotal project through which to analyze his architectural production in its relation to literature. In the second half of the twentieth century, the search for and the freedom of style led artists into uncharted areas, made possible by new materials and construction techniques. Architects and designers such as Aldo Rossi (1931–1997), Renzo Piano (1937– ), Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978), and Gae Aulenti (1927–) used their personal poetics to convey themes of obsession, the metaphor of a literary text, or the atmosphere of drama or painting into the narrative space of architecture. Time and space, energy and naturalness were connected to the marketplace, the villa, the tower, and the gable. These forms were Aldo Rossi’s main ‘‘modules,’’ composed from fragments, relics of time, found objects that were reused to become the source of a thousand creations. Rossi’s most successful attempt at recovery was his conception of the theater as a delimited space, where performance was imposed with the orchestra’s first notes. Theater and architecture shared a common foundation in ritual, in 72

the moment when action comes into being. This common thread was exemplified in the productions of the Teatro Scientifico and its poetic and symbolic apex, Teatro del mondo (Theatre of the World, 1979), a bizarre floating castle that arrived by sea to dock in the Venetian lagoon during carnival. This theater-ship became an emblematic site in which architecture ended and imagination began. With an explicit reference to the Shakespearean Globe Theater and to premonumental Venice, its prestige lay in its mixing of themes, types, and materials. These traits, also reflected in Rossi’s paintings and stage sets (as in the 1992 Electra staged at Taormina), refuted the superfluous, entrusting themselves to the imaginations of actor and audience. After L’architettura della citta` (The Architecture of the City, 1966), Rossi’s Autobiografia scientifica (Scientific Autobiography, 1981) was one of his most suggestive poetic narratives. In I dialoghi del cantiere (Dialogues in the Building Yard, 1986) and Giornale di bordo (The Renzo Piano Logbook, 1997), Renzo Piano used a firstperson narrative voice to describe his adventures as architect. His works rely on a complex team effort, the wise use of technology, and experimentation. Piano ventured into the theatrical realm by participating in the challenging project for Luigi Nono’s Prometeo (Prometheus, 1984–1985), a work with a libretto composed by philosopher Massimo Cacciari. Piano designed not a set but a musical space: Meant for the church of San Lorenzo in Venice, the stage structure became a great sound box that contained audience, orchestra, and soloists, itself a musical instrument. It was necessarily a unique space; after the Venice premiere it was adapted in entirely different contexts in Milan, Paris, and Berlin. Themes and strong iconographic influences drawn from figurative art (Klee, Mondrian, Kandinskij, Arp) characterized Carlo Scarpa’s production, which reevaluated architecture in terms of its contamination by painting and sculpture. In works such as the restoration of the Castelvecchio Museum near Verona and of the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice, Scarpa integrated concepts and combinations into his creative process without disturbing the Gothic elements of the original buildings. His efforts as an organizer of exhibitions (the Venice Biennale and the Galleria d’Arte Nazionale Moderna in Rome) were also essential. In some cases, he conceived spaces through analogy with the exhibited works. For example, in the Padiglione del libro (1950), he built a ‘‘book for books,’’ in the form of a construction that can be leafed

PIETRO ARETINO through, changing in space and time. Scarpa created a narrative in which architecture accentuated the meaning of the work of art by way of shaping the way it is perceived in a particular space. Gae Aulenti (1927–) is an eclectic architect whose stage and costume design connects different artistic fields, turning the spaces in which she works into theaters, museums, or exemplars of civic architecture. Her stage sets often evoke Marinetti’s Manifesto del Teatro di Varieta` (The Vaudeville Manifesto, 1913). She uses provocative sets to create a theater architecture in which ‘‘noise’’ dominates, as in her staging of Shakespeare’s King Lear (1992). Aulenti’s poetics can be best seen through her work on restructuring projects and museum exhibitions (the Muse´e d’Orsay in Paris, 1980–1986, and the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, 1985–1986) or in her creation of stage sets for operas and plays, often in collaboration with director Luca Ronconi. Aulenti recreates spaces and their functions in the stage sets she designs for Ronconi, finding dramatic action in surprising and innovative places, such as the Laboratorio di Progettazione Teatrale in Prato (1978), which she adapts for Pasolini’s Caldero´n and Hofmannsthal’s La torre (The Tower), both indebted to Caldero´n de la Barca’s Life’s a Dream, and for Euripides’ Bacchae. SABINA TUTONE Further Reading Bernardini, Maria Grazia, and Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Regista del Barocco, Milan: Skira, 1999. Buchanan, Peter, Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Complete Works, London: Phaidon, 1993–2000.

Caramel, Luciano, and Alberto Longatti, Antonio Sant’Elia: L’opera completa, Milan: Mondadori, 1987. Carandini, Silvia, Teatro e spettacolo nel Seicento, RomeBari: Laterza, 1990. Consonni, Giancarlo, Teatro corpo architettura, RomeBari: Laterza, 1998. Dal Co, Francesco, and Giuseppe Mazzariol (editors), Carlo Scarpa: Opera completa 1906–1978, Milan: Electa, 1984; as Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works, New York: Rizzoli, 1988. Fossati, Paolo, La realta` attrezzata: Scena e spettacolo dei futuristi, Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Maderna, Marco (editor), Pensieri di un architetto del secondo Ottocento: Documenti e frammenti per una biografia intellettuale di Camillo Boito critico militante e architetto, Milan: Archinto, 1998. Magnago Lampugnani, Vittorio, and Millon A. Henry (editors), The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, New York: Rizzoli, 1994. Malacarne, Gino, and Patrizia Montini Zimolo, Aldo Rossi e Venezia: Il teatro e la citta`, Milan: Unicopli, 2002. Meek, Alan, Guarino Guarini, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Petranzan, Margherita, Gae Aulenti, New York: Rizzoli, 1997. Piano, Renzo, I dialoghi di cantiere, Bari: Laterza, 1986. Piano, Renzo, Giornale di bordo, Florence: Passigli, 1997; as The Renzo Piano Logbook, London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Quadri, Franco, Gae Aulenti, and Luca Ronconi, Il Laboratorio di Prato, Milan: Ubu Libri, 1981. Rossi, Aldo, L’architettura della citta`, Padova: Marsilio Editori, 1966; as The Architecture of the City, Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1982. Rossi, Aldo, Autobiografia scientifica, Milan: Nuove Pratiche Editrice, 1999; as A Scientific Autobiography, Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1981. Schumacher, Thomas L., Terragni e il Danteum, Rome: Officina, 1980; as The Danteum: A Study in the Architecture of Literature, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1985.

PIETRO ARETINO (1492–1556) An eccentric and transgressive man of letters of the early sixteenth century, Pietro Aretino owed his fame above all else to his exceptional life, which he was able to construct with tenacious determination as the most ingenious of his works. Given the tight interweaving of writing and biographical

incident, his literary production must be considered in the light of the fundamental stages of his eventful life and his relation to the politics and mores of the time. His writings, in fact, spring from the immediacy—often opportunistic—with which he was able to react to contemporary events. 73

PIETRO ARETINO His origins being obscure and humble—he was the illegitimate son of a shoemaker and a beautiful courtesan—he wished to be known, according to a widespread custom among artists and adventurers of the time, only by the name of his city of birth. In Perugia, having entered a refined circle of painters, writers, and scholars from the provinces, he made his debut as a poet and painter; he remained tied to painting for his entire life, counting Titian, Raphael, Sansovino, and Sebastiano del Piombo among his friendships and associations. During this period he published his first collection of verse, Opera nova (New Work, 1512). A conventional effort under the influence of Petrarch, Pietro Bembo, and of the then-dominant fifteenth-century lyric, this early short work allows us to reconstruct the formation and the beginning of the writer’s ambitious literary career. An autodidact and dilettante, far from possessing humanistic discipline, the young Aretino was already adept at mastering the literary exercise, and here in particular the courtly lyric, which was considered a means of access to the courts. The famous Pasquinate (pasquinades), a typically Roman literary form that Aretino recast in the vernacular, date to the first years he spent in Rome (1517–1522), at the court of Pope Leo X and later of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. In Aretino’s modernization, the Pasquinate, biting satires against the corruption of the Curia, cardinals, authorities, and government leaders, became a true instrument of struggle and political propaganda. On the occasion of the conclave that followed the death of the pope, Aretino, a supporter of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, composed a series of aggressive and desecrative sonnets in order to denigrate the other candidates. Around these Pasquinate, he built the myth of the satiric poet, a master in the art of defamation, which in a short time brought him fame throughout Europe. The figure of Pasquino became the desecrative and feared alter ego of Aretino himself. With a frenetic activity as a libeler, he created a new technique, a new rhythm, and a new lexicon, characterized by the vivacity of spoken language and the use of dialectal and slang terms, in open contrast with the classicizing ideals of the time. The election in 1522 of the Flemish Pope Adrian VI, whom Aretino opposed and denigrated in the Pasquinate del Conclave (Pasquinades of the Conclave), published only in 1891, forced him to leave Rome, to which he would be able to return only after the election of the Medicean Pope Clement VII. In a papal court that was favorable to him but 74

already beset by the winds of the Lutheran revolt, he pursued the edification of his own image as a free and daring writer. Aware of his own genius, he knew how to exalt or sway and blackmail the powerful, who loved and feared him and were prepared to buy his praises or, even more, his silence. Ludovico Ariosto defined him as the ‘‘flagello dei principi’’ (scourge of princes). In 1524 he composed the Sonetti lussuriosi (Lascivious Sonnets) and Sonetti sopra i XVI modi (Sonnets on the Sixteen Pleasures) to accompany a matching number of erotic engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi. In them, he described the copulative positions in a burlesque tone. He made an enemy of Cardinal Gian Matteo Giberti, the powerful pontifical datary, who, accusing him of obscenity, forced him to leave the city once again. In Mantua, aspiring to a possible post at the court of the Duke Federico Gonzaga, in 1527 he began to write the chivalric poem Marfisa in his honor, along with the comedy Il Marescalco (The Marescalco), which were both reworked some years later. He also dedicated to the duke a celebrated ‘‘prognostication’’ (only a fragment survives), in which he foretells violent and traumatic events that appear to be realized shortly afterward with the terrible sack of Rome on May 5, 1527; the prognostication was interpreted as an authoritative prophecy of the disaster. No longer feeling secure at the Mantuan court, he moved to Venice in 1527, where he spent the rest of his years. The Serenissima, the center of the arts, capital of the fashionable world and of European publishing, seemed to him the ideal place to be able to achieve his social and literary ambitions. Esteemed by the Doge Andrea Gritti and the Venetian aristocracy, within a short time he built a thick web of political and cultural connections at the highest level. Artists, architects, men of letters, princes, ecclesiastics, noblewomen, and businessmen frequented his house on the Canal Grande. He was immortalized by the brush of his friend Titian, and his success knew no limits. The greatest powers of the time, from the King of France, Francis I, to the Emperor Charles V, from Pope Clement VII to Cosimo de’ Medici, showered him with tributes and recognition. Alongside his political and social activity is his febrile literary productivity, which resulted in a dizzying flow of various publications, thanks as well to the close relation he established with the publisher Marcolini. To the Pasquino ‘‘scourge of princes,’’ he added the figure of the refined man of letters, epic poet, treatise writer, author of

PIETRO ARETINO comedies, and letter writer. The recent invention of the printing press allowed writing to reach a wide audience rapidly, bringing it into the fast-moving circle of production and consumption. Aretino exploited all of the potential of this new instrument of publishing, and he relied on the printing press for the amplification of his fame. It is impossible, therefore, to approach Aretino using the standards of Humanism. As the child of a new age, he opposed the rituality of the court models and the aspiration to classicism the reversal of that world and of those models. Having understood that the market is the engine of the new society, he was aware that his own literary works were subject to an economic logic. The genres and subjects that his abundant, disordered production approached are at times libertine and erotic and at others ascetic and religious; but not libertine or religious for their own sakes but as a function of their destination, accessibility, and consumption. In Venice, Aretino composed his masterpiece, the dialoghi puttaneschi (whore’s dialogues), traditionally grouped together under the title Ragionamenti (Dialogues, 1534, 1536), a paradoxical pedagogy of the trade of the prostitute and the madame. Following this work are the Ragionamento de le Corti (Court Dialogue, 1938), in which not only courtiers, but the court itself is compared to whores; and Carte parlanti (The Speaking Cards, 1543), a reportage on the life of the powerful depicted as a place of deception and the negation of every human virtue. The two works represent and carry to an extreme typically Aretinian themes and attitudes, but they remain far from the felicitous spontaneity and expressive immediacy of the dialoghi puttaneschi. With his Lettere (Letters), Aretino invented a new successful genre, transferring to the vernacular the model of humanistic letter writing. The approximately 3,000 letters were published in six volumes (the first in 1538, the last posthumously in 1557). They are not simple missives but rather the literary monument of his entire existence. Addressed to the most diverse personages, they converge to build the image of the author as ‘‘secretary of the world,’’ someone who is placed at the center of a web of excellent personal connections. Aretino’s letter writing is an indispensable point of reference for the vast sixteenth-century production of letters in the vernacular. Also significant, for their inventive and stylistic force, are the early comedies, which break with the classical schemes and constitute an atypical presence in the panorama of Renaissance Italian comedy. Having arisen within the life of the court,

these comedies represent with a pungent vivacity the corruption of the clergy and the powerful. The brilliant La Cortigiana (The Courtesan, 1534) was rewritten and published in Venice after a distinct first composition in Rome of 1525. In 1533, Il Marescalco reelaborated the text that was already partly composed during his stay in Mantua. With an amusing burlesque plot built around the homosexuality of Duke Federico Gonzaga’s chamberlain, the comedy resulted in a lively satire of life at court. The court setting is preserved as well in the theatrical works to follow, which, while remaining faithful to the poetics of the spoken word, blend elements of comedy and the novella and even represent the author’s harkening back to the schemes he had previously rejected. Lo Ipocrito (The Hypocrite, 1542), which is dominated by the figure of a Tartuffe avant le lettre, is a traditional comedy built around the classical plots, mistaken identities, the customary matrimonial misunderstandings and arrangements. In Talanta (1542) as well, performed during the carnival of the same year with a prestigious set decoration by Giorgio Vasari, there is an evident Terentian ancestry and the essential acceptance of classicizing rules. Il Filosofo (The Philosopher, 1546), which is derived explicitly from Boccaccio’s Decameron, is a conventional erotic situational comedy. La Orazia (The Horatii, 1546) is the only tragedy Aretino composed in hendecasyllables; it represents a break with respect to his previous production. With this work, he attempted to conform to the highest level recognized by the poetics of classicism, thus contributing to the sixteenth-century codification of tragedy in the vernacular. In contrast, and running parallel to, the erotic writings, letters, and comedies, beginning in 1534, he published his religious prose with great success. There are two quite distinct series, chronologically and in argument. On the one side are the biblical works: Passione di Gesu´ (The Passion of Christ, 1534), Salmi (The Psalms, 1534), Umanita` di Cristo (Christ’s Humanity, 1535), and Il Genesi con la visione di Noe` (Genesis with Noah’s Vision, 1538). On the other are the hagiographical writings: Vita di Maria vergine (The Life of the Virgin Mary, 1539), Vita di Catherina vergine (The Life of Catherine, 1540), and Vita di San Tomaso signor d’Aquino (The Life of Saint Thomas, 1543). Both series were published in two volumes (1551, 1552) and offered to the Arezzan Pope Giulio III. Stylistically, the manneristic refinement of the sacred compositions is not without dramatic and pictorial-figurative effects. Composed as he aspired to the cardinal’s 75

PIETRO ARETINO chapel, in reality they allow a sympathy to shine through for reformed attitudes and perspectives that are widespread in Italian evangelical circles. In his practice of poetry, which he began during his years as a young man and continued for his entire life, Aretino had multiple models—he looked to Petrarch, but also to Luigi Pulci, Teofilo Folengo, and Ariosto. His is above all an occasional poetry that cannot claim to reach the heights of epic poetry. Nevertheless, he wished to try his hand at this genre as well: Marfisa, a poem begun in 1527 of which he published two cantos in 1532, conceived in order to celebrate the Gonzaga family but never completed; and Orlandino (only two cantos published in 1540), a savage desecration of chivalry. Innovation and tradition, anticlassicism and classicism, the profane-obscene and the sacred seem to alternate with one another and in some stretches to coexist in Aretino’s work. Though he always asserted the ideal of a spontaneous writing, imbued with immediacy and naturalness, he proved to be well aware of the fact that only a high, refined language could assure him dignity as a writer. In 1559, three years before his death, his works were placed on the Index and his reputation was quickly tarnished, remaining for centuries that of the pornographic and scandalous writer, a cynic and adventurer, a symbol of corruption and dissoluteness. Contemporary criticism has reevaluated the complexity of his personality, emphasizing his modernity and openness to any form of experimentation.

Biography Pietro Aretino was born in Arezzo, between April 19 and April 20, 1492, to Luca Buta and Tita (Margherita) Bonci. He moved to Perugia in 1510. He was in Rome, the guest of the banker Agostino Chigi and afterward at the court of Pope Leo X, in 1520. He passed into the service of the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici in 1521. Upon the election of Pope Adrian VI, he followed Cardinal de’Medici to Bologna and Florence in 1522. Aretino was in Mantua, first with the Gonzagas, and then in the summer at the camp of the condottiere Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, in 1523. Having come into conflict with the cardinal Giberti, he sought refuge in Fano, where he met the King of France, Francis I. He returned to Rome in 1523. He faced an attempt on his life, probably commissioned by Gilberti, and sought refuge in Mantua in 1525. He moved definitively to Venice in 1527. After a period of oscillation between the Francophile party and the pro-imperial 76

party, he aligned himself with Charles V, from whom he received an annual pension of 200 scudi in 1536. With his lover Caterina Sandella, he had his first daughter, Adria, in 1537. He was denounced for blasphemy and, perhaps, for sodomy, in 1538. He was accepted into the Accademia degli Infiammati of Padua in 1541. In Peschiera he met with Charles V in 1543. Caterina Sandella bore him a second daughter, whom he named Austria in honor of the Emperor, in 1547. The city of Arezzo named him gonfaloniere, and the new Arezzan Pope Giulio III conferred on him the knighthood of San Pietro in 1550. He returned to Rome and was named Chief Captain of the pontifical army in 1553. He died in Venice on October 21, 1556, from an attack of apoplexy. DANIELE VIANELLO Selected Works Collections Prose sacre di Pietro Aretino, edited by Ettore Allodoli, Lanciano: Carabba, 1914. The Letters of Pietro Aretino, edited by Thomas Caldecot Chubb, New York: Archon, 1967. Teatro, edited by Giorgio Petrocchi, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1971. Le vite dei santi, edited by Flavia Santin, Rome: Bonacci, 1977. Pasquinate romane del Cinquecento, edited by Valerio Marucci, Antonio Marzo and Angelo Romano, 2 vols., Rome: Salerno 1983. Lettere, edited by Gian Mario Anselmi, Rome: Carocci, 2000. Edizione Nazionale delle Opere, Rome: Salerno, 1992–2004.

Poetry ‘‘Opera nova,’’ 1512. ‘‘Esortazione de la pace tra l’Imperatore e il Re di Francia,’’ 1524. ‘‘Laude di Clemente VII,’’ 1524. ‘‘Sonetti lussuriosi,’’ 1524. ‘‘Sonetti sopra i XVI modi,’’ 1524; as I Modi: The Sixteen Pleasures, translated by Lynn Lawyer, 1988. ‘‘Canzone in laude del datario,’’ ca. 1524–1525. ‘‘Dui primi canti di Marphisa,’’ 1532. ‘‘D’Angelica due primi canti,’’ 1535. ‘‘Stanze in lode di madonna Angela Sirena,’’ 1537. ‘‘Tre primi canti di battaglia’’ (three cantos of Marfisa), 1537. ‘‘De le lagrime d’Angelica due primi canti’’ (fragment Marfisa), 1538. ‘‘Abbattimento poetico del divino Aretino, et del bestiale Albicante,’’ 1539. ‘‘Li dui primi canti di Orlandino,’’ 1540. ‘‘Il capitolo e il sonetto in laude de lo Imperatore,’’ 1543. ‘‘Ternali in gloria di Giulio terzo pontefice, et delle maesta` della Reina cristianissima,’’ 1551. ‘‘Pasquinate di Pietro Aretino e anonime per il conclave di Adriano VI,’’ 1891.

PIETRO ARETINO Plays Il Marescalco, 1533; as Marescalco, translated by George Bull, 1978; as The Marescalco, translated by Leonard G. Sbrocchi and Douglas J. Campbell, 1986. La Cortigiana, 1534. Lo Ipocrito, 1542. Talanta, 1542; as Talanta in Three Reanaissance Comedies, translated by Christopher Cairns, 1991. Il Filosofo, 1546. La Orazia, 1546.

Other Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia, 1534; as Dialogues, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, 1971. La passione di Gesu´ con due canzoni, 1534. I sette salmi della penitentia di David, 1534. I tre libri de la humanita` di Cristo, 1535. Dialogo nel quale la Nanna [...] insegna alla Pippa sua figliuola, 1536. Ragionamento de le Corti, 1938; as Dialogues, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, 1971. Il Genesi con la visione di Noe`, 1538. Vita di Maria vergine, 1539. Vita di Catherina vergine, 1540. La vita di san Tomaso signor d’Aquino, 1543. Dialogo nel quale si parla del giuoco con moralita` piacevole (known as Carte parlanti), 1543.

Letters Lettere Lettere Lettere Lettere Lettere Lettere

I, 1538. II, 1542. III, 1546. IV, 1550. V, 1550. VI, 1557.

Further Reading Aquilecchia, Giovanni, ‘‘Pietro Aretino e altri poligrafi a Venezia,’’ in Nuove schede di italianistica, Rome: Salerno, 1994. Cairns, Christopher, Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice: Researches on Aretino and His Circle in Venice 1527–1556, Florence: Olschki, 1985. Cleugh, James, The Divine Aretino, New York: Stein & Day, 1966. Cottino-Jones, Marga, Introduzione a Pietro Aretino, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993. Hutton, Edward, Pietro Aretino: The Scourge of Princes, London: Constable, 1922. Innamorati, Giulio, Tradizione e invenzione in Pietro Aretino, Messina-Florence: D’Anna, 1957. Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino, Rome: Salerno, 1997. Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino tra Rinascimento e Manierismo, Rome: Bulzoni, 1980. Petrocchi, Giorgio, Pietro Aretino tra Rinascimento e Controriforma, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1948. Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita. Atti del Convegno di Roma-Viterbo-Arezzo (28 settembre–1 ottobre 1992) e Toronto-Los Angeles (23–29 ottobre 1992), 2 vols., Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1995. Procaccioli, Paolo, ‘‘Pietro Aretino,’’ in Storia generale della letteratura italiana, vol. 4, edited by Walter Pedulla` and Nino Borsellino, Milan: Federico Motta, 2004.

Quondam, Amedeo, ‘‘Nel giardino del Marcolini. Un editore veneziano tra Aretino e Doni,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 157(1980), 75–116. Romano, Angelo, L’officina degli irregolari. Scavi aretiniani e verifiche stilistiche, Viterbo: Sette citta`, 1997. Romano, Angelo, Periegesi aretiniane. Testi, schede e note biografiche intorno a Pietro Aretino, Rome: Salerno, 1991. Romei, Danilo, ‘‘Aretino e Pasquino,’’ Atti e Memorie della Accademia Petrarca di Lettere, Arti e Scienze, 54 (1992), 67–92. Valletta, Giovanni, Le prose sacre di Pietro Aretino, Naples: Societa` di Cultura per la Lucania, 1974. Waddington, Raymond B., Aretino’s Satyr, Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

LA CORTIGIANA, 1534 Play by Pietro Aretino

La Cortigiana (The Courtesan), Aretino’s first dramatic work, remained for a long time in manuscript form. A prose comedy in five acts, composed in Rome between February and July of 1525, it was printed in Venice after almost a decade by the publisher Marcolini, with significant modifications. This manuscript was published in a modern edition in 1970. As the title suggests (La Cortigiana is a ‘‘court comedy’’), the central theme is the world of the court, in particular the corrupt Roman Curia in which Aretino lived between 1516 and 1526. The first draft of the work is entirely Roman and pasquinesco, a violent satire against the pettiness of daily life and the parasitism the courts of the cardinals. Rome and the papal Curia are represented as a modern Babel, a topsy-turvy world ruled by money, envy, ambition, and above all by the practice of deception: ‘‘Voi credevate che ci fussi sotto la torre di Babilonia, e sotto ci era Roma’’ (You thought that beneath was the Tower of Babel, but it was Rome) asserts the long introductory section (Prologo, 7), which insists upon the ‘‘Roman-ness’’ of the comedy. 77

PIETRO ARETINO The plot turns on two parallel pranks: The first is planned at the expense of the foolish Sienese Messer Maco, who, having come to Rome to become the perfect courtier and cardinal, falls into the trap of Mastro Andrea and is savagely mocked. The victim of the second ‘‘prank’’ is the ceremonious Parabolano, a Neapolitan in love with a Roman noblewoman named Laura, who is mercilessly deceived by the cunning servant Roso and Aloigia, a procuress. The two principal pranks are interwoven with a number of minor episodes, which are defined by the author himself as parts ‘‘fuor di commedia’’ (outside the play). The dramatic structure of the first Cortigiana breaks down into a tangle of rapid and independent situations and chaotic scenes. In the Prologo and the Argomento, Aretino, calling himself the ‘‘omo di suo capo’’ (man of his own mind) declares his own rejection of preconstituted models. The rules of classical comedy, which are precisely defined in the dramatic works of the first two decades of the century (from Ariosto’s Cassaria to Machiavelli’s La mandragola), are here reversed. The Prologo begins with the typical send-off ‘‘Plaudite et valete’’ (Applaud, and farewell), and the comedy threatens to end even before it begins. The Rome of the first Cortigiana is a ‘‘citta` reale’’ (real city): The scene is moved off the stage, into the street, and the sendoff seems to present the possibility of a continuation of the spectacle ‘‘a ponte Sisto’’ (on the Ponte Sisto). Having now settled in Venice, far removed from the Roman world, and with fewer subjective reasons for his involvement in and aggression toward the papal court, Aretino reorganized the new comedy principally around the pranks. A great many of the references to real events and people of Medicean Rome disappear. Of the first Roman version, the Venetian edition preserves the plot, the parodic exaggeration, and the reversal of the Petrarchan amorous code; but the style, imbued with a more refined form of theatrical writing, changes. On the anarchy of the original text, Aretino superimposed a more disciplined compositional structure, a primitive comic language, encrusted with dialect forms, mixed with the use of regular Tuscan forms, in the service of a rigorous literary design. The anticourt polemical vein turns into the juxtaposition of the order of the Serenissima to the chaos of the Roman court, with Venice being identified as the ideal city in which justice and liberty reign supreme. DANIELE VIANELLO 78

Editions First edition: Cortigiana, Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1534. Critical edition: La cortigiana (from the ms. of 1525), edited by Giulio Innamorati, Turin: Einaudi, 1970; rev. ed. 1973; Cortigiana, in Teatro, edited by Giorgio Petrocchi, Milan: Mondadori, 1971; Cortigiana, edited by Angelo Romano, Milan: Rizzoli, 2001.

Further Reading Baratto, Mario, ‘‘Commedie di Pietro Aretino’’ (1957), in Tre studi sul teatro, Vicenza, Neri Pozza, 1964. Ba`rberi, Squarotti, Giorgio, ‘‘L’invenzione della ‘Cortigiana,’’’ Campi immaginabili, 11–12 (1994), 7–33. Borsellino, Nino, ‘‘La memoria teatrale di Pietro Aretino: i prologhi della ‘Cortigiana,’’’ Annali FM, 1(1979), 21–35. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘Il teatro di Roma: la prima Cortigiana,’’ in Le voci dell’istrione. Petro Aretino e la dissoluzione del teatro, Naples: Liguori, 1977. Guidi, Jose, ‘‘Visage de la vie de cour selon Castiglione et l’Are´tin, du ‘Cortegiano’ a` la ‘Cortigiana,’’’ in Culture ˆ ge a` la Renaissance, et Socie´te´ en Italie du Moyen-A hommage a` Andre´ Rochon, Paris: Universite´ de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1985. Larivaille, Paul, ‘‘Vers un the´atre a` une seule voix: les prologues de l’Are´tin au ‘Marescalco’ et a` ‘La Cortigiana’ du 1534,’’ in L’e´crivain face a son public a` la Renaissance, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1989. Procaccioli, Paolo, ‘‘L’anticamera della corte: dalla ‘Farza’ alla ‘Cortigiana,’’’ Annali FM, 1(1979), 37–56. Romano, Angelo, ‘‘Appunti sui personaggi della ‘Cortigiana’ (1525) dell’Aretino,’’ in Scenary, Set & Staging in the Renaissance. Studies in the Practice of Theatre, edited by Christopher Cairn, Lewiston–New York– Lampeter: Edwind Mellen, 1996. Tonello, Mario, ‘‘Lingua e polemica teatrale nella ‘Cortigiana’ di Pietro Aretino,’’ in Lingua e strutture del teatro italiano del Rinascimento, Padua: Liviana, 1970.

RAGIONAMENTI, 1534–1536 Dialogues by Pietro Aretino

Two works are grouped together under the heading Ragionamenti: the Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia (The Dialogue of Nanna and

PIETRO ARETINO Antonia, 1534) and Dialogo della Nanna e della Pippa (Dialogue of Nanna and Pippa, 1536). Printed in Venice (even if the former bears the marking Paris, the latter Turin), they were both probably released by the publisher Marcolini. It is the author himself who created confusion surrounding the title, defining the work as a whole as dialoghi puttaneschi (whore’s dialogues) but calling the Ragionamento at times a ‘‘dialogue,’’ at times capricci (caprices), or at other times ragionamenti (discussions). To the Ragionamenti Aretino owed his fame not only as a licentious writer but also as a paradoxical exponent of Renaissance etiquette. The characters of the dialogues seem to incarnate, in a provocative manner, the brutal reversal and degradation of the courtly model proposed by Baldassarre Castiglione into the feminine. In this work, more than in others, Boccaccio’s Decameron constitutes a clear point of comparison. Both dialogues take place over the course of three days. In the Ragionamento, these correspond to the description of three different female conditions: that of the nun, the wife, and the whore; the three days of the Dialogo mark an excursion into the whore’s trade covering the profession’s dangers and the art of pandering. The protagonist is the Roman courtesan Nanna, the mother of Pippa. In the Ragionamento, the dialogue takes place in Rome on the via della Scrofa, under a fig tree. On the first day, Nanna, encouraged by Antonia, her peer, tells how as a nun she had been precociously initiated into sex at a libertine convent, the site of wild orgies in which the bishop himself participated. The second day is devoted to the life of married women, a dull and unbearable life for those who, like Nanna, have taken as their model the practice of betrayal and transgression. The third day describes the life of whores, which Nanna finally arrives at, persuaded that only in prostitution can the status of a ‘‘free’’ and ‘‘honest’’ woman be achieved. She therefore has no doubts about directing her daughter along the same path, confident of choosing the best possible future for her. The three days of the Dialogo are largely removed from the life of the characters. The first day Nanna devotes to teaching her daughter how to be an honest whore, revealing the pitfalls and secrets of the trade. On the second day, Nanna acquaints Pippa with male betrayal, which is symbolized in the parody of the love affair of Dido and Aeneas. On the third day, mother and daughter listen to a midwife and a wet nurse who evoke their pasts and discuss the art of pandering.

‘‘Le puttane non son donne, ma sono puttane’’ (Whores are not ladies, but whores): This is the conclusion of the argument that unfolds over the course of the three days. Prostitution is a trade that justifies itself with the realization of its own objectives: ‘‘la puttana [...] fa come un soldato che e` pagato per far male, e facendo non si tiene che lo faccia, perche` la sua bottega vende quello che ha a vendere’’ (the whore acts like a soldier who is paid to act badly, and she does not think about what she is doing, since her shop is selling what she has to sell) (Ragionamento, Day III). The scene is filled with female characters portrayed through an entirely masculine lens. Nanna is both a character and the presence of the author; she is a symbol of the commodified woman, an assertion of the value of the ‘‘civilta` puttanesca’’ (whorish civilization) on the social conventions and idealizations of the courtly world. Whores and panderers seem to suggest, for Aretino, the image of literature itself. All of his work is dominated by a vision of the world as a market, in which the relations between the sexes show their cynical tie with the brutal reality of money. At bottom, there circulates the bitter feeling of a human being, whether man or woman, who is dominated by economic and sexual appetite, overpowered not so much by passions (it is not appropriate here to speak of love) as by primordial instincts, within a corrupt, compromised, and violent social context. It is a world in which there is no room for authentic human relations, and it is very far from the ideal images of love and women popularized by lyric poetry, treatises, and courtly literature. The dialogues, characterized by teeming language with a strong theatrical cast, proceed through rapid scenes and images, with a frantic style full of jokes, Latinisms, dialect, and metaphors: ‘‘io favello a la improvvisa,’’ Aretino would have us believe, ‘‘non stiracchio con gli argani le cose che io dico in un soffio’’ (I speak off-the-cuff and I do not dilute the things I say on the spur of the moment) (Dialogo, Day I). In reality, the Ragionamenti had a long and slow gestation (the author was already working on them in 1530). Although achieving a felicitous immediacy and expressive spontaneity, they reveal on the one hand a close confrontation with certain models of the ancient and modern tradition and on the other hand an elegant virtuosity, the fruit of the subtle work of refining with which Aretino exhibited the skill of a cultured and successful writer. DANIELE VIANELLO 79

PIETRO ARETINO Editions First Edition Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia, Paris (but Venice): probably Francesco Marcolini, 1534; and Dialogo nel quale la Nanna [...] insegna a la Pippa sua figliuola, Turin (but Venice): Francesco Marcolini, 1536.

Critical Editions Sei giornate. Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia (1534), Dialogo nel quale la Nanna insegna a la Pippa (1536), edited by Giovanni Aquilecchia, Bari: Laterza, 1969. Opere di Folengo, Aretino, Doni, edited by Carlo Cordie´, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1976. Ragionamento. Dialogo, edited by Paolo Procaccioli, Introduction by Nino Borsellino, Milan: Garzanti, 1984. Ragionamento. Dialogo, edited by Carla Forno, Introduction by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, Milan: Rizzoli, 1988. Sei giornate, edited by Angelo Romano, Milan: Mursia, 1991.

Translation Aretino’s Dialogues, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, New York: Stein & Day, 1972.

Further Reading Ba`rberi Squarotti, Giorgio, ‘‘Il ‘Ragionamento’ e il ‘Dialogo’: le ambizioni dell’Aretino alla totalita` della let-

teratura,’’ in Parodia e pensiero: Giordano Bruno, Milan: Greco & Greco, 1997. Bragantini, Renzo, ‘‘Il testo allo specchio deformante: Petrarca e Bembo in un passo di Aretino,’’ Filologia e critica, 10: 2–3(1985), 295–306. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘Il teatro della Nanna,’’ in Le voci dell’istrione. Pietro Aretino e la dissoluzione del teatro, Naples: Liguori, 1977. ´ ducation e´rotique. Pietro Aretino ‘‘RagioFischer, Carolin, E namenti’’ im libertinen Roman Frankreichs, Stuttgart: M&P, 1994. Larivaille, Paul, ‘‘La ‘grande diffe´rence entre les imitateurs et les voleurs’: a` propos de la parodie des amours de Didon et d’Ene´e dans les ‘Ragionamenti’ de l’Are´tin,’’ in Re´e´critures. Commentaires, parodies, variations dans la litte´rature italienne de la Renaissance, vol. 1, Paris: Universite´ de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1983. Marini, Quinto, ‘‘Eversione e controriformismo in Pietro Aretino,’’ La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 84 (1980), 501–519. Paratore, Ettore, ‘‘Pietro Aretino rielaboratore di Virgilio,’’ in Spigolature romane e romanesche, Rome: Bulzoni, 1967. Patrizi, Giorgio, ‘‘Il gioco dei generi: Per una lettura delle ‘Sei giornate,’’’ Annali FM, 1 (1979), 65–79. Procaccioli, Paolo, ‘‘Per una lettura del ‘Ragionamento’ e del ‘Dialogo’ di Pietro Aretino,’’ La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 91(1987), 46–65. Procaccioli, Paolo, ‘‘Ragionamento e Dialogo,’’ in Letteratura italiana. Le Opere, vol. 2, Dal Cinquecento all’Ottocento, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 1993.

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO (1474–1533) Ludovico Ariosto, whose life and work bridged the period of fifteenth-century humanism with that of the vernacular classicism that burgeoned later in the sixteenth century, is a crucial figure in the development of Italian Renaissance literary culture. An accomplished neo-Latin poet whose earliest letter requested books on neo-Platonism from the prominent Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius (1498), Ariosto used his considerable knowledge of classical literature, primarily Roman, to forge a literary corpus that blended classical models with medieval ones to create an impressive example of vernacular classicism. At the same time, he succeeded in turning his vernacular literary language, a variant of Tuscan inflected with his Ferrarese dialect, into a dazzling linguistic vehicle that later 80

critics would claim rivaled even the classical languages. No less than his contemporary Michelangelo Buonarroti, Ariosto took the literary revival of antiquity to new heights. Accordingly, Ariosto can be seen as a forerunner of Miguel de Cervantes and other vernacular prose artists whose critical recapitulations of medieval chivalric fiction under the influence of classical works and classicizing authors (like Ariosto) eventually led to the birth of the novel. For readers of today accustomed to the conventions and constraints of modern fiction, Ariosto sounds strangely familiar and modern, even postmodern. By most reckonings, Ariosto achieved a degree of popularity greater than any other writer in Europe in the sixteenth century. His fame derives

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO primarily from his narrative poem in octave stanzas, Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando), which he published in three versions over the course of his life in 1516, 1521, and in the definitive third edition of 1532. In the poem, Ariosto used Charlemagne’s war against the Saracens as a backdrop to explore typical Renaissance themes such as love, madness, and fidelity, with an elaborate subplot that dramatizes how these themes affected the dynastic fortunes of his patrons in the house of Este, the ducal rulers of Ariosto’s hometown, Ferrara, in northern Italy. The poem had come out in over 100 editions by 1600, so great was its appeal to readers of the time. Almost immediately upon its publication in the definitive third edition in 1532, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso became an important site, frequently a hotly contested one, of critical investigation, and it has remained such throughout most of the history of its reception. It was the first poem in the European literary tradition to sustain an ongoing debate about its canonicity. Early critics such as Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinzio and his prote´ge´ Giovanni Battista Pigna were interested in legitimating Ariosto’s poem through a variety of strategies, including affiliating it to canonical works of antiquity, many of which had originally influenced Ariosto’s shaping of the Orlando Furioso’s narrative. Legitimating the Orlando Furioso in this way also contributed to the ongoing process in the cinquecento of arguing for the value of the vernacular language as an adequate linguistic vehicle for epic and other examples of high literature. Thus, as the poem increased in canonical stature, so did the vernacular language in which it was written. It is significant that as Ariosto revised his poem in preparation for its second edition in 1521, he worked to bring it more in line with the linguistic precepts of Pietro Bembo’s standardization of Italian, fully spelled out in Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua (Prose Writings about the Vernacular Language, 1525), the gist of which Ariosto would have learned during Bembo’s extended sojourns in Ferrara between 1497 and 1504. In fact, Bembo most likely began drafting this work that would make a case for the elevated status of the vernacular as early as 1501–1502, years when he was closely associated with Ariosto and other Ferrarese writers. The canonization of the Orlando Furioso as a new kind of vernacular classic was simultaneously a victory for the Italian language and for Ariosto’s hometown of Ferrara (Daniel Javitch, Proclaiming a Classic, 1991). By the middle of the cinquecento, Ariosto was readily referred to as the Ferrarese

Homer and often represented in classical profile wearing the laurel crown, a symbolic marker that his own poetic excellence had matched that of the classical touchstones. Even in early descriptions of the poet’s life, biographers emphasized what they perceived to be a Virgilian track to his career in his progress from smaller poetic genres to his larger poem. A crucial point of contention in these first debates on the Orlando Furioso’s status as a vernacular classic was the poem’s narrative design, specifically the extent to which it resembled a classical epic and/or a medieval romance. Bembo had promoted Petrarch and Boccaccio as models for Italian lyric and prose, respectively, but there was no idealized equivalent for narrative poetry in the vernacular. The example of Dante’s poem was too controversial and idiosyncratic, with its divine subject that was rather distant from the more civic goals of the humanists, to serve as a model for narrative poetry in the cinquecento. As early as the 1540s, Ariosto’s poem was positioned to satisfy the need for such an Italian model. It was in these same years that Italian critical discourse was being shaped by the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars poetica, whose strictures of a unified narrative design were contradicted by Ariosto’s poem. Accordingly, the Orlando Furioso landed at the center of an acrimonious debate between neoclassical Aristotelians who found Ariosto’s narrative wanting in epic features and other critical readers who sought to justify the romance qualities of its narrative design. The primary criticism against the poem was that its plot focused on many actions of numerous characters rather than a single unifying action of one heroic character. In addition, many Aristotelians interpreted the intermittent interventions of the narrator into the narrative as a breach of epic decorum. Finally, the poem lacked verisimilitude. Strategies to defend the Orlando Furioso against these criticisms varied. Some readers emphasized those features of the poem that did indeed recall classical epic, for example, its many allusions to Virgil’s Aeneid and the occasional allusion to Homeric poetry. Ariosto’s recycling of classical similes from Virgil and Homer was a case in point. In this way, these classicizing critics countered that the Orlando Furioso, despite appearances to the contrary, was much more epic than the untutored reader might recognize. On the other hand, a critic like Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinzio pointed out that the poem’s vast interlaced narrative recalled instead the genre of medieval romance in his 81

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi (Essay on the Composition of Romances, 1554). An intriguing tactic adopted by Ludovico Dolce, among others, was to affiliate the Orlando Furioso with those poems of antiquity that were themselves somewhat less than faithful to the canonical standards of classical epic narrative. Ovid’s Metamorphoses played an important role in this regard. This strategy proved so successful that subsequent Italian translators of Ovid’s poem frequently created the impression in their renderings that the Latin work was a romance-epic poem akin to Ariosto’s. Moreover, Venetian publishers packaged these Italianized classics in editions that in many ways looked like the Orlando Furioso in order to capitalize on Ariosto’s poem’s critical fortune. This proved a successful marketing ploy, for readers had begun to expect that literary narratives, even classical ones, should conform to the parameters of Ariosto’s poem. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the Orlando Furioso had become the touchstone of narrative art. In the end, although critics could not always agree on what to call it—epic, romance, romanceepic—and whether or not it should be canonized a vernacular classic, Orlando Furioso’s popularity surged among general readers. Translated into all the major European languages (including Latin) as well as dialects of Italian, Ariosto’s poem continued to experience unprecedented success as a best seller into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There is, however, less foundational and lasting criticism of the poem from this period. Moving forward in time, the rise of interest in the modern novel that the Orlando Furioso had helped to create eventually led to a marked decrease in its popularity among readers in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But somewhat ironically, Ariosto’s poem experienced a resurgence in critical attention as general readers lost their interest in it. From the mid-nineteenth century on, the poem regained its position in Italian literary criticism as one of the preeminent sites of critical interrogation (along with Dante’s Comedia) to which critics have continued to turn in their work. The sweeping panorama of critical approaches over approximately the last century and a half devoted to the Orlando Furioso has been impressive in its variety. This work has included philological research; studies in textual criticism and textual bibliography; stylistic, metrical, and linguistic research; source criticism; studies of Ariosto’s ties to the chivalric tradition; examinations of the links between Ariosto and the new learning of 82

the humanists; the poet’s relationship with his patrons, the Este, their court, and with Ferrarese culture in general; the philosophical aesthetic interpretations of Benedetto Croce and his followers; investigations into Ferrarese material culture; narratological studies and other structuralist projects; the presence of the figurative arts and music in the Orlando Furioso and its impact on subsequent artists and composers; gender and sexuality in Ariosto’s work; and the study of individual characters in the poem, among many other topics. Despite the marginalization of Ferrara as a case for study when compared to the scholarly dialogues that thrive around Florence, Rome, and Venice (even though Ferrara’s peripheral status could be challenged), Ariosto and the Orlando Furioso have consistently been a focus for the investigations of literary and cultural historians. In fact, Ariosto’s presence in the Ferrarese dossier has done more than any other single figure to attract attention to Ferrara and Ferrarese culture. One of the fields that led the way in reestablishing the poem’s critical preeminence in the late nineteenth century was source criticism, Quellenforschung, and its leading practitioner in Ariosto studies was Pio Rajna. Rajna dedicated his research to amassing and interpreting the sources that Ariosto brought together in the composition of his poem. With some disdain for prior critics, who in his opinion overestimated the value of Ariosto’s classical allusions, Rajna used his incomparable knowledge of medieval Franco-Italian literary culture to demonstrate the importance of the medieval narrative traditions underlying the Orlando Furioso. Rajna’s special contribution was to note that the poem that Ariosto took as his point of departure, Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Innamoramento di Orlando (Roland in Love, 1483, 1495), was itself a sophisticated blend of Arthurian romance, Carolingian epic, and classical culture, knowledge of which was deepening with the new learning of successive generations of humanists. With Rajna’s investigations in the 1870s and for several decades following, a much more complex picture emerged of Ariostan poetics and literary influence in the Ferrarese cultural tradition moving from Boiardo to Ariosto. Rajna’s work, reprinted in 1975, one century after it was first published, remains fundamental today. A much more recent trend in Ariosto studies, almost at the opposite end of the chronological span opened by the focus on source criticism that marked the beginning of the revival of critical interest in the poem, has been in the field of gender

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO studies. Modern critics have undertaken comprehensive studies on the relationship between gender and genre in the Orlando Furioso, exploring specifically the foundational role that Ariosto’s poem played in the sixteenth-century debate on the status of women, the querelle des femmes (Durling, Finucci, McLucas, Shemek). An important voice in the 1980s that set the tone for subsequent readings of the Orlando Furioso was Albert Russell Ascoli’s Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony (1987). Whereas previous generations of critics under the sway of the philosophical aesthetics of Benedetto Croce read the Orlando Furioso as a poem of perfection and cosmic harmony, Ascoli made a convincing case for the poem’s artful lack of harmony. His investigation into the poet’s engagement with political, cultural, and religious crises of various types has become a necessary lens through which subsequent critics have come to consider the poem. The Orlando Furioso that emerged from Ascoli’s reading and from the interpretations of others in its wake in the 1990s and in the new millennium often reflects the postmodern tendency to distrust objectivity and authority, to resist moral and ideological absolutes. The vast array of modern responses to Ariosto’s major poem does not yet include a critical voice that places Ariosto on the bookshelf of the general reader, though Italo Calvino’s playfully serious novel Il cavaliere inesistente (1959) is probably the work that comes closest to doing so. Calvino, moreover, edited an abridged version of the poem for Italian students in 1970, which made it more accessible to scholastic readers than it had been before. Several studies of the 1980s and 1990s made a strong case for the Orlando Furioso’s importance as a prototype for the modern novel (Hart, Javitch, Zatti), a venue of research that should be explored in more detail. Along these lines, David Quint provided a useful examination of the links between Cervantes and Ariosto in Cervantes’s Novel of Modern Times (2005). Ariosto’s major narrative deserves the attention it has garnered over the centuries, but he composed other significant works, which inevitably came to be considered minor in comparison to the magnitude and popularity of the Orlando Furioso. These minor works also helped to establish the poet’s place in cinquecento literary history. Moreover, they shed light on the cultural traditions of Estense Ferrara during his lifetime. The variety of his secondary writings is impressive, as is their quality. In some cases, reading the minor works in relation to the Orlando Furioso offers insights into Ariosto’s

epic poem and the culture that produced it, but these works, when read as independent pieces, more than hold their own. They include lyric poetry in Italian and Latin composed over the course of most of his adult life (1493–1528); five highly influential comedies written between 1508 and 1529 for the stage in Ferrara and Rome; Satire (Satires, 1517–1525); seven autobiographical epistolary poems in Dantesque terza rima that document the poet’s critical attitude toward his culture, family, patrons, and more; the Cinque Canti (Five Cantos, 1518–1519, 1526), a substantial fragment of five cantos in octave stanzas which Ariosto may have intended to add to the end of the Orlando Furioso; one striking example of a satirical prose piece, the Erbolato (The Herbal Remedy, ca. 1525–1530); and over 200 letters composed between 1498 and 1532. Ariosto left behind an authenticated corpus of 98 lyric poems in Italian and 71 in Latin composed over the course of his lifetime. Many of the poems Ariosto wrote when he was a young man reveal his proximity to momentous events impinging on Ferrarese history in the 1490s and the first decade of the 1500s. He wrote, for example, of the Duchess Eleonora’s death in 1493 in a capitolo in Italian (Lirica 59), of Alfonso’s marriage in 1502 to Lucrezia Borgia in a lengthy epithalamium in Latin hexameters (Lirica 217), and of the failed conspiracy in 1506 against Duke Alfonso and Cardinal Ippolito by their brothers Ferrante and Giulio in a pastoral poem in Italian (Lirica 129). In 1495, the young poet delivered the inaugural oration for the academic year at the University of Ferrara in elegant Latin verse, De laudibus philosophiae (In Praise of Philosophy). Though there is no indication that Ariosto intended his Latin poetry to be published as a separate volume, Pigna assembled it into a collection that he brought to light in 1553. There is, however, no standard edition of these poems, nor has there been much serious scholarship devoted to them, Giosue` Carducci’s fine study notwithstanding. In I romanzi (1554), Pigna reported that even Pietro Bembo, the sternest critic, praised the author’s latinity, urging him to write in the classical language over Italian. The poetry reveals a keen awareness of the Latin lyric tradition with imitations of Horace, Catullus, Tibullus, and Ovid, and even some knowledge of Greek poets from the Greek Anthology, whom Ariosto knew in Latin translation. An interesting feature of the collected Latin lyrics is the collocation of subsequent versions of a given poem. We can observe the author’s attempt at perfecting the latinity of ‘‘Ad Philiroe¨m’’ (Lirica 180) and numerous epitaphs 83

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO (194, 227), including his own (226). He experimented with classical meters, diction, and style, aspects of which reappear in his Italian Rime and in his narrative poetry. The aging poet had a Latin couplet inscribed over the door of his new home built in 1527 on Via Mirasole (now Via Ariosto) in the ‘‘Herculean addition,’’ the masterpiece of urban planning that doubled the size of medieval Ferrara to create what Jacob Burckhardt called Europe’s first modern city: ‘‘It may be small but it suits me; it’s not offensive or ugly; and I paid for it with my own money’’ (Lirica 232). Published posthumously in 1546, his Italian lyric poems, for their part, bear the imprint of the day’s reigning fad, Petrarchism. The poems show the heavy influence of Petrarch’s poetry in style and substance with canzoni, sonnets, madrigals, and several other subgenres of lyric making up their number. But Ariosto’s response to Petrarchan poetry was hardly the work of a poetaster; he imbued his imitations with details that link them to his narrative poem, suggesting that his lyrics were meant to be seen in a much broader context than one might imagine, as if his lyrics were related to his narrative in the way that drawings and sketches of a master painter are related to larger artistic projects in oil or fresco. If this status relegates the vernacular lyrics to the category of the minor, there are still many good poems worthy of attention. Several Italian critics, notably Claudio Vela continuing the research of Cesare Bozzetti, have worked to establish a new and improved text of Ariosto’s Rime, but there has been little attention given to these poems outside of Italy. Ariosto’s earliest theatrical works, written in 1508 and 1509 for carnival celebrations in Ferrara, established his reputation as a literary figure in the circle of the Estense court. La Cassaria (The Coffer, 1508) and I Suppositi (The Pretenders, 1509) were examples of the new style of comedy dear to humanists, commedia erudita (intellectual vernacular comedy), modeled on the Roman plays of Terence and Plautus but adapted to contemporary Italian life. The themes of love, mistaken identity, and incompetent public officials characterize these two early plays. By the time Ariosto produced his later play, Il Negromante (The Necromancer, 1529), written in 1520, he had become head of the revived ducal theater and oversaw the stage design of artists like the Dossi brothers. Il Negromante deals with the quintessential Renaissance theme of folly, while La Lena (Lena, or the Procuress, 1528), generally recognized as his best comedy, focuses on another recurrent topic of interest to early 84

modern Italian writers, moral corruption. Ariosto never finished his fifth work, I Studenti (The Students, 1518–1519), but both his brother and his son composed completed versions of it after his death. The themes of folly and corruption are also central to Ariosto’s Satire, begun in Ferrara in the lull after the publication of the Orlando Furioso’s first edition and completed at the end of his stint in the Garfagnana, where he served as an official Estense commissioner from 1522 to 1525. These epistolary poems are in the tradition of the ancient Roman literary genre of the same name, a genre marked by the freedom it gives the poet to criticize his contemporaries. Ariosto took full advantage of the satire’s conventions to lambaste the ambitions and foibles of his peers in general, with many individuals in particular skewered by his witty barbs. Traditional readings of the satires have often assumed that their numerous autobiographical details provide accurate and ‘‘true’’ glosses on the poet’s life. In contrast, more recent interpretations appreciate the literary nature of these poetic exercises, in which the author created his own narrating voice, a voice owing much to classical Roman precedents, especially Horace, and to Dante, whose terza rima provided the metrical framework for Ariosto. The sixth satire, composed for Bembo between 1524 and 1525, gives a glimpse into Ariosto’s mature position on humanism and education. The poet asked his friend’s help in locating a tutor of Greek for his son, Virginio, studying in Padua at the time. In this satire Ariosto raised questions about the potential moral shortcomings of humanistic learning, having moved far beyond his youthful enthusiasm for classical knowledge for its own sake. At some point during these later years (between 1525 and 1530), he carried the criticism of humanism further in his Erbolato, a prose parody of the work of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and other neo-Platonists. The Erbolato is composed in the form of a speech delivered by Master Antonio Faventino. Faventino, an amalgam of several identifiable contemporaries of Ariosto, is portrayed hawking a miraculous medicinal potion in the town square. In the venerable tradition of the charlatan or quack doctor he claimed that his herbal medicine—the ‘‘erbolato’’ that gives the work its title—is a universal remedy for any illness. His pseudo-philosophical description of the importance of medicine for humankind, in part based on the proem to book 7 of Pliny’s Natural History, eventually becomes a theatrical sales pitch for his elixir, recalling Il Negromante. As the rhetoric modulates from a pastiche of Pliny

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO and neo-Platonic oratory to the verbal playfulness of street theater, we witness Ariosto’s searing criticism of the academy and its relation to the marketplace. The piece becomes nothing less than a meditation on the perennial question of who owns knowledge. That vague sociological construct, the marketplace of ideas, gives way to the actual market stall from which Faventino tries to sell his brain child. This short prose work provides a good example of how Ariosto employed the classics in an ironic critique of his own contemporary culture. He might have struck a pose of Horatian disdain for all the hoopla of courtly life (Satire 3.40–44), but Ariosto remained very aware of his surroundings, and he disapproved of much of what he saw. In the same spirit and also in the latter decade of his life, Ariosto rewrote the Cinque Canti, originally composed in 1518–1519 and resumed in 1526, most likely with an eye to adding them to the narrative of the Orlando Furioso. The cantos tell the grim story of the disintegration of Charlemagne’s army, indeed of the chivalric world as a whole. The narrative foregrounds the themes of evil, deceit, and betrayal in a martial setting that is radically different from the world depicted in the Orlando Furioso, so different, in fact, as to prompt a new wave of interpretive debate over the position of the cantos in Ariosto’s corpus. David Quint argued forcefully that the Cinque Canti were meant to be a freestanding work, whereas others, such as Sergio Zatti and Alberto Casadei, argued that the five cantos are fragments the poet could not insert into his larger narrative of the Orlando Furioso. We have 213 letters by Ariosto. The majority of them deal with issues arising from his position as the local representative of the Este family in the Garfagnana region of northern Tuscany from 1522 to 1525. In these letters we sense the author’s fatigue from dealing with the rough inhabitants of the mountainous outpost. As local magistrate of the Estense government, Ariosto was put in the unfamiliar position of serving as a provincial representative of the ruling power. His letters are often merely reports or requests, but in some of them one detects the critical and ironic voice of the poet, on the verge of commenting on the justice of whatever circumstance he must relay to his ducal lords. The remaining letters, approximately 25, are fascinating documents of Ariosto’s intellectual development, shedding light on the composition and production of Orlando Furioso and his other works, especially the comedies. The poet had to make arrangements for the production of his works, for example, requesting permission to have

paper shipped across state lines from the Veneto into the Estense territories. These artistic letters, while not nearly as rich as the collection of lettere poetiche left by Ariosto’s great successor, Torquato Tasso, are worthy of more attention than they have heretofore received. Ariosto’s youthful minor works no less than the first edition of the Orlando Furioso in 1516 reveal a probing authorial mind quickened by the new learning of the humanists. But by contrast the later works, the Lena, Erbolato, Satire (especially the sixth), Cinque Canti, and the final additions to the definitive Orlando Furioso of 1532, bespeak a more mature, critical, darker interpretation of the human condition, one that critiques humanism for its failed promises. After enduring Ferrara’s political marginalization by the various powers of the Italian peninsula in the opening decades of the sixteenth century and after witnessing the political machinations in Europe of the 1520s, the sack of Rome in 1527 among them, how could the humanist poet not be skeptical of the march of progress promised by the revival of antiquity? The vernacular humanism inaugurated by Ariosto would have to deal with this problem in the century that followed.

Biography Born in Reggio Emilia on 8 September 1474, Ariosto grew up in Ferrara, where his father, Count Niccolo` Ariosto, served the Este family. His mother, Daria, was the daughter of a scholar, Gabriele Malaguzzi. Envisioning for him the career of a civil servant, his father forced him to study law, which he did with reluctance in the early 1490s. After his father’s death in 1500, Ariosto began to serve Cardinal Ippolito d’Este as a diplomatic and administrative aide. Representing Ferrarese interests during the papacies of Julius II and Leo X, he undertook numerous missions to Rome in the first two decades of the 1500s. After a break with Ippolito for refusing to follow him to Hungary in 1517, Ariosto was welcomed as a courtier by the cardinal’s older brother, Alfonso I, who had assumed the leadership of Ferrara when Ercole I died in 1505. The poet published Orlando Furioso in 1516, then revised it in 1521 to bring it in line with the linguistic strictures of Pietro Bembo. Shortly thereafter, Alfonso appointed him the local Estense official in the province of Garfagnana between Tuscany and Romagna from 1522 to 1525. Upon returning to Ferrara, he supervised the ducal theater. In 1528 he produced La Lena for the festivities surrounding the wedding of Ercole II and Rene´e de France. In 85

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO 1528, Ariosto wed Alessandra Benucci, but secretly, so as not to lose his ecclesiastical benefices. That same year he accompanied Duke Alfonso in a ceremonial encounter with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V when he passed through Ferrarese territory near Modena. In 1531, Alfonso d’Avalos, a high-ranking soldier in Charles’s army, awarded the poet an annual pension of 100 ducats. The definitive edition of the Orlando Furioso came out in 1532 with four new episodes that increased the poem’s length by 5,600 lines, from 40 to 46 cantos. Ariosto died in Ferrara on 6 July 1533. DENNIS LOONEY See also: Epic Selected Works Lyric Poems ‘‘Rime,’’ ca. 1493–1525; as Le Rime di M. Lodovico Ariosto, edited by Iacopo Coppa Modanese, 1546; as Lirica, edited by Giuseppe Fatini, 1924. ‘‘Carmina,’’ ca. 1494–1528; Carminum Lib. Quatuor, edited by Giovanni Battista Pigna, 1553; as Carmina, edited and translated into Italian by Ezio Bolaffi, 1938. ‘‘Le Satire,’’ 1517–1525; as The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto: A Renaissance Autobiography, translated by Peter DeSa Wiggins, 1976; as The Satires, translated by Rodolf B. Gottfried, 1977.

Plays La Cassaria, 1508; as The Coffer, translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, 1975. I Suppositi, 1509; as The Pretenders, translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, 1975. I Studenti, ca. 1518–1519; as The Students, translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, 1975. La Lena, 1528; as Lena, translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, 1975. Il Negromante, 1529; as The Necromancer, translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, 1975.

Narrative Poems ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ 1516, 1521, 1532; as Orlando Furioso, translated in prose stanzas by Allan Gilbert, 1954; as The Frenzy of Orlando, translated in verse by Barbara Reynolds, 1975; as Orlando Furioso, translated in prose by Guido Waldman, 1983. ‘‘Cinque Canti,’’ ca. 1518–1519; 1526; as Five Cantos, translated by Leslie Z. Morgan, 1990; as Cinque Canti: Five Cantos, translated by Alexander Sheers and David Quint, 1996.

Prose Lettere, 1498–1532; in Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto, edited by Cesare Segre, vol. 3, 1984. Erbolato, ca. 1525–1530; as Herbolato di M. Lodovico Ariosto, edited by Iacopo Coppa Modanese, 1545; as Erbolato in Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto, edited by Cesare Segre, vol. 3, 1984.

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Further Reading Agnelli, Giuseppe, and Giuseppe Ravegnani, Annali delle edizioni ariostee, 2 vols., Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933. Ascoli, Albert Russell, Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Beecher, Donald, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi (editors), Ariosto Today: Contemporary Perspectives, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by S. G. C. Middlemore, London: Penguin, 1990. Calvino, Italo (editor), ‘‘Orlando Furioso’’ di Ludovico Ariosto. Raccontato da Italo Calvino, Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Carducci, Giosue`, La gioventu´ di Ludovico Ariosto e le sue poesie latine, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1881. Casadei, Alberto, ‘‘Alcune considerazioni sui Cinque canti,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 165(1988), 161–179. Catalano, Michele, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto, 2 vols., Geneva: Olschki, 1930–1931. Durling, Robert M., The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Finucci, Valeria, The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Giraldi Cinzio, Giovanni Battista, Discorso dei romanzi, edited by Laura Benedetti, Giuseppe Monorchio, and Enrico Musacchio, Bologna: Millennium, 1999. Hart, Thomas R., Cervantes and Ariosto: Renewing Fiction, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Javitch, Daniel, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Looney, Dennis, and Deanna Shemek (editors), Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2005. McLucas, John C., ‘‘Amazon, Sorceress, and Queen: Women and War in the Aristocratic Literature of Sixteenth-Century Italy,’’ The Italianist, 8(1988), 33–55. Mori, Barbara, ‘‘Le vite ariostesche del Fornari, Pigna e Garofalo,’’ Schifanoia, 17–18(1997), 135–178. Pigna, Giovanni Battista, ‘‘Messer Giovambattista Pigna a Messer Giovambattista Giraldi,’’ in G. B. Giraldi Cinzio, Scritti critici, edited by Camillo Guerrieri Crocetti, Milan: Marzorati, 1973. Pigna, Giovanni Battista, I romanzi, Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1554. Quint, David, Cervantes’s Novel of Modern Times: A New Reading of ‘‘Don Quixote,’’ Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Quint, David, ‘‘Introduction’’ to Ludovico Ariosto, Cinque Canti: Five Cantos, translated by Alexander Sheers and David Quint, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. Rajna, Pio, Le fonti del’’’Orlando Furioso’’ (1876), Florence: Sansoni, 1975. Shemek, Deanna, Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998. Vela, Claudio, ‘‘Gli studi di Cesare Bozzetti sulle rime di Ariosto,’’ in Fra satire e rime ariostesche, edited by Claudia Berra, Milan: Cisalpino, 2000.

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Zatti, Sergio, L’ombra del Tasso: Epica e romanzo nel Cinquecento, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1996; as The Quest for Epic: From Ariosto to Tasso, edited by Dennis Looney, translated by Sally Hill with Dennis Looney, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

CINQUE CANTI, CA. 1518–1519; 1526 Fragmentary Poem by Ludovico Ariosto

The Cinque Canti or Five Cantos is a substantial fragment in octave stanzas, which Ariosto may have intended to add to the Orlando Furioso. Most critics interpret the work as an addition to Ariosto’s major poem, but a growing minority have argued for its status as a freestanding literary work (Beer, Quint), a position held by some sixteenthcentury readers (Casadei). In a letter of 15 October 1519, Ariosto probably referred to the material of the Cinque Canti when he reported to Mario Equicola, the secretary of Isabella d’Este at the Gonzaga court in Mantua, that he had composed some extra episodes to add to the first edition of the poem that had been published in 1516. This specific addition, however, was not published in the poet’s lifetime. The manuscript of the fragmentary work was carefully guarded and eventually seen through the press by his son, Virginio. First printed in 1545 by the heirs of Aldus Manutius in Venice as an appendix to the Orlando Furioso, the work contains five cantos of approximately 4,400 lines of verse. The date of his letter to Equicola as well as several internal textual references in the Cinque Canti strongly suggest that Ariosto completed the bulk of the work between 1518 and 1519; there are other indicators that he was revising the work into the middle of the 1520s. The continuation resumes the action at the end of the Orlando Furioso after the marriage of Bradamante and Ruggiero, the union that founded the Este family. The cantos relate the story of the disintegration of Charlemagne’s army, indeed of the chivalric

world as a whole, as Sergio Zatti put it so aptly in his study of the Cinque Canti (‘‘La frantumazione del mondo cavalleresco,’’ 1996). The agent of the evil enchantress Alcina is none other than Ganelon, chief villain in the Carolingian tradition who betrayed Roland/Orlando at Roncevaux. In the Cinque Canti, Ganelon agitates effectively to create dissension among Charlemagne’s soldiers (cantos 1–2). Rinaldo rebels against his lord as the soldiers squabble over a golden shield to be awarded to the most valiant paladin (canto 3). In a subsequent episode that takes its inspiration from a passage in Lucian’s True History (1.30ff), a whale under the demonic control of Alcina swallows Ruggiero (canto 4). Inside the beast, the hero encounters another Christian warrior, Astolfo, who frets about having been a wayward soul. The narrator leaves the heroes inside the whale to return to the situation of Charlemagne, who is preparing for a massive battle in and around Prague. Rinaldo and Orlando duel, and the final canto breaks off with Charlemagne falling precipitously into the Moldau River, to be saved, barely in the nick of time, by his horse (canto 5). The ideology that animates the work is articulated very clearly in the hour of the Christian leader’s need: ‘‘Carlo ne l’acqua giu´ dal ponte cade, / e non e` chi si fermi a darli aiuto; / ... che poco conto d’altri ivi e` tenuto: / quivi la cortesia, la caritade, / amor, rispetto, beneficio avuto, / o s’altro si puo` dire, e` tutto messo / da parte, e sol ciascun pensa a se stesso’’ ([Charlemagne] falls into the water below the bridge, and there is no one who stops to give him help . . . there is little concern for others there: there courtesy, charity, love, respect, gratitude for favors received in the past, or anything else one can say is put aside, and each one thinks only about himself; 5.92). As David Quint argued in the introduction to his translation, this is a very different world from that depicted in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The focus here is on the darker side of internecine politics and intra-Christian conflict, in a martial landscape that owes much to the poetry of civil war depicted in Lucan’s Pharsalia, a Roman epic from the first century AD on Julius Caesar’s machinations that contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic. DENNIS LOONEY Editions First edition: Cinque canti, Venice: in casa de’ figliuoli di Aldo [Aldus Manutius], 1545. Critical editions: in Opere minori, edited by Cesare Segre, Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1954; Cinque canti di un nuovo libro di M. Lodovico Ariosto, edited by Luigi

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LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Firpo, Turin: UTET, 1963; Cinque canti, edited by Lanfranco Caretti, Turin: Einaudi, 1977; Orlando Furioso e Cinque Canti, edited by Remo Ceserani and Sergio Zatti, vol. 2, Turin: UTET, 1997. Translations: as Five Cantos, translated with afterword by Leslie Z. Morgan, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992; as Cinque Canti: Five Cantos, translated by Alexander Sheers and David Quint, introduction by David Quint, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996.

Further Reading Beer, Marina, Romanzi di cavalleria. Il ‘‘Furioso’’ e il romanzo italiano del primo cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1987. Casadei, Alberto, ‘‘Alcune considerazioni sui Cinque canti,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 165(1988), 161–179. Casadei, Alberto, ‘‘I Cinque canti o l’ultima eredita` di Boiardo,’’ Italianistica, 21(1992), 739–748. Dionisotti, Carlo, ‘‘Appunti sui Cinque Canti e sugli studi ariosteschi,’’ in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1961. Dionisotti, Carlo, ‘‘Per la data dei Cinque Canti,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 137(1960), 1–40. Larosa, Stella, Poesia e cronologia nei ‘‘Cinque canti.’’ Una nuova ipotesi, Rende (Cosenza): Centro editoriale e librario, University of Calabria, 2001. Quint, David, ‘‘Introduction’’ to Ludovico Ariosto, Cinque Canti: Five Cantos, translated by Alexander Sheers and David Quint, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. Segre, Cesare, ‘‘Appunti sulle fonti dei Cinque canti’’ and ‘‘Studi sui Cinque Canti,’’ in Esperienze ariostesche, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. Zatti, Sergio, ‘‘La frantumazione del mondo cavalleresco: i Cinque Canti dell’Ariosto,’’ in L’ombra del Tasso: Epica e romanzo nel Cinquecento, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1996.

COMEDIES Plays by Ludovico Ariosto

On 18 March 1532, Ariosto posted a copy of four comedies to the Duke of Mantua, Federico Gonzaga, with an accompanying letter to his secretary, Giangiacomo Calandra, in which the Ferrarese poet-playwright explained that he was sending all the comedies he had written up to that point. The plays he sent included: La Cassaria (The 88

Coffer), I Suppositi (The Pretenders), Il Negromante (The Necromancer), and La Lena (Lena, or The Procuress). In the letter he made reference to a fifth incomplete comedy, which came to be called I Studenti (The Students) and, in a later continuation by Ariosto’s brother, Gabriele, was renamed La Scolastica (The Scholastics). Virginio, the poet’s son, also published a posthumous continuation of this fifth play, called L’imperfetta (The Imperfect Woman). These five comedies, two of which, La Cassaria and I Suppositi, Ariosto rewrote in verse after having first composed and produced them in prose, and a third, Il Negromante, was rewritten in an expanded version, constitute his theatrical corpus. La Cassaria and I Suppositi were composed as part of the celebrations for carnival in 1508 and 1509, respectively. I Suppositi was produced again in 1519 in Rome for Pope Leo X, who was so enthralled with Ariosto’s comedy that he encouraged him to complete another one as soon as possible. The playwright quickly complied with Il Negromante, which may have incurred papal displeasure for its irreverent comments on indulgences and was not produced until 1529 in Ferrara. For his later plays, beginning with Il Negromante, Ariosto depended on an unrhymed hendecasyllabic verse line that sounds a bit more formal than standard prose. In the last years of his life, Ariosto became the supervisor of the revived ducal theater, producing plays that included several revivals of his earlier comedies and a new work, Lena, in 1528, restaged the following year with additional scenes. He also acted in plays, designed sets, and even oversaw the construction of a permanent stage in the palace, which burned down shortly before the author’s death in 1533. Ariosto composed his plays around themes typical in early cinquecento comedy, such as human passion, frustrated desire, folly, fortune, mistaken identity, and moral corruption. The publication history of Ariosto’s dramatic works is complicated, as is often the case with theatrical compositions. The inherent instability of a text created for presentation on the stage combined with the vicious commercialism of early modern printers created circumstances that made it difficult for early textual critics to establish authoritative versions of Ariosto’s comedic works. In the prologue to the second version of La Cassaria, Ariosto lamented the pirated, clandestine editions of the first version of the play. He reported that the play ‘‘data in preda agli importuni et avidi / Stampator fu, li quali laceraronla / E di lei feˆr cio` che lor diede l’animo. / E poi per le botteghe e per li

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO publici / Mercati a chi ne volse la venderono / Per poco prezzo’’ (It became the prey of pesty and greedy printers who tore it apart, doing what they liked with it; they sold it everywhere—in shops and public markets—to whomever would buy it, at bargain prices). We gather more details about the author’s struggle to control his texts from several fascinating letters where he complained about being robbed by both printers and actors. A full discussion of the editorial history of Ariosto’s theatrical texts can be found in Cesare Segre’s critical note to his edition of Ariosto’s Opere minori (1954). The revival of the Roman playwrights Terence and Plautus in northern Italy in the late quattrocento was the most important influence on Ariosto’s drama. The restoration of Latin comedy in Ferrara began in the 1470s and 1480s under the impetus of Ercole I, who was an avid reader of classics in translation. Ercole sponsored events that frequently included recreations of Roman comedies, and Ariosto himself may have performed in Plautus’s Menaechmi at the wedding festivities of Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d’Este, another of Ercole’s children, in 1491. There is some speculation that Ariosto may have translated or collaborated on translations of Latin comedy and poetry presented on various occasions in the ducal court of Ferrara in the decades around the turn of the century. Ariosto’s early theatrical works, La Cassaria and I Suppositi, were in the vein of the new humanistic commedia erudita, comedy based on Roman models but adapted to contemporary Italian life. These classicizing works contributed significantly to the rebirth of classical comedy in Renaissance Italy. In addition to the influence of Ariosto’s theater on Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena’s Calandra (1513), his work also impressed Niccolo` Machiavelli, who commented at some length on the language and style of I Suppositi in his Discorso intorno alla nostra lingua (Discourse on Language, ca. 1524). Ariosto’s plays had a considerable impact on later Italian comedies, as well as on developments in European theater, especially Elizabethan, Spanish, and French. At the beginning of I Suppositi, Ariosto accounted for some of his artistic choices in an explanatory prologue, noting that he treats his Latin models, Plautus and Terence, as the Roman authors had treated their Greek models: Qui tra l’altre supposizioni el servo per lo libero et el libero per lo servo si suppone. E vi confessa in questa l’Autore avere e Plauto e Terenzio seguitato ... perche´ non solo ne li costumi, ma ne li argumenti ancora de le fabule vuole essere de li antichi e celebrati poeti, a tutta

sua possanza, imitatore; e come essi Menandro et Apollodoro e li altri Greci ne le lor latine comedie seguitoro, egli cosı` ne le sue vulgari e modi e processi de’ latini scrittori schifar non vuole. (In this play, among other things, the servant is substituted for the master and the master for the servant. The author confesses that in this he has followed both Plautus and Terence . . . He has done so because he wants to imitate the celebrated classical poets as much as possible, not only in the form of their plays, but also in the content. And just as they in their Latin plays followed Menander, Apollodorus, and other Greek writers, so he, too, in his vernacular plays is not averse to imitating the methods and procedure of the Latin writers.)

Ariosto’s remarks recall a passage from the opening of Terence’s Andria, familiar to humanistic readers and audiences of his day, in which the Roman playwright explained that he had combined two comedies of Menander into his own. Terence’s image for this combination of sources is contaminatio, the mixing of multiple models through imitation. Ariosto, for his part, did his Roman model one better by combining two plays of two different authors (Louise G. Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, 1989). But he assured the audience at the end of the prologue that his Roman models ‘‘non l’arebbono a male, e di poetica imitazione, piu´ presto che di furto, li darebbono nome’’ (would not be offended and would call it poetic imitation rather than plagiarism). This bold mixing of sources is characteristic of Ariosto’s artistry in general. By the time he came to write what many critics consider his masterpiece, La Lena, he was not as dependent on Roman comic models and went so far as to emphasize the innovative quality of this late work in its prologue. Finally, one should note that there is a decisive theatrical element in many of the scenes and episodes in Orlando Furioso. In addition, Ariosto’s minor work, the Erbolato, is highly theatrical, bearing many of the characteristics of a dramatic monologue. Although Ariosto worked in the theater only in certain periods of his life, the theater was always alive and well in him. DENNIS LOONEY Editions First Editions La Cassaria: Comedia Nuova titolata Chassaria Composta per Lodovico Ariosto nobile Ferrarese, Ferrara: Mazzocco, 1509 or 1510; Cassaria in versi, as La Cassaria: Comedia di M. Ludovico Ariosto, da lui medesimo riformata, et ridotta in versi, Venice: Giolito, 1546. I Suppositi: Comedia Nuova Composta Per Lodovico Ariosto nobile Ferrarese, Ferrara: Mazzocco, 1509 or 1510;

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LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Suppositi in versi as I Suppositi Comedia di M. Lodovico Ariosto, da lui medesimo riformata, et ridotta in versi, Venice: Giolito, 1551. Il Negromante: Comedia di Messer Lodovico Ariosto, Venice: Bindone e Pasini, 1535. La Lena: Comedia di Messer Lodovico Ariosto, Venice: Marchio Sessa, 1532 or 1533 or 1534. La Scolastica: Comedia di M. Lodovico Ariosto. Novellamente posta in luce. . ., Venice: Griffio, 1547.

Critical Editions Commedie, edited by Michele Catalano, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933. Opere minori, edited by Cesare Segre, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1954. Commedie, edited by Angela Casella, Gabriella Ronchi, and Elena Varasi, vol. 4 of Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto, Milan: Mondadori, 1974.

Translation As The Comedies of Ariosto, translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard C. Sbrocchi, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Further Reading Catalano, Michele, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto, 2 vols., Geneva: Olschki, 1930–1931. Clubb, Louise George, Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Coluccia, Giuseppe, L’esperienza teatrale di Ludovico Ariosto, Lecce: Manni, 2002. Ferroni, Giulio, Il testo e la scena, Rome: Bulzoni, 1980. Giannetti, Laura, and Guido Ruggiero, ‘‘Playing the Renaissance,’’ in Five Comedies from the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Marangoni, Marco, In forma di teatro. Elementi teatrali nell ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ Rome: Carocci, 2002.

ORLANDO FURIOSO, 1516; 1521; 1532 Romance-epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto

Ariosto’s literary fame deservedly rests on his narrative poem in octave stanzas, Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando), published in three editions during his lifetime. The first edition came out 90

in 1516 in 40 cantos. Ariosto then revised it for publication in a second edition in 1521, to bring it in line with the linguistic strictures of his friend and fellow humanist, Pietro Bembo. The third and definitive edition of the epic poem was published in 1532 with four new episodes that increased its length by 5,600 lines, from 40 to 46 cantos. Ariosto used Charlemagne’s war against the Saracens as a backdrop to explore typical Renaissance themes such as love, madness, and fidelity, with an elaborate subplot that dramatizes how these themes affect the dynastic fortunes of the house of Este. There are three specific plots that the poet wove in and out of each other over the vast canvas of the poem’s narrative: the ongoing martial struggles between the Christian forces of Charlemagne and the forces of Islam led by Agramante; the story of Orlando’s relentless love and quest for the princess, Angelica, and his eventual madness when he discovers that she has given herself to another man; and the story of the love between Bradamante and Ruggiero, a Muslim who converts to Christianity, whose marriage will be the foundational union that creates the house of Este in Ferrara. The poem concludes with a duel between Ruggiero and Rodomonte, the colleague in arms of Ruggiero in his former life, which dramatically interrupts the wedding festivities of the Estense progenitors. In the poem’s final scene, Ruggiero slays Rodomonte, dispatching his soul to the underworld, Ariosto’s striking literary allusion to Aeneas’s actions at the end of Vergil’s Aeneid that presage the founding of Rome. The fiction pretends that the poet as minstrel or cantastorie recites the poem before his patron, Ippolito d’Este, supposedly a descendent of Bradamante and Ruggiero. This fictitious guise was maintained after Ippolito dismissed Ariosto from his services in 1517 and even after his former patron died in 1520. The minstrel’s voice lends the narrative the air of a medieval romance, while the backdrop of war provides the poem with an appropriately epic setting. As Robert M. Durling has noted, the poet often intervened in the narrative to editorialize on the situation at hand and he frequently spoke in propria persona in the proems that open each canto and at each canto’s conclusion (The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, 1965). The poet registered the Orlando Furioso’s epic pretensions by paraphrasing the beginning and ending verses of the Aeneid at his poem’s start and finish—but the reader who expects to find the poem full of the stuff of epic will be disappointed.

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO The poem’s titular hero, Orlando, who carries much of its epic burden, goes mad in the middle of the narrative and therefore cannot move inexorably toward the completion of his appointed task in the manner of an epic hero (vv. 23–24). The protagonist’s course is characteristic of romance, for he wanders off his literal track, eventually falling into madness. The narrative characteristics of romance defy the straightforward teleology of epic: Deviation, diversion, and digression are typical of its design. And there is at least one notable medieval romance precedent for Orlando’s madness: Chre´tien de Troyes’s Yvain also deviates from the typical behavior of a proper knight. Orlando, however, exists in a netherworld somewhere between the two generic possibilities offered by epic and romance. He sets out on a quest for Angelica like a good knight of medieval romance (9.7), zigzagging along the way. But despite occasional deviations, like the episode of Olimpia (9–11) or Atlante’s castle (12), his application to the quest has an epic seriousness about it. The narrator draws our attention to the heroic expansiveness of Orlando’s search with an unusual classical allusion that likens his search for Angelica to Demeter’s for Persephone (12.1–4). And just before he comes upon the site of Angelica’s betrayal (as he sees it), a simile of Homeric inspiration describes Orlando in heroic terms (23.83). When Orlando finds himself in the pastoral-romance setting at the end of canto 23, whereas the romance knight in him should defer the quest and indulge momentarily in this place of pleasure, the epic misfit goes berserk. Ariosto’s treatment of Orlando as a creature who moves between two genres, two traditions, two kinds of narrative, depended on his immediate predecessor at the Estense court, Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441–1494). Orlando, a traditional figure in medieval Franco-Italian literature, is associated with the chanson de geste, the heroic war poetry of medieval France. In that literary tradition he fights and dies nobly as befits Charlemagne’s most heroic knight. For later Italian writers, however, Boiardo’s treatment of Orlando would be the prism through which prior literary representations of his heroism are refracted. And Boiardo blended the Carolingian stories of war with Arthurian legends full of love and magic to create a paradoxical Orlando who falls madly in love, as caught in his poem’s title, Innamoramento d’Orlando (Roland in Love, 1483, 1495). In such condition he is hardly the stuff of literary heroism. Add to this mix the resurgent classical humanism that was coming into its own in Ferrara, and one can see that Ariosto

had to deal with challenging precedents when he began to sketch his own picture of Orlando. His version recalls the figure of medieval legend and bears some resemblance to Boiardo’s courtly lover, but his Orlando is also a creature of the new classicism. Moreover, Ariosto’s portrait of Orlando was affected by the other traditions that his chronological position required him to hold in the balance. The intervention of medieval romance turned Ariosto’s would-be Aeneas into something more like an imitation of Dido in a compromise of the Vergilian epic model. In other episodes of the poem, similar confrontations occur between romance and epic, often brought about through the imitation of somewhat more marginal classical models like Lucan and Lucian. Ariosto’s complicated and filtered reception of antiquity, especially his understanding of genre, has received much attention in recent criticism (Javitch, Looney, Marinelli, Quint, Zatti). Under the influence of Benedetto Croce, many critics, from approximately the 1920s until the 1980s, read the Orlando Furioso as an ahistorical and timeless text of cosmic harmony, a perfect example of Renaissance classicism. Robert Durling and Eduardo Saccone, notable exceptions, argued for the role of the narrating poet in a more complex picture of poetic irony and truth. Following their lead, critics since the 1980s have been making the case for a different interpretation of the poem, drawing attention to its problematic narrative structure, its threatened thematic coherency, its linguistic polish and lack thereof (Ascoli). Moreover, Ariosto’s engagement with current events does not support the romanticized image of the aloof poet. His poem contains numerous passages, often in the proems to cantos, where he expressed, among many other views, his concern about political and military alliances of the day based in part on his diplomatic experience; his fascination with the increasing knowledge of world geography; his abhorrence for the application of new technology to war machines; and his position on the place of women in Renaissance society (Casadei). The Orlando Furioso is a fantastic poem very much rooted in the real world, as is a substantial fragment in octave stanzas, which Ariosto perhaps meant to add, Cinque Canti, begun in 1518 or 1519 and worked on sporadically until finished around 1526. Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso had become wildly successful by the time the author died in 1533. Print records document that the poem was a best seller in the cinquecento, its popularity lasting well into the next century. The third edition, published 91

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO under Ariosto’s watchful eye over the summer of 1532, came out in an unusually large run of some 3,000 copies. By 1600 well over 100 editions had been published. Often produced to look like classical texts with commentaries and other accompanying paratexts (for example, the life of the poet, lists of classical allusions, historical notes), these editions helped the poem become an important touchstone in debates over narrative poetry, with readers sometimes arguing that Orlando Furioso was equal or even superior to classical narrative poems. This process of the poem’s canonization as an authoritative text would eventually earn it the status of a new kind of classical work, a vernacular classic that helped to grant the Italian language a degree of linguistic nobility. The debate between neo-Aristotelians and their opponents over the Orlando Furioso’s status as a classicizing poem focused on the degree to which it abided by rules governing the epic genre, which were deduced primarily from Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars poetica. One strategy to make the poem legitimate was to claim that it resembled a canonical epic of antiquity, a position that could lead a critic like Giovanni Battista Pigna to interpret Ariosto’s poem (and even his biography) as Virgilian. Another tactic directly in response to Aristotelian criticism of the poem was to turn the argument around and claim that the poem was a new kind of long narrative, not an epic but a romance, a theory propounded most vigorously by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinzio in the middle of the sixteenth century. Proponents of this argument pointed to classical models of romancelike narratives such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses as precedents for the Orlando Furioso’s interlaced narrative. This line of argument could lead no less a critic than Lionardo Salviati (1539–1589), the guiding force behind the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca, to revise his interpretations of the classical poems themselves in the 1580s. In a curious role of reversed influence, interpretations and translations of certain classical poems began to be influenced by the Orlando Furioso. The Orlando Furioso was a source of inspiration for European illustrators and painters from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, including Annibale Carraci, Guido Reni, Peter Paul Rubens, Nicolas Poussin, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Rensselaer W. Lee, Names on Trees, 1977). This may be in part because the poem itself highlights Ariosto’s interest in art: It contains many ecphrases (for example, in cantos 3, 33, 42, 46), and it includes a detailed description of a woman (7.11–15) that 92

became a prominent case in subsequent theoretical discussions of descriptive poetry, such as Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura (1557) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laokoon (1766). The poem praises nine contemporary artists at 33.2 and exhibits a classical harmony like that that dominated art in Italy during Ariosto’s lifetime. The definitive third edition of the Orlando Furioso is decorated with a woodcut portrait of Ariosto supposedly based on a drawing by Titian. The illustrations in the editions of Gabriel Giolito (Venice, 1542) and Francesco dei Franceschi (Venice, 1584) are especially handsome. In the 1780s Jean-Honore´ Fragonard prepared over 150 drawings for a volume that was never published. A noteworthy later edition contains over 500 drawings by Gustave Dore´ (Paris, 1879). Anonymous artisans have used the poem for decorating everything from ceramics and weavings of the late Renaissance to the carts and marionettes of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Sicilian folk art (opera dei pupi). The Orlando Furioso was also a source of material for musicians, playwrights, nondramatic authors, and at least one landscape designer from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. As early as 1517, Bartolomeo Tromboncino set to music Orlando’s lament from the scene at the center of the poem where the protagonist goes mad (23.126). Subsequent composers, including Claudio Monteverdi, adapted the poem’s more popular passages, its idyllic scenes and lovers’ laments, for madrigal settings. Many European authors rewrote, alluded to, or parodied the Orlando Furioso, elaborating on its characters and multiple plots, perhaps challenged by the poet himself, who invited later and ‘‘better’’ writers to resume the story of Angelica and Medoro (30.16). Lope de Vega, for example, accepted the challenge with La Hermosura de Ange´lica (The Beauty of Angelica, 1602). Notable operatic works that take their inspiration from Ariosto’s work include Antonio Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso (1727) and Handel’s Orlando (1733) and Alcina (1735). The garden at the Villa Orsini in Bomarzo, near Viterbo, may have been designed to recreate in three dimensions the experience of reading the Orlando Furioso’s narrative. DENNIS LOONEY Editions Early editions: Orlando Furioso, Ferrara: Mazocco del Bondeno, 1516; second edition, Ferrara: Giovanni Battista da la Pigna, 1521; third and definitive edition, Ferrara: Francesco Rosso da Valenza, 1532.

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Critical editions: Orlando Furioso, edited by Santorre Debenedetti, Bari: Laterza, 1928; Orlando Furioso, edited by Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre, Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1960; Orlando Furioso, edited by Cesare Segre, Milan: Mondadori, 1976; Orlando Furioso, edited by Emilio Bigi, 2 vols., Milan: Rusconi, 1982. Translations: as Orlando Furioso, translated by Sir John Harington (1591), edited by Graham Hough, London: Centaur Press, 1962; as Orlando Furioso, translated by Allan Gilbert, 2 vols., New York: Vanni, 1954; as Orlando Furioso, translated by William Stewart Rose, edited by Stewart A. Baker and A. Bartlett Giamatti, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968; as The Frenzy of Orlando, translated by Barbara Reynolds, 2 vols., London: Penguin, 1975; as Orlando Furioso, translated by Guido Waldman, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Further Reading Ascoli, Albert Russell, Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Beer, Marina, Romanzi di cavalleria. Il ‘‘Furioso’’ e il romanzo italiano del primo cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1987. Brand, Peter C., Ludovico Ariosto: A Preface to the ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974. Carne-Ross, Donald S., ‘‘The One and the Many: A Reading of Orlando Furioso, Cantos 1 and 8,’’ Arion, 5:2(1966), 195–234. Carne-Ross, Donald S., ‘‘The One and the Many: A Reading of the Orlando Furioso,’’ Arion, n..s. 3:2 (1976), 146–219. Casadei, Alberto, La strategia delle varianti. Le correzioni storiche del terzo ‘‘Furioso,’’ Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1988. Durling, Robert M., The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Fahy, Conor, L’‘Orlando Furioso’ del 1532. Profilo di una edizione, Milan: Universita` Cattolica, 1989. Javitch, Daniel, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Lee, Rensselaer W., Names on Trees: Ariosto into Art, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. Looney, Dennis, Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. Marinelli, Peter, Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. Quint, David, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Saccone, Eduardo, Il soggetto del ‘‘Furioso,’’ Naples: Liguori, 1974. Salviati, Lionardo, [R]isposta al libro intitolato Replica di Camillo Pellegrino. Nella qual risposta sono incorporate tutte le scritture, passate tra detto Pellegrino, e detti Accademici intorno all’Ariosto, Florence: Padovani, 1588.

Wiggins, Peter DeSa, Figures in Ariosto’s Tapestry: Character and Design in the ‘‘Orlando Furioso,’’ Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Zatti, Sergio, Il ‘‘Furioso’’ fra epos e romanzo, Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1990. Zatti, Sergio, The Quest for Epic: From Ariosto to Tasso, edited by Dennis Looney, translated by Sally Hill with Dennis Looney, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

SATIRE, 1517–1525 Poems by Ludovico Ariosto

Ariosto’s Satire (Satires) are in the tradition of the ancient Roman literary genre of the same name, a literary form marked by the freedom it gives the poet to mock and criticize his contemporary culture. Ariosto took full advantage of the satire’s generic conventions to lambaste the ambitions and foibles of his peers in general, with many individuals in particular skewered by his witty barbs. He accomplished this ongoing critique in these seven poems, composed between 1517 and 1525, in a colloquial and often ironic tone that contributes to what Cesare Segre has called his best comic writing (‘‘Struttura dialogica delle ‘Satire’ ariostesche,’’ 1979). Traditional readings of the satires have often assumed that their numerous autobiographical details provide accurate and ‘‘true’’ glosses on the poet’s life. In contrast, more recent interpretations appreciate the literary nature of these poetic exercises in which the author created his own narrating voice, a voice owing much to classical Roman precedents, especially Horace, and to Dante, whose terza rima provides the metrical framework for Ariosto. Despite the pitfalls of the autobiographical fallacy, the tone of the Satire does reveal something of a private Ariosto, a man with familial cares and desires in addition to concerns about his career as a poet. In a tone that blends the colloquial and formal, the Satire provide a glimpse into Ariosto’s life, as it is and as he would have liked it to be. Often, the poet gave a passionate defense of the status quo. The first satire, composed and sent both to his brother, Alessandro, and a friend, Ludovico da 93

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO Bagno, in October 1517, deals with Ariosto’s decision not to follow his patron, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, to Hungary. This poem is an appropriate opening for the collection of satirical writings, for in it the author lamented his marginalized fate, while at the same time casting judgmental aspersions on those who would disagree with the decision that put him in the position he found himself. His curmudgeonly tone, sometimes moralizing but at other times simply ill-tempered, lends the Satire much of their appeal. The second satire, to his brother Galasso (December 1517), is critical of Church, especially papal, corruption, and contrasts contemporary Rome with the city and culture of days of yore. Ariosto had little sympathy for the pomposity of the current ecclesiastical hierarchy. The third satire, addressed to a cousin in March 1518, explores the ambitions and fortunes of men in Ariosto’s day. The poet reiterated that he preferred to stay at home rather than travel the world, asserting that he could journey just as far and much more safely following maps in the comfort of his abode. The image of Ariosto as an armchair traveler is a striking endorsement for the power of the word, which is in line with the values of Renaissance humanism. The fourth, fifth, and seventh satires were written while Ariosto was working as a provincial governor for the Este family in the rugged Garfagnana region of northern Tuscany, 1522–1525. In the fourth satire, he longed for the life of leisure and learning he was forced to leave behind in Ferrara. In the fifth, sent to a cousin about to be married, Ariosto engaged in a playful tirade on the institution of marriage. In the seventh, written in the last year of his service in the Garfagnana, Ariosto rejected an invitation to serve as ambassador to the Vatican for the Estense rulers of Ferrara. Addressed to the Ferrarese ducal secretary, Bonaventura Pistofilo, the seventh satire revisits many of the arguments against ambitious careerism that Ariosto made in the third satire. The sixth satire, composed for Pietro Bembo sometime between 1524 and 1525, is Ariosto’s most programmatic statement about humanistic learning. The occasion for the poem was the author’s request that his friend help him locate a tutor of Greek for Virginio, his son, who was around 15 at the time. Although he was an illegitimate child, the father was very solicitous of his well-being and training. Ariosto explained that he had taught the boy something of the Latin tradition (6.142–144): Gia’ per me sa cio` che Virgilio scrive Terenzio, Ovidio, Orazio, e le plautine / scene ha vedute...(Through me he’s already 94

learned what Vergil’s text is like, and how Terence, Ovid and Horace write theirs, and he has seen Plautus staged...). But he confessed that he did not know Greek well enough to teach it to his son because his priorities had always been with the language of Rome (6.178–180): che ’l saper ne la lingua de li Achei / non mi reputo onor, s’io non intendo / prima il parlar de li latini miei. (I don’t believe that knowing the language of the Achaeans will bring me honor, unless I first understand the way my Latins speak). The author then recounted in some detail the autobiographical circumstances that first fostered, then eventually hindered his own education. The nostalgic reverie yields to what seems at first glance a conventional humanistic encomium of classical culture, concluding with a plea that Bembo help the boy scale the tops of Mount Parnassus. But the satire, as Albert R. Ascoli showed, in keeping with its generic conventions, allows the author a certain liberty of expression, which he used to register an implicit critique of humanism (Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony, 1987). The oldest manuscript copy of the satire with corrections in Ariosto’s hand (referred to as F by textual critics) reveals that he rewrote the verse to highlight the noun umanista (humanist). But any positive value associated with this relatively new word in the Italian language is undermined by its context: ‘‘Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti / che fe’ a Dio forza, non che persu¨ase, / di far Gomorra e i suoi vicini tristi’’ (Few humanists are without that vice that forced God–it didn’t take much persuading—to render Gomorrah and her neighbors woeful!). By impugning humanists as potential sodomites, Ariosto suggested that the typical humanistic education is deficient and sterile, much as Dante implied in his portrayal of Brunetto Latini in Inferno 15. This criticism is borne out in the character of Ruggiero in the Orlando Furioso, the knight who appears impervious to didactic instruction in much of the first part of the poem, notwithstanding the fact that he is destined to become the founder of the Ferrarese house of Este and progenitor of Ariosto’s (sometime) patrons. Virginio reported that his father composed a satire, now lost, for Baldassare Castiglione (Michele Catalano, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto, vol. 1, 1930). That satire, should it ever turn up, would likely provide us with tantalizing glimpses of Ariosto’s take on courtly politics and power. The satirical poems that we do have were published posthumously in 1534. DENNIS LOONEY

GIOVANNI ARPINO Editions

Further Reading

First edition: Le Satire di M. Ludovico Ariosto. . . Ferrara: Francesco Rosso da Valenza, 1534; Le Satire autografe di Lodovico Ariosto, introduction by Prospero Viani, Bologna: Guido Wenk, 1875 (this is a facsimile of a manuscript in Biblioteca comunale di Ferrara, no longer considered an autograph; rather, it is held to be an apograph with corrections in Ariosto’s hand). Critical editions: Satire, edited by Cesare Segre, vol. 3 of Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto, Milan: Mondadori, 1984; Satire, edited by Alfredo D’Orto, Parma: Guanda, 2002. Translations: as The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto, translated by Peter DeSa Wiggins, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976; as The Satires, translated by Rudolf B. Gottfried, Lunenburg, VT: Stinehour Press, 1977.

Ascoli, Albert Russell, Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Berra, Claudia (editor), Fra satire e rime ariostesche, Milan: Cisalpino, 2000. Bonatti, Bruno, Ariosto pensoso. Lettura delle ‘‘Satire,’’ Florence: Nuova Toscana, 1984. Catalano, Michele, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto, 2 vols., Geneva: Olschki, 1930–1931. Cuccaro, Vincent, The Humanism of Ludovico Ariosto: From the ‘‘Satire’’ to the ‘‘Furioso,’’ Ravenna: Longo, 1981. Durling, Robert, The Figure of the Poet, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Floriani, Piero, Il modello ariostesco. La satira classicista nel Cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1988. Segre, Cesare, ‘‘Struttura dialogica delle ‘Satire’ ariostesche,’’ in Semiotica filologica. Testo e modelli culturali, Turin: Einaudi, 1979.

GIOVANNI ARPINO (1927–1987) Alberto Asor Rosa classifies Arpino among those Italian writers who, during the 1960s and 1970s, placed themselves in a rather compromising ‘‘medium’’ level by diluting the ‘‘quality’’ of their work in order to make it more accessible to a larger audience (‘‘Il best seller all’italiana,’’ 1999). As a prolific fiction writer, Giovanni Arpino kept his distance from the contemporary narrative establishment and rejected any form of experimentalism. Originally from Istria, he worked in publishing and journalism while pursuing a literary career. At the age of 22 he published Sei stato felice, Giovanni (You Have Been Happy, Giovanni, 1952), in which he dealt with his youth while examining his cultural heritage. Overtly influenced by Ernest Hemingway, this book figures as the stepping-stone for a dense and plentiful career. The publication of Arpino’s debut novel with Einaudi was facilitated by Elio Vittorini, the first to recognize Arpino’s narrative talent and to discern in his writing neo-Realist elements (a label Arpino never fully accepted, preferring instead the term ‘‘Realist’’). Indeed, Vittorini’s artistic patronage became, for the young writer, a cage he felt compelled to escape, and later on he resisted reprinting his first novel, maintaining a particularly critical attitude toward it.

It is with the collection of poems Il prezzo dell’oro (The Price of Gold, 1957) that elements that would eventually characterize Arpino’s mature writings began to surface: the autobiographical search for his roots as in ‘‘Lunga strada, soldati a Napoli’’ (Long Road, Soldiers in Naples) and ‘‘Un rapido saluto’’ (A Quick Regard); the life in the village Bra inhabited by rough and unsociable farmers, which is portrayed in ‘‘Cronache piemontesi’’ (Piemontese Chronicles); the city of Turin in its seasonal changes; love conceived as something eternal that transcends momentary passion as in ‘‘Tendo la mano, la Compagna’’ (I Reach out, the Partner). With the exception of Un crimine d’onore (A Crime of Honor, 1961), Arpino’s novels represent one thematic corpus. When, in 1958, Gli anni del giudizio (The Judgment Years) was published, the poetics of neo-Realism had already exhausted its expressive strength, and writers needed to search for other modes to tell their stories, looking for wider perspectives. At this point, politics began to appear in Arpino’s work. In Gli anni del giudizio, through the words of the protagonist, the worker Ugo, politics is not seen as a simple ideological commitment; rather it becomes a means to 95

GIOVANNI ARPINO understand how life evolves around us. Ugo develops the awareness that the individual, alone, is destined to fail if alienated by the society in which he lives, and the absence of solidarity among individuals is the greatest fault of all. Also, Antonio Mathis of La suora giovane (The Novice, 1959), a novel praised by Montale, is an alienated subject. Incapable of carrying on his love story with Serena, Antonio is doomed to loneliness. In this novel, written in a diary form, love is something elusive, a utopian moment of slender joy destined to end. As Giorgio Ba`rberi-Squarotti has pointed out, La suora giovane offers ‘‘an opportunity to reveal the true state of everybody, of all those oppressed by misery and by the horror within the industrial society’’ (‘‘Introduzione,’’ in Giovanni Arpino, Opere, 1991). Una nuvola d’ira (A Cloud of Anger, 1962) explores the rapport between class aspirations and individualism. As it happens, three workers, Matteo, Angelo, and Sperata (the narrator) are fascinated by Marxist ideology and choose to defy the bourgeois myth of marriage by experimenting a free cohabitation. They create a love relationship based primarily on their belief in the same political ideal, beyond traditional conventions and religious scruples. But it is a utopia and, by definition, unattainable. In the end, Matteo, overwhelmed by jealousy, flees the hospital in which he has been recovering from an ulcer, destroys their house in a ‘‘cloud of anger,’’ and escapes to the mountains, where he eventually kills himself. Such a dramatic conclusion is metaphorically a return to the roots by a generation defeated in their ideological beliefs. Arpino was convinced that the illusion of wellbeing and the middle class’s small horizons had invaded the working class. Ideological commitment figures as something contrary to a society composed of individuals not yet mature to understand it. But ideology has its shortcomings as well: It brings Matteo to his suicidal restlessness, while it fails to offer any shelter from his human weakness. Una nuvola d’ira was Arpino’s last ‘‘political’’ novel. It was followed by a new narrative trend that no longer focused on man’s alienated relationship to society. For example, Un’anima persa (A Lost Soul, 1966) is a symbolist novel, lacking any concrete reference to contemporary history; it is an homage to the stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Finally, with Randagio e` l’eroe (Stray Is the Hero, 1972) Arpino returned to the use of a daily language that had marked his literary beginnings. Once again his investigation focused on a grotesque 96

character in conflict with the ‘‘civilized’’ world that is turning chaotic and iniquitous. As a playwright, Arpino viewed the stage as a way to escape the traps of everyday life and adopted irony and satire, as in his narrative, in order to reveal the face of a corrupt humanity. In La riabilitazione (The Rehabilitation, 1968) he described presumed dictatorships in which the political system turns men into puppets; in L’uomo del bluff (The Man of Bluff, 1968) he criticized the old middle class through three characters: a teacher addicted to gambling, a counterfeiter countess, and a weak boy. In Arpino’s literary production there is never linguistic plurality as a mirror of social plurality, even though the choral aspect is present in his depiction of characters and their ambience. One of his leading narrative motifs, the journey, is reinterpreted each time at different levels: It can be an integral part of the story as for L’ombra delle colline (The Shadow of the Hills, 1964) and Il buio e il miele (Darkness and Honey, 1969); it can evoke a return to the maternal womb for Marx’s repudiated children (Una nuvola d’ira); or it is conceived not as something preplanned but as unexpected wandering (Sei stato felice, Giovanni). In this context, Geno Pampaloni speaks of the influence of Cesare Pavese on Arpino as well as of American reminiscences (Hemingway, Steinbeck) (La narrativa italiana del dopoguerra, 1968). There is also the writer’s fascination for picaresque wanderings derived from his readings of the Spanish novelists of the 1500s and 1600s. In this narrative journey, Turin, the city of maturity, is also often a strong presence. The city’s seasonal changes correspond to the characters’ psychological and emotional changes. Turin is introduced in her grand architecture but also through her very own citizens. As Arpino wrote in La stampa: ‘‘Non sono solo i muri e i portoni a definire una citta`, sono le facce della gente, il suo muoversi, le abitudini collettive... che formano la sostanza di un agglomerato urbano’’ (Not only the walls and the front doors define a city, also the faces of the people, the collective habits create an urban agglomerate) (‘‘Torino, Malamata,’’ 10 November 1971). Like the Piedmontese Pavese and Beppe Fenoglio, Arpino assigned a central place to the langhe in his novels. But while Pavese adopted a psychological perspective, projecting onto the landscape the anguishes and existential dilemmas of his displaced characters, and Fenoglio’s langhe were the historical sites of Resistance fights, Arpino chose a more

GIOVANNI ARPINO naturalistic approach: He saw in the hills surrounding the village of Bra an example of real family life, sometimes pleasurable while at others dramatic but perpetually fascinating. Arpino’s fiction, as well as his work as a sports reporter (he viewed sport as a way to live more intensely without useless intellectualisms) attest to his capacity to engage in literary ventures that also combine wide readership appeal.

Randagio e` l’eroe, 1972. Racconti di vent’anni, 1974. Azzurro tenebra, 1977. Lune piemontesi, 1978. Il fratello italiano, 1980. Bocce ferme, 1982. La sposa segreta, 1983. Passo d’addio, 1986. Trappola amorosa, 1988. Rafe` e Micropiede, 1988. Nel bene e nel male, 1989. Storie dell’Italia minore, 1990.

Biography

Poetry

Giovannie Arpino was born in Pola (Istria) on 1 January 1927. In 1929 the family moved to Piacenza where he lived for 11 years. In 1941, he moved to Bra (Turin), where he finished high school. In 1946, he enrolled in the Facolta` di Lettere at the University of Turin, where he graduated in 1951. In 1953, he married Rina Brero, and they moved from Bra to Turin; three years later Thomas was born. Between 1953 and 1960, Arpino worked for publishers Einaudi and Zanichelli. From 1969 to 1979, he was a sports reporter for La stampa. Arpino received a number of literary awards: the Strega Prize in 1964 for L’ombra delle colline; the ‘‘Gold Moretti’’ in 1969 for Il buio e il miele; the Campiello for Randagio e` l’eroe in 1972 and, again, in 1980 for Il fratello italiano. Arpino died in Turin on 10 December 1987. MARIANO D’AMORA Selected Works Collections Opere (1927–1997), edited by Rolando Damiani, Milan: Rusconi, 1991. Opere scelte (1927–1997), edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi-Squarotti, Milan: Mondadori, 2005.

Fiction Sei stato felice, Giovanni, 1952. Gli anni del giudizio, 1958. La suora giovane, 1959; as The Novice, translated by Peter Green, 1964. Delitto d’onore, 1961; as A Crime of Honor, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, 1963. Una nuvola d’ira, 1962. L’ombra delle colline, 1964. Un’anima persa, 1966. La babbuina e altre storie, 1967. Il buio e il miele, 1969.

‘‘Il prezzo dell’oro,’’ 1957. ‘‘Fuorigioco,’’ 1970.

Theater La riabilitazione (produced 1968). L’uomo del bluff (produced 1968). Donna amata dolcissima (produced 1969).

Other Le mille e un’ Italia, 1970. I racconti del calcio, 1975. Grazie azzurri, 1978. Area di rigore, 1979. Calcio nero: Fatti e misfatti dello sport piu´ popolare d’Italia, 1980.

Further Reading Amoroso, Giuseppe, Narrativa italiana 1975–1983 con vecchie e nuove varianti, Milan: Mursia, 1983. Asor Rosa, Alberto, ‘‘Il best seller all’italiana,’’ in L’altro novecento, Scandicci (Florence): La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1999. Balduino, Armando, Messaggi e problemi della letteratura italiana contemporanea, Venice: Marsilio, 1976. Ba`rberi-Squarotti, Giorgio, ‘‘Introduzione,’’ in Giovanni Arpino, Opere, Milan: Rusconi, 1991. Cetta, Bernardo, Giovanni Arpino, ‘‘il narratore di storie,’’ Cavallermaggiore: Gribaudo, 1991. Montale, Eugenio, Il secondo mestiere: Prose 1920–1979, edited by Giorgio Zampa, vol. 2, Milan: Mondadori, 1996. Pampaloni, Geno, La narrativa italiana del dopoguerra, Bologna: Cappelli, 1968. Pullini, Giorgio, Volti e risvolti del romanzo italiano contemporaneo, Milan: Mursia, 1972. Quaranta, Bruno, Stile Arpino, una vita torinese, Turin: Societa` Editrice Internazionale, 1989. Romano, Massimo, Invito alla lettura di Giovanni Arpino, Milan: Mursia, 1974. Scrivano, Riccardo, Giovanni Arpino, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979. Varese, Claudio, Occasioni e valori della letteratura contemporanea, Bologna: Cappelli, 1967. Veneziano, Gian Maria, Giovanni Arpino, Milan: Mursia, 1994.

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ART CRITICISM

ART CRITICISM Art criticism is, in the strict sense, the study and interpretation of artistic products in order to arrive at a value judgment about them, while in a broad sense any attitude implying an evaluation of works of art may be considered ‘‘art criticism.’’ As a verbal formulation of judgments, art criticism is born as a specific literary genre only in the eighteenth century and takes on a high degree of specialization beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. The emergence in the eighteenth century of a new intellectual figure—the militant critic who, unlike the historian, is concerned with contemporary art—gave rise to the prejudice, which survives in some form to this day, that art history and art criticism operate in separate spheres: The former should be concerned only with ancient art, classifying and arranging it according to certain criteria, while the latter, confining itself to judgments of contemporary art, should not be compelled to follow historical methods. Such a dichotomy between art history and art criticism has no legitimate grounds, since every judgment—even one concerning the present—is necessarily historical and, likewise, every historical reconstruction necessarily involves criticism. To judge a work is to compare it with those that precede and those that follow it and implies reconstructing the figurative and cultural context in which it was produced and with respect to which it offers itself as an original phenomenon: This is because, beyond the distinctions of convenience between the historical and the critical fields, a critical-evaluative operation is not conceivable without serious historical study, just as a history of art is not conceivable without critical assessments, unless the critic declares explicitly that he wishes to participate in the programs and plans of particular schools of poetics, at the cost of sometimes forcing history with a view toward action (operative criticism). After the abbot Luigi Lanzi (1732–1810), who was a precursor to the figure of the expert in his Storia pittorica dell’Italia dal risorgimento delle belle arti fin presso la fine del XVIII secolo (A History of Painting in Italy from the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century, 1789), a form of criticism emerged that was based on attribution, that is to say on the distinguishing 98

of the original from the fake and on placing works within the coherence of individual artistic personalities. Authors and schools were distinguished with the aid of scholarship and a rigorous examination of particular styles. Among the first Italian experts in the nineteenth century it is necessary to mention Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (1817– 1897) and Giovanni Morelli (1826–1891). A doctor and collector, Morelli (who went by the pseudonym of Lermolieff-Schwarze), in seeking to provide a scientific basis for the expert’s method, returned to the old theory of ‘‘manner,’’ understood as the ‘‘artistic writing’’ typical of each creator (their characteristic ways of rendering the form of the ear, the hand, drapery, and so on). Focusing on all of the inimitable elements of the style of each artist, he was able to reimpose order to the attributions of works belonging to various German and Roman painting galleries. A map of the tendencies of art criticism in Italy from the twentieth century until the present day practically coincides with a review of the schools of Italian art and the critical methodologies that these schools apply in the study and evaluation of the work of art. This map—whose borders become permeable, moreover, after the opening of many Italian scholars to the interpretive tools shared by recent disciplines (anthropology, psychoanalysis, semiotics)—does not encompass those who opt for a predominantly operative and militant criticism, among whom we should at least mention, in recent years, Germano Celant (1940–), who launched the so-called arte povera (‘‘poor’’ art), and Achille Bonito Oliva (1939–), a theorist of the trans-avant-garde. Among modern experts, a prominent place belongs to Adolfo Venturi (1895–1941), who based the interpretation of works on an analysis of their formal values, reconstructing the individual personality of the artist without neglecting the cultural aspects that are necessary in order to illuminate the work itself. Through the influence of his most gifted and lively pupils, he also became conscious of what, in the cultural panorama of his time, represented novelties: the ‘‘pure visibility’’ (Reine Sichtbarkeit) of the Viennese school and Crocian criticism. We must also mention Pietro Toesca

ART CRITICISM (1897–1962), who became editor-in-chief of Venturi’s journal L’arte beginning in 1904. Scholarly rigor and the concreteness of the historical terrain, on which all of his research was based, were the most prized characteristics of a method that made fundamental contributions to whole artistic cultures (for example, the Lombard figurative civilization of the Middle Ages and the fourteenth century). Adolfo Venturi had many students: his son Lionello (1885–1961); Giuseppe Fiocco (1884–1971), who helped to widen and renew decisively the study of Venetian art; Antonio Morassi (1893– 1976), who later on, methodologically, became close to the school of Vienna and Dvorˇak; and Roberto Longhi (1890–1970), who was in turn the ‘‘father’’ of the current generation of experts. The young Longhi also studied with Toesca and was partly influenced by the ‘‘pure visibility’’ school and by Bernard Berenson, though he eventually distanced himself from both in equal measure; above all, he brought to fruition the ideas of Benedetto Croce. In opposition to the history of art as the ‘‘history of culture,’’ the ‘‘history of artists,’’ and the ‘‘history of the evolution of the arts,’’ he proposed avoiding any undertaking of a theoretical or philosophical nature and turned his attention instead to problems intrinsic to the work of art. He approached the latter with a language that intended to mimic it, using an extremely personal prose and a refined multiplicity of linguistic styles in order to penetrate as far as possible into the work of art and to recover the vast pictorial ‘‘provinces’’ of the Italian art of various centuries. Some of Longhi’s pupils made richly documented and always timely contributions in the historicalscholarly sense to the panorama of Italian studies: Among others, there is Mina Gregori (1924–), the president of the Fondazione Longhi and the director of the review Paragone-Arte, a scholar of Caravaggio and of Lombard painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Giuliano Briganti (1918–1992), known for his studies of artists and currents of various periods, from Mannerism to Romanticism to the twentieth century; Federico Arcangeli (1915–1974), who was concerned largely with contemporary art, thus separating himself from the interests of a great many Longhians, among whom the writer Giovanni Testori stands out for his declared aversion toward the contemporary avant-gardes. Finally, we should mention Federico Zeri (1921–1998), a student of Toesca who later came into contact with Longhi and Berenson, until he settled on his own original sociological

approach. Also of the historical-scholarly school were Rodolfo Palluchini (1908–1989) and Paolo Barocchi (1927–), who integrated the method of the expert with the social history of art, prominent among whom were Ferdinando Bologna (1925–), Enrico Castelnuovo (1929–), and Giovanni Previtali (1934–1988). Lionello Venturi was the leading proponent of the historical-cultural conception of the work of art. A professor at the Universita` di Torino beginning in 1915, in 1926 he published his famous essay ‘‘Il gusto dei primitivi’’ (The Primitive Taste), which had vast resonance in the Italian and European culture of the time. In this text he distinguished the concept of art, understood as the particular style, the creative and original contribution of the artist, from the concept of taste, understood as the institutionalized culture within which artists make their choices. An idealist and a Crocean, as he defined himself, Venturi also fused idealism with the criticism of ‘‘pure visibility,’’ while managing to avoid the dangers most frequently run by the latter: His principal intention was to define the formal culture of the artist, in line with the principles of the Viennese for whom art is the knowledge of form, but he did not let abstract modes of vision overwhelm the concreteness of the work of art. In his History of Art Criticism, published for the first time in the United States in 1936, Venturi asserted that a ‘‘preference in art is always the beginning of art criticism,’’ though it is not yet criticism, but, precisely, gusto, or taste. In this way, by understanding artistic choices themselves as the beginning of critical activity and conceiving the work of art as an objective reality, which does not dissolve in the moment of creation, but which, over time, continues to exercise a decisive influence on human thought, he arrived at an identification of the history of art with art criticism. Unlike Longhi, who concerned himself occasionally with twentieth-century art, Venturi took it upon himself to interpret and defend contemporary art with a singular passion. Showing a balanced appreciation of the ancients and the moderns, in the popularizing text published first in English with the title Painting and Painters: How to Look at a Picture, from Giotto to Chagall (1945), he attempted to modernize the past and to historicize the present. This book echoes, in its very title, Come si guarda un quadro (How to Look at a Picture, 1927) by Matteo Marangoni (1876–1958), another Croceian critic and successful popularizer of the grammar of seeing, as the numerous editions of his Saper vedere (The Art of Seeing Art, 1933) attest. 99

ART CRITICISM Despite the limits springing from his Croceanism, Lionello Venturi initiated a methodological procedure whose outlines expanded to include new interdisciplinary interests, as occurred for some of his disciples, including notably Giulio Carlo Argan (1909–1992), who elaborated a ‘‘philosophy of history’’ imbued with phenomenology and a method of interpreting artworks in which various approaches converge, among which sociological and iconological inquiry are prominent. Argan’s interests ranged from problems of preserving the artistic heritage to the historical reconstruction of the art—and especially of the architecture—of various ages, with particular attention to contemporary art. For Argan, the history of art was the study of cultural, social, and technical structures, which let the work of art be understood as a freely creative act with respect to historically given conditions. The corollary—an idea descending from Venturi—that followed was that the artistry and the historicity of the work coincide. A prominent space in Italian art criticism belongs to Carlo Ludovico Raggianti (1910–1987), a disciple of Marangoni, who elaborated a critical-historical method (‘‘aesthetic historicism’’) that was based on modern thought from Giambattista Vico to Francesco De Sanctis to Croce and in particular on the contributions of Konrad Fiedler, whom he considered the first authentic linguist of figurative art. Raggianti was concerned not only with the figurative arts but also with the cinema and entertainment, and he remained substantially faithful to the notion of visual art as a language, which can be traced back to the Crocean concept of aesthetics as general linguistics, with the result that the linguistic analysis of the artwork is given the task of grasping within the work itself narrative or poetic traits. Raggianti did not conform to the specific interpretive systems of the most recent semiotics, but he devoted particular attention to the ‘‘exact verification’’ of works of art through the tools provided by new technologies (like the computer), which would confirm experimentally ‘‘the justness of the conception of art as a formal language’’ (Arti della visione, vol. 3, 1979). Involved in problems of conserving and restoring artworks and in aesthetic speculation, Cesare Brandi (1906–1986), who was a poet as well, began from idealistic premises, but he arrived at a rather personal synthesis of thought, in which Husserlian phenomenology and the experience of the most recent structuralist criticism were interwoven. Sergio Bettini (1905–1986) was also a follower of the school of Vienna and especially of Alois Riegl. 100

In his studies, he united a solid scholarly foundation with a control of methodological procedures and tools. A specialist in the history of Byzantine and medieval art, he roamed, however, within a horizon that extended from the late Roman period up to the art of the present day, pursuing a critical investigation based on the texts of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, on structuralism, and on semiology. Among the others indebted, to varying degrees, to the Vienna school we enlist the archaeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (1900–1975) and the historian of architecture Bruno Zevi (1918–2000). The formalism of ‘‘pure visibility’’ is commonly juxtaposed to the emphasis on content of the iconological method, which, focusing its critical interest on the meaning of images, tends toward the cultural interpretation of artistic phenomena. This latter method does not have much success in Italy, and only since the 1970s has it become the object of noteworthy interest. Schematically, we can say that there are at least two different ways of applying the interpretive method of Erwin Panofsky and, more generally, of the Aby Warburg school: The first consists in privileging the conscious and rational meaning of an artistic creation; the second, on the other hand, consists in going beyond into the interpretation of the work’s unconscious meanings understood in a psychoanalytic sense. Both ways of applying iconology find followings among Italian scholars. There are some who investigate the aspect of intentional meanings or even those expressed unawares by the artist, but which can be reconstructed, however, on the basis of cultural codes: This was the case of Eugenio Battisti (1924–1989), who, inspired by Warburg, made use of the contributions of fields of inquiry thought to be foreign to the tradition of the criticism of the figurative arts (fable, folklore, the history of religions, with references that range from Propp to Kerenyi); of Salvatore Settis (1941–), a professor of classical archaeology, but also a scholar of modern art; of Augusto Gentili (1943–) and, in part, of Michelangelo Muraro (1913–1991) and Lionello Puppi (1931–). But there are also those who apply Jungian psychology, such as Maurizio Calvesi (1927–) and Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco (1939–2002). Art historians with different make-ups, but all inspired by Marxist theories, follow what is generically defined as the sociological method (which studies artistic products in relation to social situations), often combining it with other methodologies. In Italy one of the first to lay the foundations

ART CRITICISM for a methodical sociological reading of poetry and art in general was the philosopher Galvano Della Volpe (1895–1968). His importance for aesthetics lies mainly in Critica del gusto (A Critique of Taste, 1960), where he maintained that the assessment of the ‘‘sociological nature’’ of the work of art coincides with the assessment of its ‘‘structural meanings or values,’’ that is, the semantic structures corresponding to historical, social, in short empirical, conditions. In Della Volpe we thus see a convergence between the sociological and the semantic-structural interpretations of the work of art. During the 1950s and early 1960s some art historians were particularly interested in the relation between art and society, among them, Corrado Maltese (1921–2001), who was mostly concerned with modern art from the nineteenth century onward. In the second half of the 1960s and the 1970s, some of the most important contributions in various fields of inquiry included the works of Manfredo Tafuri (1935–1994), Mario Manieri Elia (1929–), Antonio Del Guercio (1923–), Francesco Poli (1949–), Fernando Bologna, and other experts also interested in social history, such as the previously mentioned Giovanni Previtali and Enrico Castelnuovo. The semiotic-structural perspective examines the work of art as a system of signs, from the point of view of signification and communication, and highlights the aesthetic level and the originality of the message. The interest in structuralism and semiology grew during the 1970s, when the writings of art historians responded to the numerous and sometimes decisive theoretical contributions of scholars of aesthetics such as Umberto Eco and Emilio Garroni (1925–). Brandi participated in the semiotic-structural field with Le due vie (The Two Ways, 1966), Struttura e architettura (Structure and Architecture, 1967), and Teoria generale della critica (A General Theory of Criticism, 1974), which constitutes a summa of his aesthetic positions, in which phenomenology, structuralism, and semiology are combined. Brandi did not renounce the interpretive tools offered by semiology (witness the essays on architecture in his book from 1967), but he maintained that the essence of art is astanza, which is to say that the work of art is an aesthetic object that does not signify but gives itself as pure presence. After the contributions of several architect-theorists, such as Italo Gamberini and Giovanni Klaus Koenig, who approach architecture from the semiotic-communicative perspective, we should mention the contributions to the history of architecture by Maria Luisa Scalvini

(1934–) and Renato De Fusco (1929–). Formed in the school of Roberto Pane (1897–1987), a Crocean architectural historian, De Fusco, known as the founder of Op. Cit, a journal of criticism of contemporary art, and for various popularizing texts, elaborates the methodological hypothesis of uniting Fernand De Saussure’s linguistics with Fiedler’s theory of pure visibility and with the conception, borrowed from August Schmarsow, of architecture as Raumgestaltung (shaped space). He is concerned with defining the specificity of the architectural sign, its levels of articulation, as well as the characteristics of the urban sign. To verify his own theses, De Fusco conducts a number of interpretations of buildings in various styles and from various ages. He thus makes semiology assume a concrete applicability and attributes to it a utility that, not restricted to the history of architecture but extending to practical design, confers upon it an effective role in the outline of a new cultural politics. Beginning in the 1960s, Bruno Zevi also made numerous forays into the debate over architectural semiotics, which were collected in Il linguaggio moderno dell’architettura (The Modern Language of Architecture, 1972), an essay in which the linguistic system of modern architecture was distinguished through the ‘‘seven invariants of the anticlassical code.’’ Because only classical architecture is codified, Zevi extracted these invarianti from the exceptions to the classical rules contained in the most important contemporary architectural texts. At the time of this writing, semiological contributions to the history of the visual arts come from Gillo Dorfles (1910–), one of the most active and prolific contemporary scholars of art and aesthetics, and Filiberto Menna (1926–1989), whose La linea analitica dell’arte moderna: Le figure e le icone (The Analytical Strain in Modern Art: Figures and Icons, 1975) proposed a semiotic interpretive paradigm that can be applied to art ranging from Seurat to Conceptual Art. Finally, Renato Barilli (1935–) has devoted numerous studies to modern and contemporary art, opting since Culturologia e fenomenologia degli stili (A Culturology and Phenomenology of Styles, 1982) for the method of ‘‘cultural, or, better yet, technological historical materialism’’ (which is developed, among others, by Marshall MacLuhan). Barilli offered interesting contributions to the semiotic debates of the 1970s, writing a seminal essay entitled Tra presenza e assenza: Due modelli culturali in conflitto (Between Presence and Absence: Two Cultural Models in Conflict, 1974). 101

ART CRITICISM At the foundation of much criticism inspired by semiotics is the idea of giving an objective and scientific explanation of artistic facts, essentially the fear of seeing concepts like the ineffability and the uniqueness of artistic phenomena undermined. But, on the other hand, Marxist scholars also have launched attacks against the idealists—for example, that they pursue a sterilely formalistic approach and that they are incapable of explaining the ‘‘why’’ of the work. In fact, the risk of dehistoricization of artistic facts is run only by those structuralist scholars who privilege the synchronic approach over the diachronic. Moreover, if we apply to art criticism the same principle recommended for literary criticism by Cesare Segre in Semiotica filologica: Testo e modelli culturali (Scholarly Semiotics: Text and Cultural Models, 1979), it becomes indispensable to be furnished with a scholarly arsenal adequate to confront any semiotic study of cultural codes, texts, and contexts. Once again, therefore, the recovery and restitution of the work of art to history become necessary, as much for those who make use of a single methodology as for those who, in a globalizing project, utilize the contributions of various disciplines. GIUSEPPINA DAL CANTON See also: Literature and Visual Arts

Further Reading Argan, Giulio Carlo, ‘‘Critica d’arte,’’ in Enciclopedia del Novecento, vol. 1, Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1975. Argan, Giulio Carlo, Progetto e destino, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1965. Argan, Giulio Carlo, Salvezza e caduta nell’arte moderna, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1964. Barilli, Renato, Culturologia e fenomenologia degli stili, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982. Barilli, Renato, Tra presenza e assenza: Due modelli culturali in conflitto, Milan: Bompiani, 1974. Battisti Eugenio, L’antirinascimento, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962. Battisti, Eugenio, Rinascimento e Barocco, Turin: Einaudi, 1960. Bettini, Sergio, Venezia nascita di una citta`, Milan: Electa, 1978. Blunt, Anthony Frederick, Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. Bologna, Ferdinando, ‘‘I metodi di studio dell’arte italiana e il problema metodologico oggi,’’ in Storia dell’arte italiana, vol. 1, Turin: Einaudi, 1979. Brandi, Cesare, Le due vie, Bari: Laterza, 1966.

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Brandi, Cesare, Struttura e architettura, Turin: Einaudi, 1967. Brandi, Cesare, Teoria generale della critica, Turin: Einaudi, 1974. Croce, Benedetto, La critica e la storia delle arti figurative, Bari: Laterza, 1934. Croce, Benedetto, Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale, Bari: Laterza, 1902; as Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, translated by Douglas Ainslie, London: Macmillan, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995. Dal Canton, Giuseppina, ‘‘Le scuole di critica d’arte in Italia,’’ Op. cit.: Selezione della critica d’arte contemporanea, 47(1980): 33–65. De Fusco, Renato, Segni, storia e progetto dell’architettura, Bari: Laterza, 1973. Della Volpe, Galvano, Critica del gusto, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1960; as Critique of Taste, translated by Michael Caesar, London: NMB, 1978. Filippi, Elena, ‘‘Critica d’arte e storia dell’arte in Italia a partire dagli anni Trenta: Appunti per un consuntivo,’’ Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 156 (1997–1998): 551–611. Grassi, Luigi, Teorici e storia della critica d’arte, 3 vols., Rome: Multigrafica, 1970–1979. Kultermann, Udo, Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: Der Weg einer wissenschaft, Wien-Du¨sseldorf: Econ-Verlag, 1966; as The History of Art History, New York: Abaris Books, 1993. Longhi, Roberto, ‘‘Proposte per una critica d’arte,’’ Paragone, 1(1950): 5–19. Longhi, Roberto, Da Cimabue a Morandi: Saggi di storia della pittura italiana scelti e ordinati da Gianfranco Contini, Milan: Mondadori, 1973. Marangoni, Matteo, Come si guarda un quadro: Saggio di educazione del gusto sui capolavori degli Uffizi, Florence: Vallecchi, 1927. Marangoni, Matteo, Saper vedere, Florence: Vallecchi, 1933; as The Art of Seeing Art, London: Shelly Castle, 1951. Menna, Filiberto, La linea analitica dell’arte moderna: Le figure e le icone, Turin: Einaudi, 1975. Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico, Arti della visione, 3 vols., Turin: Einaudi, 1975–1979. Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico, Profilo della critica d’arte in Italia, Florence: Vallecchi, 1973. Schlosser, Julius Ritter von, Die Kunstliteratur: Ein Handbuch zur Quellenkunde der neueren Kunstgeschichte, Wien: Anton Schroll, 1924. Sciolla, Gianni Carlo, La critica d’arte del Novecento, Turin: UTET, 1995. Segre, Cesare, Semiotica filologica: Testo e modelli culturali, Turin: Einaudi, 1979. Sohm, Philip, Style in the Art Theory of Early Modern Italy, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Tafuri, Manfredo, Teorie e storia dell’architettura, Bari: Laterza, 1970. Toesca, Pietro, Il Medioevo, 2 vols., Turin: UTET, 1927. Toesca, Pietro, Il Trecento, Turin: UTET, 1951. Venturi, Adolfo, Storia dell’arte italiana, 25 vols., Milan: Hoepli, 1901–1945. Venturi, Lionello, History of Art Criticism, translated by Charles Marriot, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1936.

PELLEGRINO ARTUSI Venturi, Lionello, Painting and Painters: How to Look at the a Picture, from Giotto to Chagall, New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945. Zeri, Federico, Pittura e Controriforma: L’arte senza tempo di Scipione di Gaeta, Turin: Einaudi, 1957; rpt. 1970.

Zevi, Bruno, Il linguaggio moderno dell’architettura: Guida al codice anticlassico, Turin: Einaudi, 1972; as The Modern Language of Architecture, London: University of Washington Press, 1978; rpt. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.

ARTURO’S ISLAND See L’Isola di Arturo (Work by Elsa Morante)

PELLEGRINO ARTUSI (1820–1911) When, in 1891, Pellegrino Artusi printed at his own expense La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well), where the term ‘‘cucina’’ means ‘‘kitchen’’ as well as ‘‘cookery,’’ he had already collected two editorial failures. In fact, his collection of essays Vita di Ugo Foscolo (The Life of Ugo Foscolo, 1878) and Le osservazioni in appendice a trenta lettere di Giuseppe Giusti (Observations on Thirty Letters by Giuseppe Giusti, 1881), for both of which he ‘‘footed the bill,’’ went almost unnoticed. As Artusi remarked in the humorous preface to the fourth edition of La scienza in cucina (1899), this new book also initially seemed to go down the same path: He had sent two complimentary copies to the charity fair of Forlimpopoli (his birthplace) only to learn that the winners had immediately rushed to the local tobacconist to resell them; then he sent another copy to a Roman literary review that listed it in the ‘‘Books Received’’ column with a wrong title. After these disappointments, a decisive breakthrough came in the form of a note of encouragement from Professor Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910), one of the most celebrated academics of the time, whose intention to popularize a scientific approach to bodily pleasures could not miss the profane and progressive importance of Artusi’s cookery manual.

Mantegazza’s support was a good omen for the book, which by its fourth edition had sold 52,000 copies and turned Artusi’s Florentine address in Piazza D’Azeglio into the most famous Italian book agency. Artusi was a member of Mantegazza’s newborn Societa` Italiana di Antropologia ed Etnologia (Anthropological and Ethnological Italian Society) and a recurring presence in the audience of its lectures and debates. His use of ‘‘science’’ and ‘‘art’’ in the title of his book attests to the author’s faith in a knowledge that partakes in the wider aesthetic involvement of human beings. This hedonistic approach, for Artusi, is not adverse to ethics. If ethics is now viewed in the light of Charles Darwin’s survival logic, it inevitably comprises the imperative of mid-nineteenthcentury popular manuals on hygiene. Against the ‘‘ideali illusioni’’ (idealistic illusions) and the ‘‘anacoreti’’ (anchorites), now outdated, Artusi invited his readers to understand that ‘‘il mondo corre assetato, anche piu´ che non dovrebbe, alle vive fonti del piacere’’ (the world thirsts after the living sources of pleasure, even beyond its needs) and advised them ‘‘a temperare queste pericolose tendenze con una sana morale’’ (to temper these dangerous tendencies with healthy ethics). ‘‘Healthy ethics’’ relies upon appropriate nourishment, 103

PELLEGRINO ARTUSI which can be obtained by following the hygienic rules that Artusi himself dictated in La scienza in cucina. Far from being the result of recent experimental discoveries, as Piero Camporesi has shown in his critical edition, Artusi’s recommendations were rooted in the medieval School of Salerno or Renaissance treatises such as Leon Battista Alberti’s Libri della Famiglia (The Family in Renaissance Florence, 1433–1441), which was reworked by Agnolo Pandolfini (1360–1446) into the Trattato del governo della famiglia (A Treatise on the Administration of the Family, 1734). The precise, almost liturgical, articulating of meals; the salubrious promenades; the temperance in drinking; the vigil hermeneutic of corporeal needs under the control of a refined taste that combines pleasure with a sober inclination to parsimony—all are designed to offer the reader a healthy itinerary toward preservation of life, wellbeing, and happiness by means of a most delightful discipline. The decision to include in the later editions a letter by Countess Maria Fantoni Mantegazza, in which the professor’s second wife thanks the author for his precious recipes, is a vindication of the educational importance of the book. If the fundamental functions of life are ‘‘species proliferation’’ and ‘‘nutrition,’’ Artusi’s work strove to educate the latter as Mantegazza’s Fisiologia del Piacere (The Physiology of Pleasure, 1877), aimed at improving the former. Indeed Artusi succeeded in shaping his cookeryhedonology with an unsurpassed style, which explains the success of his steady seller. Artusi is to be especially commended for writing a unified cookery book within the context of a young nation that had so far been split in two: The few who knew how ‘‘to cook in French’’ (for instance, the Royal Family, who influenced Florentine gastronomy idiolect when the capital city was moved to Tuscany in 1865) and the many who were used ‘‘to cooking in dialect,’’ that is, the food of the poor commoners. The anti-French pronouncements in Artusi’s book were often meant to encourage, according to an ideal of moderate indulgence for the pleasures of eating, the simplicity of flavors as the most authentically Italian response to French grandeur: Exemplary recipes are no. 123 (Salsa alla maitre d’hotel) and no. 137 (Balsamella) or the humorous etymological digression on the Brandade de morue in recipe no. 118. The author also avoided his predecessors’ French jargon. He purposely entrusted to the recipe for caciucco, a stew made up of a great variety of fishes, the task of enunciating 104

his linguistic program via a perfect metaphorical correspondence of food- and language-theory. After pointing out that the term caciucco is strictly Tuscan-Mediterranean, as opposed to the Adriaticcoast brodetto, he concluded: ‘‘Dopo l’unita` della patria mi sembrava logica conseguenza il pensare all’unita` della lingua parlata, che pochi curano e molti osteggiano, forse per un falso amor proprio e forse anche per la lunga e inveterata consuetudine ai propri dialetti’’ (After the unification of Italy, I thought it necessary that one should also care about a unified spoken language: Few, however, take it at heart while many oppose it perhaps out of misguided self-love or the old and lasting habit of practicing their own dialects). For Artusi, the simplicity of flavors corresponded to the quest for a ‘‘simple and pure’’ language that reflects the pleasure that readers will experience while executing each and every recipe. Thus Artusi offers this advice to neophytes: ‘‘Scegliete sempre per materia prima roba della piu´ fine, che questa vi fara` figurare’’ (Always begin by choosing the finest of ingredients; they will help you succeed). Furthermore, instead of the detached ‘‘lay-down-the-law’’ tone of recipe books where verbs appear in the imperative, Artusi’s style is friendly, humorous, sometimes even amusing. Therein are all sorts of digressions: Recipes often become a vehicle for scientific remarks (nos. 479 and 490) or for historic-mythological glosses, as in nos. 546 and 550 on peacock, which, as happens sometimes in this amazing book, is followed by no recipe at all. These recipes become a pretext for anecdotal tales and sketches (no. 47), where the narrative verve leads the reader into the recipe through unexpected and puzzling paths. Indeed, La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene was Artusi’s life work: He continued to revise, enlarge, and restructure it, until its final form of 790 recipes. By the time of his death, his book had become a classic, omnipresent in the homes of the Italian bourgeois families. For a Catholic nation where even the reading of the Bible was better left to the priests, this book became a cultural companion for many ladies, who found in the instructions of an old gentleman the appropriate discrete advice in the kitchen.

Biography Pellegrino Artusi was born in Forlimpopoli (Forlı`), 4 August 1820, the only son among seven daughters

PELLEGRINO ARTUSI of Teresa Giunchi and Agostino, a wealthy grocer who had been involved in the 1831 patriotic riots. He attended high school at the Episcopal Seminar in Bertinoro and university in Bologna, where he graduated in Italian literature. The only thrilling episode of a life otherwise devoted to the prudent enjoyment of affluence and licit pleasures took place in the night of 25 January 1851, when the gang of Stefano Pelloni, the famous ‘‘Passatore,’’ broke into the Theater of Forlimpoli and robbed the audience. Afterward, the bandits went on pillaging the houses of local prominent families, including his own. Artusi negotiated with the bandits after his father managed to escape. After this incident, his family moved to Florence and, from there, Artusi went to Livorno in 1853. Back in Florence in 1854, he established his Banco, where he dealt in textiles. A bachelor at 50, he retired from business and dedicated himself to literary and gastronomic interests, with the help of his two cooks: the Tuscan Mariella Sabatini and Franceso Ruffilli from Emilia-Romagna. He died in 1911, in Florence. SIMONE LENZI See also: Culture of food

Selected Works Cookbooks La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, 1891; edited by Piero Camporesi, 1970; as Italian Cook Book, adapted by Olga Ragusa, 1945; as The Art of Eating Well, translated by Kyle M. Phillips, 1996; as Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, translated by Murtha Baca and Stephen Sartarelli, 2003.

Other Vita di Ugo Foscolo, 1878. Le osservazioni in appendice a trenta lettere di Giuseppe Giusti, 1881. Autobiografia, edited by Alberto Capatti and Andrea Pollarini, 1993.

Further Reading Benporat, Claudio, Storia della gastronomia Italiana, Milan: Mursia, 1990. Camporesi, Piero, Introduction to Pellegrino Artusi, La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Capatti, Alberto, and Massimo Montanari, La cucina italiana: Storia di una cultura, Rome–Bari: Laterza, 1999. Faccioli, Emilio, L’arte della cucina in Italia, Turin: Einaudi, 1987. Pollarini, Andrea (editor), La Cucina bricconcella 1881/ 1991: Pellegrino Artusi e l’Arte di Mangiar bene cento anni dopo, Bologna: Grafis, 1991. Roncuzzi, Alfredo, Profilo biografico di Pellegrino Artusi, Forlimpopoli: Cassa rurale ed artigiana, 1990.

AS A MAN GROWS OLDER See Senilita` (Work by Italo Svevo)

ASHES See Cenere (Work by Grazia Deledda)

105

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ASHES OF GRAMSCI, THE See Le Ceneri di Gramsci (Work by Pier Paolo Pasolini)

AUTOBIOGRAPHY The first recorded English use of the neologism ‘‘autobiography’’ (the writing of one’s own life) appeared in 1797, and it is indeed the Romantic period, with its sustained and self-conscious inquiry into inner life, that is generally considered to be the golden age for this genre. Though many scholars believe that the Romantics raised autobiography to the status of a major literary genre by discovering its range of expressive possibilities, the ‘‘invention’’ or initial use of autobiography is an issue of an altogether more ancient and complex provenance. The desire to write about one’s own life, however varied, is arguably one of the most enduring tendencies of the Western literary tradition. From early Greek lyric fragments to twenty-first-century tell-alls, the proliferation of autobiographical works, both in Italy and abroad, has been matched in scale perhaps only by the cultural, political, and social controversies that have attended this literary practice. Moreover, the malleability and fluidity of the word ‘‘autobiography’’ and its cognates continually thwart most attempts to define or imbue with consistent theoretical principles the changing and idiosyncratic literary practices associated with self-representation. Notwithstanding this critical confusion, in Italy and elsewhere the question of autobiography has attracted a vast number of authors wishing to leave a record of their lives and a corresponding amount of powerful critical voices, as one would expect from a literary matter that bears so viscerally upon individual and collective notions of identity. Over any study of literary autobiography in the Italian tradition looms the specter of Dante, at 106

once a sacred precedent and a soaring challenge for Italian authors attempting to translate their life story into apologetic and self-mythologizing form. Indeed a great deal of what Dante wrote drew on, represented, or interpreted his life experiences in some way. Dante acknowledged Boethius and St. Augustine’s Confessiones (397–401) as authorities for speaking about oneself but above all as models of spiritual and intellectual conversion. His first major composition, the youthful Vita nova (New Life, ca. 1294), whose pioneering impact as a ‘‘book’’ has been explored by, among others, Ernst Robert Curtius in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953), recounts his love for Beatrice and his poetic apprenticeship in the dolce stil novo of Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Guinizzelli. And, of course, Dante’s masterpiece, the Comedia (Divine Comedy, ca. 1305–1321), walks a literary tightrope between the allegorical plight of all Christian souls and Dante’s private spiritual path. Even when Dante did not directly write about his life, the palinodic aspect of his work (its tendency toward incorporating and revising earlier autobiographical components) often asserts itself. For example, it is accepted to argue that when Dante swooned in Inferno 5 after hearing Francesca tell how she and Paolo arrived at their adulterous embrace, he did so partly for autobiographical reasons: namely, because of his guilt over composing the kind of un-Christian, stilnovistic lyric that Francesca literally ‘‘mouths’’ when she describes to Dante, in a rhetorically graphic manner, how her beloved bestowed upon her lips a trembling kiss. On the whole, literary self-representation is a privileged

AUTOBIOGRAPHY means in the Comedia for exploring the plethora of concerns, secular and divine, that subtends Dante’s encyclopedic vision. Critic William Hazlitt once said of William Wordsworth that he saw only himself and the universe; for Dante, one might say, the self and the universe were one, from the slightest of personal details to the glory of the godhead. Throughout the poem, all knowledge is to a degree felt, lived, and experiential, and hence a form of selfknowledge, even (and perhaps especially) when Dante’s vision transcended the limitations of individual identity. Moreover, it is not only the life of the Pilgrim but also that of his readers that Dante wished to ‘‘write’’ or compose in some manner. The intensely personal and interpersonal nature of the poem, for all its erudition, finds its distillation in the text’s 20 or so addresses to the reader, which according to Erich Auerbach represent a groundbreaking instance in which a medieval author forged an intimate connection between himself and the interpreters of his work (‘‘Dante’s Addresses to the Reader,’’ 1954). The Italian writer considered to be Dante’s autobiographical successor, Petrarch, also obsessively employed the figure of apostrophe, but often his imaginary interlocutors (who included Cicero) existed only in the history books or in Petrarch’s imagination. A prestigious guide to the autobiographical element in the Petrarchan lyric came in 1823 from Ugo Foscolo, whose ‘‘A Parallel between Dante and Petrarch’’ (1823) transforms a comparison of the two—a practice that was a hallmark of Romantic criticism in Italy and abroad—into a cosmic struggle between those poets whom he referred to as the founders of Italian literature. Foscolo mentioned Petrarch’s claims for himself of the title of supreme poet, while consigning Boccaccio and Dante to the status of, respectively, great Christian and philosopher. Petrarch, Foscolo wrote, was an observer of the extreme of ‘‘the history of his own heart’’ and allowed ‘‘his mind to prey incessantly on itself’’ (‘‘Essay on the Poetry of Petrarch,’’ 1823). It would be a mistake, however, to take Petrarch at his word and read the Canzoniere (ca. 1342–1374) as simply the record of a self in crisis. For, much in the manner of his modern heir Giacomo Leopardi, Petrarch’s stylized lyrical self-representation hums with an aesthetic pleasure at odds with the more dolorous and self-accusatory themes of the verses. In the labyrinth of the Petrarchan lyrical self, part of the interpretive challenge derives from the author’s capacity to create this engaging contrast between the measure and harmony of the poetry’s

formal articulation and, conversely, its more official (because stated explicitly) melancholic descriptions of the self. The Renaissance witnessed major contributions to the autobiographical genre, including the Vita (My Life, 1558–1562) by Benvenuto Cellini, an artisan whose picaresque memoir emphasizes (and often exaggerates) the author’s adventurous life and career. The prosimetrum form of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Comento sopra alcuni de’ suoi sonetti (Commentary on Some of His Sonnets, ca. 1476) recalls the Dantesque mix of prose self-commentary and poetic composition in the Vita nuova. Echoes of Petrarchan strategies of self-representation permeate the lyric poetry of the European Renaissance to a profound degree, in authors ranging from Michelangelo Buonarroti in Italy to Louise Labe´ (1522–1566) in France and Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) in England, to name only the more prominent exponents. For all the richness of the literature on the self in the early modern period, however, it was not until the Enlightenment that the modern contours of the genre began to take shape. A major scholar of literary self-representation, Philippe Lejeune, dated the interest of the French and English reading public in autobiographical texts from about 1750 onward (L’autobiographie en France, 1971). A survey of eighteenth-century European literature of the self reveals a striking and unprecedented quantitative and qualitative breadth. One can categorize the major strands of the eighteenth-century autobiography into five groups. The most prominent version is the traditional memoir, by a range of authors including Giovanni Giacomo Casanova an his Histoire de ma vie (History of My Life, 1821), one of the massive autobiographies of the century; Lorenzo Da Ponte’s four volume Memorie (1823– 1827); Carlo Goldoni’s anecdotal Memoirs, a personal and melancholic diary, which he wrote in French between 1783 to 1787; and Carlo Gozzi’s Memorie inutili (Useless Memoirs, 1797–1798), which elucidates his positions on the function of the dramatic. In the style of Voltaire, these absorbing autobiographies recount the major external episodes of the authors’ lives and the development of their reputation, vocation, or public persona. Another type of autobiography consists of third-person narratives of intellectual development (cursus studiorum) in such texts as Giambattista Vico’s Vita scritta da se` medesimo (Autobiography, 1725–1731) and his contemporary Ludovico Antonio Muratori’s Intorno al metodo seguito ne’ suoi studi (On the Method Followed in His Studies), written in 107

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1721. The era also witnessed the proliferation of fictionalized autobiographical accounts between 1770 and 1800 by authors including Goethe and Foscolo, who represented aspects of their personal lives through the veil of literature in, respectively, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774) and Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, 1798–1817). Two final categories are literary diaries such as Vittorio Alfieri’s Giornali (Journals, 1774–1775) and the retrospective personal accounts narrated according to the methodological principles and practices of the historian, for example, Edward Gibbon’s Memoirs of My Life and Writings (1796). Scholars, however, continue to locate the official birth of the modern autobiographical genre in the Romantic age rather than the Enlightenment period so well documented by the preceding examples. One might approach this distinction by comparing the modes of self-representation in the predominant eighteenth-century form, the me´moire, with a more unclassifiable work from that time, JeanJacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782–1789). The rich interiority of the Confessions and its focus on the author’s elusive quest for personal identity diverge from the more traditional autobiographical texts then in circulation. In many respects, Rousseau’s text embodies what scholars of the genre understand to be a modern autobiography proper: an author’s retrospective narrative of his or her personal identity, in both its external and internal manifestations. By contrast, in the eighteenthcentury memoirs, the emphasis falls on the public nature of the life in question, while personal identity is implicit and incidental. In the Italian tradition, a great example of pre-Romantic change in autobiographical thinking is Vittorio Alfieri’s Vita scritta da esso (The Life of Vittorio Alfieri Written by Himself, posthumous 1804). In direct opposition to the memoir tradition, the Vita scritta da esso applies an organic pattern of human growth, which Alfieri described in terms of the pianta umana. As a whole, it makes the life of the writer, and not of the individual per se, the central theme of the text, for the narrative balances upon that Archimedean point in Alfieri’s life in which he dedicated himself to becoming Italy’s premier tragedian, in part by learning the illustrious Tuscan literary idiom of Dante. Though the conversionary topos is one of the most hallowed in the Italian literary tradition (Dante’s confession to Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise, Petrarch’s prayer to the Madonna at the conclusion of the Canzoniere, or Manzoni’s chapters on the Innominato 108

in I promessi sposi), Alfieri was the first author to imbue this Pauline, Augustinian topos with a vocational, aesthetic, and secular twist. The rediscovery in Alfieri’s Vita scritta da esso of the internal and eternal mysteries of the life of the writer became a rite of passage for subsequent authors. For example, Foscolo conceived Jacopo Ortis in such lifelike terms that he wrote about his novel: ‘‘Non si legge mai; si ode sempre; ne` s’ode l’oratore o il narratore, bensı´ l’uomo giovine che parla impetuosamente, e lascia discernere i varj colori della sua voce e i mutamenti della sua fisonomia’’ (One never reads it; one always hears it; nor does one hear the orator or the narrator, but rather a young man who speaks impetuously and lets one perceive the various textures of his voice and the changes of his countenance) (‘‘Notizia bibliografica,’’ 1816). For Foscolo, the merits of Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis reside in its lack of an artificial literary style. By 1814, however, Foscolo began to distance himself from the unmediated and transparent Ortis and adopted a new literary alter ego, Didimo Chierico, who viewed life with ironic detachment. Since Foscolo, the Italian literary tradition has witnessed a rich diversity of autobiographical writings. The subgenres include the self-representations by Italian patriots during the Risorgimento, such as Ippolito Nievo’s Confessioni di un italiano (The Castle of Fratta, 1867); Holocaust testimonials, most notably Primo Levi’s Se questo e` un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz, 1947), La tregua (The Reawakening, 1963), and I sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986); and literary self-portraits that depict the perennial struggles over the questione meridionale, such as Carlo Levi’s chronicle of his political exile in Lucania, Cristo si e` fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli, 1945). During the twentieth century, Italian autobiography transformed self-representation into a site for philosophical and theoretical inquiry. Indeed, autobiography became as much a literary mode as it was a genre. In Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno (Confessions of Zeno, 1923), the fictional persona (the patient-protagonist Zeno Cosini) embodies the author’s interests in Freudian psychoanalysis and the subconscious. In Italian, the word coscienza means both ‘‘conscience’’ and ‘‘consciousness.’’ In recent times, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo (The Leopard, 1958), a fictional biography of the author’s great-grandfather, prompted Giorgio Bassani to introduce the novel as ‘‘forse ancor piu´ un autoritratto, lirico e critico insieme’’ (perhaps even more a self-portrait,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY at once lyrical and critical). Prince Lampedusa’s reconstruction of the Leopard’s life is part of a dialectic between the worldview of the ancien re´gime, the perennial crisis of the Southern Question, and the revolutionary politics of the Risorgimento. The insertion of anachronistic details, including the American-made bomb that would devastate the family estate in World War II, speaks of the relationship between the historically displaced Leopard and the successive generations who would presumably confront their own crises of identity. In Bassani’s novel Il giardino dei FinziContini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, 1962) the narrative frame distills a similar lyrical nostalgia. The epigraph, drawn from Manzoni’s I promessi sposi, asks ‘‘Ma che sa il cuore? Appunto un poco di quello che e` gia` accaduto’’ (But what does the heart know? Just a little of what already occurred); the novel’s conclusion attests to the firstperson narrator’s pledge to speak no more of ‘‘quel poco che il cuore ha saputo ricordare’’ (what little the heart was able to remember). The affective modalities of memory counter the brutal historical record of the Finzi-Continis’ deportation to Nazi Germany in 1943 and ultimately coalesce to form a literary epitaph for a family denied proper burial. Other literary works of the twentieth century comprise the monumental lyrical collections of Umberto Saba and Giuseppe Ungaretti. Saba spent much of his life editing his poetic opera omnia into the anthology form made famous by Petrarch’s Canzoniere (also the title of Saba’s work). As in the early Humanist model, Saba’s poems highlight temporal gaps in experience and signal both the interdependence and intrinsic singularity of the poetic insights in a life that was, by the author’s own admission, relatively lacking in external drama. Instead the vatic rhetoric of the cosmopolitan Ungaretti’s lyrical voice in Vita d’un uomo (Life of a Man, 1969) seems a world apart from the more homely lexicon and themes of Saba. The fact that both poets cast their lifetime work into a coherent autobiographical form attests to a continuity and influence of the enduring precedents for selffashioning set by Dante and Petrarch at the origins of the Italian literary vernacular. A significant aspect of the autobiographical genre in contemporary Italian studies has been the recovery of lost voices (especially women and immigrants). One such case is the Historia (Story, 1622) by Camilla Faa` Gonzaga, a pioneering woman’s autobiography. More conventional but nevertheless appealing memoirs were written by

Rita Levi Montalcini, Luisa Passerini, and Enif Robert. But, for all the variety in the strategies of self-representation adopted by canonical and lesser-known authors alike, a common thread in Italian literature has been its consideration of the cultural, historical, political, social, and spiritual dimensions of Italian identity from the perspective of autobiography. Thus the dialogue between italianita` and individualita`—however divergently conceived and indelibly inflected with the ideologies and worldviews of a given era—represents one of the most powerful and abiding elements of Italian literary history. JOSEPH LUZZI See also: Biography

Further Reading Auerbach, Erich, ‘‘Dante’s Addresses to the Reader,’’ Romance Philology, 7(1954), 268–278. Bassani, Giorgio, ‘‘Preface’’ to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il gattopardo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1958. Battistini, Andrea, Lo specchio di Dedalo: Autobiografia e biografia, Bologna: ll Mulino, 1990. Briganti, Paolo (editor), Autobiography, Annali d’Italianistica, 4(1986). Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953. De Man, Paul, ‘‘Autobiography as De-Facement,’’ in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Foscolo, Ugo, ‘‘An Essay on the Poetry of Petrarch,’’ in Essays on Petrarch, London: John Murray, 1823. Foscolo, Ugo, ‘‘Notizia bibliografica,’’ in Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, Zurich: Orell and Fu¨ssli, 1816. Foscolo, Ugo, ‘‘A Parallel between Dante and Petrarch,’’ in Essays on Petrarch, London: John Murray, 1823. Guglielminetti, Marziano, Memoria e scrittura: L’autobiografia da Dante a Cellini, Turin: Einaudi, 1977. ´ ditions Lejeune, Phillipe, Le pacte autobiographique, Paris: E du Seuil, 1975. Luzzi, Joseph, ‘‘Literary Lion: Alfieri’s Prince, Dante, and the Romantic Self,’’ Italica, 80:2(2003), 175–194. Olney, James (editor), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Parati, Graziella, Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Starobinski, Jean, ‘‘Le style de l’autobiographie,’’ in La relation critique, Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Tiozzo, Enrico, La trama avventurosa nelle autobiografie italiane del Settecento, Rome: Aracne, 2004. Weintraub, Karl, ‘‘Autobiography and Historical Consciousness,’’ Critical Inquiry, 1:4(1975), 821–848. Weintraub, Karl, The Value of the Individual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

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B RICCARDO BACCHELLI (1891–1985) Bridge, 1927), Bacchelli narrates the failure of the insurrectional attempts of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in the Emilia region between 1873 and 1876. The narrative techniques belong to the nineteenth century, to which are added a dose of skepticism along with a subtle form of humor, from a writer who, thanks to detachment operated by time, is able to keep his distance from the story he tells. This same artistic approach is found in his biblically inspired novels as well as in the narratives with a strictly historical background. His capacity to narrate exciting tales never yields to sentiment or to intimacy: Only when Bacchelli recounts events centered on the psyche of his characters does he write his least convincing works. Whenever there is a historical background that can be precisely documented, the author succeeds in entering into the innermost feelings of his characters, thereby offering to the reader a credible, interior representation of them. His most celebrated novel is Il mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po, 1938–1940), from which a cinematographic adaptation by Alberto Lattuada (1949) and a TV series were produced. The work is divided in three parts: Dio ti salvi (God Save You, 1938), La miseria viene in barca (Trouble Travels by Water, 1939) and Mondo vecchio sempre nuovo (Nothing New Under the Sun, 1940). The trilogy embraces almost a century of Italian history, from the retreat of the Napoleonic campaign in Russia to the Battle of Vittorio Veneto to the conclusion of World War I. The image that runs throughout

During his long life, the versatile writer Riccardo Bacchelli produced works in almost every literary genre: from lyric poetry to narrative, from dramaturgy to opera librettos, from essays to short stories, newspaper articles, and literary criticism, becoming an author who played an important role on the twentieth-century Italian artistic scene. His works, which span almost the entire century, succeed in maintaining a notable stylistic and ideological coherence in spite of such a wide variety of interests. Although faithful to a prose style that draws upon the examples of Alessandro Manzoni and Giacomo Leopardi, Bacchelli never relinquished the freedom to choose his personal style, which helped him to become an important twentieth-century narrative writer. After an education based on the ideology of Vincenzo Cardarelli’s La Ronda, which, following the challenges provoked by the Futurist movement, urged a ‘‘return to order,’’ Bacchelli turned to Manzoni’s writings from which his first and strongest interest for narrative, particularly the historical novel, was derived. This is the most congenial genre for Bacchelli, to which he dedicates a large part of his literary production. For Bacchelli, moving toward Manzoni did not only signify— according to the approach of the rondisti—the recovery of a nineteenth-century tradition in terms of form, but also a return to great historical panoramas and to captivating events capable of speaking to a wider audience. In one of his early novels, Il diavolo al Pontelungo (The Devil at the Long 111

RICCARDO BACCHELLI the novel is suggested by the parallelisms between the Po River and the life of man: As the river, flowing slowly and majestically, can sometimes have sudden surges that cause profound modifications to the landscape, so the life of man, appearing always to be the same, is capable of changing from one minute to the next. In the background of the novel are the great historical events such as the wars, the technological revolution, and the pressure put on the common man by the powers that be. In the forefront is the story of the Scacerni family, millers from the city of Ferrara, with which are interwoven the daily occurrences of life in the country. The first part, Dio ti salvi, recounts how Lazzaro Scacerni, survivor of the Russian campaign, is able to buy a mill on the shores of the Po with the money he made from a sacrilegious theft. He lives a good life even though dangers of every kind—from the local mafia to a devastating flood—are always lying in wait. The second part, La miseria viene in barca, narrates the events of Lazzaro’s son, Giuseppe, who greatly increases the family’s patrimony through illegal activities, up until his death and another flood, which makes Lazzaro lose his mind, causing him to be confined to a mental hospital. In the third part, Mondo vecchio sempre nuovo, Giuseppe’s widowed wife, Cecilia, must battle a calamitous disgrace: Her oldest son ends up in prison, accused of arson in the burning of the mill, while her second son dies in the Piave River at the end of World War I, just a few days before the Italian victory. Il mulino del Po recounts the history of the Italian people, persistent and industrious, strong in the face of every adversity. Permeated by a strong moral tone, the novel offers idyllic depictions, moments of caricature, pages of authentic suspense, and ample but well-balanced descriptions. Its length—almost 2,000 pages—and division into parts allows the work to assume the aspect of a multiple novel, which, however, comes through as unified. Along with the narrative works, Bacchelli also wrote poetry, such as Poemi lirici (Lyric Poems, 1914) and Parole d’amore (Words of Love, 1935), which move along the lines of a rich, autobiographical experience to which is added an inclination toward philosophical discourse resulting in a complex formal and thematic approach. All of this reveals, from his early works, Bacchelli’s determination not to dedicate himself to a purely contemplative treatment of the lyric material, but rather to utilize poetry as an effective means of discussion. The structure of Bacchelli’s verses approaches prose as it rejects rhyme schemes and facile 112

musicality. The only form of poetry possible for modern writers, according to Bacchelli, is a sort of rhythmic prose in which basic themes founded on the truth predominate. In his later years, with his three collections of Versi e rime (Verses and Rhymes, 1971–1973), Bacchelli seems to return to a heightened musicality, although his poetry tends toward unusual themes, such as science, theology, or morality, according to a model that could lead back to the philosophic poetry of a Clemente Rebora, or even of a T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot. Bacchelli’s theatrical pieces (collected in the first two volumes of Tutte le opere, 1957–1974) are articulated and well-constructed in a dialectical framework. He begins with a reworking of Amleto (Hamlet, 1919), which faithfully recovers the storyline of the Shakespearian tragedy, although the protagonist is much more aware of his predicament—so much so that he loses the ambiguity of his predecessor. Conceived as an autobiographical projection of the author, Amleto becomes a poet in whom persists the regret for a life no longer possible for him. Of greater impact is L’alba dell’ultima sera (The Dawn of Last Evening, 1949), a drama that deals with the inner conflict of a scientist who, after having created a terrifying atomic device, refuses to make it known to anyone, preferring rather to die. There are about 10 other theatrical pieces that are rarely performed today. The monologues written for actress Paola Borboni had greater success. Bacchelli is also the author of radio plays, television screenplays, and of farces, such as La notte di un nevrastenico (The Neurasthenic’s Night, 1957), which was transformed in 1960 into a libretto for the music of Nino Rota. It recounts the grotesque event of a man in a hotel, who tries in vain to find nocturnal tranquility. Bacchelli was also a literary critic, a travel writer, and a music critic, whose writings include a biography of Gioacchino Rossini published by UTET in 1941. All of these activities make of Bacchelli a multifaceted author who is at the same time endowed with an admirable coherence of style and commitment, to the point of being notable, in clear contrast with the poetics of the fragment typical of rondismo, as one of the most remarkable exponents of the twentieth-century novel.

Biography Born in Bologna 19 April 1891; son of a lawyer, enrolled in the Department of Letters at the University of Bologna, where he was a student of

RICCARDO BACCHELLI Giovanni Pascoli, among others; his studies were interrupted in the third year; he collaborated with the newspapers Il Resto del Carlino and La Patria, and with the journals La Raccolta, Primato, and La Voce; was among the founders of the journal La Ronda in 1919; during World War I, fought as a volunteer artillery officer, an experience that would later be recalled in Memorie del tempo presente; in 1941, his enormous narrative, poetic, and essay production earned him the nomination to the Accademia d’Italia (a position from which he would resign in 1944) and, later, to the Accademia della Crusca and to the Accademia dei Lincei; the University of Milan and the University of Bologna bestowed upon him an honorary degree (honoris causa) in letters; along with his artistic activity, he edited the editions of Opere by Giacomo Leopardi (1935) and by Alessandro Manzoni (1953). Bacchelli died in Monza (Milan) on 8 October 1985. PAOLO QUAZZOLO Selected Works Collections Tutte le novelle, 1911–1915, Milan: Rizzoli, 1952. Tutte le opere, 28 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1957–1974.

Novels Il filo meraviglioso di Lodovico Clo`, 1911. Il diavolo al Pontelungo, 1927; as The Devil at Long Bridge, translated by Orlo Williams, 1929. La citta` degli amanti, 1929; as Love Town, translated by Orlo Williams, 1930. Una passione coniugale, 1930. Oggi domani e mai, 1932. Il rabdomante, 1936. Il mulino del Po, 1938, 1939, 1940; as The Mill on the Po, (contains God Save You and Trouble Travels by Water), translated by Frances Frenaye, 1952; as Nothing New Under the Sun (volume 3 of Il Mulino de Po), translated by Stuart Hood, 1955. Lo sguardo di Gesu`, 1948. La cometa, 1951. L’incendio di Milano, 1952; as The Fire of Milan, translated by Kathleen Nott, 1958. Il figlio di Stalin, 1953; as Son of Stalin, translated by Kathleen Nott, 1956. Tre giorni di passione, 1955. Non ti chiamero` piu` padre, 1959. Il coccio di terracotta, 1966. L’‘‘Afrodite’’: un romanzo d’amore, 1969. Il progresso e` un razzo: romanzo matto, 1975. Il sommergibile, 1978. In grotta e in valle, 1980.

Short Stories ‘‘Bella Italia. Novelle, fiabe e racconti,’’ 1930. ‘‘La fine d’Atlantide e altre favole lunatiche,’’ 1942.

‘‘L’elmo di Tancredi ed altre novelle giocosa,’’ 1942. ‘‘Il brigante di Tacca del Lupo ed altri racconti disperati,’’ 1942. ‘‘La bellissima fiaba di Rosa dei venti,’’ 1948.

Poetry ‘‘Poemi lirici,’’ 1914. ‘‘Amore di poesia. Poemi lirici. Memorie. Riepilogo. Liriche,’’ 1930. ‘‘Parole d’amore,’’ 1935. ‘‘La notte dell’8 settembre 1943,’’ 1945. ‘‘Versi e rime: primo libro, la stella del mattino,’’ 1971. ‘‘Versi e rime: secondo libro, bellezza e umanita`,’’ 1972. ‘‘Versi e rime: terzo libro, giorni di vita e tempo di poesia,’’ 1973.

Theater Amleto, 1919. L’alba dell’ultima sera, 1949. La notte di un nevrastenico (libretto), 1957. La smorfia (libretto), 1959. Il calzare d’argento (libretto), 1961.

Travel Writings Italia per terra e per mare. Capitoli di viaggio, 1952. Viaggio in Grecia, 1959. Viaggi all’estero e vagabondaggi di fantasia, 1959. America in confidenza, 1966. Africa tra storia e fantasia, 1970. Questa nostra Italia, 1978.

Critical Essays La ruota del tempo, 1928. Confessioni letterarie, 1932. Gioacchino Rossini, 1941. Rossini e esperienze rossiniane, 1959. Leopardi e Manzoni. Commenti letterari, 1960. Saggi critici, 1962. Giorno per giorno. Dal 1912 al 1922, 1966. Giorno per giorno. Dal 1922 al 1966, 1968.

Historical and Political Writings La congiura di Don Giulio d’Este, 1931. Nel fiume della storia. Riflessioni, discorsi e saggi storici, 1955. La politica di un impolitico 1914–1945. ‘‘Dieci anni di ansie’’: Due saggi su Giolitti e altri scritti, 1948.

Further Reading Bergamo, Giorgio Mario, Il mio Bacchelli, Verona: Stamperia Valdonega, 1998. Briganti, Alessandra, Riccardo Bacchelli, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980. Casotti, Claudia, Uno scrittore nel tempo: bibliografia di Riccardo Bacchelli, Florence: Le Lettere, 2001. Della Peruta, Franco, Riccardo Bacchelli e il mondo rurale padano, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1992. Dosi Barzizza, Antonietta, Invito alla lettura di Riccardo Bacchelli, Milan: Mursia, 1986. Masotti, Claudia, Riccardo Bacchelli, Naples: Morano, 1991. Ragni, Eugenio, ‘‘Cultura e letteratura dal primo dopoguerra alla seconda guerra mondiale,’’ in Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 9, Il Novecento, edited by Enrico Malato, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2000.

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RICCARDO BACCHELLI Saccenti, Mario, ‘‘Il romanzo plurim,’’ in Novecento, vol. 5, edited by Gianni Grana, Milan: Marzorato, 1980. Saccenti, Mario, Bacchelli: memoria e invenzione, Florence: Le Lettere, 2000.

Vitale, Maurizio, Sul fiume reale: tradizione e modernita` nella lingua del Mulino del Po di Riccardo Bacchelli, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1999.

NANNI BALESTRINI (1935–) Nanni Balestrini’s experience is perhaps one of the most radical and contradictory within the neoavant-garde panorama. Balestrini’s search for both open and experimental ways of expressing ideological concerns brought him in contact with many genres and different forms of writing—from virtual or electronic visual poetry to the collage and combinatorial methods—in order to destroy any mechanism of control that might establish the subject’s authoritative presence in words. However, even if he seems to follow Dadaistic combinatory techniques, his writing appears nevertheless restrained by an evident unwillingness to abandon rhetoric. According to Alfredo Giuliani, Balestrini’s ‘‘writing is provisional, provocative even if it shows impeccable ‘formalisms,’’’ therefore addressed to a pragmatic outcome like a machine showing its mechanisms, so that the recipient could make more practical and concrete use of the verbal material toward a full recovery of ‘‘the wonderful organic, anonymous, casual sense of life’’ (Le droghe di Marsiglia, 1977). Today, Balestrini’s first poetical attempts written in the 1950s are regarded as remarkable— collected in Osservazioni sul volo degli uccelli: poesie 1954–1956 (Observations on the Flight of Birds: Poems 1954–1956, 1988). The richness of the images and evoked objects reminds John Picchione of Ezra Pound’s lesson: ‘‘The juxtaposition of objects and events follows paratactic or asyndetic constructions that try to capture the simultaneity of perceptions and discard discursive and descriptive modes of writing’’ (‘‘Nanni Balestrini and the Invisibility of the Poetic ‘I,’’’ 2004). A more extensive search for linguistic short-circuits can be seen in Il sasso appeso (The Dangling Rock, 1961), then again in Come si agisce (How to Act, 1963): ‘‘Here, possibilities of narration are continuously frustrated by the presence of semantic oppositions, antitheses, and antinomies that not only cause a state 114

of tension but also create a linguistic and mental suspension that opens the text to a multiplicity of meanings,’’ (John Picchione, ‘‘Nanni Balestrini and the Invisibility of the Poetic ‘I,’’’ 2004). Suffering from a slow and difficult political disillusionment, immediately after the Gruppo 63 experience, Balestrini created a remarkable allegory of the will toward social change with a WomanBird character, the protagonist of Le ballate della signorina Richmond (Miss Richmond’s Ballads, 1977). In 1987, this allegory can still be found in Il ritorno della signorina Richmond (Miss Richmond’s Return)—a narrative cycle in progress about the political transformations in Italy between the 1970s and 1990s, almost a counter melody to the author’s life between his political engagement in Italy and his exile in France. In 1999, he published the collection Le avventure complete della signorina Richmond (Miss Richmond’s Complete Adventures). This is a new kind of civic poetry where the language is a mixture of everyday sentences, proverbs slightly changed in order to modify their meanings, direct speech, violent invectives and explicit allusions to films, songs, newspapers and novels. There are many different sources: ornithological and cookery handbooks, poetry and drama collections, Vladimir Propp, extracts and quotations from Bertolt Brecht, political and trade-union speeches, Erik Satie’s musical advice and, amidst all of this, a remarkable homage to the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Balestrini collaborated with his friend and muse Valeria Magli, who performed a harsh and dissonant dance arrangement many times. In Ipocalisse (Hypocalypse, 1986) Balestrini experiments with a new, open sonnet form: 49 compositions where the verses seem ‘‘like threads hanging while going on, ever breaking inside, still in the impossibility of giving shape to a plausible continuity of sense’’ (Maurizio Cucchi, ‘‘Nanni Balestrini,’’ 1996).

NANNI BALESTRINI After the anthology of the Il romanzo sperimentale, Palermo 1965/Gruppo 63 (The Experimental Novel, Palermo 1965/1963 Group, 1966), his prose work, too, shows an explicit interest in the combinatory method and civic subjects. The prose cycle including Vogliamo tutto (We Want Everything, 1971), Gli invisibili (The Unseen, 1987), L’editore (The Publisher, 1989) was reissued under the title La grande rivolta (The Great Revolt, 1999). These works tell of the crucial moments of social and political life in Italy: the insurrection of the new Southern working class against the Northern industrial automatism, the physical and cultural suppression of the rebels, and the emblematic and tragic death of the Milanese publisher Gian Giacomo Feltrinelli. Whereas in I furiosi (The Furious, 1994), the collective ‘‘I’’ speaks through a syntax free from any literary boundary, in a language so colloquial and full of slang as to seem onomatopoeic, and describes the ritual of soccer supporters in a polyphonic self-odyssey. As in a mimetic flux, the prose is interrupted only by lyrical-like inserts with echoes of fanatical soccer fan songs and jibes and is characterised by its lack of any punctuation, recalling the language of children. The writing represents an instinctual and superficial animality, displaying something provincial in the description of the wonder for the rites of the sporting community. The individual plots are always intertwined in the text and remain at the early stage of pure voices, even where there is an evident embryonic notion of a community ideal, of a collective sharing that goes far beyond the support and the sense of belonging that pertains to soccer fans to the extent that they consider themselves and not the players the Milanese soccer team. After Una mattina ci siam svegliati (One Morning, We Woke Up, 1995), where the organization of a big national political manifestation is described through the lower-class flux of voices, in a collective, almost psalm-like tale, Balestrini wrote his last narrative, Sandokan: Storia di camorra (Sandokan: A Camorra Story, 2004) where the title alludes to the name of the main character, a mafia boss. The deterioration of the environment and cultural backwardness of a little village near Caserta under the obsessive control of the mafia lead a group of men into delinquency. This story tells about the rise and fall of an economic empire built on blood and grounded in an artificial ideal of ‘‘honour’’ and ‘‘honourableness,’’ in the name of which all the most challenging expiations are accepted. In this documentary novel, Balestrini’s language reflects

the subject, as an epic confession-conversation, a simple and sterile monologue to reflect the language of the mafia, created out of the fake cliche´ that the American movies love and overuse. In this prose, a simple and barren language seems to be the most suitable means to show his impossible reconciliation.

Biography Born in Milan 2 July 1935. Poet and novelist, cultural and political activist. Began publishing his poetry in the early 1950s in the periodical Mac Espace directed by Gillo Dorfles. His first volume of poetry Il sasso appeso published in 1961. In 1961, wrote his first computer-aided poem Tape Mark 1 (pubished in the Almanacco Bompiani). Played a decisive role in the creation of the culture reviews Il Verri, Quindici, and Alfabeta. Took part in the Gruppo 63 and Italian neo-avant-garde, being both coeditor (with Alfredo Giuliani) and contributor to the volume I novissimi (1961). Founding member of Potere Operario, 1969. In 1973, joined the extreme left movement Autonomia Operaia. On April 7, 1979, with many others of the movement, was accused of subversive association and involvement in 19 murders, among them Aldo Moro’s. Took refuge in Paris in order to avoid arrest (later dropped). His novel Gli invisibili translated as The Unseen and shown as a documentary on the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1989. Balestrini also works in performing and visual arts. Exhibited in many galleries in Italy and abroad and the Biennial International Exhibition of Modern Art in Venice in 1993. In 2003, along with Maria Teresa Carbone, founded the review online Zoooom—libri e visioni in rete. In 2004, a number of exhibitions including at the Contemporary Art Museum in Rome, the Communal Gallery in Macerata and the Hermete Gallery in Turin. In 1963, was awarded the Premio Ferro di Cavallo prize for the most experimental book of the year. In 1996, appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des arts et des lettres in France. Nanni Balestrini divides his time between Paris and Rome. STEFANO TOMASSINI See also: Neo-Avant-Garde Selected Works Collections La grande rivolta (Vogliamo tuttoGli invisibiliL’editore), Milan: Bompiani, 1999.

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NANNI BALESTRINI Le avventure complete della signorina Richmond, Turin: Testo & Immagine, 1999. Tutto in una volta, autoantologia delle poesie 1954–2003, Venice: Edizioni del Leone, 2003.

Anthologies

Poetry

Radiodrama

‘‘Il sasso appeso,’’ 1961. ‘‘Come si agisce,’’ 1963. ‘‘Altri procedimenti,’’ 1965. ‘‘Ma noi facciamone un’altra,’’ 1968. ‘‘Ballate distese,’’ 1975. ‘‘Poesie pratiche. 1954–1969,’’ 1976. ‘‘Le ballate della signorina Richmond,’’ 1977. ‘‘Blackout,’’ 1980. ‘‘Finisterre,’’ 1982. ‘‘Cieli,’’ 1984. ‘‘Ipocalisse,’’ 1986. ‘‘Il ritorno della signorina Richmond,’’ 1987. ‘‘Osservazioni sul volo degli uccelli: poesie: 1954–1956,’’ 1988. ‘‘Il pubblico del labirinto, quarto libro della signorina Richmond,’’ 1992. ‘‘Estremi rimedi,’’ 1995. ‘‘Elettra, operapoesia,’’ 2001. ‘‘Sfinimondo,’’ 2003.

Fiction Tristano, 1966. Vogliamo tutto, 1971. La violenza illustrata, 1976. Gli invisibili, 1987; as The Unseen, translated by Liz Heron, 1989. L’editore, 1989. I furiosi, 1994. Una mattina ci siam svegliati, 1995. Sandokan. Storia di camorra, 2004.

Essays Prendiamoci tutto: conferenza per un romanzo: letteratura e lotta di classe, 1972. L’orda d’oro, 1988 (with Primo Moroni).

Gruppo 63. La nuova letteratura, 34 scrittori, Palermo, ottobre 1963, 1964 (with Alfredo Giuliani). Il romanzo sperimentale, Palermo 1965/Gruppo 63, 1966. Deposizione, 1973. Parma 1922: una resistenza antifascista, 2003.

Translations Claude Simon, Trittico, 1976. Samuel Beckett, Sussulti, 1991.

Further Reading Barilli, Renato, La neoavanguardia italiana: Dalla nascita del «Verri» alla fine di «Quindici», Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995. Cucchi, Maurizio, ‘‘Nanni Balestrini,’’ in Poeti italiani del secondo Novecento 1945–1995, edited by Maurizio Cucchi and Stefano Giovanardi, Milan: Mondadori, 1996. De Stasio Wedel, Giovanna, Glauco Cambon, and Antonio Iliano, editors, Twentieth-Century Italian Poets, Detroit and London: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1993. Esposito, Roberto, ‘‘Produzione poetica e forma di riproduzione: Nanni Balestrini,’’ in Le ideologie della neoavanguardia, Naples: Liguori, 1976. Giuliani, Alfredo, Le droghe di Marsiglia, Milan: Adelphi, 1977. Picchione, John, ‘‘Nanni Balestrini and the Invisibility of the Poetic ‘I,’’’ in The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetics Practices, Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Riccardi, Antonio, ‘‘Osservazioni sul volo degli uccelli di Nanni Balestrini,’’ in Poesia, 2, no. 5 (May 1989): 64–65. Sanguineti, Edoardo, ‘‘Come agisce Balestrini,’’ in Ideologia e linguaggio, edited by Erminio Risso, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2001.

MATTEO BANDELLO (1485–1561) Matteo Bandello is considered one of the most important novella writers after Giovanni Boccaccio. He was also the chronicler of sixteenth-century courtly society in Northern Italy. His life reveals a religious and theological education as well as a talent for diplomatic missions; he moved easily in society and was in contact with the most important representatives of the Renaissance. The encyclopedic character of his literary work offers not only a source for historical and literary studies of history of his time but also evidence of real human 116

experiences showing the different aspects of the Renaissance. Bandello is thus a symbolic figure for Lombardian humanism. His uncle Vincenzo Bandello, an extraordinary theologian who became famous for his theses about the Immaculate Conception, is responsible for Matteo’s intellectual and social education. With the intention of reforming the order of St. Dominic, Vincenzo travels to France, Spain, and Germany in 1501. Having returned to the monastery of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan, he finally calls a

MATTEO BANDELLO general assembly of the order. In 1505 he will invite Matteo to accompany him during his religious mission to Central and Southern Italy. The basis of the first literary experience of Matteo is formed during his studies in Genoa by the friendship of Giambattista Cattaneo, an exceptionally gifted young monk of the Dominican Order, who dies of the plague. Founded on this experience, Matteo writes his first literary work, which is a report on the life of Cattaneo in Latin: Religiosissimi Fratris Joannis Baptistae Cattanei Genuensis vita (Life of the most religious brother Giambattista Cattaneo of Genoa, ca. 1501). The inscription on Cattaneo’s tombstone says: ‘‘Invitis parentibus, ad Praedicatorum Religionem convolavit, in qua quadraginta dumtaxat diebus exercitus, morte praescita, sevissima peste interrempta’’ (Against the will of his parents, he flocked to the Dominican Order, in which he militated for just 40 days; he was killed by a most cruel plague, his death having been foretold). This literary biography is a valuable document of Matteo’s religious sense and the real life of a Dominican convent of that time. In 1505, having definitively entered the convent and accompanying his uncle he gains another experience that bears fruit in his literary works. Staying at the monastery Santa Maria Novella in Florence he gets to know a young lady called Violante Borromea, whom he admires platonically and to whom he paid tribute. Although she dies one year later (only a few days before his uncle’s death), her name appears several times in Matteo’s poetry. In Canto I,28 of Canti XI de le lodi de la signora Lucrezia Gonzaga (Eleven Cantos, 1545) he mentions her name and her origin, Florence. Moreover, to her he dedicates novella I,18 Il Bandello a la Diva Violante Borromea Fiorentina Salute (Bandello to the Diva Violante Borromea Fiorentina), which is Bandello’s first novella, probably written in 1505. On his journeys he visits many important courts, gaining much diplomatic and literary experience. When Vincenzo dies in Calabria, Matteo takes the corpse to Naples, where he buries him in the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore. Back in Milan Matteo, in touch with poets Cecilia Gallerana e Bergamina and Camilla Scarampa e Guidobuona, he is inspired to collect his novellas by Ippolta Sforza. He dedicates the first novella of the first volume to his patron by calling her the founder of this collection and also the founder of the individual composition. In novella IV/16 Bandello describes his journey to the court of Louis XII in Blois. In 1509, we can find the translation of Boccaccio’s eighth novella of the 10th day, the novella of Titus and Gisippus,

translated into Latin by Bandello between 1504 and 1508. This translation with the title of Titi Romani Egisippique Atheniensis amicorum historia in latinum versa (The story of the two friends Titus the Roman and Gisippus the Athenian translated into Latin) reveals Bandello’s particular interest in the Boccaccio’s Decamerone. Bandello is also the author of the introduction to the Calipsychia (1515) of Radini Tedeschi, a work in the tradition of medieval allegory. When Bandello takes refuge with Isabella d’Este Gonzaga in 1515 he has the opportunity to get to know the educated aristocracy of Mantova, especially Elisabetta Gonzaga, Emilia Pio, and Ippolita Torelli, the wife of Baldassare Castiglione. Having returned to Milan in 1522, Bandello is forced to leave Milan again in 1525 when his house is plundered by the Spanish troops (Bandello mentions this in novella I,23), and valuable manuscripts are destroyed and lost. Back to Mantova during the battles against the Spanish army he contacts famous generals, as for example Giovanni dalle Bande Nere and the Renaissance tactician and theorist of war, Niccolo` Machiavelli. Meetings with those historical characters are mentioned in novella I,40, which he dedicates to Giovanni de’ Medici. Bandello’s poetry in terza rima (three-line stanza), Le tre Parche, ne la nativita` del signor Giano, primogenito del signor Cesare Fregoso e de la signora Gostanza Rangona sua consorte (The Three Fates, 1531) is written in the honour of Giano, the firstborn child of Cesare and Gostanza Fregoso. Cesare Fregoso is also mentioned by Ludovico Ariosto in the 46th canto of his Orlando furioso. Having met Marguerite de Navarre, Bandello keeps in touch with the author of the Heptame´ron, a work that had a great influence on Bandello’s novellas. In 1539, he sends his translation in the Italian vernacular language (volgare) of Euripides’ play Hekuba (Ecuba) to Marguerite. Between 1535 and 1538 he writes Canti XI de le lodi de la signora Lucrezia Gonzaga da Gazuolo in octaves. Marguerite de Navarre will get one manuscript in 1544. Moreover, Bandello mentions in his novella II, 11 a vocabulary in Latin that he has collected from many works of the best authors. This encyclopedia, as he says, was lost during the occupation of Milan in 1525: ‘‘E tra l’altre cose mi rubarono la maggior parte de le mie rime ed alcune novelle insieme con quel mio gran volume dei vocaboli latini da me raccolti da tutti i buoni autori’’ (And, among other things, they stole most of my poetry and some novellas together with that big book of mine of Latin words which I had assembled from all the 117

MATTEO BANDELLO good authors). In 1545, Bandello releases Canti XI and Le tre Parche to be published in Agen, and also the first three volumes of his novellas Le tre parti de le Novelle del Bandello, edited in Lucca in 1554 by Francesco Busdrago. These volumes containing the first 186 novellas, the following 28 novellas, partly obtained in Italy and partly written by himself, are published in Lyon in 1573, 12 years after Bandello’s death. The first literary judgment on Bandello comes from the monk Leandro Alberti in a collection on famous Dominicans of 1517. Alberti praises Bandello’s clear and direct style: ‘‘Virum in scribendo floridum, clarum, nitidum, emunctum et accuratum’’ (A copious, straightforward, polished, refined, and precise writer) (cited in Giuliano Pirotta, Bandello narratore, 1997). In the course of literary criticism, Bandello’s light and fluent style is commonly mentioned. It is considered to contain a sense of realism. Natalino Sapegno talks about his ‘‘stile giornalistico’’ ( journalistic style), a language that follows the truth, a ‘‘linguaggio di cose’’ (Compendio di storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 2, 1941), which is connected, as Bruno Maier says, with a ‘‘poetica del vero,’’ a poetics of contemporary and real life (Matteo Bandello, 1990). Bandello rules out that his novellas are fictitious and states that he has experienced all events himself and then wrote them down (Giusi Baldissone, Le voci della novella, 1998). Through this oral tradition, Bandello collects in his works different kinds of truth, which show the social and political confusion of his times. Especially in the dedication letters, an attempt to order the chronology of the events in his unstable life can be registered. There are many differences between the novellas of Giovanni Boccaccio and Matteo Bandello, which are a consequence of the conditions at that time. Bandello experiences war, which gives him the opportunity to contact different royal courts and generals. The centre of power is no longer the city republics of the fourteenth century, but the royal courts, often in conflict between the emperor and the Pope and thus having to endure foreign occupying powers. The omission of a frame story in Bandello’s collection of novellas is the expression of a ‘‘instabil varieta`’’ (unpredictable variety) of the circumstances, which puts the courtly culture of conversation at the centre of attention (Willi Hirdt, review of Matteo Bandello, novelliere europeo, 1986). There is a huge and dialectic contrast between the culture of aristocratic patronage, sense of art, artistic awareness, the elevated conversation of the court life and the violence of the period, which 118

he criticises from an aesthetic distance. In novella IV,25, which is dedicated to Berlingieri Caldora, Bandello judges the use of firearms as an agreement to modern types of war and calls it an evil instrument by referring to the wound of Fregoso’s colonel Lelio Filomanino, who is ‘‘ferito di una palla di arcobuso, instrumento diabolico’’ (wounded by a shot from an arquebus, a diabolical instrument). Bandello’s moral judgment is true, but it is much more difficult to explain the tension between the morality of the Dominican and the immoral stories of his literary work. Bandello is a monk and a courtier at the same time; at the court he tells stories and agrees with rules that conversation is to be enjoyed, but also to be useful ( prodesse et delectare). The varied character and development of the author is explained by Adelin Charles Fiorato in Bandello entre l’histoire et l’ecriture (1979), which lays the foundation for the literary scientific treatment of Bandello, who is viewed as ‘‘un produit des e´coles et de la ville’’ and whose ‘‘expe´rience s’est paracheve´e dans les chaˆteaux, les camps et les garnisons de l’Italie septentrionale, dans les demeures e´piscopales de Guyenne.’’ Nevertheless he stands by his roots. So Bandello justifies the usage of the Lombardian language by dedicating the Le novelle to Ippolita Sforza: ‘‘Se poi, come di leggiero forse avverra`, cose assai vi saranno rozze, mal esplicate, ne´ con ordine conveniente poste, o con parlar barbaro espresse, a la debolezza del mio basso ingegno l’ascriva e al mio poco sapere, e pigli in grado il mio buon volere, pensando ch’io son lombardo e in Lombardia a le confini de la Liguria nato e per lo piu` degli anni miei sin ad ora nodrito, e che, come io parlo cosı` ho scritto’’ (If then, as perhaps may easily happen, many things seem rough, ill explained or expressed uncouthly and not placed in appropriate order, ascribe this to my weak wit and to my litle knowledge, and take into account my good will, remembering that I am a Lombard born in Lombardy on the border with Liguria and for most of my years brought up there and that I write as I speak). On the one hand, Bandello regards himself as God’s unworthy tool following the traditions of Christian hermeneutics, on the other hand he attaches great importance to the individual character of his poetry, with his special emphasis on the Lombardian language by showing the distance and independence from the idioms of Tuscany and the Trecento, especially in relation to Boccaccio. Already in the introduction to the first volume it is important for Bandello to announce his linguistic and stylistic difference to Boccaccio: ‘‘Io non voglio dire come disse il gentile ed eloquentissimo

MATTEO BANDELLO Boccaccio, che queste mie novelle siano scritte in fiorentin volgare, perche´ direi manifesta bugia, non essendo io ne´ fiorentino ne´ toscano, ma lombardo. E se bene io non ho stile, che il confesso’’ (I do not want to say, as the noble and eloquent Boccaccio said, that these stories of mine are written in the Florentine vernacular, because I would be telling an obvious lie since I am neither Florentine nor Tuscan, but Lombard. And if I don’t have style, then I admit it). Through this confession Bandello counts himself among the tradition of novellas established by Boccaccio, but at the same time he asks the reader not to compare him with Boccaccio. The use of the Lombardian language shows less the incompetence of Bandello to use the Tuscan language than his pride in his origins, which he explains in his work. In the preface of the third part of the novellas he mentions again his Lombardian origins and his descent from the Ostrogoth who founded his home Castelnuovo under the Ostrogoth King Teodorico. In novella I,52 and 53 there is some evidence of his father, Giovan Francesco, yet his mother is never mentioned. Moreover, in novella I,23 he tells a love story of his ancestor and founder of the family Bandelchil, which was already written in an old book: ‘‘La novella io gia` vidi in un antichissimo libro scritto a mano ove erano molte cose de le antichita` de la nostra terra’’ (The story which I took from a very old book written by hand where there were many things about the ancient times of our land). With much self-irony, Bandello tells of the true love of his ancestor Bandelchil, who with trickery got into the bedroom of his beloved Aloinda; after their marriage she bore him many descendants. The description of the true affection of a couple, whose love can only come true through trickery, reminds us of Romeo and Juliet, who have no other wish than to get married. In novella II,9 their passionate words of love and longing seem as true and honest as the ones of Bandelchil and Aloinda. That is what Aloinda says to Bandelchil: ‘‘Signor mio, da me piu` che la vita mia amato, se voi tanto m’amate quante mi dite e scritto m’avete, voi farete di modo che possiamo lungamente esser insieme, che sara` se per moglie mi sposate’’ (My lord, loved by me more than my life, if you love me as much as you say you do, you will act so that we can be together for a long time, which will be if you take me as your wife).

Biography Born in 1485 in Castelnuovo Scrivia (Alessandria), then in Lombardy, son of Giovan Francesco

Bandello of an old aristocratic family. In 1497 goes to Milan to the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where he is taught and educated by his uncle Vincenzo Bandello, the prior of the monastery. In 1500 or 1501 he follows his uncle, who teaches theology in Pavia, and from 1503 to 1505 completes his theological education in Genoa in the convent of S. Maria di Castello. Having survived the plague and having taken the vows, he accompanies his uncle Vincenzo, who has been appointed as the Superior General of the Order of St. Dominic, to a religious mission to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Calabria to reform the order. He familiarizes self with not only the monasteries of the central and southern part of Italy but also life at the residence of Pope Jules II in Rome and the courtly life at the royal court of Beatrice d’Aragon, at Castle Capuano in Naples. After the death of Vincenzo Bandello on 27th August 1506, returns to Milan to the monastery of S. Maria delle Grazie, where he is ordained a priest in 1507. There cultivates his contacts with the aristocrats of Lombardy as well as with the most important literary circles. With Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio, the wife of Alessandro Bentivoglio of Bologna, he develops profound cultural contacts and is inspired by her to make his collection of novellas. In the function of a courtier he offers his services to the Bentivoglio and in 1508 he is sent on a diplomatic mission to the court of Louis XII in Blois. In consequence of the various battles between the Italian dynasties of the Po Valley and the foreign French, Spanish, and Imperial forces, Bandello comes into the service of several representatives of the Italian Renaissance such as Massimiliano Sforza, the son of Ludovico il Moro, who reaches Milan in 1512. Bandello is in direct contact with the nobility of Milan, the aristocratic families Atellani and Sanseverino and with the poets Cecilia Gallerana e Bergamina and Camilla Scarampa e Guidobuona. After the battle at Marignano the Sforza family has to sustain the loss of its territories and the French are turning to Milan. Takes refuge with Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, placing himself under her protection. Again he is sent on diplomatic missions to important courts of northern Italy. The battle of Bicocca and the combined defeat of the French stabilize the condition and power of the Sforzas, and in 1522 Bandello goes back to Milan until 1525, when Lombardy is occupied by the Spanish and the house of Bandello is looted. Bandello finds refuge in Mantova, where he is taken into service by Francesco Gonzaga and gets to know the garrisons and battlefields. Finally, in 1529 Bandello is indentured to the Genoese 119

MATTEO BANDELLO emigrant and Venetian general Cesare Fregoso, who is, on instructions from Venice, stationed in Verona, where Bandello will live from 1529 to 1536. After a short stay in Castelgoffredo (Mantova) in 1536 he follows Fregoso to France where he meets Queen Marguerite de Navarre. On 2 July 1541 Cesare Fregoso is murdered on orders of the Emperor Karl V. Bandello accompanies the widow, Gostanza Rangona, to Venice, then to Bazens near Agen, where Gostanza Rangona lives under protection of the King of France, Franc¸ois I. There until his death, Bandello concentrates on his literary works. After the demise of the bishop of Agen, Antonio della Rovere, Bandello is appointed bishop, responsible as vicar general for the administration of the diocese of Agen. From 1550 to 1555, he holds the office of bishop of Agen until Ettore Fregoso, the son of Gostanza, is of age. In 1561, Matteo Bandello died in Bazens and was buried in the Dominican convent of Port SainteMarie near Agen. MICHAEL AICHMAYR See also: Novella Selected Works Collections Le novelle, edited by Gioachino Brognoligo, 3 vols., 2nd revised edition, Bari: Laterza, 1928–1931. Tutte le opere di Matteo Bandello, edited by Francesco Flora, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1934–1935. Novelle, critical edition by Giuseppe Guido Ferrero, Turin: U.T.E.T., 1978; as The Novels of Matteo Bandello, 6 vols., translated by John Payne, London: Villon Society 1890.

edited by Nino Borsellino and Walter Pedulla`, vol. 3: Rinascimento e Umanesimo: Dal Quattrocento all‘Ariosto, Milan: Motta, 2004. Fiorato, Adelin Charles, Bandello entre l’histoire et l’ecriture: La vie, l’expe´rience sociale, l’e´volution culturelle d’un conteur de la Renaissance, Florence: Olschki, 1979. Griffith, T. Gwynfor, Bandello’s Fiction: An Examination of the ‘‘Novelle,’’ Oxford: Blackwell, 1955. Hirdt, Willi, review of Matteo Bandello, novelliere europeo: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (7–9 novembre 1980), edited by Ugo Rozzo, Tortona: Cassa di Risparmio, 1982, in Romanische Forschungen, 98, nos. 3/4 (1986): 463–466. Maier, Bruno, ‘‘Bandello, Matteo (1485–1561): Matteo Bandello e la novellistica del Cinquecento,’’ in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, vol. 1, 2nd edition, Turin: U.T.E.T, 1990. Masi, Ernesto, Matteo Bandello o vita italiana in un novelliere del Cinquecento, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1900. Ordine, Nuccio, Teoria della novella e teoria del riso nel Cinquecento, Naples: Liguori, 1996. Petrocchi, Giorgio, Matteo Bandello: L’artista e il novelliere, Florence: Le Monnier, 1949. Pirotta, Giuliano, Bandello narratore, Florence: Polistampa, 1997. Rozzo, Ugo (editor), Matteo Bandello, novelliere europeo: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (7–9 novembre 1980), Tortona: Cassa di Risparmio, 1982. Sapegno, Natalino, Compendio di storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 2, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1965–1966. Sauer, K.M., Geschichte der italienischen Literatur von ihren Anfa¨ngen bis auf die neueste Zeit, Leipzig: Verlag Wilhelm Friedrich, Hofbuchha¨ndler, 1883. Schalk, Fritz, ‘‘Bandello und die Novellentheorie der italienischen Renaissance,’’ in Romanische Forschungen, 85 (1973): 96–118. Toffanin, Giuseppe, Il Cinquecento, 7th revised edition, Milan: Vallardi, 1965. Wolter, Christine, ‘‘Begebnisse und Leidenschaften,’’ in Matteo Bandello: Novellen, edited by C. Wolter., vol. 2, Berlin:Ru¨tten & Loening, 1988.

Short Stories ‘‘La prima (la seconda, la terza) parte, de le Novelle del Bandello,’’ Lucca: Francesco Busdrago, 1554. ‘‘La quarta parte de le Novelle del Bandello nuovamente composte ne´ per l’adietro date in luce,’’ Lyon: Alessandro Marsilii, 1573. ‘‘La prima, la seconda, la terza, la quarta parte de le novelle,’’ critical edition by the Centro Studi ‘‘Matteo Bandello e la cultura Rinascimentale,’’ Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1992; rpts. 1993, 1994, 1996; selection in Italian Renaissance Tales, edited and translated by Janet L. Smarr, Rochester, MI: Solaris Press, 1983.

NOVELLE, 1554; 1573 Short Stories by Matteo Bandello

Further Reading Baldissone, Giusi, Le voci della novella: Storia di una scrittura da ascolto, Florence: Olschki, 1998. Cremonte, Lelia, Matteo Bandello e i casi veri delle sue novelle, Alessandria: Comitato onoranze Bandelliane, 1966. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘La cultura del Cinquecento: Il modello delle corti,’’ in Storia generale della letteratura italiana,

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‘‘Io, gia` molti anni sono, cominciai a scriver alcune novelle, spinto dai comandamenti de la sempre acerba e onorata memoria, la vertuosa signora Ippolita Sforza, consorte de l’umanissimo signor

MATTEO BANDELLO Alessandro Bentivoglio, che Dio abbia in gloria’’ (Many years ago now, I began to write some short stories, encouraged by the commands of the virtuous Lady Ippolita Sforza, of ever fresh and honoured memory, consort of the most humane Lord Alessandro Bentivoglio, whom God may keep in glory). With this dedication to Ippolita Sforza, who has, as he says himself in the introduction to novella I,1, inspired him to make the collection of novellas, Bandello emphasizes the courtly character of his writing, which is closely connected to the royal courts of the time. In contrast to the urban inspired novellas of the authors of the period of the fourteenth century, Bandello stresses the courtly character of his work. The dedication letters to famous characters of his time, which introduce his novellas, show not only his practical style and realistic tone but also his intention to create a literature that is directly connected to life and everyday events. His style, an expression of this literary conception, underlines the historic relevance of literature, and not only in the area of fiction. It is, of course, a mistake to accept all the dates in the dedication letters as historically approved. These letters, which were once seen as authentic historical documents, are currently also considered a part of poetic fiction and have to be interpreted in connection with the novella to which they belong. But certainly there are some facts that can be seen as historically confirmed, concerning the names, the mentality, the political unrest and war at that time, which all can be proved in history, especially from the point of view of the courtier and the servant Bandello. In deference to Il Decamerone by Giovanni Boccaccio and many other models of the tradition of novellas up to the Heptame´ron by Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), the sister of the French King Franc¸ois I and Queen de Navarre, there is no frame story in Bandello’s novellas, which were published in four parts: Le tre parti de le Novelle del Bandello (1554) and La quarta parte de le Novelle del Bandello (posthumously 1573). Nevertheless, there is a significant separation into two parts, the first as a dedication letter to a character of the time who knew Bandello, and the second as an event that the author experienced or heard himself: ‘‘E queste mie novelle ... non sono favole ma vere istorie’’ (And these stories of mine are not fables but records of real events). This shows a tight structure that can be compared with a separation into a frame story and the actual novella. The dedication letters present the introduction to the novella and at the same time they seem to act as a guarantee for the truth of the story. Both story and dedication letter reflect

the social situation of the time. The difference is that the first part is more representative-historical, whereas the second part is written on the basis of different transmissions of the matter concerning the social and political circumstances in the Renaissance. Even the order of the novellas, strung along without an overall structure, gives an impression of the chaos at that time in a world without order. Bandello lets all social classes appear, indicates their different types of dialogue, from the colloquial to courtly discourse. Not only are the protagonists explained in detail, the minor actors, too, are described with psychological interest. Bandello’s novellas can be considered a seismographic representation of the tumultuous times of the Renaissance. From the point of view of content variations of love provided by the main themes, as in the rough sexual comedy of a clever Don Faustino (Nov. II,2), the brutal rage of the betrayed wife Violante on her husband (Nov. I,42), and the noble courtly love between Romeo and Juliet and her tragic end (Nov. II,9). Luigi da Porto (1485–1529), storyteller from Vicenza, composed the story of Romeo and Juliet for the first time in 1524, adapting it from Masuccio Salernitano’s Novellino (1476). Bandello changed it into a poetic prose version and led it to its artistic perfection. William Shakespeare’s dramatic version in 1595 turned it into one of the most famous love stories in world literature. The merit of Bandello is founded on the dialogical structure of the work, prefiguring the conception of the drama. Language and story are fused into one unity: Through language, passion strives to overcome the distance between the loving couple, separated because of the conflict between the families. Even at the time of death, the surviving lover tries to connect himself with the soul of his loved one through words. The love story of Ugo and Parisina (Nov. I,44) also ends tragically. Ugo is the son of Niccolo` III d’Este and Parisina, his young stepmother. In this story both are sentenced to death. References to Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone occur several times. Yet his themes appear in a new context in Bandello’s novellas. An example is novella II,59, which reverses the contents of Boccaccio’s novella about Nastagio degli Onesti (Il Decamerone, Nov. V,8). During a journey to Ravenna, Bandello enjoys the hospitality of Messer Carlo Villanova in a famous pine grove mentioned by Boccaccio, whose novella tells a story about this grove in which the ghost of Guido degli Anastagi follows a woman who did not accept him as her 121

MATTEO BANDELLO lover at her lifetime. Now Bandello introduces a story in this place that makes people laugh and leads to love and happiness. Bandello is proud of several meetings with famous characters, for example Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and Niccolo` Machiavelli. The meeting with Leonardo da Vinci occurs when Bandello is a young man, watching the artist in 1497 in the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie, when da Vinci is painting the L’ultima cena (Nov. I,58). Bandello tells many stories about the tricks played by the court jester Gonnella at the Este court of Ferrara. In contrast to the Florentine author Franco Sacchetti, who highlights the tricks Gonnella played in his collection Il Trecentonovelle, Bandello emphasizes the pleasant and cheerful character of the court jester (Nov. IV,2). Gonnella was good at conversation and worked faithfully for his lord. When he wants to cure the Marchese of Ferrara of illness and throws him into the icy waters of the river Po, he is sentenced to death, but only to all appearance. Yet before he can be put to death he dies of fright, to the sorrow of the whole court. This is a typical sign of the reverse side and contradictions of the Renaissance. At that time a death sentence could be given easily by the absolute ruling prince. A film, E ridendo l’uccise (2000), was adapted from this novella by the director Florestano Vancini, who was born in Ferrara. There is also a play, Baruffino Buffone (1991) with stage directions by Florestano Vancini and Massimo Felisatti. The reception of Bandello’s works begins during the sixteenth century and continues until the twentyfirst century. Between 1559 and 1616, 56 different versions of French translations of his novellas were released, the most famous one by Pierre Boaistuau continued by Franc¸ois de Belleforest entitled Histoires tragiques extraictes des œuvres italiennes de Bandel. Translations into Spanish and English followed, which brought to fame the theater of Lope de Vega and the Elizabethan theater of England. In addition to the tragic novella of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare was inspired by the novella I,22 about Timbreo and Fenicia to write Much ado about nothing (1599), and by novella II,36 to write the comedy As you like it (1599). John Webster’s drama The Duchess of Malfi (1602) is also connected with the motive of rage in Bandello’s novella I,26. Lope de Vega’s El castigo sin venganza (1631) is related to the scandal at the house of Niccolo` III d’Este (Nov. I,44), a novella that laid 122

the foundation for the verse drama Parisina by Gabriele d’Annunzio. Lord Byron’s Parisina (1816) is also indirectly influenced by this novella of Bandello. Several other novellas of Bandello are models for Lope de Vega’s Es desde´n vengado, 1617 (Nov. III,17), La Quinta de Florencia, 1598 (Nov. II,15), El padrino desposado, 1598 (Nov. III,54), and El castigo del discreto, 1608 (Nov. I,35). In France, Bandello’s novella I,21 became the model for the comedy La Quenouille de Barberine by Alfred de Musset. Stendhal admired Bandello and mentioned his work several times, especially in the Chroniques italiennes. Bandello worked on his collection at the same time as Francesco Straparola (1480–1557), who, like Boccaccio, provided a frame story for his narratives. At that time Bandello was in contact with Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529) and Niccolo` Machiavelli (1469–1527) and chose the characters of his works on the basis of the tradition of the medieval and ancient literary motives. So the contents are based not only on the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, but also on the Classical world and the ancient figures, with a dramatic and mythological meaning that is confronted with the Renaissance. The suicide of the Roman Lucrece (Nov. I,8), the behaviour of Phaedra (Nov. I,44), or the journey into the underworld,with the evocation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth in the novella of Romeo and Giulietta (Nov. II,9) stand as the basis of the critical reflection on the era of the Renaissance. MICHAEL AICHMAYR Editions First editions: La prima (la seconda, la terza) parte, de le Novelle del Bandello, Lucca: Francesco Busdrago, 1554; La quarta parte de le Novelle del Bandello nuovamente composte ne´ per l’adietro date in luce, Lyon: Alessandro Marsilii, 1573. Critical editions: Novelle, edited by Giuseppe Guido Ferrero, Turin: U.T.E.T., 1978; La prima, la seconda, la terza, la quarta parte de le novelle, Centro Studi ‘‘Matteo Bandello e la cultura Rinascimentale,’’ Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1992; rpts. 1993, 1994, 1996; Le Novelle, edited by Gioachino Brognoligo, 3 vols. Second revised edition,Bari: Laterza, 1928–1931; in Tutte le opere di Matteo Bandello, 2 vols., edited by Francesco Flora, Milan: Mondadori, 1934–1935. Translations: as The Novels of Matteo Bandello, 6 vols., translated by John Payne, London: Villon Society, 1890; selection in Italian Renaissance Tales, edited and translated by Janet L. Smarr, Rochester, MI: Solaris Press, 1983.

ANNA BANTI (LUCIA LOPRESTI) Further Reading Aichmayr, Michael, ‘‘Matteo Bandello: A Poet Touching the Key of History,’’ in Gonnella, in Mittelalter-Mythen: Verfu¨hrer, Schurken, Magier, edited by Ulrich Mu¨ller and Werner Wunderlich, vol. 3, St. Gallen: UVK, Fachverlag fu¨r Wissenschaft und Studien, 2001. Baldissone, Giusi, Le voci della novella: Storia di una scrittura da ascolto, Florence: Olschki, 1998. Besomi, Ottavia, ‘‘Un cartone umanistico per Bandello (II,21),’’ in La novella italiana: Atti del Convegno di Caprarola 19–24 settembre 1988, vol. 2, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1989. Blask, Dirk J., ‘‘Nachwort: Matteo Bandello und sein Erza¨hlwerk,’’ in Matteo Bandello, Mit List und Leidenschaft: Italienische Liebesgeschichten der Renaissance, Mu¨nchen: Winkler, 1985. Brigantini, Renzo, ‘‘La sorte de il riso,’’ in Il tema della Fortuna nella letteratura francese e italiana del Rinascimento: Studi in memoria di Enzo Giudici, Florence: Olschki, 1990.

Ciccuto, Marcello, ‘‘Il novelliere ‘en artiste’: strategie della dissimiglianza fra Boccaccio e Bandello,’’ in La novella italiana: Atti del Convegno di Caprarola 19–24 settembre 1988, vol. 2, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1989. Cremonte, Lelia, Matteo Bandello e i casi veri delle sue novelle, Alessandria: Comitato onoranze Bandelliane, 1966. Felisatti, Massimo, et al., Baruffino Buffone, Ferrara: Liberty House, 1991. Hirdt, Willi, review of Matteo Bandello, novelliere europeo: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (7–9 novembre 1980), edited by Ugo Rozzo, Tortona: Cassa di Risparmio, 1982, in Romanische Forschungen, 98, nos. 3/4 (1986): 463–466. Ordine, Nuccio, Teoria della novella e teoria del riso nel Cinquecento, Naples: Liguori, 1996. Pirotta, Giuliano, Bandello narratore, Florence: Polistampa, 1997. Porcelli, Bruno, La novella del Cinquecento, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1979.

THE BANQUET See Convivio (Work by Dante Alighieri)

ANNA BANTI (LUCIA LOPRESTI) (1895–1985) Anna Banti, the literary pseudonym of Lucia Lopresti, was a writer, art historian, and literary and film critic. She published 10 novels, a play, and six collections of short stories, numerous critical monographs and articles, and one fictionalized version of her own life and work. The recipient of prestigious literary awards, founder and coeditor with her renowned art historian husband, Roberto Longhi, of the cultural and literary journal Paragone, translator of Virginia Woolf, Colette, Alain Fournier, and William Makepeace Thackeray, among others, author of a literary biography of

popular novelist Matilde Serao, as well as monographs on several artists, and a frequent contributor to the cultural columns of Italian newspapers, the prolific Banti was a prominent figure on the Italian literary scene for almost 50 years and she is one of the most important Italian female modernist writers. In the 1920s, Banti, a trained art historian, published critical essays on seventeenth-century Italian artists such as Marco Boschini, Francesco Crassia, and Francesco Cozza, which attracted the attention and praise of many critics, including Benedetto 123

ANNA BANTI (LUCIA LOPRESTI) Croce. At the age of 42 she launched her literary career with the publication of a semiautobiographical narrative, Itinerario di Paolina (Paolina’s Itinerary, 1937), comprised of loosely organized chapters that recount diverse events and experience in the protagonist’s childhood and adolescence. A second fictionalized autobiographical novel, Sette lune (Seven Moons, 1941) continues the life of a female protagonist, now named Maria Alessia, at the university. In both novels, Banti explores in various fictional contexts and genres: the representation of a female subjectivity different from that of men; the difficulties of establishing friendships among women and necessity of female bonding; and the difficulty in representing a female subjectivity grappling with the conflicts and solitude resulting from the desire to be different. Banti’s sophisticated modernist style reflects the influence of the prosa d’arte movement, which was prominent in Italian literary circles of the 1920s and 1930s, and was characterized by highly stylized prose and the indirect treatment of autobiographical themes that functioned to transform reflections of the self and lived experience into descriptive pieces of poetic brilliance with broad human significance. Another influence was her training with Longhi, whose emphasis on formal analysis of works of art informs her complex descriptive prose and narrative style as well as the representation of artists in her fictional works. As a chronicler of women, Banti’s style is also linked to works of the women writers she translated, namely Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and Colette. Unlike some of her models, though, Banti is not interested in portraying her characters as products of specific psychological or socially determined forces. Her work is grounded in specific situations, highlighting the reactions and often incongruous behavior of her protagonists after they have suffered a real or perceived injustice, most often related to their status as a woman. Banti published her first two collections of short stories in the early 1940s, Il coraggio delle donne (The Courage of Women, 1940) and the semiautobiographical Le monache cantano (The Nuns Are Singing, 1942). The short story ‘‘Il coraggio delle donne’’ portrays a woman’s seemingly passive yet courageous resistance to an abusive husband; the other stories illustrate the bitter ironies in the lives of average women struggling to break out of the seclusion and monotony of their daily routine, where heroism and accomplishment are lacking. In Banti’s fiction, women of varying talents and from different epochs avail themselves of three 124

means of establishing their own identity: study, work, and artistic creation. Work is the solution attempted by the petite bourgeoise Ofelia in ‘‘Vocazioni indistinte’’ (Indistinct Vocations), a short story subsequently republished in the collections La monaca di Sciangai e altri racconti (The Shanghai Nun and Other Stories, 1957) and Campi Elisi (Elysian Fields, 1963). Ofelia oscillates between two antithetical vocations, that of wife and mother versus independent woman. When a courtship falls through, Ofelia is required to choose the second vocation, that of the ‘‘new independent, self-sufficient woman’’ described in the women’s journals of the time. Ofelia becomes a piano teacher of some repute before she resorts to marriage in order to escape endless self-doubts and a bad family situation. In this domestic fairy tale gone awry, Ofelia’s grotesque pathological complexes result in madness. In 1947, Banti published the acclaimed Artemisia, a highly innovative blend of art history, history, fiction and autobiography that firmly established her reputation as a writer. In a prefatory note in the reader, Banti, who rewrote the story of Artemisia from memory after her manuscript was destroyed in the 1944 bombings of Florence, calls the text a ‘‘simbiosi storico letteraria’’ (historical-literary symbiosis). In this novel, a fictionalized account of the life of the brilliant seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, Banti reinvents an Artemisia who, in her search of a father’s recognition, her embattled femininity, and an artistic vocation, is both the key to the condition of Banti’s experience of femaleness in Italy. Banti departs from official historical records to creatively draw a rich inner life by interweaving real with imaginary events: female solidarity and difference stand out in Artemisia’s relationships with other women and in the representation of female creativity. The female artists, composers, writers, and intellectuals are figures that often appear in Banti’s short stories. The embattled artist is once again a protagonist in ‘‘Lavinia Fuggita’’ (Lavinia Has Fled), in the collection Le donne muoiono (Women Are Dying, 1951), which received the prestigious Viareggio Prize in 1952. Lavinia is a young and gifted musician living in an orphanage known for training women musicians. Unable to accept playing only the masters, she substitutes one of her works for a new one by Vivaldi, who teaches in the orphanage. When discovered, her music is publicly destroyed and she runs away, although her friends preserve copies of her work. The title story in this collection, ‘‘Le donne muoiono,’’ is one of

ANNA BANTI (LUCIA LOPRESTI) three science fiction stories written by Banti. Set in the year 2617, ‘‘Le donne muoiono’’ depicts the return of female oppression when sexual difference becomes a means of isolating and disparaging women. Men discover that they have ‘‘a second memory’’ that enables them to remember past lives, conquer their traditional fear of death and claim immortality for themselves through their constant reincarnation. Instead of participating in this self-preserving and self-serving continuum, many women retreat to communities, which resemble old convents. Women are now free to create and even dominate the realm of literature and art. Their masterpieces are, however, ignored by the male establishment that has marginalized all practitioners of the arts. Here and in other of Banti’s short stories, the convent and other enclosed spaces are depicted as communities that privilege autonomous females and their traditions, they also come to signify women’s isolation and the disruption of their history. ‘‘Joveta di Betania,’’ which appeared in Je vous e´cris d’un pays lointain (I Write to You from a Faraway Land, 1971), is the story of an eleventh-century princess turned abbess after arranged marriages fail. Joveta is committed to learning and independence and chooses the convent, ‘‘un harem senzo letto coniugale’’ (a harem without a conjugal bed). Joveta becomes a distinguished abbess and founder of a community that encourages the aesthetic capacities of women. She is also a mentor to her niece Melisenda, who is placed for safety in Joveta’s care until a marriage partner can be found for her. The failure of the arranged marriage of her beloved niece will eventually destroy Melisenda’s life, as well as Joveta’s intellectual legacy. In the end, Joveta, like Ofelia, falls into an embittered and seemingly senile state as she awaits death. Betrayals that lead to hopelessness and/or social conformity in their romantic or family relationships characterize Banti’s novels of the 1950s and 1960s: Il bastardo (The Bastard, 1954), Allarme sul lago (Alarm on the Lake, 1962), and Le mosche d’oro (The Golden Flies, 1962). These works have been classified as examples of ‘‘feminine realism,’’ although Banti, like other women writers of her generation, did not identify openly with any feminist movement. Banti drew some of her plots from la cronaca section of newspapers, which recount in a somewhat tabloid fashion the details of local crimes and dramas. Whether or not they are based on actual anecdotes, the fictional works of Banti’s realist period tend to represent marriage as a failed relationship and to emphasize jealousy,

vengeance, and brutality as predominant experiences in the lives of many women. In her last novels Banti focuses on historical characters and events. The male narrator of her fictionalized political memoir Noi credevamo (We All Believed, 1967) is based on Domenico Lopresti, a distant relative of Banti who lived during the Risorgimento; and La camicia bruciata (The Burned Nightgown, 1973), features the erratic and sensual Princess Marguerite Louise d’Orle´ans, who was forced by Louis XIV to marry the overly religious Cosimo III. As in Artemisia, Banti creatively mixes the genres of biography and historical fiction through the use of multiple viewpoints to subvert notions of subjectivity as a unified entity and to question traditional historiography. The elusive Banti created herself in and through her art. She experimented with various narrative forms and techniques and, at the same time, she used her own experience to mold and understand her vivid fictional characters. In her last collection of short stories, Da un paese vicino (From a Nearby Town, 1975), she included ‘‘La signorina,’’ a thinly disguised portrait of the young Banti facing her own uncertain vocations, confronting the two traditional female destinies, and attesting her evolution from la signorina into a married woman (la signora). Finally, in 1981, she published Un grido lacerante (A Piercing Cry), where the narrator, a young Roman woman, is a compendium of all Banti’s heroines. Here the author reassesses her own life and identity, and bids an emotional farewell to Longhi (her professor-husband), while proclaiming herself a feminist and ‘‘una donna di lettere.’’

Biography Born Lucia Lopresti in Florence on June 27, 1895, to a family of Calabrian origin. Majored in art history at the University of Rome. Married art critic Roberto Longhi in 1924. Founder and coeditor with Longhi of Paragone, which she directed after his death in 1970. Also film reviewer for L’approdo letterario. Winner of several literary awards, including the Viareggio in 1952 for Le donne muoiono; the Marzotto for Allarme sul lago in 1955; the Veillon for La monaca di Sciangai in 1957; the Ceppo for the short story ‘‘Tela e Cenere’’ in 1974; and the Antonio Feltrinelli from the Accademia dei Lincei in 1982 for Un grido lacerante. Died at Ronchi di Massa (Florence) on September 2, 1985. CAROL LAZZARO-WEIS 125

ANNA BANTI (LUCIA LOPRESTI) Selected Works

Colette, La vagabonda, 1977. Andre´ Chastel, Storia dell’arte italiana, 1983.

Novels Itinerario di Paolina, 1937. Sette lune, 1941. Artemisia, 1947; as Artemisia, translated by Shirley D’Ardia Caracciolo, 1988. Il bastardo, 1953. Allarme sul lago, 1954. Le mosche d’oro, 1962. Noi credevamo, 1967. La camicia bruciata, 1973. Un grido lacerante, 1981; as A Piercing Cry, translated by Daria Valentini, 1996.

Short Stories ‘‘Il coraggio delle donne,’’ 1940. ‘‘Le monache cantano,’’ 1942. ‘‘Le donne muoiono,’’ 1951. ‘‘La monaca di Sciangai e altri racconti,’’ 1957. ‘‘Campi Elisi,’’ 1963. ‘‘Je vous e´cris d’un pays lointain,’’ 1971. ‘‘Da un paese vicino,’’ 1975. ‘‘The Signorina and Other Stories,’’ translated by Martha King and Carol Lazzaro-Weis, 2001 (includes ‘‘Vocazioni indistinte,’’ ‘‘Le donne muoiono,’’ ‘‘Joveta di Betania,’’ ‘‘I velieri,’’ ‘‘La signorina’’).

Plays Corte Savella, 1960.

Critical Essays Lorenzo Lotto, 1953. Fra Angelico, 1953. Diego Vela´squez, 1955. ClaudeMonet, 1956. Opinioni, 1961. Matilde Serao, 1965. Giovanni di San Giovanni: Pittore della contraddizione, 1977. Quando anche le donne si mettono a dipingere, 1981. Rivelazione di Lorenzo Lotto, 1982.

Translations William Makepeace Thackeray, La fiera della vanita`, 1948. Virginia Woolf, La camera di Jacob, 1950. Alain Fournier, Il gran Meaulnes, 1974.

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Further Reading Biagini, Enza, Anna Banti, Milan: Mursia, 1978. Biagini, Enza (editor), L’opera di Anna Banti: Atti del Convegno di Studi, Firenze 8–9 maggio 1992, Florence: Leo Olschki, 1997. Caru`, Paola, ‘‘Uno sguardo acuto dalla storia: Anna Banti’s Historical Writings,’’ in Gendering Italian Fiction: Feminist Revisions of Italian History, edited by Maria Marotti and Gabriella Brooke, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1999. Di Blasi, Maria Luisa, L’altro silenzio, Florence: Le Lettere, 2001. Finucci, Valeria, ‘‘‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Female Panter’: The Kunstlerroman Tradition in A. Banti’s Artemisia,’’ in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 8 (1987): 167–193. Gallucci, Carol, ‘‘Anna Banti: On the Courage of Women,’’ Colophon, 4 (1998): 69–76. Garrard, Mary, Artemisia Gentileschi Around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Heller, Deborah, ‘‘History, Art and Fiction in Anna Banti’s Artemisia,’’ in Contemporary Women Writers in Italy, edited by Santo Arico`, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Lazzaro-Weis, Carol, ‘‘Stranger than Life: Autobiography and Historical Fiction,’’ in Gendering Italian Fiction: Feminist Revisions of Italian History, edited by Maria Marotti and Gabriella Brooke, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 1999. Nozzoli, Anna, ‘‘Anna Banti,’’ in Tabu` e coscienza: La condizione femminile nella letteratura italiana del Novecento, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Valentini, Daria, ‘‘A House of Mirrors. A case of Spatial Disintegration in Anna Banti’s Fiction,’’ in Romance Languages Annual (1995): 350–356. Valentini, Daria, ‘‘Anna and Her Sisters: The Idyll of the Convent in Anna Banti,’’ in Forum Italicum 30, no. 2 (1996): 132–350. Valentini, Daria, and Paola Caru (editors), Beyond Artemisia: Female Subjectivity, History, and Culture in Anna Banti. Chapel Hill, NC: Annali d’Italianistica, 2003.

ERMOLAO BARBARO (THE YOUNGER)

ERMOLAO BARBARO (THE YOUNGER) (1453–1494) A scientist, philosopher, philologist, and ambassador, Ermolao Barbaro is one of the key figures of fifteenth-century Italian Humanism. Unlike other Humanists of the period, whose activities were often solely speculative, Barbaro divided his career between intellectual and political activity, and between scientific and moral concerns. Two letters written in Latin around 1480 and collected in Epistolae, Orationes et Carmina (Letters, Orations, Poems, 1943) define Barbaro’s position as a Humanist. The first letter documents the author’s ideas about his priority in life: ‘‘Since I am speaking openly about myself, I want you to know that nothing but literature really mattered in my life.’’ The second letter presents his intellectual self-portrait, summarized in the statement: ‘‘I recognize two Lords, Christ and literature.’’ Barbaro identifies literature with human knowledge and adopts philology as his principal instrument of understanding. His interests are eminently philosophical and scientific. As a philosopher, Barbaro attempted to revive Aristotelian studies and to restore Aristotle’s works to their original versions. In conjunction with this cultural project, in 1478–1479 he translated Aristotle’s Rhetorica (1544) and interpreted Themistius in the Libri paraphraseos Themistii (Paraphrases of the Books of Themistius, 1499). In his philosophical works, Barbaro paid constant attention to rhetorical perfection. He once confessed in a letter to a follower: ‘‘I translate all of Aristotle’s books, and I craft them as brilliantly, appropriately and carefully as possible.’’ As a scientist, he tried to renew botany and the natural sciences by returning to and editing the primary sources and adopting a new scientific method. The first phase of this cultural project was a philological commentary of Pliny’s text Naturalis Historia, which he entitled Castigationes Plinianae (Studies on Pliny, 1493). Barbaro’s method of restoring the primary text consists in identifying Pliny’s terms throughout the book and cross-referencing them with historical quotes in order to re-establish their original meanings. The second phase was the development of a new scientific method documented in writings such as In

Dioscoridem corollari (Corollaries in Dioscorides, 1510) and by the foundation of the Botanical Garden of Padua, the first in Europe. Barbaro’s direct observation of natural phenomena foreshadowed the experimental method. Two moral treatises outline his ideal of life, De coelibatu (On Celibacy, ca. 1472) and De officio legati (On the Ambassador’s Office, ca. 1490), in which he analyzed the dilemma of the contemplative versus the active life, and addressed the humanistic theme of the dignity of man. The two works also renewed a tradition of philosophical and technical writing that uses portraits of welldefined ideal figures to represent the author’s ideas. De coelibatu, Barbaro’s first completed work, was written during the author’s youth at the Court of Naples. It defends the reasons for being celibate by citing the writings of Aristotle, Cicero and Saint Jerome, and disputes his uncle Francesco’s treatise on wifely duties, De re uxoria (On Marriage, 1416), written in defense of marriage. Barbaro defines celibacy as the ideal state of the scholar and describes the nature and condition of the man who is completely devoted to contemplation and studies. Left incomplete at some point between Barbaro’s diplomatic mission to Milan (1488–1489) and his nomination as Patriarch of Aquileia (1491), De officio legati documents his political experience. On first examination, this work is a rejection of the ideal life outlined in De coelibatu, as it defends the reasons and the duties of the active life embodied in the figure of the ambassador. However, its composition attests to Barbaro’s dedication to refined language and behavior, as well as to moral perfection, which constitute the tenets of the contemplative life. These works generally echo the trust that Petrarch placed in the supreme value of literary studies along with attention to Christian faith. They also evoke the Humanist tradition of Venice, with its particular combination of cultural and practical tasks and its attention to daily life and moral behavior. De coelibatu and De officio legati began the tradition of Renaissance writings about the perfect figure of the 127

ERMOLAO BARBARO (THE YOUNGER) courtier and were the model for treatises such as Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528). Barbaro’s combination of culture and faith also had an impact on European Humanists such as Erasmus of Rotterdam. In 1485, Barbaro’s strong convictions led him to a dispute with Pico della Mirandola, the Florentine Humanist, over the dilemma of philosophy and eloquence, doctrine and style. Traditionally, their disagreement is said to represent two different humanistic positions: Barbaro’s, which focused on literature and rhetorical perfection, and Pico’s, which emphasized philosophy and speculative engagement. More precisely, it documents the dialogue between two factions of Italian culture: the philological, Aristotelian, erudite Humanism of Venice and the poetic, Platonic, spiritual Humanism of Florence.

Collections Epistolae, Orationes et Carmina, edited by Vittore Branca, 2 vols., Florence: Bibliopolis, 1943. De coelibatu, De officio legati, edited by Vittore Branca, Florence: Olschki, 1969.

Treatises De coelibatu, ca. 1472; edited by Vittore Branca, 1969. De officio legati, ca. 1490; edited by Vittore Branca, 1969. Castigationes Plinianae et in Pomponium Melam, 1493. Compendium scientiae naturalis ex Aristotele, 1514.

Commentaries Castigationes Plinianae, 1493. Libri paraphraseos Themistii, 1499. In Dioscoridem corollari, 1510.

Translation Aristotle, Rhetorica, 1544.

Letters Filosofia o eloquenza? (with Pico della Mirandola), edited by Francesco Bausi, 1998.

Biography Born in Venice, 1453. Early studies in Verona, Rome, Ravenna, 1460–1468. Given the title of poeta by Emperor Frederick III in Verona, December 3, 1468. Member of the Maggior Consiglio of the Repubblica di Venezia, September 26, 1471. In Naples with his father, ambassador of the Republic of Venice, 1471–1473. Graduated as doctor artium from the University of Padua, August 23, 1474. Graduated as doctor utriusque iuris from Padua, October 17, 1477. Lectured on Aristotle in Padua, 1474–1479. Followed his father to Rome, 1480–1481. Became Senatore de la Republica and then Ufficiale de le Rason Vecchie, 1483–1484. Private lectures on Demosthenes and Theocritus. Founded the Botanic Garden of Padua, 1484. Lectured on Aristotle in Venice, 1484. Ambassador to Bruges (1486), to Milan (1488–1489), and to Rome (1490). Exiled from the Republic of Venice because of a conflict between his political position and his designation as patriarch of Aquileia, 1491. Died in Rome during the plague, 1493, probably in July. MATTEO SORANZO

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Selected Works

Further Reading Branca, Vittore, ‘‘L’umanesimo veneziano alla fine del Quattrocento. Ermolao Barbaro e il suo circolo,’’ in Storia della cultura veneta, edited by Giorgio Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, vol. 3, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1980. Branca, Vittore, ‘‘Umanesimo veneziano fra Barbaro e Bembo,’’ in Una famiglia veneziana nella storia: i Barbaro. Atti del Convegno (Venezia, 4–6 novembre 1993), edited by Michela Marangoni e Manlio Pastore Stocchi, Vicenza: Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, 1996. Branca, Vittore, La sapienza civile. Studi sull’Umanesimo a Venezia, Florence: Olschki, 1998. Cox, Virginia, ‘‘Rhetoric and Humanism in Quattrocento Venice,’’ in Renaissance Quarterly, 56, no. 3 (2003): 652–694. Figliuolo, Bruno, Il diplomatico e il trattatista: Ermolao Barbaro ambasciatore della Serenissima e il De officio legati, Naples: Guida, 1999. Frank, Maria Esposito, Le insidie dell’allegoria: Ermolao Barbaro il Vecchio e la lezione degli antichi, Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 1999. Garin, Eugenio, L’umanesimo italiano, Bari: Laterza, 1947. Garin, Eugenio, La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano: ricerche e documenti, Florence: Sansoni, 1961.

GIUSEPPE BARETTI

GIUSEPPE BARETTI (1719–1789) Journalist and traveler, Giuseppe Baretti, known for his unabashedly critical voice, is credited for the popularity of Italian literature in England in the eighteenth century. Born in Turin in 1719, he was educated by the Jesuits. At 18, he left his family and his childhood home and moved to Guastalla, in the province of Reggio Emilia, where he worked for two years as a clerk in a mercantile house. Here he devoted his leisure time to literature and criticism. His ideas were profoundly influenced by the works of Carlo Cantoni. Baretti next moved to Venice, where he met many of the future members of the Academy of the Granelleschi. His first published works were translations of Ovid and of some tragedies of Pierre Corneille, the Tragedie di Pier Cornelio tradotte in versi italiani (Pierre Cornelie’s Tragedies Translated into Italian Verses, 1747–1748). One year later he moved to Milan, where he came in contact with the poets of the Academy of the Trasformati. In addition to continuing his linguistic studies, he published his first poems, Piacevoli poesie di Giuseppe Baretti torinese (The Pleasing Poetry of Giuseppe Baretti of Turin, 1950), which he later declared of no value on the grounds that a true poet must know how to do much more than simply compose rhymes. After wandering Italy for several years, supporting himself with his writings, Baretti felt compelled to leave his homeland because of the scandal caused by his opposition to the erudite intellectuals in Turin. He arrived in London in 1751 and embraced the liberalism and tolerance he found in English society. He was appointed secretary to the Royal Academy of Painting, where he met a group of friends including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson, the latter of whom would have a profound influence on his career. Baretti’s critical voice was already taking shape, and he expressed strong opinions, especially in reaction to certain criticisms of Italian culture. He attacked Voltaire’s ideas about epic Italian literature in A Dissertation upon the Italian Poetry (1753), calling Voltaire’s criticisms unfounded and ignorant. Baretti defended Dante’s poetry and suggested that it may have inspired John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). This, the first of his publications in English, was very well-received in England.

In London, Baretti worked first as a poet for the Italian Opera, composing Don Chisciotte in Venezia (Don Quixote in Venice), an unpublished bizarre theatrical piece in which the famous character from Spanish literature finds himself in a Venetian background. However, his main profession in London was that of a teacher of Italian language. He published several textbooks and manuals, including Remarks on the Italian Language and Writers (1753); An Introduction to the Italian Language (1755); A Dictionary of English and Italian Languages (1760), and A Grammar of the Italian Language (1762). These last two works are considered the most proficient and complete texts of their kind until the twentieth century. His first significant literary contribution is The Italian Library (1757), a catalogue of the lives and works of several Italian authors. Baretti left London in 1760 to return to Italy. He published Lettere famigliari a’ suoi tre fratelli (1762–1763), a four-volume work based on his travels through Spain, Portugal, and France. The work was soon censored in Milan, probably due to his defense of the Jesuits. As a result, Baretti attempted to publish it again in Venice. This scandalous work also treats polemic subjects such as the education of women, the importance of foreign language education, and his respect for English society. He later expanded this work and translated it into English as Journey from London to Genoa through England, Portugal, Spain and France (1770). Upon his return to Italy in 1763, Baretti founded a journal of literary criticism, La frusta letteraria, which he published under the pen name ‘‘Aristarco Scannabue’’ (Aristarchus the Ox-Slayer) due to the strict censorship laws of that time. This bimonthly publication, for which he wrote almost all the articles under the guise of a retired soldier who passes his time writing book reviews, is considered Baretti’s masterpiece. Two years after its first publication, and after printing 25 issues, the Venetian government banned the publication because of several attacks on Father Appiano Buonafede. The next eight issues of La frusta letteraria were published in Ancona, and were devoted to criticism of Buonafede. His arguments center on a few recurring themes, especially the contrast 129

GIUSEPPE BARETTI between conservative and innovative ideas, or rather the difference between tradition and Enlightenment. He spoke out against the Arcadia and the Accademia della Crusca, criticizing the usage of literary language to exclude readers, and offering easily comprehensible English literature as a model. In this literary journal, Baretti rediscovers Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita (My Life, 1558–1562), praising the lively, picturesque writing. He also criticized Pietro Bembo’s devotion to Petrarch’s style and attacked Carlo Goldoni’s theater for his lack of refined and distinguished language and for characters representative of human errors rather than embodiments of universal archetypes. Indeed, Baretti remained tied to the notion of a wise, classical culture, and preferred Molie`re’s comedic style to that of Goldoni. He idealizes a strong protagonist, whose language reflects morality, not reality. It was Baretti’s criticism, joined with that of other conservative Venetians, that eventually forced Goldoni to leave Venice. As a literary critic, Baretti freely expressed his opinions on many of the fundamental traditions of Italian literature. His critical views were influenced by French culture and criticism. More appreciative of writers such as Lodovico Ariosto and Francesco Berni than of many of his contemporaries, he criticized Gian Vincenzo Gravina for lacking ‘‘a poetic soul,’’ Pietro Verri for abuse of the Italian language, and Ludovico Antonio Muratori for his lack of elegance in writing. He gave his highest praise to Metastasio, whom he considered an original, noble and incisive writer endowed with a refined, yet simple style. He also favoured the work of Carlo Gozzi, whose antirealistic and antibourgeois themes contrast those of Goldoni, going so far as to call him a new Shakespeare because of his classical use of language and for the complexity of the drama set in a variety of backgrounds. Overall, Baretti insisted on the spontaneity of form, the pre-eminence of content, and on the quality of language used. The theater should be edifying, poetry simple and inspired, and literary criticism should become a work of art rather than a form of speech with no style. Shortly after La frusta letteraria was censored, Baretti left Italy, never to return. Arriving in London in November 1766, he soon resumed publishing, continuing his defense of Italian literature and culture in An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy (1768), written in response to Samuel Sharp’s derogatory Letters from Italy (1767). Soon thereafter he was appointed secretary of foreign correspondence at the Royal Academy 130

of Painting. A short time later, after rejecting a prostitute’s advances, he was involved in a struggle with her procurers and killed a man with a fruit knife. Charged with homicide, he defended himself in the court trial, and was acquitted after some of London’s most important intellectuals, among them Samuel Johnson, acted as character witnesses on his behalf. Baretti then published Tutte le opere di Niccolo` Machiavelli (All the Works of Niccolo` Machiavelli, 1772), for which he also wrote a significant preface. One of his most polemic works from this period is a dissertation on Shakespeare and Voltaire, Discours sur Shakespeare et Monsieur de Voltaire (Discourse on Shakespeare and Mr. Voltaire, 1777), which is considered his greatest work of literary criticism. Here Baretti defends Shakespearean theater against Voltaire’s criticisms, calling his philosophy a menace to the Italian language and culture. He scrutinizes Voltaire’s translations of Shakespeare, describing his language and style as artificial, and accusing him of ignorance of the English tradition. He praises Shakespeare’s passion and variety, calling him a poetic genius, thus anticipating Romantic criticism of the great English playwright. Baretti rejects the notion of a universal standard for literature, arguing instead for a set of literary standards that take into account national and cultural backgrounds. He considers the theater a venue for entertainment rather than a forum for critical interpretation and attributes the success of Shakespeare to his ability to engage his audience and to his disregard for contemporary critical rules. In Scelta delle lettere familiari fatta per uso degli studiosi della lingua italiana (A Selection of Family Letters for the Use of Students of Italian Literature, 1779), Baretti offers an instrument through which to learn the Italian language, while reemphasizing some of his own ideas about literary criticism. This last work demonstrates his philosophical transformation from a conservative Italian viewpoint to a more liberal English one. He presents lively, argumentative and stalwart positions, at times insisting more on creating scandal than on serious reflection on literary ideas. The authors of nearly all these letters are fictitious, created to allow Baretti an alternative outlet for his polemic debates.

Biography Born in Turin on 25 April 1719, the first of four brothers. An avid traveler since his youth, he lived in Venice, 1739; Milan, 1740; back to Turin, 1742;

ALESSANDRO BARICCO until his trip to London, where he supported himself as a teacher of Italian and working at the Opera House, 1751–1760. Returned to Italy, traveling through Spain, Portugal and France, 1760; founded the journal La frusta letteraria, 1763–1765; returned to London, 1766; received royal pension in England, 1782. Died in London on 5 May 1789. BARBARA BIRD See also: Enlightenment Selected Works Collections Prose scelte ed annotate da Luigi Piccioni, Turin: Paravia, 1907. Prefazioni e polemiche, edited by Luigi Piccioni, Bari: Laterza, 1911. Scritti, edited by Mario Menghini, Florence: Sansoni, 1935. Opere scelte di Giuseppe Baretti, edited by Bruno Maier, Turin: UTET, 1972.

Poetry ‘‘Piacevoli poesie di Giuseppe Baretti torinese,’’ 1750.

Play The Sentimental Mother, 1789.

Essays Remarks on the Italian Language and Writers, 1753. A Dissertation upon the Italian Poetry, 1753. An Introduction to the Italian language, 1755. The Italian Library, 1757. A Dictionary of English and Italian Languages, 1760; as Dizionario della lingua italiana, ed inglese, translated into Italian, 1795. A Grammar of the Italian language, 1762. Easy Phraseology, for the Use of Young Ladies, Who Intend to Learn the Colloquial Part of the Italian Language, 1775. An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy, 1768. Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Monsieur de Voltaire, 1777. Scelta delle lettere familiari fatta per uso degli studiosi della lingua italiana, 1779. A Guide through the Royal Academy, 1781.

Letters Lettere famigliari a’ suoi tre fratelli, 2 vols., 1762–1763; as Journey from London to Genoa through England, Portugal, Spain and France, translated and expanded by Baretti, 1770. Epistolario, edited by Luigi Piccioni, 2 vols., 1936. Lettere sparse, edited by Franco Fido, 1976.

Edited Works Tutte le opere di Niccolo` Machiavelli, 3 vols., 1772.

Translations Tragedie di Pier Cornelio tradotte in versi italiani, 2 vols., 1747–1748.

Further Reading Anglani, Bartolo, Il mestiere della metafora: Giuseppe Baretti intellettuale e scrittore, Modena: Mucchi, 1997. Astaldi, Maria Luisa, Baretti, Milan: Rizzoli, 1977. Bracchi, Cristina, Prospettiva di una nazione di nazioni: an account of the manners and customs of Italy di Giuseppe Baretti, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’orso, 1998. Cerruti Marco, and Paola Trivero (editors), Giuseppe Baretti: un piemontese in Europa, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1993. Collison-Morley, Lacy, Giuseppe Baretti: With an Account of His Literary Friendships and Feuds in Italy and in England in the Days of Dr. Johnson, London: John Murray, 1909. Crotti, Ilaria, Il viaggio e la forma: Giuseppe Baretti e l’orizzonte dei generi letterari, Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1992. Devalle, Albertina, La critica letteraria nel ‘700: Giuseppe Baretti, suoi rapporti con Voltaire, Johnson e Parini, Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1932. Fubini, Franco, Dal Muratori al Baretti: studi sulla critica e sulla cultura del Settecento, Bari: Laterza, 1954. Gustarelli, Andrea, Giuseppe Baretti, Milan: Antonio Vallardi, 1940. Jonard, Norbert, Giuseppe Baretti (1719–1789): l’homme et l’oeuvre, Clermont-Ferrand: De Bussac, 1963. Morandi, Luigi, Voltaire contro Shakespeare, Baretti contro Voltaire, Rome: Sommaruga, 1882. Prosperi, Carlo (editor), Giuseppe Baretti: Rivalta bormida, le radici familiari, l’opera, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1999.

ALESSANDRO BARICCO (1958–) Although his education had prepared him for a more academic career, Alessandro Baricco has become since the 1990s one of Italy’s most popular novelists. Baricco studied philosophy at the

University of Turin, where Gianni Vattimo supervised his dissertation on Adorno and the Frankfurt School. He also studied musicology at the Conservatory, studies that resulted in two essays, Il genio 131

ALESSANDRO BARICCO in fuga (The Genius in Fugue, 1988) and L’anima di Hegel e le mucche del Wisconsin (Hegel’s Soul and the Cows of Wisconsin, 1992), in which he analyzed, respectively, Gioacchino Rossini’s compositions and the relationship between music and modernity. Baricco is also a columnist-editorialist for the daily newspaper La stampa. His articles on contemporary high and low culture were collected in two volumes entitled Barnum: Cronache del Grande Show (Barnum: Chronicles of the Big Show, 1995) and Barnum 2: Altre cronache del Grande Show (Barnum 2: Other Chronicles of the Big Show, 1998). More recently, his articles in La repubblica dealing with social problems like globalization were collected in Next: Piccolo libro sulla globalizzazione e il mondo che verra` (Next: A Small Book on Globalization and the World to Come, 2002). Baricco’s popularity as a writer has been reinforced by his work for both television and radio. Whereas the greater public was especially drawn to Pickwick, del leggere e dello scrivere (1994), a television program dedicated to book reviews and discussions, his major breakthrough came with the first of three programs entitled Totem (1998–2003). Alternating literary or musical fragments with commentary meant to familiarize a wider audience with literature and music, the show was created by Baricco and some of the colleagues with whom he had founded the ‘‘Holden’’ school of creative writing, named after the protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The success of Baricco’s performances and public initiatives was met with skepticism from some of his fellow writers and intellectuals. His success also affected the reception of his literary works, praised for their stylistic bravura but at times criticized for their lack of substance. Baricco made his literary debut in 1991 with the novel Castelli di rabbia (Lands of Glass), which was awarded the prestigious Prix Me´dicis e´tranger. Set in a fictitious frontier country, Castelli di rabbia presents the stories of its inhabitants, whose eccentricities range from the dysfunctional to the highly ingenious. The nonlinear and intricate storytelling revolves around the construction of a linear railway track. Baricco’s second novel, Oceano mare (Ocean Sea, 1993), further explores the themes of Castelli di rabbia: Its characters’ eccentricities as well as their heightened awareness are linked to the search for artistic expression. The novel’s setting is now a hotel rather than a town, and the writing process itself becomes a theme as one of the hotel’s mysterious guests happens to be the writer of the story. Baricco’s latest novel, City (1999), is his most experimental 132

work to date. Whereas changes of perspective and shifts in plotlines were clearly evident in the earlier novels, they are barely perceptible in City. The novel is set in a twentieth-century town in which each street leads to a different story (the street map functions as a textual topography). While focusing on three major plots, Baricco intertwines very different forms of storytelling: the Bildungsroman, the western, and sport journalism, the latter coming closest to an oral form of expression. As a novelist, Baricco pays particular attention to the rhythm of his works. The circularity or nonlinearity of his storytelling is striking: There is no chronology and the repetition of episodes or textual fragments that may be slightly altered is reminiscent of a musical refrain. Indeed, Baricco’s writing strategies can be seen as musical techniques, imitating the example of his favorite composer, Rossini, whom Baricco admires for his capacity for complicating his compositions by repeating the same motive in an almost unaltered form but accelerating the rhythm, as in a crescendo. The other influences on Baricco’s writing are mainly nontextual. The author claims that he belongs to the first generation of Italian writers who did not have literary models as their point of reference, but drew inspiration from popular culture including film, media culture (video games and the like), and sports icons such as tennis star John McEnroe. Baricco’s work echoes these eclectic sources by combining different registers, styles, and genres, creating a representative form of postmodern contamination. This elaborate and intricate way of writing is notably absent from a play and two shorter texts generally defined as long short stories. The theatrical monologue, Novecento (1900; 1994), widely known because of the film adaptation by Giuseppe Tornatore, La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano (The Legend of 1900, 1998), resembles Baricco’s novels in terms of its circular composition and the presence of music. At its center is the story of a virtuoso pianist named Novecento who spends his life on a cruise ship. The two stories are Seta (Silk, 1996), about the impossible love of a nineteenthcentury silk tradesman for a Japanese woman, in which silence is their primary means of communication; and Senza sangue (Without Blood, 2002), which tells two episodes in the life of Nina, a woman who willingly relives a traumatizing experience with her torturer. Both stories are characterized by linear and single plots. In spite of their restrained style these short stories superbly reveal Baricco’s qualities as a writer.

DANIELLO BARTOLI

Biography

Next: Piccolo libro sulla globalizzazione e il mondo che verra`, 2002.

Born in Turin, on January 28, 1958. University degree in philosophy under the supervision of Gianni Vattimo, 1980; studied piano and saxophone at the Conservatory of Turin. Made his literary debut in 1991 with the novel Castelli di rabbia. Also worked as a music critic for La repubblica and as an editorialist for La stampa. Worked for RAI television, hosting the shows L’amore e` un dardo, on opera, 1993; and Pickwick, del leggere e dello scrivere, on literature, 1994. Cofounded the ‘‘Scuola Holden,’’ a school for creative writing, in 1994. Cocreated several performance shows, called Totem: Letture, suoni, lezioni introducing literature and music to a wider audience, 1998–2003. As of this writing, he lives in Rome. INGE LANSLOTS Selected Works Fiction Castelli di rabbia, 1991; as Lands of Glass, translated by Alastair McEwen, 2002. Oceano mare, 1993; as Ocean Sea, translated by Alastair McEwen, 1999. Seta, 1996; as Silk, translated by Guido Waldman, 1997. City, 1999; as City, translated by Ann Goldstein, 2002. Senza sangue, 2002; as Without Blood, translated by Ann Goldstein, 2004. Questa storia, 2005.

Theater Novecento, 1994. Partita spagnola, with Lucia Moisio, 2003.

Essays Il genio in fuga: Sul teatro musicale di Gioachino Rossini, 1988. L’anima di Hegel e le mucche del Wisconsin, 1992. Barnum: Cronache del Grande Show, 1995. Barnum 2: Altre cronache del Grande Show, 1998.

Other Totem: L’ultima tourne´e, 2003. Omero, Iliade, 2004; as An Iliad, translated by Ann Goldstein, 2006.

Further Reading Bellavia, Elisa, ‘‘La lingua di Alessandro Baricco,’’ in Otto/ Novecento, 25, no. 1 (2001): 135–168. Contarini, Silvia, ‘‘Corrente e controcorrente,’’ in Narrativa, 12 (1997): 27–50. Fuchs, Gerhild, and Lange Wolf-Dieter (editors), Alessandro Bariccos Variationen der Postmoderne, Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2003. Gargiulo, Gius, ‘‘Esercizi di stile: Baricco giornalista sportivo,’’ in Narrativa, 20–21 (2001): 263–283. Giannetto, Nella, Oceano mare di Baricco: Molteplicita`, emozioni, confini tra Calvino e Conrad, Milan: Archipelago, 2002. Lanslots, Inge, ‘‘Alessandro Baricco’s Infinite Tales,’’ in Spunti e Ricerche, 14 (1999): 47–57. Lazzarin, Stefano, ‘‘Bartleby, Barnabooth, Bartlebooth, Bartleboom: Baricco e il grande oceano delle storie,’’ in Narrativa, 16 (1999): 143–165. Milanesi, Claudio, ‘‘Baricco et la Meduse,’’ in Cahiers d’Etudes Romanes, 1 (1998): 87–97. Pezzin, Claudio, Alessandro Baricco, Sommacampagna (Verona): Cierre, 2001. Rorato, Laura, ‘‘La realta` metropolitana del Duemila: Ambaraba di G. Culicchia e City di A. Baricco. Due opere a confronto,’’ in Narrativa, 20–21 (2001): 243–261. Rorato, Laura and Simona Storchi, ‘‘Citta` versus City: The Globalized Habitat of Alessandro Baricco,’’ in Romance Studies, 22, no. 3 (2004): 251–262. Scarsella, Alessandro, Alessandro Baricco, Fiesole: Cadmo, 2003. Senardi, Fulvio, ‘‘Alessandro Baricco, ovvero... che storia mi racconti?’’, in Problemi, 112 (1998): 261–296. Van den Bogaert, Annelies, ‘‘Alessandro Baricco: Fra Novecento e il mare c’e` di mezzo la musica,’’ in ‘‘...E c’e` di mezzo il mare’’: Lingua, letteratura e civilta` marina, edited by Bart Van den Bossche, Michel Bastiaensen, and Corinna Salvadori Lonergan, Florence: Cesati, 2002.

DANIELLO BARTOLI (1608–1685) Daniello Bartoli, Paolo Segneri (1624–1694), and Sforza Pallavicino (1616–1644) make up what is considered to be the triad of great Jesuit writers. Bartoli’s decision to join the Order of St. Ignatius

played a fundamental role in his life, contributing tremendously to his literary output. In 1637, he began his preacher’s career, obtaining great fame throughout Italy. Although none of his homilies 133

DANIELLO BARTOLI are available to us today, it is agreed by scholars that these works constitute an important step in his literary education. It was during this experience that Bartoli probably developed his unique writing style, characterized by a perfect balance of formal elegance and religious fervor. His intellectual and culture skills attracted the attention of his superiors who, in 1648, decided to entrust him with the task of writing the monumental Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu` (History of the Company of Jesus), completed in 1673. It is important to stress that no other religious order had before encouraged the writing of a humanistic historiography. This ambitious project is a prime example of the efforts made by the Jesuits during the seventeenth century to challenge the expanding laical culture using secular genres. Although the young Bartoli longed for the martyrdom that could be obtained through participation in one of the many Jesuit missions, he remained faithful to his vow of obedience and devoted himself totally to the titanic enterprise that had been set before him. In 1650 he began work, publishing Della vita e dell’istituto di S. Ignazio fondatore della Compagnia di Gesu´ (History of the Life and Institute of St. Ignatius de Loyola: Founder of the Society of Jesus), with the intent of demonstrating the critical role of the founder in the evolution of the religious order. The first pages of the biography outline Bartoli’s plan for the Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu`, proposing a geographical criterion that would describe the missions of the order in four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. A number of volumes on different geographical areas followed: L’Asia (Asia, 1650), Il Giappone (Japan, 1660), La Cina (China, 1661), L’Inghilterra (England, 1667) and L’Italia (Italy, 1673). In 1663, Bartoli also published La missione al Gran Mogor del p. Ridolfo d’Acquaviva (The Mission of Father Ridolfo d’Acquaviva to the Great Mogul) that was later added to the 1667 edition of Asia. At the end of his life, realizing that there was not enough time to finish his ambitious project, Bartoli summarized his collected materials in a five-book compendium entitled: Degli uomini e dei fatti della Compagnia di Gesu`—Memorie Storiche (On the Men and the Deeds of the Company of Jesus—Historical Memoirs, 1684). Over the centuries, Bartoli’s detractors have accused him of lacking historical accuracy. This claim has been disproved by the recent discovery of notes written in the author’s hand that testify to his thorough preliminary research. Clearly, this 134

meticulous scrutinizing of documents (from travel records to minutes of Sacred Colleges) does not erase the openly apologetic nature of Bartoli’s work, and his enthusiastic adherence to Jesuit doctrine. His ideological stance is particularly evident in the books devoted to Europe, where narrative and artistic endeavors are stifled by the insistent defense of his fellow Jesuits’ conduct. Much more captivating are the pages devoted to the evangelization of Asia. Bartoli, following the Jesuit tradition, takes great interest in describing with curiosity and respect the exotic customs of the continent. With regards to China, such feelings become open admiration. In the seventeenth century, the Mandarin ruling class was viewed as being both literarily educated and sophisticated, corresponding in many ways to the Jesuits’ own aspirations for political and cultural influence. The activities of missionaries such as Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and Francis de Sales (1567–1622) are enlivened not only by geographic and anthropological digressions but also by an underlying sense of adventure and a taste for the exotic that could lead the reader to consider Bartoli’s masterpiece as a polyphonic novel in which the role of the main characters is interpreted by the Jesuit martyrs. Although Bartoli’s work clearly influenced later novel writers such as Alessandro Manzoni, however, any attempt to interpret the Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu` as a kind of prototype of this literary genre risks being anachronistic. Unlike a novelist, Bartoli is not interested in any kind of psychological treatment of his characters, who often appear to be nothing more than one-dimensional, stereotyped allegories of the Christian virtues that he wanted to extol. Bartoli alternated the long and painful drafting of his main work with the composition of several essays on literary, religious, and moral topics. In the first category falls L’uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato (The Learned Man Defended and Reformed, 1645), in which he portrays the writer as a wise stoic, detached from earthly life and totally absorbed in his intellectual pursuits. In this text, as in Il torto ed il diritto del non si puo` (The Right and the Wrong of the ‘‘You Cannot,’’ 1655), Bartoli proves his competence in literary and linguistic issues and argues for a balancing of grammatical rule with poetic inspiration, of classical tradition with Baroque sensibility. The finest example of Bartoli’s many religious essays is L’huomo al punto, cioe` l’huomo al punto di morte (Man at the Turning Point, That Is, Man on the Point of Death, 1667), where he attempts to dissipate the

DANIELLO BARTOLI fear of death with the assertion that for those who believe in God a cadaver is just a body sunk in a deep sleep. The third group of literary works is formed by moral essays such as La ricreazione del savio (The Wise Man’s Recreation, 1659) and La geografia trasportata al morale (The Moral Transposition of Geography, 1664). These works are devoted to a refined description of several natural phenomena, from the mouth of the Nile to tiny marine snails. Bartoli invites the reader to see in these displays of beauty the glaring proof of God’s existence. This last group of essays is also the source of the most famous passages of his entire work, in which emerges Bartoli’s talent for transforming moral and religious ideas into images of great visual strength. Toward the end of his life, Bartoli became increasingly interested in empirical research. In the wake of Catholic scientists like Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), Bartoli hoped to bridge the gap between science and faith. It is this optimistic aspiration that inspired works such as Del suono, de’ tremori armonici e dell’udito (On Sound, Harmonic Trembling and Hearing, 1679) and Del ghiaccio e della coagulatione (On Ice and Coagulation, 1682). Although Bartoli was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, his work was met with both enthusiastic praises and harsh criticism in the following centuries. The Romantics emphasized the artificiality of the style and the lack of originality of the content of his works. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a series of important literary and historical figures, from Giacomo Leopardi to Giorgio Manganelli, who expressed admiration for the elegance and the richness of the Jesuit father’s prose. The twentieth century has witnessed a reassessment of Baroque culture that has also involved Bartoli. Influential scholars from Luciano Anceschi (‘‘La poetica del Bartoli,’’ 1954) to Ezio Raimondi (‘‘Daniello Bartoli e la ‘Ricreazione del Savio,’’’ 1961) and Bice Mortara Garavelli (‘‘Note sui Ritratti,’ di Daniello Bartoli,’’ 1965) have made possible a more balanced critique of his work and have brought to light Bartoli’s original method of using to the fullest the syntactic and rhetorical structures of Italian artistic language. The resulting prose presents itself as an intermediary between the classical tradition and the Baroque.

Biography Daniello Bartoli was born in Ferrara on 12 February 1608. His father was Tiburzio Bartoli, a

chemist, who worked at the court of the duke Alfonso II d’Este. After studies under the Jesuits, he entered the novitiate of San Andrea, Rome, in 1623. In Piacenza he studied rhetoric and, in 1625, took his first three religious vows (his definitive ordination would take place in 1643 in Pistoia). The following three years (1626–1629) he studied philosophy in Parma where he taught rhetoric from 1629 to 1633. Between1634–1636, Bartoli studied theology first in Brera then in Bologna. One of his professors was Giovanni Battista Riccioli, great astronomer, who in his Chronologia reformata (1669) would describe his old student as one of the most prominent figures of his age. In 1637, he began his apostolic career as preacher throughout Italy. In 1646, Bartoli had a narrow escape from a shipwreck during a trip from Naples to Palermo. The following year he kept preaching in Naples and Malta. From 1648 until his death he lived in Rome where he devoted himself to literary production. He interrupted his studies only from 1671 to 1673, when he reluctantly became rector of the Roman College. On 13 January 1685, Bartoli died from an apoplectic stroke. MATTIA BEGALI Selected Works Collections Delle opere del padre Daniello Bartoli della Compagnia di Gesu`, 34 vols., Turin: Marietti, 1825–1842.

Essays L’uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato, 1645. Della vita e dell’istituto di S. Ignazio fondatore della Compagnia di Gesu´, 1650; as History of the Life and Institute of St. Ignatius de Loyola: Founder of the Society of Jesus, translated, 1855. Il torto ed il diritto del non si puo`, 1655. La ricreazione del savio, 1659. La geografia trasportata al morale, 1664. L’huomo al punto, cioe` l’huomo al punto di morte, 1667. Dell’ultimo e beato fine dell’uomo, 1670. Dell’ortografia italiana, 1670. Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu`, 1650–1673; 6 vols. (L’Asia, 1650; Il Giappone, 1660; La Cina, 1661; La missione al Gran Mogor del p. Ridolfo d’Acquaviva, 1663; L’Inghilterra, 1667; L’Italia, 1673). Del suono, de’ tremori armonici e dell’udito, 1679. Del ghiaccio e della coagulatione, 1682. Degli uomini e dei fatti della Compagnia di Gesu`—Memorie Storiche, 1684.

Correspondence Lettere inedite del padre Daniello Bartoli, 1834. Lettere inedited e rare, edited by Ottavio Gigli, 1838.

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DANIELLO BARTOLI Further Reading Anceschi, Luciano, ‘‘La poetica del Bartoli’’ in Del barocco ed altre prove, Firenze: Vallecchi, 1954. Angelini, Franca, and Alberto Asor Rosa, Daniello Bartoli e i prosatori barocchi, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1975. Asor Rosa, Alberto, ‘‘La narrativa italiana del seicento,’’ in Letteratura italiana, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, vol. 3, part 2, Turin: Einaudi, 1984. Basile, Bruno, ‘‘L’Asia del Bartoli, ’’ in Il tempo e le forme: studi letterari da Dante a Gadda, Modena: Mucchi, 1990. Basile, Bruno, ‘‘Dell’uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato di Daniello Bartoli,’’ in Letteratura Italiana. Le opere, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, vol. 2, Turin: Einaudi, 1993. Basile, Bruno, ‘‘Argomentazione e scienza: due esempi secenteschi,’’ in Come si legge un testo: percorsi di lettura da Dante a Montale, edited by Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi, Milan: Mursia, 1999.

Beltramo, Laura, De rebus physicis: Daniello Bartoli e la prosa scientifica, Turin: Libreria Stampatori, 2004. Daniello Bartoli, storico e letterato, Ferrara: Accademia delle scienze di Ferrara, 1986. Di Grado, Antonio, Il gesuita e la morte: congetture su Daniello Bartoli, Catania: CUECM, 1992. Di Grado, Antonio, Dissimulazioni: Alberti, Bartoli, Tempio: tre classici (e un paradigma) per il millennio a venire, Caltanisetta: Salvatore Sciascia, 1997. Mortara Garavelli, Bice, ‘‘Un uso particolare dell’infinito in Daniello Bartoli,’’ in Atti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 17 (1962): 486–495. Mortara Garavelli, Bice, ‘‘Note sui Ritratti,’ di Daniello Bartoli,’’ in Lettere italiane, 17 (1965): 129–140. Raimondi, Ezio, ‘‘Daniello Bartoli e la ‘Ricreazione del Savio,’’’ in Letteratura barocca. Studi sul Seicento italiano, Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1961. Renaldo, John J., Daniello Bartoli: A Letterato of the Seicento, Naples: Nella sede dell’Istituto italiano per gli studi storici, 1979.

GIAMBATTISTA BASILE (1575?–1632) According to Benedetto Croce, Giambattista Basile’s oeuvre should be read ‘‘simply as a work of art.’’ This repositioning of Basile’s works in a more illustrious situation within the ‘‘national’’ literary tradition (a repositioning that was in no way obvious, given the fact that they are for the most part in dialect) followed and to a certain extent registered what had happened ‘‘naturally’’ in the rest of Europe, as a result of the numerous translations of Basile’s most important work, Lo cunto de li cunti overo Lo trattenemiento de’ Peccerille (The Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile, 1534–1536), defined by Croce as ‘‘the richest, the oldest and most artistic among the books of popular tales’’ (Giambattista Basile e l’elaborazione artistica delle fiabe popolari, 1928). Indeed, the Grimm brothers and Charles Perrault expressed their appreciation for it, while Croce himself translated it into Italian as Pentamerone, ossia la fiabe delle fiabe (Pentamerone, or the Tale of Tales, 1925) (the alternative title Pentamerone had been used as early as the 1674 edition). However, the objective of Croce’s comment was the ‘‘romantic prejudice’’ regarding popular themes and stories. Although inspired to such popular production, Basile’s tales, in the critic’s account, are the product of an autonomous 136

Baroque vein ideally related, if anything, to the Italian artistic literature of Pulci, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and, to some extent, Boiardo and Ariosto, who refashioned, through laughter, the matter of chivalric romances. Basile was educated in Naples, the city of Giovanbattista Marino and of Torquato Tasso and his literary heritage, the most important centre of the Italian Baroque, and the Spanish vice-royalty capital, where Neapolitan, Italian, and Spanish could all be heard (in fact, Basile himself wrote occasional verses in the language of Go´ngora and Quevedo). Early poems in Italian such as Il pianto della Vergine (The Virgin’s Tears, 1608) follow the lyric patterns of Mannerism, with a preference for themes derived from authors such as Luigi Tansillo, Tasso, and Angelo Grillo. Basile also had a talent for poetry for music, written in particular for his sister Adriana, a well-known singer, to whom he dedicated the first of the three editions of his Mandriali et ode (Madrigals and Odes, 1609–1617), as well as for tales on maritime subject, such as Le avventurose disavventure (The Adventurous Misadventures, 1611). His poetic production in Italian was always in the service of a court, first that of Prince Luigi

GIAMBATTISTA BASILE Carafa of Stigliano, who protected Adriana and her family of musicians and writers, and later that of the Spanish viceroy, the duke of Alba. He also wrote numerous works for the festivals and celebrations typical of Baroque culture. With his editions of the works of Pietro Bembo (1616), Giovanni della Casa (1617) and Galeazzo di Tarsia (1617) and with his solid philological knowledge, Basile mapped out a variation on the canon of poetic production that can no longer be considered manneristic, but that possibly belongs rather to the Baroque. For the Neapolitan Giulio Cesare Cortese (1575–1627?), author of La Vaiasseide (The Poem of the Maids, 1612), a parodic poem in dialect, Basile wrote the outline of some prose pieces and the daring dedication ‘‘Allo Re delli Viente’’ (To the King of Winds), the windy receiver of poetic deeds. Basile’s first work in Neapolitan is a series of nine eclogues in seven-syllable lines and hendecasyllables, each with a subtitle disclosing the content, entitled Muse napoletane (Neapolitan Muses, 1635) and published under the pseudonym of Gian Alessio Abbattutis. The genre, derived from Virgil, suits Basile’s vocation for mimetic and grotesque prose, with its eloquent words and gestures. The narrative pretext develops scenes of everyday life, with popular characters caught in their immediate spontaneity yet described in a controlled style that is far from instinctive. The young guy falling in love with a prostitute, the old man shamelessly wooing an adolescent girl, the conceited self-made man who does not realize the opportunism of the people around him are some of the characters of Basile’s tales, which also relate quarrels over women and gambling, and the nostalgia for the music of the past that the inexorable flow of time has replaced with the sophisticated and artificial music of the present—all held together by a playful and cheerful moralism that owes something to the influence of Cortese. On the contrary, Lo cunto de li cunti is a collection of popular fairy tales, the subtitle of which implies an intended audience of children (Lo trattenemiento de’ Peccerille means ‘‘entertainment for the little ones’’). This aspect was emphasized by Giovanni Getto, who also found in Basile’s popular dimension an evident extraneousness from archaic values. For Getto, the popular and the childish are ‘‘provisional forms’’ and ‘‘occasional pretexts’’ ‘‘for the abundant use of absurd situations and of an extremely structured language in its constant playfulness (leaving aside the savvy technique and the culture that underlie the whole work

and make it anything but popular)’’ (‘‘La fiaba di Giambattista Basile,’’ 1969). Lo cunto de li cunti, Basile’s true masterpiece, is also the first and foremost example of seventeenth-century Southern Italian prose, which demonstrates the use of the Neapolitan dialect as an instrument in the search for consciousness and identity, in open opposition to the Florentine norms of the Accademia della Crusca. This work is also known as Pentamerone as it is composed of 50 tales told in five days and alternated with four eclogues that echo the ballate in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1373), an unavoidable source, as well as the eclogues in Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1504), and Francisco Quevedo’s El mundo por de dentro (1612) in which servants, cooks and household staff of the princely palace are the main characters. The tales in the collection are nourished by a popular imagination rather than by mythology, and delineate, as Michele Rak shows, a theater of human miseries by adapting the material of myths and legends, ‘‘of exempla and proverbs, of jokes and stories, of the minor chronicles of posters and the major chronicles of the istorie, of the ne varietur retelling of the sacred works of the noble ideology and of the ritual retelling of the equally sacred popular works, of the open conversation around a fireplace in the country houses, inns, fairs, markets, and celebrations’’ (La maschera della fortuna, 1975). The author imagines that 10 peasant women, whose names are cleverly expressive, come and tell tales to three characters: Tadeo, the prince of Camporotondo, a Moorish slave who has deceived him into becoming his wife, and the young girl Zoza, who is in love with him. In the end, the deceits of the slave girl are discovered and she is sentenced to death, while Zoza can at last be loved back by the prince. This is the plot of the 50th and last story, the one that includes all the previous tales and gives the title to the collection. The tales are governed by a conception of the world dominated by chance and contingency, in which human beings are passive cogs. Another dominant element is the Baroque theme of metamorphoses and transformations that are, in this case however always controlled by a kind of magical Providence that enlightens the strangest and most absurd aspects of things and events, thus widening the essentially rational perspective of Boccaccio’s collection. This is a new perspective that looks toward an ever-changing universe that flows also and perhaps above all at the level of language, due to a skillful use of metaphors and anagrams, which from merely expressive, linguistic facts turn into existential, physical instances. 137

GIAMBATTISTA BASILE Some of the tales in the collection are wellknown, for example ‘‘La gatta cenerentola’’ (The Cinderella Cat), the archetype of the story of Sleeping Beauty in ‘‘Sole, Luna e Talia’’ (Sun, Moon and Talia), and ‘‘Le tre cetre’’ (The Three Lyres), from which Carlo Gozzi derived his famous dramatic tale L’amore delle tre melarance (The Love of Three Oranges, 1761). Moreover, in Gagliuso Basile tells the story of a wise cat who leads a poor man to better fortune and is repaid with nothing but ingratitude, which was used by both Charles Perrault and Ludwig Tieck.

Novelle Lo cunto de li cunti overo Lo trattenemiento de’ Peccerille, 5 vols., 1634–1636; as The Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile, translated by N. M. Penzer, 1932.

Edited Works Pietro Bembo, Rime, 1616. Giovanni della Casa, Rime, 1617. Galeazzo di Tarsia, Rime, 1617.

Biography Born in Naples, possibly in Posillipo around 1575 (although some say in 1566, or 1570/1572). Between 1603 and 1604 joined the Venetian armies and reached Candia, which at that time was threatened by the Turks and there attended the Accademia degli Stravaganti founded by Andrea Cornaro. Returned to Naples, 1608. Worked as secretary, administrator, and courtly writer for some of the great families of the kingdom; his services included the organization of celebrations and official ceremonies. Member of the Neapolitan Accademia degli Oziosi, 1611. At the end of 1612, joined his sister, the singer Adriana Basile, in Mantua, where he was knighted and made Earl Palatine. Back in Naples, was under ´ lvarez di, who the protection of Viceroy Antonio A appointed him governor of the city of Aversa in 1626. In his last years, the duke of Acerenza Galeazzo Pinelli appointed him governor of Giugliano where, during the winter 1631–1632 he was infected by a violent epidemic. He died in Giugliano (Naples) on February 23, 1632. STEFANO TOMASSINI See also: Novella Selected Works Collections Le opere napoletane, edited by Olga Silvana Casale, Rome: Benincasa, 1989.

Poetry ‘‘Il pianto della Vergine,’’ 1608. ‘‘Mandriali et ode,’’ 1609; expanded as Mandriali et ode prima e seconda parte, 1612; expanded as De’ Madrigali et delle ode del Cavalier Giovan Battista Basile, 1617.

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‘‘Le avventurose disavventure,’’ 1611. ‘‘Opere poetiche di Giovan Battista Basile il Pigro cioe` Mandriali et Ode prima e seconda parte. Venere addolorata, Favola tragica. Egloghe amorose e lugubri. Avventurose disavventure. Pianto delle Vergine, Poema sacro,’’ 1613. ‘‘Le Muse napoletane,’’ 1635. ‘‘Del Teagene,’’ 1637.

Other Varieta` de’ testi nelle rime del Bembo, 1616. Osservationi intorno alle rime del Bembo e del Casa, 1618.

Further Reading Canepa, Nancy L., From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile’s Lo cunto de li cunti and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. Croce, Benedetto, ‘‘Giambattista Basile e l’elaborazione artistica delle fiabe popolari,’’ in Storia dell’eta` barocca in Italia, Bari: Laterza, 1928. Fulco, Giorgio, ‘‘La letteratura dialettale napoletana. Giulio Cesare Croce e Giovan Battista Basile. Pompeo Sarnelli,’’ in Storia della Letteratura Italiana, edited by Enrico Malato, vol. 5, Rome: Salerno, 1997. Getto, Giovanni, ‘‘La fiaba di Giambattista Basile,’’ in Barocco in prosa e in poesia, Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. Guaragnella, Pasquale, ‘‘Il mondo dal ‘di dentro.’ Un intermezzo de Lo cunto de li cunti di G.B. Basile: ‘La Coppella,’’’ in Gli occhi della mente. Stili nel Seicento italiano, Bari: Palomar, 1997. Moro, Anna L., Aspects of Old Neapolitan: The Language of Basile’s Lo cunto de li cunti, Mu¨nchen: Lincom Europa, 2003. Petrini, Mario, Il gran Basile, Rome: Bulzoni, 1989. Picone, Michelangelo and Alfred Messerli (editors), Giovan Battista Basile e l’invenzione della fiaba, Ravenna: Longo, 2004. Porcelli, Bruno, ‘‘Il senso del molteplice nel Pentamerone,’’ in Novellieri italiani: dal Sacchetti al Basile, Ravenna: Longo, 1969. Praz, Mario, ‘‘Il Cunto de li cunti di G.B. Basile,’’ in Bellezza e bizzarria, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1960. Rak, Michele, La maschera della fortuna: letture del Basile ‘‘toscano,’’ Naples: Liguori, 1975. Rak, Michele, Napoli gentile: La letteratura in ‘‘lingua napoletana’’ nella cultura barocca (1596–1632), Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994. Ussia, Salvatore, ‘‘I Sacri sospiri di Giambattista Basile,’’ in Il Sacro Parnaso: il lauro e la croce, Catanzaro: Pullano, 1993.

GIORGIO BASSANI

GIORGIO BASSANI (1916–2000) Bassani began his career in 1940 with Una citta` di pianura (A City on the Plain), a collection of short stories set in his native city, Ferrara. The book was published under the pseudonym of Giacomo Marchi, a precaution made necessary by the antiSemitic legislation passed by the Fascist government in 1938. The racial laws and the memory of the people who died in the concentration camps during the war are the themes of his first collection of poems, Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi (Stories of Miserable Lovers and Other Verses, 1945). A second collection of poems, Te lucis ante (To You before the Close of Day, 1947), whose title refers to the ancient hymn ‘‘Te lucis ante terminum,’’ consists of brief religious verses written by a poet who does not believe in God but nonetheless feels the terrible and sometimes horrible fascination for a superior power who controls history. His next work, Un’altra liberta` (Another Freedom, 1951), is a collection of autobiographical poems referring to his war experience. It reflects the poetics of neorealism, in which Italian literature and cinema realistically represented the condition of postwar Italy and imagined what was to be done for its reconstruction. Bassani, however, is by no means a historian, bur rather a writer who transfigures history through fantasy. In the 1950s, he was also active as a scriptwriter. This experience taught him new methods, more visual than descriptive, that he would then apply to his own writing, as witnessed by the short stories ‘‘La passeggiata prima di cena’’ (The Walk Before Dinner, 1953), ‘‘Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti’’ (The Last Years of Clelia Trotti, 1955), ‘‘Storia d’amore’’ (Love Story, 1956), ‘‘Una lapide in via Mazzini’’ (A Tablet in Via Mazzini, 1956), and ‘‘Una notte del ’43’’ (A Night in ’43, 1956), which were collected as Cinque storie ferraresi (Five Stories of Ferrara, 1956), and for which he was awarded the prestigious Strega prize. In ‘‘La passeggiata prima di cena,’’ Bassani comes to terms with the trauma of Jewish persecution and extermination. In the other stories, people and documents are directly taken from actual reality, as in ‘‘Una notte del ’43.’’ Jewish identity is central to the five stories, both as a burden (given the persecution

against the Jewish community) and as a source of spiritual strength. Memory is another important theme of Bassani’s works, which show the influence of his great literary mentor, Marcel Proust. The desire and the necessity of remembering are expressed in various ways, as situations, atmospheres and moods again and again rise to the surface of memory. Indeed, memory is for the writer ‘‘a refuge and, at the same time, an optimal dimension from which one can look at world, [...] not in order to divine the future, to establish useless and illusory parallelisms, but rather in order to clarify once and for all what happened inside and outside us,’’ as Massimo Grillandi aptly put it (Invito alla lettura di Giorgio Bassani, 1972). The time gap separating the different stories of Cinque storie ferraresi only underlines the static immutability of the human condition. The only way to escape from human isolation and social alienation is through memory. A direct consequence of this reliance on memory is the characters’ inability to communicate, to decide what to do or even what to think. Not sufficiently strong enough to engage in life’s battles, they prefer to hide, to deny the truth because it is a truth they cannot accept. All of the stories are set in Ferrara, which is both protagonist and backdrop of the works. From story to story, in fact, there reappear, as variations on the theme, characters representing both the good and the bad in provincial life under Fascism and in the years after World War II. Beginning with ‘‘La passeggiata prima di cena,’’ Ferrara becomes a tumultuous and bizarre microcosm of passions, conflicting emotions, courageous or vile actions, uncertainties, and obsessions. The writer’s intention is to pin down and represent the habits and mentalities of the well-to-do Jewish community of his native city. Ferrara, writes Roberto Cotroneo, ‘‘is constructed as a mental place, so vivid that it becomes ever more unreal, impossible, vague; as a mental place, but also as a place of collective memory of a city that becomes a memory of the narrator and of his characters’’ (La ferita indicibile, 1998). With Gli occhiali d’oro (The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, 1958), Bassani’s style becomes more 139

GIORGIO BASSANI literary and less cinematic. In Cinque storie ferraresi the author had observed his characters from the outside, and their existences had been reconstructed with historical precision. In Gli occhiali d’oro, he dwells on the consciousness of his characters. The story is told from the point of view of a first person narrator who relates the story of Athos Fadigati, a homosexual doctor who is driven to suicide by his isolation. His friendship with the narrator, a young Jewish student, and the solidarity they develop, forms the core of the novel. By linking together racial and sexual persecution, Bassani brings into sharp relief the central themes of his narrative: the struggle for equality and the need for tolerance. Two years later, he revised and collected Cinque storie ferraresi and Gli occhiali d’oro in a single volume, Le storie ferraresi, demonstrating his relentless desire to rewrite his works. If, as Giorgio Varanini has suggested, the reader’s first impression of this omnibus volume may be that of a certain ‘‘narrowness of visual angle, of an all too exclusive predilection for Ferrara and its Jewishness and, with rare exceptions, for a strictly limited period, between 1936 and the end of World War II’’ (Giorgio Bassani, 1970), a closer analysis of the texts demonstrates that this visual angle opens up a whole world of human and social experiences. The writer’s direct and conscious knowledge of the events represented is the point of departure for a more profound investigation of the human condition. Nevertheless, unlike in the previous Ferrara stories, Bassani here avoids the accumulation of lyric passages: The Ferrarese settings, which previously seemed places of enchantment, now are rendered with unfaltering lucidity. After a very long preparation, Bassani published his best-known book, Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, 1962). This novel is the fullest expression of the writer’s world. In its vision of reality, the reader can detect the influence of Bassani’s master, the philosopher and literary critic Benedetto Croce. In the following two decades, Bassani continued to publish new novels, essays and poems, as well as to revise all of his former works. Among his later books, perhaps the most complex is Dietro la porta (Behind the Door, 1964), which deals with an adolescent’s discovery of the world—and particularly of sexuality. The story is told from the point of view of the boy himself as an adult. Returning to the themes of memory and alienation, Bassani paints a sharp and, in the end, profoundly pessimistic psychological portrait of the youth. The novel is a first-person 140

narrative, in which the protagonist, who belongs to a family of the city’s well-to-do bourgeoisie, attends his first year at a secondary school in Ferrara. There he attracts the fascinated attention of his classmate, Luciano Pulga—who is poor, meek, and in some ways repugnant—and simultaneously yearns to become friends with the best student in the class, Carlo Cattolica. But friendship with Carlo seems impossible, and Luciano insinuates himself into the protagonist’s life, despite his feeble attempts to withdraw from such intimacy. Carlo proposes to make Pulga fall into a trap: He will invite him to his house, hide him behind the door, and have him hear his false friend spout malicious things about him. The plan succeeds, but Luciano prefers to flee instead of confronting his false friend. Adolescence is described as a time constantly threatened and invaded by morbidity and sadism. In its explicit taste for suffering, the novel recalls the morbid relations among the young in the fiction of Andre Gide. Finally L’airone (The Heron, 1968) shows Bassani’s desire to find new themes. With pitiless minimalism, the novel recounts Edgardo Limentani’s day of hunting, registering—alongside the objective details—the slow and inexorable mounting of disgust, of the muffled horror of existence, with potentially tragic results. In contrast to his hunting companion, Gavino, a young man with a brusque and soldierly air, the protagonist identifies himself with the heron of the title, a wounded bird whose slow, agonizing death he watches. The bird thus comes to represent a ‘‘double’’ of the protagonist, a symbol of the world’s agonies and of everlasting death. More than a recollection of a period, the novel is the story of a man and his personal vicissitudes. It reflects the more general crisis of a generation that can no longer identify itself with the values of its fathers.

Biography Born in Bologna on 4 March 1916, into a middleclass family from Ferrara; educated at the Liceo ‘‘Ludovico Ariosto’’ in Ferrara until 1934; studied literature at the University of Bologna, and graduated in 1939; arrested in May of 1943 and imprisoned in Ferrara because of his anti-Fascist activities; released on 26 July 1943; married Valeria Sinigallia, a young Jewish woman from Ferrara, on 4 August 1943; lived for a few months in Florence, under a false name, then in Rome, until the end of the war; had two children, Paola and Enrico;

GIORGIO BASSANI worked as a civil servant, a secondary school teacher in Velletri; editor of the journal Botteghe Oscure in 1948–1960; Strega prize for Cinque storie ferraresi, 1956; discovered the creative talent of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and edited his Il Gattopardo for the publisher Feltrinelli, 1958; director of the ‘‘Biblioteca di letteratura’’ for Feltrinelli, 1958–1963; professor at the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica ‘‘Silvio D’Amico’’ in Rome, 1957–1967; vice president of the RAI television network, 1957–1967; Viareggio prize for Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, 1962; Campiello prize for L’airone, 1969; visiting professor of Italian literature in several North American universities, including Berkeley, 1976; honorary degree in arts and letters from Saint Mary’s College, in 1980; honorary degree in natural sciences, University of Ferrara, in 1996. Died in Rome on 13 April 2000. MARCELLA FARINA Selected Works Collections Opere, edited by Roberto Cotroneo, Milan: Mondadori, 1998.

Fiction Una citta` di pianura, 1940. La passeggiata prima di cena, 1953. Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti, 1955. Cinque storie ferraresi, 1956; republished as Le storie ferraresi, 1960; as A prospect of Ferrara, translated by Isabel Quigly, 1962; as Five Stories of Ferrara, translated by William Weaver, 1971. Gli occhiali d’oro, 1958; as The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, translated by Isabel Quigly, 1960. Una notte del ’43, 1960. Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, 1962; as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, translated by Isabel Quigly, 1965; as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, translated by William Weaver, 1977. Dietro la porta, 1964; as Behind the door, translated by William Weaver, 1992. L’airone, 1968; as The Heron, translated by Jonathan Keates, 1993. L’ odore del fieno, 1972; as The Smell of Hay, translated by William Weaver, 1996.

Poetry ‘‘Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi,’’ 1945. ‘‘Te lucis ante,’’ 1947. ‘‘Un’altra liberta`,’’ 1951. ‘‘L’alba ai vetri. Poesie 1942–1950,’’ 1963. ‘‘Epitaffio,’’ 1974. ‘‘In gran segreto,’’ 1978. ‘‘In rima e senza,’’ 1982.

Other Le parole preparate, e altri scritti di letteratura, 1966. Di la` dal cuore, 1984.

Further Reading Chiappino, Alessandra, and Gianni Venturi (editors), Bassani e Ferrara: le intermittenze del cuore, Ferrara: G. Corbo, 1995. Cotroneo, Roberto, ‘‘La ferita indicibile,’’ introduction to Giorgio Bassani, in Opere, Milan: Mondadori, 1998. Di Napoli, Thomas P. (editor), The Italian Jewish experience, Stony Brook, NY: Forum Italicum, 2000. Dolfi, Anna, Le forme del sentimento: prosa e poesia in Giorgio Bassani, Padua: Liviana, 1981. Dolfi, Anna, Giorgio Bassani: una scrittura della malinconia, Rome: Bulzoni, 2003. Duncan, Derek, ‘‘Secret Wounds: The Bodies of Fascism in Giorgio Bassani’s Dietro la porta,’’ in Queer Italia: Same-sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film, edited by Gary P. Cestaro, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Frandini, Paola, Giorgio Bassani e il fantasma di Ferrara, San Cesario di Lecce (Lecce): Manni, 2004. Gaeta, Maria Ida (editor), Giorgio Bassani: uno scrittore da ritrovare, Rome: Fahrenheit 451, 2004. Gagliardi, Antonio (editor), Bassani: lo scrittore e i suoi testi, Rome: NIS, 1988. Gialdroni, Michele, Giorgio Bassani, poeta di se stesso: un commento al testo di Epitaffio (1974), New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Grillandi, Massimo, Invito alla lettura di Giorgio Bassani, Milan: Mursia, 1972. Guiati, Andrea, L’ invenzione poetica: Ferrara e l’opera di Giorgio Bassani, Fossombrone: Metauro, 2001. Kroha, Lucienne, ‘‘The Sound of Silence: Re-reading Giorgio Bassani Gli occhiali d’oro,’’ in The Italianist, 10 (1990): 71–102. Moloney, Brian, ‘‘Giorgio Bassani, James Joyce and the Storie ferraresi,’’ in Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, 5 (1997): 231–243. Neiger, Ada, Bassani e il mondo ebraico, Naples: Loffredo, 1983. Oddo De Stefanis, Giusi, Bassani entro il cerchio delle sue mura, Ravenna: Longo, 1981. Prebys, Portia, Giorgio Bassani: bibliografia sulle opere e sulla vita, Florence: Centro editoriale toscano, 2002. Rinaldi, Micaela (editor), Le biblioteche di Giorgio Bassani, Milan: Guerini, 2004. Risari, Guia, The Document Within the Walls: The Romance of Bassani, Market Harborough, UK: Troubador, 1999. Roveri, Alessandro, Giorgio Bassani e l’antifascismo (1936–1943), Sabbioncello San Pietro: 2 G, 2002. Schneider, Marilyn, Vengeance of the Victim: History and Symbol in Giorgio Bassani’s Fiction, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Sempoux, Andre` (editor), Il Romanzo di Ferrara: contributi su Giorgio Bassani, Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1983. Sicher, Efraim, (editor), Holocaust Novelists, Detroit: Gale, 2004. Toni, Alberto, Con Bassani verso Ferrara, Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2001. Varanini, Giorgio, Giorgio Bassani, Florence: La nuova Italia, 1970. Varanini, Giorgio, Bassani: narratore, poeta, saggista, Modena: Mucchi, 1991.

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GIORGIO BASSANI

IL GIARDINO DEI FINZI-CONTINI, 1962 Novel by Giorgio Bassani

Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) is Bassani’s most popular novel. It was translated into more than 100 languages and in 1970 made into a film by Vittorio De Sica. The story, which takes place during the Fascist era in Ferrara, centers around a garden where young Jewish men and women are invited to pass their time as an alternative to their insecure destiny. Bassani draws on Anton Chekhov and Giovanni Pascoli, as well as Alain Fournier’s Grand Meaulnes (1913), in representing adolescent friendship. Furthermore, Bassani subtly analyses the subtle social differences between the upper, middle and lower strata of the bourgeoisie and their entanglement with the hierarchies imposed by Fascism. The novel opens with the protagonist’s visit to the Finzi-Contini family mausoleum and then divides into four parts. The first part recalls the narrator’s childhood experiences leading up to his encounter with Alberto and Mico´l Finzi-Contini. The next two parts follow the characters as they attend university, develop their friendship, especially in the ‘‘tennis club’’ in the garden of the Finzi-Contini’s villa, and are confronted with the restrictions imposed by Fascist racial laws. The final section of the book covers the gradual fading of the narrator’s involvement in the tennis club, his futile attempts to restart his romance with Mico´l, and his eventual departure from Ferrara. The idyllic and peaceful garden hides the thoughtless snobbery of its noble inhabitants who, through indifference, try to detach themselves from what is happening outside the ancient walls of their villa. In the end, their serene refuge of peace and love will be destroyed by war and racial persecution. Knowing their fate, the narrator must come to terms with the inability to bury the memories of the past and the need to face reality.

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The novel is founded on two themes. The first one is familiar to Bassani’s readers as one that inspires all his fiction and poetry: the idea of solitude and of seclusion, projected now onto ‘‘the garden,’’ a natural space so replete with poetic analogies. The garden remains Vittorio De Sica’s central archetypal image of his 1970 cinematic adaptation. The main female character, Mico`l, seems to be inhibited: She does not love, she does not want to get engaged, she is unable to enter the normal circle of life, and, like the rest of her family, she does not believe in the future. Her friendship with the protagonist is not based on the expectation of a happy future together but rather serves as a tender and elegiac evocation of the past. The other main theme is death. Already evoked in the prologue, where the reader is presented with images of the Etruscan necropolis of Cerveteri, images of death recur throughout the novel, infusing it with an atmosphere of melancholy. Rather than being horrible, the end of the rich and illustrious FinziContini family, destroyed in the concentration camps, has the gloomy faintness of a lost love. MARCELLA FARINA Editions First edition: Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, Turin: Einaudi, 1962. Translations: as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, translated by Isabel Quigly, New York: Atheneum, 1965; as The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, translated by William Weaver, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Other editions: in II romanzo di Ferrara (III), Milan: Mondadori, 1974.

Further Reading Andreoli, Annamaria, and Franca De Leo (editors), Giorgio Bassani. Il giardino dei libri, Rome: De Luca, 2004. Bon, Adriano, Come leggere Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini di Giorgio Bassani, Milan: Mursia, 1979. Bosetti, Gilbert, ‘‘Il mito della fanciullezza ne ‘Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini’’’ in Narratori italiani del Novecento: Ginzburg, Moravia, Bassani, Pratolini, Saviane, Soldati, Tobino: Premi Pirandello dal 1985 al 1991, edited by Gilbert Bosetti, Palermo: Palumbo, 1996. Cannon, Joann, ‘‘Memory and Testimony in Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, edited by Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Caproni, Giorgio, ‘‘Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini,’’ in La scatola nera, Milan: Garzanti, 1996.

LAURA BATTIFERRA DEGLI AMMANNATI Davis, Harry, ‘‘Narrated and narrating I in Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini,’’ in Italian Studies, 43 (1988): 117–129. Grillandi, Massimo, Invito alla lettura di Giorgio Bassani, Milan: Mursia, 1972. Kroha, Lucienne, ‘‘Judaism and Manhood in the Novels of Giorgio Bassani,’’ in The Italian Jewish Experience, edited by Thomas P. Di Napoli, Stony Brook, NY: Forum Italicum, 2000.

Marcus, Millicent, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation, Baltimore-London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Possiedi, Paolo, ‘‘Prima dell’Olocausto: Il giardino dei FinziContini di Giorgio Bassani,’’ in Nemla Italian Studies, 17 (1993): 107–119. Schneider, Marilyn, ‘‘Dimensioni mitiche di Mico`l FinziContini,’’ in Italica, 51.1 (1974): 43–65. Silva, Annamaria, Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, Milan: Mursia, 1994.

LAURA BATTIFERRA DEGLI AMMANNATI (1523–1589) Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati flourished as a poet in turbulent times, when Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim worldviews came into collision across Europe, sparking religious and aesthetic reform in Italy. Of an intellectual elite fiercely loyal to the Church of Rome, Battiferra expresses in her art a major cultural transition, from the high Renaissance to the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and beyond, through decades of deepening spirituality. Her poetry reflects sources astonishing in their reach, wittily targeted and adapted, from the Bible, Virgil, and Ovid to Dante, Petrarch, Jacopo Sannazzaro, Pietro Bembo, Giovanni Della Casa, Tullia d’Aragona, Chiara Matraini, and her Florentine mentor, Benedetto Varchi. At once successor to the Tuscan master sonneteer and namesake of his lady, she fashions a distinctive Petrarchist identity as ‘‘Dafne,’’ a new Laura seeking her laurels on the Parnassus of sixteenth-century Italy. Born into Urbino’s intellectual aristocracy, upon her first husband’s premature death (mourned in a private sequence of sonnets influenced by Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Ga`mbara), she went to live in Rome with her father, a wealthy Vatican cleric responsible for her classical education and elegant Italian chancery script, displayed in her few surviving letters (16 to Varchi; two to Duke Guidobaldo Della Rovere about her dowry; several others penned for her husband to Michelangelo and the Medici duke). Remarried to the Tuscan sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati, a loving

match that would last 40 years, she moves in elite Roman circles, judging from personages featured in her poetry: Annibal Caro, secretary to Alessandro Farnese (Pope Paul III’s grandson); Livia and Ortensia Colonna; Ersilia Cortese Del Monte, niece to Pope Julius III; Lucrezia Soderini of the great banking family; Eufemia, the Neapolitan singer-poet whose angelic strains enchanted the city. Five letters to her from Caro survive as well as sonnets they exchanged, printed in Il primo libro dell’opere toscane (First Book of Tuscan Works, 1560) and Caro’s posthumous Rime (1569). The death of Julius III in 1555 forced the Ammannati to move to Florence, where Bartolomeo found new patronage with Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Although devastated, his wife soon took root in a rich cultural milieu on the Arno shores, where she published Il primo libro dell’opere toscane. Dedicated to the Duchess Eleonora di Toledo, this carefully shaped lyric anthology, a tribute to Cosimo’s conquest of Siena, collects 187 poems, 146 by the author and 41 by distinguished male correspondents, among them Varchi, Caro, il Lasca (Anton Francesco Grazzini), Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, Antonio Gallo, and Girolamo Razzi. Mostly sonnets, including a sequence in honor of her husband ‘‘Fidia,’’ it displays a programmatic mix of forms: madrigals, canzonette or odes, sestina, canzone, terza rima in translations of Jeremiah’s lament, and a hymn attributed to St. Augustine (actually Peter Damian), and verso sciolto (free verse) in an eclogue.

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LAURA BATTIFERRA DEGLI AMMANNATI Her second book, I sette salmi penitentiali del santissimo profeta Davit . . . con alcuni suoi sonetti spirituali (Penitential Psalms of the Most Holy Prophet David . . . with Some of Her Spiritual Sonnets, 1564), announces the post-Tridentine era. Sent to the pious Vittoria Della Rovere, duchess of Urbino, it addresses a larger female public by offering each of the Psalms to cloistered nuns, among them her aunt Cassandra Battiferra. A third collection, entitled simply Le rime (The Rhymes, before 1859), survives in a manuscript left incomplete at her death and rediscovered in 1995. It was intended to contain all she had ever written, except for her poetry preserved in collections by others (e.g., Bronzino’s Rime, Varchi’s Contro gl’Ugonotti, Cento sonetti in morte di Luca Martini, Laura Terracina’s Rime libro nono, Lodovico Domenichi’s funeral anthology for Eleonora and her sons Giovanni and Garzia, Michelangelo’s funeral anthology, Mario Colonna’s Poesie toscane, Curzio Gonzaga’s Rime). This long lost trove reflects her intensifying religious sentiments during the 1570s and 1580s, when the Ammannati became Jesuit sponsors. Battiferra’s late Rime honor the Society of Jesus and touch on such Catholic Reformation themes as the Magdalene, Crucifixion, and Massacre of the Innocents. The final entry, which breaks off after only 17 stanzas of ottava rima, is a heroic poem based on the biblical account of Samuel with poignant sympathy for Hannah, infertile as the poet herself apparently was. To the same period belongs her one known prose work, the Oratione sopra il Natale di Nostro Signore (Orison on the Birth of Our Lord, before 1859), an impassioned meditation on the Nativity inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. Connected to Urbino, Rome, and Florence, she attracted the attention of literati not only across Italy (Lodovico Beccadelli, bishop of Ragusa, Malatesta Fiordiano of Rimini, Lucia Bertana of Bologna), but also at the imperial courts of Prague and Madrid. Male peers canonized her in catalogs of famous women (Bernardo Tasso, Amadigi; Pietro Calzolari, Historia monastica; Vasari, Vite de’ piu´ eccellenti architetti, pittori e scultori italiani, second ed.; Tomaso Garzoni, Vite delle donne illustri della scrittura sacra). They embraced her in prestigious academies and more informal groups that met like salons. These coteries gravitated to the venerable monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in the heart of Florence beside Brunelleschi’s Rotunda, to patrician villas in the surrounding

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countryside, and sometimes to the warmth of Battiferra’s own fireside. In ever-shifting combinatory activity, they produced fashionable, multivoiced lyric anthologies that measure the parabola of Battiferra’s fame. Still praised in the eighteenth century by Giovan Maria Crescimbene, Francesco Saverio Quadrio, and Girolamo Tiraboschi, as of the nineteenth century she virtually disappears, except for trickles of memory that recall I sette salmi penitentiali and a handful of autobiographical sonnets. The occasional verse, Petrarchist and Mannerist, that made up the bulk of her production—a corpus of more than 500 poems, 400 that she herself wrote and over 100 addressed to her by literary correspondents—was all but forgotten. She may herself have diminished the fame that she so aggressively pursued when younger by retreating into a more secluded life as an older woman to meditate on the vanities of the world, to pray for salvation, and to compose religious poetry that never crossed the threshold of print.

Biography Born St. Andrew’s Day, 13 November 1523, probably in Urbino, to Giovan’ Antonio Battiferri of Urbino and his concubine Maddalena Coccapani of Carpi; educated by her father; legitimized with her brother Ascanio and her half-brother Giulio by Pope Paul III in a document of 9 February 1543; married to Vittorio Sereni, organist in service of Duke Guidobaldo II Della Rovere of Urbino, 1549; remarried to the Tuscan sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati, at Casa Santa in Loreto, 1 April 1550; lived in Rome 1550–1555; then in Florence in orbit of the Medici court. No children; first woman inducted into the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati, 1560; member of the Accademia degli Assorditi in Urbino; assisted in preparation of funeral anthology for Benedetto Varchi, 1566. Died in Florence of unknown causes, 3 November 1589; buried in the Jesuit church San Giovannino (today San Giovannino degli Scolopi). She left a planned third volume of verses unfinished in manuscript at her death. Two portraits survive: by Agnolo Bronzino (ca. 1560, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), by Alessandro Allori (ca. 1590, in the Ammannati funeral chapel at San Giovannino, Florence); another by Hans Van Aachen is lost. VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM

CESARE BECCARIA Selected Works

Further Reading

Collections Il primo libro dell’opere toscane di M. Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati, 1560 (based on the holograph in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Ms. Magl. VII, 778); republished as Rime della Sig. Laura Battiferra nuovamente date in luce da Antonio Bulifon, 1694; Il primo libro delle opere toscane, edited by Enrico Maria Guidi, 2000. Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati and her Literary Circle: An Anthology, edited and translated with commentary by Victoria Kirkham, 2005.

Poetry ‘‘Rime, Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense,’’ Ms. 3229, before 1589.

Other Oratione sopra il Natale di Nostro Signore, Macerata, Biblioteca Comunale Mozzi-Borgetti, Ms. 137, fols. 137r– 141v, before 1589. I sette salmi penitentiali del santissimo profeta Davit. Tradotti in lingua Toscana da Madonna Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati. Con gli argomenti sopra ciascuno di essi, composti dalla medesima; insieme con alcuni suoi Sonetti spirituali, 1564; rpt. 1566, 1570; republished in Salmi penitentiali, di diuersi eccellenti autori con alcune rime spirituali di diuersi illust. cardinali, di Reuerendissimi uescoui, et d’altre persone Ecclesiastiche. Scelti dal reuerendo P. Francesco da Triuigi Carmelitano (Francesco Turchi), 1568; rpt. 1569, 1570, 1572, 1749; edited by Enrico Maria Guidi, 2005. Lettere di Laura Battiferra Ammannati a Benedetto Varchi, edited by Carlo Gargiolli, 1879; rpt. 1968.

Guidi, Enrico Maria, ‘‘I salmi penitenziali di David nella traduzione di Laura Battiferra,’’ in Accademia Raffaello: Atti e studi, 1 (2004): 83–92. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Laura Battiferra’s ’First Book’ of Poetry: A Renaissance Holograph Comes out of Hiding,’’ in Rinascimento, 35 (1996): 351–391. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Dante’s Fantom, Petrarch’s Specter: Bronzino’s Portrait of the Poet Laura Battiferra,’’ in ‘‘Visibile parlare’’: Dante and the Art of the Italian Renaissance, edited by Deborah Parker, special issue of Lectura Dantis, 22–23 (1998): 63–139. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati benefattrice dei Gesuiti fiorentini,’’ in Committenza artistica femminile, edited by Sara F. Matthews Grieco and Gabriella Zarri, Quaderni storici, 104, no. 2 (2000): 331–354. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Creative Partners: The Marriage of Laura Battiferra and Bartolomeo Ammannati,’’ in Renaissance Quarterly, 55 (2002): 498–558. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘La poetessa al presepio: Una meditazione inedita di Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati,’’ in Filologia e critica, 27, no. 2 (2002): 258–276. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Sappho on the Arno: The Brief Fame of Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati,’’ in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France and Italy, edited by Pamela Benson and Victoria Kirkham, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Zaccagnani, Guido, ‘‘Lirici urbinati del secolo XVI,’’ in Le Marche, 3 (1903): 87–114.

THE BAY IS NOT NAPLES See Il Mare non bagna Napoli (Work by Anna Maria Ortese)

CESARE BECCARIA (1738–1794) Cesare Beccaria, a marquis who sought change through a rejection of his own privileged status in the hierarchical social system of Milan, is the author of what is widely considered the most

important work of Italian Enlightenment, Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments, 1764). A defining event in Beccaria’s ideological formation was the radical break from his family, which 145

CESARE BECCARIA he suffered in 1760 when he fell in love with Teresa Blasco, a woman of inferior social status. Despite the disapproval of his noble family, the couple married in 1761 and sought financial independence. In the same year, Beccaria made the acquaintance of Pietro and Alessandro Verri, two intellectuals whose support and friendship would have a profound effect on his intellectual development and accomplishments. Beccaria, along with the Verri brothers and other young intellectuals of Milan, formed an informal accademia in the tradition of the French philosophes who gathered around the Encyclope´die. The group became known as the Societa` dei Pugni (1762–1766) because of reputed fistfights among the young participants during heated debates. As a member of the Accademia, Beccaria’s intellectual curiosity was heightened by intense philosophical discussions with its members, and especially with Pietro Verri, who was 10 years his senior and became a mentor figure. Under the tutelage of Verri, Beccaria studied the authors of the French Enlightenment and was especially influenced by Montesquieu—whose Lettres persanes (1721), Beccaria claims, contributed to his philosophical conversion—as well as by Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. With the help of Verri, he reunited with his family in 1762. At the end of this period of conflict, Teresa gave birth to their first child, Giulia, who would be the mother of Alessandro Manzoni. In recognition of one of his intellectual influences, Beccaria named Giulia after Julie, the heroine of Rousseau’s La Nouvelle He´loı¨se (1761). However, the period of conflict greatly influenced the young writer, who later included a chapter on the spirit of the family in Dei delitti e delle pene, in which he criticizes parental tyranny and emphasizes the necessity of destroying familial autocracy before social equality can be achieved. The members of the Societa` dei Pugni published a number of treatises and articles in their years as an official group. Beccaria published his first treatise with the Accademia, Del disordine e de’ rimedi delle monete nello Stato di Milano nell’anno 1762 (On the Disorder and on Remedies Regarding Currency in the State of Milan in the Year 1762, 1762), which opposed the possibility of Milan forming its own currency. In an effort to promulgate the ideas of the Accademia, its members founded the periodical Il Caffe` (1764–1766) under the leadership of Pietro Verri. In the year of the periodical’s foundation Beccaria, aged 25, wrote Dei delitti e delle pene, published in Livorno by the publisher Giuseppe 146

Aubert and released on April 12, 1764. The treatise, divided into 42 short chapters, is a critique of the Italian juridical system. It advocates the abolition of the death penalty and the humanitarian treatment of prisoners, and condemns the use of torture as a means of punishment. Scholars agree that, although neither the subject matter nor the ideology expressed in the book is new, the style of writing set it apart from other juridical works. Instead of employing an expository style in hopes of defining and clarifying what the law is, Beccaria writes a censorial treatise that postulates what the law ought to be. For this reason, the English theorist in the philosophy of law Jeremy Bentham called Beccaria the ‘‘father of censorial jurisprudence.’’ Beccaria begins his treatise with the idea, later made famous by Bentham in Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), which states the importance of ‘‘la massima felicita` divisa nel maggior numero’’ (greatest happiness shared by the greatest number). Strongly influenced by Rousseau’s Le contrat social (1762), Beccaria writes that men are forced ‘‘a cedere parte della propria liberta`: egli e` adunque certo che ciascuno non ne vuol mettere nel pubblico deposito che la minima porzion possibile, quella sola che basti a indurre gli altri a difenderlo. L’aggregato di queste minime porzioni possibili forma il diritto di punire; tutto il di piu´ e` abuso e non giustizia’’ (to give up part of their personal liberty, and it is certain, therefore, that each is willing to place in the public fund only the least possible portion, no more than suffices to induce others to defend it. The aggregate of these least possible portions constitutes the right to punish; all that exceeds this is abuse and not justice, 13). Basing his philosophy upon this premise of maintaining the greatest possible portion of individual liberty, Beccaria seeks to define the purpose, the necessity, and the objectives of punishment for crimes, advocating for swift castigation in its least cruel form to serve as a deterrent to would-be criminals in the greater community. The circumstances surrounding Beccaria’s work—as well as his reaction to the immediate fame he received from its publication—contributed to doubts regarding its authorship. Dei delitti e delle pene was first published anonymously for fear of a potentially negative reaction from the Austrian government in Milan. The book was received well by Austrian rule, however, and was soon printed with Beccaria’s name. Pietro Verri had persuaded the author to write the treatise on crimes and punishments, a subject about which the

CESARE BECCARIA young scholar initially knew little. The idea for the book evolved over the course of time from discussions between the two men as well as other members of the Accademia. However, Beccaria, who suffered from anxiety and a general disinterest in participating in the intellectual atmosphere, was in need of constant prodding and encouragement from Verri and others to finish the project. Once Beccaria had written the brief chapters, Verri edited, reordered, and wrote out the text to be sent to the publisher. Verri sent this revised manuscript to Aubert, the same publisher who had recently published his own Meditazioni sulla felicita` (Meditations on Happiness) in 1763. Verri’s close involvement with the work, as well as a publication of his defense of the work in 1765, created skepticism about Beccaria’s authorship. Both Verri and Beccaria made quite clear their roles in the book’s production, however, and Verri asserted Beccaria’s claim to the work long after the dissolution of their friendship. Dei delitti e delle pene met with enormous success outside of Italy as well. Catherine the Great invited the young author to Russia in 1766 to help her implement the changes for which he advocated, but Beccaria, increasingly uncomfortable with his newfound fame, declined the offer. In the same year, he reluctantly accepted an invitation to Paris from the French intellectuals who had admired his work and success. In his brother’s place, Alessandro Verri accompanied him to France. Upon arrival, however, the young author’s anxious and antisocial behavior failed to impress the French intellectual crowd. Despite Verri’s pleas to Beccaria to stay, he left Paris in autumn of 1766 to return to Milan. The author’s abrupt departure was followed by the demise of his friendship with the Verris and the eventual dissolution of the Accademia. Beccaria failed to write another major work after Dei delitti e delle pene, but the fame he received, as well as the invitation from Catherine the Great, brought him to the attention of the Austrian government. He held various positions for Lombardy’s Austrian rulers for the remainder of his life and contributed to the Hapsburg reforms. In 1768, he was appointed to the newly created chair of ‘‘cameral sciences’’ at the Palatine School in Milan, where he gave his inaugural address in January of 1769. He lectured there for two years before petitioning for an administrative position with the Supreme Economic Council of Lombardy, to which he was elected in 1771. He remained in charge of monetary reforms until 1773, at which time he began supervising matters regarding the food supply. In 1778, Beccaria

became the provincial magistrate of the mint, a position he held until his sudden death on November 28, 1794. Two years before his death, Beccaria authored a proposal to abolish the death penalty and reprised many of the arguments from his famous treatise. The reputation of Beccaria and the reception of the Dei delitti e delle pene have been subject to the vicissitudes of historical perspective. The Catholic Church listed the book on its Index of Prohibited Books in 1766 for its extremely rationalistic approach. In the nascent United States of America, John Adams quoted Beccaria’s recently translated book in his defense of the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Nearly 80 years after its publication, in his Storia della Colonna Infame (The Column of Infamy, 1842), Alessandro Manzoni acknowledged the limitations of his grandfather’s work and his views, and proposed that the juridical system was not as unambiguously unjust as Beccaria’s portrayal had suggested. The text, which Beccaria continually edited, reorganized, and appended, underwent at least seven editions within the author’s lifetime. Andre´ Morellet’s fourth edition, a French translation that appeared in December of 1765 at the behest of the French Illuminists, completely reordered the book from Beccaria’s first edition and left only four paragraphs unedited and in their original position. Although Beccaria added a note to the fifth edition claiming that the French ordering was preferable to his own, he oversaw two later editions of the work that retained, for the most part, the original arrangement of material. Since 1958 Beccaria scholars have accepted the fifth edition, the so-called ‘‘Harlem’’ edition, as the standard Italian text.

Biography Born March 15, 1738, in Milan; attended Jesuitrun Collegio Farnesiano in Parma, 1746–1754; entered University of Pavia, 1754; graduated September 13, 1758; married Teresa Blasco, 1761; first daughter, Giulia, born 1762; member of Societa` dei Pugni, 1762–1766; traveled to Paris and returned to Italy three weeks later, autumn 1766; appointed to the newly created chair of ‘‘cameral sciences’’ at the Palatine School of Milan, 1768; elected to the Supreme Economic Council of Lombardy, 1771; placed in charge of monetary reforms, 1771–1773; supervised matters regarding the food supply, 1773; wife Teresa died and he married Anna Barbo` four months later, 1774; son Giulio born, 1775; named provincial magistrate of the 147

CESARE BECCARIA mint, 1778; died suddenly in Milan on November 28, 1794. ERIN M. MCCARTHY Selected Works Collections Opere, edited by Sergio Romagnoli, 2 vols., Florence: Sansoni, 1958. Edizione nazionale delle opere di Cesare Beccaria, edited by Luigi Firpo and Gianni Francioni, 11 vols., Milan: Mediobanca, 1984–2004. On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, edited by Richard Bellamy and translated by Richard Davies with Virginia Cox and Richard Bellamy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Treatises Del disordine e de’ rimedi delle monete nello Stato di Milano nell’anno 1762, 1762. Dei delitti e delle pene, 1764; as On Crimes and Punishments, translated by Richard Davies et al., 1995; as Of Crimes and Punishments, translated by Jane Grigson, 1996. Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile, 1770. Elementi di economia pubblica, 1804.

Further Reading Andrews, Richard, ‘‘The Cunning of Imagery: Rhetoric and Ideology in Cesare Beccaria’s Treatise On Crimes and

Punishments,’’ in Begetting Images: Studies in the Art and Science of Symbol Production, edited by Mary B. Campbell and Mark Rollins, New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Angiani, Bartolo, Il dissotto delle carte: sociabilita`, sentimenti e politica tra i Verri e Beccaria, Milan: F. Angeli, 2004. Biagini, Enza, Introduzione a Beccaria, Rome: Laterza, 1992. Cesare Beccaria tra Milano e l’Europa: convegno di studi per il 250 anniversario della nascita promosso del comune di Milano. Milan: Cariplo; Rome: Laterza, 1990. Corpaci, Francesco, Ideologie e politica in Cesare Beccaria, Milan: Giuffre`, 1965. Dioguardi, Gianfranco, Attualita` dell’illuminismo milanese: Pietro Verri e Cesare Beccaria, Palermo: Sellerio, 1998. Fubini, Mario, ‘‘Beccaria scrittore’’ in Saggi e ricordi, Milan-Naples: R.Ricciardi: 1971. Gaspari, Gianmarco, Letteratura delle riforme: da Beccaria a Manzoni, Palermo: Sellerio, 1990. ———, Cesare Beccaria and the Origins of Penal Reform, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973. Mereu, Italo, La pena di morte a Milano nel secolo di Beccaria: cinquanta tavole, Vincenza: Neri Pozza, 1988. Monachesi, Elio, ‘‘Cesare Beccaria,’’ in Pioneers in Criminology, edited by Hermann Mannheim, Chicago: Quadrangle, 1960. Villari, Lucio (editor), Illuministi e riformatori, Rome: Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello stato, 1995. Wheelock, James T. S., ‘‘The Anonymity of the Milanese ‘Caffe`’ 1764–1766,’’ Eighteenth-Century Studies, 5, no. 4 (1972): 527–544. Zorzi, Renzo, Cesare Beccaria: il dramma della giustizia, Milan: Mondadori, 1966.

FEO BELCARI (1410–1484) Feo Belcari was a renowned poet in Medicean Florence whose strict religious education informed his literary writings. His first work, finished in 1445, Il prato spirituale (The Spiritual Meadow), was a vernacular translation of the Latin lives of the saints by Ambrogio Traversari. In 1449, he compiled a version of the Vita del Beato Giovanni Colombini (Life of the Blessed Giovanni Colombini), which narrates the life of the founder of the fourteenth century Order of the Gesuati. In this prose work, Belcari revived the biographical genre by supplementing previous biographies with data derived from public records. He composed numerous laudi (ca. 120 attributed), which show innovative features when compared with the traditional 148

religious Laud. Modeled on the terza rima of Dante’s Commedia and the rhymed verses of secular songs and madrigals, these laudi praise the virtues of the Holy Virgin and the saints, describe the state of the soul in love with God, and illustrate some articles of faith. Some 40 rhymed compositions are also ascribed to Belcari; mainly sonnets that answer religious queries asked by eminent poets and figures of the time. As a high authority on the Sacred Scriptures, Belcari was frequently consulted on theological and moral matters. The purity of his volgare was acknowledged by the Academicians of the Crusca in their dictionary. Belcari is best known for his sacre rappresentazioni, or religious plays in the vernacular, a dramatic

FEO BELCARI genre that enacted stories from the Old and New Testament, as well as from the hagiographic and devout literature. This new genre was created around the mid-1440s by a group of poets and men of letters, who, under the sponsorship of Archbishop Antonino Pierozzi, endeavored to represent edifying exercises and examples of good life for the boys of the newly formed compagnie di fanciulli (boys companies), who acted in them. The educational effectiveness of this dramatic entertainment, however, was instrumental in extending its influence beyond the circle of the boys companies, merging with other forms of religious spectacles practiced at that time in Medicean Florence. Belcari became one of the important protagonists of this new activity. Among the eight plays attributed to him, two of his most impressive are the Rappresentazione di Abraam e di Isaacsuo figliuolo (The Play of Abraham and Isaac, ca. 1485), first performed in 1449 in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Cestelli, and the Rappresentazione della Nunziata (The Play of the Annunciation, ca. 1495), composed between 1448 and 1464. The first one may be considered the prototype of the new genre, as it establishes its essential dramatic features: the use of a hendecasyllabic eightline stanza, stage directions with captions minutely detailed, and the presence of an Annunzio (Announcement) and a Licenza (Valediction) delivered by an angel. The text is structured as follows: The Announcement demands the people’s attention, expounds the subject of the play, disclosing God’s intention that Isaac be sacrificed, and describes the protagonists’ journey toward the place of sacrifice. The play unfolds according to Genesis 22:1–14, and focuses on the theme of the obedience that man owes to God, sons to their fathers, and servants to their masters. A relevant role is given to Sarah, Isaac’s mother, whose pain for her son’s fate represents an allegory of human earthly affections versus Abraham’s obedience to God. In the end, all the actors assemble in a choral lauda, while the Angel delivers a valedictory address in the context of the audience’s familiarity with the Biblical story. The play conforms to fifteenth-century preaching styles, stressing the importance of its moral message. Impressive stage effects disclose Belcari’s command of his craft. This play, dedicated to Giovanni, son of Cosimo de’ Medici, enjoyed a wide circulation in its manuscript and printed versions. The Rappresentazione della Nunziata has a similar structure. After the Announcement, a long procession of prophets and sibyls predicts the coming

of Christ; the next scene takes place in Paradise where, in the Disputa delle Virtu` (Dispute of the Virtues), the Advent of Christ for the deliverance of humankind is decided. Then the Annunciation is presented according to Luke I: 26–38, and the play ends with the valediction delivered by the Angel. The text introduces subtle considerations on the mystery of the Incarnation and attests to the poetical and theological nature of Belcari’s theatre. A performance of the Nunziata, probably in 1471, to honor Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, confirmed Belcari’s place among the Florentine literary elite.

Biography Born in Florence, 4 February 1410. His father, Feo di Coppo, belonged to a family of Florentine upper middle class. Nothing is known about his studies, but he surely had a serious religious education, which is reflected by his works. He married around 1435; had seven children; worked for several years as a copyist and financial manager of the church of San Lorenzo al Monte. A Medici supporter, held several public offices, among them Priore (Prior) in 1454; and Gonfaloniere delle Compagnie del Popolo (Standard-bearer of the People Companies) in 1468. Died in Florence, 16 August 1484; was buried in the church of Santa Croce. PAOLA VENTRONE See also: Sacra Rappresentazione Selected Works Collections Le Rappresentazioni di Feo Belcari ed altre di lui poesie edite ed inedite, edited by Gustavo Galletti, Florence: Moutier, 1833. Prose di Feo Belcari edite ed inedite sopra autografi e testi a penna, edited by Ottavo Gigli, Rome: Salviucci, 1843–1844. Sacre Rappresentazioni e Laude di Feo Belcari, edited by Onorato Allocco Castellino, Turin: UTET, 1926. Lirici toscani del Quattrocento, edited by Antonio Lanza, Rome: Bulzoni, 1973 (41 sonnets and rhymes). Newbigin, Nerida, Feste d’Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-century Florence, Florence: Olschki, 1996 (Nunziata Ascensione and Pentecoste, published from ancient manuscripts).

Plays Rappresentazione di Abraam e Isaac, ca.1485. Rappresentazione di San Pafnunzio, ca. 1490. Rappresentazione di San Giovanni Battista nel deserto (written with Tommaso Benci), ca. 1490. Rappresentazione del dı` del Giudizio (written with Antonio di Matteo di Meglio Araldo), ca. 1495.

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FEO BELCARI Rappresentazione Rappresentazione Rappresentazione Rappresentazione

della Nunziata, ca. 1495. dell’Ascensione, 1833. della Pentecoste, 1833. di San Giorgio, 1833.

Poetry ‘‘Laude fatte e composte per piu` persone spirituale,’’ 1486.

Other Lettere di Feo Belcari, edited by Domenico Moreni, 1843. Il prato spirituale, edited by Ottavio Gigli, 1844. Giovanni Colombini, 1874. Vita del Beato Giovanni Colombini, ca. 1477; edited by Rodolfo Chiarini, 1914; as The Life of Beato.

Further Reading Cremonini, Stefano, ‘‘Sui sonetti di Feo Belcari: Intertestualita` di una ‘poetica theologia,’’’ Studi e problemi di critica testuale, 68 (2004): 5–36. Eisenbichler, Konrad, ‘‘Per un nuovo approccio all’’Abramo et Isac’ di Feo Belcari,’’ in Cultura e potere nel Rinascimento, Atti del IX Convegno Internazionale, edited by Luisa Secchi Tarugi, Florence: Cesati, 1999. Figliuolo, Bruno, ‘‘Tre lettere inedite di Feo Belcari a Ottone Niccolini,’’ Lettere italiane, 52 (2000): 265–271. Guccini, Gerardo, ‘‘Retoriche e societa` nell’Abramo e Isacco di Feo Belcari,’’ Biblioteca teatrale, 19 (1977): 95–117.

Guccini, Gerardo, ‘‘Domande sulla sacra rappresentazione e su Feo Belcari,’’ Quaderni di teatro, 15 (1982): 127–35. Guidi, Remo L., ‘‘Influenza delle tradizioni religiose e agiografiche nella Vita del B. Giovanni Colombini di Feo Belcari,’’ Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 5 (1969): 391–412. Martelli, Mario, Letteratura fiorentina del Quattrocento: Il filtro degli anni Sessanta, Florence: Le Lettere, 1996. Newbigin, Nerida, ‘‘Il testo e il contesto dell’Abramo e Isac di Feo Belcari,’’ Studi e problemi di critica testuale, 23 (1981): 13–37. Newbigin, Nerida, ‘‘Between Prophecy and Redemption: The ‘‘Disputa delle Virtu`’’ and Florentine Plays of the Annunciations,’’ in Atti del IV Colloquio della Socie´te´ Internationale pour l’E´tude du The´aˆtre Me´die´val, edited by Miryam Chiabo` and Federico Doglio, Viterbo: Union Printing, 1984. Ventrone, Paola, ‘‘Per una morfologia della sacra rappresentazione fiorentina,’’ in Teatro e culture della rappresentazione: Lo spettacolo in Italia nel Quattrocento, edited by Raimondo Guarino, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988. Ventrone, Paola, ‘‘La Rappresentazione di Abraam e Isaac di Feo Belcari,’’ in Ingresso a teatro: Guida all’analisi della drammaturgia, edited by Annamaria Cascetta and Laura Peja, Florence: Le Lettere, 2003.

CRISTINA DI BELGIOIOSO (ALBERICA TRIVULZIO) (1808–1871) Milanese writer and journalist, best known as a heroine of the Italian wars of independence, a patriot, a cosmopolitan, a free spirit, Cristina Trivulzio di Belgioioso has been called the ‘‘Revolutionary Princess’’ and the ‘‘Romantic Princess.’’ While biographers have produced numerous studies on her controversial and intense life, few analyses of her vast literary production have been published. She revealed her anticonformist and independent spirit at the age of 20 when she separated from her libertine husband, Prince Emilio Barbiano di Belgioioso, and began what she would later define a ‘‘nomadic’’ life. Traveling to Genoa, Rome, and Florence in the years 1828 through 1830, she came into contact with liberal and revolutionary groups fighting for Italian independence. By this time her political views had already been influenced by her friend and art teacher, Ernesta Bisi, who was 150

affiliated with the secret society Carboneria, and by her stepfather, the Marquis Alessandro Visconte d’Aragona, who was a member of the liberal Il conciliatore group. When her political activities eventually made her a target for Austrian prosecution, she fled to France. In the 1830s her Paris salon became a meeting point for Italian expatriates and politicians (Vincenzo Gioberti, Nicolo` Tommaseo, Camillo Cavour) and for European intellectuals and artists such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Honore` de Balzac, Alfred de Musset, Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, and Franz Liszt. She also encountered historians Augustin Thierry and Franc¸ois Mignet, who would play an influential role in her life. The 1840s were a decade of intense political and intellectual activity for Belgioioso. Having returned to Italy after a short stay in England, she published the Essai sur la formation du dogme catholique

CRISTINA DI BELGIOIOSO (Essay on the Formation of Catholic Dogma, 1842), a history of Christianity from its origin to modern times, emphasizing the importance of free will in the church’s doctrine of salvation. It was followed in 1844 by her translation of Giambattista Vico’s Principi di scienza nova into French, with a critical introduction maintaining history’s inevitable progress toward the abolition of social injustice. Back in Paris, she directed and contributed to several reviews, among them, La gazzetta italiana (1845), La rivista italiana (1846), and Ausonio (1846–1848). These activities attracted some criticism even among liberal thinkers, as evidenced by Terenzo Mamiani’s refusal to be a codirector of La gazzetta italiana, because he disapproved of a woman directing a political journal. When in 1848 the Milanese patriots revolted to overthrow the Austrian regime, Belgioioso went to the aid of the insurgents with a battalion of volunteers, which she financed and equipped. When this most celebrated revolution ended in total defeat, Belgioioso was forced to flee to Paris again. Between 15 September 1848 and 15 January 1849, she published a series of articles in the renowned Revue des Deux Mondes under the general title ‘‘L’Italie e la re´volution italienne de 1848’’ (Italy and the Italian Revolution of 1848). They address the siege and capitulation of Milan, Venice’s insurrection, and the war in the Italian Tyrol. In 1949, after assisting Giuseppe Mazzini’s illfated Roman Republic as a hospital director, she fled Italy in order to avoid political persecution. The last days of the Roman Republic and her journey to Malta, Constantinople, and Asia Minor are recounted in a series of articles published in the French magazine Le National as ‘‘Souvenirs dans l’exil’’ (Memories in Exile, 1850). Her experience in the Orient is central to her next two works: Asie Mineure et Syrie (Asia Minor and Syria, 1858), an account of her 11-month journey from Turkey to Jerusalem, and the Re´cits turques (Turkish Short Stories, 1856–1858). Not only did Belgioioso’s orientalist works break with the traditional erotic perception of the Orient, they also implicitly challenged western patriarchal values: the harem becomes the symbol of women’s marginality and exclusion. Belgioioso shows that, deprived of education as a means to emancipation, women came to accept the very system that enslaved them. She further explained in ‘‘Della condizione delle donne e del loro avvenire’’ (Of Women’s Condition and of Their Future, 1866) that women needed to coin new roles for themselves

through learning experiences before reforms could be implemented. Cristina di Belgioioso spent her last years in semiretirement, residing between Milan and Lake Como, and continuing to comment on political issues. Her last works, Osservazioni sullo stato dell’Italia e del suo avvenire (Observations on Italy and its Future, 1868) and Sulla moderna politica internazionale (About Modern International Politics, 1869), discuss the socio-political problems facing the recently unified Italian nation.

Biography Born in Milan on 28 June 1808; lost her father and inherited a great fortune, 1812; married Prince Emilio Belgioioso, 1824; left her husband and traveled to Genoa, Rome, Florence, 1828; escaped to Paris, where she opened famed salon, 1830; her daughter Marie was born, 1838; returned to Italy, 1840; inspired by Franc¸ois Charles Marie Fourier and Claude Henri Saint-Simon, modernized the Trivulzio properties, opened nurseries and schools in 1840s; returned to Paris, reorganized opposition to Austria, reopened her salon to Italian exiles, 1848; aided Mazzini’s Roman Republic, 1849; escaped with daughter to Asia Minor and bought land in a remote area, Ciaq-Maq-Oglou, 1850; traveled from Turkey to Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, 1852; stabbed by a servant, 1854; returned to Italy and lived in Milan and on Lake Como with her daughter and son-in-law Marquis Ludovico Trotti, 1855; died in Milan on 5 July 1871. PAOLA GIULI Selected Works Essays Essai sur la formation du dogme catholique, 1842. Etude sur l’historie de la Lombardie dans les Trente dernie`res anne´es, ou les causes du de´faut d’energie chez les Lombards, 1846. ‘‘L’Italie et la re´volution italienne de 1848,’’ Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 September 1848–15 January 1849. Premieres notions d’histoire a` l’usage de l’enfance, 1850. Histoire de la maison de Savoie, 1860. ‘‘Della condizione delle donne e del loro avvenire,’’ Nuova Antologia, November 1866. Osservazioni sullo stato dell’Italia e del suo avvenire, 1868. Sulla moderna politica internazionale, 1869.

Travel Writing ‘‘Souvenirs dans l’exil,’’ Le National, 15 September–12 October 1850; as Souvenirs dans l’exil, 1946. Re´cits turques, 1856–1858.

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CRISTINA DI BELGIOIOSO Asie Mineure et Syrie, 1858; as Oriental Harems and Scenery, translated by George Carlton, 1862. Sce`nes de la vie turque, 1858.

Fiction Emina, 1856.

Translations La Science Nouvelle par Vico, 1844.

Further Readings Barbiera, Raffaello, La Principessa Belgiojoso, Milan: Treves, 1902.

Brombert, Beth Archer, Cristina: Portraits of a Princess, New York: Knopf, 1977. Gattey, Charles Neilson, A Bird of Curious Plumage: Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso, 1808–1871, London: Constable, 1971. Guicciardi, Emilio, Cristina di Belgiojoso Trivulzio cento anni dopo, Milan: La Martinella, 1973. Incisa, Ludovico and Alberica Trivulzio, Cristina di Belgioioso, Milan: Rusconi, 1984. Malvezzi, Aldobrandino, La Principessa Cristina di Belgiojoso, 3 vols., Milan: Treves, 1936–1937. Severgnini, Luigi, La Principessa di Belgioioso. Vita e opere, Milan: Edizioni Virgilio, 1972. Whitehouse, H. Remsen, A Revolutionary Princess, Christina Belgiojoso Trivulzio. Her life and Times, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1906.

DARIO BELLEZZA (1944–1996) What in the 1960s was called ‘‘new poetry’’ had in the poet and novelist Dario Bellezza its prophet. Bellezza enters the Roman intellectual world in the mid-1960s when, thanks to literary critic and writer Enzo Siciliano, he becomes increasingly close to Sandro Penna, Aldo Palazzeschi, Attilio Bertolucci, Alberto Moravia, and Elsa Morante. Morante eventually becomes a confidant. The decade from 1950–1960 was a period in which the working class, the PCI (Italian Communist Party), the trade unions, and all their hopes for radical cultural change were dramatically defeated. The political and economic growth of the Christian Democrat middle class and the new, changed free masonries prevailed. Bellezza thus lived in a political-cultural era convulsed by the ideological confrontations of the 1960s and the subversive ideological line of the aggressive neoavant-garde that struggled against conventional linguistic codes. Nevertheless, he managed to carve out his own poetic space, one untouched by cultural strategies or projects of linguistic experimentalism. When Invettive e licenze (Invectives and Licenses) appeared in 1971, it was hailed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his introduction: ‘‘Here is the best poet of the new generation.’’ Invettive e licenze, notable for its technical rigor, depicts people overwhelmed by bitterness, shame, feelings of guilt, alienation, scandal, and sexual perversions. The poems also express a constant, thinly veiled desire for death. Bellezza was a 152

bourgeois, as were many other intellectuals, but differed from them, according to Pasolini, in being ‘‘the first poet bourgeois to judge himself.’’ Pasolini had a profound affection for Bellezza’s work and his artistic experience. The young poet reciprocated this feeling, and also was deeply grateful to Elsa Morante for what he called his poetic apprenticeship. In 1981, enraged by the publication of the ‘‘obscene’’ photographs of the dead Pasolini, ‘‘in tutta la loro gelida, disarmante crudezza... nudo, esposto, con tutte le macabre ferite esibite del suo ‘sacro’ martirio’’ (in their icy, disarming rawness... naked, exposed, with all the grisly wounds exhibited of his ‘sacred’ martyrdom), Bellezza wrote the biographical essay Morte di Pasolini (Death of Pasolini). The essay afforded him the chance not only to speak of Pasolini’s violent death in November 1975, but to try to understand if his death had been an act of blind fate or a predictable ending of Pasolini’s complex and ambiguous personality. Bellezza’s reaction to his own historical situation differed from his colleagues of the neoavant-garde, who tried to discover any irrational fanciful escape from their social condition. He pessimistically accepted reality and began looking to psychoanalysis, an interest that will also become a vehicle of provocation. In 1983, he published io (me), the lack of capital letters intentional. In this work Bellezza lightly but

DARIO BELLEZZA concretely describes his everyday life and the mediocre desperation of his loves in ample detail. The poet associates life with insomnia, a curse that constantly pursues him: ‘‘mi imprigioni, o insomnia’’ (you imprison me, o insomnia). He suffers from insomnia because, as a highly educated bourgeois and homosexual bigot, he feels tortured by a feeling of guilt and driven by the many contradictions that struggle against each other. Such contradictions are the quintessence of his existence: ‘‘l’insomnia viene solo ai bugiardi, / a chi disobbedisce’’ (insomnia comes only to liars, / to those who disobey). In his guilt-ridden insomniac persona he anticipated the poetry that would be too often adopted in the 1980s, that of the artist-outcast. Bellezza is consumed by anguish and by the relics of (a now mocking) sense of hope: ‘‘E se l’orecchio poso al rumore solo / delle scale battute dal rimorso / sento la tua discesa corrosa/dalla speranza’’ (And if the ear I place to the noise only / of staircases beaten by remorse / I hear your descent corroded / by hope). He is reduced to corrosive accounts of his own social condition: ‘‘Io / dimenticato relitto di una civilta` / passata sono il solo che piango i defunti / miraggi di un’eta` morta’’ (I / forgotten wreckage of a civilization / from the past I am the only one crying the dead / mirages of an age gone); and again: ‘‘Sciagurato solo di me so parlare’’ (Alone wretch am I, I know how to speak only of me). Dario Bellezza’s obsessive use of the first person was a conscious literary choice connected to his need to describe a single self corroded by loneliness and isolation. This obsessive monotone is the underlying theme to all of his poetic works until Proclama sul fascino (A Proclamation on Charm, 1996). This work amplifies Bellezza’s sense of his degenerative unhealthy loneliness and renders this loneliness exaggerated, tragic, cathartic.

1994. Died of AIDS in Rome on March 31, 1996. That year a poetry prize was established in his name. MARIANO D’AMORA Selected Works Collections Poesie 1971–1996, edited by Elio Pecora, Milan: Mondadori, 2002.

Poetry ‘‘Invettive e licenze,’’ 1971. ‘‘Morte segreta,’’ 1976. ‘‘Libro d’amore,’’ 1982. ‘‘Colosseo,’’ 1982. ‘‘Io,’’ 1983. ‘‘Piccolo canzoniere,’’ 1986. ‘‘Undici erotiche,’’ 1986. ‘‘Serpenta,’’ 1987. ‘‘Libro di poesia,’’ 1990. ‘‘Gatti e altro,’’ 1993. ‘‘L’avversario,’’ 1994. ‘‘Proclama sul fascino,’’ 1996.

Novels L’innocenza, 1970; new edition as Storia di Nino De Donato, 1983. Lettere da Sodoma, 1972. Il carnefice, 1973. Angelo, 1979. Turbamento, 1984. L’amore felice, 1986. Nozze col diavolo, 1995.

Plays Testamento di sangue, 1982. Apologia di teatro, 1985. Salome`, 1991. Morte funesta, 1993. Ordalia della croce, 1994.

Other Morte di Pasolini, 1981.

Further Reading

Biography Dario Bellezza was born in Rome on 5 September 1944. He worked for several Italian literary and poetry magazines: Paragone, Carte segrete, Bimestre, Periferia, Il Policordo. From the early 1960s on, Bellezza collaborated with the magazine Nuovi argomenti, becoming associate director shortly before his death. Bellezza won the Viareggio prize in 1976 for Morte segreta, the Gatto prize in 1991 for Invettive e licenze, the Montale prize in 1994 for L’avversario, and for the play Ordalia della croce he received the Fondi la Pastora prize in

Battisti, Silvia, and Mariella Bettarini, Chi e` il poeta?, Milan: Gammalibri, 1980. Cordelli, Francesco, Il poeta postumo, Cosenza: Lerici, 1978. Cucchi, Maurizio, and Stefano Giovanardi, Poeti italiani del secondo novecento 1945–1995, Milan: Mondatori, 1996. Della Bella, Marina, Sacro e diverso: Percorsi genettiani nell’opera di Dario Bellezza, Ancona: Il Lavoro Editoriale, 1990. Giovanardi, Stefano, ‘‘Metrica: Tra norma e infrazione’’ in Letteratura italiana del novecento: Bilancio di un secolo, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Gregoriani, Maurizio, Morte di Bellezza: Storia di una verita` nascosta, Rome: Castelvecchi, 1997. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Introduction to Invettive e Licenze, Milan: Garzanti, 1971.

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DARIO BELLEZZA Pautasso, Sergio, Gli anni ottanta e la letteratura: Guida all’attivita` letteraria in Italia dal 1980 al 1990, Milan: Rizzoli, 1991. Reina, Luigi, Scenario novecento, Naples: Editrice Ferraro, 1993.

Salerno, Rocco, Utopia della speranza nella poesia di Dario Bellezza, Rome: Edizione del Giano, 1994. Spagnoletti, Giovanni, Storia della letteratura italiana del novecento, Rome: Newton Compton, 1994.

GIUSEPPE GIOACHINO BELLI (1791–1863) Belli is one of the most complex and contradictory figures of Italian literature. A Catholic zealot and a faithful subject of the pontifical state, with a tentative openness to moderate liberalism, he participated in the rituals of an extremely backward culture that was devoted to the antiquarian, to idle and sterile erudition, and to the performances of the dying Arcadia. For the academies—in particular for the Accademia Tiberina, which he founded along with other writers in 1813—he produced an enormous number of poems in Italian, only a small fraction of which is collected in two volumes of Versi (Verses, 1839) and Versi inediti (Unpublished Verses, 1843). They are unoriginal compositions in which the expert rhymer tries his hand at the burlesque genre, at the opposing genre of ‘‘vision’’ in the manner of Vincenzo Monti, and at the sepulchral lyricism that came into fashion at the end of the eighteenth century. La proverbiade (A Poem of Proverbs, ca. 1813–1815) possesses a certain interest. It is a series of 37 sonnets, each one of which playfully exemplifies a proverb, supporting a gnomic vein that draws its stylistic inspiration from the fourteenth-century Franco Sacchetti. The Canzoniere amoroso (Amorous Verses, ca. 1822–1825), to the marchesa Vincenza Roberti, is a late product of Arcadian Petrarchism. There remain two theatrical experiments, which show some degree of vivacity and an innate taste for scenic representation: the farce Il tutor pittore (The Painting Tutor, 1816), and the cicalata (burlesque chatter) in the form of a monologue, Il ciarlatano (The Charlatan), written and performed for the carnival of 1828. This is the official Belli, who serves as a screen for the ‘‘other Belli,’’ the one who in secret wrote the 2,279 Sonetti (Sonnets) in the Roman dialect, the most disturbing and transgressive work of 154

the Italian nineteenth century. Their composition was concentrated, for the most part, in two relatively brief phases: the creative fury of the years 1830–1837 and the later, slower resumption in the years 1843–1849. Like their composition, their circulation was also clandestine: the poet recited some of them, with extraordinary bravura, to his close friends, who transcribed them and transmitted them by word of mouth. Only one sonnet, ‘‘Er padre e la fija’’ (Father and Daughter), dedicated to the dramatic art of his friend the actress Amalia Bettini, was published in a theatrical journal with the author’s consent; another 22 sonnets were printed against his will. The work, therefore, remained subterranean, both because censorship would not allow publication and because Belli himself considered it a great blasphemy. In approaching Belli’s masterpiece (the sonnets), the first misconception to be dispelled is the comparison with the published works and Roman watercolors of Bartolomeno Pinelli and JeanBaptiste Thomas (if anything, the appropriate comparison is with Goya’s Caprichos and Proverbios). The part of the Sonetti that makes Belli great has nothing in common with the folkloristic model of so much popular and dialectal literature. In the ‘‘Introduzione’’ (Prologue) to the Sonetti, in fact, he speaks of ‘‘a monument to what the people of Rome are today,’’ hence of a unified creation, made up of distinti quadretti (distinct pictures) tied together by un filo occulto (a hidden thread) that must be identified with the continuous, implacable laying bare of the natural state of the lowest and most powerful of the plebe di Roma (plebeians) in the entire inexhaustible range of their doleful and diverse expressions. Each sonnet, though it can be read autonomously, conceals amidst its folds a

GIUSEPPE GIOACHINO BELLI characteristic—a situation, a thematic element, an image—that will resurface in other sonnets that are chronologically near or distant, on different planes of representation. That characteristic, however, belongs to the power of unmasking that is precisely of the plebeian instinct and that acts obliquely to connect the countless pictures that, while remaining distinct, tend to combine and form a potential poetic construction with imprecise boundaries. The sonnet form—which is the closed form par excellence, replicated and practiced by Belli—becomes therefore a living cell in relation to other countless cells, within a grandiose and incomplete organism. We can find evidence of this subterranean stream, the ‘‘hidden thread,’’ in the poet’s linguistic laboratory, that is, in the hundreds of ‘‘notes for Roman poems’’ that he disseminated in notebooks of every kind and made on the corners of letters, on the blank margins of printed invitations, on the sides of shopping lists, amidst the lines of any memo: We are dealing with thoughts, phrases, fragments of dialogue, sayings, witticisms, insults, and malapropisms that Belli collected from the living voice of the people and around which he constructed the schemes, outlines, and rhymes of sonnets. Yet it must be emphasized that frequently a thread ties annotation to annotation, and that from the very same nucleus there arise hints for various sonnets, even those composed at a distance of years from one another, through a game of unexpected refractions, associations, and analogies. Belli chose the life of the people as the subject of his work because in a society like that of the pontifical state, without cultural outlets and oppressed by violence, corruption, and hypocrisy, the common people appeared to him, precisely because of their marginalization, to be the sole depository of truth (a truth he defines as ‘‘naked’’ and ‘‘shameless’’). But the descent into the obscure recesses of the people, though liberating, is never playful or purifying because Belli’s primitive does not possess the characteristics of the ‘‘noble savage’’ of Rousseau, whom the poet read, along with Voltaire and the Italian, French, English, and German Romantics: His Zibaldone (Miscellany), begun in 1824 and almost entirely unpublished, attests to this reading. Nor does this common man bear any resemblance to the Milanese character of Carlo Porta (an admired and imitated model in the first sonnets), with whom he has in common the protest against injustice and oppression, but not the ruling class that is its target: The Milanese are reactionary, but are nevertheless thrown into crisis by the democratic pressures of the new bourgeoisie; the Romans are

clerical, and blinded in a kind of atemporal and theological immunity. The Bellian primitive is a figure condemned to the life of the senses, of outward instincts, which Belli the ‘‘upright citizen’’ cannot easily absolve. Hence the double process of attraction and repulsion that the murky universe of plebeian demonstrations engenders in the poet’s soul, resolving itself artistically into the form of comedy, the form most adapted to mix and objectify the incurable antinomies and ambiguities of a poetic and existential adventure that does not recognize cathartic approaches. It is ‘‘comedy’’ in the theatrical and ancient sense of the term as well because Belli constantly uses an actor-speaker who claims sole responsibility for what is argued and narrated in the Sonetti, both when a monologue takes a ‘‘self-reflexive’’ direction (it speaks of itself, answers or poses questions to a silent interlocutor), and when it incorporates and mimes in its own discourse thoughts, acts, and dialogues of other characters absent from the scene, multiplying an array of voices that will, however, be reunited in the focal point of the narrating voice, within which even the voice of the author—and we never know with what degree of agreement or dissent—may be dissimulated. The descent into the ‘‘commoner’’ character necessarily entails the total adoption of its speech, and even this operation is for Belli anything but painless. First of all, it implies the devaluing of the longlived literary practice of the Roman academy, the rejection of illustrious ‘‘speeches,’’ which the poet himself judges to be ‘‘rotten through seven centuries of life.’’ The choice of the Roman dialect, on the other hand, is quite different from the choice of the Milanese, Venetian, or Neapolitan dialect, languages common to all the strata of their respective societies, and hence able to express every kind of content, both ingenuous and learned. For a host of historical reasons, the Roman dialect of the nineteenth century is an exclusively subaltern idiom that is used only by the lower classes: to choose it therefore means transporting oneself wholly into the mental and cultural structures of the crowd of people that is—according to its very etymology, on which the poet dwells briefly in Zibaldone—disordered, unstable, and incoherent. Belli, like no other Italian realist writer, carries out the arduous imitation by succeeding in conjuring an entire reality and humanity, as various and contradictory as ever, only through the logical categories of the lower classes. Which reality? The anachronistic reality of a theocratic state in the middle of the nineteenth 155

GIUSEPPE GIOACHINO BELLI century is a pyramid at the top of which sits the Pope, the vice-God, the despot deaf to the voice of his subjects (‘‘Er Papa’’; The Pope), and which for centuries has remained the same because it only changes its appearance, not its spirit, which migrates from one papal body to another (‘‘Er passa-mano’’; The Human Chain). Under the Pope are the cardinals, the corrupt and powerful prelates. At the base are the people, resigned or rebellious, who in order to forget and to forget themselves take refuge in a religion of grimaces or stupefy themselves with the elementary pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex, who become excited by bragging and bloody quarrels (‘‘Chi cerca trova’’; Whoever seeks shall find), who boast of being the heirs of a pagan and warlike race, carrying the rosary beads in their pockets along with the knife (‘‘L’educcazione’’; The Upbringing). And part of the displays of boastfulness is the provocative and impudent celebration of the matchless splendors of the city (‘‘Piazza Navona’’). Belli does not deny an echo, a memory of ancient Roman greatness, to this crude and impetuous boasting. There is a spark of wretched and painful magnanimity in the bloodthirsty bully, as in the hyperbolic figure of the prostitute (‘‘Santaccia de Piazza Montanara’’; Saint Strumpet of Piazza Montanara), who multiplies the simultaneity of her services until it becomes visually grotesque, not only out of greed, but also to perform an act of mockery toward a poor, penniless man. Particularized in an infinity of characters and situations, this is Belli’s ‘‘Roman comedy,’’ which expands beyond the confines of the city to encompass the destiny of all men, and of God himself, who is responsible for this destiny. The Bellian god is the tyrant who, when he created the world, remained in ambush in order to catch Adam and Eve red-handed and to thunder sinisterly the eternal punishment of future generations (‘‘La creazzione der monno’’; The Creation of the World); he is the Christ who, on the cross, sheds his blood for the powerful, and for the poor the serum, thus sanctioning the splitting of humanity in two (‘‘Li du’ggener’umani’’; The Two Kinds of Humans). The terrible, face-to-face confrontation of the disinherited with divinity is a theme that spans the entire Bellian monumental oeuvre. For long stretches, nevertheless, the dramatic tension slackens and new spaces are therefore opened within the endless poem: the pure entertainment of the commediole (little comedies), of the bickerings, and of the neighbors’ quarrels (‘‘Le chiamate dell’appigionante’’; 156

The Neighbor’s Calls); the scrupulously mimetic exercises of languages altered by social affectation (‘‘Er parla` ciovı´le de piu`’’; The Kindest Way of Speaking), maternal simpering (‘‘Le smammate’’; Mothers’ Mawkishness), or pathological defect (‘‘Er tratajjone arrabbiato’’; The Angry Stammer); the rare concessions to lyric abandon (‘‘Er tempo bbono’’; Nice Weather), to the elegiac meditation (‘‘La bbona famijja’’; The Good Family), or to controlled pathos (‘‘La famijja poverella’’; The Poor Family). These are moments of respite that vary and enrich, but do not threaten or destroy, the heroless epic of the Sonetti. Laden with a subversive and destructive energy and dominated by a gloomy fatalism that concedes nothing to nineteenth-century progressivism, Belli’s work has long been misunderstood. Even in his times, however, there was significant recognition from Nikolaj Gogol, who, having heard the poet himself perform some sonnets in the Roman salon of the princess Zinaida Volkonskij, spoke of Belli with enthusiasm to his friend Charles Augustin de Sainte-Beuve, who, in his turn, recorded his detailed impressions in a page from Premiers Lundis (First Mondays, 1845) and in other of his writings. Italian criticism—first Carduccian and then Crocian—has long privileged Carlo Porta, Cesare Pascarella, and Salvatore Di Giacomo, while Belli had to wait until the 1940s and 1950s to obtain the position that he deserves among the great writers of the nineteenth century: He left a profound mark on Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Carlo Emilio Gadda; and it was a poet of the generation between La voce and La ronda, Giorgio Vigolo, who edited the first complete and annotated edition of the Sonetti. Of the foreign writers fascinated by Belli mention should be made of the German Nobel-prize winner Paul von Heyse, Rafael Alberti, William Carlos Williams, and Anthony Burgess, the author of a novel, Abba abba (1977), which has Belli and John Keats for its protagonists.

Biography Born in Rome on 7 September 1791 to the accountant Gaudenzio and Luigia Mazio. Completed his studies at the Collegio Romano and lost both parents, and found modest private and public employment. In 1812 entered the Accademia degli Elleni; one year later, along with friends, he founded the Accademia Tiberina. In 1816 married Maria Conti, a rich widow with whom he had one son, Ciro; in

GIUSEPPE GIOACHINO BELLI 1822 he met the marchesa Vincenza Roberti, for whom he nurtured a passion that was eventually transformed into friendship. Some travels (especially those to Milan between 1827 and 1829) put him in contact with liberal and Romantic circles. In 1830 he began, within his residence in Piazza Poli, a ‘‘Reading Society’’ on the model of Gabinetto Vieusseux, which he attended in Florence. From 1834 to 1836 he contributed to Lo spigolatore, especially with reviews of theatrical shows. After the death of his wife in 1837 he was afflicted by economic troubles. The bloody events of Mazzini’s republic of 1849 upset him and pushed him into the camp of the most intransigent reactionaries. Assailed by religious scruples, he burned the pages containing the Roman Sonetti; however, he had entrusted drafts and calligraphic copies of them to his friend the monsignor Vincenzo Tizzani, with instructions to destroy them after his death (Tizzani in fact consigned them to Belli’s son, Ciro). Died in Rome of apoplexy, 22 December 1863. LUCIO FELICI Selected Works Sonnets in Dialect ‘‘I sonetti romaneschi di Giuseppe Gioachino Belli,’’ edited by Luigi Morandi, 6 vols., 1886–1889. ‘‘I sonetti,’’ first completed edition based on the authographs, edited by Giorgio Vigolo, 3 vols., 1952. ‘‘Poesie romanesche,’’ critical edition by Roberto Vighi, 10 vols., 1988–1993; translation of nine sonnets by Frances Eleanor Trollope, in ‘‘The Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets,’’ Belgravia (July-October 1880): 60–72; as The Roman Sonnets of G. G. Belli, 46 sonnets in New York slang translated by Harold Norse, preface by William Carlos Williams, introduction by Alberto Moravia, Highlands: Williams, 1960; as The Sonnets of Giuseppe Belli, translated by Miller Williams, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1981; 71 sonnets translated in Anthony Burgess, Abba abba, London: Faber & Faber, 1977.

Poems in Italian ‘‘Versi,’’ 1839. ‘‘Versi inediti,’’ 1843. ‘‘Belli italiano,’’ edited by Roberto Vighi, 3 vols.

Prose Le lettere, edited by Giacinto Spagnoletti, 2 vols., 1961. Lettere Giornali Zibaldone, edited by Giovanni Orioli, preface by Carlo Muscetta, 1962. Lettere a Cencia (Vincenza Perozzi Roberti), edited by Muzio Mazzocchi Alemanni, 2 vols., 1974.

Further Reading Abeni, Damiano et alia, Belli oltre frontiera: La fortuna di G. G. Belli nei saggi e nelle versioni di autori stranieri, Rome: Bonacci, 1983. Almansi, Guido, Barbara Garvin, and Bruce Merry, Tre sondaggi sul Belli, Turin: Einaudi, 1978. De Michelis, Eurialo, Approcci al Belli, Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani, 1969. Fasano, Pino, I tarli dell’alberone: Saggi belliani, Rome: Bulzoni, 1991. Gadda, Carlo Emilio, ‘‘Arte del Belli,’’ in I viaggi la morte, Milan: Garzanti, 1977. Gibellini, Pietro, Il coltello e la corona: La poesia del Belli tra filologia e critica, Rome: Bulzoni, 1979. Gibellini, Pietro, I panni in Tevere: Belli romano e altri romaneschi, Rome: Bulzoni, 1989. Janni, Guglielmo, Belli e la sua epoca, 3 vols., Milan: Cino Del Duca, 1967. Letture belliane, 10 vols., Rome: Istituto di Studi RomaniBulzoni, 1981–1990. Merolla, Riccardo, Il laboratorio del Belli, Rome: Bulzoni, 1984. Merolla, Riccardo (editor), Belli romano, italiano ed europeo, Atti del II Convegno Internazionale di Studi Belliani (Rome, 12–15 November 1984), Rome: Bonacci, 1985. Muscetta, Carlo, Cultura e poesia di G. G. Belli, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961; Rome: Bonacci, 1981. Samona`, Giuseppe Paolo, G.G. Belli: La commedia romana e la commedia celeste, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1969. Studi belliani, Atti del primo Convegno (Rome, 16–18 December 1963), Rome: Colombo, 1965. Teodonio, Marcello, Introduzione a Belli, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992. Teodonio, Marcello, Vita di Belli, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993. Vigolo, Giorgio, Il genio del Belli, 2 vols., Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1963.

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MARCO BELLOCCHIO

MARCO BELLOCCHIO (1939–) Marco Bellocchio is a politically committed filmmaker who combines a Bun˜uelian scorn for bourgeois ritual with a documentary filmmaker’s attraction to monolithic institutions and belief systems. He attacks all institutions—the army, the socialist politics, Jesuit education, and the Vatican—but rails most fiercely against the falsity and hypocrisy of family life. He wants not only to challenge traditional mores, but to promote a personality independent of the family and its values. These aims can be traced to his first feature film, I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket, 1965), hailed as the most important film debut of the decade. Inspired by the British ‘‘Free Cinema’’ (particularly Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz) and the French nouvelle vague, it marked a break with neorealistic tradition and commedia all’italiana. The film is a dark and violent meditation on the new generation’s moral crisis. The story involves a provincial middle-class family, of which three out of four children are mentally and physically ill. The two adolescent protagonists, who suffer from epilepsy, rebel against their repressed and repressive situation. Eventually Sandro, the second born, decides to eliminate his epileptic siblings. Having confessed his crimes to his sister Giulia, he dies of an epileptic fit. The centre-right Christian Democrat Party was so incensed by the film that it wanted it banned as an offence against the Italian family—a charge of some irony because the director made the movie with money borrowed from his relatives and shot it in Bobbio, not far from where he grew up. The film immediately established Bellocchio as a major new talent in the Italian cinema. Bellocchio returned to his favourite subject matter in his second feature, La Cina e` vicina (China Is Near, 1967), a political farce that he regards as a didactic film on how one should not live. The plot once again centers on a disintegrating family. Vittorio, the older brother, is a Socialist Party candidate; Camillo, the younger brother, is a Maoist who directs his revolutionary actions against Vittorio (who represents the Italian political compromise); their sister Elena dominates both. The following year Bellocchio joined the Marxist-Leninist group Servire il popolo and renounced fictional films for politically militant cinema. He became involved in 158

the co-operative production of propaganda shorts and seemed lost to mainstream cinema. This is symptomatic of Bellocchio’s complex character. He returned to features and to his antiestablishment themes with Nel nome del padre (In the Name of the Father, 1971). Here Bellocchio explores the disruptive potential of human neurosis with a sort of joy and satisfaction. The film has its autobiographical roots in adolescent memories of his high school years with the Padri Barnabiti; years that are transformed in a grotesque way. It was the first film in which Bellocchio used color; he then started thinking more directly about problems of form and expressive technique. A common element in Bellocchio’s cinema is the absence of a paternal figure. Even his female characters, like Giulia in Diavolo in corpo (The Devil in the Flesh, 1986), suffer from an unresolved Oedipal complex. Giulia does have a love relationship, but her love is disordered and possessive, sometimes a morbid and pathological one. The inability to love or even to experience sex in a normal way afflicts many of his protagonists. In La condanna (The Conviction, 1990), a couple locked in a museum at night eventually have semicoerced and ecstatic sex. Their experience becomes the occasion for a philosophical argument staged as a courtroom drama. As the film clearly states, woman’s inferiority consists in her not having the courage of her desires: Sandra tries to destroy the man for whom she feels an attraction because she fears losing herself in a loving union. This theory of inferiority is later contradicted by Bellocchio’s film based on a short story by Luigi Pirandello, La balia (The Nanny, 1999), a sensitive and intelligent work in which the director treats social life and primal emotional relationships in a thoughtful manner. Bellocchio made many changes to his source, the Pirandellian story written in 1903. Thus, the father is no longer a socialist politician, but a psychiatrist, Vittoria is conscious of her incapacity to love her own child, and the nanny’s husband is not a violent man. The story of the nanny, forced to abandon her own son in order to feed the doctor’s one, argues against a system of social relations that produces coldness, paralysis, and alienation. But the film avoids sentimentalism as well as violence

MARCO BELLOCCHIO and tragedy. The characters are able to learn from one another. The director concentrates on the relationship between normality and neurosis by focusing the story on the doctor, a tolerant democrat who believes in everybody’s right to grow up. Bellocchio had already adapted a Pirandellian play in his Enrico IV (Henry IV, 1984), where he had worked a similar transformation. This film seems to be a minor adaptation, but it contains some harsh scenes that contribute to the semidarkness that represents Bellocchio’s characteristic scenic atmosphere. Bellocchio returned to the family in L’ ora di religione: Il sorriso di mia madre (The Religion Hour: My Mother’s Smile, 2002), where he again presents a fascinating drama about a clash of values between members of a family. Ernesto is a painter and successful illustrator separated from his wife but still very close to his young son Leonardo. He discovers that for the last three years his aunt has been campaigning to have his mother canonized as a saint. But the protagonist, an atheist, is skeptical about this process and recalls his mother’s stupidity and her religious subservience to Catholicism. Bellocchio is deeply critical of the Vatican process of canonization. The real source of contention between Ernesto and his relatives is his disapproval of their greediness. In one of his more recent films, Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003), Bellocchio comes to terms with the Italian political situation of the 1970s. The film recounts the events surrounding the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro, a former prime minister and head of the Christian Democrat party, through the eyes of Chiara, one of his kidnappers. Moro was taken hostage by Red Brigade members on March 16; almost two months elapsed while negotiations were pursued with no avail. His bullet-riddled body was found on May 9 after a phone call informed authorities. A shocking crime had been committed and Italy teetered on the edge of political chaos. Though the title is taken from one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, the film is in fact inspired by Anna Laura Braghetti and Paola Tavella’s book Il prigioniero (1998). Bellocchio re-created the ways Moro’s kidnappers contrive to keep their hiding place a secret, and how the character of Chiara struggles to decide whether the choices she is making are truly justified. Italy in the 1970s is evoked through footage from various television programs and news reports. The consummate skill of his filmmaking and the quality of the performances he secured in producing a complex film of devastating emotional power confirm Bellocchio’s

position as one of Italian cinema’s most intriguing contemporary auteurs.

Biography Born in Piacenza on 9 November 1939, the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher; studied in Catholic schools and attended the Liceo Padri Barnabiti in Lodi; abandoned his intention to study philosophy at the university of the Sacred Heart in Milan; applied to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, 1959, where he studied performance and direction; started his career as director with two shorts, La colpa e la pena, 1961, and Il ginepro fatto uomo, 1962, and a documentary, Abbasso il zio, 1961; attended London’s Slade School of Fine Arts, 1962; his first feature, I pugni in tasca premiered at the Venice Film Festival, 1965; joined the extreme-left Communist Union and abandoned fictional films for politically militant cinema, 1968; returned to features, Nel nome del padre, 1971; met the psychoanalyst Massimo Fagioli, 1985; winner of several awards, including Silver Sail at Locarno International Film Festival, 1965, for I pugni in tasca; Venice Film Festival, Special Jury Prize ex-equo and International Critics Award, for La Cina e` vicina, 1967; Berlin Film Festival, Silver Bear for La condanna, 1991, and for Il sogno della farfalla, 1994; David di Donatello for La balia, 1999; Moscow International Film Festival, Silver St. Gorge, for his contribution to World Cinema, 1999; Cannes Film Festival, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury—Special Mention, for L’ora di religione, 2002. Currently lives in Rome. MARCELLA FARINA Selected Works Feature Films I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket), 1965. La Cina e` vicina (China Is Near), 1967. Amore e rabbia (episode Discutiamo, discutiamo), 1969. Nel nome del padre (In the Name of the Father), 1971. Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina (Slap the Monster on Page One), 1972. Marcia trionfale (Victory March), 1976. Il gabbiano (The Seagull, adapted from Anton Chekhov’s play), 1977. Salto nel vuoto (Leap Into the Void), 1980. Gli occhi, la bocca (The Eyes, the Mouth), 1982. Enrico IV (Henry IV, adapted from Luigi Pirandello’s play), 1984. Diavolo in corpo (The Devil in the Flesh, adapted from Raymond Radiguet’s novel), 1986. La visione del Sabba (The Witches Sabbath), 1988.

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MARCO BELLOCCHIO La condanna (The Conviction), 1990. Il sogno della farfalla (The Butterfly’s Dream), 1994. Sogni infranti (Broken Dreams), 1995. Il Principe di Homburg (The Prince of Homburg, adapted from Heinrich von Kleist’s novel), 1997. La balia (The Nanny, adapted from Luigi Pirandello’s short story), 1999. Un altro mondo e` possibile (Another World Is Possible), 2001. L’ ora di religione: Il sorriso di mia madre (My Mother’s Smile), 2002. Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night), 2003. Il regista di matrimoni, 2006.

Documentaries Ginepro fatto uomo, 1962. Paola (co-operative production), 1969. Viva il primo maggio rosso (co-operative production), 1969. Nessuno o tutti/Matti da slegare, 1975. La macchina cinema (with Silvano Agosti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli), 1978. Vacanze in Val Trebbia, 1980. Un romano nell’arena, 1984.

Screenplays I pugni in tasca: un film, Milan: Garzanti, 1967. La Cina e` vicina, edited by Tommaso Chiaretti, Bologna: Cappelli, 1967; as China Is Near, translated by Judith Green, New York: Orion Press, 1969. Nel nome del padre, edited by Goffredo Fofi, Bologna: Cappelli, 1971. Marcia trionfale, edited by Anna Maria Tato`, Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Salto nel vuoto, edited by Alberto Barbera and Gianni Volpi, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980. Il principe di Homburg di Heinrich von Kleist, edited by Giovanni Spagnoletti, with a preface by Tullio Kezich, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1997. La balia (with Daniela Ceselli), Rome: Gremese, 1999. L’ ora di religione: Il sorriso di mia madre. La sceneggiatura originale, le immagini, le differenze con il film, Rome: Elleu Multimedia, 2002. Buongiorno, notte, Venice: Marsilio, 2003.

Further Reading Apra`, Adriano (editor), Marco Bellocchio: Il cinema e i film, Venice: Marsilio, 2005. Bandirali, Luca, and Stefano D’Amadio (editors), Buongiorno, notte: Le ragioni e le immagini, Lecce: Argo, 2004. Bernardi, Sandro, Marco Bellocchio, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Bertuzzi, Laura, Il cinema di Marco Bellocchio, Castelsangiovanni (PC): Edizioni Pontegobbo, 1996. Bolzoni, Francesco, and Mario Foglietti, Le stagioni del cinema: Trenta registi si raccontano, Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro): Rubbettino, 2000. Bondanella, Peter, Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present, 3rd ed., New York-London: Continuum, 2002. Callegari, Giuliana, and Nuccio Lodato (editors), Marco Bellocchio, I pugni in tasca e La macchina cinema, Pavia: Centro stampa dell’Amministrazione provinciale, 1979. Camerino, Vincenzo, Cinema e politica: Il film di Marco Bellocchio, Cavallino di Lecce: Capone, 1982. Ceretto, Luisa, and Giancarlo Zappoli (editors), Le forme della ribellione: Il cinema di Marco Bellocchio, Turin: Lindau, 2004. Costa, Antonio, Marco Bellocchio: I pugni in tasca, Turin: Lindau, 2005. Landy, Marcia, Italian Film, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lodato, Nuccio, Marco Bellocchio, Milan: Moizzi, 1977. Malanga, Paola (editor), Marco Bellocchio: Catalogo ragionato, Milan: Edizioni Olivares, 1998. Martini, Giacomo (editor), Una regione piena di cinema: Marco Bellocchio, S.I.: Regione Emilia-Romagna, 1997. Masoni, Tullio, Marco Bellocchio: Quadri, il pittore, il cineasta, Alessandria: Falsopiano, 2003. Nicastro, Anita (editor), Marco Bellocchio: Per un cinema d’autore, Florence: Brancato, 1992.

MARIA VILLAVECCHIA BELLONCI (1902–1986) Well-known in the literary world as the cofounder, director, and manager of one of the most coveted Italian literary prizes, the Premio Strega, Maria Villavecchia Bellonci is equally recognized as a historical novelist, journalist, commentator, and translator. While a satisfactory and complete 160

assessment of her contribution as a writer is still to come, her impact on female historical novelists such as Rosetta Roy, Marta Morazzoni, Dacia Maraini, Francesca Sanvitale, and Gina Lagorio is unquestioned. Bellonci’s first attempt as a novelist was the unpublished Clio e le amazzoni (Clio and

MARIA VILLAVECCHIA BELLONCI the Amazons), written under her maiden name Villavecchia. It is through the circulation of this manuscript that she met her future husband and most important mentor, the Bolognese journalist and militant critic Goffredo Bellonci. After the marriage, the Belloncis permanently settled in Maria’s native Rome, notwithstanding her numerous stays in several other Italian cities. In the aftermath of World War II, the Belloncis’ home became the meeting place of a group of literati, the Amici della domenica, who gathered to discuss the advancement and promotion of Italian literature after a period of hardship and sorrow. From these meetings stemmed Bellonci’s idea of creating a literary prize whose jury would be comprised of these same writers and intellectuals and that would reward the best written works among those proposed by various publishing houses or sponsors. The name Strega was chosen as a tribute to the Alberti family, the makers of the liquor of the same name, who generously agreed to fund the prize. In 1947, Ennio Flaiano won the first award with his Tempo di uccidere (Time to Kill), and many of the most significant names of twentieth-century Italian literature have competed for the award ever since. More than 20 years later, Bellonci documented her ongoing commitment to the role of director and manager of the prize in Come un racconto gli anni del Premio Strega (The Years of the Premio Strega Told as a Story, 1970). In this memoir, she recalls not only the pervasive atmosphere of sorrow in the postwar period and the excitement of creating a prize, but also the sentiments of rivalry among those being considered for the Premio Strega. By the time the prize was established, Bellonci had already gained a vast commercial success as a historical novelist thanks to her first-published novel, Lucrezia Borgia, la sua vita e i suoi tempi (The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, 1939), which details the life of the nefarious daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Although fully aware of the predominant literary trends, Bellonci defied them, choosing her own path, that of the historical novel, which anticipates the popularity of later works such as Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose, 1980). One cannot deny the influence that Alessandro Manzoni played in Bellonci’s treatment of the genre. However, one must not forget such other examples as Benedetto Croce’s Vite di avventure, di fede e di passione (Lives of Adventure, Faith and Passion, 1936) and Riccardo Bacchelli’s Congiura di don Giulio d’Este (The Conspiracy of Don Giulio d’Este, 1931), from which she may have benefited. In

addition, her work was influenced by her knowledge of authors such as Stendhal. In his introduction to Bellonci’s Opere (Complete Works, 1994), Massimo Onofri has dubbed Bacchelli and Bellonci ‘‘scrittori della salute’’ (writers of health) because of the anachronistic traits that they share. Nonetheless, while Bacchelli’s archival research aims at studying society, Bellonci’s original research focuses on specific historical figures, often women, and their inner and private lives. This is considered her most original contribution to the historical novel as a literary genre. Her historical research is guided by her interest in secondary sources such as jewelry, ornaments, furniture, clothing and painting, especially portraits. The so-called minor arts, from which she draws inspiration to create her stories, acquire a primary status. As a fully documented novel, Lucrezia Borgia is both a reliable biography and a work of fiction. Segreti dei Gonzaga (A Prince of Mantua: The Life and Times of Vincenzo Gonzaga, 1947), her second novel, shares most of the narrative features of the previous book. Set once again in the Renaissance, it tells the story of Vincenzo Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Divided in three parts, the novel is at once dramatic and rooted in politics. The first edition also includes Vincenzo’s epistles and an inventory of the jewels belonging to the Gonzaga family. A substantial novelty surfaces in Bellonci’s work with the publication of the trilogy Tu vipera gentile (You, Noble Viper, 1972), which is composed of the novella of the same title, Delitto di stato (Crime for Reasons of State) previously published in 1961, and Soccorso a Dorotea (Help for Dorotea). This collection documents Bellonci’s increasingly mature style. While including the usual erudite and accurate historical documents, in Delitto di stato she also decides to insert fictitious characters for the first time, entrusting the unfolding of the story to two protagonists, Tommaso Striggi and Paride Maffei. Even more than in the previous stories, her last narrative work, Rinascimento Privato (Private Renaissance, 1985), calls into question the relationship between fiction and history. It is in this same novel that she also reaches the maturity of her own personal style. The story is told in the first person by the main character, Isabella d’Este, who had previously appeared in Lucrezia Borgia, la sua vita e i suoi tempi as the sister of Lucrezia’s husband. By using fictional characters like Robert de la Pole, to whom the writer assigns the major role of describing actual historical events, Bellonci leaves the realm of history in order to give voice to timeless 161

MARIA VILLAVECCHIA BELLONCI human dramas and passions. Thus, Rinascimento Privato is a metahistorical novel that documents Bellonci’s attempt to create a ‘‘feminine novel,’’ even though she never identified with the feminist movement and was always critical in its regard. Bellonci’s active involvement in the reshaping of the literary, cultural and intellectual life of postWorld War II Italy is also documented by her work as a contributor to several periodical publications such as the weekly Il punto (1958–1964) and the Roman daily Il Messaggero (1964–1970). Her articles on a variety of topics were collected in Pubblici segreti (Public Secrets, 1965) and the posthumous Pubblici segreti N. 2 (1989). Another posthumous volume, Segni sul muro (Signs on the Wall, 1988), brings together a series of commentaries on several Italian cities and on modern and classical European writers such as Virginia Woolf and Albert Camus. Bellonci’s translations include Vanina Vanini e altre cronache italiane (1961) and La duchessa di Paliano (1994) by Stendhal, I tre moschettieri (1977) by Alexandre Dumas, and Nana (1955) by E´mile Zola, among others. Bellonci also wrote an introduction for a publication of Andrea Mantegna’s complete works (1967) and another for a book of poems by Gaspara Stampa (1994), confirming once more her keen interest in several aspects of Italian literature and culture.

Biography Born in Rome, on November 3, 1902. Graduated from Liceo Umberto, 1921; married Goffredo Bellonci, 1928; cofounded the Premio Strega in Rome, 1947; organized the first international congress ‘‘Pen Club’’ in Venice, 1949; contributed to the weekly Il punto, 1958–1964, and the daily Il Messaggero, 1964–1970; Premio Viareggio for Lucrezia Borgia, 1939; Penna d’oro award, 1985; Premio Strega, received posthumously for Rinascimento privato, 1986. Died in Rome of cardiovascular complications on May 13, 1986. LODOVICA GUIDARELLI Selected Works Collections Opere, edited by Ernesto Ferrero, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1994–1997.

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Fiction Lucrezia Borgia, la sua vita e i suoi tempi, 1939; as The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia, translated by Bernard Wall, 1953. Segreti dei Gonzaga, 1947; as A Prince of Mantua: The Life and Times of Vincenzo Gonzaga, translated by Stuart Hood, 1956. Delitto di stato, 1961. Tu vipera gentile, 1972. Marco Polo, 1984. Rinascimento privato, 1985; as Private Renaissance, translated by William Weaver, 1989.

Nonfiction Milano viscontea, 1954. Pubblici segreti, 1965. Come un racconto gli anni del Premio Strega, 1970. I Visconti a Milano, 1977. Io e il premio Strega, 1987. Segni sul muro, 1988. Pubblici segreti N. 2, 1989.

Translations

E´mile Zola, Nana, 1955. Stendhal, Vanina Vanini e altre cronache italiane, 1961. Alexandre Dumas, I Tre moschettieri, 1977. Marco Polo, Il Milione, 1982. Jules Verne, Viaggio al centro della terra, 1983. Stendhal, La duchessa di Paliano, 1994.

Further Reading Grillandi, Massimo, Invito alla lettura di Maria Bellonci, Milan: Mursia, 1983. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘Maria Bellonci e i suoi segni,’’ in Il Veltro 40, no. 1–2 (1996): 149–153. Onofri, Massimo, Introduction to Maria Villavecchia Bellonci, Opere, edited by Ernesto Ferrero, vol. 1, Milan: Mondadori, 1994. Petrignani, Sandra, Le signore della scrittura, Milan: La tartaruga, 1984. Reeb, Gerda, ‘‘Rinascimento privato: A Historiographic Carnival,’’ in Gendering Italian Fiction: Feminist Revisions of Italian History, edited by Maria Ornella Marotti and Gabriella Brooke, Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999. Roush, Sherry, ‘‘Isabella Inventrix: History and Creativity in Maria Bellonci’s Rinascimento privato: Romanzo,’’ in Italica, 79, no. 2 (2002): 189–203. Scarparo, Susanna, ‘‘‘Sono uno storico in quanto scrittore’: Imagining the Past in Maria Bellonci’s Rinascimento privato,’’ in Modern Languages Notes, 117, no. 1 (2002): 227–240. Simonetta, Marcello, ‘‘Maria Bellonci, Manzoni e l’eredita` impossibile del romanzo storico,’’ in Lettere Italiane, 50, no. 2 (1998): 248–263.

PIETRO BEMBO

PIETRO BEMBO (1470–1547) A Venetian humanist, grammarian and poet, Pietro Bembo was one of the most influential and representative figures of the high Renaissance in Italy. His career began amidst the Italian linguistic and literary crisis of courtly culture at the end of the fifteenth century, flourished during the politically turbulent period of the Italian wars during the first decades of the sixteenth century, and extended into the first years of the Counter-Reformation, when Bembo was nominated cardinal by Pope Paul III, the culminating acknowledgment of a brilliant literary career. Titian’s impressive portrait of 1540 depicts Cardinal Bembo shortly after his elevation. Bembo’s most significant and long-lasting contribution was the establishment of an Italian national linguistic and literary standard in his Prose della volgar lingua (Prose on Vernacular Eloquence, 1525), published at the height of the Italian political crisis, when the cultural and political fragmentation that had always characterized the peninsula was aggravated by the competition of France and imperial Spain for political dominion. A linguistic, literary, and cultural antidote to Italian political vulnerability, Bembo’s Prose established the rhetorical, literary, historical, and grammatical bases, in the era of modern print culture, for a unified tradition in the vernacular based on the classic Italian authors of the fourteenth century, Boccaccio for prose and Petrarch for poetry ( just as Cicero and Virgil had served as exemplars for modern humanist eloquence in the Latin). He followed the Prose with the publication of a book of his vernacular lyric poetry, the Rime (Poems, 1530), which offered a practical application of his linguistic and rhetorical principles and marked the point of departure for both Italian and European Renaissance Petrarchism. Pietro Bembo’s father, Bernardo, was one of the most prominent cultural and political personalities of late fifteenth-century Italy. He passed on to his son a passion for books, humanistic letters, and the Tuscan vernacular literary tradition, an interest that Bernardo cultivated also while serving as Venetian ambassador to Florence between 1478–1479, with the young Pietro in tow. Under the guidance of Giovanni Alessandro Urticio and perhaps of Giovanni Alessandro Augurello, Pietro

acquired impeccable humanistic credentials, also studying Greek with his friend Trifone Gabriele for two years in Messina at the school of Constantinus Lascaris. On his return from Sicily, he made available Lascaris’ Greek grammar to Aldus Manutius, who published it in 1495. Bembo published another souvenir from his Sicilian sojourn the following year, also with Aldus, a Latin dialogue with his father about the ascent of Mt. Etna (De Aetna). Between 1496 and 1503, Bembo frequented the philosophical, humanist and vernacular courtly environment of Ferrara, where his father was visdominio, a kind of Venetian ambassador to the Estense. There he came into contact with the philosophical school of Niccolo` Leoniceno, with the poets Lodovico Ariosto, Antonio Tebaldeo, and with the humanist Ercole Strozzi, who will assume the role of the defender of Latin language and opponent of the vernacular in the fictional dialogue of the Prose. Upon his return to Venice, Pietro Bembo did not undertake the Venetian political career expected of young men from patrician families and especially of the son of Bernardo Bembo. Instead, Pietro pursued a courtly and ecclesiastical career that would lead to his frequenting various courts of north and central Italy, initially Ferrara and Urbino, and eventually brought him to Rome where he achieved the position of papal secretary. Early in the new century, however, Bembo’s association with Aldus Manutius led to the publication of Petrarch’s Sonetti e canzoni (1501) and of Dante’s Commedia (1501) and Le terze rime (1502). These editions were editorially supervised by Bembo, and were based upon the consultation of authoritative manuscripts (in Petrarch’s case of the autograph). They marked a watershed in the history of Italian vernacular philology due to their quality and the context of renewed interest in the vernacular literary tradition from which they emerged. Bembo’s treatment of vernacular works of Dante and Petrarch as classics, implicitly on the same level as the Greek and Latin classics that Aldus was publishing in the same format, represented an unprecedented championing of Italian vernacular for a non-Tuscan humanist of his stature. Bembo followed up shortly thereafter with the publication of a vernacular love treatise in dialogue 163

PIETRO BEMBO form, Gli Asolani (Gli Asolani, 1505), the first in a series of Renaissance vernacular works in this genre on this topic. Initially dedicated to Lucretia Borgia, whom Bembo had fallen in love with while in Ferrara, the dialogue explores positive, negative and Neoplatonic views of love in three books, alternating between courtly Boccaccian prose and Petrarchan poetry in the mixed prose and verse tradition of Dante’s Vita nuova and Boccaccio’s Ameto. In 1506, Bembo moved to the court of Guidobaldo di Montefeltro of Urbino and resided there during a period that is memorialized in Baldesar Castiglione’s masterpiece, Il libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528), which features Bembo delivering a dissertation on Neoplatonic love in the third book, in part, no doubt in response to Bembo’s reputation as an authority on the topic, as established by the recent publication of Gli Asolani, for which Bembo will also be remembered in the last canto of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (46.15). While residing in Urbino, Bembo wrote his own less famous portrait of the Urbino court, the De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini ducibus (On the Duke of Urbino Guido of Montefeltro and Elisabetta Gonzaga, 1530). It was during this period that he also composed two vernacular poems that established his reputation as one of the leading court poets of the age: the Stanze (1507) on the occasion of the carnival in Urbino, and a canzone, in commemoration of his brother Carlo who had died in 1503. While in Urbino, Bembo set his sights on papal patronage and an ecclesiastic career. At the beginning of 1508, Bembo received a commenda from Julius II of a manor in the city of Bologna belonging to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, although he did not take formal religious orders until 1522, following the death of his father (1519). Bembo moved to Rome in 1512 and there entered into polemic with Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola on the question of imitation, assuming in his De imitatione (On Imitation, 1513) the Ciceronian position of imitation of the single best model, in opposition to the eclectic position of Pico that had been expressed by Paolo Cortesi in an earlier polemic with Agnolo Poliziano, and to the antiCiceronianism of Erasmus. Bembo’s election by Leo X in 1513 to be papal secretary represented a triumph of Ciceronianism and a consolidation of his cultural position as a leading cultural figure. Bembo returned again to Venice in 1519 following the death of his father and remained there until 1522, when he returned to Rome, but soon returned to the Veneto and settled in Padua, 164

where despite the fact that he had taken vows of the Order of St. John, he lived with a woman, Faustina Morosina della Torre. He returned to Rome in 1524 to present to Pope Clement VII the dedication manuscript of the Prose della volgar lingua, and at this time he also composed a Latin poem, Benacus (1524), dedicated to Bishop Giovan Matteo Giberti. Following the publication of the Prose della vulgar lingua, Bembo returned to Venice, where in 1530 he was nominated historiographer of the Venetian republic and librarian of the Nicean Library (later the Marciana). He undertook the writing of the Historiae venetae libri XII (Venetian Histories, 1551), and at the same time published in 1530 with the da Sabbio brothers in Venice the Rime, and a second revised edition of Gli Asolani, as well as editions of some of his Latin writings including the philological dialogue De Virgilii Culice et Terentii fabulis (On Virgil’s ‘‘Culex’’ and the Comedies of Terence, 1530). In 1535, the collection of his Latin briefs written for Pope Leo X were published and he was elected cardinal in 1539. After stays in Venice and Gubbio, of which he was bishop, Bembo resided in Rome after 1544 until his death. His last years were dedicated to the translation into the vernacular of his Venetian histories, Della historia vinitiana libri XII (1552) and to the reordering and revision of his works in preparation for the posterity that had always represented the ideal public for his writings in Latin and in the vernacular. Finally, however, it was Ariosto who granted Pietro Bembo the highest and most appropriate recognition at the end of the Orlando Furioso (Canto 46: 15) when he praised the Venetian for his contributions to Italian vernacular linguistic and literary history, as the one ‘‘che ‘l puro e dolce idioma nostro, / levato fuor del volgare uso tetro, / quale esser dee, ci ha col suo esempio mostro’’ (who raised that pure and sweet idiom of ours out of vulgar dark usage, and showed us with his example what it should be).

Biography Son of Bernardo and Elena Morsini, is born in Venice 20 May 1470; in June 1491 he meets the Florentine poet and philologist Agnolo Poliziano in Venice and assists him in the Bembo family library with the collation of a manuscript of Terrence; between 1492 and 1494 he studies Greek at the school of Costantino Lascaris in Messina; between 1497 and 1499 he lives in Ferrara; in December 1503 his brother Carlo dies and Bembo returns to Venice from Ferrara; in 1506 he quits Venice for

PIETRO BEMBO the court of Urbino, where he is the guest of Guidobaldo of Montefeltro; in 1512 he leaves Urbino and takes up residence in Rome, where he is the guest of Federigo Fregoso; in 1513 he is elected papal secretary by Leo X; in December 1514 he undertakes an unsuccessful diplomatic mission to Venice on behalf of the pope; his father dies 28 May 1519 and Bembo returns to Venice 2 June, where he remains for a year for family and health reasons; in April 1520 he returns to Rome; in April 1521 he quits Rome and moves to Venice; in 1522, after having survived a grave illness, he settles in Padua where he lived with a woman, Faustina Morosina della Torre, with whom he had three children (Lucilio b. 1523; Torquato b. 1525; Elena b. 1528); in December of 1522 he finally takes vows, becoming a knight of St. John; in September 1525 the first edition of the Prose della volgar lingua is published by Tacuino in Venice; in 1529, Bembo travels to Bologna to participate in the imperial coronation of Charles V; in September 1530 he is named historiographer of the Venetian republic and also librarian of the Nicene library of the Venetian republic; in 1532, his son Lucilio dies; in June of 1535 the first edition of his papal briefs written for Leo X is published in Venice; his companion Morosina dies August 6, 1535; in March of 1539 he is made cardinal by Pope Paul III and moves to Rome; in July 1541 he is named bishop of Gubbio; Cola Bruno, Bembo’s secretary and friend of nearly 50 years, dies in May 1542; in the summer of 1543 he returns to Venice for the last time for the marriage of his daughter Elena to Pietro Gradenigo; in November 1543, he is residing in the bishopric of Gubbio; in 1544 he is named bishop of Bergamo but never takes up residence there; he leaves Gubbio and returns to Rome in March of 1544; he dies on 18 January 1547 in Rome, where he is buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. THEODORE CACHEY Selected Works Collections Opere del card. Pietro Bembo ora per la prima volta tutte in un corpo unite, 4 vols.,Venice: F. Hertzhauser, 1729. ‘‘Motti’’ inediti e sconosciuti di Pietro Bembo, edited by Vittorio Cian, Venice: Tipografia dell’Ancora, 1888. Opere in volgare, edited by Mario Marti, Milan: Sansoni, 1961. Lettere I. (1492–1507), critical edition by Ernesto Travi, 4 vols., Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1987.

Prose della volgar lingua; Gli Asolani; Rime, edited by Carlo Dionisotti, Milan: TEA, 1966; rpt. 1989. Carmina, Turin: Edizioni RES, 1990.

Works in Vernacular Gli Asolani, 1505; edited by Giorgio Dilemmi, 1991; as Gli Asolani, translated by Rudolf Brand Gottfried, 1954; rpt. 1971. Stanze, 1507; edited by Alessandro Gnocchi, 2003. Prose della volgar lingua, 1525; edited by Claudio Vela, 2001. Rime, 1530; enlarged edition, 1535. Carteggio d’amore, 1500–1501: Maria Savorgnan—Pietro Bembo, 1950.

Works in Latin De Aetna, 1496; edited by Vittorio Enzo Alfieri, Marcello Carapezza, and Leonardo Sciascia, 1981; as Lyric Poetry: Etna, translated by Mary P. Chatfield, 2005. De imitatione, 1513; as Le epistole ‘‘De imitatione’’ di Giovanfrancesco Pico dellaMirandola e di Pietro Bembo, edited by Giorgio Santangelo, 1954. Benacus, 1524. De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini ducibus, 1530; in vernacular as Volgarizzamento des Dialogs De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzagia Urbini ducibus, edited by Maria Lutz, 1980. De Virgilii Culice et Terentii fabulis, 1530. Historiae venetae libri XII, 1551; in vernacular as Della historia vinitiana libri XII, 1552.

Further Reading Baldacci, Luigi, Il Petrarchismo italiano nel Cinquecento, Padua: Liviana, 1974. Cian, Vittorio, Un medaglione del rinascimento: Cola Bruno messinese e le sue relazioni con Pietro Bembo, Florence: Biblioteca della letteratura italiana, 1901. Clough, Cecil H., ‘‘Pietro Bembo’s Edition of Petrarch and His Association with the Aldine Press,’’ in Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture. Essays in Memory of Franklin D. Murphy, edited by Davis S. Zeidberg, Florence: Olschki, 1998. Dionisotti, Carlo, Scritti sul Bembo, edited by Claudio Vela, Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Floriani, Piero, Bembo e Castiglione: studi sul classicismo del Cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1976. ———, I gentiluomini letterati. Studi sul dibattito culturale nel primo Cinquecento, Naples: Liguori, 1981. Kidwell, Carol, Pietro Bembo: Lover, Linguist, Cardinal, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Lowry, Malcolm J. C., The World of Aldus Manutius, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979. Mazzacurati, Giancarlo, Misure del classicismo rinascimentale, Naples: Liguori, 1990. Perocco, Daria, ‘‘Rassegna di studi bembiani (1964–1985),’’ in Lettere italiane, 37 (1985): 512–540. Prada, Massimo, La lingua dell’espistolario volgare di Pietro Bembo, Genoa: Name, 2000. Richardson, Brian, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Sabbatino, Pasquale, La ‘‘scienza’’ della scrittura: dal progetto del Bembo al manuale, Florence: Olschki, 1988.

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GLI ASOLANI, 1505 Dialogue by Pietro Bembo

Gli Asolani is a vernacular dialogue on love written in prose with lyric poetic compositions interspersed (prosimetron), a genre that traced its Italian origins via Boccaccio to Dante’s Vita nuova. The work treats the nature, effects and ends of love in three books, and is imagined to have taken place in Asolo, located in the Treviso area of the Veneto region and home to the court of Caterina Cornaro, the exiled queen of Cyprus, to whom the Venetians had granted Asolo in compensation for the loss of the island. Written between 1497 and 1502, the work emerges out of the context of a flourishing late fifteenth-century courtly vernacular literary culture that was imbued with Florentine Neoplatonism, and at a time when Pietro Bembo was first exploring courtier life as an alternative to the political career expected of a Venetian patrician. Gli Asolani was published in Venice in 1505 in the wake of Aldus Manutius’ groundbreaking editions of the vernacular classics that were edited by Bembo. A significantly revised edition of the Asolani was published in 1530, which brought the work into greater linguistic and stylistic conformity with Bembo’s watershed contribution to the Italian language question debate (questione della lingua) and the Prose della volgar lingua. Indeed, while the dialogue’s speculative or philosophical value is generally considered to be marginal at best (on a plane with the courtly conversations of the third book of Castiglione’s Il libro del Cortegiano with which the second edition of the work enters into implicit dialogue), Gli Asolani is nonetheless a major milestone in Italian linguistic and literary history. In the first place, this dialogue represented a bold, not to say scandalous foray into the vernacular literary realm for an intellectual with Bembo’s impeccable humanist credentials (in both Latin and Greek). It put into practice the author’s idea that writers in the vernacular should scrupulously adhere to the Tuscan language and adopt the prose writings of Boccaccio and Petrarch’s lyrics as standards for Italian vernacular literary expression. Moreover, the work marks an important transitional moment (parallel to the more or less contemporary Arcadia 166

by Jacopo Sannazaro) in Italian Renaissance literary history, between the eclectic and stylistic Petrarchism of the fifteenth century and the more mature and more profoundly ideological Petrarchism of the sixteenth century that Bembo himself would inaugurate with the publication of his Rime in 1530. In Book I of Gli Asolani, the fictional courtier Perottino embodies the figure of the unhappy lover and reflects on love’s negative effects while, by contrast, in Book II a more positive view of love is represented by Gismondo. Book III features the Neoplatonizing courtier Lavinello, who, thanks to the corrective counsel of a holy hermit, eventually arrives at a Christian and ascetic view of earthly love that denies its capacity to lead to God. While the position of the author is not explicitly revealed, it may be observed that the medieval and traditional Christian perspective of the Hermit at the end of Book III is consistent with the ideological framework informing Petrarch’s Canzoniere (in which the poet turns away from his earthly love Laura toward the Virgin) as well as with Bembo’s mature Renaissance Petrarchism. THEODORE CACHEY Editions First edition: Venice: Aldo Manuzio, 1505; revised edition, Venice: Da Sabbio, 1530. Critical edition: as Gli Asolani, edited by Giorgio Dilemmi, Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1991. Translations: as Gli Asolani, translated by Rudolf Brand Gottfried, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954; rpt. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.

Further Reading Berra, Claudia, La scrittura degli asolani di Pietro Bembo, Scandicci (Florence): La Nuova Italia, 1995. Cachey, Theodore J. Jr., ‘‘In and Out of the Margins of a Renaissance Controversy: Castiglione in the 2nd Asolani (1530),’’ in Rivista di letteraturaItaliana, 3 (1985): 253–263. ———, ‘‘Il pane del grano e la saggina: Pietro Bembo’s 1505 Asolani Revisited,’’ in The Italianist, 12 (1992): 5–23. Capasullo, Rosa, ‘‘Appunti su un’edizione degli Asolani,’’ in Lettere Italiane, 46, no. 3 (1994): 442–458. Clough, Cecil-H., ‘‘Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani of 1505,’’ in MLN 84, no. 1 (1969): 16–45. Curti, Elisa, ‘‘L’Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta e gli Asolani di Pietro Bembo: Alcune osservazioni sulle postille bembesche al codice Ambrosiano D 29 Inf,’’ in Studi sul Boccaccio, 30 (2002): 247–297.

PIETRO BEMBO Kidwell, Carol, Pietro Bembo. Lover, Linguist, Cardinal, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Rizzarelli, Giovanna, ‘‘La favola della Regina delle Isole Fortunate negli Asolani di Pietro Bembo,’’ in Lettere Italiane, 54, no. 3 (2002): 389–401. Scarpa, Emanuela, ‘‘Qualche proposta (e qualche ipotesi) per i primi ‘Asolani,’’’ in Studi di Filologia Italiana, 52 (1994): 93–109.

PROSE DELLA VOLGAR LINGUA, 1525 Dialogue by Pietro Bembo

The Prose della volgar lingua (Prose on Vernacular Eloquence), a dialogue in three books, is generally considered, alongside the De vulgari eloquentia by Dante Alighieri, to be one of the two most influential works of literary criticism and rhetorical theory in the history of Italian literature. A decisive intervention in the Italian questione della lingua, which had been at issue since Dante’s time, the Prose della volgar lingua established the cultural autonomy and prestige of the vernacular language vis-a`-vis Latin, and provided a grammatical and rhetorical model for modern Italy based upon the model of Boccaccio’s Decameron and Petrarch’s Canzoniere. The signal importance of the work is reflected by the fact that it is generally possible to date to before or after the watershed year 1525 Italian Renaissance writing according to whether or not it adheres to the linguistic model established by Bembo. Authors of Renaissance classics including Lodovico Ariosto, Baldesar Castiglione, and even the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini conducted linguistic revisions of their works in order to bring them into greater conformity with the modern Italian standard established by Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua. Bembo’s promotion of the ‘‘vulgar tongue,’’ and his arguments for a vernacular humanist or classicizing literary solution to the linguistic question

met the resistance of purist partisans of the Latin (who are represented in the dialogue by the humanist Ercole Strozzi); of proponents of the lingua cortigiana, or courtly school of thought, who favored an eclectic model based upon the spoken language of the courts of Italy (a viewpoint expressed and indirectly attributed to Vincenzo Calmeta); and of defenders of the contemporary Florentine language (a position assumed in the dialogue by Giuliani de’ Medici). Bembo’s own point of view is presented by his brother Carlo, and the dialogue is situated at the Bembo home in Venice in 1502 (a fictional dating designed to grant Bembo priority in the vernacular field over Le regole della vulgar lingua published by Gianfrancesco Fortunio in 1516). Book I of the Prose presents Bembo’s response to the competing schools of thought on the language question and provides the theoretical premises for the literary-historical discussion of the vernacular tradition in Book II. A detailed grammar based on the careful study of the language of Petrarch and Boccaccio is discussed and exemplified in Book III. Bembo’s seminal contribution in the Prose is best understood within the context of the technological, cultural and political factors that fostered the resolution of the Italian language question in the direction of the vernacular humanism theorized and practiced in the dialogue. In fact, the technological advance of printing had made urgent the need for a linguistic model that might serve the entire peninsula above and beyond the local spoken dialects. Within the cultural sphere, the triumph of humanistic Ciceronianism in Latin suggested the path of imitation that the vernacular might follow. Bembo’s classicizing solution to the crisis represented a historically efficacious cultural response to the political disunity and vulnerability of Italy that reached a peak during the high Renaissance. The literary and linguistic unification of the peninsula fostered by means of Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua would represent the only form of national cultural identity available to Italians between the Renaissance and the political unification of Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. THEODORE CACHEY Editions First edition: Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 1525. Critical editions: Prose della volgar lingua : l’editio princeps del 1525 riscontrata con l’autografo Vaticano latino 3210, edited by Claudio Vela, Bologna: CLUEB, 2001; as Prose della volgar lingua; Gli Asolani; Rime,

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PIETRO BEMBO edited by Carlo Dionisotti, Milan: TEA, Editori Associati, 1989; La prima stesura delle Prose della volgar lingua: fonti e correzioni:con edizione del testo, edited by Mirko Tavosanis, Pisa: ETS, 2002.

Further Reading Dionisotti, Carlo, Scritti sul Bembo, edited by Claudio Vela, Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Floriani, Piero, Bembo e Castiglione: studi sul classicismo del Cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1976.

Morgana, Silvia Scotti, Mario Piotti, and Massimo Prada (editors), Prose della volgar lingua di Pietro Bembo: Gargnano del Garda (4–7 ottobre 2000), Milan: Cisaplino, 2000. Pertile, Lino, ‘‘Trifon Gabriele’s Commentary on Dante and Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua,’’ in Italian Studies, 40 (1985): 17–30. Sabbatino, Pasquale, La ‘‘scienza’’ della scrittura: dal progetto del Bembo al manuale, Florence: Olschki, 1988. Tavoni, Mirko, ‘‘Prose della volgar lingua,’’ in Letteratura italiana. Dizionario delle opere, directed by Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1999–2000).

CARMELO BENE (1937–2002) No Italian actor in twentieth-century theater has been more extravagantly praised or more bitterly vilified than Carmelo Bene. His historical importance for the Italian avant-garde and experimental theater is beyond discussion, and he was described by the Encyclope´die Francaise as ‘‘one of the most significant presences in twentieth-century theater, along with Diaghilev, Nureyev, Maria Callas and Orson Welles.’’ However, in 1963 his first theater, Teatro Laboratorio, was closed by the authorities when charges of blasphemy and of causing a public outrage were brought against the play, Cristo ‘63 (Christ ‘63), in 1974 S.A.D.E. ovvero libertinaggio e decadenza del complesso bandistico della gendarmeria (S.A.D.E. or Libertinism and Decadence of the Bandit Gang of the Gendarmerie) was taken off by magistrates on the grounds of obscenity, and his 1989 production of Sem Benelli’s La cena della beffe (The Supper of Hoaxes, 1909) caused riots in Milan. Rational discussion of his theater or his stagecraft is made difficult by his insistence, taken by acolytes as proof of high seriousness, that his drama unfolds in a dimension transcending rationality and hence closed to interpretation. His own utterances are Delphic, couched in grandiloquent, hyperbolic and even deliberately self-contradictory terms. These pronouncements seem part of a lifelong labor to construct for himself, both in life and on stage, an image as Nietzschean superman, dandy or flaneur. He is given to expressing a lofty contempt for fellow actors and for audiences, as well as a misanthropic view of humankind, a distaste for democracy and a detestation of both the 168

theater and cinema in which he worked all his life. Giorgio Strehler, Dario Fo, and Eugenio Barba were all dismissed as holding inadequate views of theater. Cinema he described as ‘‘la pattumiera di tutte le arti’’ (the dustbin of all the arts) (Carmelo Bene and Giancarlo Dotto, Vita di Carmelo Bene, 1998). Modern theater, in his view, can be divided into two streams, one inspired by Bertold Brecht and the other by Antonin Artaud. Political beliefs held no interest for him; his production in 1968 of a Don Quixote set outside time and history was his way of cocking a snook at the political fervor of that year. It was with the visionary Artaud, with his refusal of rationality, his love of excess, his probes into the unconscious, his search for the overwhelming stage impact, as well as his rejection of realism and narrative, that Bene identified. He referred also to Arthur Schopenhauer as his educatore permanente or permanent educator (La ricerca impossibile, 1990). Schopenhauer’s reflections on the enigmatic power of music to make a deep emotional impact influenced the kind of abstract, antirealist, ‘‘metaphysical’’ and ultimately music-based theater Bene aimed to provide. His stage work seems to hark back to ritual, ceremonial or prerational rites; it came increasingly to be imbued with the forms of nonsense or of musical theater, and was finally reduced to performance based on voice, or on the transmission of the fonema (phoneme). He formed intellectual partnerships with maverick figures like Salvador Dalı`, opera singer Giuseppe De Stefano and composer Sylvano Bussotti.

CARMELO BENE Bene, although he wrote, performed and published his scripts, proclaimed himself a demolisher rather than a creator of drama, aiming at teatro senza spettacolo (theater without spectacle). To him, performance was impossible but also necessary and unavoidable, respect for the script was a symptom of mummified theater, and attempts to create images were self-defeating. Tragedy and comedy in the classical sense were to be swept aside in favor of parody, pornography, vulgarity and the ridiculous. Even if he was reluctant to admit any such debts, Bene was a successor of surrealism and an heir of wider irrationalist trends. Indeed, he made his impact in the turbulent, irreverent, anarchic 1960s, when such imprecise events as ‘‘happenings’’ were saluted in theaters all over Europe. His debut was, in retrospect, a false start. After a brief and fruitless period at the Accademia di Arte Drammatica in Rome, he persuaded Albert Camus to give him the rights to Caligula (1959). As an actor, Bene was acclaimed, but never again did he work with a director or accept the discipline of another author’s script. Bene was an apostle of ‘‘indiscipline,’’ so the choice of Caligula, the deranged emperor, was a significant one. Over the years Bene was drawn toward grand, titanic, solitary figures, hovering on the margins of society and civilization, never integrated or balanced. Such figures include: the broodingly playful (a dark Pinocchio altered beyond the imaginings of Carlo Collodi, 1961); the self-destructive (six Hamlets in various media, staged from 1961 to 1994); the monstrous (Marquis de Sade, or King Richard of Riccardo III staged in 1977); the bewildered (a Mayakovsky who has lost faith in the revolution in Spettacolo-Concerto Majakovskij, 1960); the cannibalistic (La storia di Sawney Bean, 1964); the demonic (Lorenzaccio al di la` di Musset, 1986). Bene’s theater is solipsistic. His success with Caligula and his acting talent guaranteed his access to major Italian theaters, where he would only stage his own work. He creates his production in every detail, dramatizes personal dilemmas in styles of his choosing, allowing other performers only subsidiary roles. One of the paradoxes of his career is that, though an iconoclast, his own vision is shaped by the classics, but classics radically reformed in his own image and likeness. Thus, little of the texts of the classics he performed remained. The phases of his career can be traced through the variations introduced into successive reworkings of certain preferred plays, notably Hamlet and Pinocchio.

After Caligula, he was invited to Genoa, where he produced a version of Lo strano caso del dottor Jekyll e del signor Hyde (The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1961), but an attentive observer would have paid heed to the credits, which ran: ‘‘da R. L. Stevenson, due atti di Carmelo Bene, traduzione, rielaborazione, protagonista e regista, Carmelo Bene’’ (from R. L. Stevenson, two acts by Carmelo Bene, translation, re-elaboration, protagonist and director, Carmelo Bene). His Teatro Laboratorio in Rome was a quintessentially 1960s alternative venue, or ‘‘cellar.’’ It was a site for wild ‘‘happenings,’’ but the opening productions were Pinocchio and Hamlet, even if both were defiantly cut to measure. Addio porco (Farewell, Pig), staged in 1963, had the anarchy, or spontaneity, of works by Julian Beck’s Living Theater. The first half consisted of caricatures of opera arias, while the second half was a silence interrupted by actors eating and drinking on stage. In the notorious Cristo ‘63, Bene played Christ in a Last Supper scene. There was no script, and in the general mayhem one evening an actor urinated over the Argentinian ambassador. Bene was able to move between experimental venues and the commercial, city-center theaters. His Salome` (1964) from Oscar Wilde had a cast of prisoners from a Roman jail, appearing on stage in top hats and red velvet suits before a piece of furniture that was both altar and bar. The cocktail party in progress, with guitars languidly strumming, is interrupted when the guests fall on John the Baptist and throw him into a cistern. After that production, the critic-playwright Ennio Flaiano gave the striking description of Bene as a director ‘‘con i piedi fermamente poggiati sulle nuvole’’ (with his feet firmly planted in the clouds) (‘‘Salome´,’’ in C. Bene, Opere, 1995). His restless imagination produced endless shifts of style and topic. His production of Il rosa e il nero (The Pink and the Black) in 1966 was based on the gothic novel The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, but can also be viewed as a mixture of autobiography and manifesto. The staging was enriched by music specially composed by Sylvano Bussotti and Vittorio Gelmetti. His second production of Hamlet, Amleto o le conseguenze della pieta` filiale (Hamlet, or the Consequences of Filial Piety, 1967), offered a multilayered script rewritten and reimagined by Bene but also seen through psychoanalytic lenses provided by Jules Laforgue. Everywhere, sacred texts are debunked, demystified, parodied and mocked. Some Italian critics view Bene’s works at this time as examples of postmodern metatheater, 169

CARMELO BENE but they are also a star vehicle by which Bene asserts his own position as virtuoso. Music assumed an ever greater position as support and eventually alternative to plot. Bene also directed and acted in films. His most adventurous and successful was Nostra Signora dei Turchi (Our Lady of the Turks, 1968), first written as a novel and later adapted for the stage. A series of brief sketches set in his native Puglia, the film was acclaimed in France as a reply to the contemporary American underground cinema, but dismissed by others as unintelligible. On his return to theater in 1973, he remained the enfant terrible but emerged simultaneously as champion of the musicality of the voice and word in theater. For his Riccardo III, he removed all the palace maneuverings, the Machiavellian schemes of the despot Richard to leave a private man grappling with love-hate for women, and indeed Bene’s overtly misogynistic depiction of women, often naked and abused on stage, drew the ire of feminists. His 1979 recital of Byron’s Manfred at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, with orchestral backing, marked a phase in which voice and music almost converted theater into oratorio, even if one underwritten by an intricate technology of amplifying devices. The development of the voice and what he called the ‘‘phoneme’’ rose to prominence in his later discussions of his theater. Carmelo Bene made a huge impact in his lifetime, but the career of an actor is ephemeral, and his fashioning of his dramatic writings to suit his own idiosyncratic stage persona means that few of his writings are likely to survive. Film and video will grant a longevity unknown in other centuries to stage works that were violent encounters, made to shine with bright luster by the sheer vivacity of his presence, between a living audience and an extraordinary actor.

Biography Born on 1 September 1937, in Campi Salentino (Lecce); 1957, enrolled at the Accademica di Arte Drammatica in Rome but was expelled for indiscipline; 1959, stage debut with Caligula directed by Alberto Ruggiero, and committed to mental hospital by family to prevent marriage to Giuliana Rossi; 1960, begins collaboration with Sylvano Bussotti with performance of readings from Vladimir Mayakovsky; 1961, set up in Rome Teatro Laboratorio, an alternative venue, opening productions are Pinocchio and Amleto o le conseguenze della pieta` filiale. Same year, Alessandro, his only 170

son born; 1963, theater closed by authorities; 1964, son, in care of grandparents in Florence, dies; 1966, wrote his only novel, Nostra Signora dei Turchi, subsequently staged twice and made into a film; 1967–1968, returns to underground theater at Teatro Beat 72 with new version of Amleto; 1967, plays Creon in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film, Edipo re, and begins a relationship with actress Lydia Mancinelli; 1968, opens Teatro Carmelo Bene in Rome with Arden of Feversham, but theater lasts only six months; 1968–1973, abandons theater for cinema; 1972, publishes L’orecchio mancante, an attack on his critics; 1973, return to stage, but now playing in main theaters, concert halls and opera houses; 1977, first appearance on television with poetry readings; 1979, relationship with Mancinelli ends violently; 1981, reads Dante’s Comedia from Asinelli Tower in Bologna to commemorate victims of railway station terrorist bombing; 1982, marries ex-Miss Italy, Raffaella Baracchi, by whom he has a daughter, Salome`, with her, too, there are reported episodes of violence; 1983, publishes autobiography, Sono apparso alla madonna; 1988, appointed director of drama at Venice’s Biennale: suffers first heart attack due to excessive drinking and drug abuse; 1990, his association with the Biennale ends in a welter of legal cases brought by either side: Bene received deferred sentence of more than two years imprisonment; 1994, Hamlet Suite in Roman Arena in Verona. 16 March, 2002, dies of heart attack. JOSEPH FARRELL Selected Works Collections Opere, Milan: Bompiani, 1995.

Plays Spettacolo-concerto Majakovskij (produced 1960). Lo strano caso del dottor Jekyll e del signor Hyde (produced 1961). Tre atti unici (produced 1961). Gregorio: Cabaret dell’800 (produced 1961). Pinocchio (produced 1961); as Pinocchio e Proposte per il teatro, 1964. Amleto (produced 1961; 1974). Cristo ‘63 (produced 1963). Edoardo II (produced 1963). I Polacchi (Ubu Roi) (produced 1963). Addio porco (produced 1963). Salome` (produced 1964). La storia di Sawney Bean (produced 1964). Manon (produced 1964). Faust o Margherita (produced 1966). Pinocchio ‘66 (produced 1966). Il rosa e il nero (produced 1966), 1979.

SEM BENELLI Nostra signora dei Turchi (produced 1966). Amleto o le conseguenze della pieta` filiale (produced 1967). Arden of Feversham (produced 1967), 1967. Don Chisciotte (produced 1968). Amleto (produced 1974). S.A.D.E. ovvero libertinaggio e decadenza del complesso bandistico della gendarmeria salentina (produced 1974), 1976. Romeo e Giulietta (Storia di W. Shakespeare) (produced 1976). Riccardo III (produced 1977), 1995. Otello, o la deficienza della donna (produced 1979), 1981. Manfred (produced 1979), 1980. Pinocchio (produced 1981). Macbeth (produced 1983), 1995. L’Adelchi di A. Manzoni in forma di concerto (produced 1984); as L’Adelchi o della volgarita` della politica, 1984. Lorenzaccio al di la` di Musset e Benedetto Varchi (produced 1986), 1986. Hommelette for Hamlet, operetta inqualificabile da J. Laforgue (produced 1987). Pentesilea (produced 1990), 1995. Hamlet Suite (produced 1994), 1995.

Films Ventriloquio, 1967. Hermitage, 1968. Nostra Signora dei Turchi, 1968. Capricci, 1969. Don Giovanni, 1970. Salome`, 1972. Un Amleto di meno, 1973.

Fiction Nostra Signora dei Turchi, 1966. Credito italiano V.E.R.D.I., 1967.

Other L’orecchio mancante, 1972. La voce di Narciso, 1982. Sono apparso alla Madonna, 1983. Il teatro senza spettacolo, 1990. ‘‘La ricerca teatrale nella rappresentazione dello stato, o dello spettacolo del fantasma prima e dopo Carmelo Bene,’’ in La ricerca impossibile, Biennale ‘89 (with critical essays by other writers), 1990. Vulnerabile invulnerabilita` e necrofilia in Achille, 1994.

Further Reading Bartalotta, Gianfranco (editor), Carmelo Bene e Shakespeare, Rome: Bulzoni, 2000. Bene, Carmelo, and Giancarlo Dotto, Vita di Carmelo Bene, Milan: Bompiani, 1998. Brunello, Yuri, ‘‘Carmelo Bene tra espressione e contemplazione: appunti su un teatro della presenza e della crisi,’’ in L’asino di B., 6–7 (November, 2002): 44–88. Flaiano, Ennio, Lo spettatore addormentato, Milan: Rizzoli, 1983. Giacche`, Piergiorgio, Carmelo Bene: Antropologia di una macchina attoriale, Milan: Bompiani, 1997. Grande, Maurizio (editor), Carmelo Bene: Il circuito barocco, special issue, Bianco e Nero, 24, nos. 11–12 (1973). Puppa, Paolo, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo novecento, 6th ed., Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2004. Quadri, Franco, Il teatro degli anni settanta: Tradizione e ricerca, Turin: Einaudi, 1982. Saba, Cosetta, Carmelo Bene, Florence: Il Castoro, 1999. Tessari, Roberto, Pinocchio: ‘‘Summa atheologica’’ di Carmelo Bene, Florence: Libero Scambio, 1982.

SEM BENELLI (1877–1949) ‘‘Academician of no Academy, conferred upon with no decoration. Pontifex Maximus of neither church, nor monastery, nor conventicle’’: Few critics in the twentieth century subscribed to Vicenzo Errante’s emphatic albeit legitimate appraisal of Sem Benelli’s role in modern Italian theater: ‘‘He had fought to transfigure the Italian entertainment into Italian Theatre and the Italian Theatre into a Temple of paramount poetry’’ (Orazione commemorativa di Sem Benelli, 1953). Most critics in fact were hostile to his work, considered him unreadable, and remorselessly mocked his tragic verse. As early as 1916 Giovanni Papini tore him to pieces

in an almost resentful way: Sem Benelli is ‘‘il cenciaiolo della letteratura drammatica’’ (the ragman of dramatic literature) (Stroncature, 1916). And Ennio Flaiano in 1940 sensed ‘‘un’anima di piombo’’ (a lead soul) in his work (I vezzi di Sem Benelli, 1940). In the postwar period, a reaction set in against an artificial and decadent literary style. Critical distaste for what was considered to be the worst D’Annunzio style, a style linked (mostly wrongly) to Fascist bombast, ended up jeopardizing the reception of Benelli’s poetic and especially dramatic works. His theatrical characters, according to 171

SEM BENELLI Antonio Gramsci, were created ‘‘dalla gola canora e dall’anima di legno’’ (from a singing throat and a wooden soul), that is, from the union of song and melodrama, and were said to lack an authentic psychological life (Letteratura e vita nazionale, 1950). In Studi sul teatro contemporaneo (1923), the most influential dramatic critic of his time, Adriano Tilgher, complained of Benelli’s work because there were ‘‘fatti quanti ne vogliamo, anche troppi, ma esperienze di vita interiore, no’’ (As many facts as we want, even too many; but no experience of inner life whatsoever). Despite this criticism, Sem Benelli was an authentic and fertile stage craftsman. He enjoyed an early success with his public, both in Italy and internationally. His earnings allowed him to build himself a castle in Switzerland. The recent rediscovery (1973) by Carmelo Bene of La cena delle beffe (The Supper of Practical Jokers, 1909), Benelli’s most famous theater work, has led to a reconsideration of his poetic style now also seen as evoking a dizzying emptiness that reflects a horror of the inorganic, as Umberto Artioli put it (‘‘Quella risibile escrescenza dell’umano,’’ 1988). Notwithstanding these revisionary readings of his work, it must be said that Benelli’s wavering between Fascism and anti-Fascism, between fervent interventionism and journalistic disillusion did not help secure his identity as a national writer, someone capable of creating a poetic drama, one free from retrospective longing, in the wake of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s legacy. Among his first works is the intimate and autobiographical Tignola (The Moth, 1908), a comedy first performed in Genua on 10 February 1908. Its protagonist is a bookshop assistant who is unable to love. In this play, according to Carla Apollonio, the author’s lyrical vein, which coexisted with the other more external forms that were soon to prevail, is revealed in grey tones of painful defeat (‘‘Sem Benelli,’’ 1987). Benelli’s first unhoped-for triumphant success arrived in the evening of 16 April 1909 at Rome’s Teatro Argentina. Between Tignola and Cena delle beffe, Benelli’s lyrical vein develops into a project for poetic theater. It was a theater based on tragedy and aimed at connecting fantasy with reality (teatro di poesia), in opposition to the predominant theatrical vogue for life-likeness (teatro di vita), typical of the bourgeois and veristic literature, which was mainly imported from France. In reviewing the play, Gramsci spoke of La cena delle beffe as a ‘‘castelletto di carta pesta e di stucco cinquecentesco’’ (tiny castle made of papier-mache´ and sixteenth century stucco) (Letteratura e vita 172

nazionale, 1950). The play was adapted from ‘‘Le cene,’’ a novella by Antonio Francesco Grazzini, known as Il Lasca, set in Renaissance Florence. It was inspired by a historical taste that quickly turned into lasting fashion, at least until the 1930s. As a matter of fact, dealing with the horrific revenge of Gianetto on his two brothers, this drama at once became a big international success, attracting the talent of great actors: Sarah Bernhardt performed it in France in Jean Richepin’s adaptation, playing the male role of Gianetto; Ida Roland in Germany; John, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore in numerous performances in the United States. Benelli envisaged a theater of popular poetry that can be technically characterized as dramatic poetry competing with figurative arts; a kind of poetry in which the ‘‘sound’’ must overrule and be recipient of colour. Above all, Benelli’s dramatic style was based on the conception of an easy, almost airy but at the same time cultivated verse, which was unmistakably his own. His verse tended to simulate a simple conversational prose with colloquial verisimilitude. Benelli complemented this conversational style with a skillful handling of dramatic action. The following pie`ces in verses were all warmly welcomed by the public: L’amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings), a lyrical drama with music by Italo Montemezzi taking place in the Middle Ages, was first performed in Rome in 1910. Il mantellaccio (The Ugly Cloak) was performed at the same time in Rome and Turin in 1911, as was Rosmunda (1912), which was staged in Milan by the so-called ‘‘Benellian’’ company starring Irma Gramatica and Giulio Tempesti. La Gorgona (Gorgon, 1913) followed, in direct competition with D’Annunzio’s La nave; and after that Le nozze dei Centauri (The Centaurs Wedding, 1915), staged in Turin by Ermete Novelli with Lyda Borelli. Benelli seemed to changed on his return from the war. This change can be seen beginning with Ali (Wings, 1921), through Con le stelle (With the Stars, 1927), Eroi (Heroes, 1931), a one-act war drama, Madre Regina (Queen Mother, 1931), a revolutionary one-act drama, and concluding in his last prose dramas, from Il ragno (The Spider, 1935), to Paura (Fear, 1947), which are dominated by gloomy pessimism and polemical verbal harshness. Benelli was now making his own theater an instrument of social and historical conceptions. The theme of Adam’s fall and of the loss of Eden, which was present in his previous dramas, and the grip of passions were the subjects of his last

SEM BENELLI theater works. Echoes of these concerns are found in his Ethiopian war reporting Io in Affrica (Africa and Me, 1936–1937), and Schiavitu` (Slavery, 1945), in which he is highly critical of the Fascist regime. As of this writing, there exists no available modern edition of Sem Benelli’s poetry and theater works.

Adamo ed Eva, 1932. Caterina Sforza, 1934. Il ragno, 1935. L’elefante, 1937. L’orchidea, 1938. La festa, 1940. Paura, 1947. Oro vergine, 1949.

Biography

Libretti

Born in Filettole, in the province of Prato, on 10 August 1877. Studied at the Scolopi Fathers School in Florence. After his father’s death (1895) worked as a salesman in a furniture shop and then as bookshop clerk. Also worked at Marzocco’s editorial office and then for the La rassegna internazionale, living between Rome and Milan. Wrote sport articles for the magazine Verde azzurro. 1905–1907, coeditor, with F. T. Marinetti and Ponti, of the review Poesia, rassegna internazionale multilingue. Volunteered for World War I and was decorated. Initially a Fascist, but after the murder of Socialist Giacomo Matteotti, turned anti-Fascist. In 1925, subscribed to Benedetto Croce’s countermanifesto, as an answer to the Fascist intelligentsia. Volunteered for the war in Ethiopia, and during World War II sought shelter in Switzerland. Died in Zoagli (Genova), on 18 December 1949. STEFANO TOMASSINI Selected Works Plays La morale di Casanova, 1906 (with Giulio De Frenzi). Tignola, 1908. La maschera di Bruto, 1908. La cena delle beffe, 1909, as The Supper of Practical Jokers, adapted into English verse by Ada Sterling, 1919, as The Jest, translated by Marjorie Bowen, 1922; as The Jest, new English adaptation by Sem Benelli and Reuss Emerson, 1926. L’amore dei tre re, 1910; 1932, as The Love of the Three Kings, translated by Howard M. Jones in Chief Contemporary Dramatists, edited by T.H. Dickinson, 1930. Il mantellaccio, 1911. Rosmunda, 1912. La Gorgona, 1913. Le nozze dei Centauri, 1915. Ali, 1921. L’arzigogolo, 1922. La santa primavera, 1923. L’amorosa tragedia, 1925. Il vezzo di perle, 1926. Con le stelle, 1927. Orfeo e Proserpina, 1929. Fiorenza, 1930. Eroi, 1931. Madre Regina, 1931.

L’amore dei tre re, 1913, music of Italo Montemezzi, English version by R. H. Elkin. La cena delle beffe, 1926; 1934, music of Umberto Giordano; as The Jester’s Supper, English version by K.H.B. de Jaffa, 1925. Rosmunda, 1926, music of Erardo Trentinaglia. Incantesimo, 1932, music of Italo Montemezzi.

Nonfiction Ricordo di Giovanni Pascoli, 1913. Parole di battaglia, 1918. Il Sauro, 1919. Io in Affrica, 1936–1937. La mia leggenda, 1939. Schiavitu`, 1945.

Poetry ‘‘Un figlio dei tempi,’’ 1905. ‘‘L’altare,’’ 1916. ‘‘La passione d’Italia,’’ edited by P. Arcari, 1918. ‘‘Notte sul Golfo dei Poeti,’’ 1919.

Further Reading Antonucci, Giovanni, Storia del teatro italiano del Novecento, Rome: Studium, 1986. Apollonio, Carla, ‘‘Sem Benelli,’’ in Letteratura Italiana. I Contemporanei, vol. 3, Milan: Marzorati, 1987. Artioli, Umberto, ‘‘Quella risibile escrescenza dell’umano. La Cena di Bene: l’artificio dell’affermar negando,’’ in Il castello di Elsinore, 3 (1988): 122–129. Borgese, Giuseppe Antonio, La vita e il libro: Terza serie, Turin: Bocca, 1913. Cecchi, Emilio, Studi critici, Ancona: Puccini, 1912. Errante, Vincenzo, Orazione commemorativa di Sem Benelli, Milan: Ariel, 1953. Flaiano, Ennio, ‘‘I vezzi di Sem Benelli’’ (1940), in Lo spettatore addormentato, edited by Emma Giammattei and Fausta Bernobini, Milan: Rizzoli, 1983. Gramsci, Antonio, Letteratura e vita nazionale (1950), Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1971. Grande, Maurizio, La lettera mancata: Uno studio su La cena delle beffe di Carmelo Bene, Rome: Marchesi, 1988. Marotti, Ferruccio, ‘‘Sem Benelli,’’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 8, Rome: Treccani, 1966. Palazzi, Fernando, Sem Benelli: Studio biografico-critico, Ancona: Puccini, 1913. Papini, Giovanni, Stroncature (1916), Florence: Vallecchi, 1920. ´ poPersonne´, Luigi Maria, Il teatro italiano della ‘‘Belle E que’’: Saggi e studi, Florence: Olschki, 1972. Picchi, Arnaldo, ‘‘In margine alla Cena delle beffe di Sem Benelli,’’ in Quindi (November 1989): 2–18.

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SEM BENELLI Stassi, Maria Gabriella, ‘‘Tra sogno e realta`: un’ipotesi di teatro,’’ in La letteratura in scena: Il teatro del Novecento, edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori, 1985.

Tessari, Roberto, Teatro italiano del Novecento: Fenomenologie e strutture 1906–1976, Florence: Le Lettere, 1996. Tilgher, Adriano, Studi sul teatro contemporaneo, Rome: Libreria di scienze e lettere, 1923.

PAOLO BENI (1552/53–1625) ‘‘Concerning the concepts that Aristotle uses in his definition... Paolo Beni distinguishes up to 12 or 15 differing opinions that he then refutes before giving us his own.’’ With these words the French dramatist Pierre Corneille described Paolo Beni, in his Discours de la trage´die (1660), as the last great commentator on Aristotle’s Poetics. Beni’s In Aristotelis Poeticam commentarii (Commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics, 1613) is not only a final summing-up of a long interpretative tradition of which he was surely the last exponent, but also the first of the modern era. After studying philosophy and theology, Beni was suddenly called to the University of Padua in November 1599 to take up the chair of humanities left vacant on the death of Antonio Riccoboni (1541–1599), the last Italian master of classical philology. Still largely unknown, Beni accepted the position and conscientiously assumed his role. In his academic teaching, he expressed his firm belief in the renewal of contemporary literature, and he actively intervened in the debate on university reform. Evidence of these intense activities remains in his numerous unpublished works. In Padua, he became immediately involved in a number of violent literary controversies. In this context, he maintained a revisionist position; however, while he was personally inclined to the modern, he was able to engage in a fruitful way with the tradition. In his Risposta alle considerazioni o dubbi dell’Ecc.mo Sig. Dottor Malacreta accademico ardito sopra il Pastor Fido (Reply to the Considerations or Doubts of the Most Excellent Doctor Malacreta about the Pastor Fido, 1600), he adopted a position in favor of Battista Guarini and the legitimacy of his new model of tragicomedy, although not without some ambiguity. He further clarified his opinion in the Discorso nel qual si dichiarano e stabiliscono molte cose pertinenti alla Risposta (Discourse in Which Are Declared and 174

Established Several Things Relating to the Reply, 1600), probably spurred on by Guarini himself. In his Disputatio in qua ostenditur praestare comoediam atque tragoediam metrorum vinculis solvere (Discourse in Which Comedy Is Demonstrated to Be a Superior Genre, and Tragedy Is Freed of the Bondage of Meter, 1600), Beni promoted the use of prose in tragedy, and discussed the established custom of actors who delivered verses in performances by going beyond the metrical breaks. He thus demonstrated his increasing openness to theatrical practice as well as to theory. In 1612, Beni published the polemical treatise Anticrusca, overo Paragone dell’italiana lingua (The Counter-Crusca, or Comparison of the Italian Language), which argued against the canonization of Giovanni Boccaccio as a linguistic model in the dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca published that same year. He vehemently opposed the prevailing use of obsolete, old-fashioned normative practices in current speech and poetry, and voiced an open dislike for Dante that anticipated the more general reaction of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The Florentines resentfully replied with similarly pointed and at times insulting words. In response, Paolo Beni wrote another work under cover of a pseudonym: Il Cavalcanti overo la difesa dell’Anticrusca di Michelangelo Fonte (The Cavalcanti, or the Defense of the Counter-Crusca by Michelangelo Fonte, 1614), the title of which referred to the exiled Tuscan humanist Bartolomeo Cavalcanti (1503–1562), who differed from the Florentine academic tradition because of his antipurist position. Further evidence of Beni’s activities in Padua is found in a letter by Giambattista Manso (1569?–1645), sent from Naples in March 1610. Here Beni is described in his ‘‘unofficial’’ role as the purveyor of the most recent lunar discoveries of Galileo Galilei, and as an astute witness to the

PAOLO BENI impact that the discovery and installation of the telescope in 1609 had on the Italian imagination. But Beni’s critical thought is more clearly in evidence in his most substantial work, the exegesis of Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580) that argued in favor of contemporary literature. In 1616, he personally financed the publication of Il Goffredo ovvero Gerusalemme liberata col commento (The Goffredo, or Jerusalem Delivered), his extensive commentary on Tasso’s poem. This work had been preceded by the publication in 1607 of his Comparatione di Torquato Tasso con Homero e Virgilio (Comparison of Torquato Tasso with Homer and Virgil), a work composed of seven discourses, subsequently increased to 10 in the 1612 edition. Tasso’s poem, which Beni considers as a unified whole, is critically analyzed using the principal rhetorical categories of inventio and dispositio. Subsequently, his wide-ranging commentary in Il Goffredo ovvero Gerusalemme liberata col commento focused mainly on the category of elocutio. While Tasso discusses the nature of his heroic poem in terms of its distance from the ‘‘romance’’ registers of the ‘‘heroic’’ material of Ludovico Ariosto’s age, Beni considers it in terms of the opposition between ‘‘ancient’’ and ‘‘modern.’’ His support of Tasso’s poetic style thus reinforces the identity of the poetic style of Northern Italy, as opposed to that of Florence. However, as a result the vindication of the category of the ‘‘modern’’ is accompanied for the first time by a clear devaluation of the ‘‘ancient,’’ including the poetry of Homer and Virgil. This view of modernity reflects, as Pierantonio Frare has remarked, ‘‘the idea of continuous improvement that extends from the sciences to language and the arts’’ (‘‘La ‘nuova critica’ della meravigliosa acutezza,’’ 1997). However, this defense of the modern was not clear-cut and unequivocal. In his commentary on Aristotle’s works, Beni carefully separates authority and reason, making Aristotle an academic polemicist ante litteram, Plato’s rival and Homer’s partisan. As Paul B. Diffley explains in his 1988 biography of the author, ‘‘while Beni was clearly a Modern in his linguistic works, his instinct in the commentary on the Poetics, as elsewhere in his Latin commentaries, is to put the old before the new.’’

Biography Born in Gubbio in 1552 or 1553, day and month unknown; he had four brothers and two sisters. Against the will of his father, Francesco, who

wanted him to become a lawyer, studied at the Collegio Germanico in Rome and after an unhappy period of legal studies in Perugia, he decided to study philosophy and theology in Bologna, 1566, and then at the University of Padua, 1573, where he joined the Accademia degli Animosi, sponsored by the abbot Ascanio Martinengo, and where he possibly met Torquato Tasso for the first time. He took his degree in theology and philosophy and entered into the service of Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo in Rome and then of Francesco Maria II, duke of Urbino. He entered the Jesuit Order, leaving it in 1596, probably because of theological disagreements, remaining, however, a member of the secular clergy. Until 1593 he was reader of theology in Perugia. From 1594, he was reader of philosophy at the Universita` La Sapienza in Rome, at the invitation of Pope Clemente VIII. In 1600, he was appointed to the chair of humanities at the University of Padua. He retired from teaching in 1623 and died in Padua on 12 February 1625. STEFANO TOMASSINI Selected Works Essays Risposta alle considerazioni o dubbi dell’Ecc.mo Sig. Dottor Malacreta accademico ardito sopra il Pastor Fido, 1600. Discorso nel qual si dichiarano e stabiliscono molte cose pertinenti alla Risposta, 1600. Disputatio in qua ostenditur praestare comoediam atque tragoediam metrorum vinculis solvere, 1600. Comparatione di Homero, Virgilio e Torquato, 1607; rev. 1612. De historia libri quatuor, 1611. Anticrusca, overo Paragone dell’italiana lingua, 1612. Orationes quinquaginta, 1613. Il Cavalcanti overo la difesa dell’Anticrusca di Michelangelo Fonte, 1614. In Aristotelis Poeticam commentarii, 1614; rev. 1622; rev. 1625. Il Goffredo ovvero Gerusalemme liberata col commento, 1616. Commentarii in Aristotelis libros Rhetoricorum, 2 vols., 1624–1625. L’Anticrusca, parte II, III, IV, edited by Gino Casagrande, 1982.

Other Rime, 1614.

Further Reading Corneille, Pierre, Discours de la trage´die, in Oeuvres comple`tes, edited by Andre´ Stegmann, Paris: Seuil, 1963.

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PAOLO BENI Dell’Aquila, Giulia, ‘‘Sulle Rime varie di Paolo Beni,’’ in Rivista di letteratura italiana, 14, nos. 1–3 (1996): 97–118. Dell’Aquila, Michele, La polemica anticruscante di Paolo Beni, Bari: Adriatica, 1970. Diffley, Paul Brian, Paolo Beni. A Biographical and Critical Study, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Frare, Pierantonio, ‘‘La ‘nuova critica’ della meravigliosa acutezza,’’ in Storia della critica letteraria in Italia, edited by Giorgio Baroni, Turin: UTET, 1997. Landoni, Elena, ‘‘A proposito della vita e delle opere di Paolo Beni (1552–1625),’’ in Rendiconti dell’Istituto lombardo, 113 (1979): 27–34.

Martiradonna, Maricla, ‘‘Nuovi paradigmi dell’ ‘Heroico’ nella Comparatione di Paolo Beni,’’ in Rivista di letteratura italiana, 14, nos. 1–3 (1996): 77–95. Sangalli, Maurizio, ‘‘Di Paolo Beni e di una riforma dello studio di Padova (1619),’’ in Studi Veneziani, 42 (2001): 57–134. Tomassini, Stefano, ‘‘‘Il brunir de la corazza’: Beni commenta Tasso (1616),’’ in Philo-logica, 4 (1993): 39–69. Tomassini, Stefano, L’ ‘‘Heroico,’’ ad esempio. Tasso idea del poema nell’opera di Paolo Beni, Turin: Genesi, 1994. Villa, Edoardo, ‘‘La ‘Comparatione’ di Paolo Beni,’’ in Italianistica, 24, nos. 2–3, (1995): 649–658.

ROBERTO BENIGNI (1952–) Although a fixture in Italian popular culture on television and in film since the late 1970s, Tuscan comedian actor and director Roberto Benigni gained international renown when his film La vita e` bella (Life is Beautiful, 1997) won three Academy Awards, one of which was for best actor, the first ever bestowed for a non-English speaking role. Benigni is part of a generation that directly experienced the waning of the traditional peasant life by the industrialization underway in Italy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At this time, the Benigni family left their agricultural community to search for work in the nearby city of Prato. As a child, Benigni enjoyed rhyming contests and linguistic games in the tradition of Tuscan improvisational poetry. Benigni’s verbal abilities developed through his participation in country festivals with improvising poets, the so-called poeti a braccio who sang octets in the old regional tradition in a display of wit and verbal acrobatics. Despite their origins in a popular setting, the poeti a braccio are quite sophisticated and their performances are the fruit of careful and detailed preparation including careful study of poets such as Ludovico Ariosto and Dante in order to gain familiarity with the hendecasyllable meter. After Benigni finished middle school, his parents enrolled him in a Jesuit college in Florence; he might very well have completed religious training and become a priest but his seminary shut down due to the devastating flooding of the Arno River in 1966. Benigni, who had plans to attend the university, pursued instead a career as a performer. 176

He became a fan of the Italian pop star Adriano Celentano and even attempted to join Celentano’s production Clan in Milan. In the early 1970s, Benigni went to Rome where he entered the milieu of the avant-garde theater. He used this period to hone his performing skills and fill in the gaps of his formal education by reading voraciously and attending screenings at cinema clubs. The encounter of Benigni’s heritage of oral poetry and the free-form experimentation of counterculture theater eventually resulted in the monologue Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia (Cioni Son of Gaspare and the Late Giulia, 1975). The piece, cowritten with Giuseppe Bertolucci, combines stories and voices from Benigni’s rural Tuscan past with the influences of the avant-garde theater and his own readings, particularly Dostoevski and Rabelais. Benigni’s performance was an archaic, primitive explosion of coarse invective that perhaps needed the climate of avant-garde experimentation to come to fruition. Benigni’s first television shows, Onda libera (Free Wave, 1976–1977) and Vita da Cioni (Cioni’s Dog Life, 1978), were based on his foul-mouthed Tuscan country bumpkin character Mario Cioni taken from his early monologue. Benigni also starred in an unsuccessful cinematic adaptation of Cioni Mario entitled Berlinguer ti voglio bene (Berlinguer I Love You, 1977), directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci. During the late 1970s, he played small roles in films by Bernardo Bertolucci, Marco Ferreri, Costas Gravas, and eventually appeared in Renzo Arbore’s popular television show L’altra domenica (1978–1979). This landed

ROBERTO BENIGNI him a role as a costar in Arbore’s Il pap’occhio (Pope in Your Eye, 1980), an example of the Italian commercial cinema of the time featuring television-based performers. Then came his association with Cesare Zavattini (1902–1989), the great theorist and storyteller of the neorealist style, the art of ‘‘naked reality,’’ who could endow the most contrived events with extraordinary emotions. In his twilight years, Zavattini was preparing what was to be his last film, La verita`aa (The Truth, 1983), for which he wanted Benigni in the starring role. Although Zavattini eventually decided to cast himself in the film, the period that Benigni spent with the aging master was a fundamental influence on his later work in terms of its fabulist approach and its stylized imagery, blending realistic elements with moments of sheer fantasy. In the early 1980s, Benigni costarred in Il minestrone (1981), a film directed by Sergio Citti, who had been, with his brother Franco, a faithful follower and friend of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975). Citti did not share Pasolini’s tragic sense of life, and his ability to shape farcical elements in an intriguing narrative secured him a position among the leading directors of comedy. For Il minestrone, he had enlisted as his screenwriter Vincenzo Cerami, who would exercise a defining influence on Benigni’s artistic career. After appearing in Giuseppe Bertolucci’s documentary of his national stage tour Tuttobenigni (1983), and in a collection of comedy sketches directed by Arbore, F.F.S.S. (1983), Benigni tried his own hand at directing with Tu mi turbi (You Bother Me, 1983), working with his future wife and costar in all of his films, the classically trained actress Nicoletta Braschi. Then followed Non ci resta che piangere (Nothing Left to Do But Cry, 1984), codirected with the gifted Neapolitan actor Massimo Troisi (1954–1994). The film is a fabulist comedy, in which the pair travels back in time to the fifteenth century and where the topical satire of the 1980s is replaced by a sensitive view of the individual’s relationship to society. After meeting Jim Jarmusch at a film festival, Benigni would star in Jarmusch’s 1986 films Down by Law and Coffee and Cigarettes, as well as in the Roman episode of Night on Earth (1992). Despite their differences in background and overall creative practices the Tuscan actor and the Ohio-born independent filmmaker shared an awareness of tragicomic human weaknesses; and perhaps Benigni’s quintessential performances are to be found in Jarmusch’s films and, most importantly, in Federico Fellini’s 1989 La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon).

Il piccolo diavolo (The Little Devil, 1988) was completed with Vincenzo Cerami as scriptwriter. It is the first in a series of films in which the Benigni/Cerami collaboration adjusts the persona originated in the Cioni monologue to a variety of situations for comic effect, in this specific case as a devil tormenting a priest played by Walter Matthau. In the 1990s, Benigni directed himself in a double role as an uncanny bus driver/mafia boss in Johnny Stecchino (1991) and then as an urban scrounger mistaken for a serial killer in Il mostro (The Monster, 1994). Both films held all-time record profits: Johnny Stecchino outdid Robin Hood and Terminator II at the box office; Il mostro outdrew The Lion King and Forrest Gump. Due to the success of the genre, 44% of the Italian films produced in that period were comedies. Benigni’s next film with Cerami, La vita e` bella (Life is Beautiful, 1997), broke out of the international art house circuit to gain the sort of popular audience that he already enjoyed in Italy. The film, however, was steeped in controversy for Benigni’s casting of his comic persona as an Italian Jew deported to the concentration camps during World War II. In the 1990s, the Jewish experience had become a prominent issue in Italy, Benigni (who is not Jewish) immersed himself in the works of Primo Levi. The idea grew out of a personal experience: Benigni’s father was sent to a German labor camp in 1943. What shaped the film was the way his father recounted his experience, with a mixture of chilling and funny details. Benigni plays Guido, a free-spirited bookseller who lives in Arezzo. He pursues Dora, a charming schoolteacher, whom he eventually marries. Halfway through the film, Guido is deported with Dora and his 5-year-old son Giosue` to a German camp. In order to shelter the boy from the horrific reality, he concocts an elaborate game of deception, which will eventually save Giosue`’s life. Benigni’s next film, Pinocchio (Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio, 2002), an adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s popular children’s book, was initially scheduled to be made by Federico Fellini. It combines cultural sophistication with mainstream appeal. Rather well-received in Italy, Pinocchio sharply failed during its North American release. In another film, La tigre e la neve (The Tiger and the Snow, 2005), Benigni plays a poet struggling with themes of love and war in settings including contemporary Iraq. Besides working in the cinema, Benigni has also staged numerous public performances, particularly of selected cantos of Dante’s Comedia, including 177

ROBERTO BENIGNI L’ultimo del paradiso (2002) in which he commented Paradiso XXXIII in a nationally televised event.

Biography Born on October 27, 1952 in Misericordia (Arezzo), an agricultural community; attended Jesuit college in Florence, 1966; attended Istituto Commerciale Datini in Prato, 1966; moved to Rome, 1972; performed one-man show as Cioni in Rome, 1975; Cioni Mario made into film Berlinguer ti voglio bene by Giuseppe Bertolucci, 1977; married actress Nicoletta Braschi, 1991; film La vita e` bella won three Oscars, 1998. CARLO CELLI Selected Works Theater Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, 1975. Tuttobenigni, 1983. Lectura Dantis, 1990. Tuttobenigni 95/96, 1995. L’ultimo del paradiso, 2002.

Acting Roles Berlinguer ti voglio bene, 1977. I giorni cantati, 1979. Letti selvaggi, 1979. La luna (Luna), 1979. Chiedo asilo, 1979. Il pap’occhio, 1980. Il minestrone, 1981. F.F.S.S. ovvero che mi hai portato a fare sopra Posillipo se non mi vuoi piu bene?, 1983. Tuttobenigni, 1986. Down by Law, 1986. Coffee and Cigarettes, 1986. La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon), 1989. Night on Earth (Episode - Rome), 1992. Son of the Pink Panther, 1993. Aste´rix et Obe´lix contre Ce´sar, 1999.

Films Tu mi turbi, 1983. Non ci resta che piangere, 1984. Il piccolo diavolo, 1988. Johnny Stecchino, 1991. Il mostro, 1994. La vita e` bella (Life is Beautiful), 1997. Pinocchio (Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio), 2002. La tigre e la neve (The Tiger and the Snow), 2005.

Screenplays Tuttobenigni (with Giuseppe Bertolucci), Rome: Theoria, 1992. E l’alluce fu monologhi e gag, Turin: Einaudi, 1996. La vita e` bella (with Vincenzo Cerami), Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Io un po’ Pinocchio, Florence: Giunti, 2002.

Further Reading Ambrogi, Silvano, Quando Benigni ruppe il video i primi testi televisivi di Roberto Benigni, Turin: Nuova ERI, 1992. Borsatti, Cristina, Roberto Benigni, Milan: Il Castoro, 2001. Bullaro, Grace Russo (editor), Beyond ‘‘Life Is Beautiful’’: Comedy and Tragedy in the Cinema of Roberto Benigni, Leicester, UK: Troubador Publishing, 2005. Celli, Carlo, The Divine Comic: The Cinema of Roberto Benigni, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001. Cosentino, Andrea, La scena dell’osceno. Alle radici della drammaturgia di Roberto Benigni, Rome: Oradek, 1998. Marcus, Millicent, ‘‘The Seriousness of Humor in Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful,’’ in After Fellini: National Cinema in the Postmodern Age, Baltimore-London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Martinelli, Massimo, Carla Nassini, and Fulvio Wetzel, Benigni Roberto di Luigi fu Remigio, Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1997. Masi, Stefano, Roberto Benigni ‘‘Superstar,’’ Rome: Gremese, 1999. Parigi, Stefania, Roberto Benigni, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1988. Simonelli, Giorgio, and Gaetano Tramontana, Datemi un Nobel! L’opera comica di Roberto Benigni, Alessandria: Edizioni Falsopiano, 1998.

CATERINA BENINCASA See Catherine of Siena

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STEFANO BENNI (1947–) Stefano Benni began his literary career in 1976 with a collection of comic short stories, Bar Sport. Like its companion volumes, Bar Sport 2000 (1997) and the surrealist stories of Il bar sotto il mare (The Bar Beneath the Sea, 1987), this book subordinates plot to descriptions of curious and unusual characters. Since then, Benni has expanded his range of literary production to include novels, plays, poetry, as well as nonfiction, in particular journalistic writing, the genre he had practiced before devoting himself to fiction. In fact, to this day Benni is a regular contributor to La repubblica, Il manifesto, and other periodicals. In spite of the multifaceted nature of his writing, all of Benni’s works betray an underlying pessimism about contemporary society, which he believes is preoccupied by a consumerism encouraged by the mass media and justified as a mode of progress. In his first novel, Terra! (Terra!, 1983) he explores the philosophical possibilities of science fiction, and in L’ultima lacrima (The Last Tear, 1994) he satirizes technological exuberance. Consumerism leads to populism and goes hand in hand with political opportunism, and in this context political leaders soon abandon the principles of democracy and install authoritarian regimes. In this sense, Benni’s earlier texts seem to be visionary insofar as they announce the rise of media mogul Silvio Berlusconi in Italian politics. In the dystopian future of novels such as Elianto (1996), holding a deviant opinion is no longer acceptable and leads to exclusion, confinement and other forms of punishment. The novel’s repeated slogan, ‘‘Siate Maggioranza’’ (Be the Majority), is obviously meant to recall ‘‘Think majority,’’ the political slogan of 1984, George Orwell’s vision of a terrifying future. While it takes place in a futuristic world, Elianto is easily recognizable as a darkly parodic version of Western society and in particular of Italy, here called Tristalia. Benni stubbornly rejects the protocols of the realist novel, appropriating tropes and situations from low literary genres ranging from science fiction to fantasy, as well as from popular culture, including television and pop music. Some recurrent patterns can be detected in Benni’s novels. The inhabitants of his fictional worlds can be fantastic

creatures, such as the metamorphic ghosts of Spiriti (Ghosts, 2000), or fictional characters come to life, as in Achille pie` veloce (Fleet-Footed Achilles, 2003). The young protagonists are assisted by a host of curious characters who are usually endowed with special gifts, like Eliant’s high IQ, the great soccer skills of Memorino, Lucifero and Ali in La compagnia dei celestini (The Fellowship of the Celestinians, 1992) or the incredible powers of Salvo in Spiriti. However, their gifts can make them vulnerable to the totalitarian regimes that want to eliminate them for their deviant nature. The protagonists are always children, usually boys, on a quest to save the world from decay. The outcome of their rebellion is often uncertain, and even the more positive ending of recent works like Saltatempo (Timejumper, 2001) and Achille pie` veloce do not overcome an underlying pessimism. Notwithstanding this pessimism, the dominant tone of Benni’s fiction is comic. A great parodist, Benni is especially amusing in his verbal puns (indeed, character names are often the result of a play on words, as ‘‘Edgar Allan Disney’’ in La compagnia dei celestini). Equally comic is the wordplay issuing from different forms of contamination and multilinguism: Words are constantly contracted or combined with each other; different registers, discourses, and languages (French, Latin, and English) intermingle, often in distorted transcriptions. Benni’s discourse is thus familiar and yet bewildering; it creates both a sense of distance from reality while capturing the complexity of its multiracial and multimedia dimensions. Finally, Benni frequently resorts to a literary device also typical of the comic—combining inventories, repetitions, and lists at various textual levels, a compositional strategy Benni shares with Italo Calvino, from whom he also derives the frequent metatextual interventions of the narrator. Indeed, for all their structural and thematic similarities to popular fiction, Benni’s novels are carefully constructed texts, with a high degree of intertextuality and a complex paratextual apparatus that includes lists of characters, epigraphs, and warnings to the reader. In this sense, Benni is one of the most accomplished representatives of postmodern fiction in Italian literature. 179

STEFANO BENNI

Biography

Plays

Born in Bologna, 12 August 1947. Started his career as a journalist writing for La repubblica, Il manifesto, Panorama, cultural journals (Micromega), humor magazines (Cuore) and others. Scriptwriter and director, Musica per vecchi animali, 1989. Has worked in the theater as a performer of his own and other authors’ works. Organizes seminars and courses on various artistic forms on a regular basis. Since 1999 he has been artistic consultant for the international jazz festival Rumori mediterranei. INGE LANSLOTS Selected Works Fiction Bar Sport, 1976. Terra!, 1983; as Terra!, translated by Annapaola Cancogni, 1985. I meravigliosi animali di Stranilandia, 1984. Comici spaventati guerrieri, 1986. Il bar sotto il mare, 1987. Baol: una tranquilla notte di regime, 1990. La compagnia dei celestini, 1992. L’ultima lacrima, 1994. Elianto, 1996. Bar Sport 2000, 1997. Spiriti, 2000. Saltatempo, 2001. Achille pie` veloce, 2003. Margherita Dolcevita, 2003.

Teatro, 1999. Teatro 2, 2003.

Nonfiction La tribu` di Moro seduto, 1977. Non siamo Stato noi, 1978. Il Benni furioso, 1979. Spettacoloso, 1981. Il ritorno del Benni furioso, 1986. Leggere, scrivere, disobbedire (with Goffredo Fofi), 1999. Dottor Niu`. Corsivi diabolici per tragedie evitabili, 2001.

Further Reading Boria, Monica, ‘‘Echoes of Counterculture in Stefano Benni’s Humour,’’ in Romance Studies 23, no. 1 (2005): 29–42. La Porta, Filippo, La nuova narrativa italiana. Travestimenti e stili di fine secolo, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995. Paternoster, Annick, ‘‘Terra! di Stefano Benni: Viaggio nella leggerezza cosmica,’’ in Piccole finzioni con importanza: Valori della narrativa italiana contemporanea, edited by Nathalie Roelens and Inge Lanslots, Ravenna: Longo, 1993. Perissinotto, Cristina, ‘‘The Pen and the Prophet,’’ in Romance Languages Annual 8 (1996): 287–291. Perissinotto, Cristina, ‘‘Di vincitori, di vinti e d’idee: Fanciulli e filosofia nei romanzi di Stefano Benni,’’ in Romance Languages Annual 9 (1997): 300–304. Tani, Stefano, Il romanzo del ritorno. Dal romanzo medio degli anni sessanta alla giovane narrativa degli anni ottanta, Milan: Mursia, 1990. Ward, David, ‘‘Stefano Benni,’’ in Italian Novelists since World War II, 1965–1995, edited by Augustus Pallotta, vol. 196 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1999.

Poetry ‘‘Prima o poi l’amore arriva,’’ 1981. ‘‘Ballate,’’ 1991. ‘‘Blues in sedici: ballata della citta` dolente,’’ 1998.

ANGELO BEOLCO See Il Ruzzante (Angelo Beolco)

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GIOVANNI BERCHET

GIOVANNI BERCHET (1783–1851) The figure and works of Giovanni Berchet fully represent Italian Romanticism for their theoretical commitment, their polemical tendencies, and the undeniable evocative energy present in his poetry. His production is articulated on the one hand through theoretical writings and articles that appeared in the Milanese periodical Il conciliatore, and on the other through compositions in verse varying in nature. Critically speaking, his most significant is Sul ‘‘Cacciatore feroce’’ e sulla ‘‘Eleonora’’ di Goffredo Augusto Bu¨rger. Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo al suo figliuolo (On the ‘‘Ferocious Hunter’’ and ‘‘Eleonora’’ by Gottfried August Bu¨rger: A Semi-Serious Letter from Grisostomo to His Son, 1816), which, although it cannot be considered a complete expression of his poetics, outlined the main principles and, above all, laid the foundations of Italian Romantic thought. Writing in the wake of the impressions raised by Madame de Stae¨l’s article ‘‘Sulla maniera e l’utilita` delle traduzioni’’ (On The Manner and Use of Translations), which appeared in 1816 in the first issue of the Milanese periodical La biblioteca italiana, Berchet clearly distinguished between the poetry of the ancients and that of the moderns, affirming that the poetry of the former was dead since audiences could no longer relate to the themes of mythology. The poetry of the moderns, conversely, must have truth and history as sources, must use a living and spoken language, and must provoke immediate interest. The ancients, however, were not to be ignored: They remained an example to follow, if it were true that Homer and Virgil were considered ‘‘Romantics’’ because they were able to write poetry about subjects that, in their time, were alive in the collective sensibility. The true poet, for Berchet, was the one who faced life with a ‘‘modern’’ soul, rejecting the imitation of the classics: The polemic, then, was not against the ‘‘classics,’’ but against the ‘‘classicists.’’ In the new artistic vision, what predominated was the concept of literature as an instrument for the education of the people, the only true recipient of art. Found at the opposite end of the spectrum were those whom Berchet defined ‘‘Parigini’’ (Parisians) and ‘‘ottentotti’’ (Hottentots): The former, dominated by an excessive refinement, were no longer capable

of abandoning themselves to sentiment; the latter, conversely, lived an existence deprived of the light of the spirit. The fictitious author of Lettera semiseria is a certain Giovanni Grisostomo, a kind of sage (the symbolic name is indicative), who wrote to his son in answer to a question on the usefulness of foreign literature. The adjective ‘‘semiserious’’ is appropriate because Grisostomo, at the end of the letter, jokingly pretended to retract his own affirmations. The satiric pamphlet, which distanced itself from the classical tradition, took on notable importance within Italian literature, which was strongly linked to models from the ancient world. For his stance against an entrenched cultural system, Berchet anticipated in some ways the extremist positions of the Futurist avant-garde a century later. Among his contemporaries, Berchet felt most vividly the need for a renewal of lyric poetry from both a thematic and stylistic point of view. His work in this field has a prevalent patriotic inclination, beginning with the poem ‘‘I profughi di Parga’’ (Parga’s Refugees, 1823), written following an event that shook public opinion: England’s cession of the Greek city of Parga to the Turks. Similarly, in the other long poem ‘‘Fantasie’’ (Fantasies, 1829), he imagined an Italian exile far from his homeland as he remembered its former grandeur, comparing it to the misery of the present. In the collection Romanze (Romances, 1829), the themes were taken from contemporary life and the poems narrated important events: The protagonist of ‘‘Clarina’’ is a Lombard woman who, after having married an Austrian man, realizes with horror that she will be the mother of a child who is an enemy of her homeland; in ‘‘Romito del Cenisio’’ (The Hermit of Mount Cenis), a tourist admires Italy’s beauty but, when he learns that the country is held under foreign domination, he declares that he prefers to these sun-drenched lands the dark, foggy, but free landscapes of his own country; in ‘‘Giulia,’’ the agony of a Lombard mother who watches her son leave as a soldier for Austria is narrated. In order to present these themes in poetry, the author used the meter of the ode and of the canzonetta, but he infused them with a new musicality, utilizing a realistic language that was in tune with the basic themes presented and, above all, 181

GIOVANNI BERCHET made them accessible to a large public. Berchet’s translations, such as Vecchie romanze spagnuole (Old Spanish Romances, 1837), held more than marginal interest and, although not yet sufficiently studied, can be considered one of his most stylistically convincing works. Praised by his contemporaries, Berchet was initially judged exclusively in light of the political and patriotic value of his production. Later, the stylistic and linguistic novelties of his poetry were highlighted. More recently, attention has been focused on the sociological dimension of his work, extolling his profuse commitment in the research for a new audience. Among literary critics, the first to recognize the artistic value of Berchet’s patriotic poetry, detaching it from purely political considerations, was Giosue` Carducci, who lauded its ‘‘nervous versification,’’ ‘‘pictorial precision of the images,’’ and ‘‘substantial agitation of the representation’’ (‘‘Goffredo Mameli,’’ 1937).

Selected Works Collections Opere, edited by Marcello Turchi, Naples: Rossi, 1972.

Poetry ‘‘I funerali,’’ 1808. ‘‘Amore,’’ 1809. ‘‘I profughi di Parga,’’ 1823. ‘‘Romanze,’’ 1829. ‘‘Fantasie,’’ 1829. ‘‘Poesie,’’ 1830.

Letters Lettere alla marchesa Costanza Arconati, edited by Robert van Nuffel, 2 vols., 1956–1963.

Traduzioni Thomas Gray, Il bardo, 1807. Oliver Goldsmith, Il vicario di Wakefield, 1810. Vecchie romanze spagnuole, 1837.

Essay Sul ‘‘Cacciatore feroce’’ e sulla ‘‘Eleonora’’ di Goffredo Augusto Bu¨rger. Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo al suo figliuolo, 1816.

Biography Born in Milan on December 23, 1783, the son of Federico, a tradesman of Swiss origin; completed classical studies in Milan and in 1810 entered in the bureaucratic apparatus of the Italian kingdom; from 1814 on, he was in the Austrian administration where he was entrusted with translating duties; took part in the polemic against the classicists, and was among the first supporters in Italy of the Romanticist movement, 1816; between 1818 and 1819 collaborated with Il conciliatore, for which he wrote articles on literature; became a member of the ‘‘Carboneria,’’ 1820, and was involved in the uprisings of 1821 against Austria; was forced to flee first to Switzerland, then to France and finally to London, where he remained until 1829 and where he published his most famous poetic pieces; became tutor in the house of the Marquis Giuseppe Arconati, moving with him to Belgium, France, and Germany; returned to Italy, 1845; participated in the revolts of 1848 in Milan, taking part in the provisory government; at the return of the Austrians, sought refuge in Tuscany and then in Piedmont, relocating definitively in Turin, where he was elected deputy to the Subalpine Parliament as a moderate. Died in Turin, following a serious illness, on December 23, 1851. PAOLO QUAZZOLO See also: Romanticism

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Further Reading Bertelli, Italo, L’itinerario umano e poetico di Giovanni Berchet, Pisa: Giardini, 2005. Cadioli, Alberto, Introduzione a Berchet, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1991. Carducci, Giosue`, ‘‘Goffredo Mameli,’’ in Opere. Edizione nazionale, vol. 18, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1937. D’Ambrosio Mazziotti, Anna Maria, ‘‘L’apprendistato poetico di G. Berchet,’’ in Critica letteraria, 12, no. 2 (1984): 237–263. D’Aronco, Gianfranco, Berchet e la nuova poesia ‘‘popolare’’: guida a una lettura di Grisostomo, Udine: Del Bianco, 1979. Floris, Gonaria, ‘‘All’origine del dibattito romantico: Sapienza e retorica dei ‘Manifesti,’’’ in Yearbook of Italian Studies, 7 (1988): 43–58. Mauri, Paolo, ‘‘La letteratura dell’Italia statuale regionale. La Lombardia,’’ in Letteratura italiana. Storia e geografia, vol. 2, L’eta` moderna, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 1989. Morace, Aldo Maria, Il raggio rifranto: percorsi della letteratura romantica, Messina: Sicania, 1990. Portinari, Folco, ‘‘I poeti romantici,’’ in Storia della civilta` letteraria italiana, vol. 4, Il Settecento e il primo Ottocento, edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, Turin: UTET, 1992. Scotti, Mario, and Valerio Marucci, ‘‘Romanticismo europeo e Romanticismo italiano,’’ in Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 7, Il primo Ottocento, edited by Enrico Malato, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1998.

CARLO BERNARI (CARLO BERNARD)

CARLO BERNARI (CARLO BERNARD) (1909–1992) A self-made man with no formal schooling after grade seven, Carlo Bernari grew up in Naples and was active in the socialist intellectual circles that saw debates on Crocean idealism, Lukacsian and Marxist aesthetics, avant-garde art, fascism, and political engagement in the arts. His favorite writers were Andre´ Gide, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann, and he read extensively books on philosophy and history. With the help of his best friend, painter and art critic, Paolo Ricci, he acquired an impressive knowledge of art and in particular of Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, and French surrealism. This is evident in the recurring painterly descriptions found in his works, from the 1930s to the 1950s, where colors, light effects, and shadows play a major role. The author’s cultural and political background as well as his views on the social function of literature in unveiling what he defined as ‘‘la realta` della realta’’ (literally ‘‘the reality of the reality’’ but also referring to the hidden contradictions that lie under superficial appearances) are reflected throughout his writings. The essay ‘‘Sulla realta`’’ (On Reality) appears together with several other writings on art and aesthetics and on the genesis of his own novels in Non gettate via la scala (Do Not Throw Away the Ladder, 1973). His first publication, the Manifesto dell’ UDA (Manifesto of the Union of Destructive Activists, 1929), written in collaboration with art critic Paolo Ricci and architect Gugliemo Peirce, advocated the revolutionary features of avant-garde art and a closer relationship between science and the arts. Bernari’s attention to historical and cultural phenomena is at the base of his entire work that scrutinizes the conditioning elements of sociopolitical institutions on all aspects of daily life. Some early critics spoke of Bernari’s excessive eclecticism and experimentalism ranging from realism and naturalism present in his first novels, from Tre operai (Three Workers, 1934) to Quasi un secolo (Almost a Century, 1940) and short stories, Siamo tutti bambini (We Are All Children, 1951) and Per cause imprecisate (For Indeterminate Causes, 1965) to

elements of Bontempellian magical realism in Il pedaggio si paga all’altra sponda (The Toll Is Paid on the Other Side, 1943) and Tre casi sospetti (Three Suspicious Cases, 1946), psychological love stories, as in Amore amaro (Bitter Love, 1958), metafiction and detective fiction, as in Un foro nel parabrezza (A Hole in the Windshield, 1971), Tanto la rivoluzione non scoppiera` (The Revolution Will Not Take Place, 1976), and Il giorno degli assassinii (The Day of the Murders, 1980). Some critics (Eugenio Ragni, for example) have instead underlined Bernari’s coherence in his consistent examination, for nearly half a century, of the notion of attesa (the ‘‘endless sense of waiting’’ that dominates in most of his early works), and of the conflicts between individuals and sociopolitical structures, as he unveils hidden contradictions (the ‘‘reality of the reality’’) in our society (Ragni, Invito alla lettura di Bernari, 1978). His first novel, Tre operai, published by Cesare Zavattini, is a milestone in contemporary Italian fiction both as a forerunner of Neorealism and of the literary trend ‘‘Letteratura e industria’’ (Literature and Industry). Thirty years later, with Era l’anno del sole quieto (It Was the Year of the Quiet Sun, 1964), Bernari was to write once again about workers; this time in relation to the failures of industrialization in Southern Italy. Written during 1928–1929, Tre operai combines historical background, sociopolitical criticism, free indirect discourse, Neapolitan dialect, symbolism, and cinematic zooming techniques in focusing on landscapes and characters. There are no touristy postcard pictures in Bernari’s Naples, afflicted with a polluted sea, rainy days, unemployment, and factory strikes. The unstable political realities of the time provide the background for the economic and sentimental failures of the three workers Anna, Teodoro, and Marco. In Inchiesta sul Neorealismo (1950), Carlo Bo pointed out the importance of Tre operai and was instrumental in the republication of the novel by Mondadori. Bernari adds the ‘‘Nota 65’’ to the 1965 reprint of the novel in which he explains the genesis of his first novel 183

CARLO BERNARI (CARLO BERNARD) and the sociohistorical and cultural ambience that inspired him to write. The ‘‘Nota 65’’ will accompany all subsequent editions. In over 30 published texts, not including his numerous pieces of journalism, Bernari has examined a variety of aspects of Italian life such as fear under fascism—see Tre casi sospetti and Prologo alle tenebre (Prologue to Darkness, 1947)—centuries old feudal social structures Quasi un secolo and Domani e poi domani (Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 1957), deep-rooted bureaucracy, corrupt institutions, failures of industrialization (Era l’anno del sole quieto), terrorism in the 1970s (Tanto la rivoluzione non scoppiera` and Il giorno degli assassinii) and, above all, the eternal conflict between individuals and social institutions. All of his fiction, even the most fantastic stories like in Il pedaggio si paga all’altra sponda and Tre casi sospetti prove to be deeply rooted in historic and social realism. His antifascist novel Prologo alle tenebre contains numerous autobiographical elements and references to well-known intellectuals who fought fascism in Naples. In the shorter revised version, with the new title Le radiose giornate (The Radiant Days, 1969), the names of artists and intellectuals appear without acronyms and the message about the contradictions surrounding the characters is much more clear. As Giuseppe Amoroso shows, the revision also provides evidence of how the author, in rewriting this and other novels, was constantly working on his style, language and narrative techniques (Sull’elaborazione dei romanzi contemporanei, 1970). And this may be a reason why critics found his work too eclectic. The author has often displayed a love-hate relationship with his native city, and Naples is present as a character even when it is not mentioned, as illustrated in Era l’anno del sole quieto and Il giorno degli assassinii. He detested the notion of theatrical napolitanita` (Neapolitan way of life) that surfaces for example in Eduardo De Filippo’s theater but loved to write about the dramas that can be witnessed in the streets of Naples. Vesuvio e pane (Vesuvius and Bread, 1952), Bibbia napoletana (Neapolitan Bible, 1960), and Napoli silenzio e grida (Naples Silence and Cries, 1977) provide some of his best accounts of people and events in his cities, from the Fascist era to the immediate postwar days. In a war-torn Naples occupied by the Allies and on the eve of voting on the referendum in 1946, the dramas of several poor families unfold in Speranzella (Little Hope, 1949)—winner of the Premio Viareggio in 1950. The novel shows 184

great linguistic and stylistic merit (especially in the harmonious fusion of Neapolitan dialect with standard Italian) as well as being an entertaining and moving story of poor people divided between returning to the monarchy and voting for a republic. The social plights and contradictions of the entire mezzogiorno (the Italian South), in an endless state of ‘‘waiting,’’ appear in several of Bernari’s novels but especially in Quasi un secolo Domani e poi domani, and Era l’anno del sole quieto. Tanto la rivoluzione non scoppiera` and Il giorno degli assassinii are two fascinating mystery-detective fictions, in the style of Leonardo Sciascia, that denounce the political situation during the 1970s, when black and red brigades terrorized Italy. Four months before suffering a stroke Bernari completed Il grande letto (The Big Bed, 1988) an autobiographical novel that revisits his days growing up in Naples and the antifascist activities narrated in Prologo alle tenebre. Bernari’s novels have resisted labeling and classification, and with few exceptions his role in contemporary Italian literature has not been explored fully by academics, but it has instead attracted wide attention by reviewers in newspapers and journals who have recognized his skills as writer and witness of postwar social changes. His major novels have appeared in French, Russian, German, and Spanish. The author’s opus was donated to the Archives of Twentieth Century Authors at the University of Rome. The first international congress paying tribute to Carlo Bernari took place, in Rome, at the Casa delle Letterature in October 2002.

Biography Born in Naples on 13 October 1909. 1922: expelled from school. 1926–1933: with his close friends Paolo Ricci and Guglielmo Peirce participated in Neapolitan cultural activities that took him close to leftist artists and intellectuals such as Antonio Ambrosio, Ugo De Feo, Franco Cangiullo, and Carlo Cocchia. 1930: short trip to Paris with Paolo Ricci. Meets Andre´ Breton and RibemontDessaignes. 1932–1938: while remaining active in cultural circles performs odd jobs including journalism and helping with the family dye and drycleaning business. 1939: moves to Milan. Becomes editor of Il Tempo and Milano Sera and a close friend of the publisher Arnaldo Mondandori. 1939: Marries Marcella Palance, the lifelong companion who will bear him three sons. 1941–1943: serves in the Italian army as a journalist. 1943: moves

CARLO BERNARI (CARLO BERNARD) permanently to Rome. His home often becomes a meeting place for writers and artists hiding from fascist authorities. 1953–1962: his diversified writing career intensifies as he works on essays, newspapers, fiction, and film scripts. 1955: goes to China as a correspondent for L’Europeo. 1962: awarded an Italian Oscar for the script of Nanny Loy’s Le quattro giornate di Napoli. 1968: lecture tour in United States (Los Angeles, Buffalo, New York City). 1970–1988: regular contributor to the cultural page of the daily Il Mattino of Naples. 1988: a stroke leaves him speechless and unable to write. 1992: dies in Rome, 22 October 1992. ROCCO CAPOZZI Selected Works Fiction Tre operai, 1934. Quasi un secolo, 1940. Il pedaggio si paga all’altra sponda, 1943. Prologo alle tenebre, 1947. Speranzella, 1949. Vesuvio e pane, 1952. Domani e poi domani, 1957. Amore amaro, 1958. Bibbia napoletana, 1960. Era l’anno del sole quieto, 1964. Le radiose giornate, 1969. Un foro nel parabrezza, 1971. Tanto la rivoluzione non scoppiera`, 1976. Il giorno degli assassinii, 1980. Il grande letto, 1988. L’ombra del suicidio: Lo strano Conserti, 1993. Gli stracci, 1994.

Short Stories ‘‘Tre casi sospetti,’’ 1946. ‘‘Siamo tutti bambini,’’ 1951. ‘‘Per cause imprecisate,’’ 1965. ‘‘Alberone eroe a altri racconti non esemplari,’’ 1971. ‘‘Napoli silenzio e grida,’’ 1977. ‘‘Dal Tevere al Po,’’ 1980. ‘‘Romanzesco ma non troppo,’’ 1992.

Poetry ‘‘Ventisei cose in versi,’’ 1977. ‘‘Il cronista giudizioso,’’ 1979.

Essays Manifesto dell’UDA, 1929. Il gigante Cina, 1957. Non gettate via la scala, 1973. Non invidiate la loro sorte, 1991.

Film Scripts I due sergenti, 1936. Sul ponte dei sospiri, 1952. Terza liceo, 1953. Le quattro giornate di Napoli, 1962. L’immorale, 1966. Un foro nel parabrezza, 1983.

Theater Via Rasella non passa per via Fani, 1981.

Further Reading Accrocca, Emilio Filippo, Ritratti su misura, Venice: Il sodalizio, 1960. Amoroso, Giuseppe, Sull’elaborazione dei romanzi contemporanei, Milan: Mursia, 1970. Bernard, Daniela (editor), Omaggio a Carlo Bernari, special issue of Nord e Sud, 47, no. 6 (2000). Bo, Carlo (editor), Inchiesta sul Neorealismo, Rome: Edizioni RAI, 1950. Capozzi, Rocco, ‘‘Myth Reality and Theatricality in Carlo Bernari,’’ in Forum Italicum, 13, no. 3 (Fall 1979): 231–248. Capozzi, Rocco, Bernari. Tra fantasia e realta`. Naples: Societa` Editrice Napoletana, 1984. Capozzi, Rocco, ‘‘Arti visive e nuova oggettivita` nel primo Bernari,’’ in Forum Italicum, 25, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 140–162. D’Ambrosio, Matteo, I circumvisioniti a Napoli, Naples: CUEN, 1996. Infusino, Gianni, Napoli da lontano, Naples: Societa` Editrice Napoletana, 1981. Mauro, Walter, ‘‘Carlo Bernari’’ in I Contemporanei, vol. 2, Milan: Marzorati, 1963. Pesce, Emilio, Bernari, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1970. Ragni, Eugenio, Tre operai e pagine di altri romanzi, Milan: Mondadori, 1976. Ragni, Eugenio, Invito alla lettura di Bernari, Milan: Mursia, 1978. Silvi, Nicola, Pretesto Bernari, Rome: Casa Editrice Stella, 1982. Spagnoletti, Giacinto, Scrittori per un secolo, Milan: Marzorati, 1974. Toscani, Claudio, La voce e il testo, Milan: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1985.

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FRANCESCO BERNI

FRANCESCO BERNI (1497 OR 1498–1535) Born in a poor, though noble family in a small town in Tuscany, Berni received a humanist education in Florence and then, in his late teens, moved to Rome in search of employment. In the elegant world of Leonine Rome not only did he find a good position and supportive friends, but he also began to approach life from a rather carefree and nonconformist angle. Casting aside his earlier sophisticated Latin love lyrics (carmina) in the style of Catullus, he now drew pleasure and garnered fame from his facility in composing burlesque poetry that ridiculed the sins of the age or proclaimed the glories of the banal. A hint of his future flowering as a comic writer can already be gleaned in his first literary work, La Catrina (Cathrine, ca. 1516), a rustic drama in ottava rima that clearly points to his lively interest in the popular language of the lower classes and to the Tuscan tradition of burlesque poetry. Berni was heir to a long-standing medieval comic vein in vernacular literature represented by such writers as Rustico di Filippo, Cecco Angiolieri, Domenico di Giovanni, called ‘‘il Burchiello,’’ Luigi Pulci, and, more recently, Lorenzo de’ Medici himself. While following in the path of previous comic poets, Berni was also pointing the way for future ones and making himself the leader of a new tradition of nonconformist poetry that was to include, among others, Anton Francesco Grazzini, Agnolo Firenzuola, Giovanni Della Casa, Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, and Annibal Caro. As prolific as he was humorous, Berni thrived in the frivolous and risque´ atmosphere of the first Medici papacy. During the second Medici papacy, and while in the service of the reforming bishop of Verona, Berni blossomed and produced most of his literary corpus. He composed capitoli, sonnets, and sonetti caudati (sonnets with a tail) that are generally satiric or polemical, and always comical. The editio princeps of his collected works appeared posthumously in Venice in 1538. In the years that followed, his poetry would be republished many times both by itself and together with that of his major contemporaries. The bulk of his poetry is still not available in English translation. While in the service of Bishop Giovanni Matteo Giberti, Berni began to revise Matteo Maria 186

Boiardo’s masterpiece, the incomplete epic poem Orlando innamorato (Roland in Love). His aim was to cleanse it of its ‘‘Lombard’’ blemishes (Boiardo came from the lower Po valley near Ferrara) and give it an elegant Florentine makeover. Berni thus Tuscanized the ‘‘Lombard’’ vocabulary and idiomatic expressions present in the original and then added over 250 moralizing and autobiographical stanzas of his own to the text, thus carrying out a complete remake (rifacimento) of Boiardo’s epic. While Berni’s contemporaries, and scholars as late as the nineteenth century, strongly favoured it, modern scholars have cast it aside and look at it only within the context of the wider sixteenth-century debate on the Questione della lingua. Berni’s far more important contribution to Italian literature lies, instead, in his comic poetry. His vitality and productivity in this field quickly lent his name to a new genre—bernesco (Bernesque poetry). His poetry focuses on the quotidian. He composed capitoli in terza rima on such everyday objects as needles, jelly, artichokes, or peaches; he touched the sensitive with his verses on disease and the current scourge of syphilis; he descended into the vulgar with capitoli in praise of chamber pots and urinals; and he did not hesitate to leap eagerly in the sexually risque´ with his works in praise of young male servants and his overt dallying with lust (desire is too light a word in his case). Though often in the first person, his poetry is not usually, or necessarily, autobiographical. In spite of his moral and literary nonconformity, Berni’s poetry is firmly based on a very refined sense of language and a profound love for the idiom of his native land. Linguistically, his verses are of the highest quality. His stile bernesco revels in lexical virtuosity, frolics liberally with wordplays and puns, brings to the page the lively idioms and crisp spoken language of the masses, and never holds back when the possibility of an obscene allusion to sexual activities or bodily functions might arise. In so doing, Berni tilts at the windmill of sixteenth-century Petrarchism and takes issue with the current literary fashion. His 1526 Dialogo contro i poeti (Dialogue Against Poets) challenges the Renaissance theory of imitation and the perceived

FRANCESCO BERNI prophetic role of poetry (two ideas strongly advanced by Bembo and the Bembisti) to declare, instead, that poetry is nothing more than entertainment, simply a literary diversion to idle away time. This might be a fine claim, but Berni himself puts the lie to it. In spite of his linguistic and sexual nonconformity, he remains a strongly moral individual (albeit not in a Christian sense) who uses his poetry to advance a much more profound agenda than mere diversion. His satiric barbs at the corruption of the clergy, at the intellectual indolence of the learned, at the servility of the poets, at the pomposity of courtiers, at Adrian’s dourness and Clement’s indecisiveness, all point to a profound sense of irony in the recognition of the inconstancy and selfishness that is human life. Ultimately, his poetry proposes a detached, perhaps even stoic understanding of human nature, and challenges the reader to shed the trappings of fatuous servility in favour of a more dynamic and direct connection with life. Clearly one of the enfants terribles of his century, Berni remains still largely unknown and unexplored today. Aside from his contribution to literature by way of the Bernesque style, he is remembered also for his epigrammatic summary of Michelangelo’s poetry in a capitolo addressed to the Venetian painter Fra Bastiano del Piombo, where he writes: ‘‘tacete unquanco, pallide viole / e liquidi cristalli e fiere snelle: / e’ dice cose e voi dite parole’’ (be quiet at last, pale violets / and watery crystals and lithe beasts: / he says things and you say words).

Biography Born in 1497 or 1498 in the small town of Lamporecchio (just west of Pistoia), in a noble but impoverished family. His father, a notary, sends the boy to Florence to be educated. In 1517 Berni moves to Rome and enters the service of Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, a distant relative. At his patron’s death in 1520, he transfers to the cardinal’s nephew, the Apostolic Protonotary Angelo Dovizi. In 1522, on the election of Pope Adrian VI, who had inspired some of Berni’s most lively and virulent satires, he leaves Rome for a safe haven in the abbey of San Giovanni in Venere, in the Abruzzi regions, at that time administered by his patron. With Adrian’s passing Berni returns to Rome (end of 1523) and becomes secretary to Giovanni Matteo Giberti, bishop of Verona and former datary to Leo X. In the years that follow, Berni travels extensively in the bishop’s service and

divides his life between Verona and Rome. In 1527 he witnesses the Sack of Rome. In 1531 he leaves the bishop’s service and spends a year in Padua completing his revisions and rewriting of Boiardo’s epic poem Orlando innamorato. Returning to Florence, Berni enters into the service of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici (1532) who, the following year, appoints him a canon of the Florentine cathedral (1533). On 26 May 1535, Berni dies under mysterious circumstances in the palazzo of Cardinal Innocenzo Cybo, apparently a victim of poisoning. KONRAD EISENBICHLER See also: Pietro Bembo, Petrarchism Selected Works Collections Tutte le opere [...] in terza rima, nuovamente con somma diligentia stampate, Venice: Curzio Navo et fratelli, 1538, in 8 . Opere burlesche. Con annotazioni, e con un saggio delle sue lettere piacevoli [by Anton Maria Salvini], Milan: Societa` tipografica de’ Classici italiani, 1806. Opere, Milan: G. Daelli, 1864; 2nd ed. Milan: Sonzogno, 1874. Rime, poesie latine, e lettere edite e inedite, edited by Antonio Virgili, Florence: Successori Le Monnier, 1885. Poesie e prose, edited by Ezio Chiorboli, Geneva and Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1934. Rime facete, edited by Ettore Bruni, Milan: Rizzoli, 1959. Rime, edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, Turin: Einaudi, 1969; selection in Italian Poets of the Renaissance, translated by Joseph Tusiani, Long Island, NY: Baroque Press, 1971 (contains seven poems). Rime, edited by Danilo Romei, Milan: Mursia, 1985. Rime burlesche, edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, Milan: Rizzoli, 1991. Carmina, Turin: Edizione RES, 1995. (also includes the carmina of Baldassare Castiglione and Giovanni Della Casa).

Poetry ‘‘Capitolo del gioco della primiera col comento di messer Pietropaulo da San Chirico,’’ Rome: F. Minitio Calvo, 1526, in 4 . ‘‘Le terze rime del Bernia et del Mauro novamente con ogni diligentia et corretione stampate,’’ Venice: Curzio Navo, 1537, in 8 . ‘‘Sonetti in diversi sugetti, et a diverse persone scritti,’’ Ferrara: Scipion et fratelli, 1537, in 8 . ‘‘I capitoli del Mauro et del Bernia et altri authori nuovamente con ogni diligentia et correttione stampati,’’ Venice: Curzio Navo, 1537, in 8 . Matteo Maria Boiardo, ‘‘Orlando innamorato nuovamente composto da M. Francesco Berni Fiorentino,’’ Venice: Heredi di Lucantonio Giunta, 1541, in 4 . Matteo Maria Boiardo, ‘‘Orlando innamorato, composto gia` dal Signor Matteo Maria Bojardo et rifatto tutto di

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FRANCESCO BERNI nuovo da M. Francesco Berni,’’ Milan: Andrea Calvo, 1542, in 4 . ‘‘Il primo libro dell’opere burlesche di Francesco Berni, di Gio. della Casa, del Varchi,’’ Florence: Bernardo Giunta, 1550, in 8 . ‘‘Il secondo libro dell’opere burlesche di m. Francesco Berni, del Molza, di m. Bino, di m. Lodouico Martelli. Di Mattio Francesi, dell’Aretino, et di diuersi autori. Nuouamente posto in luce, et con diligenza stampato,’’ Florence: Eredi di Berrnardo Giunta il vecchio, 1555, in 8 . ‘‘Carmina quinque Hetruscorum poetarum. Nunc primum in lucem edita,’’ Florence: Giunta, 1562, in 8 (includes: Benedetto Accolti, Fabio Segni, Francesco Vinta, Francesco Berni, Benedetto Varchi).

Theater La Catrina, atto scenico rvsticale, Florence: Valente Panizi e compagni, 1567, in 8 .

Other Dialogo contra i poeti, Rome: Francesco Minizio Calvo, 1526, in 4 . Ventisei lettere famigliari. Edite ed inedite, Venice: Alvisopoli, 1833.

Further Reading Allodoli, Ettore, ‘‘Il pensiero del Berni,’’ in La Rinascita 6, alt. no. 29 (1943): 3–18. Bettella, Patrizia, ‘‘Discourse of Resistance: The Parody of Feminine Beauty in Berni, Doni and Firenzuola,’’ in MLN, 113, no. 1 (1998): 192–203. Clements, Robert J., ‘‘Berni and Michelangelo’s Bernesque Verse,’’ in Italica, 41, no. 3 (1964): 266–280. Corsaro, Antonio, Il poeta e l’eretico. Francesco Berni e il ‘Dialogo contra i poeti,’ Florence: Le Lettere, 1989. Ferrajoli, Alessandro, ‘‘Due lettere inedite di Francesco Berni,’’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 45 (1905): 67–73.

Longhi, Silvia, ‘‘Le rime di Francesco Berni. Cronologia e strutture del linguaggio burlesco,’’ in Studi di filologia italiana, 34 (1976): 249–299. Reynolds, Anne, ‘‘Francesco Berni: Satire and Criticism in the Italian Sixteenth Century,’’ in Comic Relations: Studies in the Comic, Satire, and Parody, edited by Pavel Petr, David Roberts, and Philip Thomson, Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Reynolds, Anne, ‘‘The Poet in Society: Francesco Berni and Court Life in Cinquecento Rome,’’ in Spunti e ricerche, 4–5 (1988–1989): 51–62. Reynolds, Anne, ‘‘Ambiguities of Apollo and Marsyas: Francesco Berni and His First Published Work, Dialogo contra i poeti,’’ in Studies in Iconography, 16 (1994): 191–224. Reynolds, Anne, ‘‘The Earliest Editions of Dialogo contra i poeti by Francesco Berni (1497?–1535),’’ in Bulletin du bibliophile, 2 (1996): 341–360. Reynolds, Anne, Renaissance Humanism at the Court of Clement VII: Francesco Berni’s ‘‘Dialogue against Poets,’’ in Context, New York: Garland, 1997 (incl. trans. of the Dialogo contro i poeti). Reynolds, Anne, ‘‘Francesco Berni, Gian Matteo Giberti, and Pietro Bembo: Criticism and Rivalry in Rome in the 1520s,’’ in Italica, 77, no. 3 (2000): 301–310. Sorrentino, Andrea, Francesco Berni: poeta della scapigliatura del Rinascimento, Florence: Sansoni, 1933. Weaver, Elissa, ‘‘The Spurious Text of Francesco Berni’s Rifacimento of Matteo Maria Bojardo’s Orlando Innamorato,’’ in The Journal of Modern Philology, 75, no. 2 (1977): 111–131. Weaver, Elissa, ‘‘Erotic Language and Imagery in Francesco Berni’s Rifacimento,’’ in MLN, 99, no.1 (1984): 80–100. Woodhouse, H.F., Language and Style in a Renaissance Epic: Berni’s Corrections to Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1982.

GIAN LORENZO BERNINI (1598–1680) Gian Lorenzo Bernini is considered the ‘‘director of the Baroque,’’ a title that takes into account his undertakings as architect, sculptor, and painter, as well as the culture of macchinatore dello spettacolo (builder of theatrical machines), creating a comprehensive portrait of a ‘‘composite’’ man in whom there compete different artistic practices. If little remains of Bernini’s work as a painter thanks to the artist’s dissatisfaction with his own work, the 188

almost complete loss of his work in the theater and as a dramatist is due to the conditions of theatrical practices of the time, by definition ephemeral. In biographies and other information collected during Bernini’s lifetime, the artist untiringly narrates his own dramatic and theatrical engagement and the admirable results he attained therefrom. Filippo Baldinucci, Bernini’s contemporary biographer, suggests in his Vita del cavaliere Gio.

GIAN LORENZO BERNINI Lorenzo Bernino (first ed., 1682) that triple excellence in the arts of architecture, sculpture, and design perfectly complemented the artist’s talent for ‘‘composing excellent, ingenious comedies.’’ Besides recalling the inventions of Bernini as set designer, constructor of ‘‘flying cupids,’’ and author of texts, the biographer also remembers his acting skills: ‘‘He also admirably performed all the serious and humorous parts, and in all of the languages that they were performed.’’ Many of his contemporaries testified to Bernini’s multiple abilities in the context of theater. In 1644, John Evelyn famously referred to a theatrical work for which Bernini ‘‘painted the sets, sculpted the statues, invented the stage apparatuses, composed the music, wrote the comedy and built the theater’’ (cited in the Appendix to Fontana di Trevi, 1963). The artist also excelled in the intermediate terrain of creating festivities, from the catafalque for Paolo V Borghese (1622), to the apparatuses for canonizations, to festivities for the infanta of Spain and for the heir apparent of France, to the festive transformations of the hill of Trinita` dei Monti or Piazza Farnese. Bernini recalls, as Chantelou records in his Journal de voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France regarding the artist’s stay in France in 1665, a comedy titled La verita` discoverta dal tempo (Truth Uncovered by Time). This work revealed a more complex idea of the widespread iconography of the Veritas filia Temporis (Time That Reveals Truth), in which time, upon the raising of the curtain, arrives too late: ‘‘It is true that Time reveals Truth, but often it does not reveal it in time.’’ A celebrated sculpture is dedicated to the same theme; it was conceived in the period of Bernini’s dismissal from his previous commissions subsequent to the election of Pope Innocent X in 1644. More significant than marvelous theatrical machinations—floods of the hall restrained just in time, fires, and other simulated cataclysms—is in fact the revelation in another lost comedy, Li due Covielli (The Two Coviellos, 1637), of a mirror-theater behind the curtain, where, at the conclusion of the work, the real public watches a long procession of a fictional audience as it returns home. The parade transforms into a funeral procession for the funeral of the sun. Death makes a brief appearance from behind a final curtain (which quickly closes) on a skeletal horse, representing that ‘‘which breaks with the past tradition of all comedies,’’ as correspondent of the Duke of Modena reported in a description of the play

in 1637 (cited in the Appendix to Fontana di Trevi, 1963). The practice of combining arts and artistic techniques by way of the bel composto (beautiful composition) is representative of Bernini’s undoubtedly theatrical disposition: architecture, sculpture, and painting converge in unitary creations, as in his Roman works, the Cappella Cornaro at Santa Maria della Vittoria, the Cappella Fonseca of San Lorenzo in Lucina, and the Cappella Albertoni of San Francesco a Ripa. But the final project invented by the elderly Bernini surpasses his own previous artistic output, comprising a comprehensive ars moriendi, as Irving Lavin has suggestively shown, to prepare himself for his encounter with the Creator (Bernini and the Unity of Visual Arts, 1980). As far as dramatic literature in the true sense is concerned, only part of one of the more than 20 comedies which, according to sources, Bernini composed, seems to have survived. The existent theatrical work comprises two acts and the beginning of a third. Moreover, this untitled comedy published by two modern editors as Fontana di Trevi and L’impresario was discovered only in the early 1960s. The ample fragment is found in a file of the Bibliothe`que Nationale of Paris contained in a miscellaneous codex, listing the cost of repairing the Fontana di Trevi in 1652. Dated 1643–1644, the comedy translates the author’s creative and practical abilities into the genre of the commedia ridicolosa. Commedia ridicolosa, a genre popular in Rome, is a written comedy performed with masks by amateur players. The protagonist of Bernini’s work is Graziano, machinator in the double sense of constructor of theatrical apparatuses and inventor of comic plots. The Bolognese doctor allows himself to be convinced to write and stage a comedy for which he constructs a machine that simulates the movement of clouds (a device that appears in accounts of plays, as I due Covielli, actually realized by Bernini). Pretending to be a manager, the playwright and painter Cinzio—thanks in part to the shrewdness of the servant Coviello—organizes the spectacle, in order to both comprehend the secret of Graziano’s genius and obtain the good graces of Angelica, his daughter. Particularly vibrant are those scenes dedicated to the theatrical workshop, a space populated by characters of artisans, painters, and various workers. Neither of the two narrative threads concludes decisively, and contrary to the opinion sustained by Franca Angelini in her ‘‘Gian Lorenzo Bernini e la sorpresa del vedere,’’ (1994), it appears implausible 189

GIAN LORENZO BERNINI that this is a completed work. Presumably two acts and a part of the third are missing if the text is conceived in canonical, five-act form, the typical structure of other commedie ridicolose of the period.

Biography Born in Naples, 7 December 1598. Followed his father, Pietro, to Rome, 1606–1607. First relevant commissions came under the protection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, from the Enea, Anchise e Ascanio in fuga da Troia (1618) to the David (1623), to Apollo e Dafne (1622–1623). Architect from 1627, completing the fac¸ade of the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide. Under the protection of Cardinal Barberini (Pope Urban VIII) from 1623, was briefly dismissed after his death and the election of Innocent X in 1644. Completed the Cappella Cornaro in Santa Maria della Vittoria with the famed Santa Teresa in estasi, 1647. There followed the curved fac¸ade of the Palazzo di Montecitorio, 1650; and the Fontana dei Fiumi in Piazza Navona, 1651. Under Pope Alexander VII, began construction of the colonnade and pulpit of St. Peter’s. In 1665, traveled to Paris to design the Louvre (although these plans were not realized). Died in Rome, 28 November 1680. PIERMARIO VESCOVO

See also: Literature of Architecture Selected Works Plays Commedia senza titolo (ca. 1643–1644); as Fontana di Trevi, edited by Cesare D’Onofrio, 1963, as L’impresario, edited by Massimo Ciavolella, 1992; translated by Donald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella, 1985.

Further Reading Angelini, Franca, Il teatro barocco, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1975. Angelini, Franca, ‘‘Gian Lorenzo Bernini e la sorpresa del vedere,’’ in Silvia Carandini (editor), Il valore del falso, Rome: Bulzoni, 1994. Baldinucci, Filippo, Vita del cavaliere Gio. Lorenzo Bernino (1682), edited by S. Samek Ludovici, Milan: Il Milione, 1948. Carandini, Silvia, ‘‘La festa barocca a Roma,’’ in Biblioteca teatrale, 16–17 (1976): 276–308. Chantelou, Fre´art de Paul, Journal de voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France (first ed. in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1877), Paris: Macula, 2001. Fagiolo dell’ Arco,Maurizio, Bernini: Una introduzione al gran teatro del barocco, Rome: Bulzoni, 1976. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Maurizio, Berniniana: Novita` sul regista del Barocco, Milan: Skira, 2002. Lavin, Irving, Bernini and the Unity of Visual Arts, New York-London: Oxford University Press, 1980. Lavin, Irving, Bernini e il Salvatore: La ‘‘buona morte’’ nella Roma del Seicento, Rome: Donzelli, 1998. Molinari, Cesare, Le nozze degli dei, Rome: Bulzoni, 1968.

GIUSEPPE BERTO (1914–1978) Novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, and journalist, Giuseppe Berto owes his fame to his 1947 novel Il cielo e` rosso (The Sky Is Red), for which he was awarded the Premio Letterario Firenze, and later to Il male oscuro (Incubus, 1964), for which he received the prestigious Viareggio and Campiello prizes. One of the chief qualities of Berto’s writing is his independence from any fashionable literary trends and his refusal to be associated with any political parties or ideological movements—a rare occurrence for an Italian writer of his generation. This independence of thought, combined with the diversity and variety of his 190

literary production, makes Berto a unique case in the Italian panorama of twentieth-century literature. Berto creates stories by drawing his inspiration from factual life experience. His recurrent theme is a sense of evil, but evil cannot be explained: It is a mysterious force that rules history. It governs human life in all its multifaceted manifestations. It can take the shape of an armed conflict, a physical or psychological disease, or even a more abstract notion, such as disloyalty and betrayal. It is named male universale (universal evil) and is accompanied by an inevitable sense of guilt.

GIUSEPPE BERTO Berto’s literary production may be subdivided in four subsequent phases, corresponding to different periods in the author’s life. The first, usually ascribed to the neorealist tradition, features Il cielo e` rosso, Le opere di Dio (The Works of God, 1948) and Il brigante (The Brigand, 1951). Here Berto gives a penetrating account of his experiences during World War II, which had a profound and traumatic effect on him as a young man. Berto fought as a volunteer in the Ethiopian war and the North African campaign from 1941 to 1943. Captured by the Allied Forces in Tunisia, he served time in the prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford (Texas), where he reads and hears stories about the war in Italy. He writes Le opere di Dio and Il cielo e` rosso (original working title, La gente perduta) to describe the devastation of his own country under German occupation and during the liberation. In Le opere di Dio, a peasant family must evacuate their home during the fighting between German and American troops in northern Italy. They disperse and their house is destroyed. In Il cielo e` rosso, which was adapted for the screen by Claudio Gora in 1950, the (undisclosed) setting is Treviso, Berto’s hometown, following a heavy bombing that has destroyed a good portion of the city. Four young people, two boys and two girls, find shelter among the ruins of fallen buildings and live there as in a small commune. Two of them are killed, and Daniele, an authorial alter ego, commits suicide by jumping off a train. Piety and compassion for the poverty and dejection of his people are at the core of both novels. More than literary, Berto’s motivations to produce these stories are existential. His realistic rendition of the events of war is influenced by contemporary American writers whose works he finds in the Hereford camp library. For example, Berto’s use of dialogue, which is inspired by John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, remains a primary tool of narration and characterization, while description is limited to a minimum. A less successful novel, Il brigante, relies on contemporary reports on southern Italian bandits, who aimed at fighting disenfranchisement and sociopolitical alienation. The second period, a transitional phase, comprises a diary, Guerra in camicia nera (War in a Black Shirt, 1955), a collection of short stories, Un po’ di successo (A Little Success, 1963), and a drama, L’uomo e la sua morte (Man and His Death, 1964), while he attempts to find his own stylistic identity and distinguishing authorial traits. His war experiences continue to dominate his imagination and writing well into the 1960s: the North African

campaign is recounted in journal form in Guerra in camicia nera, based upon notes drafted at the time, and confronting his allegiance to Fascism; Un po’ di successo offers diversified insights into the horrors of war. L’uomo e la sua morte details the last moments in the life of the legendary Sicilian outlaw Salvatore Giuliano, who brought political attention to the poverty of southern peasants and was eventually assassinated on July 5, 1950. For Berto, Giuliano is a Christlike archetypal figure of existential intrigue and legalized subterfuge. During the third period, the most intensely original, Berto draws his subject matter from his personal experience with psychoanalysis and translates it into a spellbinding, self-reflective masterpeice, Il male oscuro. This is one of the most important Italian novels of the twentieth century. The first-person narrative, with little or no punctuation, fits the monologic, confessional style, which is strongly influenced by Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno (Zeno’s Conscience, 1923). The book’s chief thematic clusters include the protagonist’s impossible relationship with his father, marital troubles, sexual guilt, difficulty in adjusting to his own fatherhood, and physical disease. Psychoanalysis is connected to artistic creation as a form of authorial exploration within one’s own psychological frailty. Writing objectifies the protagonist’s paranoid and hypochondriac tendencies and helps to exorcise them; an important redeeming factor is the transformation of anxiety into humor. Subsequently, Berto publishes La fantarca (A Fantasy Ark, 1965), a parodic remake of science fiction stories, narrated with a tinge of social and political irony. As a paradoxical solution to the questione meridionale (southern question), in this divertissement, Berto proposes the deportation of all Italian southerners to the planet Saturn. La cosa buffa (Antonio in Love, 1966), which was begun in 1958 and evokes Joseph Conrad’s saying that life is a funny thing, tells of the unhappy and pathetic love story of Antonio and Maria from a psychological perspective, but uses the detaching device of a thirdperson narration and a bitter irony to describe the frustration and alienation of its male protagonist, whose constant point of reference is a possible suicide. The last phase begins with the ecological fable Oh, Serafina! (1973), which declares Berto’s opposition to the profit-oriented Italian society of the 1960s and 1970s. This highly ironic, fantastic tale finds its chief inspiration in traditional accounts of St. Francis of Assisi’s life. The main characters’ refutation of capitalism, humoristic love of birds, 191

GIUSEPPE BERTO and preference for ecologic issues attest to its Franciscan matrix. A concentration on spiritual matters brings Berto to leave irony behind in his last two works, which are rewritings of the biblical canon. Indeed, the drama La passione secondo noi stessi (Passion According to Ourselves, 1972) and the novel La gloria (Glory, posthumous 1978) conclude Berto’s literary career with reflections on guilt and betrayal. The first, a rewriting of Christ’s Passion, focuses on the rediscovery of Jesus’ human identity and on Judas’ complex relationship to him; the second serves as Berto’s personal and authorial testament. In La gloria, Judas Iscariot, the traitor par excellence in the Western tradition, is offered an opportunity to give his version of the last moments in Christ’s earthly existence, and also his own. The conglomeration of responsibility and predestination finds an insoluble conclusion in the necessity for Judas’ guilt in order to accomplish Christ’s glory. La gloria brilliantly encompasses the main themes of Giuseppe Berto’s literary production: from the inexplicable presence of evil to the unavoidable sense of human guilt, and the persistent thought of suicide as an impossible liberation from an existence of suffering and alienation.

Biography Born in Mogliano Veneto (Treviso) on December 27, 1914. His antagonistic relation with his father will shape his personality and will originate his psychological condition, thereby indirectly contributing to his literary career. Studying art history at the University of Padua, he joins the army and fights in Ethiopia for four years. He graduates after his return to Italy in 1940 and teaches history and Latin in a high school in Treviso. In 1942, he joins the Fascist army again and is sent to Libya. In May 1943, he is captured by American troops and deported to a Texas prisoners’ camp, where he remains until 1946. 1948: Premio Letterario Firenze for Il cielo e` rosso. 1964: Viareggio and Campiello prizes for Il male oscuro. Worked as a journalist for Il resto del Carlino and as a scriptwriter. Between 1955 and 1964, Berto suffers from a serious psychological crisis, which he temporarily overcomes thanks to psychoanalysis, but which will continue intermittently for the rest of his life. Berto dies in Rome on November 1, 1978. ALESSANDRO VETTORI See also: Neo-Realism 192

Selected Works Fiction Il cielo e` rosso, 1947; as The Sky is Red, translated by Angus Davidson, 1948. Le opere di Dio, 1948; as The Works of God and Other Stories, translated by Angus Davidson, 1950. Il brigante, 1951. Un po’ di successo, 1963. Il male oscuro, 1964; as Incubus, translated by William Weaver, 1966. La fantarca, 1965. La cosa buffa, 1966; as Antonio in Love, translated by William Weaver, 1968. Anonimo veneziano, 1971; as Anonymous Venetian, translated by Valerie Southorn, 1973. Oh, Serafina! Fiaba di ecologi, a di matrimonio e d’amore, 1973. E` forse amore, 1975. La gloria, 1978.

Plays L’uomo e la sua morte, 1964. La passione secondo noi stessi, 1972.

Other Guerra in camicia nera, 1955. Modesta proposta per prevenire, 1972.

Further Reading Artico, Everardo, and Laura Lepri (editors), Giuseppe Berto: La sua opera, il suo tempo, Venice: Marsilio, 1989. Bartolomeo, Beatrice, and Saveria Chemotti (editors), Giuseppe Berto vent’anni dopo, Atti del Convegno, Padova, Mogliano Veneto 23–24 ottobre, 1998, Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2000. Biagi, Dario, Vita scandalosa di Giuseppe Berto, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Heiney, Donald, ‘‘The Final Glory of Giuseppe Berto,’’ in World Literature Today, 54, no. 2 (Spring 1980): 238–240. Lanapoppi, Aleramo P., ‘‘Immanenza e trascendenza nell’opera di Giuseppe Berto: La trappola del neorealismo,’’ in Modern Language Notes, 85, no. 1 (1970): 42–66. Lombardi, Olga, Invito alla lettura di Giuseppe Berto, Milan: Mursia, 1974. Marabini, Claudio, ‘‘Giuseppe Berto,’’ in Nuova Antologia di lettere, arti e scienze, 102, no. 1993 (January 1967): 70–94. Monterosso, Ferruccio, Come leggere ‘‘Il male oscuro’’ di Giuseppe Berto, Milan: Mursia, 1977. Piancastelli, Corrado, Berto, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1970. Pullini, Giorgio, Giuseppe Berto: Da ‘‘Il cielo e` rosso’’ a ‘‘Il male oscuro,’’ Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1991. Striuli, Giacomo, Alienation in Giuseppe Berto’s Novels, Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1987. Toscani, Claudio, ‘‘Giuseppe Berto: Proposte critiche e riproposte editoriali,’’ in Vita e pensiero, 53 (1970): 579–583.

CARLO BERTOLAZZI Vettori, Alessandro, ‘‘La parodia come strategia ermeneutica in Oh, Serafina! di Giuseppe Berto,’’ in L’anello che non tiene, 6, nos. 1–2 (Spring-Fall 1994): 38–66. Vettori, Alessandro, ‘‘La predestinazione al male nell’opera di Giuseppe Berto,’’ in Forum Italicum, 36, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 316–338.

Vettori, Alessandro, ‘‘Giuda tradito, ovvero l’ermeneutica parodica di Giuseppe Berto,’’ in Modern Language Notes, 118, no. 1 (2003): 168–193.

CARLO BERTOLAZZI (1870–1916) Carlo Bertolazzi’s works are notable for the peculiarity of both their audience and their critical reception. The divergence between praise and indifference on the part of critics and public originates in differing perspectives on the importance of dialect in Italian theater, and in the fact that Carlo Bertolazzi’s controversial works challenged the expectations of audiences and actors alike. Bertolazzi’s career suffered the artistic tensions that marked the turn of the nineteenth century. On the one hand, there was the project for a unified theater capable of molding Italian-speaking citizens, and, on the other, the strong presence of a regional theater in dialect. At both the national and local levels, theatrical companies also suffered internal struggles between authors and actors. Disappointed by the failure of an artistic authorial theater in dialect, Bertolazzi turned to writing psychological drama in Italian. But both in Italian and in dialect theater, he came into conflict with the powerful figure of the actor: at first in Milan with the farcical repertory of Edoardo Ferravilla (1846–1915), who as actor-author, theater manager, and director literally dominated the Milanese theatrical scene from 1870 until his death; then with the Italian mattatore, when major actors persistently rejected his plays because his main characters were too unpleasant to win over audiences. Bertolazzi was very young when his first one-act plays were performed by the Sbodio-Carnaghi, the theater company created by actor Gaetano Sbodio (1844–1920) after leaving Ferravilla’s company. Sbodio and other critics of Ferravilla accused him of ruining Milanese theater repertory, concentrating solely on commercial success or on his own talent (to the exclusion of others). Bertolazzi’s best known work, El nost Milan (Our Milan, 1894), is divided into two parts: La

povera gent (The Poor People) and I scioˆri (The Rich People, 1905). The first was performed to great acclaim in 1893 (and later staged by Giorgio Strehler at Piccolo Teatro di Milano in 1961); the second was represented in 1894. They depict different social environments: the poor and the amoral nobility. The plot of La povera gent revolves around Nina, a victimized girl typical of Bertolazzi’s comedies and of Milanese theater in general. She falls in love with Togasso, a violent criminal, and for him becomes a prostitute. To vindicate their honour, her father kills Togasso. Nina rejects her father’s morality to follow her destiny, asserting the overwhelming power of hunger over respectability. The play offers no hope, no rescue of the destitute, no revolution, and no God to save them. The social issues typical of Milanese theater find new strength in this play, thanks to its innovative dramaturgical structure and matter-of-fact style. Nina is constantly surrounded by a crowd of characters, each with a story developing in the various places harboring Milan’s poor. In I scioˆri, Nina is now a high-class prostitute with whom Baron Riccardo di Rivalta falls in love. She expresses her father’s ideas about honor and rejects Riccardo, who escapes to Africa to forget his love and the corruption of his own family and class. The moralistic condemnation of the higher classes and opposition of good and bad (Riccardo and his brother Cesare) are more mechanical, as are the characters and the conceit of the prostitute with a heart of gold. Opera and feuilleton provide the background for the poor girl who becomes a prostitute in La gibigianna (1898), a psychological drama in Italian, in which Maria is stabbed by her jealous lover Enrico in the name of love and honor and is forgiven by him. Maria survives, but the protagonist of Lulu´ (1904) is less fortunate, although at first she 193

CARLO BERTOLAZZI dominates the difficulties of the city by deceiving her lovers in pursuit of their money. She falls in love with and marries a student, Mario, but when he discovers that she is pregnant and has a lover, he kills her. Lulu´ mixes Italian with dialect and follows a more traditional dramaturgical structure, while also adhering more strictly to the morals of the times. Initially written in Italian in 1900, L’egoista (A Selfish Man, 1902) was refused by all major Italian actors, and in 1901 the author agreed to its translation into Venetian for actor Ferruccio Benini (1854–1916). Its success was immense, according to Bertolazzi, and Benini’s acting somewhat smoothed the character. In one of the latest performances of the play, directed in 1987 by Marco Sciaccaluga, the popular actor Alberto Lionello transformed the protagonist, a cruel businessman, into a beguiling scoundrel. Franco Marteno, the ‘‘egoist’’ of the title, uses his charms to obtain power over people: his brother, the wife he marries for money and allows to die in solitude, and even his daughter, whom he persuades to renounce marriage to dedicate her life to him. In his old age, frantic with terror at the idea of God’s punishment, he leaves his possessions to the church he despised as a young man. In Lorenzo e il suo avvocato (Lorenzo and His Lawyer, 1905), also performed by Benini, Bertolazzi depicts a poor schoolteacher, Lorenzo, distraught at the departure of his niece Nannina for the city, where she will marry her beloved fiance´e. After the young couple has gone, Lorenzo kills himself with carbon monoxide fumes. In the last scene, the actor waits, silent and still, for death, facing the audience in a scene of astonishing cruelty. Benini was also the protagonist of L’amigo de tuti (Everybody’s Friend, 1899), a play in Venetian dialect (and Bertolazzi’s last in dialect) that anticipates L’egoista. In his effort to please, the protagonist Alessandro painfully discovers the age-old laws of selfishness and survival. Bertolazzi was unable to manage his career as a playwright. Theater was not lucrative in early nineteenth-century Italy, and he thus also worked as secretary in the municipality of Rivolta D’Adda. He never achieved the success he hoped for, and in May of 1916 announced his retirement from theater. He died a month later.

Biography Born on 2 November 1870 in Rivolta d’Adda (Cremona), into a well-to-do family. Graduated in law from the University of Pavia, 1894, where he met 194

the Sbodio-Carnaghi company. Worked as drama critic for Il corriere della sera and Guerin meschino. First symptom of the illness that would eventually be fatal, 1906. In a letter to a friend, announced his retirement from the stage, May 1916. Died in Milan on 2 June 1916. TERESA ZOPPELLO Selected Works Collections Teatro (L’egoista, La maschera, La casa del sonno, Il successore, Lorenzo e il suo avvocato, La zitella), Milan: Agnelli, 1915. El nost Milan e altre commedie, edited by Folco Portinari, Turin: Einaudi, 1971.

Plays Preludio, (I benis de spos, Al mont de pieta, Ona scena de la vita, In Verze´e), 1892. I benis de spos, 1893. El nost Milan: La povera gent, 1894. La gibigianna, 1898. L’amigo de tuti, 1899. L’egoista, 1902. Lulu´, 1904. El nost Milan: I scioˆri, 1905. Lorenzo e il suo avvocato, 1905. Il diavolo e l’acqua santa, 1905. La rovina, 1907. La sfrontata, 1907. Ombre del cuore, 1909.

Short Stories ‘‘Le mie bricconate,’’ 1908.

Further Reading Acerboni, Giovanni, ‘‘El nost Milan: I Scioˆri: Opera trascurata di Carlo Bertolazzi con una bibliografia ragionata degli studi,’’ in Acme, 44, no. 1 (1991): 5–13. Albini, Ettore, Cronache teatrali 1891–1925, edited by Giuseppe Bartolucci, Genoa: Edizioni del Teatro Stabile di Genova, 1972. Althusser, Louis, ‘‘Le Piccolo, Bertolazzi et Brecht. Notes sur un the´aˆtre materialiste,’’ in Pour Marx, Paris: Franc¸ois Maspero, 1965. Carlo Bertolazzi e la scena, special issue of Ariel, 15, nos. 2–3: (2000). Curti, Antonio, Preface to Carlo Bertolazzi, Preludio, Milan: Aliprandi, 1892. Manzella, Domenico, and Emilio Pozzi, I teatri di Milano, 2 vols., Milan: Mursia, 1985. Palmieri, E. Ferdinando, Del teatro in dialetto, Venice: Edizioni del Ruzante, 1976. Portinari, Folco, ‘‘Realismo e realta` (Premesse per uno studio sul teatro di Bertolazzi),’’ in L’approdo letterario, 51 (1970): 73–90. Pozza, Giovanni, Cronache teatrali (1886–1913), Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1971. Rovetta, Girolamo, Preface to Carlo Bertolazzi, La gibigianna, Milan: Baldini-Castoldi, 1898.

ATTILIO BERTOLUCCI

ATTILIO BERTOLUCCI (1911–2000) Attilio Bertolucci is considered one of Italy’s greatest twentieth-century poets. During his lifetime, he also distinguished himself as a major essayist, prolific translator, and editor. A recognized master of descriptive and narrative poetry, Bertolucci remained unconnected with any particular poetic movement. His nonconformist attitude resulted, initially, in his remaining in the shadows of his contemporaries because critics were unable to categorize him. His poetry represented for many years an alternative to the once prevalent hermetic tradition. Unlike the hermetic poets, Bertolucci was drawn to the concrete elements of reality and chose to render them in a natural and ordinary manner. His essential inspiration was the familiar world of his origins, as he focused on the surrounding countryside of his native region of Parma. A son of the agricultural middle class, Bertolucci’s childhood represented a period of happiness, and in his poems he returns almost obsessively to those simple elements of his land that recall the joys of his youth. Like his beloved Marcel Proust, whose A la recherche du temps perdu he discovered at the age of 14, Bertolucci’s poetry is strongly based on memory. Through his poems, he attempted to create a protective, privileged ‘‘shelter’’ in order to defend himself against the painful intrusion of reality. He chose to weave his discourse within margins that are extremely limited and intimate. Consequently, his poetic and emotional sanctuary is the neatly circumscribed world of the family. This attachment to the family reflects a need for a constant, consolatory presence. From an early age, Bertolucci learned to transfer this emotional liability into poetry. His recourse to a world of invention serves as a brief and only temporary remedy against the painful loss of his domestic universe. While a high school student in the 1920s, Bertolucci discovered another of his passions, the cinema. This interest was reinforced by his friendship with the future, celebrated screenwriter and leading exponent of neorealism, Cesare Zavattini, who had briefly been one of Bertolucci’s high school instructors. Zavattini was also among those friends who encouraged him to publish in 1929, not yet 18 years old, his first collection of poetry, Sirio (Sirius). This early production reveals those characteristics that

will distinguish Bertolucci’s poetry from prevailing contemporary poetical trends and movements: a kinship with Giovanni Pascoli and the crepuscular poets, the representation of reality through isolated fragments, and a colloquial and prose-like style. In 1931, Bertolucci enrolled unwillingly in the School of Law at the University of Parma. The following year he was ill and bedridden for several months. He would later state that one of the reasons for contracting pleurisy was to find an excuse to avoid taking his ‘‘dreadful’’ law exams. His poetry also began to appear in prominent reviews and to draw attention of important literary figures such as Eugenio Montale and Enrico Falqui. Bertolucci’s faith in the common objects of a familiar world and his use of ordinary language persists in his second volume of poetry, Fuochi in novembre (Fires in November, 1934). Here again his poetry is anachronistic with respect to the literary climate of the times. His preference for a language and style that were consistent with the simple, unobtrusive reality depicted in his poetry was a marked contrast to the pure, sublime poetry of the predominant hermetic movement. Bertolucci did not feel that it was necessary to seek recourse in an obscure language in order to free his poetry from any realistic constraints. In Fuochi in novembre, he returns to the calm, natural setting of rural Emilia and to the intimate relationship that exists between the poet and his surroundings. This intimacy personalizes ordinary objects and invests them with a sense of uniqueness. In 1935, while at the University of Bologna, Bertolucci came in contact with Giorgio Bassani and Francesco Arcangeli, all of whom were students of the famed art historian Roberto Longhi. After the declaration of an armistice in Italy on 8 September 1943, Bertolucci sought refuge with his family at the abandoned seventeenth-century family residence in the Apennine village of Casarola. Cardiac arrhythmia had prevented him from active participation in the war. After a long silence, his third volume of poetry, La capanna indiana (The Indian Hut), was published in 1951. It contains selections from Sirio and Fuochi in novembre; in addition, Bertolucci collected poems written from 1935 to 1950 and 195

ATTILIO BERTOLUCCI included them in the section titled ‘‘Lettera da casa’’ (Letter from Home). The three-part poem ‘‘La capanna indiana’’ and ‘‘Frammento escluso’’ (Excluded Fragment) complete the volume. In the volume’s later works, the timeless, privileged dimension of his earlier poems is invaded by outside forces: the reality of war, the deaths of loved ones, and the sight of his children growing up, all of which have affected the serenity of his personal environment. His reaction to any possible change affecting his idyllic world is to establish an enclosed space, which has the capacity of evoking a mythic dimension. In his ‘‘La capanna indiana,’’ for example, the simple storage space for agricultural equipment becomes the emblematic center of the universe, a type of womb. In Rome, Bertolucci had difficulty adapting to a new life and longed to return to Parma. Nevertheless, he recognized that the pain caused by this uprooting was necessary for his poetry. In 1955, an enlarged edition of La capanna indiana was published. It included the 18 new poems of ‘‘In un tempo incerto’’ (In an Uncertain Time), which signal a transition in Bertolucci’s vision of the universe. The nostalgia that was already a part of his poetic realm, even when he lived in contact with his land, is now imbued with a sense of resignation. He intensifies the idyllic aspects in order to compensate for the pain and anxiety of the loss. The elegiac tone of his previous poetry yields to a more epic expression. Viaggio d’inverno (Winter Voyage, 1971), boldly experimental and one of the most significant poetic collections published in postwar Italy, attests to a dramatic existential crisis that originates with his separation from his natural paradise. Away from home and unable to exorcise his neuroses, Bertolucci resorts, in these poems, to sharp contrasts between lightness/darkness, solitude/sociability, time/eternity, stasis/movement, and life/death. What follows is book 1 of a novel in verse, entitled La camera da letto (The Bedroom, 1984), which he had begun in 1955. In 1988, book 2 was added. In this novel, Bertolucci focuses, with almost obsessive detail, on the places, figures, and events that constitute his intimate family history, dating from 1798 to 1951. His decision to write a long narrative poem was an exceptional event for the contemporary Italian literary scene and signaled his autonomy among fellow poets. The publication of three volumes of critical essays, Aritmie (Arrhytmias, 1991), Ho rubato due versi a Baudelaire (I Stole Two Verses from Baudelaire, 2000), and Amici, viaggi, incontri (Friends, Travels, Encounters, 196

2003) witness Bertolucci’s versatile interests, ranging from cinema, theater, literature, and art, and his role as a protagonist of twentieth-century Italian culture. Among his last works are the collections of poems Verso le sorgenti del Cinghio (Toward the Springs of the Cinghio River, 1993) and La lucertola di Casarola (The Lizard of Casarola, 1997). The titles of these volumes remind us of Bertolucci’s allegiance to his birth region: The Cinghio is a creek in the mountains near the village of Antognano, while Casarola is the Apennine site that inspired La camera da letto.

Biography Born in San Lazzaro (Parma) on 18 November 1911. Contributed to the local newspaper, Gazzetta di Parma, under the direction of longtime friend Cesare Zavattini, 1928; enrolled in law school at the University of Bologna, 1931; participated in a national poetry contest, held during the Fascist era, and was awarded second place, 1933; studied at the University of Bologna with art historian Roberto Longhi, BA in letters, 1938; married Ninetta Giovanardi in 1938; taught art history at the Maria Luigia Lyce´e in Parma, 1938–1943 and 1945–1950; founded the foreign poetry series La fenice for Guanda publisher, 1939; his son Bernardo is born, 1941; his second son Giuseppe is born, 1947; moved to Rome, 1951; the death of his father led to a period of severe anxiety, 1954; coedited the literary journals Nuovi argomenti (1966–1980), Paragone, and L’approdo letterario; served as a consultant of the publisher Garzanti; collaborator for the cultural programs of the Italian radio (RAI); Viareggio prize for La capanna indiana, 1951, and La camera da letto, 1989; Etna-Taormina and Tarquinia-Cardarelli prizes for Viaggio d’inverno, 1971; Librex-Guggenheim prize for Le poesie, 1991; the Antonio Feltrinelli prize of the Accademia dei Lincei, 1992, and the Flaiano d’oro in 1993 for his poetic collections. Died in Rome on 14 June 2000. MARK PIETRALUNGA Selected Works Collections Le poesie, Milan: Garzant, 1990; as Selected Poems, translated by Charles Tomlinson, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1993. Opere, edited by Paolo Lagazzi and Gabriella Palli Baroni, Milan: Mondadori, 1997.

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI Poetry

Translations

‘‘Sirio,’’ 1929. ‘‘Fuochi in novembre,’’ 1934. ‘‘Lettera da casa,’’ 1951. ‘‘La capanna indiana,’’ 1951; revised and enlarged, 1955; further revised and enlarged edition, 1973. ‘‘In un tempo incerto,’’ 1955. ‘‘Viaggio d’inverno,’’ 1971. ‘‘La camera da letto,’’ 1984–1988. ‘‘Al fuoco colmo dei giorni. Poesie 1929–1990,’’ edited by Paolo Lagazzi, 1991. ‘‘Verso le sorgenti del Cinghio,’’ 1993. ‘‘La lucertola di Casarola,’’ 1997. ‘‘Poesie scelte,’’ 1997. ‘‘Il viaggio di nozze: versi inediti,’’ edited by Gabriella Palli Baroni, 2004.

Honore` de Balzac, La ragazza dagli occhi d’oro, 1946. D.H. Lawrence, Classici italiani, 1948. Ernest Hemingway, Verdi colline d’Africa (with Aldo Rossi), 1948. Thomas Love Peacock, L’abbazia degli incubi, 1952. Poesia straniera del Novecento, 1958. Charles Baudelaire, I fiori del male, 1975. Imitazioni, 1995.

Essays Aritmie, 1991. Ho rubato due versi a Baudelaire: prose e divagazioni, 2000. Amici, viaggi, incontri, 2003.

Other Una lunga amicizia. Lettere 1938–1982 (with Vittorio Sereni), 1994. Le pause operose del poeta. Attilio Bertolucci alla radio e alla tv, 1998. Il divino egoista (with Doriano Fasoli), 2002. Un’amicizia lunga una vita: carteggio, 1929–1984 (with Cesare Zavattini), edited by Guido Conti and Manuela Cacchioli, Parma: Monte Universita` Parma, 2004.

Further Reading Briganti, Paolo, and Maurizio Schiaretti, Sulla paziente storia dei giorni, Parma: Silva, 1998. Castellari, Mariagiulia, Attilio Bertolucci. La trama dei giorni da ricordare, Faenza: Moby Dick, 2001. Giovanuzzi, Stefano, Invito alla lettura Attilio Bertolucci, Milan: Mursia, 1997. Iacopetta, Antonio, Attilio Bertolucci: Lo specchio e la perdita, Rome: Bonacci, 1984. Jewell, Keala, The Poiesis of History: Experimenting with Genre in Postwar Italy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Lagazzi, Paolo, Attilio Bertolucci, Florence: Nuova Italia, 1982. Lagazzi, Paolo, Reˆverie e destino, Milan: Garzanti, 1993. Lavagetto, Mario, ‘‘Pratica pirica,’’ in Nuovi Argomenti, 23–24 (1971): 221–233. Magro, Fabio, Un ritmo per l’esistenza e per il verso: metrica e stile nella poesia di Attilio Bertolucci, Padua: Esedra, 2005. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, ‘‘Attilio Bertolucci,’’ in Poeti italiani del Novecento, Milan: Mondadori, 1978.

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI (1941–) Bernardo Bertolucci is the most international director ever to come out of the Italian film industry. Yet his first films were devoted to representing Italian national history from the early twentieth century to the present. He treated contemporary Italy in his early feature films, La commare secca (The Grim Reaper, 1962), Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution, 1964) and Partner (1968), then looked back upon the decades of Fascism in Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970) and the Resistance in La strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, 1970). He returned to contemporary times with Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris, 1972), and subsequently took a retrospective,

century-long look at modern Italy in Novecento (1900, 1975–1976). In his subsequent film, La luna (Luna, 1979), Bertolucci adopted the viewpoint of the ‘‘stranger.’’ Italy was seen from the vantage point of the film’s protagonist, Caterina, a recently widowed American opera singer who goes on a tour to Italy with her teenage son, Joe. While she is performing in various Verdi operas in Rome, Caterina is shaken by the discovery that her troubled and lonely son is a heroin addict. Her desperate attempts to free Joe from his addiction result in an incestuous relationship; it also provides the possibility of reuniting him, and herself, with his father. The film’s

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BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI apparently personal journey into an individual’s psychological and existential universe represents one of Bertolucci’s many attempts to remap the cultural and historical identity of Italy. In the early days of his career as a filmmaker, he critically deconstructs Italy, but later recreates it as a mythical place that is the source of fears, anguishes, and dilemmas but also the source of inner dreams and hopes. As Francesco Casetti shows, the journey is a common trope in Bertolucci’s films, a way of exploring the complex web of issues that define Italy’s identity as perceived both by Italians generally and by Bertolucci personally (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1978). Bertolucci’s own perspective is framed by his ideological—mostly Marxist—and psychoanalytic—mostly Freudian—paradigms. Inherently and profoundly self-reflexive and intertextual, the whole of Bertolucci’s work, despite its diversity, remains utterly coherent and cohesive in its thematic and ideological structure. Three key images are constantly evoked in Bertolucci’s cinema: the journey, suggesting a coming from and/or going to one’s place of origin; ambiguity, often connected to a generational discomfort; and finally death, constantly attributed to or associated with a painful father-son relationship. Beginning with his first feature film, La commare secca, where a murder takes place in Rome but the murderer comes from Veneto, the trope of the journey provides a distinct narrative structure and thematic strategy for all of Bertolucci’s narratives. More often than not, an arrival provokes de´paysement, while a departure is rarely shown on screen. This dynamic informs the destiny of the main character in La strategia del ragno, a free adaptation of Jorge Louis Borges’ short story ‘‘Theme of the Traitor and Hero’’ that preserves the ambiguity and labyrinthine nature of its literary source. The protagonist is a young man, Athos Magnani, who resembles his father in the most minute details. He returns to his hometown, Tara, to meet his father’s lover, but ends up investigating his father’s past and the circumstances of his death in order to make sense of his own present. The film ends as the camera slowly pans over railroad tracks clogged with weeds and frozen in a timeless dimension suggesting the impossibility of departure from Tara. The search for personal meaning is also the search for a collective and generational understanding about one of the most crucial and problematic moments in Italy’s modern history, Fascism and the Resistance. This historical quest is developed in Bertolucci’s next film, released in 198

the same year, Il conformista, another free adaptation, this time from the novel by Alberto Moravia. The film centers on the troubled existence of a young man from a wealthy family, Marcello Clerici (played by Jean Louis Trintignant) who, in an extreme attempt to conceal his unconfessed abnormality, decides to collaborate with the Fascist regime and work for its secret police. He agrees to assist in the murder of his former teacher, professor Luca Quadri, an exiled anti-Fascist in Paris. The film takes the spectator through a series of flashbacks—a visual tour de force that explores a discomforting personal life and the compulsion to conform—that place Clerici’s actions within a larger metaphorical and political dimension, thus revealing the reasons for the collective fall into Fascism. A brilliant, decadent film, Il conformista fully discloses Bertolucci’s cinematic talent. As Angela Dalle Vacche perceptively remarks, Il conformista proposes an interpretation of Fascism that explicitly grounds the genesis of the regime in the vices of the bourgeois class, but also exploits Benito Mussolini’s ideology of a unified body politic translating it into a mesmerizing spectacle film (The Body in the Mirror, 1992). Bertolucci’s camera becomes an acting subject in exploring the past, together with Trintignant’s highly stylized performance. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro entices the viewer with the same representational strategies promoted by the regime in order to gain consent from the nation: He uses chiaroscuro and the colour spectrum to blend iconographic elements, philosophical allusions, and psychological nuances. Both La strategia del ragno and Il conformista develop a sense of ambiguity that characterize Bertolucci’s cinema as a whole, including his next film, Ultimo Tango a Parigi, acclaimed as a landmark in cinema history. Such ambivalence works at the level of both form and content. Formally, Bertolucci’s narratives oscillate between diverse generic solutions, resisting facile, prefabricated, and codified plot strategies. At first influenced by Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom he met when he moved to Rome with his family and whom he assisted in the direction of his first feature film Accattone (1961), and later inspired by the French New Wave directors, most importantly by Jean-Luc Godard, Bertolucci pursued a new and contemporary interpretation of cine´ma ve´rite´ that expressed his personal authorial voice. It was with Ultimo Tango a Parigi that he dispatched the past and moved forward to a thoroughly new stage in his development as a filmmaker. The film is a self-reflexive and metadiscursive statement on cinema, its past and

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI its future, as well as a disenchanted commentary on contemporary social behaviours. Marlon Brando’s performance as Paul, a middle-aged American in Paris, brings to the text Brando’s private and public persona and to the cinema to which he belongs. Brando’s character, indeed, serves as a testament to the last romantic hero. Paul meets the 20-year-old Jeanne (Maria Schneider) in an empty apartment that they both wish to sublet. They make love and come back during the following days, acting out their erotic fantasies. To visually represent their story, Storaro relied on the light of the winter sun to naturally convey a warm tonality and, inspired by Francis Bacon’s paintings, he chose orange as the colour of passion, of emotion. The tragic and romantic ending of the film invokes another trope in Bertolucci’s cinema, death. As they exit the apartment in which most of the story has unfolded, Paul and Jeanne walk to a dance hall where, during a heartbreaking tango sequence, Paul changes from a mythical and mysterious figure to become an older and unhappy man. A fairly plain and vacuous young woman, Jeanne is frightened by him and, as he follows her into her mother’s apartment wearing her father’s military hat, she shoots him. Bertolucci records Brando/Paul’s death in a splendid moment of cinematic bravura. A dying man, but also a fallen angel, he slowly retreats into the background of the image, steps onto the balcony, and raises his gaze to the sky with a smile that will forever remain in the spectator’s memory as a tender and tragic goodbye. Ultimo Tango a Parigi remains, along with Il conformista, one of Bertolucci’s most engaging and experimental films of the 1970s. The director’s remapping of modern Italy continued in his next film, Novecento, where in a long flashback he reviews 75 years of national history through the intertwined lives of Olmo Dalco (Ge´rard Depardieu), nephew of a peasant, and Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro), the son of a landowner, born on the same day in the year 1900. The screenplay, authored by Bertolucci with his brother Giuseppe (also a filmmaker and a theatrical director), is a melodramatic saga staged as a political epic (the original director’s cut was five hours and 45 minutes). The film reaches its most climactic and controversial moment in the representation of the violence, decadence, and corruption of the Fascist years. As a whole, however, the film is uneven in its cinematic effects. With La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, 1981), Bertolucci ends his investigation of Italy’s modern history but continues to

use the recurring figure of death as a reflection of a precarious and difficult father-son relationship. The film tells the story of an Italian industrialist Primo Speggiari (played by Ugo Tognazzi) who, when his son is kidnapped and killed, tries to use the ransom money for his personal gain. La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo brings to an end Bertolucci’s personal journey to a place of origin, to the ambiguous relationship one often entertains with one’s past, often due to a deeply strained relationship with one’s father. As he seemed to bid farewell to his own country, he also recapitulated a lifelong dialogue with psychoanalysis, with cinema, but perhaps most importantly with ideology. Indeed, this farewell was reiterated in a documentary released in 1984 and dedicated to the death of Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, tellingly entitled L’addio a Enrico Berlinguer. After that, Bertolucci’s journeys take the spectator to foreign places—China in L’ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, 1987), Africa in Il te` nel deserto (The Sheltering Sky, 1990), India in Piccolo Buddha (Little Buddha, 1993). These films were produced with foreign financing and originally released in English. In L’ultimo imperatore, Bertolucci used a flashback structure to relate the spectacularly ambiguous life of Pu Yi, enthroned in 1908, at the age of three, as the emperor of China. He conjures up a complex vision to balance historical reconstruction with imaginative interpretation: Pu Yi’s journey unfolds from the imperial orange glow of his early age in the Forbidden City to the cold and bleak hues (blues and greys) of his prison years. Once again he creates a film of epic grandeur. When he returned to Italy, he did so by representing a group of foreigners who look at Italy as a place of beauty, memory, and inspiration for personal and sexual awakening, as happens in Io ballo da sola (Stealing Beauty, 1996), a film that taps a reservoir of mythical and perhaps even stereotypical images of the country. The foreign experience and understanding of Italy is once again the focus of Bertolucci’s L’assedio (Besieged, 1999), where an African woman Shandurai goes into exile in Italy, after a dictator jails her husband. She studies medicine and lives in one room of a Roman palazzo owned by Mr. Kinsky, an eccentric English pianist and composer. As the story unfolds in beautifully lit, womb-like interiors, the English man besieges her with flowers, gifts, and music, and declares his passionate love for her. Unquestionably, this film, like many other works by Bernardo Bertolucci, raises relevant and pressing questions about 199

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI personal and collective identity. Italy is once again presented as the ideal place for individual, ideological, and sexual exploration. But the film also raises questions about ambiguity and death, two of the most recurrent topoi in Bertolucci’s distinctive and personal cinematic journey. Bertolucci’s way of telling a story is one of the most sophisticated in cinema. Always torn between Marxist politics and sensuous aesthetics, he works with ideological threads that become tangential, as he weaves a hauntingly beautiful visual fabric. His film, I sognatori (The Dreamers, 2003), which is set in Paris, pays the ultimate homage to Godard, to the great city of cinema. Once again Bertolucci shows that he can create images about which others can only dream.

Biography Born on March 16, 1941, in Parma. His father, Attilio, leading poet and film critic, inspired a love for the cinema by taking him frequently to the movies. Brother Giuseppe born, 1947. In his early teens, made two short films, La teleferica and Morte di un maiale. In 1952, family moved to Rome and settled in an apartment building where Pier Paolo Pasolini lived. Attended University of Rome (1958–1961), studying modern Italian literature; assistant director to Pasolini in Accattone, 1961. After that, left the university without completing his degree, and began training in film independently. In 1962, Bertolucci published his first book of poems, In cerca del mistero, and won the prestigious Viareggio prize. Directed his first feature film, La commare secca, 1962. Prima delle rivoluzione opened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1964, but did not receive theatrical distribution until 1967. In the 1960s, directed documentaries, such as La via del petrolio (1965–1966), and collaborated with Sergio Leone and Dario Argento on the screenplay for Leone’s C’era un volta il West (1968). Joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), 1969, and began Freudian analysis. Ultimo tango a Parigi opened at the New York Film Festival, 1972. Recipient of numerous awards including an Oscar nomination for Il conformista (best screenplay), 1970, and for Ultimo tango a Parigi (best director), 1973; L’ultimo imperatore won nine Academy Awards, including set design, editing, and cinematography, 1988. Married to Clare Peploe, his closest collaborator on the set; lives in London and Rome. MANUELA GIERI 200

Selected Works Poetry ‘‘In cerca del mistero: poesie,’’ 1988.

Films La commare secca (The Grim Reaper), 1962. Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution), 1964. La via del petrolio (documentary), 1965–1966. Partner (based on Dostoyevsky’s ‘‘The Double’’), 1968. Amore e rabbia (segment ‘‘Agonia’’), 1969. La strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, based on Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘‘Theme of the Traitor and the Hero’’), 1970. Il conformista (The Conformist, based on Alberto Moravia’s novel), 1970. La salute e` malata (documentary), 1971. Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris), 1972. Novecento Atto I and Atto II (1975–1976). La luna (Luna), 1979. La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man), 1981. L’addio a Enrico Berlinguer (documentary), 1984. L’ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, based on the book From Emperor to Citizen by Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi), 1987. 12 registi per 12 citta` (segment ‘‘Bologna’’), 1989. Il te` nel deserto (The Sheltering Sky, based on the novel by Paul Bowles), 1990. Piccolo Buddha (Little Buddha), 1993. Io ballo da sola (Stealing Beauty), 1996. L’assedio (Besieged, based on a short story by James Lasdun, ‘‘The Siege’’), 1999. Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (segment ‘‘Histoire d’eaux’’), 2002. I sognatori (The Dreamers), 2003.

Screenplays La commare secca, Milan: Zibetti, 1962; rpt. 1988. Ultimo tango a Parigi (with Franco Arcalli), Turin: Einaudi, 1973; as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, with essays by Pauline Kael, New York: Delacorte Press, 1973. Novecento, atto primo (with Franco Arcalli and Giuseppe Bertolucci), Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Novecento, atto secondo (with Franco Arcalli and Giuseppe Bertolucci), Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Piccolo Buddha (with Rudy Wurlitzer and Mark Peploe), Milan: Bompiani, 1993. Il te` nel deserto (with Mark Peploe), Milan: Bompiani, 1994. L’ultimo imperatore (with Mark Peploe and Enzo Ungari), Milan: Bompiani, 1995. Stealing Beauty, edited by Susan Minot, New York: Grove Press, 1996.

Further Reading Amengual, Barthe´lemy et al. (editors), Bernardo Bertolucci, Paris: Lettres modernes, 1979. Bertetto, Paolo (editor), Vittorio Storaro: Un percorso di luce, Turin: Umberto Allemandi & Co., 1989. Bertolucci Bertolucci: Interviews, edited by Fabien S. Gerard, T. Jefferson Kline and Bruce Sklarew, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.

BESTIARIES Campani, Ermelinda M., L’anticonformista: Bernardo Bertolucci e il suo cinema, Florence: Cadmo, 1998. Campari, Roberto, In viaggio con Bernardo: il cinema di Bernardo Bertolucci, Venice: Marsilio, 1994. Carabba, Claudio, Gabriele Rizza, and Giovanni Maria Rossi, La regola delle illusioni: il cinema di Bernardo Bertolucci, Florence: Aida, 2003. Casetti, Francesco, Bernardo Bertolucci, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Dalle Vacche, Angela, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Garofalo, Marcello, L’ultimo imperatore. Storia di un viaggio verso Occidente: dal film di Bernardo Bertolucci, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1991. Garofalo, Marcello, Bertolucci: Images, Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 2000. Gerard, Fabien S., Ombres jaunes: journal de tournage du film Le dernier empereur de Bernardo Bertolucci, Paris: Cahiers du Cine´ma, 1987.

Kline, T. Jefferson, Bertolucci’s Dream Loom: A Psychoanalytic Study of Cinema, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Kolker, Robert Phillip, Bernardo Bertolucci, London: British Film Institute, 1985. Pillitteri, Paolo, Il conformista indifferente e il delitto Rosselli, Milan: Bietti, 2003. Pitiot, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Mirabella, Sur Bertolucci, Castelnau-le-Lez: Climats, 1991. Prono, Franco, Bernardo Bertolucci: Il conformista, Turin: Lindau, 1998. Socci, Stefano, Bernardo Bertolucci, Milan: Il Castoro, 1996. Tonetti, Claretta, Bernardo Bertolucci: The Cinema of Ambiguity, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. Ungari, Enzo (with Bernardo Bertolucci), Scene madri, Milan: Ubulibri, 1987.

BESTIARIES The literary works whose protagonists are animals have Semitic and Arian origins, which have been passed down through the Assiro-Babylonian tradition and the Indian Panchatantra to Giovanni da Capua, who popularized the animal tale in the West in the twelfth century. This heritage was further elaborated in ancient Greece with Aesop’s literary personification of animals in the fourth century BC. Aesop was followed by Phaedrus, who lived during the first empire. Then, in the second-century AD, Apuleius wrote the Metamorphoses, influenced by the Fabulae Milesiae by Aristide of Mileto (second century BC). The first Italian fables with animal protagonists stem from earlier Latin and French fables found in three different medieval collections: (a) the fables in elegiac couplets, well known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as Aesopus communis; (b) the Ysopets by Marie de France (late twelfth century), translated into standard Tuscan in the thirteenth century; (c) the medieval bestiaries, allegorical treatises with a morally didactic purpose in strict agreement with medieval aesthetics. Bestiario moralizzato, published in 1889 and reprinted in 1983, presents a manuscript from the fourteenth century written by an anonymous author from Umbria. It

is composed of 64 sonnets, each of which is about a different animal. While the text often refers to the classical tradition—Aesopus communis in particular—it was written in the spirit of medieval mysticism. Thus, it is based on the understanding of the function of literature in terms of a specific manGod relationship, a common feature among the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the Esopi volgari from the fourteenth century offer political rules of civil prudence to the reader, and, therefore, surpass the exclusively didactic and moralizing medieval tradition. Bestiario politico by the Anonymous Goriziano and the Bestiario moralizzato di Gubbio reveal the same sort of innovative thinking, and so does the mystical bestiary of the Fioretti of Franciscan literature, a simplified Tuscan version (1370–1390) of a doctrinal Latin work. The Italian Humanists also turned back to Aesop and Phaedrus, and their critical approach to the animal tale was later passed down to the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Among those who popularized Aesop in Italy are Chiaro Davanzati in the thirteenth century, Antonio Pucci (1310–1388), Luigi Pulci (1432–1484), Bernardino da Siena (1380–1440), Anton Francesco Doni (1513–1574), and Giaovan Battista Gelli (1498–1563), who 201

BESTIARIES translated the Metamorphoses by Apuleius, discovered by Boccaccio. Moreover, famous Humanists from Poggio Bracciolini (Facetiae, 1452), to Giovanni Pontano (Asinus, 1491) and Leon Battista Alberti (Intercoenales, 1438) also adopted themes from Aesop in their works. Additionally, Leonardo Da Vinci’s writings in praise of Aesop (1483–1499) make up a part of the Codice Atlantico in the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. Written in a style in harmony with the philosophy of the Renaissance, Leonardo’s Aesopian apologies form a Bestiario moralizzato. In them, the author seeks to reveal certain truths about mankind through various images of animal nature. Then, Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) creates an adaptation of the Second Book of Panchatantra focusing on contemporary customs and morality. The work is entitled Prima veste dei discorsi degli animali (The First Version of the Animals’ Discourses) and was published in 1548. On the other hand, Niccolo` Machiavelli’s L’asino d’oro (The Golden Ass, 1515) refers back to the Cricket by Plutarch. It is a work written in a philosophically critical way. Likewise, in Cabala del cavallo pegaseo (The Intrigue of the Winged Horse, 1585), Giordano Bruno makes use of the images of animals in a broader antiperipatetic discourse. The zooepic is another mainstream genre in which the protagonists are animals. Its literary antecedent is the Batrachomyomachy, attributed to Homer. In the twelfth century this work became the basis of the French Roman de Renart, popularized in Italy in Franco-Veneto dialect in the work Rainaldo e Lesengrino. The Batrachomyomachy was then translated anew by Lorenzo Valla in the fifteenth century. Moreover, the zooepic is also present in Teofilo Folengo’s Moschea (The Battle of the Flies, 1521), a parody in macaronic language, well known in Europe at the time. Thus, the zooepic gradually acquired ironic, social, anticlerical, and antifeudal overtones. In the tradition of the fable after Aesop, the animal characters are often the mouthpieces of mankind. The posthumous work of the Abbot Francesco Fulvio Frugoni (ca. 1620–1686), Il cane di Diogene (The Dog of Diogenes, 1689), is even divided into ‘‘barks,’’ thus referring to the Novelas Esemplares (1613) by Miguel De Cervantes composed in accordance with the Baroque taste for laughter. In the eighteenth century, the antisatirical vein of the Arcadia places the animals in a pastoral melicidyllic context. Giovanni Meli (1740–1815) is one of the greatest masters of this style. His Favule murali (Moral Fables, 1814), told in Sicilian dialect, attest to a basic Enlightenment faith in human progress, 202

even though human beings are less wise than the animals, which lead a life according to nature. In opposition to the mild moralism of the Favole esopiane (Fables After Aesop, 1748) by Gasparo Gozzi, a great number of gnomic and satirical works inspired by the poignant moralism of Il giorno (The Day, 1801–1804) by Giuseppe Parini appear in the second half of the century. The most important of these gnomic poets is Giancarlo Passeroni (1713–1803), who parodies all aspects of eighteenthcentury Italian life in the seven volumes of his Favole esopiane (Fables After Aesop, 1779–1786). A characteristic of Italian romantic poetry is the fusion of a sentimental subject matter with classical and realistic elements. Giosue` Carducci (1835– 1907) gives rise to this style with his rendition of the bucolic myth about Versilia in poems such as ‘‘Il bove’’ (The Ox), ‘‘A un asino’’ (To a Donkey), and ‘‘Canti di marzo’’ (March Songs). The works of Giacomo Zanella (1820–1888), in particular his most famous poem ‘‘Sopra una conchiglia fossile’’ (On a Fossil Shell in My Study) and the satiric short poems of Filippo Pananti (1766–1837) are also written in this poetic vein. The latter, moreover, became a model and inspiration for the satirical poetry of Giuseppe Giusti (1808–1850), such as in ‘‘Il re Travicello’’ (King Log) and ‘‘La chiocciola’’ (The Snail), and Gioachino Belli (1791– 1863). Other examples of works composed in this style are Ommini e bestie (Humans and Animals, 1914), Lupi e agnelli (Wolves and Lambs, 1919), Giove e le bestie (Jupiter and the Animals, 1932), three bestiaries by Trilussa (1871–1950) written in modern Roman dialect. Undoubtedly, Giacomo Leopardi’s work surpasses the compositions discussed above with the depth of its insight. In 1815, Leopardi himself translated the Batrachomyomachy, and, therefore, drew the heroic component of his Romanticism from the very source of the zooepic. His heroic and comic poem, Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia (The War of the Mice and the Frogs), for instance, is a biting satire of the Restoration. Aesopian themes are also present in Leopardi’s Operette morali (Little Moral Exercises) and his Grandi idilli (Great Songs). In fact, the anthropocentric aspect of the Aesopian literature of the Renaissance is brought to an end by Leopardi, whose writing gives rise to the twentieth-century Italian bestiaries. Today, animals no longer serve as moral exemplum in literature and have lost the sacred, fantastic, and symbolic qualities prescribed to them by the allegorical tradition. Giovanni Pascoli, for example, combines his decadent style with images

BESTIARIES from the animal world. Aesopism is also a part of the pantheistic metamorphosis in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s work. Finally, Luigi Pirandello’s bestiaries in Favole della volpe (Fox Tales, 1905) and Novelle per un anno (Short Stories, 1937) are written in the context of the crisis of positivism. Moreover, in the twentieth century, animal protagonists become the embodiments of psychological themes such as the metamorphic imaginary of the unconscious. Arturo Loria’s 70 Aesopian fables, published in 1957, and his Bestiario poetico (A Poetic Bestiary, 1959) are also modeled on Leopardi’s ideas. Likewise, Italo Svevo represents familiar everyday life in his ornithological bestiary Una burla riuscita (The Hoax, 1925), based on Leopardi’s operetta morale ‘‘Elogio degli uccelli’’ (In Praise of Birds). Svevo also uses Darwin’s vision of biological existence as a perpetual struggle and competition. In the sarcastic Primo libro delle favole (The First Book of Fables, 1952) by Carlo Emilio Gadda, the principal characters in a world of chaos are sparrows that represent the author’s anticonformist views, and the pteromorphic moralism of Le favole della dittatura (Fables of the Dictatorship, 1950) by Leonardo Sciascia also goes back to Phaedrus. The protagonist of Il corvo (The Raven) by Sciascia, inspired by Poe’s tale, embodies human illusions, while the work as a whole represents certain existential dramatic tensions. Moreover, in La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia (The Famous Invasion of the Bears in Sicily, 1945), Dino Buzzati rejects the Aristotelian understanding that animals do not have a rational soul. Similarly, Aldo Palazzeschi’s Bestie del 900 (Twentieth-Century Animals, 1951) is a critique of anthropocentrism. This is a parody of medieval bestiaries that satirizes the institutions. In his unfinished Favole e apologhi (Fables and Apologues), Umberto Saba takes up Leopardi’s approach to the personification of animals. The sparrows in his ‘‘Quasi una moralita`’’ represent archetypal domestic sentiments. The she-goat, for instance, becomes a zooerotical image of the womananimal in his well-known poem ‘‘A mia moglie.’’ The same symbol also appears in Italo Svevo’s writing. Likewise, the okapi, the vixen-lover, and

the birds of Eugenio Montale all have a Jungian psychological function. Dialoghi con Leuco` (1947) by Cesare Pavese discusses mythological monsters such as Lycaon (woolf-man), Chimera, Centaurs, while Antonio Tabucchi in his Angelo nero (1991) and Requiem (1992) calls forth a bestiary deprived of any kind of heraldic allure. Tommaso Landolfi has a predilection for insects, from the spider to the cockroach, and, thus, composes a bestiary based on the very first stages of evolution. The creatures in his writing are never presented in an allegorical context. Finally, Giorgio Manganelli transforms his bestiary into a representation of the crisis of literature. His moths, butterflies, worms, and earthworms are all images of the lowest forms of life whose destiny can only be to fade away. PAOLA MARTINUZZI See also: Literature of Anthropology Further Reading Auerbach, Erich, ‘‘Figura,’’ in Archivium Romanicum, Nuova rivista di Filologia Romanza, 22 (1938): 436–489. Biagini, Enza, and Anna Nozzoli (editors), Bestiari del Novecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 2001. Cassirer, Ernest, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963. Durand, Gilbert, Les structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire, Paris: Bordas, 1969. Eco, Umberto, and Chiara Frugoni, ‘‘A Bestiary in Stone,’’ in FMR: the magazine of Franco Maria Ricci, 92 (1998): 17–36. Lecomte, Mia, Animali Parlanti, Florence: Firenze Atheneum, 1995. Lewinsohn, Richard, alias Morus, Gli animali nella storia della civilta`, Milan: Mondadori, 1956. Mezzalira, Francesco, Beasts and Bestiaries: The Representation of animals from Prehistory to the Renaissance, Turin: Allemandi, 2001. Morini, Luigina, Bestiari medievali, Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Seppilli, Anita, Poesia e magia, Turin: Einaudi, 1962. Theobaldus Epicopus, Physiologus, London: J & E Bumps, 1928. Zambon, Francesco, Il bestiario di Cambridge, Milan: FMR, 1974. Zambon, Francesco, L’alfabetico simbolico degli animali: I bestiaridel medioevo, Milan: Lumi, 2001.

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CARLO BETOCCHI

CARLO BETOCCHI (1899–1986) In 1932, Carlo Betocchi’s first book, Realta` vince il sogno (Reality Defeats Dreams), a thin volume of 32 lyrics, was published in the poetry series of Frontespizio, the literary Catholic review for which Betocchi was an active contributor. This volume declared a new poetics. In the 1930s, Hermeticism was the dominant poetic movement in Florence. Although Betocchi struck up a friendship with many of its major representatives, such as Mario Luzi, Carlo Bo, and Alfonso Gatto, his poetry is not considered a part of the movement. Realta` vince il sogno does not share any of the Hermetic commonplaces or poetic principles. Betocchi’s main intellectual point of reference was a circle of young Florentine intellectuals rather removed from the Hermetics that included the Catholic novelist Nicola Lisi (1893–1975) and the critic and essayist Piero Bargellini (1897–1980). Sharing Lisi’s and Bargellini’s profound religiosity, he collaborated with them in launching the periodical Calendario dei pensieri e delle pratiche solari in 1923. Betocchi’s non-Hermetic poetics are exemplified by the following verse, from the poem ‘‘Della solitudine’’ (On Solitude): ‘‘E godo la terra / bruna e l’indistruttibile / certezza delle sue cose’’ (I enjoy the brown / earth and the indestructible / certainty of earthly things). The poem is typical of Betocchi’s abiding desire to converse with reality, especially with the landscape with which he enjoys intimate contact. The poet seems immune to the exalted mysticism typical of Hermeticism. Saba’s poetics of direct feeling is a more appropriate reference point for understanding his poetry. In their very titles, Betocchi’s poetic collections describe humble events and common facts and creatures in spiritual communion with a divine presence that permeates reality. As he stated in ‘‘Diario della poesia e della rima’’ (Journal of Poetry and Rhyme), a short essay collected in Tutte le poesie (Complete Poems, 1984), rhyme itself is a rhetorical device to achieve objectivity. Betocchi’s verses could be called a poetry of images in which he represents the lyric scene as if drawing it by hand. His poem ‘‘Piazza dei fanciulli la sera’’ (Square with Children at Night), also in Realta` vince il sogno, is an example. The whole 204

poem develops out of a descriptive catalogue of fixed and moving images; the setting and the people are poetically framed as in an idyll. Yet, the poem is a static representation of nature and humanity. Only with his subsequent collections did Betocchi develop this poetic stasis into a more dynamic form of representation. However, the core of his poetry remained essentially the same: Altre poesie (Other Poems, 1939) as well as Notizie di prosa e di poesia (News on Prose and Poetry, 1947) confirm Betocchi’s poetic craft, and display a deeper cultural consciousness and a better use of his metrical skills. The volume Poesie (Poems, 1955) represents a collection of all his poetic production up to that year. Betocchi continued to update his collected works in Prime e ultimissime (First and Latest Poems, 1974), which included L’estate di San Martino (Indian Summer, 1961) and Un passo, un altro passo (A Step, Another Step, 1967). Un passo, un altro passo opens a new phase in Betocchi’s poetic career: As his poetry matured, he began to understand reality in a deeper sense. His poetry became freer to express itself and to release his religious spirit. Considered his greatest poetic achievement, the volume embodies the sincere and humble image of a man dealing with the everyday aspects of religion and deriving from them profound theological insights. The greatness and mystery of the Christian God are treated as facts that must be taken as they are. Indeed, Betocchi’s final message is simply that God is what He is: This dogmatic, biblical formula contains every necessary explanation. Betocchi’s poetry is thus at its most captivating at the very end of the poet’s life. His final collection, Poesie del sabato 1930–1980 (Saturday’s Poems, 1980), which contains the extraordinary section ‘‘Breviario della necessita`’’ (Breviary of Necessity), constitutes both a summa and a continual beginning of his poetry.

Biography Born in Turin on May 23, 1899. When his father died in 1911, family moved to Florence. Graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Statale of Florence as a land surveyor, 1915. Moved to Parma where he joined the army, 1917. Served on the Austrian

CARLO BETOCCHI front during World War I and in Libya as a garrison officer, 1918. Discharged, 1920. In Florence, with Nicola Lisi, Pietro Parigi, and Piero Bargellini, founded the Calendario dei pensieri e delle pratiche solari, 1923. Cofounded Frontespizio, 1930. Contributor to Il Selvaggio, Primato, Campo di Marte, Letteratura, 1929–1938. Moved to Trieste, 1939. Moved to Bologna and then to Rome, 1941. Appointed professor at the Conservatorio Statale of Venice, 1942; professor at the Conservatorio ‘‘L. Cherubini’’ in Florence, 1952–1968. Awarded the Viareggio prize for Poesie, 1955. Appointed editorin-chief of the radio programme ‘‘L’Approdo,’’ 1958; editor-in-chief of L’Approdo letterario until 1977. Awarded the Citta` di Florence prize for L’estate di San Martino with the ‘‘Dante Alighieri’’ Medal, 1961; Bergamo prize for Sparsi nel mondo, 1962; Lerici-Pea prize for poetry, 1966; Libri dell’anno della scuola italiana prize for Un passo un altro passo, 1967. Awarded the Feltrinelli International Prize for poetry, 1967; Isola d’Elba prize for Un passo, un altro passo, 1968. Awarded the ‘‘Penna d’oro’’ by the president of Italy Sandro Pertini for his achievements in poetry, 1981; E. Montale (Librex-Guggenheim) prize for poetry, 1984. Died in Bordighera on May 25, 1986. DIEGO BERTELLI Selected Works Collections Poems translated by Isidore Lawrence Salomon, New York: Clarke & Way,1964. Tutte le poesie, edited by Luigina Stefani, Milan: Mondadori, 1984.

Poetry ‘‘Realta` vince il sogno,’’ 1932. ‘‘Altre poesie,’’ 1939. ‘‘Notizie di prosa e di poesia,’’ 1947. ‘‘Un ponte nella pianura,’’ 1953. ‘‘Poesie,’’ 1955. ‘‘L’estate di San Martino,’’ 1961. ‘‘Un passo, un altro passo,’’ 1967. ‘‘Prime e ultimissime,’’ 1974. ‘‘Poesie del sabato,’’ 1930–1980, 1980.

‘‘Il sale del canto,’’ 1980. ‘‘Del sempre,’’ 1982. ‘‘Dal definitivo istante: poesie scelte e inediti,’’ edited by Giorgio Tabanelli, 1999.

Fiction Cuore di primavera, 1959. Sparsi pel monte, 1965. Vino di Ciociaria, 1965. L’anno di Caporetto, 1967. Collodi, Pinocchio, Florence, 1968. Memorie, racconti, poemetti in prosa, 1983. Confessioni minori, 1985.

Essays Mistici medievali, with Nicola Lisi and Luigi Fallacara, 1956.

Letters Lettere a Franco Scataglini (1976–1984), edited by Massimo Raffaelli, 1991. Incontro a Tursi. Lettere di Betocchi a Pierro, poesie, testi critici vari, edited by Emerico Giachery, 1973. Io son come l’erba: epistolario Carlo Betocchi-Maria Pia Pazielli, edited by Paola Mallone, 2004.

Further Reading Agnello, Nino, La poesia di Carlo Betocchi tra relativo e assoluto, Foggia: Bastogi, 2000. Baldini, Michela (editor), Pagina illustrata: prose e lettere fiorentine di Carlo Betocchi, Florence: Societa` Editrice Fiorentina, 2004. Bo, Carlo, Nuovi studi, Florence: Vallecchi, 1946. Civitareale, Pietro, Carlo Betocchi, Milan: Mursia, 1977. De Robertis, Giuseppe, Scrittori del Novecento, Florence: Le Monnier, 1940. De Robertis, Giuseppe, Altro Novecento, Florence: Le Monnier, 1962. Dolfi, Anna (editor), Anniversario per Carlo Betocchi, Rome: Bulzoni, 2000. Macrı`, Oreste, Esemplari del sentimento poetico contemporaneo, Florence: Vallecchi, 1941. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Descrizioni di descrizioni, edited by Graziella Chiarcossi, Turin: Einaudi, 1979. Ramat, Silvio, La pianta della poesia, Florence: Vallecchi, 1972. Stefani, Luigina (editor), Dal sogno alla nuda parola, Florence: Gabinetto G. P. Viesseux, 1987. Stefani, Luigina (editor), Carlo Betocchi: Atti del Convegno di studi, Florence: Le Lettere, 1990. Stefani, Luigina, La biblioteca e l’officina di Betocchi, 2 vols., Rome: Bulzoni 1994. Volpini, Valerio, Betocchi, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1971.

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UGO BETTI

THE BETROTHED See I Promessi sposi (Work by Alossandro Manzoni)

UGO BETTI (1892–1953) Next to Pirandello, Ugo Betti is one of the most significant Italian playwrights of the twentieth century. His work dramatizes the typical existential crises of his generation. As a dramatist he is concerned with identifying the underlying causes and motives of human action. Moreover, his writing follows, in form as well as in content, the norms imposed by his career as a magistrate. Questions concerning legal ‘‘actuality’’ and the dialectical confrontation between characters are rather prominent, particularly in his dramatic work. The basic structure of Betti’s dramatic work, his poetry, and his short stories, is rather complicated. The ‘‘three-dimensionality of his poetic writing’’ combines realism, psychology, spirituality, or escapology. His works thus may fluctuate in surprising ways between everyday facts and fairy tale, a logical consequence of Betti’s situating himself al confine, on the ‘‘boundary line’’ (Gaetana Marrone, La drammatica di Ugo Betti, 1988). Literary criticism has often dealt with only one of these three components, although studies open to the multiple sense of Betti’s texts are not totally absent. Betti is mainly preoccupied with problems linked to war, emigration, the contrast between generations, and family. His work not only presents eternal or universal aspects of human reality, but also refers to specific moments in history. His characters are drawn from the social types he had come into contact with during his career as a lawyer. His work is further characterized by religious and existential anxiety, by a desire for some sort of harmony, and by a continuous effort to find a path of escape from worldly concerns. His own experience of social life and of human behaviour is vividly 206

expressed in his representations of modern existential situations. His attempt to be always ‘‘within his time,’’ to give his writing a profound social and existential meaning, is particularly evident in works such as Ispezione (The Inquiry, 1942), Delitto all’isola delle capre (Crime on Goat Island, 1948), La regina e gli insorti (The Queen and the Rebels, 1949), Il giocatore (The Gambler, 1950), L’aiuola bruciata (The Burnt Flower-Bed, 1951– 1952). According to Betti himself, in the essay ‘‘Religione e teatro’’ (Religion and Theatre, 1957), his texts are not intended ‘‘a passare la sera’’ (to pass an evening). For Betti there is a profound identity between art and life: Art is born as ‘‘una scintilla dall’attrito dell’artista con la vita vivente che gli e` intorno’’ (a spark from the friction of the artist with the living life surrounding him). The artist therefore is always ‘‘il giudice e l’interprete’’ (the judge and interpreter) of his own time (‘‘Esame di coscienza,’’ 1933). In the essay ‘‘Teatro grande’’ (Great Theatre), which appeared in La gazzetta del popolo of 16 May 1933, he wrote that the theater had to ‘‘costringere il secolo a guardare in se stesso, a illuminarsi, a ribellarsi magari’’ (to compel the century to look at itself, to illuminate itself, possibly to rebel), a phrase that expresses the threefold structure of his work: rebellion (revolt against a certain way of family and social life), introspection, and escape into some transcendental realm. Apart from a play inspired by a fairy tale, L’isola meravigliosa (The Marvellous Island, 1930), the theater of Ugo Betti resumed the tradition of a naturalistic triangle: the principal character, man or woman, is in conflict with two other characters;

UGO BETTI all of them desire self-realization. La padrona (The Mistress, 1926), La casa sull’acqua (The House on the Water, 1928) and Un albergo sul porto (An Inn on the Harbor, 1930), plays that are clearly influenced by the Russian theater of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, are representative of this initial way of conceiving drama. In a letter to Luigi Almirante dated 9 November 1936, dealing with the staging of Frana allo Scalo Nord (Landslide at the North Station, 1932) by the Palmer-Almirante Company at the Teatro Valle in Rome, Betti emphasized that dramatic performance should be ‘‘su un tono di assoluta reale umanita`: verita` e naturalezza’’ (in a tone of absolutely real humanity: truth and naturalness) and that the actors ‘‘devono solo essere veri e umani’’ (they should only be true and natural). Drama should be played out in accordance with the real world. However, ‘‘senza che gli attori se lo siano proposto deve sorgere nello spettatore una impressione e quasi un vago sospetto di soprarealta`’’ (an impression and almost a vague suspicion of surreality ought to arise in the spectator, without the overt suggestion of the actors). The transition from reality to surreality should not be signaled by the actors, but suggested by allusions or through scenographic transformations. In Frana allo Scalo Nord Betti achieves his singular artistic style, which had already been anticipated in some passages of his farse, Il diluvio (The Flood), written in 1931 (first performed in 1942). For Betti’s characters the clash between good and evil leads to the acknowledgment of the good and therefore of the divine. The modes of ‘‘suspension’’ and ‘‘silence’’ characterize his theatrical discourse. The Bettian character does not succeed in opening himself up to the other. On the contrary, he withdraws from contact with others and into a sort of existential ressentiment. The central dramatic situation of Betti’s plays thus involves the arrival of a stranger, a sort of ‘‘messenger,’’ who forces the other characters to look into themselves. Soon, the walls between the characters begin to disintegrate. Crevices are opened, sometimes veritable breaches, from which confessions, some of them violent, emerge; confessions that express Angst and desires, themselves feelings that inspire fear. The building contractor Gaucker, in Frana allo Scalo Nord, cries: ‘‘mi sono visto... come se mi si fosse spaccata una crosta’’ (I have seen myself... as if a crust had been cracked). Bettian drama is divided among three principal characters and their distinct functions: the principal character or characters, who admit their guilt; their antagonists, particularly

‘‘lawyers’’ and ‘‘judges,’’ who try to detect the secret motives of the central character; the stranger, the ‘‘messenger,’’ who provokes a confession. The dramatic language accordingly adopts the syntax of the legal debate. Although admitting his guilt, the protagonist goes on to defend his actions. Another, more emotional mode of discourse interacts with the mode of debate without interrupting or fracturing it. Because of this stylistic uniformity, the spectator has the impression that Betti privileges the logical, whereas, in reality, he is abandoning himself to intuition and emotion. Betti’s plays increasingly came to emphasize individuality. Simone in Un albergo sul porto, Valerio in Notte in casa del ricco (Night in the Rich Man’s House, 1938), Antonio in Il vento notturno (The Night Wind, 1941), Cust in Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia, (Corruption in the Palace of Justice, 1949), Amos in La regina e gli insorti, and Ennio in Il giocatore are characters born from a historical context; characters who still are beset by the problem of innocence and individual guilt. As Lia Fava Guzzetta shows in her introduction to Novelle edite e rare (2001), the spaces in which the Bettian characters move do not allow memory to effect idyllic or sentimental transformation: Objects are present in all their corporeality and, often, abjection. When nature appears in its most destructive form, as for instance in the short story ‘‘La cancellata’’ (The Gate, 1920), the town is also present in its most impersonal dimension, showing no traces of its historic and cultural past. Bettian characters lose their contact with each other, even if they live close to one another or are separated only by thin walls that transmit sounds but not meaning, as in Il vento notturno. Sometimes space is limited to a few poor rooms in small flats or boarding houses, as in Ispezione, Lotta fino all’alba (Struggle Till Dawn, 1945), Spiritismo nell’antica casa (Spiriualism in the Ancient House, 1946), and in most of the short stories in the collection Le case ( Houses, 1933). The same atmosphere dominates in the plays that are most directly linked to Betti’s profession, as for instance Frana allo Scalo Nord and Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia. Justice loses its way in a maze of personal passions and interests. In the preface to La padrona, Betti says that he does not want to identify himself with certain writers who only seek to show off their own intelligence and excellent literary style. For him, on the contrary, ‘‘solamente tutto l’altro, ci sta a cuore: la nostra fatica, il nostro amore, e la gioia... e soprattutto il dolore...’’ (all the other things are most 207

UGO BETTI important: our struggles, our love, and our happiness... but above all our suffering). His moral and social commitment prevented him from conceiving writings as game, artifice, evasion. By virtue of this commitment, the dramatic, narrative, and poetic works of Betti are continuous reflections on the ‘‘why’’ of human conduct. Through his analysis of the individual, Ugo Betti is a ‘‘judge’’ who pronounces on the misery of his time. To Betti, history is only interesting to the extent it mirrors the story of the individual. He concludes his essay ‘‘Religione e Teatro’’ with words that define his poetics: Nell’animo dell’uomo ingiusto e addirittura del giudice eversore della giustizia, scopriremo, alla fine, che egli stesso non potra` respirare e sopravvivere senza una giustizia. Sorprenderemo, nell’animo dei crudeli, degli egoisti, dei perduti, nel fondo delle amarezze piu` indurite, a un certo punto, un ‘ingiustificato’ bisogno di pieta`, d’armonia, di solidarieta`, d’immortalita`, di fiducia, di perdono; e soprattutto d’amore... Ognuna di queste misteriose esigenze e` il lato di un perimetro, il cui disegno completo, quando lo intravediamo finalmente, ha un nome: Dio In the soul of the unjust... we shall discover, at the end, that the unjust himself cannot live without justice. At the far end of atrocity, egoism, moral decline of the most hardened bitterness... we may discover by surprise an ‘unjustified’ need of pity, harmony, solidarity, immortality, trust, forgiveness; and especially love... Each of these mysterious requirements is an edge of a perimeter, of which the complete design, when it will finally be transparent to our sight, has a name: God.

We may place the plays that apparently are connected with the political context of the immediate postwar period within this moral perspective, plays such as La regina e gli insorti and L’aiuola bruciata, which may seem prophetic to the extent that Betti foresaw the growing indifference of human beings toward others. Betti dealt with the same motifs in his poetry and short stories as in his dramatic texts: poverty, family relations, emigration, accidents caused by work, corruption, and political interference into private life. In his first volume of poetry, Il re pensieroso (The Pensive King, 1922), and in his later verses as well, Betti often abandoned himself to the fairy tale. Due to the elegance, grace, and lightness of his poetic style he has a certain affinity with the socalled crepuscolari, although he is substantially far from the manner in which this group of poets privileges the pure musicality of word, rhythm, and metre. His poetry plays the darkness of death and human misery against an ardent desire for light 208

and life. The fairy tale also appears in works that devote a great deal of attention to problematic social issues, such as Canzonette-La morte (Little Songs-Death, 1932), Uomo e donna (Man and Woman, 1937), and the posthumous collection Ultime liriche 1938–1953 (Last Lyrics, 1957). The short stories center on a single and focal point of view. The narrative voice selects and displays the facts in a way that reflects his own sensibility and emotion. Today we can read all the short stories in a critical edition, Novelle edite e rare, edited by Alfredo Luzi in 2001. For the first time, therefore, it is possible to appreciate the high aesthetic value of the whole corpus of short stories, among which are also stories with a realistic, interior, and metaphysic dimension: Caino (Cain, 1928) Le case (Houses, 1933), and Una strana serata (A Strange Evening, 1948). The short stories are certainly not to be considered as test cases for themes that are developed later in the dramatic work. Betti followed his own experimental course from La Ronda to Solaria, one that took as its point of departure a fruitful combination of fairy tale elements with various modes of realism. The same combination of elements appears in the short novel La piera alta (The High Stone, 1948), initially published as a serial in L’illustrazione italiana (6 July–30 November 1947), and thematically based on the film treatment I tre del Pra’ di Sopra (The Three from the Meadow), which Betti had submitted to a 1939 contest promoted by the review Cinema. The innovative aspects of Ugo Betti’s art stem from his disregard of specific literary schools and ideologies. His art originates in his attentive observation of reality and in an irrepressible urge to find the meaning of life.

Biography Born in Camerino (Macerata) on 4 February 1892. In 1901 moved to Parma, where the father had an appointment as director of the municipal hospital. With his brother Emilio, Ugo often returned to visit his grandparents in Camerino. He remained closely attached to his native town. After having completed his high school studies, he enrolled as a student of law at the University of Parma. His doctoral thesis, ‘‘Il diritto e la rivoluzione’’ was later elaborated as the essay ‘‘Considerazioni sulla forza maggiore come limite di responsabilita` del vettore ferroviario,’’ 1920. After attending the military academy in Turin (1916), he volunteered for the front, where he was taken prisoner after the defeat of Caporetto (1917). During his captivity

UGO BETTI he stayed first in Rastatt, then in Cellelager, in barrack 15/C, where he befriended the writers Bonaventura Tecchi and Carlo Emilio Gadda. After the war he worked as a magistrate, first in Parma and then in Rome in 1930, also the year of his marriage to Andreina Frosini. He published his first volume of poetry, Il re pensieroso, in 1922, followed in 1928 by his first volume of short stories, Caino. In 1925, his first drama, La padrona, won a prize in a literary contest; L’isola meravigliosa won first prize in a contest in Rome, 1930; polemicized against the rondisti, 1933; Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia received an award from the Istituto del Dramma Italiano as best play in the 1948–1949 theatrical season. Diagnosed with stomach cancer in February 1953. Died in Rome on 9 June 1953. FRANCO MUSARRA Selected Works Collections Teatro completo, preface by Silvio D’Amico and Achille Fiocco, Bologna: Cappelli, 1955; rpt. 1971. Raccolta di novelle, edited by Lia Fava, Bologna: Cappelli, 1963. Il filo verde: Poesie, edited by Luigi Fontanella, Camerino: MIERMA, 1993. Novelle edite e rare, edited by Alfredo Luzi, Fossombrone (PS): Metauro Edizioni, 2001.

Fiction Caino, 1928. Le case, 1933. Una strana serata, 1948. La piera alta, 1948.

Poetry ‘‘Il re pensieroso,’’ 1922. ‘‘Canzonette-La morte,’’ 1932. ‘‘Uomo e donna,’’ 1937. ‘‘Ultime liriche 1938–1953,’’ 1957.

Ispezione, 1942; in Ugo Betti: Three Plays, translated by David Gullette and Gino Rizzo, 1966. Marito e moglie, 1943. Lotta fino all’alba, 1945; in Three Plays on Justice, translated by G. Harry McWilliam, 1964. Irene innocente, 1946. Spiritismo nell’antica casa, 1946. Delitto all’isola delle capre, 1948; as Crime on Goat Island, translated by Henry Reed, 1961. Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia, 1949; as Corruption in the Palace of Justice, translated by Henry Reed, The New Theatre of Europe, vol. 1, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, 1962. La regina e gli insorti, 1949; in Three Plays, translated by Henry Reed, 1956; rpt., 1958; as The Queen and the Rebels, translated by Henry Reed, in Three European Plays, edited by E. Martin Browne, 1965. Il giocatore, 1950; in Ugo Betti: Three Plays, translated by Barbara Kennedy, 1966. Acque turbate, 1951. L’aiuola bruciata, 1951–1952; in Three Plays, translated by Henry Reed, 1956; rpt. 1958; in Two Plays, edited and translated by G. Harry McWilliam, 1965; rpt. 1968, 1973, 1978. La fuggitiva, 1952–1953; in Three Plays on Justice, translated by G. Harry McWilliam, 1964.

Essays Ugo Betti, Rome: Bulzoni, 1981. Religione e teatro. Il canto XXIX del Paradiso, edited byAndreina Betti, 1957; as ‘‘Religion and Theatre,’’ translated by Gino Rizzo and William Meriwether, The Tulane Drama Review, 5 (December 1960): 2–12; as ‘‘Religion and Theatre,’’ in Theatre in the Twentieth Century, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, 1963. ‘‘Preface to The Mistress,’’ translated by Gino Rizzo and William Meriwether, in The Tulane Drama Review, 5 (December 1960): 13–14. Scritti inediti, edited by Antonio Di Pietro, 1964; selection as ‘‘Essay, Correspondence, Notes,’’ translated by William Meriwether and Gino Rizzo, The Tulane Drama Review, 8 (Spring 1964): 51–86. Viaggio nella memoria 1892–1953, edited by Sergio Celestre, 2001.

Theater

Further Reading

La padrona, 1926. La casa sull’acqua, 1928. Un albergo sul porto, 1930. L’isola meravigliosa, 1930. Il diluvio, 1931. Frana allo Scalo Nord, 1932; in Three Plays on Justice, translated by G. Harry McWilliam, 1964; in Two Plays, edited and translated by G. Harry McWilliam, 1965; rpts. 1968, 1973, 1978. Il cacciatore d’anitre, 1934. Una bella domenica di settembre, 1935. I nostri sogni, 1936. Il paese delle vacanze, 1937; in Three Plays, translated by Henry Reed, 1956; rpt. 1958. Notte in casa del ricco, 1938. Favola di Natale, 1940. Il vento notturno, 1941.

Corotenuto, Carla, ‘‘La scrittura bettiana tra realismo e trascendenza,’’ in Ugo Betti, Novelle edite e rare, edited by Alfredo Luzi, Fossombrone (PS): Metauro Edizioni, 2001. Di Pietro, Antonio, L’opera di Ugo Betti, 2 vols., Bari: Edizioni del Centro Librario, 1966–1968. Doglio, Federico, and Wanda Raspolini (editors), Betti drammaturgo, Viterbo: EUP, 1984. Fava Guzzetta, Lia, ‘‘Introduzione,’’ in Ugo Betti, Novelle edite e rare, edited by Alfredo Luzi, Fossombrone (PS): Metauro Edizioni, 2001. Imberty, Claude, ‘‘L’atto unico d’Ugo Betti,’’ in The´atre civilisation contemporaine. Me´langes offerts a` Janine Menet-Genty, edited by Marie-He´le`ne Caspar, Paris: Centre de Recherches Italiennes, 2004. Licastro, Emanuele, Ugo Betti. An Introduction, Jefferson, N.C.-London: McFarland, 1985.

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UGO BETTI Lo Cicero, Elena F., Ugo Betti: Teatro de la culpa y el rescate, Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1976. Luzi, Alfredo (editor), Ugo Betti. Letterato e drammaturgo, Macerata-Camerino: Comune di Camerino, 1996. Marrone, Gaetana, La Drammatica di Ugo Betti. Tematiche e Archetipi, Palermo: Novecento, 1988. Moro, Gildo, Il teatro di Ugo Betti, Milan: Marzorati, 1973. Musarra, Franco, Impegno e astrazione nell’opera di Ugo Betti, L’Aquila: L.U. Japadre, 1974. Musarra, Franco, ‘‘La spettacolarita` in ‘Frana allo Scalo Nord,’’’ in The´atre Civilisation contemporaine. Me´langes offerts a` Janine Menet-Genty, edited by Marie-He´le`ne Caspar, Paris: Centre de Recherches Italiennes, 2004. Pandolfi, Vito, Teatro italiano contemporaneo 1945–1959, Milan: Schwarz, 1959. Ruschioni, Ada, ‘‘Stilemi di luce e ansia di trascendenza nella poetica di Ugo Betti,’’ in Otto/Novecento, 5, nos. 5–6 (1981): 183–226. Spera, Gianni, ‘Coscienza e responsabilita`’ nell’opera di Ugo Betti, Florence: Edizioni CLUSF, 1977.

CORRUZIONE AL PALAZZO DI GIUSTIZIA, 1949 Play by Ugo Betti

Literary critics agree in considering Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia (Corruption in the Palace of Justice) Ugo Betti’s masterpiece and one of the strongest dramas of Italian twentieth-century theater. In the play, which belongs to Betti’s dramas concerned with questions of social and community relations, corruption intrudes itself into the very institution, known as the Palace of Justice, originally intended to protect society from this sort of depredation. The special prosecutor Erzi is appointed by the ministry to clear up some questionable sentences, which might be the work of a corrupt judge. The presence of Erzi is alarming to various suspect persons, who maintain their innocence. The old President Vanan is the most surprised by the inquiry. Finally Cust, a corrupt judge, confesses his guilt to the Alto Revisore (The Supreme Judge), an ambiguous, almost divine being. In Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia, written between the end of 1944 and the summer of 1945, Betti 210

has rendered characters of great dramatic depth: Cust, judge and murderer, efficient orator, who cunningly accuses himself in order to divert attention away from his real guilt; Crost, the First Judge, old and seriously ill, who, although having seen in Cust the murderer of the businessman Ludvi-Pol, does not bring charges against him, convinced that the ‘‘palace’’ must have a ‘‘worthy’’ king; Elena, the daughter of the President Vanan, who cannot prevent the collapse of her dreams; Erzi, the investigating magistrate, who assumes the dramatic role of the ‘‘messenger,’’ who induces the various characters, particularly Cust, to confess their anxieties, tensions, weaknesses, repressed desires. Even today Betti’s representation of corruption and justice continues to persuade us with its sense of actuality. Erzi’s investigation, which unfolds like a detective story, leads to the exposure of the guilty Cust, who confesses his guilt only when Croz is struck by a heart attack and Cust imagines that he is dead. Cust as well as Croz are diabolic characters. Betti has the theatrical intuition to have Croz summon the other judges, while dying, but only to frighten Cust. After having been congratulated by Erzi for his appointment as the new president (the moment of his final triumph), Cust capitulates to his sense of guilt, particularly for having caused the death of Elena. Although some critics have read the play politically as an antifascist drama, or religiously, seeing the Alto Revisore as a divine being, the drama finds its most tense meaning in the dialogues, in particular when Cust is talking. The thesis of the drama is that human justice is always defective, that ‘‘true’’ justice has to originate in the soul of those called before the High Judge. It is, however, not only the theme that makes the masterpiece, but the clever plot and the succession of monologues and dialogues in the various scenes. FRANCO MUSARRA Editions First edition: originally published in Sipario (March 1949); rpt. in Teatro completo, Bologna: Cappelli, 1955. Other editions: Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia, Bologna: Cappelli, 1966; Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia, introduction by Giovanni Antonucci, Rome: Newton, 1993; Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia, edited by Gaetana Marrone, Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2006. Translations: as Corruption in the Palace of Justice, translated by Henry Reed, The New Theatre of Europe, vol. 1, edited by Robert W. Corrigan, New York: Dell, 1962; as Corruption in the Palace of Justice,

UGO BETTI translated by Henry Reed, in Classics of Modern Theatre, edited byAlvin Kernan, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965.

Further Reading Antonucci, Giovanni, ‘‘Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia: fra cronaca e storia,’’ in Ugo Betti, edited by Federico Doglio and Wanda Raspolini, Rome: Bulzoni, 1981. Carlos De Miguel, Juan, ‘‘Progressione drammaturgica in Ugo Betti: da ‘Frana allo Scalo Nord’ a ‘Corruzione al Palazzo di Giustizia,’’’ in Studi italiani, 2 (2000): 95–109. Curetti, Elettra, Zu den Dramen von Ugo Betti, Zu¨rich: Juris Druck, 1966. Di Pietro, Antonio, L’opera di Ugo Betti, vol. 2, Bari: Edizioni del Centro Librario, 1968. Genot, Ge´rard, ‘‘Ugo Betti, l’Engrenage et la balance’’ in La mort de Godot, edited by Pierre Brunel, Paris: Lettres Modernes Minard, 1970. Marrone, Gaetana, La Drammatica di Ugo Betti. Tematiche e Archetipi, Palermo: Novecento, 1988. Musarra, Franco, ‘‘Il concetto di impegno nel teatro di Ugo Betti,’’ in Ugo Betti. Letterato e drammaturgo, edited by Alfredo Luzi, Macerata-Camerino: Comune di Camerino, 1996. Portier, Lucienne, ‘‘Le the´aˆtre en question: Ugo Betti,’’ in Italianistica, II, no. 2 (1973), 247–267. Usmiani, Renate, ‘‘The ‘Felix Culpa’ Motif in the Drama of Ugo Betti,’’ in Humanities Association of Canada, Bulletin, 21 (1970): 39–44.

DELITTO ALL’ISOLA DELLE CAPRE, 1948 Play by Ugo Betti

Since its first performance on 20 October 1950 at the Teatro delle Arti in Rome (Compagni ZareschiRandone), Delitto all’Isola delle Capre (Crime on the Goat Island) has been considered one of Betti’s most successful and significant plays. The plot is quite simple. In a house situated in a barren land lives Agata with her daughter Silvia and her sisterin-law Pia. Her husband Enrico has left her. At first it seems that harmony reigns in the house, where Agata and her husband, professor Enrico Ishi, had chosen to live in order to escape the arbitrary

compromises that prevented them from living according to the ideal of freedom to which the professor had subscribed. But their isolated life causes husband and wife to enclose themselves in silence. After the departure of her husband, Agata falls into a state of apathy and indifference. The life of the three women is upset by the arrival of the stranger Angelo, a name that suggests a´nghelos, messenger. Angelo claims to have been in captivity in Africa with Agata’s husband and to have promised Enrico that he would tell Agata of his death. He settles into the house and becomes the ‘‘pastore delle capre’’ (shepherd), seducing alternately the three women. Both an angel and a demon who subjects them to his own erotic desires, Angelo drags the women into a degrading emotional maelstrom. When it appears that reason is destined to succumb to instinct, Agata revolts. She invents a secret plan while Angelo is trapped in a well, where he had gone down to fetch some bottles of wine, when the rope ladder accidentally falls inside. She decides to help Angelo get out of the well only after her daughter and sister-in-law leave. Her plan, however, does not succeed. When she calls Angelo, she gets no answer. In her final decision to make Angelo her lover-victim and live with him in perpetual struggle, there is an unassailable conviction that human choices may know neither reflections nor forgiveness. Agata’s words that conclude Act Three are in this respect significant: ‘‘Ora siamo noi due, e tutto e` semplice. Tu non potrai certo andartene, e nemmeno io. Seguiteremo a chiamarci e a lottare per tutta l’eternita`’’ (Now we two are alone, and everything is very simple. You cannot go away, no more than I. We shall continue to call each other and to struggle in all eternity). Delitto all’Isola delle Capre, which Betti presumably wrote between 1946–1948 after Ispezione, is a drama rich in symbols that refer to more or less concealed erotic meanings. The language of the characters has a personal value: Agata is a mysterious and dominant character (she is the ‘‘mistress’’); Silvia is a figure of innocence, an innocence that begins to lose its original state as a windowpane that is about to lose its transparency; Pia, in her purity, lives in a world of dreams from which she tries vainly to escape; Angelo, who is first enticing, persuading, then violent when he is convinced he can dominate the women and take full possession of the house. His arrival unchains an ancient struggle between male and female, but also among the three women who each desire to take possession of the male. Central symbols are the island, a space separated from the rest of the world, the well as 211

UGO BETTI reference to the female and to a possible contact between the earthly and the spiritual, the wind as an element of destruction and creation, the wine and the goats as ritual elements of the Dionysian. Delitto all’Isola delle Capre is exemplary in teaching us to understand ‘‘the expressive, staging and thematic codes, on which the theatre of Betti is structured’’ (Gaetana Marrone, ‘‘‘Delitto all’Isola delle Capre,’’’ 1996). Film versions of the play, such as Charles Brabant’s Les posse´de´es (1957) and Gerardo Puglia’s Woman in the Wind (1990), attest to the continuing power of the play over audiences and the particular intellectual and human depth of its drama. FRANCO MUSARRA Editions First edition: originally published in Teatro, 15 November 1950; in Teatro completo, Bologna: Cappelli, 1955; rpt. 1971. Translations: Crime on Goat Island, translated by Henry Reed, San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1961; in Ugo Betti: Three Plays, translated by Gino Rizzo and David Gullette, New York: Hill and Wang, 1966; Crime on Goat Island, translated by Henry Reed, in Masterpieces of the Modern Italian Theatre, edited by Robert Corrigan, New York: Collier Books, 1967.

Further Reading Balducci, Marino, Alberto, ‘‘La ritualita` dionisiaca nel ‘Delitto all’Isola delle Capre’ di Ugo Betti,’’ in Ugo Betti. Letterato e drammaturgo, edited by Alfredo Luzi, Macerata-Camerino: Comune di Camerino, 1996. Di Pietro, Antonio, L’opera di Ugo Betti, vol. 2, Bari: Edizioni del Centro Librario, 1968. Marrone, Gaetana, ‘‘Sta`sis e empatheia: la trascendenza dell’immagine in una versione cinematografica americana di ‘Delitto all’isola delle capre,’’’ in Lingua e letteratura italiana nel mondo oggi, edited by Ignazio Baldelli and Bianca Maria Da Rif, Firenze: Olschki, 1991. Marrone, Gaetana, ‘‘‘Delitto all’Isola delle Capre’: dalla filologia testuale alla forma cinematografica,’’ in Ugo Betti. Letterato e drammaturgo, edited by Alfredo Luzi, Macerata-Camerino: Comune di Camerino, 1996. Moro, Gildo, Il teatro di Ugo Betti, Milano: Marzorati, 1973. Musarra, Franco, Impegno e astrazione nell’opera di Ugo Betti, L’Aquila: L.U. Japadre, 1974. Puppa, Paolo, ‘‘Il Teatro di Betti: la scena come confessione pubblica del passato,’’ in Betti drammaturgo, edited by Federico Doglio and Wanda Raspolini, Viterbo: EUP, 1984. Tuscano, Pasquale, ‘‘Il senso della vita e della morte nel dramma bettiano ‘Delitto all’isola delle capre,’’’ in Ugo Betti, Rome: Bulzoni, 1981.

SAVERIO BETTINELLI (1718–1808) The polemicist, poet, and critic Saverio Bettinelli was part of the climate of renewal that had a profound impact on literary studies in the age of the Enlightenment. His intellectual activity was complex, and reveals the convergence of numerous and diverse interests. His Jesuit education, acquired in his native Mantua as well as in other northern Italian cities, was an essential component of his productive literary career, and his loyalty to the order remained constant throughout his life. His capacity to remain abreast of the times and his acceptance of the new Enlightenment culture—as well as the tendency to curb its more revolutionary aspects—were indeed the result of the cultural teachings of the Jesuits. Bettinelli’s work can be articulated chronologically. The first phase includes the years up to 1755, during which he obtained his first successes and 212

accolades as he traveled through some of the most vibrant cultural centers of the period: Bologna, Venice, and Parma. He wrote for the theater, imitating French models in plays intended for Jesuit boarding schools. Even though successful, they are works of little interest, just as the satiric poem in octaves Le raccolte (Collections, 1751) and the Versi sciolti di tre eccellenti moderni autori (Poems in Blank Verse by Three Excellent Modern Authors, 1758), published under the Arcadian pen name Diodoro Delfico. Two essential events took place between 1756 and 1759: a trip to France and the publication in Venice of Dieci lettere di Publio Virgilio Marone scritte dagli Elisi all’Arcadia di Roma sopra gli abusi introdotti nella poesia italiana (Ten Letters by Publio Virgilio Marone Written from the

SAVERIO BETTINELLI Elysian Fields to the Roman Arcadia Concerning the Malpractices Introduced into Italian Poetry, 1757), also known as Lettere virgiliane. His sojourn in France allowed him to frequent the most important literary circles and to meet Helve´tius, Rousseau, and Voltaire, who exerted a lasting influence on Bettinelli. The Lettere virgiliane function as an introduction to the Versi sciolti di tre eccellenti moderni autori, a collection of poems written by Algarotti, Frugoni, and Bettinelli himself. In this work, the leading voice is Virgil, who launches a trenchant attack on the Italian poetic tradition and calls for reforms. He begins with Dante, on whom he expresses a limitative judgment, pointing out the obscurity and the lack of good taste in the Comedia. Petrarch is singled out as a model of elegance and harmony, but also accused (with the petrarchisti) of repetition. When Virgil arrives at the eighteenth century, during a trip to Rome, he illustrates the current state of Italian poetry, criticizing its xenophilous trends. The Lettere virgiliane, which caused a great deal of controversy for their critical stance with respect to tradition, are animated by a contentious style, however informed by a mild classicist vein. Bettinelli’s appeal to an ideal of renewal resumes in Dodeci lettere inglesi sopra varii argomenti, e sopra la letteratura italiana principalmente (Twelve Letters by an Englishman on Various Matters and Particularly on Italian Literature, 1766), or Lettere inglesi, which were written for the Milanese journal Il caffe` but published as an appendix to the reprint of the Versi sciolti di tre eccellenti moderni autori. More attention is now given to sociological conditions: the decadence of the contemporary literary scene is now identified in the lack of a national capital and of a common civilization, which cause men of letters to become argumentative and consequently of little benefit to the society in which they live. Bettinelli invited his contemporaries to look outside of Italy, and, at the same time, to protect the autonomy of their poetic experience from the academies and from the trivialization of the editorial industry. These themes are further discussed in an essay on aesthetics, Dell’entusiasmo delle belle arti (On Enthusiasm in the Fine Arts, 1769), which Bettinelli published in Milan under the auspices of Pietro Verri. The sources of aesthetic emotion, whose basic element is identified as enthusiasm (founded on imagination and sensitivity), are researched empirically rather than theoretically. With its focus on the power of feeling and nature, this essay privileges the artist’s freedom, along with a significant openness to the experience of the sublime; though tempered by a constant

appeal to ‘‘good taste’’ or rational control, it reveals Bettinelli’s sensitivity to the most advanced ideas in the field of aesthetics, from sensualism to Romanticism. In the forefront of Enlightenment thinking, Bettinelli reconstructed the Italian civilization from the eleventh to the fifteenth century in his most important work of literary historiography Del risorgimento d’Italia negli studi, nelle arti, e ne’ costumi dopo il mille (On the Revival of Italy in Scholarship, Arts, and Customs after the Year 1000, 1775). The first part is chronological, while the second discusses specific topics such as language, music, the arts, theater, and customs. Influenced by Voltaire’s historical writing (Essai sur les moeurs), Bettinelli sets civil history against political history, using some particularly well-chosen episodes. In the years that followed, he continued his literary investigations with Delle lodi del Petrarca (On Praising Petrarch, 1786) and the Saggio sull’eloquenza (Essay on Eloquence, 1802). Also important for his perspective on contemporary theater are his Dialoghi d’amore (Dialogues on Love, 1796). Bettinelli’s severe judgment of opera and tragicomedy discloses a constant attention to tragedy, recognizing the greatness of Vittorio Alfieri. He also dedicated a series of writings to the new and important female audience with Lettere d’un’amica (Letters from a Girlfriend, 1785) and Lettere a Lesbia Cidonia sopra gli epigrammi (Letters to Lesbia Cidonia Concerning Epigrams, 1788). Bettinelli’s critical reception is mixed. Over time his works have met with diverging judgments, beginning with Gasparo Gozzi’s polemical attacks on Lettere virgiliane to a difficult placement between Classicism, Enlightenment, and pre-Romanticism (Bonora and Binni, respectively). What is clear is the nonlinearity of dynamic ideas of renewal and moderate classicism, respectful of the social and ideological status quo. Yet the attention that he gives to the modes of cultural communication as well as those of the aesthetic experience reveal his sensitivity to the most enlightened cultural debate of the time.

Biography Born in Mantua on 18 July 1718. Studied at Jesuit boarding schools in his native town and later in Bologna; entered into the order, 1738; named instructor of rhetoric in Brescia, and after being ordained a priest, became professor of poetics in Venice, 1748; moved to Parma where he remained 213

SAVERIO BETTINELLI for seven years as instructor of history at the Collegio dei nobili; left Parma and traveled extensively in Germany, Switzerland, and France; relocated to Verona, 1759; appointed professor of eloquence of the University of Modena, 1772; the following year, at the suppression of the Society of Jesus, retired to his native Mantua, where he resided for the last 30 years of his life. Died in Mantua, 13 September 1808. RICCIARDA RICORDA See also: Historiography Selected Works Collections Opere, 8 vols., Venice: Zatta, 1780–1782. Opere edite ed inedite in prosa ed in versi. Seconda edizione riveduta, ampliata, e correttadall’Autore, 24 vols., revised and enlarged edition, Venice: Cesare, 1799–1801. Lettere virgiliane e inglesi e altri scritti, edited by Vittorio Enzo Alfieri, Bari: Laterza, 1930. Opere di Francesco Algarotti e di Saverio Bettinelli, edited by Ettore Bonora, Milan: Ricciardi, 1969.

Poetry ‘‘Le raccolte,’’ 1751. ‘‘Versi sciolti di Diodoro Delfico,’’ 1755.

Prose Dieci lettere di Publio Virgilio Marone scritte dagli Elisi all’Arcadia di Roma sopra gli abusi introdotti nella poesia italiana, 1757.

Dodeci Lettere Inglesi sopra varii argomenti e sopra la letteratura italiana principalmente, 1766. Dell’entusiasmo delle belle arti, 1769. Del Risorgimento d’Italia negli studi, nelle arti e ne’ costumi dopo il mille, 1775. Lettere d’un’amica, 1785. Lettere a Lesbia Cidonia sopra gli epigrammi, 1788. Dialoghi d’amore, 1796. Lettere XX ad una sua amica sopra le Belle arti, 1798. Dissertazione accademica sopra Dante, 1800.

Further Reading Arato, Franco, ‘‘Le tentazioni della filosofia: Bettinelli e Denina,’’ in La storiografia letteraria nel Settecento italiano, Pisa: ETS, 2002. Binni, Walter, ‘‘Fra Illuminismo e Romanticismo: Saverio Bettinelli,’’ in Preromanticismo italiano, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1947. Bonora, Ettore, ‘‘Introduzione,’’ in Illuministi italiani: Opere di Francesco Algarotti e di Saverio Bettinelli, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1969. Bonora, Ettore, Parini e altro Settecento: Fra Classicismo e Illuminismo, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1982. Colagrosso, Francesco, Saverio Bettinelli e il teatro gesuitico, 2nd revised ed., Florence: Sansoni, 1901. Crotti, Ilaria, and Ricciarda Ricorda (editors), Saverio Bettinelli: Un gesuita alla scuola del mondo, Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. Fubini, Mario, ‘‘Introduzione alla lettura delle Virgiliane,’’ in Dal Muratori al Baretti, Bari: Laterza, 1954. Gozzi, Gasparo, Difesa di Dante, Venice: Zatta, 1758. Marcialis, Maria Teresa, Saverio Bettinelli: Un contributo all’estetica dell’esperienza, Palermo: Aesthetica Preprint, 1988. Muscetta, Carlo, ‘‘Saverio Bettinelli,’’ in Letteratura italiana: I minori, vol. 3, Milan: Marzorati, 1961.

ALBERTO BEVILACQUA (1934–) Alberto Bevilacqua is among Italy’s most exemplary writers of the postwar period. An immensely prolific novelist, poet, and film director, he has published more than two dozen novels and other prose writings plus several collections of poetry. In recent years, this veteran writer has been especially attentive to changing social and literary tastes. For example, Giallo Parma (Parma Thriller, 1997) is indicative of a new interest by Italian readers in the serious detective novel; Gli anni struggenti (The Yearning Years, 2000) is an attempt to reach a prosperous younger readership eager to find its 214

attitudes toward life and the future taken seriously; and Eros (Eros, 1994), like several of Bevilacqua’s other works, reflects Italian society’s acceptance of more explicit fictional descriptions of sexual activities. In his best fiction, Bevilacqua works against the grain of literary conventions and expectations. His most successful narratives are either set in his native Parma or involve a resident of that city who has moved away physically from familial and cultural roots only to return in imagination to the settings of his childhood. In this regard, the critic

ALBERTO BEVILACQUA Stefano Tani has characterized Bevilacqua as a chronicler of the ‘‘microcosm’’ who has turned away from the macrocosm of history to focus instead on an elegiac description of the land of his youth (Il romanzo di ritorno, 1990). In Bevilacqua’s case, this land is the city of Parma plus the lowlands lying between the city walls and the huge and storied fluvial artery of the Po River. The characters who appear in such collections of loosely connected stories and anecdotes as those in La polvere sull’erba (Dust on the Grass, 1955), Una citta` in amore (A City in Love, 1962), and La festa parmigiana (Parma Festival, 1980), or in the novel La califfa (Califfa, 1964), are sharply unconventional individuals, men and women from different social classes who defy prevailing social customs in pursuit of their unique and often colorful destinies. Among Bevilacqua’s most notable female characters is the demimondaine but utterly honest Irene Corsini, ‘‘La Califfa,’’ who makes the most of her overpowering physical attractiveness to get ahead in the world no matter what. All of Bevilacqua’s fictional women—including Empress Maria Luisa of Austria—are powerfully driven by love and desire. Bevilacqua’s men, by contrast, typically inhabit a world that is political before it is sexual, often to the despair of their female partners who can only mourn when their loved ones are beaten by the police, jailed, exiled, or executed. In Bevilacqua’s stories set in the earlier years of the twentieth century, these heroes are often anti-Fascist political subversives. Later, during the civil war of 1943– 1945—a war that Bevilacqua was too young to fight in but not too young to witness—they are partisans. Combatants of a related but different sort appear in the stories about the years right after the war, when a lawlessness without precise ideological coloration swept over the Po lowlands with the same mindless fury as that of the floods periodically caused by the overflowing of the great river. In these tales, the often fantastic preChristian folklore of the region melds with the equally fantastic but historically based events of these confusing years, which Bevilacqua is one of the few Italian writers to have chronicled. The central characters of these works are individuals of great charisma. They include ‘‘La Califfa’’ and ‘‘La grande Gio`’’ (the big Gio`) of the 1986 novel by that name, the partisan Marco Ridolfi of La polvere sull’erba and the anti-Fascist activist Guido of Una citta` in amore. Like ‘‘La Califfa,’’ who was apparently easily recognized by other Parmigiani, Guido was based on a historical figure, the Parma native and left-wing leader Guido

Picelli. In La pasqua rossa (Red Easter, 2003) Bevilacqua returned to this fictional treatment of a historical person; Ezio Barbieri, the Milanese bandit and leader of a prison revolt, is the near legendary figure at the narrative’s center. Bevilacqua’s favorite, and in his eyes most charismatic character, was drawn from popular history, however, but from his own intimate experience. To an extraordinary degree, and even when writing about such historical individuals as those mentioned, Bevilacqua is always writing about himself as he is or would like to be. This autobiographical obsession, plus his ‘‘cannibalistic’’ tendency to repeat episodes from one book to another, marks the limits of this writer’s achievement. The Parma and the Rome that appear in Bevilacqua’s books are unlike the London of Charles Dickens’ novels, the Paris of Honore´ de Balzac’s, or the Yoknapatawpha County of William Faulkner. Instead of putting into motion the fully realized characters created by these English, French, and American authors, Bevilacqua never seems quite able to create autonomous individuals with their own unique preoccupations, desires, and destinies. Whatever happens in his books, and whatever his characters happen to be named, it is clear that this author’s dominant subject is always himself: his childhood, his family, his sex life, his quirks, the stories he has heard and made up about his native region as they resonate on his own sensibility. The creator of a vigorous, muscular Italian prose unlike that of some of the other writers of best-selling novels in the Italy of the 1960s and 1970s, Bevilacqua has followed a career trajectory similar to that of the film director who appears in many of Federico Fellini’s films from the same period. These films often depict a provincial intellectual of great talent who moves from the outskirts of the dominant culture to a corrupt and corrupting Rome whose corrosive effects on his character and art he is finally unable to escape even as he denounces those who fall prey to its allure. In his films, mostly adapted from his fiction and produced by RAI-TV, Bevilacqua continues to memorialize the promises and disappointments of the plight of many Italian intellectuals throughout the final decades of the twentieth century and, in his case, beyond.

Biography Born in a working-class neighborhood of Parma on 27 June 1934. Studied law at the University of Parma. In 1956, moved to Rome where he has 215

ALBERTO BEVILACQUA lived since. Correspondent or staff writer for the daily newspapers Il messaggero, L’approdo, Il resto del carlino, and Il corriere della sera. Literary prizes include the Campiello in 1966 for Questa specie d’amore, the Strega in 1968 for L’occhio del gatto, and the Bancarella in 1972 for Il viaggio misterioso. Frequent appearances on television talk shows. CHARLES KLOPP Selected Works

Poetry ‘‘L’amicizia perduta,’’ 1961. ‘‘L’indignazione,’’ 1973. ‘‘La crudelta`,’’ 1975. ‘‘Immagine e somiglianza,’’ 1982. ‘‘Vita mia,’’ 1985. ‘‘Il corpo desiderato,’’ 1988. ‘‘Messaggi segreti,’’ 1993. ‘‘Poesie d’amore,’’ 1996. ‘‘Piccole questioni di eternita`,’’ 2002. ‘‘Legame di sangue,’’ 2003. ‘‘Tu che mi ascolti—Poesie alla madre,’’ 2005.

Films

Fiction La polvere sull’erba, 1955; revised edition, 2000. Una citta` in amore, 1962. La califfa, 1964; as Califfa, translated by Harvey Fergusson II, 1969. Questa specie d’amore, 1966. L’occhio del gatto, 1968. Il viaggio misterioso, 1972. Umana avventura, 1974. Una scandalosa giovinezza, 1978. La festa parmigiana, 1980. La mia Parma, 1982. Il curioso delle donne, 1983. La donna delle meraviglie, 1984. La grande Gio`, 1986. La misteriosa felicita`, 1988. Il gioco delle passioni, 1989. I sensi incantati, 1991. Un cuore magico, 1993. L’eros, 1994; as Eros, translated by Ann McGarrell, 1996. Lettera alla madre sulla felicita`, 1995. Anima amante, 1996. GialloParma, 1997. Sorrisi dal mistero, 1998. Gli anni struggenti, 2000. Viaggio al principio del giorno, 2001. Attraverso il tuo corpo, 2002. La pasqua rossa, 2003. Parma degli scandali, 2004. Il Gengis, 2005.

La califfa, 1970. Questa specie d’amore, 1972. Attenti al buffone, 1975. Le rose di Danzica, 1979. Bosco d’amore (based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s story), 1981. Il grande respiro, 1981. La donna delle meraviglie, 1985. Tango blu, 1988. GialloParma, 1999.

Further Reading Ba´rberi-Squarotti, Giorgio, ‘‘I giochi dell’invenzione: Bevilacqua, Malerba e Siciliano,’’ in Storia delle letteratura Italiana, vol. 5, part 2, Turin: UTET, 1996. Bertacchini, Renato, Il romanzo del novecento in Italia, Rome: Studium, 1992. Cadioli, Alberto, L’industria del romanzo, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1981. Ragoni, Eugenio, and Toni Iermano, Scrittori dell’ultimo Novecento, edited by Enrico Malato, Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 9, Rome: Salerno, 2000. Sanguinetti, Giacinto, Storia della letteratura italiana del Novecento, Rome: Newton Compton, 1994. Scorrano, Luigi, Alberto Bevilacqua, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1982. Tani, Stefano, Il romanzo di ritorno, Milan: Mursia, 1990. Toscani, Claudio, Invito alla lettura di Alberto Bevilacqua, Milan: Mursia, 1974.

ANGELA BIANCHINI (1921–) Many authors contributed to Angela Bianchini’s development, from the United States’ Southern writers to Colette, and from the representatives of Hispanic cultures to Natalia Ginzburg. Bianchini is a writer with a cosmopolitan background, although 216

firmly rooted in Rome’s cultural life. The themes that are central to her fiction are evident in the three short stories composing Lungo equinozio (A Long Equinox, 1962): the intertwining of private passions and historical events, the anguish of exile,

ANGELA BIANCHINI the disenchanted realization of the elusiveness of all returns, and the mysterious quality of love in all its forms. Inevitably, as for many Italian writers of the twentieth century, history is one of her fiction’s protagonists. It shapes the lives of all her characters and visits its violence upon them. It also gives her characters a maturity consisting of humility and compassion that they could not otherwise have achieved. In Capo d’Europa (The Edge of Europe, 1991), a young girl caught in the Jewish diaspora caused by Italy’s 1938 anti-Semitic laws is forced to acknowledge her lack of awareness but also opens her eyes at last to the beauty and tragedy of a world she had until then not known. Capo d’Europa is a masterful narrative about seldom-explored aspects of the Jewish experience in the 1930s and 1940s. The theme of exile returns often in Bianchini’s fiction. The struggle to make sense of personal losses, the errors, the misunderstandings, and the desperate search for new reasons to live are the themes of Le nostre distanze (The Distances We Crossed, 1965). On a barely disguised Johns Hopkins campus, the protagonist, a young woman exiled from her country, discovers the charms of American university life, the hypocrisies and cruelties of the world, loneliness in an American city, and also a hard-won awareness. Earlier short stories, especially ‘‘Gli oleandri’’ (Oleanders, 1962), had already spoken about the heartbreak of displacement and the impossibility of returns, but La ragazza in nero (The Girl in Black, 1990) revisits those themes, suggesting that life will reassert itself with an invincible, sensual power. A young woman, her mother, and a fascinating grandmother are the story’s protagonists. Rome, contemplated with profound love, is more than a background to their lives; it is as changeable and seductive as is the ‘‘girl in black’’ of the title. Human passions and, above all, love cannot exist outside their historical contexts; they are transformed and distorted by events. Le labbra tue sincere (Your Candid Lips, 1995), whose title comes from an early twentieth-century song, takes place in Rome while it undergoes a major political and architectural change because it recently became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Nostalgia and the sense of youthful energy that is inherent in all transformations alternatively permeate the novel. Un amore sconveniente (An Unsuitable Passion, 1999) chronicles the stages of a love that blossoms during the first half of the twentieth

century and is bound to be terribly damaging. A Jewish intellectual passionately loves a beautiful woman, marries her, and sees his whole existence ruined not only because of the persecution visited on Jewish people but also because of his wife’s opportunism and his own inability to distance himself from her. Another recurrent element in her writing is the United States, which appears frequently in Bianchini’s fiction. It is a mirage in Capo d’Europa and a puzzling reality in Le nostre distanze, a haunting memory in ‘‘Festa dell’indipendenza’’ (Independence Day, 1962) and a memory of disappointment in ‘‘Gli oleandri.’’ In Nevada (2002), it is the state of Nevada in the early 1950s to which young and not-so-young women flock to get quick divorces and are the guests of a dude ranch that caters solely to them. They are forced to remain in one location as if cloistered. They hide painful secrets, but Bianchini gives each unhappy plot the fragrance of youthful passion. In the background, as essential to the story as any of the characters, hovers the American West, a place of fabulous and forbidding immensity. Most of Bianchini’s essays concern topics of twentieth-century Italian, Spanish, and Latin American literature. However, she also published a fundamental essay on nineteenth-century culture and the serial novel, translated Old French medieval romances, and was the curator of an edition of the letters written by the Florentine patrician Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi (1408–1471) to her exiled sons. Voce donna (Voice: Woman, 1979), a diachronic study of women’s presence in society and literature, remains one of the best works in Italian inspired by the women’s movement. In the 1970s and 1980s, the RAI (Italian Radio and Television) broadcast a number of Bianchini’s adaptations of fictional texts.

Biography Born in Rome on 21 April 1921. In 1941 immigrated to the United States because of the ‘‘racial laws’’ promulgated by the Fascist regime in 1938. Attended Johns Hopkins University, studied with Leo Spitzer, who was also an exile, and gained a Ph.D. in romance philology. In 1952, returned to Rome, where she currently resides, and started writing for prestigious periodicals and journals, Il Mondo, Tempo presente, and L’Espresso. She also wrote plays and contributed to the cultural programs of RAI, the Italian radio and television. 217

ANGELA BIANCHINI She writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri as well as the RAI, and is a prominent figure in Italian cultural life. She has won a number of literary prizes including the Premio Rapallo in 1991 for La ragazza in nero and the Premio Donne-Citta` di Roma in 1992. She has one son, Mario Fales, a well-known archaeologist. ANGELA M. JEANNET Selected Works Fiction Lungo equinozio, 1962 (includes ‘‘Gli oleandri,’’ ‘‘Festa dell’indipendenza,’’ and ‘‘Lungo equinozio’’). Le nostre distanze, 1965. La ragazza in nero, 1990; as The Girl in Black, translated by Giuliana Sanguineti Katz and Anne Urbancic, 2002. Capo d’Europa, 1991; 1992 (includes a revised version of ‘‘Gli oleandri, ’’ ‘‘La ragazza in nero,’’ and ‘‘Capo d’Europa’’); as The Edge of Europe, translated by Angela M. Jeannet and David Castronuovo, 2000. Le labbra tue sincere, 1995. Un amore sconveniente, 1999. Nevada, 2002.

Radio Play Una crociera di sogno, 1997.

Other Il romanzo d’appendice, 1969, revised as La luce a gas e il feuilleton: due invenzioni dell’Ottocento, 1988. Romanzi medievali d’amore e d’avventura, translated and edited, 1979. Voce donna, 1979. Alessandra e Lucrezia. Destini femminili nella Firenze del Quattrocento, 2005.

Further Reading De Giovanni, Neria, and Giacomo F. Rech (editors), Scrittrici italiane dell’ultimo Novecento, Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio, 2003. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘Exiles and Returns in Angela Bianchini’s Fiction,’’ in Italica, 75, no. 1 (1998): 93–111. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘Esilio e ritorno nella narrativa di Angela Bianchini,’’ in Angela Bianchini, Capo d’Europa, Milan: Frassinelli, 1998. Sanguinetti Katz, Giuliana, ‘‘The Search for Identity in Angela Bianchini’s The Girl in Black,’’ in Angela Bianchini, The Girl in Black, Welland, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 2002. Urbancic, Anne, ‘‘Memory in The Girl in Black,’’ in Angela Bianchini, The Girl in Black, Welland, Ontario: Canadian Society for Italian Studies, 2002. Wright, Simona, ‘‘Lo sguardo all’indietro: esilio e coscienza nella narrativa di Angela Bianchini,’’ in Italian Quarterly, 40, nos. 157–158 (2003): 71–87. Wright, Simona, ‘‘Intervista a Angela Bianchini,’’ in Italian Quarterly, 40, 157–158 (2003): 89–108.

LUCIANO BIANCIARDI (1922–1971) Luciano Bianciardi was one of Italy’s most provocative writers of the 1950s and 1960s. During his lifetime, he distinguished himself as a novelist, journalist, prolific translator, popular historian, and pamphleteer. His works, which bear a strong autobiographical imprint, present a skeptical analysis of post-World War II Italy. Bianciardi’s early writings demonstrate his close ties to the proletarian values of his native region of the Maremma. He wrote, with the collaboration of Carlo Cassola, I minatori della Maremma (Miners of the Maremma, 1956), a sociological inquiry of the living and working conditions in the mines of the Maremma region. The study investigates the tragic mine explosion at Ribolla of May 1954 and denounces those responsible for the death of 43 218

mine workers. In 1954, Bianciardi left his hometown of Grosseto and moved to Milan, determined to participate in the cultural industry that was then in its nascent stages, and joined the newly formed Feltrinelli Publishing House as a member of its editorial staff. Bianciardi experienced a sense of alienation in Milan, as he failed to accept the rhythm and values of the city. His nonconformist behavior led to his being released by Feltrinelli in 1957. Bianciardi’s first single-authored book, Il lavoro culturale (Cultural Labor, 1957), is set in a small town in the provinces during the immediate postwar years. It is a witty pamphlet/novel of a generation of young Italians, who came out of the war with a sense of social commitment and cultural

LUCIANO BIANCIARDI renewal; instead, they became mired in abstract formulations, indifference, and political bureaucracies, settling ultimately for a life of routine. In his next work, the satiric novel L’integrazione (Integration, 1960), Bianciardi relives his traumatic experiences in Milan’s cultural industry. For the author, the ‘‘moral capital of Italy’’ becomes the bleak symbol of alienation and consumption during the ‘‘miracle,’’ or ‘‘boom,’’ years. Also in 1960, Bianciardi published Da Quarto a Torino (From Quarto to Turin), the first of his four historical works on the Risorgimento. It was followed by La battaglia soda (The Tough Battle, 1964) and by two studies that were originally targeted to a young readership, Daghela avanti un passo! (Move a Step Onward, 1969), and Garibaldi (1972). These writings are a personal and popularized approach to the Risorgimento and are intended to challenge the standard histories of the period whose prejudices and political interferences have transformed history into hagiography and myth. The ‘‘failed revolution’’ of the Risorgimento becomes a transparent allegory that allows Bianciardi to observe and judge the contemporary Italian situation. In 1962, Bianciardi published his masterpiece, La vita agra (It’s a Hard Life), which garnered him international success as an inventive ironist. The novel tells the story of an intellectual from the provinces who comes to the city on a revolutionary mission only to fall victim to the stifling, dehumanizing metropolis that is overly devoted to conformism and economic progress. La vita agra is a satiric protest against Milan, in particular, and the capitalistic society in general. The novel’s innovative style and language reflect the neurotic state of its protagonist, as Bianciardi chose to mix the variety of styles, genres, and languages from his numerous translations in order to illustrate the chaotic condition of contemporary society. Bianciardi’s reaction to the notoriety gained by the critical and popular success of the novel is to retreat from the city to the seaside town of Rapallo where he immersed himself in his translations, an activity that would accompany him his entire professional career. Over his lifetime, his translation production exceeded well over 100 titles and included works by Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Jack London, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and the Beat Generation writers. During these years, Bianciardi continued to contribute to numerous magazines and newspapers on a variety of topics, ranging from sports and social customs to television and film.

In his final years, Bianciardi published Viaggio in Barberia (Journey to Barberia, 1969), a diary of an 8,000-mile expedition across North Africa. This journey to the Maghreb region became closely linked to the author’s childhood and enabled him to step outside the boundaries of one’s routine and enter into a world of unrestricted exploration. The last published novel in his lifetime, Aprire il fuoco (Open Fire, 1969), is a highly innovative work in which Bianciardi adapted the revolutionary event of ‘‘The Five Days of Milan’’ in 1848 to a contemporary setting of 1959. It is the story of an exiled, revolutionary professor who, having been deprived of a cause, sees no values in which to believe. Having failed to reignite the mythical passions of the past, his only solution is death. In 1970, Bianciardi returned to Milan where he died on 14 November 1971 of cirrhosis of the liver.

Biography Born in Grosseto on 14 December 1922. Served as interpreter of the Allied forces, 1943; joined the Action Party, 1945; studied at the Scuola Normale of Pisa, degree in philosophy, with a thesis on John Dewey, 1948; married Adria Belardi; his son Ettore is born, 1949; taught history and philosophy at the ‘‘Liceo Classico Carducci-Ricasoli’’ of Grosseto, 1949–1951; contributed to the newspaper Gazzetta of Livorno with the column ‘‘Incontri provinciali,’’ 1952; began collaboration with the literary and cultural magazines Contemporaneo, Belfagor, Il Mondo, and Comunita`, 1954; director of the Chelliana library of Grosseto, 1952–1954; moved to Milan and joined the Feltrinelli Publishing House, 1954; his daughter, Luciana, is born, 1955; his third child, Marcello, is born from his relationship with longtime companion Maria Jatosti, 1958; moved to Rapallo, 1964; began column of television commentaries for magazine ABC, 1965; began to contribute to the magazines Kent, Executive, and Playmen, 1967; returned to Milan, 1970; died in Milan, 14 November 1971. MARK PIETRALUNGA Selected Works Fiction Il lavoro culturale, 1957. L’integrazione, 1960. Da Quarto a Torino, 1960. La vita agra, 1962; as It’s a Hard Life, translated by Eric Mosbacher, 1965.

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LUCIANO BIANCIARDI La battaglia soda, 1964. Aprire il fuoco, 1969. Daghela avanti un passo!, 1969. Viaggio in Barberia, 1969. Garibaldi, 1972. Il peripatetico ed altre storie, 1976. La solita zuppa, 1994.

Journalistic Writing I minatori della Maremma, coauthored with Carlo Cassola, 1956. Chiese Escatollo e nessuno raddoppio`: Diario in pubblico 1952–1971, edited by Luciana Bianciardi, 1995. L’alibi del progresso. Scritti giornalistici ed elzeviri, edited by Luciana Bianciardi with a preface by Dario Fo, 2000.

Letters ‘‘Bianciardi com’era (Lettere ad un amico grossetano),’’ in L’intellettuale disintegrato: Luciano Bianciardi, Rome: Ianua, 1985. La nascita dei ‘‘Minatori della Maremma.’’ Il carteggio Bianciardi-Cassola—Laterza e altri scritti, edited by Velio Abati, Florence: Giunti, 1998.

Translations Saul Bellow, Il re della pioggia, 1959. Aldous Huxley, Ritorno al mondo nuovo, 1961. Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg (editors), Beat Generation e Angry Young Men, 1961. Henry Miller, Tropico del Cancro. Tropico del Capricorno, 1962. Kenneth Patchen, Memorie di un pornografo timido, 1962. John Steinbeck, L’inverno del nostro scontento, 1962. William Faulkner, Il palazzo. Romanzo della famiglia Snopes, 1963.

Stephen Crane, Il segno rosso del coraggio e altri racconti, 1964. Richard Brautigan, Il generale immaginario, 1967. John Barth, Il coltivatore del Maryland, 1968. Jack London, John Barleycorn. La strada, 1971. William Faulkner, Una favola, 1971. Thomas Berger, Il piccolo grande uomo, 1971.

Further Reading Bianchi, Nedo, Arnaldo Bruni, and Adolfo Turbanti, editors, Luciano Bianciardi tra neocapitalismo e contestazione, Conference Proceedings (Grosseto, 22–23 March 1991), Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992. Bianciardi, Luciana, editor, Carte su carte di ribaltura. Luciano Bianciardi traduttore, Conference Proceedings (Grosseto, 24–25 October 1997), Florence: Giunti, 2000. Clotilde, Angelini, Bianciardi, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980. Corrias, Pino, Vita agra di un anarchico. Luciano Bianciardi a Milano, Milan: Baldini &Castoldi, 1993. Ferretti, Gian Carlo, La morte irridente. Ritratto critico di Luciano Bianciardi uomo giornalista traduttore scrittore, Lecce: Piero Manni, 2000. Mauro, Walter, ‘‘Luciano Bianciardi,’’ in Letteratura italiana. I contemporanei, vol. V, Milan: Marzorati, 1974. Paoloni, Giovanni, and Cristina Cavallaro, editors, Dal bibliobus alla ‘‘ Grossa Iniziativa ’’ Luciano Bianciardi, la biblioteca, la casa editrice nel dopoguerra, Conference Proceedings (Viterbo-Grosseto, 21–22 November 2002), Rome:Vecchiarelli Editore, 2004. Pietralunga, Mark, ‘‘The Emotional Deterioration of an Ordinary Man: Luciano Bianciardi and the ‘Miracle’ Years in Milan,’’ in Italiana, 4 (1992): 127–142.

IL BIBBIENA (BERNARDO DOVIZI) (1470–1520) Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, a cardinal, diplomat, and playwright, was a conversationalist of such great skill that Baldassare Castiglione in his dialogue Il libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528) considered him as the exemplary interlocutor, so much so that in Book II he is called upon to describe the types and forms of witticisms, since ‘‘per una acuta e piacevole prontezza d’ingegno fu gratissimo a qualunque lo conobbe’’ (everyone who knew him appreciated him for his sharp and pleasant quick wit). His was the intelligence of a man of letters who was at the same time 220

a diplomat who did not believe that in politics the only option was that of power and an army. A nobleman, he followed the path that, after a Humanist education in Tuscany usually led to the Medici Court in Florence. He was attracted to neither the literary nor philosophical careers prevalent in Marsilio Ficino’s circles. Rather, he steadily pursued the role whose ideal perfection was later described in the portrait made by Castiglione, eventually receiving the honour of being known by the name of his native place while still living. Indeed, the change from his family name, Dovizi, to a

IL BIBBIENA (BERNARDO DOVIZI) toponym suggests the ostentatious display, on the part of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of the Medici family, of both an autonomous identity and a degree of independence from their milieu. In his early career, Bibbiena’s dispatches from his diplomatic missions were characterized by a certain confident impudence and carefree intelligence. For instance, on October 4, 1494, during a serious political crisis, he wrote a famous narrative letter (a veritable short story) about the love affair between Ferdinand of Aragon and Caterina Gonzaga, as if he were unable to reflect on the meaning of the events, to see himself as an agent and not a mere spectator. Even after the Medicis’ exile from Florence, Piero kept trusting the young diplomat. Following Piero’s death, Bibbiena was appointed as secretary of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, and, in opposition to Pope Julius II, became involved with political plans to bring the Medicis back to Florence. On September 1, 1512, after an 18-year exile, the Medicis returned to power, but Bibbiena, who had humbly worked toward that goal, decided to remain in Rome, which he now perceived as the actual centre of politics and power. On September 23, 1513, Giovanni de’ Medici, now Pope Leo X, appointed him cardinal for his personal merits, including services rendered during the conclave. He was, as Carlo Dionisotti has pointed out, ‘‘cardinale diacono, non prete, differenza allora importante’’ (a cardinal-deacon, not a priest, an important difference at that time) (Ricordo del Bibbiena, 1980). At the end of 1515, he moved to the Vatican and commissioned Raphael to arrange his residence, including a bathroom or stufetta decorated according to an iconological project that he had conceived himself and that Franco Ruffini recently interpreted as an interlacing and coexistence of ‘‘passion’’ and ‘‘reason’’ (Commedia e festa nel Rinascimento, 1997). This double use of the intellect against the mere use of force in political life is evident in the numerous dispatches and letters in defense of the Medici cause, collected in their entirety only in recent times by Giuseppe Lorenzo Moncallero in the two-volume Epistolario (1955–1965). In the correspondence written between 1512 and 1515, Bibbiena articulated the idea of a league of the main Italian and European states in opposition to Louis XII of France, who was threatening to invade Italy. However, as Dionisotti shows, this was mainly a literary defense, a form of political literature that, although produced in Tuscany, was also already national rather than regional, in an increasingly tighter

intertwining of politics and literary activity (Ricordo del Bibbiena, 1980). The year 1513 attests to Bibbiena’s political triumph as well as the composition of his scurrilous play La Calandria (The Follies of Calandro, 1521), for which he is chiefly remembered. His only writing within a specific literary context, indeed, within the genre of comedy, La Calandria was first performed in Urbino on February 6, 1513, during carnival, two weeks before the death of Julius II (and thus before the ascent of a Medici to the papal throne). The staging of the play in the throne room of Urbino was prepared by Castiglione, appointed duke of Novellara, who also wrote a prologue for it (although its attribution was questioned by Giorgio Padoan in his 1970 edition of the play). The scenes were designed by Girolamo Genga, a pupil of Raphael and ducal architect. As a result of its success, the play was staged again on several occasions: in the Vatican, in December 1514 and January 1515, with scenery by Baldassare Peruzzi, one of the architects of the Cathedral of St. Peter; in Mantua in 1520 and in 1532, with sets by Giulio Romano; in Venice in 1521 and 1522; in Lyon in 1548 for the entrance into the city of King Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici; and finally in Mu¨nich in 1569. Although attributing to Plautus the main source of the comedy, Castiglione’s prologue argues for its originality and novelty on the basis of the superiority of modern over ancient taste, in line with the position articulated by Ludovico Ariosto regarding his Latin models in, for instance, the prologue to La cassaria (The Coffer, 1508). The subject of the lost twins is inspired by Plautus’ Menaechmi, but also by Boccaccio’s short stories (in particular Decameron, III, 6 and 8; VII, 4, 8, and 9; IX, 5), often to the point of almost verbatim quotations or calques. The main character, the unbelievably gullible Calandro, mimicks the silly, naı¨ve hero from Boccaccio, while the action comes from Plautus: the result is a double and symmetrical game of misunderstandings and mistaken identities, of practical jokes and de´nouements deriving from the incredible likeness of the twins Lidio and Santilla. Lidio, disguised as Santilla, charms Calandro and at the same time enjoys his wife Fulvia. Calandro is persuaded by his servant Fessenio to fake death and is carried away in a coffin to his lover’s house, where he lies with a prostitute. Here, Fulvia arrives, wearing men’s clothes and impatiently waiting to meet Lidio, and angrily yells at her improvident husband. The servants’ intrigue and Ruffo’s supposed magical skills turn Lidio into a woman; the 221

IL BIBBIENA (BERNARDO DOVIZI) de´nouement happens when Fulvia is about to be discovered by Calandro, but once again manages to replace him with his look-alike sister. A double wedding ensues: Lidio marries Perillo’s daughter and Santilla marries Flaminio, Fulvia’s son. This inexhaustible comic vitality and the truly theatrical structural ambiguity of the play (staging the carnivalesque plot of beffa) have been variously interpreted. For Franco Ruffini, they represent the political quest for the union of opposites (Commedia e festa nel Rinascimento, 1986), while for Roberto Alonge, who considers the text in relation to the myth of the androgyne, they stand for the search for the original unity capable of ‘‘trascendere le contraddizioni che determinano la propria nevrosi’’ (transcending the contradictions that define one’s own neurosis) (La riscoperta rinascimentale del teatro, 2000). The text is full of sequences of words and gestures, obscene double meanings, and blasphemous allusions usually derived from the theme of cross-dressing and the carnivalesque inversion of the male/female binary that, in the end, constituted for courtly society an exemplary model of the absolute theatrical autonomy of literary play.

Biography Bernardo Dovizi was born in Bibbiena (Arezzo), on August 4, 1470. Diplomat for the Medici and the Signoria of Florence, 1488; missions to Rome, 1492, and Naples, 1494. After the banishment of the Medicis from Florence (1494), followed Piero and, after his death in 1503, Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, residing in Urbino, first as a guest of Guidubaldo da Montefeltro, then of Francesco Maria della Rovere. Appointed cardinal, 1513; diplomatic missions to Urbino, 1516, and as the pope’s ambassador to France, 1518. Patron of Raphael and of Francesco Berni, to whom he was related. Died in Rome on November 9, 1520. His death was rumored to have occurred from poisoning. He is buried in the church of Aracoeli in Rome. STEFANO TOMASSINI

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Selected Works La Calandria, 1521; edited by Giorgio Padoan, 1970. Epistolario di Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, edited by Giuseppe Lorenzo Moncallero, 2 vols., 1955–1965.

Further Reading Alonge, Roberto, ‘‘La riscoperta rinascimentale del teatro,’’ in Storia del teatro moderno e contemporaneo, edited by Roberto Alonge and Guido Davico Bonino, vol. 1, La nascita del teatro moderno Cinquecento-Seicento, Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Andrews, Richard, Scripts and Scenarios. The Performances of Comedy in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Baratto, Mario, La commedia del Cinquecento: aspetti e problemi, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1975. Baratto, Mario, ‘‘La fondazione di un genere (per un’analisi drammaturgica della commedia del Cinquecento),’’ in Il teatro italiano del Rinascimento, edited by Maristella de Panizza Lorch, Milan: Edizioni di Comunita`, 1980. Bottoni, Luciano, ‘‘Una commedia per il mistagogo parodico: la ‘Calandria,’’’ in Tra storia e simbolo: Studi dedicati a Ezio Raimondi dai Direttori, Redattori e dall’Editore di «Lettere italiane», Florence: Olschki, 1994. Bottoni, Luciano, Leonardo e l’androgino: L’eros transessuale nella cultura, nella pittura e nel teatro del Rinascimento, Milan: Franco Angeli, 2002. De Feo, Sandro, ‘‘Bernardo Dovizi da Bibiena: La Calandria,’’ (1967), in In cerca di teatro, edited byLuciano Lucignani, vol. 1, Milan: Longanesi, 1972. Dionisotti, Carlo, ‘‘Ricordo del Bibbiena,’’ in Machiavellerie: Storia e fortuna di Machiavelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1980. Fanelli, Carlo, La Calandria. Tematiche e simbologia, Florence: Atheneum, 1997. Guidotti, Angela, Specchiati sembianti. Il tema dei gemelli nella letteratura, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1992. Moncallero, Giuseppe Lorenzo, Il cardinale Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena umanista e diplomatico (1470– 1520): Uomini e avvenimenti del Rinascimento alla luce di documenti inediti, Florence: Olschki, 1953. Ruffini, Franco, Commedia e festa nel Rinascimento: La «Calandria» alla corte di Urbino, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986. Stewart, Pamela D., Retorica e mimica nel «Decameron» e nella commedia del Cinquecento, Florence: Olschki, 1986.

LIBERO BIGIARETTI

THE BICYCLE THIEF See Ladri di biciclette (Work by Vittorio de Sica)

LIBERO BIGIARETTI (1905–1993) Libero Bigiaretti’s prolific literary career spanned almost 60 years. This keen interpreter of Italian social realities first achieved success with the novel Esterina in 1942, followed by Un’amicizia difficile (A Difficult Friendship, 1945). Already an accomplished poet who had published the collections Ore e stagioni (Hours and Seasons, 1936) and Care ombre (Dear Shadows, 1940), Bigiaretti’s talent as narrator and essayist became evident with the publication of Paese di Roma (Rome’s Country, 1942). In these early works, several conceptual nucleic pairings surfaced: love and estrangement, friendship and hypocrisy, city and country, microhistory and macrohistory, obligation and disengagement, writing and publishing. On one hand, he paid particular attention to describing in great minutiae the sentimental microcosm in bourgeois society; on the other, he analyzed with equal care the process of artistic endeavors. His characters live on a threshold between past and present times. In this liminal space, memory plays the decisive role that drives the narrative of Disamore (Estrangement, 1956). This novel is composed of two elements (the letters exchanged by two ex-lovers) and it is published in an unprecedented two installments. The first half, published in 1948 as Un discorso d’amore (Love Talk), comprises the man’s letter; it is followed eight years later by the woman’s reply. With I figli (Sons, 1954), Bigiaretti shifted the focus to the sentimental life inside the family. The chronicle of the Bernabeis family is the vehicle for a portrait of contemporary bourgeois society. Bigiaretti thus elaborated on themes already visited by great French authors

whose works he had also translated (Flaubert, Gide, Maupassant, Proust, Stendhal). A different narrative structure controls Carlone (1950), a short formative novel that marries leftist ideology with the revival of neorealist literary canons. Bigiaretti was praised by critics for an uncanny ability to condense 70 years of Italian history in the short span of 60 pages. This neorealist influence dominates Il villino (The CountryHouse, 1946). In the 1940s and 1950s, Bigiaretti’s journalistic career exploded in many worthy collaborations with the likes of Giovanni Macchia, Cesare Pavese, Giacomo Debenedetti, Giorgio Caproni, Corrado Alvaro, and Giuseppe Ungaretti. He was responsible for cultural affairs at the Ivrea press office of Adriano Olivetti from 1952 to 1964. He would continue to draw on this experience throughout his literary activity, as well as deepen his understanding for the world of industry through his close friendships with writers such as Paolo Volponi, Franco Fortini, Luciano Codignola, Geno Pampaloni, as well as many architects and artists. Both the poetic collection Lungodora (Along the Dora, 1955) and the novel Il congresso (The Convention, 1963) draw on his time spent at Olivetti. Il congresso presents the reader with the theme of the intellectual engagement in the industrial world woven into the works’ personal resonance. Back in Rome, Bigiaretti published Le indulgenze (Indulgences, 1966), a novel marked by a Fellini-esque atmosphere portraying bourgeois society in the 1960s. Another important narrative strand in Bigiaretti’s work surfaces with the short-story

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LIBERO BIGIARETTI collection Uccidi o muori (Kill or Die, 1958); the surreal and fantastic stories place their protagonists in a world described by the author himself as a sort of ‘‘elsewhere.’’ Abitare altrove (To Live Elsewhere, 1990) is in fact the title of a much later collection that reprises the old theme. Likewise his novels La controfigura (The Stuntman, 1968) and Dalla donna alla luna (From Woman to the Moon, 1972) describe events that spite commonplace morals and the rules of civil existence. With Le stanze (Rooms, 1976) Libero created yet ‘‘another kind’’ of space—a free recourse into the compartments of memory for the author to peruse in searching for traces and protagonists from his familial and social past. Bigiaretti concluded his literary career with the novels Due senza (Two Down, 1979), Il viaggiatore (The Traveler, 1984), the collection of poems Posto di blocco (Checkpoint, 1986), and the story Un sogno di ferragosto (A Mid-August Dream, 1993). Critics took great interest in Bigiaretti’s work as witnessed by his great revival and posthumously published works. In 1995, Il mio paese (My Country) was published—a collection of essays dedicated to Libero’s much loved mother region of the Marche; the stories in Discorsi all’osteria (Discourses at the Tavern, 1999) were likewise inspired by the region. The volume Esercizi di dattilografia (Typing Exercises, 1999) focuses on the problems associated with literary activities. The vehicle of the book is the art of typing; through it the author examines the role of the writer, the function of literature and publishing as previously noted in Il dito puntato (The Pointed Finger, 1967). Bigiaretti’s last published work, Profili al tratto (Sketches, 2003), assembles interviews, or ‘‘encounters,’’ he made with well-known intellectuals. They appeared mainly in the periodical Successo between 1965 and 1966. Libero Bigiaretti’s works have been translated into many languages. In his honor, the township of Matelica has been awarding the National Biennial Prize for Narrative since 1998.

Biography Born in Matelica, in the region of the Marche, 16 May 1905 (not in 1906 as generally reported). Moved to Rome with family at the age of 6; selftaught, interrupted school and started working on construction sites and other odd jobs. In 1932, began publishing poems and short stories in La fiera letteraria, Meridiano di Roma, La tribuna, Il corriere padano, and Augustea; enrolled in the 224

Socialist Party and joined the fight against fascism, 1942; cofounder of the Sindacato Nazionale Scrittori (National Writers Union) together with Corrado Alvaro and Francesco Jovine, 1944; editor of Avanti! and Mondo operaio, 1945; Il villino qualified second for the newly instated Strega Prize, 1947; Fiuggi Prize for the unpublished Un discorso d’amore, 1947; collaborated with Palmiro Togliatti at L’unita`, 1947; as well as Italia libera, MilanoSera, Rinascita, Vie nuove, Il mattino; traveled to Russia as special correspondent for L’unita`, 1949; Venezia Prize for Carlone, 1950; directed the press office for Olivetti, 1952–1964; Selezione Marzotto Prize for I figli, 1955; Puccini-Senigallia Prize for I racconti; 1961; contributed to Paese sera, Il mondo, Successo, Il contemporaneo, Paragone 1960–1966; Chianciano Prize for Le indulgenze, 1966; Viareggio Prize for La controfigura, 1968. Among numerous other honors, Commende de l’Ordre du Merite of the French Republic, 1975; and the Penna d’Oro of the President of the Italian Republic, 1982. Died in Rome, 3 May 1993. CARLA CAROTENUTO Selected Works Poetry ‘‘Ore e stagioni,’’ 1936. ‘‘Care ombre,’’ 1940. ‘‘Lungodora,’’ 1955. ‘‘A memoria d’uomo,’’ 1982. ‘‘Epigrammi, proverbi e altre inezie (1975–1981),’’ 1983. ‘‘Un osso duro,’’ 1985. ‘‘Posto di blocco,’’ 1986; as Checkpoint, translated by Gabriele Erasmi and Gerald Chapple, 1991; it includes the poem ‘‘ Lettera a Valeria’’ (A Letter to Valeria) and the article ‘‘Guida allavecchiaia’’ (A Guide to Old Age). ‘‘Lettera a Valeria,’’ 1988.

Novels Esterina, 1942. Un’amicizia difficile, 1945. Il villino, 1946. Un discorso d’amore, 1948. Carlone, 1950. I figli, 1954; revised edition, 1960. Disamore, 1956. Il congresso, 1963; as A Business Convention, translated by Joseph Green, 1965; as The Convention, translated by Joseph Green, 1965. Le indulgenze, 1966. La controfigura, 1968. Dalla donna alla luna, 1972. Le stanze, 1976. Due senza, 1979. Il viaggiatore, 1984.

PIERO BIGONGIARI Short Stories ‘‘Incendi a Pale`o,’’ 1945. ‘‘La scuola dei ladri,’’ 1952. ‘‘Leopolda,’’ 1957. ‘‘Uccidi o muori,’’ 1958. ‘‘I racconti,’’ 1961. ‘‘Cattiva memoria,’’ 1965. ‘‘Il dissenso,’’ 1969. ‘‘L’uomo che mangia il leone,’’ 1974. ‘‘Abitare altrove,’’ 1990. ‘‘Un sogno di ferragosto,’’ 1993. ‘‘Discorsi all’osteria,’’ 1999.

Plays Intervista con Don Giovanni, 1958. Licenza di matrimonio, 1968.

Nonfiction

Libero Bigiaretti),’’ Dalla sala riservata: Reperti d’autore, Rivista di Letteratura italiana, 19, nos. 2–3 (2001): 295–300.

Translations Henry Becque, La parigina, 1946. Andre´ Gide, La scuola delle mogli, 1949. Gustave Flaubert, La signora Bovary, 1949. Guy de Maupassant, Pietro e Giovanni, 1952. Jean Giraudoux, La bugiarda, 1970. Robert Louis Stevenson, L’isola del tesoro, 1977. Mark Twain, Le avventure di Tom Sawyer, 1984. Jules Verne, Il giro del mondo in ottanta giorni, 1987. Jules Verne, Le tribolazioni di un cinese in Cina, 1989. James Fenimore Cooper, L’ultimo dei Mohicani, 1991.

Further Reading

Paese di Roma, 1942. Roma borghese, 1945. Schedario, 1956. Carte romane, 1957. Olivetti 1908–1958, edited by Libero Bigiaretti et alia, 1958. Il dito puntato, 1967. Questa Roma, 1981. Con i tempi che corrono: Una conversazione-autobiografia con Gilberto Severini, 1989. Scritture di fabbrica: Dal vocabolario alla societa` (Bigiaretti et alia), edited by Carlo Ossola, 1994. Il mio paese, 1995. Esercizi di dattilografia, 1999. Profili al tratto, 2003.

Letters D’Ina, Gabriella, and Giuseppe Zaccaria (editors), ‘‘Libero Bigiaretti,’’ in Caro Bompiani: Lettere con l’editore, 1988. Mazza, Antonia, ‘‘‘Cio` che conta e` la moralita` della scrittura’ (Quattro lettere inedite e uno scritto raro di

Baroni, Giorgio, Bigiaretti, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980. Carotenuto, Carla, ‘‘Tra gli autografi di Libero Bigiaretti,’’ in Autografo, 13, no. 35 (July-December 1997): 59–70. Carotenuto, Carla, ‘‘La pluridiscorsivita` di Bigiaretti: Leopolda e Le indulgenze tra scrittura e Immagine,’’ in Autografo, 15, no. 38 (January-June 1999): 61–73. Luzi, Alfredoet alia,, ‘‘Incontro con Libero Bigiaretti,’’ in Studi romani, 30, no. 4 (October-December 1982): 496–507. Luzi, Alfredo (editor), Libero Bigiaretti: La storia, le storie, la scrittura. Atti del Convegno Matelica 21–22 marzo 1998, Fossombrone (PS): Metauro, 2000. Mazza, Antonia, ‘‘Libero Bigiaretti,’’ in Scrittori italiani, Milan: Letture, 1989. Piscopo, Ugo, Libero Bigiaretti, Naples: Ferraro, 1977. Silori, Luigi, Invito alla lettura di Bigiaretti, Milan: Mursia, 1977. Strappini, Lucia, et alia, ‘‘Bigiarettiana,’’ in Studi romani, 45, nos. 1–2 (January-June 1997): 27–69.

PIERO BIGONGIARI (1914–1997) From his first poetic work, La figlia di Babilonia (The Daughter of Babylon, 1942), a collection of verses dating from 1934 to 1939, Piero Bigongiari was one of the most systematic and radical representatives of the third Hermetic generation— the so-called Florentine Hermeticism of the 1930s. The poet never distanced himself from this context, which was as much aesthetic as geographic. His entire literary production, both in verse and in prose, presents a strongly homogenous character, to the point of being called by critics

the most coherent oeuvre of twentieth-century Italian literature. Stylistically, Bigongiari’s poetics is characterized by the dissolution of linguistic structure in favor of a new, allusive and combinatorial language, much like that with which the symbolists and surrealists had already experimented. Images are put on the same level almost without any mediation, and thus unprecedented associations are achieved. In this way, the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the world is profoundly renewed, 225

PIERO BIGONGIARI thereby improving the capacity to comprehend reality. The frequent use of symbols and metaphors, the juxtaposition of terms, and the presence of iteration, assonance, and alliteration all assume primary importance in describing this general and thorough disintegration of language. The determination of meaning occurs therefore by way of new syntactic connections and isolated words where language, reduced to the essential, is pushed toward an extreme concentration. Actions are compressed in dense lexical aggregates that are developed in the course of unresolved contradictions. The sense of the grammatical functions appears therefore forced in light of the systematic reinterpretation of traditional hierarchies: adverbs are multiplied, nouns lose their central role in favor of the unopposed affirmation of the adjective, which is pushed to an efficiency of definition that originally only the verb possessed, the verb itself becomes a metaphor, a psychological figure of speech, potential energy bound to the present. Clearly, then, for Bigongiari language is no longer a simple expression of reality, nor does it transcend reality as did symbolist images. As an act of volition, it instead intervenes in the story line of existence: That is, it extracts phenomena from their absolute condition—atemporal and prehuman— and inserts them into the flow of events. Here the phenomena assume an imperfect nature since their dependence on the human will condemns them to a necessarily precarious state. However, it is only in this way that they are able to become a concrete reality in time and become cognizable objects to the individual. Similar themes recur in all of Bigongiari’s writings, both in his literary works and in his critical and journalistic texts. The poet’s unfolding artistic development is evident above all in the tendency to simplify language in order to render the expression simpler and to facilitate communication. After the second collection of poems, Rogo (Pyre, 1952), which still shares with the first volume an often indecipherable symbolism, the poet gradually tended to limit the excesses of obscurity in order to develop a more serene relationship with reality. This process begins already in Il corvo bianco (The White Crow, 1955), but becomes more explicit with Torre di Arnolfo (Arnolfo’s Tower, 1964). In fact, it is from here that one can trace a somewhat linear artistic path that runs throughout all of the successive works up to Dove finiscono le tracce (Where the Tracks End, 1996). Poetic creation consequently occurs as if it were one continuous narrative 226

where the individual books are incarnations of transitory stages that launch the successive phase of evolution. In this compact story line there are attempts at something new, as in the case of the dynamic experimentalism of Antimateria (AntiMatter, 1972) and Col dito in terra (With the Finger to the Ground, 1986). However, the intention of exploring all of the expressive potential of language never calls into question the need for a more serene lyricism, an attitude present above all in the collections Moses (Moses, 1979), Col dito in terra, and Nel delta del poema (In the Delta of the Poem, 1989). Critics are unanimous in recognizing the importance of Bigongiari’s critical writings, to the point of attributing a fundamental role among contemporary reflections on poetry to Il senso della lirica italiana e altri studi (The Meaning of Italian Lyric Poetry and Other Studies, 1952). From his thesis, published with the title L’elaborazione della lirica leopardiana (The Elaboration of Leopardi’s Lyric Poetry, 1937), Bigongiari’s interest focused mainly on Giacomo Leopardi, culminating in the monograph Leopardi (1962). His great merit is the elaboration of a methodology that focuses especially on the ‘‘internal story’’ of the work, in which the understanding of the essence of lyric expression feeds off the concrete testimonies of the ‘‘conditions’’ leading to poetry. The result is an analysis of the text that, starting with its interior relationships, can then observe the new forms that it assumes in its reception by the readers.

Biography Born in Navecchio (Pisa) on October 15, 1914; degree in letters from the University of Florence, 1936; between 1937 and 1938 he came into contact with Montale, Rosai, Gadda, Landolfi, Vittorini and Bonsanti; collaborated with the most significant literary journals of the time such as Letteratura, Campo di Marte, Prospettive and competed with Bo, Macrı`, Gatto, Luzi, Parronchi, and Traverso to define the characteristics of the Florentine Hermetic movement; in the 1950s, collaborated with the literary journals L’approdo and L’approdo letterario as well as with several newspapers, among which Il Nuovo Corriere and La Nazione; was professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Florence from 1953 to 1989. Died in Florence on October 8, 1997. GIADA VIVIANI

ROMANO BILENCHI Selected Works

Prosa per il Novecento, 1971. La poesia come funzione del linguaggio, 1972.

Collections

Letters

Tutte le poesie, edited by Paolo Fabrizio Iacuzzi, vol. 1, Florence: Le Lettere, 1994.

Poetry ‘‘La figlia di Babilonia,’’ 1942. ‘‘Rogo,’’ 1952. ‘‘Il corvo bianco,’’ 1955. ‘‘Le mura di Pistoia,’’ 1958. ‘‘Il caso e il caos,’’ 1960. ‘‘Torre di Arnolfo,’’ 1964. ‘‘Stato di cose,’’ 1968. ‘‘Antimateria,’’ 1972. ‘‘Moses,’’ 1979. ‘‘Autoritratto poetico,’’ 1985. ‘‘Col dito in terra,’’ 1986. ‘‘Diario americano,’’ 1987. ‘‘Nel delta del poema,’’ 1989. ‘‘La legge e la leggenda,’’ 1992. ‘‘Dove finiscono le tracce,’’ 1996.

Fiction Visibile invisibile, 1985. Tre racconti inediti: 1933–1934, 1991. Una citta` rocciosa e altri frammenti di un’autobiografia, 1994. Nel giardino di Armida e altre prose memoriali, un racconto e una poesia, edited by Roberto Carifi, 1996. L’azzurro e altri racconti, edited by Paolo Fabrizio Iacuzzi, 1999.

Essays L’ elaborazione della lirica leopardiana, 1937. Il senso della lirica italiana e altri studi, 1952. Poesia italiana del Novecento, 1960. Leopardi, 1962; expanded, 1976. Capitoli di una storia della poesia italiana, 1968. Poesia francese del Novecento, 1968.

Giovinezza a Pistoia: autoritratto del poeta attraverso le lettere a Mario Ciattini, 1933–1971, edited by Paolo Fabrizio Iacuzzi, 1994.

Others Testimone in Egitto, 1985. Nel mutismo dell’universo: interviste sulla poesia 1965–1997, edited by Anna Dolfi, 2001. Un pensiero che seguita a pensare: giornale 1933–1997, edited by Paolo Fabrizio Iacuzzi, 2001.

Further Reading Bernardi Leoni, Margherita, Informale e Terza generazione. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975. Biagini, Enza (editor), Per Piero Bigongiari, Rome: Bulzoni, 1997. Noferi, Adelia, ‘‘Piero Bigongiari: la critica come segno di contraddizione,’’ in Le poetiche critiche novecentesche, Florence: Le Monnier, 1970. Noferi, Adelia, ‘‘Piero Bigongiari,’’ in Novecento. I contemporanei. Gli scrittori e la cultura letteraria nella societa` italiana, edited by Gianni Grana, Milan: Marzorati, 1979. Papini, Maria Carla, ‘‘Il viaggio poetico di Bigongiari,’’ in Italianistica, 6 (1977): 295–315. Pinotti, Gianna, ‘‘Giano bifronte come anti-icona dell’essere in ‘Abbandonato dall’Angelo’ di Piero Bigongiari,’’ in Gradiva, 22 (2002): 50–57. Pozzi, Gianni, La poesia italiana del Novecento da Gozzano agli ermetici, Turin: Einaudi, 1965. Ramat, Silvio, Invito alla lettura di Piero Bigongiari, Milan: Mursia, 1979. Santoro, Jose Luiz, ‘‘Aspetti surreali del primo Bigongiari,’’ in Forum Italicum, 11 (1977): 19–35.

ROMANO BILENCHI (1909–1989) Romano Bilenchi is a greatly respected, but not always widely read, author whose beautiful and unusual short stories and novels have yet to be translated into English. Bilenchi was also a political journalist and a cultural figure of major importance in twentieth-century history in Italy. Bilenchi’s fame, however, is likely to rest on his achievements as a writer of prose fiction, especially his Conservatorio di Santa Teresa (The Santa Teresa Conservatory, 1940), a carefully crafted and

elegant coming of age novel set in the provinces during the 1930s that many considered the most enduring work of fiction produced in Italy under Fascism. From a small town in the countryside outside Siena, Bilenchi can be considered part of a tradition of Tuscan writing by authors such as Federigo Tozzi, Mario Pratesi, Carlo Cassola, and Mario Tobino, who expressed themselves in a linguistic style that, while clearly the national language, 227

ROMANO BILENCHI contained nevertheless the regional dialect from where the national language was born centuries ago. Throughout his life, Bilenchi never strayed very far from Tuscany. As a young man, he contributed to such local, regional, and national publications of the 1930s as Il selvaggio, Il bargello, L’universale, Il lavoro fascista, and even Benito Mussolini’s own mouthpiece, Il popolo d’Italia. With the coming of the war and the Resistance, he continued his journalistic militancy—but this time on the other side of the political barrier, first through his contributions to newspapers and other clandestine anti-Fascist publications, and then in active combat. After the war, Bilenchi worked for a number of Communist-supported publishing ventures. These included Societa`, which he helped found, and later Il nuovo corriere and Il contemporaneo. Toward the end of his life, he wrote for less militantly sectarian and nonparty publications, among them La nazione, Il mondo, L’approdo letterario, Il corriere della sera, and Il ponte. Bilenchi’s career as a public intellectual could be said to be paradigmatic of the changing positions held by many Italians on the left during and after Fascism. Like his friend Elio Vittorini and many others, Bilenchi began as a ‘‘frondista’’ (rebel) or left-wing ‘‘sansepolcrista’’ (a term designating someone who had attended the gathering in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolcro at the beginning of the Fascist movement in 1919). After the Civil War in Spain and with the coming of the Communist-Fascist struggle to Italy, he switched to the Communist side. He left the party in 1956, however, after writing an article critical of the suppression of an uprising in Poland that preceded the better-known upheavals in Budapest later that same year. In Italy, these events led to massive defections from the Communist Party by a number of intellectuals and other militants. Unlike many of his comrades from this period, however, whose breaks with the party were definitive, Bilenchi returned to the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1972. His return, significantly, took place at the beginning of the anni di piombo (years of lead) when the party was coming under attack from the radical left as well as from its usual adversaries on the right and the center. His value as a cultural commentator was based in part on his experience as a witness—often from close up where bullets were literally flying, to many of the most dramatic events in Italy during more than six decades of cultural and political activity. Bilenchi wrote two full-length novels, the Conservatorio di Santa Teresa and Il bottone di Stalingrado (Button from Stalingrad, 1972). The 228

latter’s title refers to a button taken by an Austrian soldier from the body of a Russian soldier during the Battle of Stalingrad. This button is passed on to the novel’s protagonist, Marco, as a symbol for his political reawakening. Marco’s story unravels from his school days under Fascism through World War II, the Resistance, and the postwar years. His transformation appears to reflect Bilenchi’s progressive political shifting. On the other hand, Bilenchi’s stories, which were written for the most part in the 1930s and published in revised versions in different collections later, dealt almost exclusively with life under Fascism in provincial Tuscany. Much of this writing has to do with childhood. Unlike Marcel Proust, Bilenchi found childhood less than perpetually idyllic—a time filled not only with the universal pains of growing up but hedged in as well by the more pervasive discomforts of life under totalitarianism. Despite this, the characters Bilenchi depicts enjoy the reassurance provided by simple social rituals like communal meals, quiet conversations, or family outings, and activities whose venerability and seeming inevitability, though sometimes marked by eruptions of violence, nonetheless sustain them through the more difficult moments of their personal growth. Such patterns of social interaction endure, Bilenchi’s narratives seem to suggest, despite the violence and bloodshed in the squares, streets, and countryside of an otherwise peaceful Tuscany. All those who have written about Bilenchi’s prose have commented on his undemonstrative style and his aversion for rhetoric that he shared with other writers from the same period such as the poets and his personal friends Eugenio Montale and Mario Luzi. Bilenchi himself has stressed the poetic nature of good narrative. It is partly because his work is so lyrical in intention that it won the admiration of Montale and Luzi as well as that of such sensitive readers of Italian poetry as the critic and philologist Gianfranco Contini. Not at all psychological narratives, Bilenchi’s texts rarely speculate about the inner workings of a character’s mind. What counts instead in these emotionally restrained texts is the simple elegance of Bilenchi’s writing and his skill in rendering even the subtlest of moods. Bilenchi’s descriptions of his native Colle d’Elsa and the surrounding Tuscan landscape are just as lacking in undue effusion. The result is a seemingly effortless prose that, while deeply rooted in the Tuscan literary tradition, seems to have come into existence—as commentators including Montale have remarked—as though arriving from nowhere.

ROMANO BILENCHI While there is a vivid sense of place in Bilenchi’s writings, his narratives, with the exception of the Resistance memoirs set in a carefully described Florence, typically unfold in locations that cannot be precisely verified on any map but are often combinations of places that can be better understood as zones in the author’s memory. An attentive and engaged witness to some of the most difficult times in modern Italian history, Bilenchi was able to capture the essence of those times in at least one region of Italy with insight and restrained precision.

Biography Born in Colle Val d’Elsa (Siena) on 9 November 1909. In 1925, moved to Florence to study at the Liceo Scientifico and began to write fiction. Contracted tuberculosis and followed courses at the University of Bologna. Back in Florence, became friends with Elio Vittorini and worked as a journalist for Il selvaggio, L’universale, Il popolo d’Italia and La nazione, among others. In the 1930s, member of the radical left wing of the Fascist Party but in Florence kept company with critics of the movement and later overt anti-Fascists such as Carlo Emilio Gadda, Eugenio Montale, Vasco Pratolini, Mario Luzi. In 1938, joined the clandestine Italian Communist Party and subsequently took an active part in the Resistance fight in Florence, 1943–1944. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s wrote and published a number of short stories and his first novel, Conservatorio di Santa Teresa (1940). From 1948 to 1956 the editor-inchief of the left-wing daily Il nuovo corriere and helped establish Societa` and Il contemporaneo, both supported by the Italian Communist Party. In 1957, resigned from the Communist Party but rejoined in 1972. That same year published Il bottone di Stalingrado, which won the Viareggio prize. In 1973, married Maria Ferrara. In 1982, won the prize for narrative for Il gelo from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Died in Florence on 18 November 1989. CHARLES KLOPP Selected Works Collections Opere, edited by Benedetta Centovalli, Massimo Depaoli and Cristina Nesi, Milan: Rizzoli, 1977.

Fiction Vita di Pisto, 1931.

Il capofabbrica, 1935, revised edition, 1972. Anna e Bruno e altri racconti, 1938. Conservatorio di Santa Teresa, 1940. La siccita`, 1941. Dino e altri racconti, 1942. Mio cugino Andrea, 1943. Una citta`, 1958. Il processo di Mary Dugan, 1972. Il bottone di Stalingrado, 1972. Il gelo, 1982. Gli anni impossibili, 1984.

Memoirs Cronaca dell’Italia meschina, ovvero storia dei socialisti di Colle, 1933. I silenzi di Rosai, 1971. Amici. Vittorini, Rosai, e altri incontri, 1976.

Other La ghisa delle cure e altri scritti (1927–1989), 1997.

Further Reading Amoroso, Giuseppe, ‘‘Sei capitoli per il Conservatorio,’’ in Narrativa italiana 1975–1983 con vecchie e nuove varianti, Milan: Mursia, 1983. Banchini, Ferdinando, Bilenchi. Analisi e cronistoria, Milan: Laboratorio delle Arti, 1999. Brouwer, Olga-Maria, Invito alla lettura di Bilenchi, Milan: Mursia, 1978. Contini, Gianfranco, ‘‘Per Bilenchi e i suoi ‘Amici,’’’ in Romano Bilenchi, Amici, edited by Sergio Pautasso, Milan: Rizzoli, 1988. Corti, Maria, ‘‘Romano Bilenchi, ovvero connotazione toscana e denotazione italiana,’’ in Metodi e fantasmi, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1969. Klopp, Charles, ‘‘Reconsidering Romano Bilenchi,’’ in Italica, 80 (2003): 428–432. Luperini, Romano, ‘‘Parole e cose, scrittura ed ethos in Bilenchi,’’ in Controtempo. Critica e letteratura fra moderno e postmoderno, Naples: Liguori, 1999. Luti, Giorgio, Passione e inganni. Dieci ritratti di scrittori contemporanei, Verona: Bi & Gi, 1987. Luzi, Mario, Introduction to Romano Bilenchi, Opere, edited by Benedetta Centovalli, Massimo Depaoli and Cristina Nesi, Milan: Rizzoli, 1977. Macrı` Tronci, Albarosa, La narrativa di Romano Bilenchi, Florence: Vallecchi, 1977. Montale, Eugenio, ‘‘Racconti di Romano Bilenchi,’’ in Il secondo mestiere. Prose 1920–1979, Milan: Mondadori, 1996. Muraca, Giuseppe, ‘‘Romano Bilenchi direttore de ‘Il Nuovo Corriere,’’’ in Utopisti ed eretici nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2000. Peritore, Giuseppe Angelo, ‘‘Ritratti critici dei contemporanei. Romano Bilenchi,’’ in Belfagor, 28 (1973): 685– 701. Petroni, Paolo, Bilenchi, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1972. Polimeri, Giuseppe (editor), Romano Bilenchi, Anna e Bruno: Rami di un romanzo inedito, Milan: Lupetti/ Piero Manni, 1996. Virdia, Ferdinando, ‘‘Romano Bilenchi,’’ in Letteratura italiana. I contemporanei, vol. 2, Milan: Marzorati, 1963.

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BIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY Biography, the description of an individual life, necessarily implies that the culture in which it occurs and the philosophy upon which it is based attribute value to individual lives. The roots of this tenet in Europe are to be found in Platonic and Aristotelian concepts of the bios, or manner of living, of an already-made man, and not a man in his becoming. The focus on the individual remains consistent throughout the history of biography, but the kind of individual deemed worthy of note and the reasons for an individual’s value vary over time. On the Italian peninsula, biography begins as eulogy, continues as in example or a guide for living, becomes a vehicle for political and religious ideologies, flourishes as praise of accomplished men, serves as a vehicle of patriotism and nationalism, and embodies modern notions of psychology and social reality. Often several of these functions occur simultaneously. Early examples of biography outside Italy are to be found in Homer’s laments for dead heroes and praise for victors, kings, and princes, all of which measure the individual in the context of a concept or an ideal. Socrates and Euripides tend toward greater historicization in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The biblical and apocryphal Gospels provide biographies of Jesus and, by the second century CE, Plutarch writes his famous Lives. We can see in early biography an impulse toward pedagogy and moralizing that at times veers into the realms of epic and mythology. The Middle Ages demonstrate a theocratic mentality that is far removed from any interest in the study of an individual’s struggle and inner growth. Biographic stories abound, nonetheless, in accounts of the lives, deaths, and miracles of saints, bishops, and abbots. The overwhelming tendency of the genre in medieval times is that of hagiography, and its social function is to provide examples of Christian lives that may serve to inspire its public to stronger faith and moral behavior. Well-known medieval biographies include Tommaso da Celano’s Actus beati Francisci (Life of Saint Francis) in the thirteenth century, and the anonymously penned Vita di Frate Ginepro (Life of Fra Ginepro) of the late fourteenth century. Pope Gregory IX commissioned Tommaso da Celano’s biography of 230

Saint Francis of Assisi in 1228 and approved the finished work the following year. His Via prima was supplemented by a Vita secunda (1246–1247) and in 1253 he added an account of Saint Francis’ miracles. Tommaso was a skillful historian and a writer, well versed in medieval rhetoric. This early biography inspired a Vita written by Giuliano di Spira between 1231 and 1235. We also note the Vite dei Santi Padri (Lives of the Holy Fathers), medieval legends that were rendered in the vulgate by Domenico Cavalca during the first half of the fourteenth century. Not all medieval biography deals with saints or church fathers, however. For example, in addition to his Gesta archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium (Acts of Medieval Bishops), Arnolfo of Milan had produced the Gesta Berengarii imperatoris (Acts of the Berengar Rulers) already during the eleventh century. Nonetheless, medieval biography never attempts to convey any sense of individual personality development, limiting itself, as its ‘‘acts’’ titles imply, to the straightforward chronicling of actual events or events deemed to have occurred. The aim of such works is to convey moral, religious, and political values or to engage in polemics of a historical nature. The Middle Ages are succeeded by the humanism of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and others. Even here biography insists more on type than on individual variant and in fact goes to some lengths to ‘‘Italianize’’ its subjects—that is, to make them resemble the ancients. Petrarch’s own De Viris illustribus (Lives of Illustrious Men), begun in 1338 and amplified many times, exemplifies this era in biography, where it is joined by Boccaccio’s Vita di Dante (Life of Dante, 1373–1374) and, in Latin, by Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (Concerning Famous Women, ca. 1361–1375) and De casibus virorum illustrium (The Cases of Illustrious Men, ca. 1355–1374). Worthy of mention is also the Vita di Cola di Rienzo (Life of Cola di Rienzo), transcribed by an anonymous writer in the middle of the fourteenth century from a lost Latin text and taken up in the 1800s by both Richard Wagner and Gabriele D’Annunzio. The first half of the fifteenth century witnesses Leonardo Bruni’s lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Cicero. With Bruni, we see an ascendancy of

BIOGRAPHY value given by the biographer to his subjects’ artistic production. Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421–1498), the leading bookseller of Renaissance Florence, further typifies this new attitude in his simple, graceful Vite di uomini illustri del XV secolo (Lives of Famous Men of the Fifteenth Century), which treats contemporary biographic objects. Biographers now emphasize remarkable creative and spiritual achievements of the individuals whose lives they recount variously in Latin or in Italian. Feo Belcari’s exemplary Vita del Beato Giovanni Colombini (Life of the Blessed Giovanni Colombini, 1449) is among the best biographies of its era, while the Vita del Brunellesco (Life of Brunelleschi), attributed to Antonio di Tuccio Manetti (1423–1497), and this same author’s lives of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Pope Nicolas V also exemplify the tendency to favor spiritual and artistic values in a biographical object. Biography flourishes in Renaissance Italy, given the era’s reclaimed emphasis on the validity of human perception and experience per se. Foremost among its social tasks is its capacity to pit political and religious ideologies against each other as we see in such works as Bernardino Baldi’s Vita di Guidubaldo da Montefeltro, duca d’Urbino (Life of Guidubaldo of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino) and in Pier Candido Decembrio’s lives of Filippo Maria Visconti (1447) and Francesco Sforza (ca. 1449). Among such exemplary sixteenth-century lives of lords, heads of state, and military leaders, Niccolo` Machiavelli’s Vita di Castruccio Castracani (Life of Castruccio Castracani, 1520) stands out as a clear attempt to create an ideal. In this work, the author cares little for establishing the facts of his object’s life but rather has recourse to invention to the extent that it serves his ideological purpose. In 1549, Paolo Giovio wrote Vite di uomini illustri (Lives of Famous Men) in Latin, later translated into the vulgate, the first volume of which contains biographies of the Visconti family. Along with the use of biography for political goals, we find a continued sixteenth-century emphasis on artistic, spiritual, and heroic achievements presented outside evident politicizing contexts in such works as the Historie della vita e dei fatti di Cristoforo Colombo (Stories of the Life and Events of Christopher Columbus), written by Columbus’ son, Fernando, Pietro Aretino’s Vita di San Tomaso signor d’Aquino (Life of Saint Thomas, 1543), and Ascanio Condivi’s Vita di Michelagnolo Buonarroti (Life of Michelangelo, 1553). The year 1550 sees the appearance of a landmark work, Giorgio Vasari’s Le vite de’ piu´ eccellenti Architetti,

Pittori, et Scultori Italiani (Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors), an outstanding eulogizing biography. Praising Rafael in his typical fashion, for example, Vasari writes ‘‘Di costui fece dono al mondo la natura’’ (With him nature made a gift to the world). With his Vite, Vasari sets in place a body of artistic achievement in visual and spatial arts that will serve to codify a canon of his era for centuries to come. Several biographies of the following century illustrate the new era’s passion for compendiums. These include Carlo Roberto Dati’s Vite dei pittori antichi (Lives of Ancient Painters, 1667) and Filippo Baldinucci’s Notizie dei professori di disegno da Cimabue in qua (Biographical Data about Design Instructors from Cimabue on, 1681). As the high Renaissance passes into the seventeenth century, a decidedly modern attitude becomes evident in biography. No longer is biography based on praise alone. Now, spiritual, psychological, and moral aspects of a subject contribute to the biographer’s evaluation of the individual, such as in Filippo Sassetti’s Vita di Francesco Ferrucci (Life of Francesco Ferrucci, ca. 1557) and Jacopo Nardi’s Vita di Antonio Giacomini (Life of Antonio Giacomini, ca. 1540). Now, too, biographers engage in acts of effective canon formation by producing actual biographical dictionaries. Foremost among these is Giovanni Baglione (ca. 1573–1644) with his Vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti (Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1642). Toward the end of the century, Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo’s disciple, is commissioned by Leopoldo de’ Medici to write Sulla vita di Galileo Galilei (About the Life of Galileo), a biography from the 1680s that aims at establishing the facts of its subject’s life in the spirit of the awakening Enlightenment and in an effort to mend Galileo’s posttrial and posthumous reputation. In the secular/religious ideology spectrum, we find the Jesuit Daniello Bartoli’s Vita del cardinale Bellarmino (Life of Cardinal Bellarmine, 1678). Two salient aspects of seventeenth-century biography in Italy as exemplified in the biographies just mentioned are its effort to divide its material into categories of knowledge (artistic, religious, and political) and its emphasis on erudition and research, both of which reflect the European valorization of reason that will lead to the Enlightenment. Eighteenth-century biography in Italy, not straying far from the influence of the erudite contemporary historian Ludovico Muratori, is generally characterized by an emphasis on research and documentation. We note the oratorios recounting 231

BIOGRAPHY the lives of the prophets written by the Venetian Apostolo Zeno (1668–1750), Giammaria Mazzuchelli’s Scrittori d’Italia (Italy’s Writers, 1753– 1763), and the works of such biographers as the Jesuit Girolamo Tiraboschi (Muratori’s successor as director of Este’s library in Modena), and Pier Antonio Serassi (1721–1791). A prescient instance of what in the following century will appear as emphatic patriotism and nationalism in biography, Francesco Milizia’s Vite dei piu` celebri architetti d’ogni nazione e d’ogni tempo (Lives of the Most Famous Architects of Every Nation and Every Era) appears in 1771. During the eighteenth century, we also find imported from England, France, and Germany a new aesthetic sensitivity regarding the value, purpose, and possibilities of an individual life. This Romantic attitude allows for a deepening of the biographical endeavor by adding to the alreadyestablished practice of rigorous research and documentation of a new understanding of the value of such work. Romanticism entails a re-evaluation of several aspects of life: its religious meaning, the role of feeling, or sentiment, and the spiritual function of the real world. History for the Romantics is thus the gradual working out of spiritual ideals in which the individual’s role is foremost, agential, and profoundly, even transcendentally, important. The philosopher Giambattista Vico occupies a unique niche with his De rebus gestis Antonii Caraphae (About the Life of Antonio Carafa, 1716). Having already penned his own autobiography, Vico brings to his telling of Carafa’s life a reinvention of biography as a genre including both historical accuracy and psychological analysis. Biography in the nineteenth century is part and parcel of the movement for the unification of Italy as a nation state, the Risorgimento. In 1802–1803, Francesco Lomonaco (1772–1810) publishes his sweeping Vite degli eccellenti Italiani (Lives of Excellent Italians), which contains 23 biographies, from Boccaccio to Lorenzo de’ Medici, from Guicciardini to Tasso, from Campanella to Beccaria, in a classicizing narrative style inspired by Tacitus and Plutarch. Such positivist analyses of figures from the past that exhibit and exemplify nationalist tendencies at times result in ideological exaggerations, such as the neo-Guelph ideology evident in Cesare Balbo’s Vita di Dante (Life of Dante, 1830). Throughout the century, patriotic zeal characterizes such works as Cesare Cantu`’s L’abate Parini e la Lombardia nel secolo passato (The Abbot Parini and Lombardy during the Past Century, 1854) and Luigi Carrer’s Life of Foscolo (1842), which 232

typify biography’s capacity to constitute a national identity by means of ideologically appropriate life stories. Pasquale Villari’s La storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de’ suoi tempi (A History of Girolamo Savonarola and His Times, 1859–1861) and Niccolo` Machiavelli e i suoi tempi (Niccolo` Machiavelli and His Times, 1877–1882) are both published after the success of the national unification movement. Not to be forgotten is the remarkable biography of Cardinal Borromeo that Alessandro Manzoni situates within his masterly novel of national unification, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), first published in 1827. Here we see an undiluted if subtle example of biography used for nationalist ends. While a historic framework of positivism may at times obscure the object of biography in contemporary European traditions, in Italy, biography remains generally anchored in a tradition of praise throughout the nineteenth century. However, a relative lack of popularity may be due to readers’ suspicions of biography as not being scientific but erring from fact in order either to praise or to blame its object. In the twentieth century, biography takes on elements of novelistic writing and expands its gamut of objects to include figures of industry and popular culture. Giovanni Papini’s Storia di Cristo (History of Christ, 1921), Dante vivo (Dante Alive, 1933), and Vita di Michelangelo nella vita del suo tempo (Michelangelo and Its Times, 1949) exemplify this novelistic narrative bent. Margherita Sarfatti’s Dux, the first official biography of Benito Mussolini, was published in English in 1925 and then appeared in a revised Italian version a year later. Another widespread tendency is the use of literary biography as a kind of philosophical and even political essay. Benedetto Croce, in his 1946 essay, Ariosto, for example, harshly criticizes the Renaissance epic poet for what the critic perceives to be Ariosto’s scarce intellectual, religious, and political passions. In 1973, Nino Borsellino’s biography of Ariosto defends the poet on nationalist grounds, claiming that he gave Italy a national model for modern literature. One may read these two biographies as statements of and a debate about the political role of art. Other biographers have taken up Petrarch as their object. Umberto Bosco publishes a detailed biography of the poet in 1946, focusing his attention entirely on Petrarch’s poetic production rather than on actual biographical events. In 1987, Ugo Dotti gives us a life of Petrarch that highlights the

BIOGRAPHY troubled mind of a poet engaged in an unending existential search for peace and serenity. Such diverse portraits contain implicit and widely diverse value systems, indicating the wide scope of recent biography as a genre in Italy. By similar tokens, such twentieth-century biographies as Giuseppe Prezzolini’s Machiavelli anticristo (Machiavelli Antichrist, 1954) make claims about historic figures that indicate the writer’s ideology in a modern context, including the unique coexistence in Italy of Catholicism and Communism. Prezzolini holds, for example, that Machiavelli believed that political activity was not compatible with Christian ethics; therefore, the Roman state, a great political creation, was weakened and destroyed by Christianity. Freudian elements come to the fore in Rolando Damiani’s 1998 biography of Italy’s great Romantic poet, Leopardi. All’apparir del vero: Vita di Giacomo Leopardi (When Truth Appears: Life of Giacomo Leopardi), in which Damiani sees Leopardi’s life as a continuous unstable balance between dreams of escape from and rebellion against his father’s vigilant power and his own great fear of the real world. Literary lions of the early twentieth century attract biographers engaged in elaborating those writers’ philosophies. Luigi Pirandello, who famously introduced humorism in Italy and sensitized readers internationally to the vicissitudes of apparent identity, is the object of numerous biographies, among them those by Gaspare Giudice, Luigi Pirandello (1963), and by Andrea Camilleri, Biografia del figlio cambiato (Biography of a Changed Son, 2000). Giudice, a scholar, traces the life of the Sicilian author in detail; Camilleri, on the other hand, gives us what he calls a ‘‘novel of Luigi Pirandello’s life’’ in an attempt to understand the man as separate from the author, an endeavor with roots in the psychologizing and sentimental tendencies of Romanticism. Several twentieth-century biographers seem motivated by a desire to set the record straight about certain historical figures, generally when those figures have political significance in contemporary contexts. For example, Marco Nozza and Indro Montanelli’s Garibaldi (1962) intends to fill the gaps that Garibaldi’s own memoir leaves open and to correct later writers who have exiled this hero of the Italian Risorgimento to the realm of mythology. Piero Chiara’s Vita di Gabriele d’Annunzio (Life of Gabriele D’Annunzio, 1978) revisits D’Annunzio’s infamous association with Mussolini and emphasizes his opposition to any

alliance with Germany. A final example of this strand of biography is Giorgio Bocca’s Palmiro Togliatti (1973), where the journalist relies on interviews with such Communist Party comrades as Amendola, Berti, and Secchia in order to trace Togliatti’s political ascent. Biography as an investigation into the lives of living persons is also popular during the twentieth century. Often, such biography is based on interviews between a journalist and the object, as is the case with Enzo Biagi’s Ferrari, l’uomo che invento` il mito del cavallino rampante (Ferrari, the Man Who Invented the Myth of the Rearing Horse, 1980). Maurizio Giammusso’s biography of Eduardo de Filippo, Eduardo (1993) relies on the actor’s private papers to trace his development from the early years when he worked with his brother and sister through his meeting with Pirandello to his international success. Italo Moscati’s Anna Magnani: Vita amori e carriera di un’attrice che guarda diritto negli occhi (Anna Magnani: Life, Loves and Career of an Actress Who Looks You Straight in the Eyes, 2003) presents her as embodying 70 years of Italian history, from variety showgirl to international star. This trend in biography also includes magazines devoted to journalistic and gossipy coverage of the lives of celebrities such as film stars, royalty, politicians, industrialists, and the wealthy in general. In 1983, the novelist Natalia Ginzburg takes up an extensive biographic project when she writes La famiglia Manzoni (The Manzoni Family). This unusual biography attempts to recompose Manzoni and his family’s history through reports of events, actual letters, and contemporary journalistic accounts. The story ranges from 1762, when Giulia Beccaria, Manzoni’s mother, is born to the events of the life of Stefano Borri, the son of Manzoni’s second wife, born from her first marriage. Such a unique and vast range implies that the biography of a single individual, if limited to that person’s lifetime, is inadequate to an understanding of that individual, for which one must, on the contrary, expand the very notion of biography as an individual life story. Finally, we cannot fail to mention the parallel development of biography in twentieth-century Italy and the annals school in first French and then international practice of historiography. This trend in history writing holds that biography is important for the purpose of re-evaluating an appropriate historical object. This perspective includes a valorization of the lives of persons not traditionally considered by scholars to be historic actors (peasants, 233

BIOGRAPHY for example), rather than powerful figures who perform what traditional historiography sees as noteworthy deeds. As is the case in Carlo Ginzburg’s groundbreaking work, Il formaggio e i vermi (The Cheese and the Worms, 1976), this historiography project ranges past the boundaries of traditional genres and even traditional fields defined by high and popular culture, blending history, sociology, and biography, to provide contemporary postmodern insights into the past. BEVERLY ALLEN

Further Reading Backsheider, Paula, Reflections on Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Baldinucci, Filippo, The Life of Bernini, translated by Catherine Enggars, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966. Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Life of Dante, New York: Garland, 1990. Branca, Vittore, Boccaccio medievale, Florence: Sansoni, 1956. Croce, Elena, Lo specchio della biografia, Rome: De Luca, 1960. Ellis, David, Literary Lives: Biography and the Search for Understanding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Gianolio, Valeria (editor), Scrivere le vite: Consonanze critiche sulla biografia, Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori, 1996. Holroyd, Michael, Works on Paper: The Craft of Biography and Autobiography, Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002. Tommaso da Celano, St. Francis of Assisi: First and Second Life of St. Francis with Selections from the Treatise on the Miracles of Blessed Francis (1257), Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988.

FLAVIO BIONDO (1392–1463) Born into a family of notaries in the northern Italian city of Forlı`, Flavio Biondo became the most notable historian and antiquarian of the fifteenth century. As a whole, his body of work dictated the rules and to a great extent defined a methodology of historiographic research that remained canonical well after his death. Although Biondo eventually gained acceptance among the Humanist elite, the domestic and geographical circumstances concerning his birth did not grant him immediate access to the liveliest cultural centers of Renaissance Italy. Rather, he was exposed from an early age to the aggressive and factious diplomacies of the political powers (Venetian Republic) and families (Visconti, Sforza) that were then vying for supremacy in Northern Italy. Educated in the liberal arts but most importantly trained as a notary, Biondo was forced to lead an itinerant life during which, given his professional education, he had the chance to hone his diplomatic abilities and to develop a necessary pragmatism. From this he acquired the skills that led him to a successful career as the foremost diplomatic representative of Pope Eugenius IV, an experience that played a pivotal role in his life. 234

The year 1433 marked a turning point in Biondo’s career. Eugenius IV appointed him papal secretary at a time in which the Roman curia had been temporarily transferred from Rome to Florence. Even though as a youth he had already had the chance to converse with personalities such as Pier Candido Decembrio (1392–1477) and Guarino Veronese (1374–1460), his period in Florence gave him the opportunity of meeting the leading Humanists of his time. Among them, Leonardo Bruni (ca. 1370–1444), and his works played the most important role in the genesis and development of his ideas. In his short treatise entitled De verbis romanae locutionis (On the Words of Roman Speech, 1435), Biondo undertook the refutation of Bruni’s argument according to which ancient Rome would have been bilingual, its two languages being the Latin of the masterpieces of classical antiquity, and a vernacular idiom spoken by the illiterate. Contrary to Bruni’s view, Biondo asserted that literary and nonliterary language differed in degree and not in kind and based his argument on evidence directly culled from Cicero’s Brutus. The inherent qualities of Latin, Biondo maintained, remained unchanged until the time of the barbaric invasions.

FLAVIO BIONDO The conclusions reached in his first confrontation with Bruni are also central to a work that in its most definitive edition was entitled Historiarum ab inclinatione romani imperii decades (Decades of History from the Decline of the Roman Empire, 1453). This work, which Biondo began writing in 1435, was again inspired by Bruni, who at the time was occupied with his Historiae florentini populi (History of the Florentine People), which he had begun as early as 1415 and formally introduced the first six books to the city government in 1439. Although at first Biondo meant to limit himself to the history of his own century, in the following decades he repeatedly revised the date of his research until finally settling for the event that in his view marked the beginning of Rome’s decline—the sack of Rome of 410 AD. Despite its monumental breadth, the work retained a remarkable unity of intent. Rather than being noted for its historical accuracy—a quality that can more easily be attributed to Biondo’s later works—the Historiarum ab inclinatione romani imperii decades also suggested for the first time the possibility of viewing secular history synoptically. Even though he effected a total departure from the providential historicism presented by Saint Augustine in his De civitate Dei (413–426), a universal history such as Biondo’s unfailingly revealed the temporal identity of man’s misused passions and overpowering greed. In 1443, the papal court returned to Rome and Biondo, just as Petrarch a century earlier, was enraptured by the appeal of the city’s ancient ruins. The antiquarian and archeological frenzy evoked by the Roman sights led Biondo to the composition in 1446 of his Roma instaurata (Rome Restored, 1446). Drawn upon a genre popular in the Middle Ages, this work was a fairly systematic topography of the ancient city’s monuments and architecture. Biondo’s archeological interests were shared by other illustrious Humanists, most notably Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), who in those very same years was working on his De varietate fortunae (On the Vicissitude of Fortune, 1448). From a comparison of these two works, the novelty of Biondo’s more positive methodology clearly emerges as an alternative to the emotiveness that still permeated the works of his contemporaries. Almost coeval to this work was his Italia illustrata (Italy Illustrated, 1453), in which Biondo undertook, between 1448 and 1453, a comprehensive geographical and archeological description of the

entire Italian peninsula. A peculiar characteristic of his work is the author’s successful attempt to demythologize the accounts regarding the origins of Italy’s most illustrious cities and his acclamation of the personalities who contributed to the rise of Humanism. Thus, after having established the date for the end of the Roman Empire, Biondo also determined, through his descriptions, the places and time central to that period in history that we now call Renaissance. Biondo’s last major historiographic effort is the Roma triumphans (Rome Triumphant, 1457–1459). This work represents the natural conclusion to a career dedicated to the investigation and revelation of Rome’s true features. Famous for the vivid descriptions (especially in the last book) of Rome’s institutions and the activities of its inhabitants, Roma triumphans serves as a true living picture of Rome at the peak of its power. Biondo liberated the study of history from all the philosophical, moralistic, rhetorical, and ultimately subjective contaminations to which it was liable in the works of the early Humanists and in a way proved what, up until then, had been merely taken for granted regarding the magnificence of Rome and its institutions. Only after Biondo did historiography become a truly positive science.

Biography Born in Forlı`, 1392; received an education in rhetoric and grammar by Giovanni Balestreri and trained as a notary; befriended Pier Candido Decembrio, and later Guarino Veronese who introduced him to the Humanistic movement of his time, 1420; resided in many Italian cities, including Imola, Ferrara, and Venice and occasionally worked on diplomatic mission for the Sforza family before moving to Rome, 1433; Pope Eugenius IV appointed him apostolic secretary, 1433. For more than a decade, he oversaw all the diplomatic relations between Rome and the Northern states, and played a significant role in the Council of FerraraFlorence, 1438–1445; forced to leave Rome when Nicholas V succeeded Eugenius IV, 1448; dedicated the last decade of his life to his historiographic research and to the promotion of a Crusade against the Turks. Died in Rome on 4 June 1463. ROCCO RUBINI See also: Historiography

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FLAVIO BIONDO Selected Works Collections Blondi Flauii Forliuiensis De Roma Triumphante libri decem priscorum scriptorum lectoribus utilissimi, ad totiusque Romanae antiquitatis cognitionem pernecessarij; Romae Instauratae libri tre. Italia Illustrata. Historiarum ab inclinato Romano imperio decades tres, Basel: Froben, 1531. Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio, edited by Bartolomeo Nogara, Rome: Tipografia poliglotta Vaticana, 1927.

Treatises De verbis romanae locutionis, 1435. Roma instaurata, 1446. Historiarum ab inclinatione romani imperii decades, 1453. Italia illustrata, 1453. Roma triumphans, 1457–1459.

Other Recuperi Ammianei da Biondo Flavio, edited by Rita Cappelletto, 1983.

Further Reading

Clavuot, Ottavio, Biondos ‘‘Italia illustrata’’: Summa oder Neuscho¨pfung?: u¨ber die Arbeitsmethoden eines Humanisten, Tubingen: M. Niemeyer, 1990. Cochrane, Eric, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Fubini, Riccardo, ‘‘Biondo, Flavio,’’ in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 10, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1968. Hay, Denys, Annalists and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Centuries, London: Methuen, 1977. Ianziti, Gary, ‘‘From Flavio Biondo to Lodrisio Crivelli: The Beginnings of Humanistic Historiography in Sforza Milan,’’ in Rinascimento, 20 (1980): 3–39. Mazzocco, Angelo, ‘‘Rome and the Humanists: The Case of Biondo Flavio,’’ in Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, edited by Paul A. Ramsey, Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982. Robathan, Dorothy, ‘‘Flavio Biondo’s Roma Instaurata,’’ in Medievalia et Humanistica, 1 (1970): 203–216. Weiss, Roberto, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.

Ariemma Capriglione, Anna, Flavio Biondo da Forli: storiografia e storiografi dell’eta` dell’Umanesimo, Naples: Loffredo, 1969.

ALESSANDRO BLASETTI (1900–1987) An Italian film, theater, and television director, Blasetti was a central figure within Italian film culture for much of the twentieth century. His belief in the expressive possibilities of film led him to champion and experiment with the medium throughout his 60-year career. Blasetti founded Italy’s first cinema school, La Scuola Nazionale di Cinematografia (1932); he was the first Italian director to use sound in the film Resurrectio (Resurrection, 1931); and the first to use Technicolor in the documentary Caccia alle volpe nella campagna romagna (Wolf Hunt in the Roman Countryside, 1938), shot by the English cinematographer Jack Cardiff. He pioneered the film-inchiesta (film as investigation), of which Europa di notte (Europe by Night, 1959) is the prime example, the episodic film in Italy with Altri tempi (Other Times, 1952), and was among the first filmmakers to work in television. Yet Blasetti has remained little known outside of Italy and underappreciated within his native 236

country, in part because his name is not associated with any one cinematic school or tendency. Although his film 1860 (1934) is considered a precursor of the postwar neorealist movement, he also made historical epics, expressionist-tinged dramas, romantic comedies, and costume films. Blasetti’s early support for Fascism, which translated into several overtly political films, such as Vecchia guardia (The Old Guard, 1934), which celebrated Fascist squadrism, also accounts for the relative silence that has surrounded his career. Although he became disenchanted with the dictatorship much earlier than many of his peers, the aura of ‘‘Fascist filmmaker’’ long surrounded him. Indeed, the ‘‘rediscovery’’ of his work came only in the course of a reappraisal of Fascist-era cinema by critics in Italy and elsewhere that began in the 1980s. Blasetti began his career in the mid-1920s, when the national film industry still suffered from the lingering effects of wartime devastation. His reviews

ALESSANDRO BLASETTI Lo schermo (1926–1927), Cinematografo (1927–1931), and Lo spettacolo d’Italia (1927–1928) urged political and financial elites to invest in the industry. They contributed greatly to the spread of a professional film culture in Italy. His first film, Sole (Sun, 1929), which celebrated Fascism’s reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, mixes realism and expressionism, melodrama and politics. His films of the early 1930s confirm this stylistic eclecticism and his commitment to marrying entertainment and mass persuasion. They range from populist paens, such as Terra madre (Mother Earth, 1931) to experimental movies (the avant-garde tinged Resurrectio, which explores the possibilities of film, music, and sound) to hybrid works (the Risorgimento-themed 1860, which combines realism with stylized historic spectacle). Ideological agendas of reconciliation (classes), unification (national), and redemption (of the nation and its individual members, especially male authority figures who pass from crisis to rebirth) provide continuity among these films. From the mid-1930s on, as Fascism became more bellicose and repressive, Blasetti moved away from overtly political filmmaking. Made on the eve of Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, Aldebaran (1935) highlights a naval officer’s conflict between private emotions and official duties. La contessa di Parma (The Countess of Parma, 1937), Ettore Fieramosca (1938), and Un’avventura di Salvator Rosa (An Adventure of Salvatore Rosa, 1940) take the director into the genres of sophisticated comedy and lavish spectacle even as they promote Italian achievements and history. Blasetti’s disaffection is more evident in his dark costume dramas: La corona di ferro (The Iron Crown, 1941) and La cena delle beffe (The Jester’s Supper, 1941) question the cult of virility that surrounds male authority figures and highlights their power abuses. The crazed despots of these films represent the culmination of Blasetti’s filmic meditations on the figure of the father-dictator: Quattro passi fra le nuvole (A Walk in the Clouds, 1942), and Nessuno torna indietro (There’s No Turning Back), which was released in 1945, return to the quotidian, in setting if not always in style. The former film, which marks the beginning of a 20-year collaboration with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, introduces a reflection on the social and psychological costs of bourgeois egotism that is developed in postwar films such as Prima comunione (First Communion, 1950), Amore e chiacchiere (Love and Gossip, 1957), and Io, Io, Io...e gli altri (Me, Me, Me...and the Others, 1966). Although Blasetti liked to proclaim himself a father of neorealism, he did not contribute much

to that movement. His Resistance film, Un giorno nella vita (A Day in the Life, 1946), is a conventionally scripted and professionally acted appeal for an ideal trait d’union between Catholics and Communists (represented in the film by cloistered nuns and partisans). Indeed, his next work, a grand costume epic made with an international cast and set in imperial Rome, Fabiola (1948), ran counter to neorealist style and its national-popular spirit. Blasetti hit a more congenial vein with his 1950s comedies, which featured well-known stars, such as Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in Peccato che sia una canaglia (‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 1954) and La fortuna di essere donna (The Fortune of Being A Woman, 1955), and wittily delivered social satire. These films influenced younger directors such as Pietro Germi, who would develop the popular commedia all’italiana. Although Blasetti had mastered a successful commercial formula, he continued to explore new models of filmmaking and forms of narration, such as those proposed in his episodic films of this period—Altri tempi and Tempi nostri (Our Times, 1954)—and in his film inchieste—Europa di notte, and Io amo, tu ami... (You Love, I Love..., 1961)—which documented nightlife in various continental capitals. Both of these new genres spawned many imitators. When Blasetti was in his 60s, his perennial interest in the cultures and technologies of modernity (his 1950s documentaries include a film on the Fiat 600 car and another on the use of animals in laboratory science) as well as his desire to communicate to younger generations led him to embrace television. His works in this medium encapsulate the scope of his talents and interests: They include historical documentaries and dramas, most notably, La lunga strada del ritorno (The Long Road Home, 1962), a three-part series on Italian prisoners of war, and a science fiction program entitled Racconti di fantascienza (Science-Fiction Stories, 1979–1980) that he directed into the last decade of his life.

Biography Born in Rome on 3 July 1900. Studied law at University of Rome, graduated in 1924; married Maria Laura Quagliotti, 1923; daughter Mara born, 1924. Begins column of film criticism at the newspaper L’Impero, 1925; founds Il mondo a lo schermo in 1926, which becomes Lo schermo (1926) and Cinematografo (1927); founds a film co-operative, Augustus, with Solari, Vergani, Serandrei, Alessandrini and Barbaro, 1927; founds journal Lo 237

ALESSANDRO BLASETTI spettacolo d’Italia, 1928; premires Sole, his first feature film, 1929; founds Cine Club d’Italia, 1930; founds Scuola Nazionale di Cinematografia, 1932; premieres his first documentary, Assisi, 1932; produces his experimental mass theater 18BL, 1934; meets the actress Elisa Cegnani, who starred in many of his films and with whom he had a 50year love relationship, 1935; founds Nembo Film to produce Ettore Fieramosca, 1937; King Victor Emmanuel III names him Cavaliere della Corona d’Italia, 1939; wins Leone d’Oro at the ninth Venice International Film Festival for La corona di ferro, 1941; refuses Fascist regime’s invitation to direct war film Bir-el-Gobi, 1943; after the Armistice, he refuses to work in the new Cinecitta` studios of the German-backed Republic of Salo, fall 1943; begins career as a theater director with Il tempo e la famiglia Conway by John Boynton Priestley and Ma non e´ una cosa seria by Luigi Pirandello, 1945. Awarded Nastro d’Argento for Un giorno nella vita, 1946; French ‘‘Victoire’’ for Fabiola, 1949; Spanish ‘‘Triumfo’’ for Prima comunione, 1951; named Commendatore al Merito della Repubblica by President Luigi Einaudi, 1952; Grolla d’oro career award at Saint-Vincent, 1958; re-edits his 1934 film 1860 with a non-Fascist ending, 1958; first documentary, La lunga strada del ritorno, for the RAI-TV, 1962; David di Donatello for ‘‘his professional contribution to the Italian cinema,’’ 1963; special Jury prize at the Moscow Film Festival for Simon Bolivar, 1969; Leone d’Oro for his career at the 50th Venice International Film Festival, 1982; struck by cerebral ictus, which forces him to stop all professional activity, 1981; wife Maria Laura dies, 1984. Dies at home in Rome on 1 February 1987. RUTH BEN-GHIAT Selected Works Feature Films Sole, 1929. Nerone, 1930. Resurrectio, 1931. Terra madre, 1931. Palio, 1932. La tavola dei poveri, 1932. 1860, 1934. Vecchia guardia, 1934. Aldebaran, 1935. La contessa di Parma, 1937. Ettore Fieramosca, 1938. Un’avventura di Salvator Rosa, 1940. La corona di ferro, 1941. La cena delle beffe, 1941.

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Quattro passi fra le nuvole, 1942. Nessuno torna indietro, 1945. Un giorno nella vita, 1946. Fabiola, 1948. Prima comunione, 1950. Altri tempi, 1952. Tempi nostri, 1954. Peccato che sia una canaglia (‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore), 1954. La fortuna di essere donna, 1955. Amore e chiacchiere, 1957. Europa di notte, 1959. Io amo, tu ami... , 1961. Io, Io, Io...e gli altri, 1966. La ragazza del bersagliere, 1967. Simon Bolivar, 1969. Napoli 1860: La fine dei Borboni, made for TV, 1970.

Documentary Films Assisi, 1932. Caccia alle volpe nella campagna romana, 1938. Napoli nuova, 1940. La gemma orientale dei Papi, 1947. Castel Sant’Angelo, 1947. Quelli che soffrono per noi, 1951. La lunga strada del ritorno, made for TV, 1962. Gli italiani del cinema italiano, made for TV, 1964. Storie dell’emigrazione, made for TV, 1972. Racconti di Fantascienza, made for TV, 1979. Mio amico Pietro Germi, made for TV, 1980. Venezia-Una Mostra per il Cinema, made for TV, 1981.

Theater Directing 18 BL, 1934. John Boynton Priestley, Il tempo e la famiglia Conway, 1945. John Boynton Priestley, Ma non e una cosa seria, 1945. Robert Emmer Sherwood, La foresta pietrificata, 1947. Ugo Betti, La regina e gli insorti, 1951.

Writings Scritti sul cinema, edited by Adriano Apra`, 1982.

Further Reading Apra`, Adriano, ‘‘Linee di politica cinematografica da Blasetti a Freddi,’’ in Cinema italiano sotto il fascismo, edited by Riccardo Redi, Venice: Marsilio, 1979. Apra`, Adriano, ‘‘Blasetti regista italiano,’’ in Scritti sul cinema, Venice: Marsilio, 1982. Apra`, Adriano, and Riccardo Redi (editors), Sole: Soggetto, sceneggiatura e note per la realizzazione, Rome: Di Giacomo, 1985. Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, Fascist Modernities: Italy 1922–1945, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Dalle Vacche, Angela, ‘‘National Tradition in Blasetti’s 1860,’’ in Film Criticism, 9, no. 1 (1984): 74–81. Gori, Gianfranco, Alessandro Blasetti, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1984. Grmek Germani, Sergio, ‘‘Blasetti dal periodo fascista al neorealismo,’’ in Il neorealismo cinematografico italiano, edited by Lino Micciche`, Venice: Marsilio, 1975. Masi, Stefano (editor), Alessandro Blasetti 1900–2000, Rome: Comitato per il Centenario della Nascita, 2001.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Micheli, Paola, Il cinema di Blasetti parlo` cosi: Un’analisi linguistica dei film, 1929–1942, Rome: Bulzoni, 1990. Prono, Franco (editor), Alessandro Blasetti: Il cinema che ho vissuto, Bari: Dedalo, 1982. Salizzato, Clavier, and Vito Zagarrio, La corona di ferro- un modo di produzione italiano, Rome: Di Giacomo, 1985.

Schnapp, Jeffrey, 18BL and the Theatre of Masses for Masses, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Verdone, Mario, Alessandro Blasetti, Rome: Editrice Roma Amor, 1988. Verdone, Luca (editor), I film di Alessandro Blasetti, Rome: Gremese, 1989.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO (1313–1375) Founding father of Italian fiction, Boccaccio forged new literary genres in a late Gothic cultural world, creating classics for the moderns by taking inspiration from antiquity; the recent literary past—above all, his idol Dante; and his revered contemporary, Petrarca. This son of a Florentine banker, educated for business and then a career in canon law, found himself drawn instead by natural inclination to poetry, a pursuit he passionately defends at the finale of his Genealogie deorum gentilium (Genealogies of the Gentile Gods, ca. 1350–1360). By ‘‘poetry,’’ he means the highest form of human expression, a vehicle for moral truth that hides its lesson beneath a fanciful narrative, much as the pith of a tree lies covered inside its bark. Consonant with the medieval aesthetic of allegory, his theory of poetry resonates as well with the ancient ideal defined by Horace, who advocated an art ‘‘sweet and useful.’’ In practice, Boccaccio’s genius as a storytelling teacher leads him to write prolifically, as ready to ply a Latin quill as to play with his native Italian. Unlike Dante and Petrarca, who left much of what they wrote unfinished, he completes one book after another—24 titles in Vittore Branca’s 10-volume edition of the complete works. From sunny university days to solitary last months of tormenting illness, he answers his destiny as a poet with brilliant experiments of genre, register, and style that brought powerful literary revival to the Italian peninsula. Associated today mainly with the Decameron (ca. 1350–1352; rev. ca. 1373), whose history has given him a distorted reputation for obscenity, Boccaccio enjoyed fame of a very different sort during his time. A poet, Humanist, orator, and ambassador (who probably composed the official

correspondence he carried), he was one of only about 70 men among several tens of thousands in Florence with the title dominus (lord), reserved for knights and jurists. Trained as a canonist at the University of Naples, he was well-suited to carry out diplomatic missions for the Florentine Commune, among them trips to popes in Avignon and Rome. The many authors he cites in his writings (no full inventory has ever been compiled) and the contents of his important personal library, bequeathed to the monastery of Santo Spirito in Florence, display the autodidact’s all-embracing curiosity. More eclectic than either Dante or Petrarca, he knows the Church Fathers, citations from whom form the basis of canon law (Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great); curriculum authors (Boethius, Martianus Cappella, Macrobius, Fulgentius, Bede, Rabanus Maurus); the Scholastic canon of Aristotle as explicated by Thomas Aquinas (the latter’s commentary on the Ethics survives in Boccaccio’s own hand); the poets (Ovid, Virgil); and an antique heritage newly re-emerging (Cicero’s orations, rediscovered by Petrarca in Lie`ge; Tacitus, which Boccaccio found at Benevento; Homer, translated by Leontius Pilatus at Boccaccio’s behest). In his day and for more than a hundred years thereafter, he was read across Europe as a moral authority, primarily for his histories and encyclopedias, which by the turn of the fifteenth century were circulating both in the original Latin and vernacular translations: Genealogie deorum gentilium; De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris (On Mountains, Forests, Springs, Lakes, Rivers, Ponds or Swamps, and Diverse Names of the Sea, 1350–1365); De casibus virorum illustrium (Falls of Illustrious Men, 1355–1360; 1373–1374); 239

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO De mulieribus claris (Famous Women, 1361–1362). Even the Decameron contributed to his good name, since stories from it were used to decorate quattrocento bridal chests (cassoni) with pictures that provided models of wifely fidelity. In the cinquecento the Decameron triumphs as Boccaccio’s most popular work. Subsequently, scholars constructed his career as an amorous youth’s ‘‘apprenticeship’’ up to that masterpiece, considered a brief moment of perfection before rapid decline into learned but sterile and moralistic Latin. A challenge to this dated ‘‘Boccaccesque’’ paradigm comes from recent ‘‘Boccaccian’’ criticism, which recognizes sophisticated artistic accomplishment throughout his corpus. Protocols of self-naming and early portraits express how seriously Boccaccio took his calling. His first four epistolary exercises, signed ‘‘Johannes, at the tomb of Virgil,’’ announce his wish to emulate the poet whose burial place brought honor to Naples. Another youthful signing, encoded at midpoint in Filocolo (1336–1339), identifies him as ‘‘Giovanni di Certaldo,’’ whose fiction will attain renown. In the acrostic of the Amorosa visione (Amorous vision, ca. 1342–1343; rev. ca. 1355– 1360), he proudly spells both a patronymic and toponymic, ‘‘Giovanni di Boccaccio da Certaldo.’’ The formula ‘‘Johannes de Certaldo,’’ consistent in his later Latin works, suggests that the family’s ancestral village was also his birthplace. A talented amateur artist, he paints a late self-portrait in dialogue with his Muse, who greets him, ‘‘Ave, frater, laurum dignum te concipe sertum’’ (Hail, brother, consider thyself worthy of a laurel crown). In this frontispiece for Buccolicum carmen (Pastoral Song, ca. 1347–1366), he sits as a plump cleric in cathedra (a professorial stall chair) explicating his allegorical eclogues to a circle of tonsured monks. Below, the kind of aphorism that was one of his signature motifs teaches, ‘‘Chi semina virtu` fama [raccoglie]’’ (he who sows virtue reaps fame) (Victoria Kirkham, ‘‘Iohannes de Certaldo,’’ 1998). The Certaldan makes his literary debut in Naples, an urban magnet with the most cosmopolitan court in Europe, a distinguished university (Thomas Aquinas had taught on its faculty), and a port that drew merchants from across the Mediterranean. In his early teens, Boccaccio traveled there overland from Florence with his father, chief agent for the Bardi banking house at Robert of Anjou’s court. Business keeps them for a 13-year sojourn, during which, while still a teenager he spends his days working the money counters in the commercial district (ca. 1327–1331) and then studies canon law for another four years at the 240

Neapolitan Studium (ca. 1331–1335). Although he blames his father for forcing him to waste time in such uncongenial pursuits (Genealogie XV, 10), he will later turn to literary profit his reluctant immersion in the mercantile milieu, his privileged proximity to the aristocracy, and contacts cultivated in the lively intellectual community at Naples, always remembered nostalgically as the happy city of his youth. Boccaccio’s habit of endlessly revising, as well as the gaps in our historical knowledge, make it difficult to establish precise dating, but he was in his 20s when he began testing his skills. To this period belong Elegia di Costanza (Costanza’s Elegy, ca. 1332), Allegoria mitologica (Mythological Allegory, 1332–1334), and four Epistole allegoriche (Allegorical Epistles, 1339), all rhetorical exercises in Latin. From Latin he also translates the third and fourth decades of Livy’s History of Rome (ca. 1338–1347), and possibly—a disputed attribution—Valerius Maximus’ Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem (Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings, ca. 20 BC–ca. AD 50). A jocose letter to Francesco de’ Bardi (1339) attests to his fluency as a speaker of Neapolitan dialect. This is one of only three that survive in vernacular, the two others being his magnificent Epistola consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi (Consolatory Letter to Pino de’ Rossi, 1361–1362) and a casual note of 1366 to Leonardo del Chiaro, a Certaldan money changer in Avignon. His early vernacular fiction reveals roots in a society ruled by the French Angevin dynasty, politically allied to pro-Guelf Florence. Caccia di Diana (Diana’s Hunt, ca. 1333–1334) cleverly pays tribute to 58 Neapolitan court ladies. Summoned by the goddess Diana to a hunt in Parthenope (Naples), they kill a fabulous menagerie (leopard, lion, wolf, a snake with seven snakelings, unicorn, ostrich, elephants, etc.), but the one unnamed lady incites her companions to reject Diana for Venus. The latter descends, resuscitating the dead animals as handsome young men, who jump into a river and emerge garbed in vermilion. Venus instructs the ladies to be their faithful mistresses, and the narrator, now revealed to be a stag, is transformed like the other beasts (‘‘di cervio mutato in creatura umana e razionale esser per certo’’) into a ‘‘human being and a rational creature’’ (XVIII, 11–12). Casting the Caccia di Diana in 18 cantos of terza rima (1,047 vv.), Boccaccio is the first to authorize Dante’s metrical invention with imitative homage. He draws on many other sources, including Dante’s lost sirventese naming 60 women, Ovid’s Actaeon myth, Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO (via Dante’s Purgatory 14), Claudian’s panegyric On Stilicho’s Consulship, the thirsting heart of the Bible (Psalms 42.1), and the bestiaries. Not definitively credited to Boccaccio until 1939, the Caccia di Diana is at surface a bid for patronage in a triumph of love over chastity. Beneath the veil of fiction, it is an allegorical psychomachia, or struggle in the soul, between sinful appetites (symbolized by the beasts) and uplifting virtue, embodied in the huntresses. In Filostrato (ca. 1334–1335) Boccaccio changes his pose from an amorous heart to a man ‘‘vinto d’amore’’ or ‘‘man struck down by love’’ (the meaning he intended for the title) and addresses his absent lady Filomena. His lonely situation frames a sad story suited to his mood. With a subject filtered through medieval accounts of the Trojan War, Filostrato employs a metrical vehicle from oral tradition (ottava rima, or stanzas of eight hendecasyllables with a rhyme scheme Boccaccio is credited with inventing ABABABCC). A novel fusion of epic and romance, classical and modern, learned and popular gives this tale its Boccaccian stamp, as does the fictional frame, a device that creates distance, permitting a humorous, ironic reading of the narrator’s misogynistic stance and Troiolo’s delusions as a courtly lover. The long prose romance Filocolo follows a creative path along which Boccaccian signature motifs are clearly forming—a Greek compound title ‘‘fatiche d’amore’’ (love’s labors), a frame tale with an amorous narrator named Giovanni from Certaldo, but in a ‘‘fictional persona’’ (a strategy inherited from Roman elegiac poetry); a love story inside the frame, a technique that juxtaposes material from ancient epic and medieval cantari (oral songs); mythological content and Christian conversion. New here is the poet’s mistress Fiammetta, prominent in the proemial scene, where the author describes falling suddenly in love with King Robert’s love child, Maria, also known as Fiammetta. Her returns in Boccaccio’s fiction give rise to a legend of his affair with a princess, not debunked until the second half of the twentieth century. Both the lady and her nickname are the young canonist’s inventions, tailored to the catechism of Filocolo and its calendar, which revolve around the feast days of Easter and Pentecost. With Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (Thesead of Emilia’s Nuptials, 1339–1341), Boccaccio again sets up a fictional frame, this time in a prose letter to Fiammetta, for whom he pretends to have found a ‘‘most ancient’’ story. His autograph manuscript displays what pains he took to articulate, decorate,

and illuminate with paratextual structures the ottava rima narrative, self-consciously aware of its status as the first Italian epic. Most important is the autocommentary, by an unnamed glossator who wants to make sure we understand its classical features and allegorical meaning. Like Caccia di Diana (and Dante’s Divina Commedia, always in the background), beneath its fictional veil the Teseida describes conflict in the soul between rational and irrational impulses. Resolving both the plot and this inner tension through marriage, Boccaccio anticipates a message central to the Decameron, setting his sights not on the afterworld, as Dante had done, but in civilized society, epitomized by Athens under the rule of Theseus. Boccaccio’s Teseida commentary, completed after an economic downturn forced him back to Florence in the winter of 1340–1341, turns on the cusp of a more difficult decade, when he must confront the end of carefree youth and establish himself in a place that, by comparison with Naples, seems unwelcoming, provincial, and philistine. Adversity brings productivity. Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Comedy of the Florentine Nymphs, 1341–1342) translates the Caccia di Diana’s Parthenope into mythic Etruria. Ameto, a primitive hunter, joins seven nymphs with patrician Florentine names hidden in riddles (Tosa, Tornaquinci, Peruzzi, Gianfigliazzi, Strozzi—not all are decipherable). They witness a singing contest between the good shepherd Alcesto (fervid virtue) and the sluggard Acaten accompanied by Teogapen (love of god) on his pipes. Each woman then tells a story in this ‘‘little Decameron’’ of how she betrayed her husband and took a lover—that is, abandoned Diana for Venus—who then descends as Trinitarian grace. The nymphs strip Ameto, bathe, and reclothe him; ‘‘e brievemente, d’animale bruto, uomo divenuto essere li pare’’ (it seems to him that he has been made from a brute animal into a man; XLVI. 5). In an allegory as surprising as it is transparent, the women personify the seven virtues (Mopsa-Wisdom; Emilia-Justice; Adiona-Temperance; Acrimonia-Fortitude; Agapes-Charity; Fiammetta-Hope; Lia-Faith). Beauties described in exquisite cameos modeled on rhetorical treatises by Matthew of Vendoˆme and Geoffrey of Vinsauf, they each subdue a contrary vice and effect Ameto’s Christian conversion. By proper name a Comedia like Dante’s poem—but also known as Ninfale d’Ameto, or just Ameto—this is the first of Boccaccio’s fictions to have a real, historical dedicatee, Niccolo` di Bartolo del Buono. Menippean in structure, with 50 chapters alternating between terza 241

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO rima and prose, its neo-Platonic dynamics recall both Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae and Dante’s Vita nuova. The Divina Commedia again makes a foil for the Amorosa visione. Accompanied by a guide who is an amusing Virgil in skirts, its dreaming narrator allows two youths to pull him into a castle, where he views painted triumphs of Knowledge, Fame, Riches, Love, and Fortune. Outside in a garden, Dreamer sees 15 beautiful women, a scene close to Boccaccio’s contemporary ternario (poem in terza rima), ‘‘Contento quasi ne’ pensier d’amore’’ (Content—almost—in thoughts of love). Just as Dreamer is about to possess the one who is his lady, Maria d’Aquino, he awakens bathetically to find the guide still beside him. Maria’s surname in this teasing allegory suggests a Thomistic key: reason (the Guide), assisted by Wisdom (Maria), subdues the sensual appetites of irascibility and concupiscence (the two young men) and sets the narrator on a less worldly path. A virtuoso metrical feat, the Amorosa visione is the world’s longest acrostic with three prefatory sonnets formed by the first letters of each terzina in 50 cantos of terza rima. Boccaccio returns to prose and contemporary Naples for Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Lady Fiammetta’s Elegy, 1343–1344). The married lady of the title, supremely unself-aware, tells how she became the unhappiest female ever—would even have committed suicide like Dido were it not for her wise old nurse—all because her lover Panfilo left her. Although set far from mythic, epic, or visionary landscapes, this is not the realistic modern psychological novel criticism has wanted to make it. A late medieval romance divided like Filostrato into nine books (perhaps with an allusion to the number of circles in Dante’s Hell), it stages a familiar allegorical drama. Fiammetta (who reprises Filostrato in the tale of Troiolo and anticipates their counterpart Filostrato in the Decameron) personifies concupiscence and irascibility; her nurse, reason. In this tour-de-force of crossvoicing, inspired by Ovid’s Heroides and Seneca’s tragedies, Boccaccio explores with brilliant irony the elegiac style, a mid-register between high tragedy and low comedy: ‘‘per elegiam stilum intelligimus miserorum’’ (by elegy we mean the style of those who are miserable) (Dante, De vulgari eloquentia II, 4.6). In Ninfale fiesolano (Nymphs of Fiesole, ca. 1344–1346), a pseudoprimitive pendant to Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, rustic Africo comes upon the huntress Mensola, Diana’s follower, among 242

beautiful nymphs singing and bathing in the wild, but unlike Ameto, he acts on precivilized instincts and translates his desire into brutal physical possession. Punished by the goddess of chastity, the weeping lovers turn into streams near Fiesole that bear their names. Their son Pruneo, raised by Africo’s parents, fathers 10 children and participates in that town’s legendary foundation. This pastoral jewel (473 octaves), an etiological fable that fosters Boccaccio’s epithet as ‘‘the Tuscan Ovid,’’ resembles Filostrato in its sophisticated antirhetorical stance, which mimics the simple, light oral style of the cantari. With these nymphals, Boccaccio’s invention as a genre, and the burnished Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, Italy’s master narrator comes to the Decameron (ca. 1350–1352; rev. ca. 1373). The Certaldan’s defining work is a confluence of his manifold writing experiences. Three men, counterparts to the Teseida protagonists, and seven female narrators are protagonists in a frame tale structure carried over from Ameto (but first tested in the Filocolo love debate). Bucolic settings re-created as utopian country gardens surround 100 tales, a symbolically perfect total like the number of cantos in Dante’s Comedia. Their setting is the mercantile world that had been part of his life since his teens in Naples, where he began harvesting a universal narrative heritage with motifs that run from ancient oriental sources to recent bourgeois anecdotes. Pith beneath the bark holds submerged allegorical suggestions that descend from as far back as Boccaccio’s first fiction, Caccia di Diana, and anticipate the overtly moralistic lines of his later Latin humanism. At midcentury, new poetic directions open to Dante’s great admirer when he meets personally Francesco Petrarca, admired from a distance ever since the 1330s and subject of the laudatory De vita et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia secundum Iohannem Bochacii de Certaldo (On the Life and Habits of Lord Francesco Petrarca of Florence According to Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo, ca. 1348–1350). Cicero’s oration Pro Archia (For Archias), received from Petrarca in 1351 as Boccaccio was working on the Decameron, prompts him to draft in the first of three major redactions De origine, vita, studiis et moribus viri clarissimi Dantis aligerii florentini poete illustris, et de operibus compostis ab eodem (On the Origin, Life, Studies, and Habits of the Most Distinguished Man Dante Alighieri, Illustrious Florentine Poet, and the Works Composed by Him, ca. 1351–1363), known better as Trattatello in laude di Dante (Little Treatise

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO in Praise of Dante). It echoes the ancient text in a plea for citizenship, argued as an apology for the poetic art: Archias, a Syrian, deserved to become a Roman; Dante, a Florentine should have the ban of exile lifted and his remains honorably returned to his natal city. The ‘‘little treatise,’’ a portrait of Dante’s life and works set around a stirring central defense of poetry, was intended as an accessus ad auctorem (introduction to the author) for one of three anthologies of Alighieri’s poetry that Boccaccio himself transcribed, enhanced with Argomenti (summaries) in terza rima and descriptive prose rubrics (1355; 1363–1366). Always an ardent Dantista, he preserves in his Zibaldoni (Notebooks, 1330s–1350s) the sole copies of letters by the older writer and the latter’s eclogue exchange with Giovanni del Virgilio. During the fertile decade of the 1350s, he further begins taking notes for his Genealogie, drafts his geographical gazeteer De montibus, and conceives De casibus virorum illustrium after seeing De viris illustribus by Petrarca. The latter’s influence clearly also touches Boccaccio’s Rime (Rhymes), composed from youth into old age. The last sonnet, ‘‘Or sei salito, caro signor mio’’ (Now you have risen, my dear lord) mourns Petrarca’s death in 1374. Petrarca’s influence bears, too, on Boccaccio’s last fiction, Corbaccio (Evil crow, 1355), often compared to the novella of the scholar’s revenge (Decameron VIII, 7). Its protagonist, an aging canonist, recounts how he is cured of his mad love for a woman who has publicly spurned him. The ghost of her dead husband comes to the narrator while the latter sleeps to lead him out of a nightmarish valley, ‘‘Venus’ pigsty,’’ with savagely misogynistic attacks against all members of the female sex and the widow in particular (to whom the pejorative title probably alludes). Long taken as autobiography, this ‘‘humble treatise’’ (Corb. 3) seems rather to be a literary joke that uses the dream vision to parody Dante’s Vita nuova in an anthology of antifeminist topoi that Boccaccio had been collecting from such canonical authorities as Jerome, Martial, and Theophrastus since the 1330s. Following the years at Naples (1327–1340/41) and Florence (1340/41–1361), the final phase of Boccaccio’s career attaches him to Certaldo. A Florentine political climate turned hostile and tensions with his half-brother Jacopo prompt his retreat in winter of 1361–1362 to his home in the Boccacci ancestral village. There in a meditative mood he continues work on his Genealogie and De mulieribus claris and completes Buccolicum carmen. His tremendously popular consolatory epistle

to Pino de’ Rossi, a friend exiled from Florence for his role in a rebellion against the Guelph party, reflects the moralistic slant of those Latin works in a mosaic of set pieces on such themes as aging and friendship. Finding the analogies between his own situation and Pino’s (both are removed from Florence, poor, and corpulent), Boccaccio invokes a panoply of literary examples (Dante, Boethius, Seneca, Valerius Maximus) in a rhetorical format resembling the Scholastic method of sic et non (yes and no)—comfort offered cannot help (exile means loss of home, friends, possessions) rebutted by counterargument (the whole world is our home, we can correspond with friends, riches are a burden). Peaceful withdrawal from society is the theme, too, of his Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani heremite et demum episcopi hostiensis ac romane ecclesie cardinalis (Life of the Most Sainted Father Peter Damian Hermit and Then Bishop of Ostia and Cardinal of the Roman Church, 1361–1362), composed for Petrarca, who was writing his treatise on the solitary life. After moving to Certaldo, where he communes with his books, recites Psalms, and meditates on the generosity of God’s gifts to man, Boccaccio still visits Florence and continues to travel, both as a diplomat and poet. On Sunday, October 23, 1373, he begins his last great project, the Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante (Expositions on Dante’s Comedy, 1373–1374), presented in public readings in the church of Santo Stefano di Badia at the invitation of the Florentine city fathers. Medieval by format, the commentary begins with an Accessus that explains in Aristotelian terms the work’s four ‘‘causes’’: its material cause, or matter (literal and allegorical meanings); its formal cause, or form (three canticles in cantos of terza rima); its efficient cause, or maker (Dante); and its final cause, or purpose (to remove the living from misery and lead them to happiness). Literally, the poem describes the state of souls after death; allegorically, it shows how justice rewards or punishes depending on whether we exercise free will for good or evil. Boccaccio then presents for each canto first a literal, then an allegorical exposition (Inferno XI is an exception, having no allegory). He draws on vast knowledge, including the Letter to Can Grande and Dante’s earlier commentators (his sons Pietro and Jacopo, Jacopo dalla Lana, Guido da Pisa), but he digresses creatively to mold engaging poetic biographies (as for Homer and Virgil in Limbo) or develop little novellas (the story of Paolo and Francesca in Inferno V). Ill health interrupted the Esposizioni just as Boccaccio 243

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO reached Inferno XVII. During his final months at Certaldo, late in 1374, he received the crushing news of Petrarca’s death, which he mourns in the last of his Epistole (Epistles, 1339–1374) and in a moving sonnet, where he imagines that his departed friend has risen to rejoin Dante in the heaven of Venus. The epitaph he composed for himself is mounted on the wall near the marble cenotaph bust of Boccaccio by Gian Francesco Rustici in his burial church at Certaldo: Hac sub mole iacent cineres ac ossa Iohannis, mens sedet ante Deum meritis ornata laborum mortalis vite; genitor Boccaccius illi, patria Certaldum, studium fuit alma poesis. Under this stone lie the bones and ashes of John; his spirit stands in the presence of God, adorned with the merits his mortal labors on earth have earned him. Boccaccio sired him; his native Fatherland was Certaldo; he cherished the nourishing Muses. (Trans. Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio, 1981)

Biography Born in Tuscany (either in the Boccacci family’s ancestral village of Certaldo or Florence), JuneJuly, 1313, the illegitimate son of Boccaccino di Chelino and an unknown mother; schooled in Florence by the grammarian Giovanni di Domenico Mazzuoli da Strada for a career in business. Moves ca. 1327 to Naples with his father, an agent of the Bardi bank. Trains as a money changer, then studies canon law at the University of Naples, probably also attends lectures on Justinian code by the jurist and poet Cino da Pistoia. Other important intellectual encounters in Naples with the royal librarian, Paolo da Perugia; the Florentine mathematician Paolo dell’Abbaco; the astrologer Andalo` del Negro; Dante’s commentator Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli, the historian Paolino Minorita (Paolino Veneto); the Augustinian theologian and Petrarca’s spiritual advisor, Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro. Forms friendships with his compatriot Niccolo` Acciaiuoli, a pivotal political figure on the Neapolitan scene; Giovanni Barrili and Barbato da Sulmona, leading men of letters at court. Financial reversals force father and son back to Florence in winter 1340–1341. Serves Florentine Commune as official of the Condotta (in charge of administering condottieri, or mercenary soldiers), 1355, 1365, 1367–1368; as chamberlain of the Camera (a city treasury post) and in negotiations for the annexation of Prato, 1351. Diplomatic missions for 244

Florence to Ostasio da Polenta in Ravenna, 1346; to Francesco Ordelaffi in Forlı`, 1347–1348; to Romagna and Ravenna, where he delivered 10 gold florins to Dante’s cloistered daughter, Suor Beatrice, 1350; to Ludwig of Bavaria in Tyrol, 1351–1352; to Pope Innocent VI in Avignon, 1354; to Certaldo, 1354; to Lombardy, 1359; to the Grimaldi doge in Genoa and to Pope Urban V in Avignon, 1365; to Pope Urban V in Rome, 1367. Formally welcomes Petrarca to Florence on latter’s pilgrimage to Rome for Jubilee of 1350; visits Petrarca in Padua, 1351; in Milan, 1359; in Venice, 1363; with Petrarca’s daughter and her family, 1367; visit to Padua with Petrarca and Venice with Donato Albenzani, 1368. Returns to Naples 1355, 1362–1363, 1370–1371. Friendships in Florence include the poets Sennuccio del Bene, Antonio Pucci, and Zanobi da Strada; Francesco Nelli, prior of the church Santi Apostoli; Coluccio Salutati, from 1374 chancellor of Florence; the historian Filippo Villani (Boccaccio’s first biographer); Benvenuto da Imola, who was present for Boccaccio’s Dante readings and wrote one of the most important Trecento commentaries of the Divina Commedia; Giovanni Gherardi, author of the Paradiso degli Alberti, and Franco Sacchetti, his epigones in the novella genre. Never married, fathered at least five natural children; godfather of Mainardo Cavalcanti’s child, born 1373. Legitimized by Innocent VI, 1360; already in holy orders as a cleric and probably eventually as a priest. Cedes house south of Arno to half-brother Jacopo in summer 1361 and the following winter withdraws to Certaldo; gives church of SS. Jacopo and Filippo two altarpieces (lost), one with his portrait as donor, in 1366. Final will dated 28 August 1374. Ill health in last years associated with obesity, scabies, and dropsy; dies in Certaldo on December 21, 1375. VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM Selected Works Collections Opere volgari di Giovanni Boccaccio, corrette su i testi a penna, edited by Ignazio Moutier, 17 vols., Florence, Marghera, 1827–1834. Vols. 1–4 Decameron, 1827; vol. 5, Corbaccio, 1828; vol. 6, Fiammetta, 1829; vols. 7–8, Filocolo, 1829; vol. 9, Teseide, 1831; vols. 10–12, Il comento sopra la Commedia di Dante Alighieri, 1831–1832; vol. 13, Filostrato, 1831; vol. 14, Amorosa visione. La caccia di Diana, 1832–1833; vol. 15, La vita di Dante Alighieri. L’Ameto, 1833; vol. 16, Rime. L’Urbano, 1834; vol. 17, Ninfale fiesolano. Lettere volgari, 1834.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Opere, 14 vols. Bari: Laterza, 1918–1951. Vol. 1, Filocolo, edited by Salvatore Battaglia, 1938; vol. 2, Filostrato, Ninfale fiesolano, edited by Vincenzo Pernicone, 1937; vol. 3, Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia, edited by Aurelio Roncaglia, 1941; vol. 4, L’elegia di madonna Fiammetta con le chiose inedite, edited by Vincenzo Pernicone, 1939; vol. 5, L’Ameto, Il corbaccio, edited by Nicola Bruscoli, 1940; vol. 6, Le rime, L’amorosa visione, La caccia di Diana, edited by Vittore Branca, 1939; vols. 7–8, Il Decameron, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, 1927; vol. 9, Opere latine minori, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, 1928; vols. 10–11, Genealogie deorum gentilium, edited by Vincenzo Romano, 1951; vols. 12–14, Il commento alla Divina commedia e gli altri scritti intorno a Dante, edited by Domenico Guerri, 1918. Decameron, Filocolo, Ameto, Fiammetta, selections edited by Enrico Bianchi, Carlo Salinari, Natalino Sapegno, in La letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, vol. 8, Milan: Ricciardi, 1952. Tutte le opere, edited by Vittore Branca, 10 vols., Milan, Mondadori, 1964–1998. Vol. 1, Filocolo, edited by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, 1967; vol. 2, Filostrato, edited by Vittore Branca; Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia, edited by Alberto Limentani; Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, edited by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, 1964; vol. 3, Amorosa visione, edited by Vittore Branca; Ninfale fiesolano, edited by Armando Balduino; Trattatello in laude di Dante, edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci, 1974; vol. 4, Decameron, edited by Vittore Branca, 1976; vol. 5, pt. 1, Rime, edited by Vittore Branca, with Argomenti e rubriche dantesche, edited by Giorgio Padoan; Carmina, edited by Giuseppe Velli; Epistole e lettere, edited by Ginetta Auzzas with Augusto Campana; Vite, edited by Renata Fabbri; De Canaria, edited by Manlio Pastore Stocchi, 1992; vol. 5, pt. 2, Elegia di madonna Fiammetta, edited by Carlo Delcorno; Corbaccio, edited by Giorgio Padoan; Consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi, edited by Giuseppe Chiecchi; Bucolicum carmen, edited by Giorgio Bernardi Perini; Allegoria mitologica, edited by Manlio Pastore Stocchi, 1994; vol. 6, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante, edited by Giorgio Padoan, 1965; vols. 7–8, Genealogie deorum gentilium, edited by Vittorio Zaccaria, 1998; vol. 9, De casibus virorum illustrium, edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria, 1983; vol. 10, De mulieribus claris, edited by Vittorio Zaccaria, 1967. Opere in versi, Corbaccio, Trattatello in laude di Dante, Prose latine, epistole, edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci, in La letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, vol. 9, Milan: Ricciardi, 1965. Opere minori in volgare, edited by Mario Marti, 4 vols., Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. Vol. 1, Filocolo; vol. 2, Filostrato. Teseida. Chiose al Teseida; vol. 3, Comedia della ninfe fiorentine. Amorosa visione. Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta. Ninfale fiesolano; vol. 4, Caccia di Diana. Rime. Corbaccio. Trattatello in laude di Dante. Dalle Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante. Lettere. Opere minori, Florence: D’Anna Thesis, 1995, three computer disks with Caccia di Diana, Filocolo, Filostrato, Teseida, Amorosa visione, Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, Ninfale fiesolano, Corbaccio, Rime, Trattello in laude di Dante.

Works in Vernacular Caccia di Diana (ca. 1333–1334); first edition, in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 14, 1832; in Opere, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 6, 1939; in Tutte le opere, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 1, 1967; rpt. 1990; in Opere minori, edited by Mario Marti, vol. 4, 1969; bilingual edition, Caccia di Diana. Diana’s Hunt: Boccaccio’s First Fiction, translated by Anthony K. Cassell and Victoria Kirkham, 1989. Rime (ca. 1334–1374); first ed. 1802; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 16, 1834; in Opere, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 6, 1939; edited by Vittore Branca, 1958; in Opere minori, edited by Mario Marti, vol. 4, 1969; in Tutte le opere, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 5, pt. 1, 1992; rpt. 1999. Filostrato (ca. 1334–1335). Filocolo (ca. 1334–1336). Lettere volgari, 1. A Francesco de’ Bardi, written 1339; first edition Prose antiche di Dante, Petrarcha et Boccaccio et di molti altri nobili et virtuosi ingegni nuovamente raccolte, 1547; in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 1, 1992. 2. A Leonardo del Chiaro, written 1366; first edition, Roberto Abbondanza, ‘‘Una lettera autografa del Boccaccio nell’Archivio di Stato di Perugia,’’ Studi sul Boccaccio, 1 (1963): 5–13; in Tutte le opere, edited by Ginetta Auzzas, vol. 5, pt. 1, 1992. Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (ca. 1339–1341). Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (Ameto) (ca. 1341–1342); first edition, 1478; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 15, 1833; in Opere, as Ameto, edited by Nicola Bruscoli, vol. 5, 1940; in Tutte le opere, edited by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, vol. 2, 1964; in Opere minori, edited by Mario Marti, vol. 3, 1969; as The Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, or Ameto, of Giovanni Boccaccio, translated with a critical introduction by Judith Powers Serafini-Sauli, Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1970; as An Annotated Translation of Boccaccio’s Ameto (Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine), by Bernadette Marie McCoy, Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1978; as L’Ameto, translated by Judith Powers Serafini-Sauli, 1985. Amorosa visione (ca. 1342–1343, rev. ca. 1361); first edition, Amorosa visione Di messer Giou. Bocc., nuouamente ritrouata, nella quale si conte[n]gono cinq[ue] Triumphi, 1521; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 14, 1833; in Opere, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 6, 1939; in Tutte le opere, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 3, 1974; rpt. 2000; in Opere minori, edited by Mario Marti, vol. 3, 1969; Amorosa visione, bilingual edition translated by Robert Hollander, Timothy Hampton, and Margherita Frankel, 1986. Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (ca. 1343–1344); first edition, Johannis Bochacci viri eloqventissimi Ad Flamettam Panphyli amatricem libellvs materno sermone aeditus, 1472; in Opere volgari as Fiammetta, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 6, 1839; in Opere, edited by Vincenzo Pernicone, vol. 4, 1939; in Opere minori, edited by Mario Marti, vol. 3, 1969; edited by Maria Pia Mussini Sacchi, 1987; edited by Francesco Erbani, 1988; in Tutte le opere, edited by Carlo Delcorno, vol. 5, pt. 2, 1994; as Amorous Fiammetta wherein is sette downe a catalog of all and singular passion of loue and iealousie, incident to an enamored yong gentlewoman with a notable caueat for all women to eschewe deceitfull and

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GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO wicked loue, by an apparant example of a Neapoltian lady, her approued and long miseries and wyth many sounde dehortations from the same, 1587; as La Fiammetta, translated by James C. Brogan, 1907; as Amorous Fiammetta, translated by Bartholomew Young (1587), 1926; as The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta, translated by Mariangela Causa-Steindler and Thomas Mauch, 1990; as The Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta Sent by Her to Women in Love, translated by Roberta L. Payne and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, 1992. Ninfale fiesolano (1344–1346); first dated edition, 1477; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 17, 1834; in Opere, edited by Vincenzo Pernicone, vol. 2, 1937; in Tutte le opere, edited by Armando Balduino, vol. 3, 1974; rpt. 1997; edited by Pier Massimo Forni, 1991; as A Famous Tragicall Discourse of Two Lovers. Affircan and Mensola, their lives, unfortunate loves and lamentable deaths . . . Newly translated out of Tuscan into French by Anthony Guerin [sic] . . . and out of French into English by Jo. Goubourne [Golburne], 1597; rpt. as Two Tracts: Affrican and Mensola, an Elizabethan Prose Version of Il ninfale fiesolano, edited by Cyril H. Wilkinson, 1946; as The Nymphs of Fiesole, translated by John Goubourne with woodcuts by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, 1952; as The Nymph of Fiesole (Il ninfale fiesolano), translated by Daniel J. Donno, 1960; rpt. 1974; as Nymphs of Fiesole, translated by Joseph Tusiani, 1971. Decameron (1350–1352; rev. 1373); editio princeps 1470; as Decameron, the John Payne translation, rev. and annotated by Charles S. Singleton, 3 vols., 1982; as The Decameron, translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella, 1982; as The Decameron: Selected Tales. Decameron: Novelle scelte. A dual-language book, edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum, 2000. Argomenti e rubriche dantesche Argumentum super tota prima parte Comedı`e Dantis Aligherii florentini . . . super tota secunda parte . . . super tota tertia parte, 1355; as Brieve raccoglimento di cio` che in se´ superficialmente contiene la lettera della prima parte della Cantica overo Comedı`a di Dante Alighieri di Firenze . . . della seconda parte . . . della terza parte (ca. 1363–1366); in Opere, vol. 14, edited by Domenico Guerri, 1918; in Tutte le opere, edited by Giorgio Padoan, vol. 5, pt. 1, 1992. Corbaccio, or Laberinto d’amore (ca. 1355); 1487; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 5, 1828; in Opere, edited by Nicola Bruscoli, vol. 5, 1940; in Tutte le opere, edited by Giorgio Padoan, vol. 5, pt. 2, 1994; as The Corbaccio, translated by Anthony K. Cassell, 1975; revised as The Corbaccio, or The Labyrinth of Love, 1993; as Boccaccio’s Revenge: A Literary Transposition of the Corbaccio, translated by Normand R. Cartier, 1977. Epistola consolatoria a Pino de’ Rossi (1361–1362); first edition, 1487; in Tutte le opere, edited by Giuseppe Chiecchi, vol. 5, pt. 2, 1994. Testamento, will written 21 August 1365; 1574, following Annotazioni e discorsi sopra alcuni luoghi del Decamerone; vernacular draft of will written 28 August 1374, in Domenico Maria Manni, Istoria del Decameron, 1742. Esposizioni sopra la Comedı`a di Dante (public readings 1373–1374); first edition, Commento sopra la Divina

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Commedia di Dante, with annotations by Antonmaria Salvini, 1724; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vols. 10–12, 1831–1832; in Opere, edited by Domenico Guerri, vols. 13–14, 1918; in Tutte le opere, edited by Giorgio Padoan, vol. 6, 1965; rpt. 1994.

Works in Latin Elegia di Costanza, ca. 1332. Allegoria mitologica, 1332–1334. Epistole allegoriche, 1339. Epistole, 1339–1374. Buccolicum carmen (ca. 1347–1366). De vita et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia secundum Iohannem Bochacii de Certaldo, ca. 1348– 1350. Genealogie deorum gentilium ca. 1350–1360. De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris, (1350–1365). De origine, vita, studiis et moribus viri clarissimi Dantis aligerii florentini poete illustris, et de operibus compostis ab eodem (Trattatello in laude di Dante; Vita di Dante) (first redaction ca. 1351; second redaction ca. 1359– 1366; third redaction before 1372); first edition, Vita di Dante, 1477; in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 15, 1833; in Opere, edited by Domenico Guerri, vol. 12, 1918; in Tutte le opere, edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci, vol. 3, 1974; rpt. as Vita di Dante, 2002; in Opere minori, edited by Mario Marti, vol. 4, 1969; as A Translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Life of Dante with a Note on the Portraits of Dante, translated by G. R. Carpenter, 1900; as The Earliest Lives of Dante, translated by James Robinson Smith, 1901; various rpts., e.g., 1963; as Life of Dante, translated by Philip Henry Wicksteed, 1904; as The Life of Dante Trattatello in laude di Dante, translated by Vincenzo Zin Bollettino, 1990. De casibus virorum illustrium 1355–1360. De mulieribus claris 1361–1362. Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani heremite et demum episcopi hostiensis ac romane ecclesie cardinalis 1361–1362.

Translations Le Deche di Tito Livio. Volgarizzamento della Prima, Terza e Quarta Deca di Tito Livio, 1476; I primi quattro libri del Volgarizzamento della Terza Deca di Tito Livio Padovano, attribuito a Giovanni Boccaccio, edited by Carlo Baudi di Vesme, 1875.

Further Reading Battaglia Ricci, Lucia, Boccaccio. Rome: Salerno, 2000. Bergin, Thomas G., Boccaccio, New York: Viking, 1981. Billanovich, Giuseppe, Restauri boccacceschi, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1945. Branca, Vittore, Boccaccio medievale, Florence: Sansoni, 1956. Branca, Vittore, Giovanni Boccaccio: Profilo biografico, Florence: Sansoni, 1977; second ed., 1992. Branca, Vittore (editor), Boccaccio visualizzato: Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento. 3 vols. Turin: Einaudi, 1999. Bruni, Francesco, Boccaccio: L’invenzione della letteratura mezzana, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Hollander, Robert, Boccaccio’s Two Venuses, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Amorous Vision, Scholastic Vistas,’’ in The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction, Florence: Olschki, 1993. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Iohannes de Certaldo: La firma dell’autore,’’ in Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio: Memoria, scrittura, riscrittura, edited by Michelangelo Picone and Claude Cazale´ Be´rard, Florence: Franco Cesati, 1998. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘L’immagine del Boccaccio nella memoria tardo-gotica e rinascimentale,’’ in Boccaccio visualizzato, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 1, Turin: Einaudi, 1999. Russo, Vittorio, Con le Muse in Parnaso. Tre studi su Boccaccio, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1983. Smarr, Janet Levarie, Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover, Urbana: University of Illinois, 1986. Studi sul Boccaccio, published annually or semiannually under the auspices of the Ente Nazionale Giovanni, Boccaccio, 1963-present. Surdich, Luigi, Boccaccio, Bari: Laterza, 2001. Tateo, Francesco, Boccaccio, Bari: Laterza, 1998.

DECAMERON, CA. 1350–1352; REV. CA. 1373 Novelle by Giovanni Boccaccio

A treasury of tales unrivaled in European literary history, Boccaccio’s masterpiece has become—for better or worse—a book synonymous with his name. Within a generation of its appearance, amateur scribes were recopying the Decameron, which by the quattrocento had traveled beyond the mercantile milieu where it first took hold into more courtly settings. In his Prose della volgar lingua (1525), Pietro Bembo canonized it as a linguistic model for literary prose. Others, including Anton Francesco Grazzini, Giovan Francesco Straparola, Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, and Giovambattista Basile, consecrated it as the archetype of a new vernacular genre, collected novelle (short stories) unified by a fictional frame story. Boccaccio himself drew on framed tales in traditions descended from the Middle Eastern Thousand and One

Nights and related medieval compilations (Dolopathos, Il libro de’ setti savi, and Pietro Alfonsi’s Disciplina clericalis), but in the history of Italian literature he was the first to develop this complex narrative structure. Regarded as the high point of his creative trajectory, the Decameron is a complex, sophisticated construction, to which the frame brings dimensions that make a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Its title rubric christens the collection: ‘‘Comincia il libro chiamato Decameron cognominato Prencipe Galeotto, nel quale si contengono cento novelle in diece dı` dette da sette donne e da tre giovani uomini’’ (Here begins the book called Decameron, surnamed Prince Gallehault, wherein are contained one hundred stories told in ten days by seven women and three young men). Boccaccio, playing a fictionalized ‘‘author,’’ presents himself in the proem as a recovered lover who now offers consolation to others still afflicted. For the neediest, ladies who pine away in their chambers under the watchful eye of fathers and brothers, he will offer his ‘‘novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie’’ (stories or fables or parables or histories), both to entertain and instruct. A long introduction to Day I paints in grim strokes Florence besieged by the Black Death of 1348, all social and moral order destroyed. In the midst of this chaos, seven young women— Pampinea, Fiammetta, Filomena, Emilia, Lauretta, Neifile, and Elissa—gather after Mass in the Dominican sanctuary of Santa Maria Novella and come to a rationally determined, life-affirming choice. Led by Pampinea, the oldest at 28, they will retreat into the countryside. Decorum is preserved thanks to Panfilo, Dioneo, and Filostrato, young men whose fortuitous arrival provides an escort. The merry brigata (company) departs on Tuesday and begins its bucolic sojourn at a villa set amidst marvelous gardens. There, taking turns as king or queen for a day, they conduct their leisure in the measured pursuit of pleasure. Every afternoon, seated in a circle, each tells a story, a ritual repeated 10 times during two calendar weeks for a total of 100 tales. Boccaccio as author intervenes once, in the introduction to Day IV to defend his stories, and as part of the apologia he tells a fragmentary tale sometimes called the 101st novella of the Decameron. He returns for a third and final word of self-justification in the author’s conclusion, at the end of Day Ten. Behind his mask as author, Boccaccio builds an edifice like a Gothic cathedral, on aesthetic principles of analogy, symmetry, and hierarchy. Felicitous in variety, individual tales run from around 247

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO 800 to 8,000 words; they imitate, sometimes with self-conscious parody, many genres—hagiography, exemplum, fabliau, history, joke (beffa), witty saying (facezia); and they illustrate the three rhetorical registers (comic, elegiac, tragic). With primary themes of fortune, intelligence (ingegno), and love, the stories are on open topics (Days I and IX), the power of luck (II), the power of human industry (III), love that ends badly (IV), love that ends well (V), witty retorts (VI), wives who cuckold their husbands (VII), trickery of all sorts (VIII), and deeds of magnificence (X). The frame tale (cornice), a narrative vehicle for all the other stories (novella portante), echoes the macrotext by enveloping each day in its own introduction and conclusion. These transitions lay a background carpet design from sunrise to bedtime daily and carry the frame down yet one more level, to the narrators’ comments before and after the stories. Alike in their exemplary demeanor, they are distinct personalities, defined through their stories, the topics they impose as ruler, and their evening ballads (10 poems by Boccaccio that make the Decameron a prosimetrum, or Menippean composition). Filostrato, for example, ‘‘abbattuto dall’amore’’ (struck down by love), presides over a day of tragic romance; rambunctious Dioneo, whose name derives from Dione, mother of Venus (cf. Paradiso VIII), delights in amorous escapades and defies each day’s assigned topic. Pauses and shifts articulate the succession, which aptly opens on the day of Mercury, god of speech (mercoledı`, Wednesday). Neifile at the end of Day II, a Thursday, proposes the brigata suspend storytelling Friday and Saturday for religious observances and bathing. On the first day of their second calendar week (III), they move to a second garden setting, reminiscent of the Earthly Paradise. A bawdy servants’ quarrel breaks into the early hours of Day VI, when unusually short tales leave time before sunset for the women to explore the nearby Valle delle Donne. To that secluded circular Valley of the Ladies, with hints of the chaste Venus and Celestial Paradise, the whole brigata retreats for Day VII. Day VIII, again a Sunday, begins after a second two-day devotional break, and Day X concludes with the brigata’s return to Santa Maria Novella. Thus they advance on a circular path, while the novelle extend through two weeks in a symmetrical diptych. Boccaccio’s ‘‘mercantile epic,’’ as Vittore Branca calls it, sings the rising middle class, businessmen who brandish not sword but florin, yet who look back nostalgically on an age of chivalry (Boccaccio 248

medievale, 1956). In this gallery of humanity, historical characters mingle with fictional, secular with ecclesiastical, Christian with Jewish and Moslem (Saladino and Melchisidech’s tale of three rings, I, 3). Mankind from worst to best throngs in a population of hundreds, spanning the social ladder— emperors, kings, popes, knights, aristocrats (tragic Ghismonda, IV, 1), merchants, soldiers, lawyers, judges, doctors, painters (Calendrino, Bruno, and Buffalmacco, VIII, 3; Giotto, VI, 5), poets (Guido Cavalcanti, VI, 9) nuns, abbots, priests, monks, abbesses, gardeners (Masetto in the nunnery, III, 1) sailors, pirates, thieves, usurers, horse traders (Andreuccio da Perugia, II, 5), damsels, wives, widows, prostitutes, virgins (adventures of the sultan’s daughter Alatiel, II, 7), artisans, and peasants. Although mostly set in Florence during the first decades of the trecento, the novelle reach well beyond their Tuscan epicenter. Chronologically, they bridge an era from Roman antiquity (the friendship of Tito and Gisippo, X, 8) to recent living memory; geographically, they crisscross the cardinal points, from Spain and England to China (Natan and Mitridanes, X, 3), wintry Friuli in the Italian Alps, to the desert sands of north Africa (Alibech and Rustico put the devil in Hell, III, 10). Its stylistic realism and anticlerical satire, heavily censored during the Catholic Reformation, led late Romantic critics, notably Francesco De Sanctis, to read the Decameron as a book that bursts the shackles of Dark Ages morality. Seminal midtwentieth-century studies by Giuseppe Billanovich and Vittore Branca set new directions, emphasizing Boccaccio’s literary debts (including those to his own earlier works) and his serious Christian ethic, solidly rooted in a classical and medieval heritage. Oriented intellectually to the trends of the day (Scholasticism, nominalism), the Decameron’s underpinnings lie in Boccaccio’s experience as a student of canon and civil law, patristics, and Aristotle explicated by the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas. With a protohumanistic stamp already seen in titles like Filostrato and Filocolo, he coins Decameron (10 days). Its etyma renew Hellenic culture but recall patristic commentaries on Genesis (cf. St. Ambrose’s Hexameron). Pushing his calendar through a second week, Boccaccio as creator forges an earthly time frame in contrast to scripture, where for exegetes like Augustine God’s Creation heralds a transcendental Eighth Day of eternal life. The Decameron subtitle ‘‘Prince Gallehault’’ alludes to Dante’s Inferno V, where Francesca da Rimini, punished among the lustful, tells how she and Paolo fall into a fatal kiss while

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO reading about Lancelot and Guinevere in the book she calls their ‘‘Galeotto.’’ Boccaccio’s suggestion is that like Gallehault, the knight who arranged for King Arthur’s queen to tryst with her lover, his ‘‘Prencipe Galeotto’’ is a go-between bearing its message from an author-character to amorous women. They are an emblematic audience, not a historical public. The poet’s choice, faithful to the courtly tradition of poets addressing pedestaled ladies, also depends on medieval notions of the female’s proclivity for lust. His program, announced in the proem as literature that will teach both what to eschew and what to pursue, allows him, in the manner of the Discipline of Scholars and Ovide moralise´ (early fourteenth century; Moralized Ovid), to tell bawdy tales under the protective cover of a didactic shield. Tension between these poles allows for wide interpretive possibilities. Giosue` Carducci, Italy’s first Nobel Laureate in literature, puts the Three Crowns of Florence into a nutshell: Dante directs his gaze upward, Petrarca inward, and Boccaccio outward. The Certaldan’s artistic space is the world around us, not the afterlife. He is ‘‘the Tuscan Ovid.’’ From Heroides, Tristia, Ars amatoria, and Remedia amoris, he draws conspicuously for his three appearances (Proem, IV Intro., Author’s Concl.), passages that humorously mark the Decameron both as an Ovidian art of love and remedy for love. Yet Boccaccio is also Dante’s heir—ironically rejecting him some say; still in a medieval spirit for others. He writes his ‘‘human comedy’’ not in the scholar’s Latin but vernacular, a decision underlined by the dedication to women. His anthology, with a total of 10  10 stories, echoes the perfect number 100, sum of Dante’s cantos. The diabolical notary Ser Cepperello, ‘‘il piggiore uomo forse che mai nascesse’’ (perhaps the worst man who ever lived; I, 1), launches the tales, which proceed to the most extreme imaginable example of virtue, ‘‘saint’’ Griselda (X, 10). The narrators progress from an infernal city to bucolic settings that rise from a luminal pastoral scene to places emblematic of Eden and Heaven. The gardens peak with the third, reserved for Day VII. That intersection of three and seven plays out in the pattern opened by the Author’s Defense (30 tales before, 70 after) and again in the brigata gender division, seven women and three men with seven servants among them. On one level, the brigata invites literary comparisons—Boccaccio played Filostrato in his homonymous romance; Fiammetta is the poet’s mistress beginning with the Filocolo; Elissa is another of Dido’s names; Lauretta points to

Petrarca’s Laura and Filomena to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. On another, the women can personify the canonical seven virtues, reiterating Boccaccio’s plan in Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, a ‘‘little Decameron’’; the men may adumbrate Aristotle’s tripartite soul (the rational, concupiscible, and irascible appetites), already a triad of protagonists in Teseida. The Decameron’s 10 days culminate under Panfilo, who rules as a figure of reason paired chiastically with Pampinea-Wisdom, queen on Day I and brigata leader (in Pythagorean numerology her age is ‘‘perfect,’’ 28 being the sum of its factors). Panfilo decrees as theme for his day deeds of ‘‘magnificence,’’ a virtue of generosity that in Aristotle’s Ethics (IV, 3) crowns and adorns all the others. Ascensional dynamics couple with typically medieval poetics of centering. Approaching the center (intro. to Day IV) Boccaccio inserts his defense as author. Whether so placed as a response to actual criticism (although there is no evidence that the Decameron stained his reputation in his lifetime) or as part of a preconceived structural plan, the interruption grapples jocosely with human sexuality. It is for Boccaccio a powerful, natural, and healthy impulse. Filippo Balducci, in the 101st tale, becomes an anchorite who tries to protect his teenage son from women by naming them papere (goslings), but the 18-year-old craves one anyway. To ‘‘accommodate’’ this drive, disruptive when uncontrolled, society channels it into marriage. Marriage is Fiammetta’s theme as queen, a ‘‘flamelet’’ who alludes to the virtue of temperance, which in Aristotle’s system is a mean between extremes. Speaking for the tempering, happy medium, she fittingly rules at a midpoint and on day 5 (the Pythagorean marriage number). Day VI, also central, begins with a metanovella about how to tell a good story. Devoted to witty retorts, it emphasizes Boccaccio’s respect for Cicero’s civic ideal of wisdom coupled with eloquence (De inventione) and Aristotle’s public virtue of eutrapelia (Ethics), the ability to entertain with a well-turned phrase. The frame narrators, whose speech is exemplary, tell stories in a recreational program of medical and moral healing. Restoring the plague-stricken community in a pastoral utopia, they enact Boccaccio’s commitment to the unity of the polity, under threat in mid-Trecento Florence from disease, internal dissension, and the aggressive duchy of Milan. Anchored to historical reality, the Decameron is above all a fictional construct. Boccaccio crafted his solemn opening pages in the metered cadences (cursus) of formal medieval prose composition (ars 249

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO dictaminis), achieving heights that would earn him Ciceronian status as the model for imitation from Pietro Bembo onward. Artifice governs his description of the Black Death, meant to remind us of Dante’s Inferno and mounted to display more subtle borrowings from Cicero, Livy, and Paulus Diaconus, who recounts a similar disaster in his Historia Langobardorum (History of the Longobards, eighth century). Scholars have traced wide-reaching sources for almost all the novelle, where even in microtextual bytes, just when he claims to be telling the truth most realistically, as Pier Massimo Forni has shown, Boccaccio is most rhetorical (Adventures in Speech, 1995). Although it was long believed that he rejected the Decameron in old age, the Berlin autograph, not reidentified until the 1960s and decorated with his own lively catchword drawings, dates from the early 1370s, proving that he continued lovingly to revise it into his very last years. Until the great chivalric epics of the Renaissance, no other work of Italian fiction enjoyed such widespread European currency. Beginning with Petrarca’s Latin translation of the Griselda story (Letters of Old Age XVII, 3), Boccaccio’s novelle have left their traces on more than a thousand writers including Aretino, Balzac, Bandello, Byron, Capuana (Il Decameroncino), Chaucer, Dryden, Goethe, Goldoni, Keats, La Fontaine, Lessing, Longfellow, Luther, Machiavelli, Marguerite de Navarre, Morata, Quevedo, Pepys, Shakespeare, Swift, Tennyson, Lope de Vega, and Voltaire. Not until the Index branded it a ‘‘forbidden’’ book did the author take on his reputation as an amoral iconoclast. In twentieth-century popular imagination the Decameron continued to lend a name to whatever promises sensual delight and erotic titillation—I.A. Waters, The Cook’s Decameron (1901; classic Italian recipes tested by upper-crust Londoners on a country holiday); Leo Frobenius, The Black Decameron (1910; Das Schwarz Dekameron, African folktales); Julia Voznesenskaya, The Women’s Decameron (1985; 10 women in a Russian maternity ward tell stories against men and the political regime); Giuseppe Sabino, Il Decamerone popolare (1990; racy Calabrian folk tales). Cinema, too, has mined this archetype. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s splendid Decameron (1971) paved the way for such soft-porn spinoffs in 1972 as Mino Guerrini’s Decameron n. 2, Mario Stefani’s Decameron ‘300, Franco Martinelli’s Decameron proibitissimo, Gian Paolo Callegari’s Le caldi notti del Decameron, and Pier Giorgio Ferretti’s Decameroticus (1974). Meanwhile, on the scholarly front, this masterpiece is still bringing major revelations, 250

among them an early authorial redaction with a complete program of pen and ink drawings in Boccaccio’s own hand. VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM Editions Early Editions: The ‘‘Deo Gratias’’ Decameron, Naples: Francesco del Tuppo (?), ca. 1470, so named from the colophon, is considered the editio princeps. It is closely related both to the autograph (ca. 1370–1372; Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Hamilton 90) and the authoritative manuscript transcribed by Francesco d’Amaretto Manelli, 1384 (Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Ms. 42.1) from a copy probably belonging to Boccaccio. The first edition with a certain date was published by Christopher Valdarfer in 1471 at Venice. Other early editions, more than for any other vernacular book in quattrocento Italy, appeared in Mantua, 1472; Bologna, 1476; Milan, 1476; and Vicenza, 1478. Venice alone produced 11 incunables at five different publishing houses. The first illustrated imprint (Venice: Giovanni and Gregorio de’ Gregorii, 1492) has 104 original woodcuts. Noteworthy among numerous sixteenth-century editions are the first quarto (Venice: Gregorio de’ Gregorii, 1516), the Decameron with Lucilio Minerbi’s appended Vocabolario (Venice: Bernardino di Vidali, 1525) apparatus that was to become customary and a forerunner of the modern Italian dictionary; the ‘‘ventisettana’’ (Florence: Giunti, 1527), admired for textual accuracy; Lodovico Dolce’s Decameron, which went through eight editions and contained his catalogue of the ‘‘words, sayings, proverbs, unfamiliar or difficult figures of speech in the book’’ (Venice: Francesco Bindoni and Mapheo Pasini, 1541, etc.); imprints edited by Francesco Sansovino with textual variants and the author’s life (Venice: Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1546, etc.); those by Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Vicenzo Valgrisio, 1552, etc.); Francesco Giuntini’s edition, which indicates passages from the Decameron quoted by Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua (Lyon: Guglielmo Rovillio, 1555); the Decameron corrected by the Accademia Fiorentina (Venice: Paolo Gherardo, 1557); and the three infamously expurgated texts edited by the ‘‘Deputati,’’ a committee of churchmen headed by Vincenzo Borghini (Florence: Giunti, 1573); Lionardo Salviati (Florence: Giunti, 1582); and Luigi Groto (Venice: Fabio and Agostino Zoppini Fratelli, et Onofrio Fari Compagni, 1588). Critical Editions: The critical tradition, with an ancestor in the 1527 Giunti Decameron, returns after a long period of censorship in an edition sponsored by the Accademia della Crusca (Lucca: Jacopo Giusti, 1761). See further Decameron, edited by Ignazio Moutier, in Opere volgari del Boccaccio, vols. 1–5, Florence: Magheri, 1827–1828; Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Bari: Laterza, 1927; Giuseppe Petronio, Turin: Einaudi, 1950; Enrico Bianchi, Milan: Ricciardi, 1952; Charles S. Singleton, Bari: Laterza, 1955; Natalino Sapegno, Turin: U.T.E.T., 1956; Mario Marti, Milan: Rizzoli, 1958; Mario Pazzaglia, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1965; Antonio Enzo

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Quaglio, Milan: Garzanti, 1974; Aldo Rossi, Bologna: Cappelli, 1977; Natalino Sapegno, Milan: Fratelli Fabbri, 1977; Cesare Segre, Milan: Mursia, 1978; Mario Marti, Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2001 (with the 1492 woodcuts). Vittore Branca’s editions include: Florence: Le Monnier, 1950–1951; 1965 (with woodcuts from the 1492 Gregori edition); Naples: Marotta, 1966 (3 vols. handsomely illustrated in color from the manuscripts); Decameron: Edizione critica secondo l’autografo hamiltoniano, Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1976; Turin: Einaudi, 1980; Milan: Mondadori, 1976; 1992; Florence: Le Lettere, 1999 (with Boccaccio’s illustrations). Selections: Decameron: Venticinque novelle scelte e ventisette postille critiche, edited by Luigi Russo, Florence: Sansoni, 1944; Decamerone da un italiano all’altro: Cinquanta novelle, translated into modern Italian by Aldo Busi, 2 vols., Milan: Rizzoli, 1990–1991. Facsimiles: Decameron. Facsimile dell’autografo conservato nel codice Hamilton 90 della Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz di Berlino, edited by Vittore Branca, Florence: Alinari, 1976; Decamerone, o ver Cento novelle, Stuttgart: Cornetto Verlag, 1999 (Reproduces Stadbibliothek, Ulm copy of Venice: Maestro Manfrino da Monferrato da Sustrevo de Bonelli, 1498). Diplomatic Edition: Decameron: Edizione diplomaticointerpretativa dell’autografo Hamilton 90, edited by Charles S. Singleton, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Translations: as The Palace of Pleasure, Beautified Adorned and Well Furnished with Pleasant Histories and Excellent Novells (selections), translated by William Painter, London: W. Denham for R. Tottell and W. Jones, 1566; as The Decameron, Containing an Hundred Pleasant Nouels, Wittily Discoursed Between Seauen Honourable Ladies, and Three Noble Gentlemen, London: Isaac Jaggard, 1620; as The Decameron of Giovanni Boccacci (Il Boccaccio), now first completely done into English prose and verse by John Payne, London: Printed for the Villon Society by private subscription and for private circulation only, 1886; frequently reprinted, e.g., New York: The Modern Library, 1931; as The Decameron, translated by J.M. Rigg, 2 vols., London: H.F. Bumpus, 1906; London: privately printed for the Navarre Society, 1921, rpt. as late as 1957; translated by Richard Aldington, 2 vols., New York: Covici Friede, 1930; Chicago: Puritan Publishing Co., 1930, several times reprinted; available on audio cassettes and cd; translated by Frances Winwar, New York: Limited Editions Club, 1933; as The Decameron; the Modell of Wit, Mirth, Eloquence and Conversation Framed in Ten Dayes, of an Hundred Curious Pieces, by Seven Honourable Ladies, and Three Noble Gentlemen; Preserved to Posterity by the Renowned John Boccaccio, the First Refiner of Italian Prose, translated into English, 1620, with an introduction by Edward Hutton and woodcuts in the Renaissance manner by Fritz Kredel, New York: The Heritage Press, 1940; as The Decameron, translated by G. H. McWilliam, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972; rpt. 1995; as The Decameron: A New Translation. 21 Novelle, Contemporary Reactions, Modern Criticism, translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella, New York: Norton, 1977; as Decameron, the John

Payne translation, rev. and annotated by Charles S. Singleton, 3 vols., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982; as The Decameron, translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella, New York: Norton, 1982; as Decameron: A Selection, edited by Kathleen Speight, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983; as Decameron, translated by Guido Waldman, edited with introduction and notes, Jonathan Usher, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; 1998; as The Decameron: Selected Tales. Decameron: Novelle scelte. A dual-language book, edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2000. See further F.S. Stych, Boccaccio in English: A Bibliography of Editions, Adaptations, and Criticism, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995, who lists 189 English complete or partial translations of the Decameron.

Further Reading Barolini, Teodolinda, ‘‘The Wheel of the Decameron,’’ in Romance Philology, 36 (1983): 521–539. Bausi, Francesco, ‘‘Gli spiriti magni. Filigrane aristoteliche e tomistiche nella decima giornata del Decameron,’’ in Studi sul Boccaccio, 27 (1999): 205–253. Billanovich, Giuseppe, Restauri boccacceschi, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1945. Bragantini, Renzo, and Pier Massimo Forni (editors), Lessico critico decameroniano. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri Editore, 1995. Branca, Vittore, Boccaccio medievale, Florence: Sansoni, 1956. Branca, Vittore, ‘‘Il narrar boccacciano per immagini dal tardo gotico al primo Rinascimento,’’ in Boccaccio visualizzato, vol. 1, Turin: Einaudi, 1999. Carducci, Giosue`, Ai parentali di Giovanni Boccaccio in Certaldo, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1876. Decameron Web. A Growing Hypermedia Archive of Materials Dedicated to Boccaccio’s Masterpiece, http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/ dweb/dweb.shtml. De Sanctis, Francesco, Storia della letteratura italiana, edited by Paolo Arcari, 2 vols., Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1925. Forni, Pier Massimo, Adventures in Speech. Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Greene, Thomas M., ‘‘Forms of Accommodation in the Decameron,’’ in Italica, 45 (1968): 297–313. Hollander, Robert, Boccaccio’s Dante and the Shaping Force of Satire, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Kern, Edith, ‘‘The Gardens in the Decameron cornice,’’ in PMLA, 66 (1951): 505–523. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘John Badmouth: Fortunes of the Poet’s Image,’’ in Boccaccio 1990: The Poet and his Renaissance Reception, edited by Kevin Brownlee and Victoria Kirkham, Studi sul Boccaccio, 20 (1991–1992): 355–376. Kirkham, Victoria, The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction, Florence: Olschki, 1993. Marcus, Millicent, An Allegory of Form. Literary SelfConsciousness in the Decameron, Saratoga, CA: ANMA Libri, 1979.

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GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Mazzotta, Giuseppe, The World at Play in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. McGregor, James, Approaches to Teaching Boccaccio’s Decameron, New York: Modern Language Association, 2000. Olson, Glending, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982. Smarr, Janet Levarie, ‘‘Symmetry and Balance in the Decameron,’’ in Mediaevalia, 2 (1976): 159–187. Smarr, Janet Levarie, ‘‘Ovid and Boccaccio: A Note on Self-Defense,’’ in Mediaevalia, 13 (1987): 247–255. Stewart, Pamela, ‘‘La novella di madonna Oretta e le due parti del Decameron,’’ in Retorica e mimica nel ‘‘Decameron’’ e nella commedia del cinquecento, Florence: Olschki, 1986. Wallace, David, Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Weaver, Elissa (editor), The Decameron First Day in Perspective, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

FILOCOLO, CA. 1334–1336 Prose Romance by Giovanni Boccaccio

Boccaccio’s Filocolo inaugurates on a grand scale the Italian tradition of prose fiction. Three times in the book the young author trumpets his awareness of its importance. For King Robert’s natural daughter Maria (also known as Fiammetta, or ‘‘Flamelet’’), he recasts the love story of Florio and Biancifiore on a high literary register (I, 1). At precisely the center (IV, 1), he embeds in a riddle his signature as a man with a name ‘‘full of grace’’ who comes from an ‘‘oak grove’’ (cerreto)—Giovanni of Certaldo. His farewell in the final chapter (V, 97) imitates Dante in Limbo (‘‘sixth among so much wisdom’’; Inferno IV, 102) and Statius before (Thebaid XII, 810–819), by creating a new canon that he joins behind Virgil, Lucan, Statius, Ovid, and Dante. Filocolo opens with the author’s description of how, on Holy Saturday in the Franciscan church of San Lorenzo at Naples, he was lovestruck by the sight of Maria, who later asks him to save from ‘‘fabulous parlance of the ignorant’’ an exemplary 252

tale of amorous fidelity. Florio, prince of Spain, and the orphan Biancifiore, born on Pentecost, grow up in his parents’ household and fall in love over ‘‘Ovid’s holy book.’’ The disapproving rulers sell Biancifiore into a harem, but Florio, traveling under the pseudonym Filocolo, ‘‘fatiche d’amore’’ (love’s labors, III, 75), rescues and marries her, once before a statue of Cupid and again, after her Christian origins have been revealed and Filocolo converts, at San Giovanni in Laterano. The newlyweds complete a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela begun by Biancifiore’s parents, Florio ascends the throne, and his kingdom embraces Christianity. From Old French, Spanish, and Italian versions of a source tale that circulated across Europe, Boccaccio derives his plot, which he complicates with new characters in a late antique setting, dresses with an apparatus of pagan gods, elevates with borrowings from Ovid and Dante, and amplifies with imaginative digressions: Fileno, whose tears melt him into a fountain (III, 26–37; V, 34–37); Idalogos, the author’s Venerean double entrapped in a pine tree (V, 8); the ‘‘Questioni d’amore,’’ a love debate presided over by Fiammetta, whose playful court anticipates the Decameron frame tale and two of its novelle (X, 3 and 4). Here Maria/ Fiammetta makes her first appearance in Boccaccio’s oeuvre, a lady not historical but fictional, invented to serve the Filocolo’s fiery Paschal and Pentecostal symbolism. With a five-book structure that points to the Pythagorean marriage number (5) and to Pentecost, the Filocolo is a gold mine of Boccaccio’s Gothic culture. Reflecting Angevin loyalties, it reconciles the poet’s study of canon law with his ambition for fame in an epic-romance of love and church triumphant. Less read today than it should be, the book saw numerous Renaissance editions and left traces in authors from Chaucer, Boiardo, Bembo, and Ariosto to Milton and Keats. The love debate, which circulated independently in Italy from the quattrocento, has enjoyed happy fortunes in English, with reprints of the Elizabethan translation that continue into the twentieth century. VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM Editions Early Editions: Il Philocolo, Florence, Magister Ioannes Petri de Magontia, 1472; Philocolo, Venice, Gabriele di Pietro, 1472; Philocolo, Milan: Domenico da Vespola, 1476; Philocolo, Milan: Phil. de Lavagnia, 1478; Philocolo, Naples: Sixto Riesenger Tedesco, 1478 (with important woodcuts); Philocolo, Venice: Philipo de Piero, 1481; Philocolo, Venice: Pelegrino Pasquale da Bologna, 1487; 1488; 1490; Philocolo, Venice: Antonio

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO da Gusago Bresano, 1492; 1497; 1514; Venezia: Pincio, 1503; Milan, 1514; Milan, 1520; Venice, 1520; Milan, 1524; Il Philopono, edited by Gaetano Tizzone da Pofi, Venice: Jacopo da Lecco, 1527; Il Philocolo, edited by Marco Guazzo, Venice: Francesco di Alessandro Bindoni and Mapheo Pasyni, 1530; Il Philocopo, edited by Marco Guazzo and Niccolo` Zoppino, Venice: Niccolo di Aristotile detto il Zoppino, 1530; Il Philocopo, Venice, 1538; Il Filocopo, Venice: Giovita Ragirio, 1551; Venice, 1553, Il Filocopo, edited by Francesco Sansovino, Venice: Francesco Lorenzini, 1564; Venezia: Lorenzini, 1566; Venice, Giovan Antonio Bertano, 1575; 1578; Venice, 1585; Filocolo, Florence: Giunti, Edizione della Crusca, 1594; Il Filocopo, edited by Francesco Sansovino, Venice: Lucio Spineda, 1612. Critical Editions: Il Filocopo, in Opere volgari di Giovanni Boccaccio, edited by Ignazio Moutier, Florence: Magheri, vols. 7–8, 1829; Il Filocolo, edited by Ettore De Ferri, 2 vols., Turin: UTET, 1921–1922; 1927; Il Filocolo, edited by Salvatore Battaglia, Bari: Laterza, 1938; Filocolo, edited by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, in Tutte le opere, vol. 1, Milan: Mondadori, 1967; rpt. 1998; Filocolo, edited by Mario Marti, in Opere minori in volgare, vol. 1, Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. Selections: Filocolo: Scelta, edited by Carlo Salinari and Natalino Sapegno, in Decameron, Filocolo, Ameto, Fiammetta, Milan: Ricciardi, 1952; rpt. Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Facsimile: La storia di Florio e Biancifiore: FarbmikroficheEdition der Handschrift Kassel, Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek—Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel 2o Ms. poet. et roman. 3, Munich: H. Lengenfelder, 1999. Theatrical Adaptation: Beatrice del Sera, Amor di virtu`: Commedia in cinque atti 1548, edited by Elissa Weaver, Ravenna: Longo, 1990. Translations: as Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Filocolo, or The Labours of love, translated, annotated and with an introduction by Rocco Carmelo Blasi, doctoral dissertation, Loyola University of Chicago, 1974; as Il Filocolo, translated by Donald Cheney with the collaboration of Thomas G. Bergin, New York: Garland Publishing, 1985; as Chaucer’s Boccaccio: Sources of Troilus and the Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales (selections), edited and translated by N. R. Havely, Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1980. The Love Debate: A Pleasaunt Disport of Divers Nobel Personages, written in Italian by M. Iohn Bocace, Florentine and poet laureat, in his boke which is entituled Philocopo, and nowe Englished by H.G., London: at the signe of the Marmayd, by H. Bynneman, for Richard Smyth and Nicolas England, [1566] 1567; rpt. as Thirteene Most Plesant and Delectable Questions, Entituled a Disport of Diuers Noble Personages, written in Italian by M. Iohn Bocace Florentine and poet Laureat, in his book named Philocopo, London: Henry Bynneman for Richarde Smyth, 1571; London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1587; London: Peter Davies, 1927, introduction by Edward Hutton; as Pleasant Questions of Love, illustrated by Alexander King, New York: Falstaff Press, 1930; as The Most Pleasant and Delectable Questions of Love, illustrated by Alexander King, introduction by Thomas Bell, New York: Illustrated Editions Company, 1931 (printed in several versions, including New

York: Three Sirens Press, 1931; Cleveland, NY: World Publishing Co., 1931); rpt. New York: World Publishing Co., 1942; Garden City, NY: Halcyon House, 1950; Filocopo (reprints 1567 edition), Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and New York: Da Capo Press, 1970; as The Filocolo of Giovanni Boccaccio with an English Translation of the Thirteen ‘‘Questioni d’amore,’’ doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1971; Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1978; Thirteen Most Pleasant and Delectable Questions of Love, Entitled a Disport of Divers Noble Personages, refashioned and illustrated by Harry Carter, New York: C.N. Potter (Crown), 1974.

Further Reading Grieve, Patricia, Floire and Blanchefleur and the European Romance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Grossvogel, Stephen, Ambiguity and Allusion in Boccaccio’s Filocolo, Florence: Olschki, 1992. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘Reckoning with Boccaccio’s Questioni d’amore,’’ in MLN, 89, no. 4 (1974): 47–59. Kirkham, Victoria, Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s Filocolo and the Art of Medieval Fiction, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Morosini, Roberta, Per difetto rintegrare: Una lettura del Filocolo di Giovanni Boccaccio, Ravenna: Longo, 2004. Perella, Nicolas J., ‘‘The World of Boccaccio’s Filocolo,’’ in PMLA, 76 (1961): 330–339. Quaglio, Antonio Enzo, Scienza e mito nel Boccaccio, Padua: Liviana, 1967. Smarr, Janet Levarie, ‘‘Boccaccio’s Filocolo: Romance, epic, and religious allegory,’’ in Forum Italicum, 12 (1978): 26–43. Wilkins, Ernest Hatch, ‘‘Boccaccio’s First Octave,’’ in Italica, 33 (1956): 19.

FILOSTRATO, CA. 1334–1335 Verse Romance by Giovanni Boccaccio

Filostrato, a treasure that traveled into English through Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, and Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite, marks Boccaccio’s debut in the genre of romance. Set to rhyming octaves in 253

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO the style of the cantari (minstrel songs sung by oral poets), it filters through humorous irony a tale of ill-fated love at the siege of Troy. Troiolo, a son of Priam smitten by Cupid’s arrow, confides in Pandaro, who acts as go-between and topples the chaste widow Criseida’s resistance. Daughter of the seer Calca`s, whose prophetic vision makes him defect to the Greeks, she rejoins her father in the enemy camp and finds amorous consolation with Diomede. Troiolo dwindles in misery over her betrayal, eventually meeting death in battle at the hand of Achilles. Boccaccio frames his ancient story with a present-day parallel: Playing the unhappy poet-lover Filostrato, he hopes his book will bring back Filomena, who has abandoned Naples for the baths at Sannio. Multiple sources flow into Filostrato, FrancoItalian in flavor. Long predating Boccaccio’s acquaintance with Homer, it draws for characters and setting on medieval accounts of the Trojan War, from the apocryphal Dares and Dictys to the Old French Roman de Troie by Benoıˆt de Sainte-Maure and Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae (History of the Destruction of Troy, 1287). Boccaccio’s ‘‘author,’’ no stranger to Virgil and Ovid, has also mastered Andreas Capellanus’ De arte onesti amandi (The Art of Courtly Love, ca. 1185), and he has explored his immediate vernacular heritage—the dolce stil novo (sweet new style), including poetry by Cino da Pistoia; Dante’s Vita nuova, Rime petrose, and Comedia. Yet for all its debts and early date (deduced from the author’s dedicatory letter to Filomena, a penlady preceding Fiammetta), Filostrato is delightfully fresh. The Hellenizing title (‘‘struck down by love’’), while true to the medieval axiom that ‘‘Names are the consequence of things,’’ heralds Boccaccio the Humanist. He raids a courtly repertoire—love is illicit, difficult, secret, all-consuming, and irresistible; widows make best mistresses; lovers have rivals; they grow pale, sick, insomniac; write letters, give tokens as gifts—but he puts it in witty, ironic perspective. He creates a memorable new character, the go-between Pandaro (whose name via Chaucer’s homonymous character gives the English verb and noun ‘‘pander’’). He articulates the book in nine ‘‘parts,’’ allusive to Dante’s infernal number; enhances it scholastically with a proemial epistle, subdivisions, rubrics, and congedo (farewell). Obedient to dictates of prose composition (ars dictaminis), the proem frames the whole with the parallel voice of an ‘‘author-lover’’ no wiser than the protagonist. Troiolo, a ‘‘little Troy’’ who crumbles under besieging love, speaks like 254

Francesca da Rimini (II, 7), compares himself to Myrrha, Biblis and Phaedra (II, 20), and rages like Dante’s Minotaur (IV, 27). With a psyche dominated by lust and wrath, he makes a perfect match for Criseida, who tosses off her honor like an extra sweater and incarnates the cliche´ of female fickleness. Boccaccio recounts their ‘‘mal concetto amore’’ (ill-conceived love, VIII, 28) in marvelous counterpoint to the Vita Nuova, crafting ‘‘light’’ vernacular rhyme in a ‘‘pietoso stile’’ (Proem 29), later renewed as a vehicle for Madonna Fiammetta’s Elegia and Filostrato in the Decameron. VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM Editions Early Editions: Philostrato, Venice: Luca Veneto, ca. 1480– 1483; El Fylostrato, Bologna: 1498; Fylostrato, Milan: Ulderich Scinzenzeler, 1499; Filostrato, Venice: Sessa, 1501; Filostrato, Venice: Penzio da Lecco, 1528. Critical Editions: Filostrato, in Opere volgari, edited by Ignazio Moutier, vol. 13, Florence: Marghera, 1831; edited by Savj Lopez, Strassburg: Heitz, [1911]; in Opere, edited by Vincenzo Pernicone, vol. 2, Bari: Laterza, 1937; Filostrato, edited by Vittore Branca, in Tutte le opere, vol. 2, Milan: Mondadori, 1964; rpt. 1990; Filostrato, edited by Mario Marti, in Opere minori in volgare, vol. 2, Milan: Rizzoli, 1969; Filostrato, edited by Luigi Surdich with Elena d’Anzieri and Federica Ferri, Milan: Mursia, 1990. Translations: as Il Filostrato: The Story of the Love of Troiolo as It Was Sung in Italian by Giovanni Boccaccio and Is Now Translated into English Verse by Hubertis Cummings, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1924; rpt. as Prose and Poetry of the Italian Renaissance in Translation, edited by Blanchard Harold Hooper, New York: Longmans, 1949; 1955; as The Filostrato of Giovanni Boccaccio, translated with parallel text by Nathaniel Edward Griffin and Arthur Beckwith Myrick, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929; New York: Biblo and Tanner, 1929; London: Milford, 1930; rpt. New York: Biblo and Tanner, 1967; New York: Farrar, Strauss (Octagon Books), 1970; 1973; 1978; as The Story of Troilus, as Told by Benoıˆt de Sainte-Maure, Giovanni Boccaccio (Translated into English Prose) Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Henryson, translations and introduction by R. K. Gordon, London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1934; rpt. New York: Dutton, 1964; Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978; as Il Filostrato, Italian text edited by Vincenzo Pernicone, translated with an introduction by Robert P. Roberts and Anna Bruni Seldis, New York: Garland, 1986; as Chaucer’s Boccaccio: Sources of Troilus and the Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales (selections), edited and translated by N. R. Havely, Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1980.

Further Reading Branca, Vittore, Il cantare trecentesco e il Boccaccio del Filostrato e del Teseida, Florence: Sansoni, 1936.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Gozzi, Maria, ‘‘Sulle fonti del Filostrato: Le narrazioni di argomento troiano,’’ in Studi sul Boccaccio, 5 (1968): 123–209. McGregor, James H., The Shades of Aeneas. The Imitation of Vergil and the History of Paganism in Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Filocolo, and Teseida, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991. Picone, Michelangelo, ‘‘Boccaccio e la codificazione dell’ottava,’’ in Boccaccio: Secoli di vita. Atti del Congresso Internazionale: Boccaccio 1975. Universita` di California, Los Angeles 17–19 Ottobre, 1975, edited by Marga Cottino-Jones and Edward F. Tuttle, Ravenna: Longo, 1977. Stillinger, Thomas, The Song of Troilus: Lyric Authority in the Medieval Book, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Wallace, David, Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1985.

LATIN WORKS During the first century after his death, Boccaccio’s renown rested on his Latin writings. The major works coalesced into a canon, shaped by his admirers and biographers. When Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence from 1375, composed a tribute to follow Boccaccio’s own modest autoepitaph in the Certaldan’s burial church, he took his cue from Virgil’s tomb verses and cast it as a catalog of the poet’s classics: Why, O glorious Bard, do you speak of yourself so humbly? You with your limpid notes have exalted pastoral verses; You with your arduous labors have numbered the hills and the mountains; You have described the forests and springs and the swamps and marshes; Aye, you have counted the names of the seas and the lakes and the rivers. You bring before us great princes, relating their trials and downfalls, From our first father Adam down to the magnates of our times. You, in most lofty measures, celebrate notable matrons; You have traced all the immortals to their dark and unknown beginnings, Filling fifteen golden volumes, second to none of the ancients. Labors past counting have made you famous among all the people

Nor will an age ever come that will pass over you in silence. (trans. from the Latin by Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio, 1981)

Salutati puts Boccaccio’s pastoral song, Buccolicum Carmen (ca. 1341–1342), at the top of his list. Thereafter he inventories the geographical gazetteer De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris (On Mountains, Forests, Springs, Lakes, Rivers, Ponds or Swamps, and Diverse Names of the Sea, ca. 1350–1365), two biographical compilations De casibus virorum illustrium (Falls of Illustrious Men, ca. 1355–1360, revised 1373–1374), De mulieribus claris (Famous Women, 1360–1375), and last, the ‘‘epic’’ Genealogie deorum gentilium libri quindecim (Genealogies of the Gentile Gods in Fifteen Books, ca. 1360). Filippo Villani, earliest to give Boccaccio a vita in his lives of famous Florentines (ca. 1380– 1390), similarly eulogizes Boccaccio the Latinist. He itemizes the same titles as Salutati and, tellingly, dismisses in a coda Boccaccio’s Italian fiction as just so many unnamed ‘‘worklets’’ (opuscula). Around midquattrocento, Giannozzo Manetti can speak well of Boccaccio’s vernacular prose and poetry, but he too clearly more admires the Latinist, rating the Genealogies a crowning achievement. By 1486, however, matters have changed. Angelo Poliziano’s Nutricia (Homage to My Wet Nurse, Lady Poetry), a universal inventory of famous writers, remembers Boccaccio as ‘‘the man who recounts one hundred short stories in ten days.’’ This shift, which signals revived interest in Italy’s mother language among Lorenzo de’ Medici’s circle, heralds the trend that will triumph. Boccaccio himself moved freely back and forth between Latin and Italian throughout his career. Three working notebooks, the Zibaldone laurenziano and Miscellanea laurenziana (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Plut. 29.8; Ms. Plut. 33.31), and the Zibaldone magliabechiano (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Ms. Magl. II, II, 327, now Banco rari 50), preserve some of his earliest experiments in Latin. Side by side in the Zibaldone laurenziano appear his first Latin poem, the so-called Elegia di Costanza (Costanza’s Elegy, 1330s), and his Allegoria mitologica (Mythological Allegory, 1330s). In the former (135 vv), inspired by the ancient epitaph of Homonoea and Atimetus, a Neapolitan beauty called Costanza speaks from the tomb where her body decays to console her grieving lover. The Allegoria mitologica, 2,000 words of obscure prose, opens with a gallop 255

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO through world history, from its golden to iron ages. Following that decline calqued on Ovid’s Metamorphoses I, renewal comes with the Christian era. Into this scenario drops a mysterious figure represented as Phaethon (following Metamorphoses II), who visits disaster on trecento Naples. Perhaps the baffling allegory alludes to conflict between old and new church doctrines. Its syncretism captures perfectly the author’s shared loyalties as a canon law student drawn to poetry. In the same Zibaldone, Boccaccio transcribed four early epistolary experiments. Bombastic salutations announce their tenor: ‘‘Crepor celsitudinis Epyri principatus’’ (Fame of the height of the principality of Epirus), ‘‘Mavortis miles extrenue’’ (Worthy soldier of Mars), ‘‘Nereus amphytritibus lymphys’’ (Nereus with Amphitritean waters), and ‘‘Sacre famis et angelice viro dilecto forti’’ (‘‘To the beloved man of holy and angelic fame’’—perhaps Petrarca). Boccaccio probably never intended to send any of these letters, which are rhetorical practice pieces in the medieval art of prose composition (dictamen), crafted in rhythmic clauses (cursus) after the best models (Dante’s Epistole to Cino da Pistoia and Moroello Malaspina) to display virtuosity on a set theme (friendship). Dating from 1339, they declare the author’s cult for Virgil, near whose tomb at Naples he pretends to be writing. Once back in a bleak Florence, seeking escape to the wonders of a wider world, he drafted De Canaria (On the Canary Islands, ca. 1342). This fascinating account, entrusted to the Zibaldone Magliabechiano, renders into Latin a lost Tuscan letter sent to their native city from Florentine merchants in Seville. An Italian-led expedition of 1341 circumnavigated many of the Canary Islands, where instead of hoped for treasure, they discovered lush vegetation, blond natives, flourishing gardens, and wellbuilt houses. The sailors broke into these dwellings, stocked with figs and luxuriant grain. Discovering a temple, they removed the statue of its god and took it back with them to Lisbon, along with four young men, who had swum out to meet the boats. Precious for ethnographic details, De Canaria has its historical context in the competition among European powers for commercial control over new lands in a burgeoning age of colonialism. Other travels carry Boccaccio into ideal fantasy realms. In 1347, when at Forlı`, he exchanges epistolary eclogues with Checco di Meletto Rossi, secretary to the lord of the city Francesco Ordelaffi, in a four-part correspondence like that between Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio (1319–1320). 256

Later, after seeing Petrarca’s Buccolicum carmen (1359), he forms the idea for a book of eclogues, poems allegorical in intent like their ideal classical antecedents by Virgil. Dedicated to Donato Albenzani and completed ca. 1366, but not released to his friends until 1370, Boccaccio’s Buccolicum carmen (Pastoral song—in the singular because it is a unified collection) gathers 15 eclogues plus a 16th, their ‘‘Messenger.’’ All except the second, a monologue, are dialogues whose speakers dwell variously on love, friendship, politics, religion, and the literary vocation, in registers that run from satiric comedy to serious theological teaching. In ‘‘Faunus’’ (III) Palemon (Boccaccio) and Pamphylus (Checco) praise the laureate Mopsus (Petrarca) and express concern for the present situation of Parthenope (Naples), under threat from Polyphemus (King Ludwig of Hungary) and his ally Faunus (Ordelaffi); in ‘‘Iurgium’’ (The Quarrel, VII), Daphnis (Emperor Charles IV) and Florida (Florence) lock horns; ‘‘Midas’’ (VIII) refers in its title to Nicola Acciaiuoli, a former friend now resentfully attacked; ‘‘Vallis opaca’’ (The Dark Valley, X) imagines a tyrant and prisoner in hell; ‘‘Pantheon,’’ in contrast (XI), convokes Mirtilis (the church of God), Glaucus (the apostle Peter), and Amintas (St. Paul) to recount Christian salvation history; ‘‘Sapphos’’ (XII) and ‘‘Laurea’’ (The Laurel Wreath, XIII) address the quest for poetic fame; ‘‘Olympia’’ (Heavenly realm, XIV), mourns Boccaccio’s little daughter Violante, who has gone to Paradise. For this ‘‘poetry of wisdom,’’ which follows a loosely structured rising narrative line from the lusts of this world to love of the next (Eclogues, xxviii), Boccaccio himself provides a partial key in a letter of ca. 1372–1373 to an Augustinian eremite monk at Santo Spirito, Fra Martino da Signa (Epist. XXIII). Boccaccio’s friendship with Petrarca, beginning at midcentury, inaugurates a second more humanistic period in his Latin poetry. Marked by direct access to previously undiscovered classical sources, it culminates with the Certaldan’s exposure to Homer in the original language, which he studied with Leontius Pilatus, proudly taking credit for restoring Greek to Tuscany (Genealogie XV, 6–7). Even before meeting Petrarca, Boccaccio avidly follows his career. The epistle ‘‘Sacre famis’’ of 1339 extols a man at Avignon, ‘‘educated in the bosom of the Muses’’ and ‘‘nursed on the milk of philosophy.’’ Two years later he copies into his Zibaldone Magliabechiano Petrarca’s Privilegium (Certification for Laureation, 1341). Petrarca’s Coronation Oration, delivered at Rome on Easter

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO of 1341, buttresses Boccaccio’s laudatory De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia secundum Iohannem Bochacii de Certaldo (On the Life and Habits of Lord Francis Petrarch of Florence According to John Boccaccio of Certaldo, ca. 1348–1350). This vita proliferated from an apograph (an exemplar transcribed from the autograph, in the Zibaldone Laurenziano) through copies made at the Florentine prison of Le Stinche, where inmates worked as amanuenses for money. Together with Petrarca’s Posteritati (Letter to Posterity) it became the basis of all subsequent Renaissance lives of the Aretine man of letters. Shortly after his first stay with Petrarca at Padua in the spring of 1351, when the two visited Livy’s tomb, Boccaccio seems to have composed another biographical piece, his Pauca de T. Livio a Iohanne Boccaccio collecta (A Few Things on Titus Livius Collected by John Boccaccio). Little more than a page and reminiscent of the medieval accessus ad auctorem (introduction to the author), it incorporates from his Zibaldoni two earlier notes on the Roman historian dating from the Neapolitan period when he translated into Italian Livy’s third and fourth Decades. Ten years later, during a sojourn in Peter Damian’s city of Ravenna, Boccaccio received a message from Petrarca, then at Milan, with a request for information about the saint. To comply, the Certaldan located an eleventh-century life of Damian by one of his disciples, Giovanni da Lodi, and rewrote it as Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani heremite et demum episcopi hostiensis ac romane ecclesie cardinalis (Life of the Most Sainted Father Peter Damian Hermit and Then Bishop of Ostia and Cardinal of the Roman Church, 1361–1362). A second visit with Petrarca, at Milan in March of 1359, spurred Boccaccio to complete his De casibus virorum illustrium, a monumental gallery of humanity from Creation to his own day dedicated in its second redaction to Mainardo Cavalcanti (1373). Wide in its range of ancient sources, the compilation retains much that is medieval. Divided into nine books, a number of shortfall vis-a`-vis the perfect 10, this dream vision lays out the universal trajectory of human events as an endless struggle between good and evil, pride and punishment, fortune and providence. As in the Divina Commedia, shades crowd before the author to tell their mournful fates. Adam and Eve lead the procession, which continues through the ages with notables like Nimrod, Saul, Dido, Tarquinius Superbus, Hannibal, Cicero, Arthur King of the Britons, and last, the Sicilian washerwoman who rose to control the

throne of Naples. Between these accounts the author pauses to moralize, bemoaning man’s mortal condition or railing against such evils as pride, riches, and women. Boccaccio, whose energies seem to have flagged after completing seven books, imagines that his ‘‘excellent and venerable master’’ Petrarca appears to rouse him (VIII, 1). Man, argues a laureated Franciscus in Boccaccio’s eloquently scripted speech, was born to strive for fame, a divine gift that brings life after death. If even Jerome and Augustine sought temporal as well as eternal glory, should we not do the same, that we may inspire posterity? An ideal diptych with De casibus, Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris is the first collection of female biographies in Western literature. Drafted around 1361, after Boccaccio’s encounter with Leontius, it passes through eight more compositional phases. An autograph (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana XC, sup. 98) reflects the final version of 1375, dedicated to the noblewoman Andrea Acciaiuoli, manly in spirit like her name, ‘‘since in Greek andres means precisely men.’’ From Eve to Queen Giovanna of Naples, 106 females parade before us in 104 chapters (two are double), each displayed in a cameo that establishes her geographical origins and genealogy, then the story of her life and death, and finally, why she is memorable and what rituals or monuments are linked to her name. Boccaccio the protohumanist details temples, idols, and cult centers; he weighs critically his classical sources. His talent for portraying female beauty warms these lives of women, both good (Lucretia) and evil (Cleopatra), ordered by hierarchy (immortals before mortals) and history, from the beginning through the translatio imperii (translation of empire) from Thebes to Troy to Rome. The lives are unframed, but they cohere through the author’s formulaic narrative pattern and his preacher-like Christian slant, which dismisses pagan beliefs as silly fictions. The same perspective rules Boccaccio’s Genealogie deorum gentilium, an encyclopedia of pagan myths in 15 books written for King Hugo IV of Cyprus. King Robert of Anjou’s erudite librarian Paolo di Perugia must have early suggested this project, for which Boccaccio began making notes around 1350. By 1360–1365 he had a draft, further elaborated in successive phases up to ca. 1373, date of the autograph (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, LII, 9). A proem questions his capacity as mere ‘‘homunculus’’ to accomplish a daunting task better suited to Atlas or Hercules—or Petrarca. So much of the pagan heritage has been 257

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO lost to fire, floods, and zealots that his task will be like gathering from a vast beach the scattered fragments of a great shipwreck. More than 700 gods and their progeny animate the Genealogie in its first 13 books, each headed by a genealogical tree. (Boccaccio himself drew and colored them in the autograph.) The last two books are a defense of poetry, defined as ‘‘a sort of fervid and exquisite invention’’ that ‘‘veils truth in a fair and fitting garment of fiction’’ (XIV, 7). Boccaccio applies his theory to the myths, deconstructing them with euhemerism (the idea that the gods were once mortals elevated through legend to divine status) or naturalistic explanations to uncover their allegorical meaning. The Genealogie reflects Boccaccio’s newly won knowledge of the Homeric poems, from which he quotes passages in the original language, the first time Greek appears in a humanistic text. This imposing accomplishment became a standard text of reference for scholars, poets, and artists throughout the Renaissance. Several early editions of the Genealogie print it together with De montibus, a geographical gazetteer. Uniquely modern among Boccaccio’s works and ostensibly written as a relaxing pastime (so he claims in a prefatory page), this compendium simply presents its information raw, without any moralistic commentary. Mountains come first, as he explains, because upon them forests grow and from them flow the rivers that feed lakes, swamps, and the sea. Within each category, the order is alphabetical. The mountains go from ‘‘Aalac’’ to ‘‘Ziph,’’ both in Syria; forests include the Ardennes; fountains, Aganippe of the Muses, Arethusa in Sicily, and Sorgue, which gave a retreat from Babylon (Avignon) to the celebrated poet Francesco Petrarca, ‘‘my compatriot and preceptor’’; lakes, Galilee; rivers, Arno (which takes precedence since it is the one he has ‘‘known above all others from infancy’’); swamps, Styx, both one in Upper Egypt and the other in the underworld, famous in the songs of the poets. Boccaccio’s miscellaneous Latin verse goes under the title Carmina (Poems): I. Elegia di Costanza; II. A pastoral poem to Checco di Miletto (1347–1348); III. Faunus, part of same exchange, revised as third eclogue in Buccolicum carmen; IV. Epitaph for the father and son Pino and Ciampi della Tosa, preserved by Coluccio Salutati (ca. 1348); V. To Petrarca (ca. 1351–1353), a metrical epistle accompanying Boccaccio’s gift of a copy of Dante’s Commedia); VI. An epigram to the archbishop of Milan, as if spoken by the Florentine 258

lion; VII. A metrical epistle to Zanobi da Strada, recently crowned poet laureate (ca. 1355); VIII. A tetrastich written as colophon to a copy of Dante’s Commedia in Boccaccio’s hand (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 1035. ca. 1360–1365); IX. Verses to Petrarca’s Africa expressing concern about that still-unpublished epic’s fate (1374); X. Boccaccio’s autoepitaph in the church of SS. Jacopo and Michele in Certaldo. Latin is the language of all but three of Boccaccio’s 24 surviving Epistole (Letters)—a pathetic remnant of what his correspondence must have been. Earliest are the four rhetorical exercises of 1339. The others have dates between 1341 (V, to Niccolo` Acciaiuoli, complaining of how unhappy he is to be back in Florence, survives only in Italian translation) and 1374 (XXIV, condolences on the death of Petrarca, to his son-in-law Francescuolo da Brossano): VI, to Zanobi da Strada, in praise of friendship (1348); VII, carried to Petrarca in Padua from the Signoria by Boccaccio as ambassador with the invitation to return, live, and teach in Florence (1351); VIII, a fragment to Zanobi da Strada in praise of ‘‘Virgilian Naples’’ (1352); IX, to Zanobi (1353); X, to Petrarca from Ravenna, obliquely criticizing him for having accepted patronage at the court of the Visconti tyrant (1353); XI, to Petrarca from Ravenna, ‘‘the sewer of transalpine Gaul,’’ referring to Petrarca’s wish for information about Peter Damian (1362); XII, to Barbato da Sulmona about Petrarca (1362); XIII, to his close friend Francesco Nelli, prior of the church of Santi Apostoli in Florence, from Venice, a ferocious attack on Niccolo` Acciaiuoli, who made Boccaccio’s trip to Naples a disaster (1363; survives in an Italian translation except for a fragment of the original Latin); XIV, to Pietro da Moglio, praised as a master of rhetoric (ca. 1366); XV, to Petrarca, a touching letter describing his visit at Venice with the recipient’s daughter Francesca (‘‘Tullia’’) and son-in-law (1367); XVI, to Niccolo` da Montefalcone from Naples, perhaps in hopes of retiring to that monk’s monastery (1371); XVII, to the Neapolitan Matteo d’Ambrasio, from Naples (1371); XVIII, to the nobleman Niccolo` Orsini, a Ciceronian orator and friend of Petrarca, from Certaldo (1371); XIX, to the knight Iacopo Pizzinga (1371); XX, to the lawyer Pietro da Monteforte from Certaldo (1372); XXI, to Mainardo Cavalcanti, describing his deteriorating health, from Certaldo (1373); XXII, to Mainardo (1373); XXIII, to Fra Martino da Signa, of the Augustinian Eremites, with an allegorical key to Buccolicum

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO carmen (1372–1374); XXIV, to Francesco da Brossano, son-in-law of Petrarch, on the latter’s death (1374). VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM Collections Carmina, miscellaneous Latin verse compositions written throughout Boccaccio’s life, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, bari: Laterza, 1928; edited by Giuseppe Velli, in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 1, Milan: Mondadori, 1992. Epistole, written 1339–1374; edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Bari: Laterza, 1928; edited by Ginetta Auzzas, in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 1, Milan: Mondadori, 1992. Genealogia deorum gentilium . . . de montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis, seu paludibus, et de diversis nominibus maris, Reggio: Bartholomeus et Laurentius de Bruschis, 1481; Vicenza: Simone de Gabis, 1487; Genealogiae Ioannis Boccatii, cum demonstrationibus in formis arborum designatis. Eiusdem de montibus et sylvis, de fontibus, lacubus, et fluminibus. Ac etiam de stagnis et paludibus, necnon et de maribus, seu diuersis maris nominibus, Venice: Bonetus Locatellus for Octavianus Scotus, 1494–1495]; Venice: Manfredo de Strevo da Monferrato, 1497; Venice: Agostino de’ Zanni da Portesio, 1511; Genealogie Johannis Boccacij cum micantissimis arborum effigiationibus cuiusque gentilis dei progenium . . . Eiusdemque De montibus et siluis de fontibus, lacubus et fluminibus . . ., Paris: Opera et expensis Dionisii Roce, Lodouici Hornken, 1511; Ioannis Boccatii Peri genealogias deorvm libri quindecim, cum annotiationibus Iacobi Micylli. Eivsdemque De montium, sylvarum, fontium, lacuum, fluuiorum, stagnorum, et marium nominibus, Basel: Ioannes Hervagius, 1532. Lettere, carmi ed altri scritti minori, edited by Attilio Hortis, in Studj (epistolary exchange between Boccaccio and Checco da Mileto, Elegia di Costanza, Allegoria mitologica), 1879, Appendices VI and VII. Le lettere edite e inedite di Messer Giovanni Boccaccio tradotte e commentate con nuovi documenti, edited by Francesco Corazzini, Florence: Sansoni, 1877. Opere in versi, Corbaccio, Trattatello in laude di Dante, prose latine, epistole, edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci, Milan: Ricciardi, 1965. Opere latine minori (Buccolicum carmen. Carminum et epistolarum quae supersunt. Scripta breviora), edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Bari, Laterza, 1928. Vite di Petrarca, Pier Damiani e Livio, edited by Renata Fabbri, in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 1, Milan: Mondadori, 1992.

Editions Elegia di Costanza, written ca. 1332–1334; in Hortis, Studj, 1879; in Vittore Branca, Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio I. Un primo elenco dei codici e tre studi, 1958; Carmina, 1992. Allegoria mitologica, written ca. 1332–1334; in Hortis, Studj, 1879; edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, Opere latine minori, 1928; edited by Manlio Pastore Stocchi, in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 2, 1994.

Epistole, written 1339–1374; first editions: I, II, III, IV, VI, IX, XI, XIV. Sebastiano Ciampi, Monumenti di un manuscritto autografo e lettere inedite di Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, Milan: P.A. Molina, 1830. V. (Survives in the manuscripts only in Italian translation) Prose antiche di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio e di molti altri nobili e virtuosi ingegni, Florence: Anton Francesco Doni, 1547. VII, XV. Jacques Franc¸ois Paul Aldonce De Sade, Me´moires pour la vie de Franc¸ois Pe´trarque, Amsterdam [Avignon]: Aske´e and Merkus, 1764–1767, vol. 3. VIII. Francesco Macrı` Leone, ‘‘Il Zibaldone boccacciano della Magliabechiana,’’ in Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 10 (1887): 1–ff. X. Johannes Boccatius ad Franciscum Petrarcham nunc primum edita epistola, Padua, 1819. XII. Marco Vatasso, Del Petrarca e di alcuni suoi amici, Roma: Tipografia Vaticana, 1904. XIII. Anton Maria Biscioni, ed., Prose di Dante Alighieri e di messer Giovanni Boccaccio, Florence: G.G. Tartini e Santi Franchi, 1723. XVI, XVII, XVIII, XX. In Le lettere edite e inedite, edited by Corazzini, 1877. XIX. Giovanni Boccaccio, Rime di messer Giovanni Boccacci, Livorno: T. Masi e Compagno, 1802. XXI, XXII. Ioannis Boccaccii ad Maghinardum de Cavalcantibus epistolae tres, edited by A.N. Veselovskii, St. Petersburg: V. Demakova, 1876. XXIII. Domenicus Antonius Gandolfi, Dissertatio historica de ducentiis celeberrimis Augustinianis scriptoribus, Rome: Buagni, 1704. XXIV. Lorenzo Mehus, Ambrosii Traversarii latinae epistolae, Florence: Cesareo, 1759. De Canaria, written, ca. 1342; edited by Manlio Pastore Stocchi, in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 1, 1992. Buccolicum carmen, written ca. 1341–1342, 1347, 1362–1366, published 1369–1370; in Opere latine minori, edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra; edited by Giorgio Bernardi Perini, in Tutte le opere, vol. 5, pt. 2, 1994. De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia secundum Iohannem Bochacii de Certaldo, written ca. 1348–1350; first edition: Document historique de Boccace sur Pe´trarque: Manuscrit de la Bibliothe`que de Saint-Marc de Vinese (Ms. Marc. Lat. XIV 223) publie´ pour la premie`re fois et accompagne d’ une dissertation et de recherches nouvelles (includes Boccaccio’s De vita et moribus with facing French trans.), edited by Marquis De Valori (Henri Zosime), Avignon: Typographie de Th. Fischer, 1856; Petrarca, Giul. Celso, e Boccaccio: Illustrazione bibliologica delle vite degli uomini illustri del primo, di Cajo Giulio Cesare attribuita al secondo, e del Petrarca scritta dal terzo (includes Boccaccio’s De vita et moribus with Italian trans.), edited by Domenico Rossetti, Trieste: G. Marenigh, 1828; Solerti; edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, 1928; edited by Renata Fabbri, in Vite, 1992. Pauca de T. Livio a Iohanne Boccaccio collecta, after 1351; edited by Attilio Hortis, Studj sulle opere latine; Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, in Opere latine minori, 1928; Renata Fabbri, in Vite, 1992. De casibus virorum illustrium, first draft 1355–1360; completed 1373–1374; De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris, written ca.

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GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO 1355–1357, revisions continue until 1374; Venice: Vindelinus de Spira, 1473; edited by Manlio Pastore Stocchi, in Tutte le opere, vols. 7–8, pt. 2, 1998. De mulieribus claris; first redaction 1360, nine redactional phases continue until 1375; edited by Vittorio Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere, vol. 10, 1967; 1970. Genealogie deorum gentilium, written ca. 1360, final redaction after 1372; edited by Raffaele Zovenzoni, Venice: Vindelinus de Spira (Wendelin of Speier), 1472; 1473; Cologne: Printer of the ‘‘Sancte Flores Agostini’’, 1473; Reggio: Bartholomeus et Laurentius de Bruschis, 1481; Vicenza, 1487; Venice: Per D. Octauiani Scoti ciuis Modoetiesis, 1494 (the first to include the genealogical trees); Venice: Manfredo de Strevo de Monferrato, 1495; 1497; Paris, 1511; Venice: Per Agostinum de Zannis de Portesio, 1511; edited by Jacobus Micyllus (Jakob Moltzer), Basil: Apud Io, Hervagium, 1532; Venice: Fabio e Agostino Zoppini, 1581; Hecker 1902; edited by Vincenzo Romano, Bari: Laterza, 1951; Ruggiero Stefanelli, Boccaccio e la poesia, Naples: Loffredo, 1978; edited by Vittorio Zaccaria, in Tutte le opere, vols. 7–8, pts. 1 and 2, 1998. Vita sanctissimi patris Petri Damiani heremite et demum episcopi hostiensis ac romane ecclesie cardinalis, written 1361–1362; edited by Aldo Francesco Masse`ra, 1928; edited by Renata Fabbri, in Vite, 1992.

Facsimile Genealogiae [and De montibus, Venice, 1494], New York: Garland, 1976.

English Version, translated by Charles G. Osgood, Princeton: Princeton University Press, London: Oxford University Press by H. Milford, 1930; rpt. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956; 1978; as Book Eleven of the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods of Giovanni Boccaccio: A Translation with Glossary, translated by Melanie Hoover, M.A. dissertation, University of Florida, 1985; as Vulcan: The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, translated by Fred Lock, Kingston, Ont.: Lock’s Press, 1999.

Further Reading Bergin, Thomas G., Boccaccio, New York: Viking, 1981. Hortis, Attilio, Studj sulle opere latine del Boccaccio con particolare riguardo alla storia della erudizione nel medio evo e alle letterature straniere aggiuntovi la bibliografia delle edizioni, Trieste: Libraria Julius Dase Editrice, 1879. Pastore Stocchi, Manlio, Tradizione medioevale e gusto umanistico nel ‘‘De montibus’’ del Boccaccio, Padua: CEDAM; Florence: Olschki, 1963. Picone, Michelangelo, and Claude Cazale´ Be´rard (editors), Gli Zibaldoni di Boccaccio: Memoria, scrittura, riscrittura, Florence: Franco Cesati, 1998. Wilkins, Ernest Hatch, The University of Chicago Manuscript of the Genealogia Deorum Gentilium of Boccaccio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927. Zaccaria, Vittorio, Boccaccio narratore, storico, moralista e mitografo, Florence: Olschki, 2001.

Translations Note: All titles in Tutte le opere except De montibus are facing text editions with the Latin original and Italian translations. Epistole: as Buccolicum carmen: Boccaccio’s Olympia, edited, with an English rendering by J. Gollancz, London: Chatto and Windus, 1913; rpt. 1914, 1921; as Eclogues, translated by Janet Levarie Smarr, New York: Garland, 1987. De casibus virorum illustrium: as The Fall of princes, translated by John Lydgate, London: Richard Pynson, 1494; rpt. 1527; rpt. London: Richard Tottel, 1554; rpt. London: John Wayland, 1554; rpt. 1558; as Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, edited by Henry Bergen, Washington: The Carnegie Institute, 1923–1927; rpt. Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1924–1927; rpt. 1967; The Fates of Illustrious Men, translated and abridged by Louis Brewer Hall, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965. De mulieribus claris: as De Preclaris Mulieribus, That Is to Say in Englyshe, Of the Ryght Renoumyde Ladyes, translated by Henry Parker (Parcare), Lord Morley, London: Printed for the Editor, 1789; as Forty-Six Lives, translated by Henry Parker, Lord Morley, edited by Herbert G. Wright, London: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 1943; as Concerning Famous Women, translated by Guido A. Guarino, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press-London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964; as Famous Women, translated by Virginia Brown, I Tatti Renaissance Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Genealogie deorum gentilium: as Boccaccio on Poetry, Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio’s ‘‘Genealogia deorum gentilium’’ in an

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TESEIDA DELLE NOZZE D’EMILIA, CA. 1339–1341 Epic Poem by Giovanni Boccaccio

Memorable as the first epic in Italian, Boccaccio’s Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia (Thesiad of Emilia’s Nuptials) answers a deficiency Dante notes in De vulgari eloquentia II, 2, 10, when he identifies the three subjects worthy of poetic treatment as rectitude, love, and arms, adding that no one, so far, has written on the last in Italy’s vernacular. The compound title announces a creative mix, ‘‘arms and the man’’ (Aeneid I, 1), leavened with love and the woman. Theseus, king of Athens, liberates Thebes and defeats the Amazons, returning triumphant with their queen Ippolita and her sister Emilia,

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO whose beauty captivates the knights Arcita and Palemone. To resolve their rivalry, Theseus decrees a tournament. The night before, Arcita prays to Mars for victory, Palemone to Venus for the lady, and Emilia to Diana for a happy outcome. Arcita wins but dies from wounds, allowing Palemone to marry Emilia. Final words addressed by the author to his book proclaim his pioneering accomplishment, a song of Mars inspired by Muses in the ‘‘nude’’—without Latin clothing (XII, 84). A bizarre hybrid to the modern eye, the autograph manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Doni e Acquisti 325) reproduces classical epic as it looked to Boccaccio in exemplars such as his surviving a twelfth-century copy of Statius’ Thebaid. In the Teseida, after a dedicatory letter to Fiammetta, 15 sonnets frame 12 books of ottava rima (9,904 verses), each further subdivided into chapter-like units by rubric-titles. Boccaccio himself, writing as if he were an anonymous commentator, provides an apparatus of interlinear and marginal glosses that swells on some folios to thousands of words. Inside this complex architecture, he sprinkles his lexicon with a Latinate vocabulary, slips the tale into a time frame before the Trojan War, and decks it with such reminders of antiquity as a machinery of pagan deities, mythic heroes who parade in an epic catalogue, a Roman amphitheater, and funeral games. The Teseida affirms the canonical epic length of 12 books but correlates them with the 12 houses of the zodiac, merging classical epic and medieval Arabic astronomy. Astronomical number symbolism, which Chaucer echoes (‘‘The Knight’s Tale,’’ first in the Canterbury Tales), connects the planetary gods to their protege´s. To the central verse (VII, 30, 1) and chapter (VII, 50, 1) Boccaccio links key descriptions of Mars and Venus, a pair allusive to marriage. Allegorically, in the terminology of Aristotelian-Thomistic ethics, they signify the irascible and concupiscible appetites. Belonging to a tradition that runs from Prudentius’ Psychomachia (fourth century; Battle in Mansoul) to Dante’s Comedia, the Teseida has its moral locus in the mind, site of conflict between reason’s civilizing power, represented by the just ruler Theseus, and the lower appetites of wrath and lust, dramatized by the rival protagonists. The closing marriage of Emilia and Palemone, which couples a tempering Diana with Venus, asserts chaste love in the well-ordered society. Widely read during the manuscript era, the Teseida waned in popularity once printed books took over. Public interest veered to newer narratives,

but their formal debt to Boccaccio is evident. His choice of ottava rima set the metrical standard for Italian chivalric epic throughout the Renaissance, from Pulci and Boiardo to Ariosto and Tasso. VICTORIA E. KIRKHAM Editions Early Editions: La Teseida, Ferrara: Agostino Carnerio, 1475, with the commentary by Andrea da Bassi; La Theseida, edited by Gaetano Tizzone da Pofi, Venice: Gerolamo Pentio da Lecco, 1528. Critical Editions: Teseide, edited by Ignazio Moutier, in Opere volgari, vol. 9, Florence: Marghera, 1831; Teseida, edited by Salvatore Battaglia, Florence: Sansoni, 1938; Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia, edited by Aurelio Roncaglia, Bari: Laterza, 1941; Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia, edited by Alberto Limentani, in Tutte le opere, vol. 2, Milan: Mondadori, 1964; Teseida, edited by Mario Marti, in Opere minori in volgare, vol. 2, Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. Translations: as The Book of Theseus, translated by Bernadette Marie McCoy, Sea Cliff, NY: Teesdale Publishing, 1974 (highly unreliable); as Chaucer’s Boccaccio: Sources of Troilus and the Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales (selections), edited and translated by N. R. Havely, Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1980.

Further Reading Anderson, David, Before the Knight’s Tale: Imitation of Classical Epic in Boccaccio’s Teseida, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Hollander, Robert, ‘‘The Validity of Boccaccio’s Self-Exegesis in his Teseida,’’ in Medievalie et Humanistica, n.s., 8 (1977): 163–183. Kirkham, Victoria, ‘‘’Chiuso parlare’ in Boccaccio’s Teseida,’’ in Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton, edited by Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini, Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983; rpt. in Victoria Kirkham, The Sign of Reason in Boccaccio’s Fiction, Florence: Olschki, 1993. Savj-Lopez, Paolo, ‘‘Sulle fonti della ‘Teseide,’’’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 36 (1900): 59–78. Schnapp, Jeffrey T., ‘‘Un commento all’autocommento nel Teseida,’’ in Boccaccio 1990: The Poet and His Renaissance Reception, edited by Kevin Brownlee and Victoria Kirkham, Studi sul Boccaccio, 20 (1991–1992): 185–203. Schnapp, Jeffrey T., ‘‘A Commentary on Commentary in Boccaccio,’’ South Atlantic Quarterly, 91.4 (1992): 813–834. Smarr, Janet Levarie, ‘‘Boccaccio and the Stars: Astrology in the Teseida,’’ in Traditio, 35 (1979): 303–332. Vandelli, Giuseppe, ‘‘Un autografo della Teseida,’’ in Studi di filologia italiana, 2 (1929): 1–76. Wetherbee, Winthrop, ‘‘History and Romance in Boccaccio’s Teseida,’’ in Boccaccio 1990: The Poet and His Renaissance Reception, edited by Kevin Brownlee and Victoria Kirkham, Studi sul Boccaccio, 20 (1991–1992).

261

TRAIANO BOCCALINI

TRAIANO BOCCALINI (1556–1613) Born into a middle-class family (his father was a known architect), Boccalini spent his childhood and adolescence in his native town of Loreto, which he always mentions in his writings with endearing words. Strongly inclined toward literature and poetry, he desired to become a full-time writer, but the meager finances of his family did not allow him to pursue a literary career and he was compelled to choose more profitable judicial and administrative posts. Boccalini would later portray the years spent studying law in Perugia and then Padua as miserable and dull; indeed, as he reported in De’ Ragguagli di Parnaso (Reports from Parnassus, 1612–1613), in order to endure the effort required, such a career was only suitable to individuals having ‘‘un cervellaccio di bue, una complessionaccia di facchino’’ (the brain of an ox, the body of a porter). In Perugia, Boccalini attended lessons by the famous Giovan Paolo Lancellotti and Rinaldo Ridolfi, and met the satirical poet Cesare Caporali (1531–1601), who might have influenced his initial conception of De’ Ragguagli di Parnaso. As a student in Padua, Boccalini developed a passionate interest in the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus. His reflections culminated in the compilation of his Commentarii di Traiano Boccalini romano sopra Cornelio Tacito (Commentaries on Cornelius Tacitus), published posthumously in 1677. In this text, a meditation on the contrast between ragion di stato (reason of state) and ethical instances, Boccalini shows his inner nature as a political moralist and opponent of Niccolo` Machiavelli, typical of the Counter-Reformation movement of Tacitism. At the same time, he openly and harshly criticizes the political corruption of his times. In 1592, with the proclamation of the new pontiff, Clement VIII, Boccalini was able to get a permanent position as pontifical governor of small cities belonging to the state of the church, thanks to the intervention of the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. It was a difficult task that obliged Boccalini to wander throughout Italy for the rest of his life, and in the course of which he experienced frustration, humiliation, and threats, including troubles with the Holy Office. It was indeed in the midst of these difficult years that 262

Boccalini left aside his Commentarii sopra Cornelio Tacito and started to conceive the draft of De’ Ragguagli di Parnaso, an allegoric treatise divided in two centurie (chapters). In it, Boccalini depicts a utopian world out of earthly time and space (Parnassus), where mythical and historical events are mingled with no distinction. The benevolent king is Apollon, who supervises his guests with a serene smile. In Parnassus congregate the greatest philosophers, writers, and statesmen of different historical times, engaged in vivacious diatribes on heterogeneous topics, such as social habits, erudition, literature, science, politics, and ethics. In this context, Boccalini ostensibly penned himself as the menante or gazzettiere (reporter), who objectively takes notes of all discussions. The leitmotiv of the De’ Ragguagli di Parnaso is social and political satire, astutely blended with poetic descriptions and literary reflections. Elegantly positioned at the intersection of several genres—mythical-allegorical fiction, political treatise, and satire—and structured according to the Horatian formula utile dulci (useful and sweet), the work enjoyed the immediate favor of a large audience and consecrated Boccalini as a writer. However, the tone of four satirical chapters, which had long circulated only in manuscript form because their author feared the revenge of the Spanish rulers and of the Inquisition, is quite different. The first collection of these writings was published anonymously in 1614 with the title La cetra d’Italia (The Lyre of Italy). Twenty-nine additional chapters were then published in Venice with the title Pietra del paragone politico (Political Touchstone) later that same year, although the volume was dated 1615. Abandoning the carefully crafted strategy described in a letter of August 27, 1612, to James I, king of England as wrapping ‘‘l’aperta verita` [...] con le larve delle metafore’’ (the open truth within [...] the maggots of metaphors), in Pietra del paragone politico Boccalini compared Spaniards to hopeless lovers, fooled by the clever and beautiful women they want to possess in vain (the Italians): ‘‘Pero´ prestate fede a me [Spagnoli], che purtroppo a mie spese l’ho esperimentato, che nel negozio di soggiogar Italia altro non caverete [...] che danno e vergogna’’ (Therefore trust me [Spaniards], all you will gain from your

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO attempt to subjugate Italy will be nothing but damage and shame. Boccalini’s attacks against the Spanish invaders hit such a crude and polemical vein that Lope de Vega called him a boca de infierno (a mouth from hell). Thus, De’ Ragguagli di Parnaso and its appendixes made Boccalini famous and infamous, loved and hated. Translated, imitated, and counterfeited for decades, his works became, as Harald Hendrix has rightly put it, the ‘‘cultural conscience’’ of the intelligentsia of seventeenth-century Europe (Traiano Boccalini fra erudizione e polemica, 1995).

Biography Born in Loreto (Ancona), probably in 1556 (there are no official birth records). Studied at the local Jesuit college. Studied law at the University of Perugia, 1578. Moved to Padua to finish his studies, after 1580. Married Ersilia Ghislieri in Rome, 1584. Settled in Rome, 1585. Became a writer of apostolic briefs, 1586. Secretary of the Marquis Spinola, Genoa, 1590. Papal governor of Trevi Umbra, 1592. Magistrate of Tolentino, June 1594. Governor of Brisighella, November 1594. Lieutenant of Scipione Gottifredo, Benevento, 1596. Mission to Venice, 1598. Criminal judge in Campidoglio, Rome, 1599. Governor of Comacchio, 1603. Denounced to the Holy Office, 1603. Faced the trial of the Inquisition, Ferrara-Rome, 1604. Governor of Bagnacavallo, 1606. Governor of Argenta, 1608. Apostolic commissioner, Matelica, 1609. Settled in Rome. His writings attracted again the attention of the Inquisition; tried and acquitted, 1610. Governor of Sassoferrato, 1611. Governor of Nocera Umbra, 1612. Moved to Venice. Died in his house of the neighborhood of Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, probably of a tumor of the liver,

September 29, 1613. However, rumors (unfounded) rapidly spread about his murder by Spanish hands (either by poison or by physical assault). Was buried in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, through the intervention of his longtime friend, the abbot Angelo Grillo. OLIMPIA PELOSI Selected Works Collections Ragguagli di Parnaso e scritti minori, edited by Luigi Firpo, 3 vols., Bari: Laterza, 1948.

Treatises De’ Ragguagli di Parnaso. Centuria prima, 1612; Centuria seconda, 1613. La cetra d’Italia, 1614. Pietra del paragone politico, 1615. Commentarii di Traiano Boccalini romano sopra Cornelio Tacito, 1677.

Further Reading Firpo, Luigi, ‘‘Boccalini, Traiano,’’ in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 11, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1969. Hendrix, Harald, Traiano Boccalini fra erudizione e polemica. Ricerche sulla fortuna e bibliografia critica, Florence: Olschki, 1995. Marconi, Laura, ‘‘Traiano Boccalini studente a Perugia (1578–1582): Documenti inediti sulla sua permanenza e laurea nello Studium perugino,’’ in Pensiero politico, 31, no. 1 (1998): 73–87. Martinelli, Bortolo, ‘‘Boccalini Traiano,’’ in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, vol. 1, Turin: Utet, 1986. Sterpos, Marco, ‘‘Boccalini tacitista di fronte al Machiavelli,’’ In Studi secenteschi, 12 (1971): 255–283. Varese, Claudio, Traiano Boccalini, Padua: Liviana, 1958. Zaccaro, Vanna, Arte dello stato e retorica in Traiano Boccalini, Fasano: Schena, 2002.

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO (1441–1494) Matteo Maria Boiardo perfectly embodied the instability, the genius, and the compromises of the late fifteenth century, a turbulent moment in Italian history and culture. Symbiotically connected to the Este court of Ferrara and its culture, Boiardo

successfully negotiated in his literary career the contrast between classical models and medieval romance, typical of the hybrid culture of the Este court. Dividing his energies between political and military duties on one side, and the cult of literary 263

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO form on the other, he achieved a position of prestige in both realms, as a quintessential courtly man. His most important work, the incomplete Orlando innamorato or Inamoramento de Orlando (Orlando in Love, 1482–1483/1495), makes him the first poet to bring Italian chivalric literature within the realm of high literature, paving the way for the masterpieces by Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. The connection of Boiardo’s family to the Este court dated back to his grandfather, Feltrino, who had obtained the county of Scandiano from the lords of Ferrara in 1423. Boiardo spent his youth at the court of the Humanist Prince Leonello d’Este until the year 1460, when he became the ruler of his feudal territory. Nevertheless, he always manifested a strong attachment to Ferrara, where the political and cultural life of the duchy was increasingly concentrated. He was an active participant in the life of the Este court, serving and writing under dukes Borso and Ercole, who shaped the cultural life of Ferrara, partially changing the humanistic tradition initiated by Guarino Guarini under Leonello d’Este. Boiardo’s first poetic endeavors were in Latin, strictly connected to his role as a courtly poet, and they inscribe him within the humanistic circle of Ferrara. Both written between 1463 and 1464, the Carmina de laudibus Estensium (Songs in Praise of the Este) and the Pastoralia (Pastoral Songs, 1500) were both inspired by a close imitation of Vergil. In the Carmina de laudibus Estensium, Boiardo lent his poetic voice to the dynastic reconstruction envisioned by Borso d’Este when the duke decided to call from Naples Ercole and Sigismondo, the two legitimate heirs of the dynasty. The praise of Borso naturally turns into the praise of Ercole, who later became Boiardo’s most important patron. The dynastic project, realized through poetic praise and legitimization of the house of Este, is a constant element of Boiardo’s career, culminating in the Orlando innamorato. The same project characterizes the 10 eclogues of the Pastoralia, where political and love themes alternate. As in the Carmina de laudibus Estensium, Boiardo represents the present and the future lord through common praise, realizing through poetry the continuity desired by the Este dynasty. Both poems clearly point to the school of Guarino Guarini (1374–1460), who had established a canon that included auctores such as Virgil, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Horace, as well as Claudianus and Lygdamus. In the same tradition we can inscribe a later work, which Boiardo composed in 1476. The poem, entitled Epigrammata (Epigrams), 264

praised the victory of Duke Ercole over an internal revolt promoted by his nephew Nicolo`. The use of the humanistic model at the time of his intellectual maturity discredits any easy identification between Boiardo’s Latin production and an early phase of his literary training. During the last years of Borso’s reign, Boiardo was assigned important diplomatic responsibilities. While he was in Reggio Emilia at Sigismondo’s court, he met Antonia Caprara, to whom he dedicated the Canzoniere, the collection of his lyric poems dated by the author 1469–1471 and entitled, following the Ovidian model, Amorum libri (Books of Love, 1499). The collection includes texts composed before these years, organized according to the fiction of a chronological sequence. There are explicit markers placing the Canzoniere into a concrete reality. The setting for the collection is the town of Reggio (sonnet 16), and the first letters of the first 14 sonnets of the first book form the name of the beloved lady. The same is true of the 14 initials of the 14 lines of sonnet 14. In structuring his Amorum libri, Boiardo was more severe than his model, Petrarch: Each of the books consists of 50 sonnets and 10 poems in a different meter, generally highly experimental. Following a classical model, the text is divided into three thematic parts: The first part praises beauty and reciprocated love; the second part describes the frustration and misery of the rejected lover; the third part evokes the nostalgic memory of the lost love, and explores the theme of the ‘‘prison of love.’’ The most reliable manuscript of the Amorum libri (ms. Egerton, London, British Library) is dated January 4, 1477, but Boiardo wrote the poems at an earlier stage. As explained in the opening sonnet, the poet has systematized a series of texts composed during his youth. Boiardo used the Petrarchan model, combining it with a variety of other inspirations, including not only the classics, but also stilnovistic and Provencal poetry. His attitude toward Petrarch is innovative: Stylistically and thematically, Boiardo seeks a colorful tone, and locates himself far from Petrarch’s medietas (middle tone). The lady praised in the collection is framed even more abstractly than the Petrarchan Laura. Distancing himself from Petrarch, Boiardo chooses to reject a representation based upon the filter of memory, embracing the present and its immediate effects. However, to avoid a critical anachronism, we should not judge Boiardo’s heterodox Petrarchism from the point of view of the Petrarchan orthodoxy of the Italian cinquecento: Boiardo was inventing a

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO tradition, rather than distancing himself from an existing one. The years between 1476 and 1483 were the most productive in his literary career. To this period belongs the Pastorale (Pastoral Song), composed of 10 eclogues in Italian, thematically divided between politics and allegories of love. The political eclogues can be dated after 1482, since they are linked to the war against Venice for the territory of Polesine, whereas the love poems cannot be dated as precisely. The dark tones of the descriptions of the war and of its effects on the familiar landscapes, which Boiardo uses consistently in the political eclogues, expose the most dramatic aspects of a time of uncertainty and fear. In these years, Boiardo was also engaged in the composition of his chivalric poem, the Orlando innamorato. Throughout his career, Boiardo also wrote various translations from the classics (volgarizzamenti) for the use and entertainment of Ercole d’Este, who had not studied Latin. Boiardo’s translations include excerpts from the works of Xenophon and Aemilius Probus (before 1471), the Chronicon Imperatorum by Riccobaldo Gervasio da Ferrara (1472–1478), a history of the Roman and Germanic emperors, Cornelius Nepos and Herodotus’ Histories (translated from a Latin version). The court, with which Boiardo became officially affiliated on January 1, 1476, provides the background and the reason for all these literary endeavors, and the work as a translator acquires particular meaning when connected to the specific nature of the translated texts. Duke Ercole, a courtly lord and military chief, had a particular interest in historiography, and the poet provided him with historical narrations of the past that serve as a model for the present. The poet also translated Lucian and Apuleius. In particular, his translation of the Metamorphoses, which had been attributed erroneously to his grandfather Feltrino, features a very open manipulation of the original, as Boiardo adds a final part to the text, taking it from Lucian’s Lucius e onos. Besides his translations, Boiardo also wrote short poems for the entertainment of the court, such as the sonnets and poems in terza rima written in 1460–1465 and entitled Capitoli (Chapters, 1523), which illustrate the Tarots. Both the translations and this minor production shed light on the various aspects and interests of the court, including the more mundane and playful. The idea of the chivalric poem was also born within the court, and Duke Ercole encouraged its composition. In order to write the Orlando

innamorato, the great epic poem of the origins of the Este, Boiardo was exempted from his political duties. In the same year that he began to write the Orlando innamorato, 1478, he married Taddea dei Gonzaga di Novellara, with whom he lived a happy domestic life. When the political and military life of the court took a turn for the worse, however, Boiardo returned to his diplomatic duties. He was captain of Modena in 1480, a task entailing heavy responsibilities, especially when the war with Venice and the pope broke out in 1482. He ultimately needed to leave the command of Modena in order to defend his own feud, Scandiano. Meanwhile, in 1483, the first edition of the Orlando innamorato appeared: It contained only the first two books of the poem and is now lost. The war was a success, and after the peace signed in 1484, Boiardo followed his lord Ercole in his travels. This is probably one of the reasons for the 1487 Venice edition of the Orlando inamorato, still composed of two books. During this time of peace, Boiardo experimented with new genres, following and shaping the taste of the court. In these years, the Este palace in Ferrara acquired an avant-garde position in the production and representation of plays, and Boiardo contributed the Timone (Timon, 1500), a classical play. This work, probably written between 1486 and 1494, is a re-elaboration of a play by Lucian (which Boiardo could read in a Latin translation), and it is probably the only surviving example of a more extensive production. The adaptation of a classical play to the taste of the modern public involves metric solutions, such as the use of the hendecasyllable, and thematic revisions. As in his translation and rewriting of the Metamorphoses, Boiardo expands the text with his own additions. In writing his Timone, he doubles the two main characters, and this results in a very effective treatment of the main theme of the original comedy. If in Lucian’s play excessive spending is inevitable, and it leads to poverty and misanthropy, in Boiardo’s rewriting there is a more optimistic view, and the poet endorses a vision of human behavior based on balance and courtesy, as he will do in the Orlando innamorato. In 1487, another phase of great political and military endeavor began. Appointed military governor of the town of Reggio, Boiardo must again relinquish his literary efforts. In 1494, due to the military pact between France, Milan, and Ferrara, the French troops left through the Este territories, an event that acquired symbolic undertones, and was perceived as marking the end of independence and freedom for the peninsula. 265

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO Boiardo, who interrupted the Orlando innamorato with this image of invasion (book 3, canto 9) died during the same year, on December 19. For centuries, Boiardo has been relegated to a marginal position within the canon of Italian literature. As far as the Orlando innamorato is concerned, Boiardo has suffered from the obscuring fame of his successor, Ludovico Ariosto, while, for the rest of his production, he paid a price to the generalized prejudice against courtly literature as instrumental and insincere. His active participation in the courtly life has often produced a stereotyped representation of his personality as a lesser Ariosto, a courtier with a superficial poetic vision of life and love. Once catalogued only as a precursor, Boiardo has now recovered some autonomy, but still only as the author of the Orlando innamorato. Even the Amorum libri, one of the most important canzonieri of the fifteenth century, has received limited critical attention. The volgarizzamenti, of crucial importance as tokens of a cultural project within the court, have never been edited in their entirety. New directions in Boiardo criticism, begun in the 1970s and culminating with the celebrations for the fifth centenary of his death in 1994, seek to focus on the totality of the poet’s works. Boiardo’s multifaceted production could provide critics a wealth of unexplored texts on the uncertain borders of Humanism.

Biography Born in Scandiano (Reggio Emilia), 1441, the son of Giovanni and Lucia Strozzi (sister of Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, Humanist and poet). Spent childhood in Ferrara; after the death of his father (1451), lived with his grandfather Feltrino, count of Scandiano and poet himself (died 1456); educated by the priest Bartolomeo da Prato; invested coruler of his territory along with his cousin Giovanni, 1460; joined the Este court in Ferrara, 1460. Diplomatic missions to Rome with Duke Borso, 1471; to Naples with Sigismondo d’Este, 1473; division of the county, 1474, which left him in charge of Scandiano, Gesso, and Torricella; hired as a direct dependent of Duke Ercole, 1476. Marriage to Taddea di Giorgio Gonzaga di Novellara, 1479; military governor of Modena, 1480–1482; military governor of Reggio Emilia, 1487–1494. Died in Reggio Emilia on December 19, 1494. ELEONORA STOPPINO See also: Epic; Ludovico Ariosto 266

Selected Works Collections Tutte le Opere, edited by Angelandrea Zottoli, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1936–1937. Opere volgari. Amorum libri, Pastorale, Lettere, edited by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, Bari: Laterza, 1962.

Poetry ‘‘Carmina de laudibus Estensium,’’ (ca. 1463–1464); edited by Angelo Solerti, 1894. ‘‘Epigrammata,’’ (1476), edited by Giovan Battista Venturi in Poesie, 1820. ‘‘Pastorale,’’ (ca. 1482), edited by Giovan Battista Venturi in Poesie, 1820. ‘‘Orlando innamorato,’’ 1482–1483 (first two books), 1495 (book 3). ‘‘Amorum libri,’’ 1499; critical editions by Tiziano Zanato, 1998; as Amorum libri: The Lyric Poems of Matteo Maria Boiardo, translated byAndrea Di Tommaso, 1993. ‘‘Pastoralia,’’ edited by Bartolomeo Crotti, 1500; critical edition by Stefano Carrai, 1996. ‘‘Capitoli,’’ 1523; as Tarocchi, edited by Simona Foa`, 1993.

Play Timone, 1500; critical edition by Tissoni Benvenuti and Mussini Sacchi, 1983.

Further Reading Anceschi, Giuseppe (editor), Il Boiardo e la critica contemporanea. Atti del convegno di studi su Matteo Maria Boiardo. Scandiano-Reggio Emilia, 25–27 aprile 1969, Florence: Olschki, 1970. Anceschi, Giuseppe, and Tina Matarrese (editors), Il Boiardo e il mondo Estense nel Quattrocento, Padua: Antenore, 1998. Bigi, Emilio, ‘‘La poesia latina del Boiardo,’’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 146 (1969): 321–338. Cavallo, Jo Ann, The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso: From Public Duty to Private Pleasure, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Cavallo, Jo Ann, and Charles Stanely Ross (editors), Fortune and Romance. Boiardo in America, Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998. Dionisotti, Carlo, Boiardo e altri studi cavallereschi, edited by Giuseppe Anceschi and Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, Novara: Interlinea, 2003. Looney, Dennis, ‘‘A Reading of Boiardo’s Herodotus in the Late Quattrocento: Annotations to Modena MS a. H.3.22,’’ in Manuscripta, 41, no. 2 (1997): 127–132. Marinelli, Peter, Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of Orlando furioso, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, La lingua del Boiardo lirico, Florence: Olschki, 1963. Monducci, Elio, and Gino Badini, Matteo Maria Boiardo: la vita nei documenti del suo tempo, Modena: Aedes Muratoriana, 1997. Navarrete, Ignacio, ‘‘Boiardo’s Pastorali as a Macrotext,’’ in Stanford Italian Review, 5, no. 1 (1985): 37–53. Quint, David, ‘‘The Figure of Atlante: Ariosto and Boiardo’s Poems,’’ in MLN, 94 (1979): 77–91.

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO Quint, David, ‘‘The Best of Romance and Renaissance Epic,’’ in Romance: Generic Transformations from Chre´tien de Troyes to Cervantes, edited by Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee, Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985. Tissoni Benvenuti, Antonia and Sebastiano Corradi (editors), Gli Amorum libri e la lirica del Quattrocento con altri studi boiardeschi, Novara: Interlinea, 2003. Tristano, Richard, ‘‘The Istoria imperiale of Matteo Maria Boiardo and Fifteenth-Century Ferrarese Courtly Culture,’’ in Phaeton’s Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, edited by Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek, Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. Villoresi, Marco, Da Guarino a Boiardo. La cultura teatrale a Ferrara nel Quattrocento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1994.

ORLANDO INNAMORATO, 1482–1483 (BOOKS 1–2), 1495 (BOOK 3) Epic-chivalric poem by Matteo Maria Boiardo

Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love), left incomplete upon the death of the author, is the title traditionally used for Matteo Maria Boiardo’s masterpiece, although Boiardo experts agree that the original title was probably Inamoramento de Orlando (which is also the title given to the new, and most authoritative, critical edition by Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti and Cristina Montagnani). Along with Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando, 1532), the Orlando innamorato is considered one of the best examples of Renaissance chivalric poetry. Boiardo’s text is deeply rooted in the cultural milieu of the Este court in the city of Ferrara, where the poet (like Ariosto) worked and lived. The poem is conceived as a dynastic epic, aimed at a legitimization of the Este as rulers and defenders of the church. The cultural tradition of the court, divided between the passion for chivalric romances and customs and a recovery of the classical tradition, is perfectly

embodied in the hybrid character of the Orlando innamorato. Traditionally, at least since the definition given by Pio Rajna in Le fonti dell’Orlando furioso (1876), the Orlando innamorato has been interpreted as a mixture of the two great epic cycles of the French Middle Ages, the Carolingian and the Arthurian cycles. The Carolingian cycle, featuring Charlemagne and his knights as protagonists, revolves around the wars between Christians and pagans at the end of the eighth century, whereas the Arthurian cycle, depicting heroes such as Tristan and Lancelot, establishes love at its center. Boiardo’s innovation would consist of presenting the Carolingian heroes as affected by the ‘‘Arthurian’’ forces of love, as the title itself demonstrates. Orlando, the bravest knight of the Frankish army, falls in love with the beautiful pagan princess Angelica, and is drawn to the adventures (venture or aventure) typical of the Arthurian tradition. This mixture, however, is already a specific trait of the tradition of the cantari and poemi cavallereschi, a popular epic genre widespread in Northern Italy during the century preceding Boiardo’s poem. Moreover, the relation between the two cycles is unbalanced: Boiardo’s intent is to subordinate the serious Carolingian knights to the rules of love and unpredictability, as Riccardo Bruscagli has remarked in Stagioni della civilta` estense (1983). Among the main characters of the Orlando innamorato, together with Charlemagne, Orlando, and Angelica, we can find Ranaldo, Orlando’s cousin, the sorceress Falerina, the pagan king Agramante and the two knights Rodamonte and Madricardo, Brunello the thief and Atlante the sorcerer, as well as Rugiero and Bradamante, the destined founders of the Este dynasty. The plot traces the centrifugal and centripetal movements of the pagan and Christian knights in pursuit of war and love, toward and away from the two sites of Paris and Albracca`. The first two books were published in 1482– 1483, and their elaboration probably started even before the reign of Ercole I (1471–1505), during the last years of Borso d’Este, who was duke from 1452 to 1471. Manuscript copies of the first two books circulated in the court before the publication of the editio princeps, of which no copies survive. The second edition in two books (1487) is preserved by only one exemplar (Venice, Biblioteca Marciana). After the publication of the first two books, the composition of the third proceeded slowly, due to the critical political and military situation of the dukedom and of Italy. It is precisely this tragic moment that Boiardo describes in the last lines of 267

MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO the poem, before leaving it incomplete at the ninth canto of the third book: While the poet writes, in the year of his death, Italy is invaded by the French army of Charles VIII. The unfinished poem ends on the striking contrast between poetry and life. The third and last book is also the one that introduces directly the dynastic theme, leaving often aside ventura to focus on Rugiero and Bradamante. The success of the poem was immediate and unprecedented, and such instantaneous triumph encouraged many poets to continue the story at the point where Boiardo had abandoned it. The Orlando innamorato immediately presented itself as a real epic text, subject to rewritings and expansions. The sixteenth century sees many editions of the original text with the addition of continuations by other authors, including Nicolo` degli Agostini, Raffaele Valcieco da Verona, and Pierfrancesco de’ Conti da Camerino. Even the most famous poem of the Italian Renaissance, Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, presents itself as a continuation (gionta) of the Orlando innamorato, a fact that contributed to relegating Boiardo’s poem to a marginal space in the canon of Italian literature. The other factor that obscured the understanding of a poem so widely appreciated soon after its appearance was its rewriting in a different language, the sixteenthcentury Toscanizing rifacimento (rewriting) by Francesco Berni entitled Orlando innamorato, nuovamente composto (The Newly Composed Orlando in Love, 1541). Both factors are part of a crucial phenomenon taking place at the beginning of the cinquecento: the creation of a linguistic norm for literary production, a stable form of language transcending regional differences, embodied in Pietro Bembo’s treatise Prose della volgar lingua (Writings in the Vernacular Language, 1525). The Orlando innamorato, marked by Emilian linguistic traits, is linguistically obsolete only a few years after its first publication, while the Orlando furioso, whose author has exactly the same regional provenance as Boiardo, is corrected and ‘‘normalized’’ by Ariosto himself. Through rewritings and poorly realized editions of the text, the Orlando innamorato faded into the darkness once reserved to the popular texts. Even the title of the poem, obscured by the loss of the editio princeps, is a reconstruction: Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti points in the direction of a different designation, Inamoramento de Orlando. This title, used by Boiardo himself in his correspondence with Isabella d’Este, links the poem even more cogently to the tradition of the cantari and poemi cavallereschi. One of the most read poemi is entitled Innamoramento di Carlo, and 268

features an old and comic Charlemagne falling in love with a young princess. The rediscovery of the Orlando innamorato in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, started by Antonio Panizzi’s edition of the original text published in London in 1830–1831, changed the field of Italian literary studies. The poem provided a bridge to the mutual understanding of the popular and learned epic traditions in Italy by coupling, for instance, the fiction of orality (reminiscent of the cantari tradition) with the use of the entrelacement technique, typical of the French prose romances. Another ‘‘wave of rediscovery’’ of the poem took place in the 1980s and 1990s, when critics such as Tissoni Benvenuti and Montagnani in their edition of the poem, Jo Ann Cavallo (Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato: An Ethics of Desire, 1993), Neil Harris (Bibliografia dell’Orlando innamorato, 1988–1999), and Marco Praloran (Maraviglioso artificio, 1990), to name a few, started interpreting the poem on its own terms. These studies shed more light on the true innovations of the text: its bold insertion of the two cycles within the tradition of learned literature in Italian, its moral tension, its introduction, within the interlaced narration, of various novelle, its creation of a new world of characters and topoi. The history of the poem is a tale in itself, made of readings, rewritings, and misreadings. A necessary part of this tale is to read the Orlando innamorato before its history. ELEONORA STOPPINO Editions First editions: Orlando innamorato, Reggio Emilia, possibly Modena or Scandiano: Pietro Giovanni del fu Filippo da San Lorenzo, 1482 or 1483 (books one and two, no exemplars survive); Venice, Piero de’ Piasi, 1487 (books one and two); Venice, Cristoforo de Pensis da Mandelo, 1491 (books one and two); as El fin de l’inamoramento d’Orlando, Venezia, Simone Bevilacqua da Pavia, 1495 (third book, cantos I–VIII); Scandiano, Pellegrino de’ Pasquali, 1495 (first complete edition, no exemplars survive). Rewriting: Francesco Berni, Orlando innamorato, nuovamente composto, Venice: Eredi di Lucantonio Giunta, 1541. Critical editions: Orlando Innamorato di Bojardo; Orlando Furioso di Ariosto; With an Essay on the Romantic Poetry of the Italians; Memoirs, and Notes by Antonio Panizzi, London: Pickering, 1830–1831; L’Inamoramento de Orlando, in Opere, edited byAntonia Tissoni Benvenuti and Cristina Montagnani, vol. 1, Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1999. Translation: Orlando Innamorato, translated by Charles Stanley Ross, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

GIOVANNI BOINE Further Reading Alhaique Pettinelli, Rosanna, L’immaginario cavalleresco nel Rinascimento ferrarese, Rome: Bonacci, 1983. Bruscagli, Riccardo, Stagioni della civilta` estense, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1983. Bruscagli, Riccardo (editor), I libri di ‘‘Orlando innamorato,’’ Modena: Panini, 1987. Bruscagli, Riccardo, and Amedeo Quondam (editors), Tipografie e romanzi in Val Padana fra Quattro e Cinquecento. Ferrara, Giornate di Studio 11–13 febbraio 1988, Modena: Panini, 1992. Cavallo, Jo Ann, Boiardo’s ‘‘Orlando innamorato’’: An Ethics of Desire, London and Cranbury, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993. Di Tommaso, Andrea, Structure and ideology in Boiardo’s Orlando inamorato, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.

Durling, Robert, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Harris, Neil, Bibliografia dell’Orlando innamorato, Modena: Panini, 1988–1991. Kisacky, Julia, Magic in Boiardo and Ariosto, New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Praloran, Marco, «Maraviglioso artificio ». Tecniche narrative e rappresentative nell’Orlando innamorato, Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1990. Rajna, Pio, Le fonti dell’Orlando furioso, Florence: Sansoni, 1876. Sangirardi, Giuseppe, Boiardismo ariostesco: presenza e trattamento dell’Orlando innamorato nel Furioso, Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1993. Weaver, Elissa, ‘‘Erotic Language and Imagery in Francesco Berni’s Rifacimento,’’ in MLN, 99, no. 1 (1984): 80–100.

GIOVANNI BOINE (1887–1917) Though a solitary and independent thinker, Giovanni Boine had much in common with members of several literary and cultural groups active in Italy on the threshold of World War I. Like Clemente Rebora and Dino Campana, both of whom he knew and admired, Boine was first and foremost a poet of ecstasy. In his prose poems especially, he scorned logic and pressed language to its limits to attain a more intense and expressionistic apprehension of reality and of the mysteries that lie beyond. Boine could also be compared to the Futurists. Although very unlike him in their enthusiasm for the industrial age just dawning in Italy, and optimistic rather than skeptical about what would come next, the Futurists, too, were determined to break with the past and create new modes of artistic expression. As a contributor to the Florentine journal La voce, moreover, Boine shared in the collective struggle of other ethically committed writers to raise the level of cultural and, in his case, religious discourse in Italy. Boine hailed from the olive country on the Ligurian Riviera between Genoa and the French frontier. Although relatives on his mother’s side were small landholders there, his own economic circumstances were modest at best, and it was only through the help of the Milanese aristocrat Alessandro Casati that he was able to attend the

university. Though he became a member of Casati’s circle of young thinkers concerned with reexamining the tenets of religious belief in Italy, he felt very much the outsider among these wealthy patricians. In addition to his poverty and the sensitivity and acute intelligence that had set him apart from others since childhood, Boine was also mortally ill from tuberculosis and his awareness of this made him an outsider everywhere. A key word in Boine’s writings is ‘‘sano’’ or ‘‘healthy,’’ used in regard to both biological and material matters, and clearly tied to the writer’s own physical condition. Boine’s writings, collected and published only in part during his lifetime, can be considered a vast work in progress rather than a series of completed texts. His miscellaneous prose works include the article ‘‘La crisi degli ulivi in Liguria’’ (The Crisis of the Olive Groves in Liguria, 1911), published in La voce, a lyric evocation, in the context of a contemporary economic crisis, of the Ligurian countryside and the patient and dignified workers who tend the terraced slopes above the sea where olives have been grown for centuries. Published in the periodical L’anima in 1911, ‘‘L’esperienza religiosa’’ (Religious Experience) is a mixture of lyric outbursts and philosophical investigation that concludes with a description not of faith but of the Divinity as ‘‘l’ansia dell’incerto, in ogni definita 269

GIOVANNI BOINE forma, il tremore germinale del vago e del nuovo: una immensa ombra che incombe, che minaccia sul mondo (in cui si divincola il mondo) e che infiltra, che imbeve, che fascia tutte quante le cose’’ (a yearning for the uncertain in every definite form, a germinating tremor for the vague and the new: an immense shadow that hangs over, that threatens the world (and beneath which the world fidgets) and that infiltrates, that soaks, that swaddles everything). In this conceptualization, God is energy, conflict, and above all mystery rather than received truth. Moral struggle is also at the heart of Il peccato (Sin, 1914), a short novel that is perhaps the most finished of all of Boine’s writings. The transgression of the title involves a sensitive, autobiographically inspired young man who, carried away by the singing of a nun in a hillside convent above the sea near his home, persuades the young woman to abandon the cloister and run away to marry him. At the work’s conclusion, the hero has moved successfully from unsatisfied desire and agonized inaction to an act that is certainly a ‘‘sin,’’ but also life affirming and spiritually fruitful. Though not usually included as a major component of the canon of twentieth-century Italian narrative, Il peccato has received high praise from Giorgio Ba`rberiSquarotti, who finds it ‘‘one of the loftiest novels of the entire Italian twentieth-century’’ (‘‘Giovanni Boine,’’ 1994). James Joyce also knew the work, and some have seen connections between it and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published just two years later, in 1916. Frantumi (Smithereens, 1918) is the title that Boine gave the prose poems he wrote at various periods during his life and that were published posthumously in a volume together with his book reviews. Many of these poems were first published in the Riviera ligure, a publication sponsored by another of Rebora’s patrons, the oil merchant Mario Novaro. In them, Milva Maria Cappellini has pointed to ‘‘the prevailing theme of identity— sought out, lost, dissolved by an individual faced with a world that is blind and dumb, but filled with an undecipherable mythology’’ (Il percorso di Giovanni Boine, 2000). Other matters treated include the disturbing disappearance of familiar verities; the passing of time and rush toward an early death for the ill poet; isolation, solitude, and intimations of madness that blur together in a longing for annihilation. The sea, boats, and setting sail as a way of escaping the abyss of an unbearable life are recurring images in these lyrical texts that evoke the Ligurian landscape and shorelines as settings 270

for the poet’s metaphysical anguish. The physical world evoked is itself frequently unstable, even putrid and disgusting but at the same time achingly beautiful. Boine’s style in Frantumi breaks sharply with conventional linguistic practice as he coins new words, jams adjectives together in a way that is not acceptable in usual Italian practice, and inserts bouncing rhymes in the midst of his highly wrought, rhythmical prose. Such a rush of images liberated from conventional syntax is another reminder that Boine was experimenting with language at the same time as the Futurists, though the suffering at the center of his vision gave his writing a loftier cast than their merely aggressive verbal gesticulations. Throughout his brief life, Boine felt tugged by powerful opposing forces. These included the desire to believe and his disgust with the hierarchy of the contemporary church, his thirst for anarchy and a countervailing respect for tradition. Some of these contradictory forces are at work in his Discorsi militari (Military Statements, 1915), a pamphlet praising military service as a manifestation of loyal citizenship and a means for establishing national identity. The only work by this writer that earned him any significant financial rewards, the Discorsi militari have puzzled some later readers not entirely able to reconcile this work’s support of the conflict already in course at the time of its publication with Boine’s generally antiestablishment stance. Boine also left hundreds of lively, well-written, and revealing letters. The four, carefully edited volumes of this correspondence include communications from many of the better-known writers and intellectuals of the period, among them La voce founder Giuseppe Prezzolini, the poets Rebora and Campana, the polygraph and enfant terrible Giovanni Papini, the scandalous novelist and poet Sibilla Aleramo (with whom Boine had a brief affair), the literary critic Emilio Cecchi, and many more. When read with Boine’s poetry and prose, and the nonconformist and very lively book reviews collected as Plausi e botte (Plaudits and Thumps, 1918), the letters provide an open and often fascinating portrait of this sometimes physically challenged but deadly serious, energetic provincial intellectual. Boine’s turbulent personal life often mirrored the more general intellectual and political confusion of pre-Fascist Italy. Dead before he could outgrow his youthful enthusiasms, intransigencies, and follies, Boine is a writer whose attitudes seem adolescent. But they were typical of a moment of dissatisfaction with the existent order

ARRIGO BOITO and remain as fluid examples of the often inchoate and sometimes incoherent attempts at rebellion by an entire generation of dissatisfied young intellectuals and artists.

Essays

Biography

Letters

Born September 2, 1887, in Finale Marina, today Finale Ligure (Savona), a seaside town on the coast of Liguria. Educated in Genoa and then in Milan, where he studied philosophy with Gioacchino Volpe and became acquainted with Alessandro Casati, Clemente Rebora, Giovanni Amendola, and Antonio Banfi. While in Milan, contributed articles to Il Rinnovamento, a journal associated with the ‘‘modernist’’ religious movement that was later suppressed by the Catholic Church. After completing his studies in Milan, moved to Porto Maurizio (today Imperia) on the Ligurian coast, where he worked as a librarian, 1909. Wrote for La voce and became well-acquainted with its editor, Giuseppe Prezzolini, and for La Riviera ligure. Died of tuberculosis in Porto Maurizio (Imperia) on 16 May 1917. CHARLES KLOPP Selected Works Collections Scritti inediti, edited by Giorgio Bertone, Genoa: Il melangolo, 1977. Il peccato. Plausi e botte. Frantumi. Altri scritti, edited by Davide Puccini, Milan: Garzanti, 1983.

Fiction Il peccato ed altre cose, 1914.

Poetry ‘‘Frantumi seguiti da Plausi e botte,’’ 1918. ‘‘Frantumi. I materiali preparatori,’’ edited by Laura Gatti, 1998.

Discorsi militari, 1915. La ferita non chiusa, 1921; expanded edition by Mario Novaro, 1939. Esperienza religiosa, 1948. La citta`, 1994. Carteggio, edited by Margherita Marchione and S. Eugene Scalia, 4 vols., 1971–1979. Lettere – Letras (with Miguel de Unamuno), 1981.

Further Reading Aleramo, Sibilla, Il frustino, Milan: Mondadori, 1932. Ba`rberi-Squarotti, Giorgio, ‘‘Giovanni Boine,’’ in Storia della civilta` letteraria italiana, vol. 5, Turin: UTET, 1994. Benevento, Aurelio, Primo Novecento: saggi su Giovanni Boine e Piero Jahier, Naples: Loffredo, 1986. Bertone, Giorgio, Il lavoro e la scrittura. Saggio in due tempi su Giovanni Boine, Genoa: Il melangolo, 1987. Cappellini, Milva Maria, ‘‘Il percorso di Giovanni Boine,’’ in Giovanni Boine, Esperienza religiosa, Turin: Aragno, 2000. Cassinelli, Giuseppe, Il tormento, la poesia, gli ulivi: note su Giovanni Boine, La riviera ligure e Mario Novaro, Bologna: M. Boni, 1981. Circeo, Ermanno, Ritratto di Boine ed altri saggi, Naples: Guida, 1974. Contini, Gianfranco, ‘‘Alcuni fatti della lingua di Giovanni Boine,’’ in Varianti e altra linguistica, Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Debenedetti, Giacomo, Il romanzo del novecento, Milan: Garzanti, 1971. Guglielminetti, Marziano, ‘‘Boine, Giovanni,’’ in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, edited by Vittore Branca, vol. 1, Turin: UTET, 1986. Luperini, Romano, Il novecento: apparati ideologici, ceto intellettuale, sistemi formali nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, 2 vols., Turin: Loescher, 1981. Raimondi, Ezio, Prime lezioni: Scipio Slataper, Giovanni Boine, edited by Andrea Battistini et al., Bologna: Pendragon, 2004. Rossani, Wolfgango, Tormento di Boine ed altri saggi, Bologna: Alfa, 1959. Viazzi, Glauco, ‘‘Boine nell’oralita` dell’epistolario,’’ in Belfagor, 38, no. 6 (1983): 621–644.

ARRIGO BOITO (1842–1918) A musician, poet, playwright, critic, and writer of short stories and librettos, Arrigo Boito was one of the most complex figures of Italian cultural life in the second half of the nineteenth century. In his

precocious operatic de´but as the poet and composer of Il quattro giugno (The Fourth of June, 1860) and Le sorelle d’Italia (Italy’s Sisters, 1861), he already demonstrated dissatisfaction with 271

ARRIGO BOITO contemporary Italian culture and a need for innovation. He was truly fascinated by the broader European artistic tradition. In the early years of his career—a period marked by his membership in the literary and artistic Milanese movement La Scapigliatura—Boito published a number of articles revealing his extraordinary erudition. An avid reader of a wide variety of literary genres, he admired and studied Dante, Shakespeare, and Victor Hugo throughout his life. The short-lived journal Figaro is the culmination of Boito’s passionate journalistic activity. It was founded by him with Emilio Praga in the beginning of 1864 and became the vanguard of La Scapigliatura’s critical view of Romanticism. Furthermore, Figaro advocated a greater openness toward European culture and reform in Italian opera. According to Boito, it was time to abandon the old operatic conventions because, ‘‘per far breccia nell’avvenire c’e` gran bisogno di pungere, di piegare, di crivellare’’ (in order to break through to the future, one needs to sting, bend, and prick) (‘‘Polemica letteraria,’’ Figaro, 4 February 1864), that is, to demolish all obstacles to innovation. Figaro also publicized the four principles Boito considered fundamental in operatic reform. To begin with, he believed in the complete abolition of the traditional opera formula, namely the aria, rondo`, cabaletta, stretta, ritornello, and pezzo concertato. Instead, he called for the creation of a new dramatic and musical form, free of genre conventions, and for the realization of the greatest tonal and rhythmic development presently possible. Finally, he demanded that the opera be the supreme incarnation of drama (‘‘Cronache dei teatri,’’ Figaro, 21 January 1864). Clearly, these are the very cornerstones of the Wagnerian operatic reform. Yet it cannot be said that Arrigo Boito was strictly an admirer of Wagner. In 1871, Boito wrote Ero e Leandro (Hero and Leander), a Mediterranean alternative to Tristan and Isolde, and, thus, came into direct conflict with the German composer. Then, having quickly abandoned this project, in 1875–1876, Boito wrote a crypto-parodist translation of the Nordic masterpiece in ‘‘i piu` infami versi che siano stati sputati da una penna’’ (the most infamous verses a pen ever scribbled), as he writes in a letter to Eleonora Duse dated 5 June 1888. A cultured man of elitist tastes, a Freemason, and an alchemist, Boito did his best to be misunderstood or even poorly understood by the public. As Angela Ida Villa has recently claimed, Boito’s polysemic works are usually based on esoteric plots 272

(‘‘Arrigo Boito teorico e poeta scapigliato,’’ 1994). Thus, there is much room for ambiguity and mischief in them, which serves the artist well in his conviction that art must be freed from moralistic assumptions. ‘‘Re Orso’’ (King Bear, 1864), for example, is a polymetric narrative poem recounting a sinister fable. The poet’s interest in a wide variety of written forms is revealed in a daring metric and lexical experimentalism, Gnosticism, and complex esoteric symbolism, typical for Boito. Yet, the elaborate form of Boito’s work is unfairly defined as ‘‘an ‘empty mould,’ an exercise of the most sophisticated craftsmanship,’’ by Mario Lavagetto (‘‘Introduzione’’ in A. Boito, Opere, 1979). At first, his short poem is criticized as too gratuitously eccentric, while later, it is believed to demonstrate the author’s intellectual experiments and a certain semantic flimsiness. The critical response to the collection of Boito’s best poems, Il libro dei versi (The Book of Verses, 1877), is identical to that of ‘‘Re Orso’’. The book includes ‘‘Dualismo’’ (Dualism, 1863), which is rich in images and coincidentia oppositorum. Learned Satanism, virulent anti-Catholicism, and Baroque realism come together in this poem. Moreover, ‘‘Dualismo’’ is a firmly anti-Romantic and anticlassicist work. A calculated distortion of figures and concepts leads to intentionally grotesque and ironic endings in a number of the poem’s sections. Moreover, these final lines also reveal the repeated use of aprosdoketon or the effect of scenic surprise. In this context, Boito’s lack of emotional involvement may be viewed as a weakness, but discarding his use of opposites as a mere intellectual amusement might be misleading. In his short stories ‘‘L’alfier nero’’ (The Black Bishop, 1867), ‘‘Iberia’’ (Iberia, 1868), ‘‘Il pugno chiuso’’ (The Closed Fist, 1870), ‘‘La musica in piazza’’ (Music in the Square, 1870–1871), and ‘‘Il trapezio’’ (The Trapeze, 1873–1874), Boito’s poetics is less violent but remains conceptually unchanged. Among those stories, ‘‘Iberia’’ stands out as an aesthetic forerunner of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s prose. Boito’s refined narration is carried out in a decadent style that brings out a mellow and dream-like sensuousness in the text. A story with a significant Templar-Gnostic substratum, ‘‘Iberia’’ ends with the birth of the Antichrist as a result of the alchemic unification of the two young protagonists. Thus, Boito concludes ‘‘Iberia’’ with a universal palingenesis. A distinct decadent style characterizes Boito’s theater as well. The only exception is ‘‘Le madri galanti’’ (The Amorous Mothers, 1863), a weak

ARRIGO BOITO bourgeois comedy written in collaboration with Emilio Praga. While the influence of the French pie`ce a` the`se is easily recognizable in it, this work echoes La Scapigliatura’s experimentalism only linguistically. Likewise, the link between Le madri galanti and Boito’s criticism of Alessandro Manzoni’s use of language is rather superficial. A few years later, Amleto (Hamlet, 1865), a libretto-like adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, was a success. At the opening night, Boito improvised a Sapphic ode, making a toast ‘‘alla salute dell’Arte Italiana! / perche´ la scappi fuora un momentino / dalla cerchia del vecchio e del cretino / giovane e sana’’ (to the health of Italian art! / that it may escape, if just for a moment, / the circles of the old and of the idiots, / and remain young and genuine). Thus, the poet offended Giuseppe Verdi, who broke all relations with him even though the two had written Inno delle Nazioni (The Hymn of Nations, 1862) together only three years before. This bright phase in Boito’s career ended in 1868 with the fiasco of Mefistofele (Mephistopheles) at La Scala in Milan. A synthesis of Goethe’s Faust, this work was intended to be the application of Boito’s theory on reforming opera. As usual, the poetic text is based on esoteric ideas. It, furthermore, reveals the author’s experiments with classical prosody, which were later used by Giosue` Carducci as well. In 1875, Mefistofele was revised and put on stage again in Bologna. Still, after the opera’s initial debacle, Boito preferred to sign his works with the anagram-pseudonym Tobia Gorrio. In the following years, his dramatic works often followed a pattern: The plot was always extravagant while the characters were psychologically abstract. The Gnostic idea of the alchemic wedding of the protagonists also invariably added an esoteric level to the text. Finally, the writing style revealed a restless to and fro between innovation and ironic insertions of conventional structures. Not devoid of esoteric allusions, Boito’s lyrical comedies differ in tone from the rest of his dramatic works. For example, in Ira`m and Basi e bote (Kisses and Blows in Venetian dialect), which were written between 1879 and 1881, Boito finds an expression for his exceptional humoristic talent. During this time he also reconciles with Verdi and writes two libretto masterpieces, namely Otello (Othello, 1887) and Falstaff (1893). It is for these works that Arrigo Boito is best known. Shakespeare was also the starting point of Boito’s stormy artistic and sentimental liaison with actress Eleonora Duse, for whom he translated and adapted Anthony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth.

Immediately after Verdi’s death, Boito published Nerone (Nero, 1901), the ultimate realization of the poet’s artistic journey. Boito worked on it for over 40 years, and this opera embodies his talent for the theatrical, his dramatic and intellectual impulse, and his endless research of aesthetics and esoteric ideas as a foundation for his work. A scrupulous historical reconstruction of imperial Rome, subtly balancing modernity and antiquity, Nerone reveals more than a simple touch of selfirony. It was performed posthumously in 1924 at La Scala, directed by Arturo Toscanini.

Biography Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito was born in Padua, on February 24, 1842. His father, Silvestro, was a painter who died in 1856. His mother, Jo´zefa Karenicka-Radolieska, a Polish countess, died in 1859. Boito was first schooled in Venice. From 1853 to 1861 he studied at the Conservatory of Milan, and then traveled, meeting Verdi, Gounod, and other musicians in Paris. In 1862, he returned to Italy, settled down in Milan, and joined the Scapigliatura movement. In 1866, he fought under the command of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Among his friends at the time were Victor Hugo, Antonio Fogazzaro, Giovanni Verga, Camille Bellaigue, and Arturo Toscanini. Had an affair with actress Eleonora Duse in 1887–1888. In 1890–1891, was appointed honorary director of the Parma Conservatory. He frequently traveled in Italy and Europe. In 1893, he was awarded an honorary degree in music by Cambridge University, England. In 1912, he became a senator of the Italian Kingdom. Died in Milan, June 10, 1918, from angina pectoris. EMANUELE D’ANGELO Selected Works Collections Tutti gli scritti, edited by Piero Nardi, Milan: Mondadori, 1942. Opere, edited by Mario Lavagetto, Milan: Garzanti, 1979. Poesie e racconti, edited by Rodolfo Quadrelli, Milan: Mondadori, 1981. Opere letterarie, edited by Angela Ida Villa, Milan: IPL, 1996.

Poetry ‘‘Inno delle Nazioni,’’ 1862. ‘‘Re Orso,’’ 1864; other editions, 1873, 1877, 1902. ‘‘Il libro dei versi,’’ 1877; new edition, 1902.

Opera Il quattro giugno, 1860. Le sorelle d’Italia, 1861.

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ARRIGO BOITO Mefistofele, 1868; new edition, 1875; as Mefistofele, translated by Theophilus Marzials, 1880; 1920. Nerone, 1901; new edition, 1924.

Libretti Amleto, 1865; new edition, 1871. Un tramonto, 1873. La falce, 1875. La gioconda, 1876; new edition, 1880; as La gioconda, translated by Henry Hersee, 1883. Ero e Leandro, 1879; new edition, 1896; as Ero e Leandro, translated by Mowbray Marras, 1896. Otello, 1887; as Otello, translated by Francis Hueffer, 1887; translated by Walter Ducloux, 1963; in Giuseppe Verdi, Seven Verdi Librettos, translated by William Weaver, 1973. Pier Luigi Farnese, 1891. Falstaff, 1893; as Falstaff, translated by William Beatty Kingston, 1894; in Giuseppe Verdi, Seven Verdi Librettos, translated by William Weaver, 1973; translated by Andrew Porter, 1979. Basi e bote, 1914. Ira`m, edited by Piero Nardi, 1942. Semira, edited by Piero Nardi, 1942.

Plays Le madri galanti, 1863 (with Emilio Praga).

Fiction L’alfier nero, 1867. Iberia, 1868. Il pugno chiuso, 1870. La musica in piazza, 1870–1871 Il trapezio, 1873–1874

Translations Richard Wagner, Rienzi, 1869. Richard Wagner, La cena degli apostoli, 1872. Michail Glinka, Ruslano e Ludmilla, 1875. Richard Wagner, Tristano e Isotta, 1876; new edition, 1888 (with Angelo Zanardini). William Shakespeare, Antonio e Cleopatra, edited by Laura Vazzoler, 1973.

William Shakespeare, Giulietta e Romeo, edited by Laura Vazzoler, 1984. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, edited by Laura Vazzoler, 1984.

Letters Lettere, edited by Raffaello De Rensis, 1932. Lettere inedite e poesie giovanili, edited by Frank Walker, 1959. Carteggio Verdi-Boito, edited by Mario Medici and Marcello Conati, 1978; as The Verdi-Boito Correspondence, translated by William Weaver, 1994. Lettere d’amore (to Eleonora Duse), edited byRaul Radice, 1979.

Further Reading Ashbrook, William, and Gerardo Guccini, Mefistofele di Arrigo Boito, Milan: Ricordi, 1998. D’Angelo, Emanuele, ‘‘Il Tristan und Isolde di Boito,’’ in Ero e Leandro: Tragedia lirica in due atti di Arrigo Boito, edited by Emanuele D’Angelo, Bari: Palomar, 2004. Farinelli, Giuseppe, ‘‘Arrigo Boito (1842–1918),’’ in La Scapigliatura: Profilo storico, protagonisti, documenti, Rome: Carocci Editore, 2003. Lavagetto, Mario, ‘‘Introduzione’’ in Arrigo Boito, in Opere, Milan: Garzanti, 1979. Maeder, Costantino, Il real fu dolore e l’ideal sogno: Arrigo Boito e i limiti dell’arte, Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2002. Morelli, Giovanni (editor), Arrigo Boito, Florence: Olschki, 1994. Nardi, Piero, Vita di Arrigo Boito, Milan: Mondadori, 1942. Tintori, Giampiero (editor), Arrigo Boito musicista e letterato, Milan: Nuove Edizioni, 1986. Villa, Angela Ida, ‘‘Arrigo Boito massone, gnostico, alchimista, negromante,’’ in Otto/Novecento, 3–4 (1992): 5–51. Villa, Angela Ida, ‘‘Arrigo Boito teorico e poeta scapigliato,’’ in Otto/Novecento, 2 (1994): 135–195.

CAMILLO BOITO (1836–1914) The intellectual figure Camillo Boito must be characterized by diverse descriptions—designer-architect, teacher, art and literary critic—which are all united by an extraordinary capacity to observe the contemporary world. Accused of being superficial and eclectic, in reality Boito was able to understand the complexities and varied nature of his own times. His skill in describing and analyzing the 274

real meanings of the contemporary world are illustrated in his theoretic works. The cultural activity he carried out, along with his teaching and research in history and theory, exceeded the limits of his architectural production. Opposing the tired eclecticism prevalent in Italian architecture of the time, which he considered to be an evident consequence of the deterioration of Romanticism, he strongly

CAMILLO BOITO advocated a renewal of the Italian architectural culture. Boito intended to highlight what are for him the fundamental components in architecture, which he defines as ‘‘the organic part and the symbolic part,’’ meaning with the first the logical framework that is dependent upon distributive and functional qualities as well as to the structural and material elements of the building, and meaning with the symbolic part the aesthetic qualities of the architecture. His didactic activity was long and constant, both at the Brera Academy in Milan— of which he became president, remaining in this capacity up until his death—and at the Polytechnic Institute, where he taught for 43 consecutive years, first teaching history of architecture, then embossment and restoration, and later style and finally architecture. Boito was present and often even arbitrator in almost all the most important architectural debates of the united Italy: from the competition for the new fac¸ade of the Cathedral of Milan to the events for the completion of the Cathedral of Florence, from the monument dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II to the Justice Building of Rome. In the field of restoration, Boito emphasized respect for history, meaning reverence for the formal stratifications caused by the successive epochs of the same building. His stance clearly differed from that of Viollet-le-Duc and of John Ruskin as it supported the conservation and absolute respect for the monument as historic testimony as well as a product of a specific style. He proposed discreet interventions that provided for consolidation and, in the most difficult cases, reparation with different materials with the intent, however, to not alter the appearance of the work. He also collaborated with art and cultural journals; from 1865 to 1899 he was involved with the artistic and literary review for Nuova Antologia, and he periodically wrote for L’Illustrazione Italiana; his writings about various topics, including literary and musical subjects, appeared in Lo Spettatore. He attributed a noteworthy importance to the minor arts, teaching them and editing several volumes about them, but above all directing the journal Arte italiana decorativa e industriale, from July 1892 until the last issue in December 1911. Unique in its kind in Italy, this journal was for more than a decade among the first European journals to provide graphic models for industry. Boito’s narrative experience, though marginal with respect to his overall cultural production, reveals an authentic writing ability. In his first volume, Storielle vane (Vain Little Stories, 1876), seven short stories, pictorial in nature, recall the

atmosphere of the Milanese Scapigliatura; the taste for the fantastic and the macabre is accompanied by a vivacious interest for the visual arts and for the figure of the artist, often the protagonist of the narrated action. His second volume, Senso. Nuove storielle vane (Senso and Other Stories, 1883) is a more mature writing effort that demonstrates how the verismo movement influenced his new manner of narrating. His most famous novella, Senso, is in some ways a small masterpiece: It recounts, with force and coherence, the story of an unprincipled and cruel noblewoman, the lover of a cynical Austrian officer, with the Venice of the historical crisis of the wars of independence in the background. In 1953, the director Luchino Visconti adapted this work into the celebrated film of the same name, which accentuates the climate of bitter decadence. In the short story, Il maestro di setticlavio (The Master of the Setticlavio), published in Nuova Antologia in 1891, Boito nostalgically elicits the Venetian musical life of his childhood and introduces several autobiographical elements from his youth spent in the lagoon city where, together with his brother, he received a good musical education.

Biography Born in Rome on October 30, 1836, oldest of two brothers (Arrigo) of Silvestro and the Polish Countess Giuseppina Raolinska; at the age of 14, frequented courses at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice with professors Francesco Lazzari and Pietro Selvatico, where in 1856 was appointed adjunct faculty member in the Department of Architecture; in 1860, became full professor in architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera in Milan, which he held until 1909; also taught at the Politecnico from 1862 to 1908; in 1862, married his cousin Cecilia Guillaume and, in 1887, Madonnina Malaspina of the Marchionesses of Portogruaro; enjoyed a long activity as a designer, participating in important competitions, such as that for the job of the square of the Cathedral in Milan; in 1861, restored the Pusterla of Porta Ticinese in Milan; in 1965, constructed the new cemetery of Gallarate and, from 1873 to 1880, executed three demanding works in Padova: the Debite palace, the entrance and staircase of the Civic Museum, and the elementary schools of the Reggia Carrarese; in 1882 in Venice, completed the large staircase in the Cavalli Franchetti palace with precious materials in the neoGothic style; worked at length on Donatello’s altar in Saint Anthony’s Basilica in Padova, where in 1895 also designed the bronze doors; last work 275

CAMILLO BOITO was the Casa di riposo for musicians, desired by Giuseppe Verdi, completed in Milan in 1899; as a narrator Boito published numerous short stories and travel journals; died in Milan on June 28, 1914. MARIA IDA BIGGI Selected Works Fiction Storielle vane, 1876. Senso. Nuove storielle vane, 1883; edited by Piero Nardi, 1961; Senso and Other Stories, translated by Christine Donaugher, 1993. Il maestro di setticlavio, 1891.

Art Writing I restauri e la ricchezza dell’arte vecchia a Verona e a Padova, in Nuova Antologia, June 1873. Architettura del Medio Evo in Italia, 1880. Gite d’un artista, 1884. I restauratori, 1884.

Questioni pratiche di Belle Arti, 1893. I principi del disegno e gli stili dell’ornamento, 1910.

Further Reading Agosti, Giacomo, and Costanza Mangione (editors), Camillo Boito e il sistema delle arti, Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2002. Borlenghi, Aldo, Narrativa dell’Ottocento, Milan: Goliardica, 1961. Castellani, Francesca, and Guido Zucconi (editors), Camillo Boito, un’architettura per l’Italia unita, Venice: Marsilio, 2000. Crippa, Maria Antonietta (editor), Camillo Boito: Il nuovo e l’antico in architettura, Milan: Jaca Books, 1989. Grassi, Liliana, Camillo Boito, Milan: Il Balcone, 1956. Maderna, Marco, Camillo Boito: pensiero sull’architettura e dibattito coevo, Milan: Guerini, 1995. Nardi, Piero, ‘‘Camillo Boito narratore,’’ in Lettere italiane, 11, no. 2 (1959): 217–223. Zucconi, Guido, and Tiziana Serena (editors), Camillo Boito: un protagonista dell’Ottocento italiano, Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2002.

BOLOGNA The chief city of the Emilia Romagna region, Bologna bases much of its own cultural image on the role played by a nine-century-old university, among the oldest in Europe, which from its beginnings develops the study of grammar, rhetoric, and legal research. Between the twelfth and thirteenth century, the dictatores, the initiators of the exegesis of the Justinian Corpus iuris, and the theoretical systematization of the law, made Bologna into the European capital of jurisprudence. Among these theorists are Irnerio, Adalberto Samaritano, and Ugo da Bologna. Meanwhile, between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an intense effort began to translate the classics into the vernacular, which was thereby elevated into a complex language and form. There emerged a group of rhymers, among whom stand out Onesto da Bologna and Guido Guinizzelli, one of the initiators of the Stilnovo. In the first decades of the fourteenth century, Bologna became one of the centers of Dante scholarship, with the commentaries of Graziolo de’ Bambagliuoli on the Inferno and especially those of Iacopo della Lana on the entire Commedia. However, there occurred a 276

profound crisis in the university, which was shaken by internal ideological disagreements and by the repression directed by the church, even during the Avignon captivity, against any theoretical and scientific innovation. Later, it was Cardinal Egidio Albornoz who would restore the fortunes of the studio by establishing the Department of Theology and encouraging the opening of the colleges to host foreign students (among them the Collegio di Spagna, founded in 1364 and still active today). Legal studies, along with grammar and rhetoric, also began to flourish again, now imbued with the doctrine of Petrarch and Boccaccio. One famous teacher of the period was Benvenuto da Imola, a pupil of Petrarch and one of the principal commentators on the Commedia. The transition from the Comune to the Signoria in 1401, with the definitive supremacy of the Bentivoglio family in 1454, saw first another decline in the university’s fame, and then the growth of a profound work of renewal that led to the flowering of ‘‘academic humanism,’’ in which exegetes and scholars such as Antonio Urceo detto Codro,

BOLOGNA Francesco dal Pozzo, and Filippo Beroaldo Senior and Junior emerged. Along with Latin, room was given to culture in the vernacular, supported by the patronage of the Bentivoglios. Out of this setting came the Porretane (1483), by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (ca. 1445–1510), a collection of 61 novelle narrated by members of the nobility at Porretta over five days in 1475. In addition, an intense publishing industry developed, sustained by the university demands and the cultural policies of Giovanni II Bentivoglio, who had numerous printing presses running in Bologna, and that included among its most noteworthy products Ptolemy’s Cosmography, along with texts on law and medicine. With the end of the Bentivoglios in 1506, and the definitive return of the church, Bologna’s phase of humanistic civilization came to an end. The cultural models changed in the sixteenth century. Family-run typographical enterprises were set up that diffuse classical and humanistic texts, treatises on law, philosophical and scientific works, and texts on Christianity, but also those popularizing heterodox doctrines, which are consequently subject to rigorous control in the age of the CounterReformation. During the first half of the 1500s, the debate between Latin and the vernacular, of whether or not to adopt the Ciceronian model, remained alive. In the middle of the sixteenth century, various literary academies were born, though they did not produce any important achievements. On the other hand, the theater was rather lively, in the form of the public festivals organized on the occasion of solemn events, often with the staging of comedies, as in 1530 with Agostino Ricchi’s I tre tiranni (The Three Tyrants) for the coronation of Charles V. But it is above all the piazza festivals (like the famous Porchetta), the jousts, and the tournaments that animated Bolognese life. The decline of legal studies corresponded to the growth of philosophical, historical, geographical, and scientific interests, above all with Pietro Pomponazzi’s De Immortalitate animae (On the Immortality of the Soul, 1516), Leandro Alberti’s monumental Descrittione di tutta Italia (A Description of All of Italy, 1550), as well as Carlo Sigonio (an investigator of antiquity) and Ulisse Aldrovandi, the founder of a rich museum and botanical garden (1568) and the creator of an observatory that opened the path for the Galilean method. However, at the beginning of the seventeenth century an ecclesiastical restoration mobilized against this scientific method, and provoked another period of crisis for the university. This crisis notwithstanding,

individual personalities were still able to take shape, such as the doctor and biologist Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694). Various academies emerged as a counterweight to the declining university, among them, in the scientific field, that of the Inquieti (1690), and later the Accademia delle Scienze (1711). Furthermore, the literary, musical, and artistic academies endured; musical drama and oratorios achieved great success; and a literary trend emerged that had its benchmark in the Accademia dei Gelati and in the figure of Giovanbattista Marino (1569–1625), without, however, elevating itself to the level of a school. Bologna remained, therefore, within the limits of a provincialism that is little inclined to new experimentation, and that preserved the poetic heritage of a prudent moralistic classicism. Ultimately, the most prominent figure was Giulio Cesare Croce (1550–1609), the author of Bertoldo (1606) and Bertoldino (1608), a witty testimony of the daily life of the lower classes. At the other end of the century, important cultural experimentation found expression in the stage setting and theatrical architecture choreographed by the brothers Ferdinando and Francesco Bibiena, the founders of a dynasty that imposed all throughout Europe the model of the scenography ‘‘seen from an angle’’ that is able to create illusionary effects. In Bologna, the Arcadia found an active representative in the lyric poet and playwright Pier Jacopo Martello (1665–1727), who proposed a modern form of versification (the heptasyllabic instead of the free hendecasyllables) that was inspired by the French alexandrine. The theater was still a considerable presence in the second half of the eighteenth century: The count Francesco Albergati Capacelli, a cultured amateur and supporter of democratic ideals, enjoyed relations with Carlo Goldoni, Vittorio Alfieri, Giuseppe Baretti, and Carlo Gozzi, but above all with Voltaire. In a city controlled by the church, however, the culture of the Enlightenment was not able to penetrate effectively; the literature of this period was barely touched by new ideas. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that there was in Bologna a true cultural flowering, which coincided with the appointment of the university chair of Italian literature to Giosue` Carducci in 1860. Thanks to Carducci’s teaching, Bologna became the intellectual capital of Italy. Two classical licei (high schools) were established (Galvani and Minghetti), whose role was the formation of the new ruling class. The publishing house Zanichelli opened in 1866, and became another Carduccian 277

BOLOGNA place: It was not simply a commercial enterprise, but a true literary caffe`. In 1887, along with Carducci’s Odi barbare (The Barbarian Odes), there came out the erotic collection Postuma by Lorenzo Stecchetti, a pseudonym of Olindo Guerrini (1845– 1916), the first of the poets of the Carduccian school, which boasted many other authors, among whom is noted Enrico Panzacchi, an intellectual with multiple interests (music, painting, poetry). When Carducci died, his university chair passed in 1905 to his most famous pupil, Giovanni Pascoli, who, just as ideologically committed as his teacher, marked out another path that was decisive for the image of modern Bologna and of Italian literature, through a poetics that foreshadows later stylistic and formal experimentations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the progressive decline of the Carduccian school, the cultural primacy of Bologna ceased to exist, though the city did generate novelists such as Adolfo Albertazzi and Alfredo Panzini and poets such as Renato Serra. The university was no longer the undisputed center of the city’s intellectual life, and its function was replaced by periodicals and cultural journalism. Among the many newspapers were La raccolta, founded in 1919 by Giuseppe Raimondi, which opposed Futurism, and Il resto del Carlino, which was established in 1885 but expanded into a national daily under the management of Mario Missiroli between 1919 and 1921. In a period of social tension and postwar crisis, Il resto del Carlino maintained its terza pagina (third page) open to intellectuals such as Georges Sorel, Piero Gobetti, Adriano Tilgher, Benedetto Croce, Filippo Turati, and Claudio Treves. It was a brief season that was harshly snuffed out by the advent of Fascism and by the expulsion of Missiroli. The subsequent cultural journalism boasted titles such as L’Italiano (1926) of Leo Longanese, balanced between provincialism and refined intellectual presences; Vita Nova (1925), founded by the Fascist Leandro Arpinati; L’orto (1931), born under the influence of journalist and politician Giuseppe Bottai, which became training ground for young intellectuals. Fascism welcomed the adherence of classicist academics, but intellectual autonomy was restricted. Still, prestigious figures were able to emerge: the philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo, the jurist Arturo Carlo Jemolo, the art historian Roberto Longhi. But the racial laws of 1938 practically emptied out the university, which was populated by teachers and students of Jewish descent. The 278

students belonging to the Gruppo Universitario Fascista (GUF) nevertheless reacted to the widespread conformism through the pages of Architrave (1940), a journal that openly rejected the denigration of contemporary art and poetry, before it was shut down by the regime. Also in 1942, under the group name ‘‘Antonio Labriola,’’ a political-cultural initiative was born whose mouthpiece was the journal Tempi nuovi, which, at the height of the world conflict, advocated social, economic, and cultural changes. This initiative failed nevertheless in the immediate postwar period, with the advent of a city government formed by leftists who lacked a broad vision for the future. During the 1950s, there was a profound renewal that extended beyond politics. Catholic culture produced a Centro di Documentazione (1952), which was later transformed into the Istituto per le Scienze Religiose (1960), and into the journal Il Regno. In 1951, the first number of the periodical Il Mulino came out, the work of a group of young university intellectuals who, three years later, created the eponymous publishing house and who introduced into political culture the innovations of sociological, anthropological, and economic studies. Among the founders were Antonio Santucci, Luigi Pedrazzi, and Nicola Matteucci. Later, they will include Ezio Raimondi and Gino Guigni, who shared secular and Catholic reformist visions, and established a dialogue with the Catholic antiFascism parliamentarian Giuseppe Dossetti. In the meantime, Il resto del Carlino refurbished its own image under the leadership of the liberal Mazzinian Giovanni Spadolini (1955–1968). The reinvigoration of Bolognese culture during the second half of the twentieth century was also attested to by other publishing houses (Cappelli, Nuova Alfa, CLUEB Pa`tron), as well as the glorious Zanichelli. But it was still the cultural journals that signaled an intellectual commitment, which existed side-by-side with a reorganization of the university into close harmony with the city’s policies: Opinione (1956), Il Verri of Luciano Anceschi (originally established in Milan in 1956), Rendiconti (1961), Lingua e stile (1966), Impegno presente (1960), Classe e Stato (1965), and more recently, Intersezioni (1981). These publications give space to the neoavant-garde, linguistic structuralism, semiology, as well as new philosophical and psychoanalytical trends, and Marxist political intellectuals. Among the many writers (several are university professors) who regularly contribute are Alberto Arbasino,

BOLOGNA Umberto Eco, Renato Barilli, Alfredo Giuliani, Angelo Guglielmi, and Gianni Celati. Therefore journals became a vital component of Italian culture, in particular Officina, a bimonthly of poetry founded by Roberto Roversi, Francesco Leonetti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, which is published by the antiquarian bookstore Palmaverde (owned by Roversi himself), a veritable workshop of poetic apprenticeship situated in a street with a prophetic name: Via de’ Poeti. Officina carries a spirit of renewal that is opposed both to the official nineteenth-century tradition and to postwar neorealism, whose theoretical failure it denounced. Its declared ‘‘new task’’ begins with the cultural modification of reality in order to erase the distance between writer and society, between politics and culture. Its contributors include Carlo Emilio Gadda, Franco Fortini, Paolo Volponi, Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, and Leonardo Sciascia. In this climate of a cultural city-laboratory (which also comprises sociologist Achille Ardigo`, economists Romano Prodi and Beniamino Andreatta, psychologists Renzo Canestrari and Gianfranco Minguzzi), the 1970s witnessed the inauguration of one of the most advanced academic curricula undertakings in Italy: the DAMS (Discipline delle Arti, della Musica, e dello Spettacolo), inspired by the work of the Greek scholar Benedetto Marzullo. It is an atypical institution in the field of humanistic studies, based on a project that merges the many languages of contemporary neoexperimentation and mass media, while promoting a renovation of traditional methodologies. Alfredo Giuliani, Umberto Eco, Furio Colombo, Renato Barilli, Gianni Celati, and Gianni Riotta are some of the intellectuals brought to teach there, alongside directors (Luigi Squarzina), musicologists and musicians (Luigi Rognoni, Roberto Leydi, Aldo Clementi), theater and film critics (Fabrizio Cruciani, Claudio Meldolesi, Giuliano Scabia, Adelio Ferrero), to name only a few. Thanks to DAMS as well, the cultural profile of Bologna changed radically during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Not only for the flowering of new enterprises, above all in the theater and the cinema, but for establishing in 1974 the regional Istituto per i Beni Artistici, Culturali e Naturali (IBC), which, among other things, produced during the 1980s a research project on the eighteenthcentury Emilia Romagna. Beginning in 1988, with a series of multidisciplinary initiatives on the occasion of the ninth centenary of the university, the relationship between the city and the academy was

consolidated and culminated in the choice of Bologna, along with eight other cities selected by the European Community, as the European city of culture in the year 2000. DANIELE SERAGNOLI Further Reading Ady, Cecilia M., I Bentivoglio, Milan: Dall’Oglio, 1968. Anselmi, Gian Mario, and Alberto Bertoni, ‘‘L’Emilia e la Romagna,’’ in Letteratura Italiana. Storia e Geografia, vol. 3, L’eta` contemporanea, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 1989. Avellini, Luisa, ‘‘Cultura e societa` in Emilia Romagna,’’ in Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unita` a oggi. L’EmiliaRomagna, edited by Roberto Finzi, Turin: Einaudi, 1997. Avellini, Luisa et al. (editors), Sapere e/e potere. Discipline, dispute e professioni nell’Universita` medievale e moderna: il caso bolognese a confronto, Atti del 4 Convegno, Bologna, 13–15 aprile 1989, 3 vols., Bologna: ComuneIstituto per la Storia di Bologna, 1991. Basile, Bruno (editor), Bentivolorum magnificentia: principe e cultura a Bologna nel Rinascimento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1984. Berselli, Aldo (editor), Storia dell’Emilia Romagna, 3 vols., Imola: University Press Bologna, 1975–1980. Berselli, Aldo (editor), Editoria e Universita` a Bologna tra Ottocento e Novecento, Atti del 5 Convegno, Bologna, 26–27 gennaio 1990, Bologna: Comune-Istituto per la Storia di Bologna, 1991. Calore, Marina, Bologna a teatro: vita di una citta` attraverso i suoi spettacoli 1400–1800, Bologna: Guidicini e Rosa, 1981. Capitani, Ovidio et al. (editors), L’Universita` a Bologna, 2 vols., Bologna: Cassa di Risparmio, 1987–1988. Cremante, Renzo, and Walter Tega (editors), Scienza e letteratura nella cultura del Settecento, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984. Dionisotti, Carlo, ‘‘Regioni e letteratura,’’ in Storia d’Italia. I documenti, vol. 2, edited by Ruggiero Romano, and Corrado Vivanti, Turin: Einaudi, 1973. Fasoli, Gina, and Mario Saccenti (editors), Carducci a Bologna, Bologna: Cassa di Risparmio, 1985. Federzoni, Luigi, Bologna carducciana, Bologna: Cappelli, 1961. Ferrarotti, Franco, and John Fraser, Pci e intellettuali a Bologna in Studi sul rapporto cultura e societa`, edited by Franco Ferrarotti, vol. 4, Naples: Liguori, 1982. Ferretti, Gian Carlo, ‘‘Officina.’’ Cultura, letteratura e politica negli anni cinquanta, Turin: Einaudi, 1975. Lenzi, Deanna, and Jadranka Bentini (editors), I Bibiena. Una famiglia europea, Venice: Marsilio, 2000. Malatesta, Maria, ‘‘Il Resto del Carlino.’’ Potere politica ed economia a Bologna dal 1885 al 1922, Parma: Guanda, 1978. Oldrini, Guido, and Walter Tega (editors), Filosofia e scienza a Bologna tra il 1860 e il 1920, Bologna: Cappelli, 1990.

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BOLOGNA Piana, Celestino, Nuovi documenti sull’Universita` di Bologna e sul Collegio di Spagna, Bologna: Publicaciones del Real Colegio de Espan˜a, 1976. Raimondi, Ezio, Codro e l’Umanesimo a Bologna, Bologna: Zuffi, 1950. Ricci, Giovanni, Bologna, Bari: Laterza, 1985. Saccenti, Mario (editor), Carducci e la letteratura italiana. Studi per il centocinquantenario della nascita di Giosue` Carducci, Atti del Convegno di Bologna, 11–12–13 ottobre 1985, Padua: Antenore, 1988.

Sorbelli, Albano, I Bentivoglio: signori di Bologna, Bologna: Cappelli, 1969; rpt. 1987. Tega, Walter (editor), Storia illustrata di Bologna, 8 vols., Repubblica di San Marino: AIEP Editore, 1987–1991. Trezzini, Lamberto (editor), Due secoli di vita musicale: storia del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 2 vols., Bologna: Alfa, 1966. Verti, Roberto, Il Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Milan: Electa, 1998. Zangheri, Renato (editor), Bologna, Bari: Laterza, 1986.

MAURO BOLOGNINI (1922–2001) Italian criticism quickly included Mauro Bolognini in the ranks (often reviled and, in any case, regarded with suspicion) of the formalists. An architect with a degree in stage design from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, as well as an assistant director in Italy and France, Bolognini never showed off his own cultural credentials. He started modestly as an assistant to Luigi Zampa in 1948 and then debuted working on lightweight comedies in the early 1950s. His first film was Ci troviamo in galleria (Let’s Meet on the Balcony, 1953), but he refused to cultivate the shameless vulgarity of the traditional comedies, unlike the cinematic hirelings. It was only in 1959 that he began attracting attention, under the banner of literature. Bolognini is credited for revealing to the Italian cinema the talent of Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose ‘‘scandalous’’ first novel, Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi, 1955), about the life of the underclasses inhabiting the Roman slums, is at the root of La notte brava (Night Heat), with a screenplay by the writer himself, while the following year, Alberto Moravia’s Racconti romani (Roman Tales, 1954) offer the subject matter for La giornata balorda (A Crazy Day), scripted by Pasolini and Moravia himself. They are two stories of wild young boys in search of a future, set among Rome’s working class and subproletariat. They are tragic characters in their atavistic indolence and sullen bluster, which Bolognini transfers to the screen with great accuracy, with a kind of pictorial complacency and great narrative sharpness that certainly border on formalism but which do not themselves constitute formalism. They, rather, attest to the commitment—both 280

cultural and ideological—of an intellectual who strives to practice cinema with a close realistic gaze filtered through the rigor of the production (the precise portrayal of characters and of setting, suggestive photography, a constantly monitored rhythm that never becomes an end in itself). This commitment, which is of entirely literary descent, is far from the neorealist movement that had just come to an end, and is inclined toward the subtle pleasures of classicism. The dry, immediate, often brutal realism that imposes itself on the glorious path of postwar Italian cinema is not congenial to him: He cannot tolerate the simplistic manipulation and flavor of raw discovery of the world, which cannot but conflict with his temperament as a patient lover of order. Bolognini’s films would not always be so rigorous (the industry has demands that are not easily reconciled with artists’ fidelity to their own inspiration). This occurred on at least five occasions, all tributaries of literature (like a great deal of the director’s filmography). They are five little gems, which are adapted from a sarcastic novel by Vitaliano Brancati about the sexual obsessions of an impotent southern male, Il bell’Antonio (Bell’Antonio, 1960); from a novel by the more cynical Moravia focused on a boy’s sentimental education, Agostino (1962); from a naturalistic story by Mario Pratesi, a minor Tuscan writer of the nineteenth century, La viaccia (The Lovemakers, 1961); from one of the most lucidly existential masterpieces of Italo Svevo, Senilita` (As a Man Grows Older, 1962); and, finally, from an ambitious novel by Vasco Pratolini— almost a social panorama—that the director envelops in the luminous Florentine atmosphere of the

MAURO BOLOGNINI beginning of the twentieth century, at the time of the first great trade-union struggles, Metello (1970). All are shot in black-and-white, with the exception of the last, whose figurative look is inspired by the paintings of the Florentine artistic movement named macchiaioli. All disclose a cultivated feeling for the visual portrayals of certain Italian cities and landscapes. They are all portraits of men who are suffering, inept, or wounded by destiny: Masks or marionettes of a life—of a society, a psychology—that are in danger at every step of losing their way in the attempt to gain, or to brush up against, freedom. Beneath the veneer of a severe classicism there rumbles an indefinable disquiet—a hidden neurosis, one might say. The wretched and mocked protagonist of Il bell’Antonio, played by Marcello Mastroianni, hides within himself a malaise that gives a meaning to the clinical case that is the object of Brancati’s satire. The precocious nastiness depicting the sexual and intellectual awakening of the young boy Agostino, who, neglected by his mother, gives in to the temptation of adventure— a piece of moralism that recalls Vittorio De Sica’s I bambini ci guardano (The Children Are Watching Us, 1944)—proves to be something more than an initiation into adult life. Similarly in La viaccia, Bolognini’s clever cinematic reconstruction of ‘‘time lost’’ unfolds the story of a peasant family from Tuscany shattered in the clash between country and city, between patriarchal styles of life and those of the ascending bourgeois class. Although La viaccia does not transcend the limits of a small melodrama, Bolognini’s polished presentation of the portrait of the defenseless Emilio and of a gray, uninviting Trieste at the center of Svevo’s Senilita` (1898) often comes close to the bitterness of an irremediable desperation. Even though it is rougher and brighter, less enclosed within a neurotic introspection, the pathos-filled panorama of Metello denounces, at each turn of the story, the plight of characters condemned to struggle each day to hold onto the improbable thread of their proletarian existence. This, perhaps, is Bolognini’s narrative leitmotif. This is the reason for his successes, as of his failed attempts: from Bubu` (1971), Gran Bollito (Black Journal, 1977) to La venexiana (The Venetian Woman, 1981), La villa del venerdı` (In Excess, 1992); and of his search for difficult themes as in Fatti di gente per bene (The Murri Affair, 1974), Libera, amore mio...! (Libera, My Love, 1975), Per le antiche scale (Down the Ancient Stairs, 1975), and L’eredita` Ferramonti (The Inheritance, 1976).

For Bolognini, filmmaking means being always in a condition of extreme freedom. Sometimes freedom, however tenaciously sought, does not let itself be captured—because it is too elusive, or too remote from the director’s temperament.

Biography Born in Pistoia, 28 June 1922. Studied architecture at the University of Florence; then attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, section of art direction. Worked as assistant director in Italy and in France, 1948–1952; awarded the Golden Sail for Il bell’ Antonio at the Festival of Locarno, 1960; and for the best director at the Festival of St. Sebastian for Senilita`, 1962; directed Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, 1964; prize for the best director for Madamigella di Maupin at the Festival of St. Sebastian, 1966; directed Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, 1972; special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival for Per le antiche scale, 1975; directed Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Teatro Romano in Verona, 1975; worked for RAI, the national Italian television (operas and miniseries) 1977–1995; member of the Jury of the Festival of Cannes, 1985; awarded the Ecumenical Jury Prize for Mosca addio at the Montre´al Film Festival, 1987; directed Luigi Pirandello’s I giganti della montagna at the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento, 1989; Franc¸ois Truffaut award at the Giffoni Film Festival, 1990; David di Donatello for career achievement, 1999. Died in Rome on 14 May 2001. CRISTINA BRAGAGLIA Selected Works Films Ci troviamo in galleria, 1953. Gli innamorati, 1955. Giovani mariti, 1958. La notte brava (Night Heat, based on the novel Ragazzi di vita by Pier Paolo Pasolini), 1959. Il bell’Antonio (Bell’Antonio, based on Vitaliano Brancati’s novel), 1960. La giornata balorda (A Crazy Day or From a Roman Balcony, based on Racconti romani by Alberto Moravia), 1960. La viaccia (The Lovemakers, based on the novel L’eredita` by Mario Pratesi), 1961. Agostino (based on Alberto Moravia’s novel), 1962. Senilita` (Senilita` or Careless, based on Italo Svevo’s novel), 1962. Madamigella di Maupin (based on The´ophile Gautier’s novel), 1966. Le streghe (episode Senso civico), 1967.

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MAURO BOLOGNINI Un bellissimo novembre (based on Ercole Patti’s novel), 1969. L’assoluto naturale (based on Goffredo Parise’s play), 1969. Bubu` (based on Bubu` de Montparnasse by Charles Louis Philippe), 1970. Metello (based on Vasco Pratolini’s novel), 1970. Libera, amore mio...!, 1973. Fatti di gente per bene, 1974. Per le antiche scale (based on Mario Tobino’s novel), 1975. L’eredita` Ferramonti (based on Gaetano Carlo Chelli’s novel), 1976. Gran bollito, 1977. La storia vera della signora delle camelie, 1980. Mosca addio, 1987.

Screenplays La viaccia, edited by Pietro Bianchi, Bologna: Cappelli, 1961, rpt. 1978.

Further Readings Bolognini, Rome: Ministero delgi Affari Esteri, 1977. Di Montezemola, Vittorio Cordero (editor), Bolognini, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1977. Frintino, Antonio, and Pier Marco De Santi, Mauro Bolognini. Cinema tra letteratura, pittura e musica. Restauro del film ‘‘La viaccia,’’ Pistoia: Brigata del Leoncino, 1997. Frintino, Antonio (editor), Mosca addio: Storia di Ida Nudel ebrea russa dissidente deportata, Pistoia: Brigata del Leoncino, 2000. Micciche`, Lino (editor), Il bell’Antonio di Mauro Bolognini: Dal romanzo al film, Turin: Lindau, 1996. Natta, Enzo (editor), Mauro Bolognini il fascino della forma, Rome: ANCCI, 1996.

GINEVRA BOMPIANI (1939–) The end of the 1960s saw the emergence of a new generation of women writers and intellectuals in Italian literary culture. Ginevra Bompiani was part of this group. Her first novel, Ba`rtelemi all’ombra (Ba`rtelemi in the Shadow, 1967), dealt with a theme often underrated in contemporary Italian fiction: the relationship between literature and myth. The novel charts a woman’s search for an alternative space in a world of fixed and rigid gender roles. There are few previous works in this mythological vein: I daloghi con Leuco` (Dialogues with Leuco`, 1947) by Cesare Pavese, and Anna Maria Ortese’s Il prto di Toledo (The Port of Toledo, 1975). La specie del sonno (A Kind of Sleep, 1975) was favorably received by Italo Calvino, who observed in his introduction to the book: ‘‘Ginevra Bompiani’s eye fixes the mythological emblems like Rorschach ink blots, with the difference that her perception cannot be naı¨ve.’’ Bompiani’s relation to myth has nothing of the bitterness of death that we find in Pavese, nor does her writing contain the disturbing surreal aspects of Ortese’s fiction. On the contrary, she depicts mythical creatures who have no inkling that they are mythical. Sleepless centaurs, hypnotic hermaphrodites, the god Pan, struggling heraldic lions, the monster in the labyrinth, and an exhausted Eracles live in her pages, but their mythical qualities are absorbed into the 282

details and routines of their everyday life. Her creatures live in a suspended time, as if they could never have a life; they speak as if they could never have a language. This explains the somnambular effect— Bompiani’s myths lightly set about unstitching the threads connecting words and the world, creating a small break between ourselves and our lives in which we see our existence fading away, that is, when we feel the approaching end of our own myth. Thus, Bompiani fuses dream, fable, and myth, in an exotic and fantastic world of her own imagining. Her subsequent novels L’incantato, (The Enchanted, 1987), Vecchio cielo, nuova terra, (Old Sky, New Earth, 1988), and L’attesa (The Waiting, 1988) are characterized by a surrealist poetic tone. Reality is presented as hostage to an imagination that dominates and torments it. In each of Bompiani’s novels, as Neria De Giovanni writes, ‘‘there is a strong tendency toward not only psychological, but I would say psychoanalytical introspection, toward...the metamorphosis of objects and people’’ (E dicono che siamo poche, 2003). In 2001, Bompiani published L’eta` dell’argento (The Silver Age), a work inspired by three motifs: farina, eta` dell’argento, and nostos (flour, silver age, nostalgia). Each motif is conceived as a pivot of a narration that, according to Bompiani, is generated

GINEVRA BOMPIANI ‘‘dall’attrito poetico fra un segno e l’immagine da esso suggerita; in grado di generare un’emozione narrativa’’ (from the poetic friction between a symbol and the image it suggests, thus creating a narrative emotion). The first motif ( farina) reminds us of the baker-character in fairy stories. The second (eta` dell’argento) alludes both to ‘‘una parola che salva la sera, la stanchezza, la vecchiaia dalle sue zavorre’’ (a word which rescues the evening, fatigue, and old age from its wastes), and also to the spring of life ‘‘agitata dal vento e dalle risa, che non va da nessuna parte’’ (shaken by the wind and by laughter, which goes nowhere). The silver age is symbolized by two opposing figures: an elderly woman (Amber) enrapt in thought to the point of disenchantment, and a young woman (Cecilia), sensual and rather empty-headed, ‘‘bambina formosa, di quelle che fanno gola agli uomini’’ (a big busty child, so tempting to men). The third motif centers on nostos or homecoming, which conveys a longing to return to one’s native land. It is a word evoking regret and nostalgia, the pain that comes with the perceived impossibility of such a return. Such feeling is experienced by one of the main characters in the story: a traveler, returning home after many years, finds it ‘‘il luogo piu` estraneo di tutti’’ (the most foreign place of all). When Cecilia drowns after she falls down into a well, a sense of anxiety makes its way into the fable. Homicide is suspected. A young male may have witnessed the crime; he saw someone near Cecilia on the evening of the crime but was only able to make out a vague shape. ‘‘Ho visto un’ombra su per la collina’’ (I saw a shadow on the hill) but he then adds that he is not sure. A chorus composed of the native islanders voicing their despair gives the novel the structure of a musical score composed of the solos of the main characters and the choric echoes alternating with and responding to each other. The main character in the story is the old woman Amber, who eventually will have to solve the mystery, but not before she has taken an important step in her own life. She must examine her own self and ask questions about the meaning of the silver age. She concludes that the silver age is the age ‘‘in cui l’isola diventa raccontabile’’ (in which the island becomes narratable), a time and place ‘‘dove infanzia e senilita` s’incontrano e si confondono’’ (where childhood and senility meet and merge into one another). Bompiani’s age/land of silver alludes to the mythological epoch described by Hesiod in his Works and Days, but hers is one inhabited by a race of ‘‘bambini incanagliti, vanitosi e storditi’’ (vain, nasty, benumbed, children), whose toys are ‘‘parole

senza peso e senza radice’’ (meaningless and rootless words). Among her critical works, Lo spazio narrante (The Narrating Space, 1978) is particularly remarkable for introducing the methods and insights of structuralism to Italian literary criticism. In analyzing narrative spaces, Bompiani discusses Jane Austen’s ‘‘gardens and labyrinths,’’ Emily Bronte¨’s ‘‘imaginary geography,’’ and Sylvia Plath’s ‘‘difficult limbo.’’

Biography Bompiani was born in Milan on August 5, 1939, daughter of the publisher Bompiani. She studied at La Sorbonne in Paris, where she took a psychology degree. Bompiani got her first job in her father’s publishing house as a director of a fantasy literature series, ‘‘Pesanervi.’’ In 2002, she founded a new publishing house with Giulia Einaudi: ‘‘Nottetempo.’’ L’incantato was shortlisted for the Rapallo-Carige prize in 1988. From 1986 to 1996 Bompiani was member of the jury for the Italo Calvino literary prize. She currently teaches comparative literature at the University of Siena, where she lives. All her works have been translated into French. MARIANO D’AMORA Selected Works Novels Ba`rtelemi all’ombra, 1967. Piazza pulita, 1968. La specie del sonno, 1975. Mondanita`, 1980. L’incantato, 1987. L’attesa, 1988. Vecchio cielo, nuova terra,, 1988. L’orso maggiore, 1994; as The Great Bear, translated by Brian Kern and Sergio Parussa, 2000. L’eta` dell’argento, 2001. Ritratto di Sarah Malcolm, 2005.

Children’s Books Via terra, 1994. L’amorosa avventura di una pelliccia e di un’armatura, 2000.

Essays Lo spazio narrante, 1978. L’attesa, 1988. Tempera, 1993.

Translations Emily Bronte¨, Poesie, 1971. Emily Dickinson, Poesie, 1978. Virginia Woolf, ‘‘Fasi della narrativa,’’ in La signora dell’angolo di fronte, 1979. Marguerite Yourcenar, I trentatre´ nomi di Dio, 2003.

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GINEVRA BOMPIANI Further Reading Botta, Annalisa, Monica Farnetti, and Giorgio Rimondi, Le eccentriche, Mantua: Tre Lune, 2004. Calvino, Italo, Introduction to La specie del sonno, Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1975. Ceserani, Remo, Raccontare il postmoderno, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1997. De Giovanni, Neria, E dicono che siamo poche, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca di Stato, 2003.

Farnetti, Monica, ‘‘Scritture del fantastico,’’ in Letteratura italiana del novecento: Bilancio di un secolo, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Farnetti, Monica (editor), Il centro della cattedrale: I ricordi d’infanzia nella scrittura femminile, Mantua: Tre Lune, 2002. Rasy, Elisabetta, Le donne e la letteratura, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2000. Ronchey, Silvia (editor), La decadenza, Milan: Nuovo Prisma, 2002.

GIUSEPPE BONAVIRI (1924–) Giuseppe Bonaviri, a poet and novelist, belongs to the group of Sicilian twentieth-century novelists, such as Gesualdo Bufalino, Vincenzo Consolo, and Leonardo Sciascia, who form a unique postmodern stream within Italian literature. He began his literary career with Il sarto della stradalunga (The Tailor on Main Street, 1954), published by Elio Vittorini in the prestigious Einaudi series I gettoni. Il sarto della stradalunga is an autobiographical novel whose protagonist is the author’s father, Settimo Emanuele, the tailor of the title, who secretly wrote poems that his son would later collect and edit under the title L’arcano (The Arcane, 1975). As a result of the success of his first novel, the young author was able to leave the hospital where he worked as a doctor and set up a private practice as a cardiologist in Frosinone, so that he could dedicate his time primarily to writing. Bonaviri was influenced not so much by Sicilian or Italian literary personalities, but rather by the simple elements of nature, such as the different shapes of clouds, or the sounds and colours of the landscape, which he saw as the elements of a sort of ‘‘prelogical’’ language. Through irony and fantasy, he overcame the naturalist tradition without a wholesale acceptance of any specific antirealist poetics such as surrealism. Rather, Bonaviri severed himself from the naturalist tradition using a unique style. For instance, while Bufalino became receptive to the complexity of linguistic quotations, which echoed the unnaturalistic mood of his narrative, Bonaviri, on the contrary, uses a direct, simple language to enrich his magic imagination populated by hidden symbols and myths. Thus, Bonaviri’s writing is an original synthesis of both the stream 284

of neorealism and the contemporary avant-garde, while also recalling Marcel Proust in its evocation of past impressions, and Dino Buzzati and Garcı`a Ma`rquez for its atmospheres of enchantment. The novel La divina foresta (The Divine Forest, 1969) continued Bonaviri’s narrative maturation toward a new literary direction. The story, which includes underlying elements of myth, history, and science, deals with traveling and metaphysical research, and is part of a trilogy consisting of L’isola amorosa (The Loving Island, 1973), which narrates the Arabic atmosphere and civilization of Bonaviri’s birthplace by means of the structure of the fable, and Notti sull’altura (Nights on the Heights, 1971). In the latter, Bonaviri is much more involved with the theme of investigation and unravels his plot within fascinating and surreal landscapes, An atypical novel within the context of contemporary Italian narrative, Notti sull’altura tells the story of a mysterious bird that leaves unusual symbols upon the death of the father of the narrator, who then starts an investigation to find the bird of death and consequently to find signs of his father’s thoughts. Dolcissimo (Dolcissimo, 1978) is acclaimed as Bonaviri’s most complex, rich and characteristic novel, in which the Sicilian novelist combines the detached irony of Leonardo Sciascia with the magical settings of Garcı`a Marquez. The story tells of the physician Ariete returning to his Sicilian birthplace to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of its villagers. He and Mario Sinus, the psychoethnologist sent to accompany him, discover a world of archaic gods, rituals, and beliefs that may provide redemption from the destructive forces of modern life. Il dottor Bilop (Doctor Bilop, 1994) is

GIUSEPPE BONAVIRI an anachronistic novel that includes fictional and poetical forms. The plot is apparently unreal, but strongly plausible, and the book narrates Doctor Giovanni Bilop’s life and his daughter’s wedding. On the train back from Rome, Giovanni meets a young physician who is working on an experiment to transform any kind of sounds into music. In Bonaviri’s novels, the realistic elements of any single circumstance and plot are subjected to his surrealistic imagination and this is a characteristic that increasingly dominates all his narratives and poetry. Most of his novels and tales closely parallel events in his own life. Hesitantly but openly, he writes about his private circumstances. His novels, tales, and poems blend neorealism, fantasy, and autobiography; he combines linguistic experimentation with the more traditional storytelling techniques of Sicilian folklore. His work has been translated into several languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Polish, Swedish, Russian, and Chinese.

Biography

Novelle saracene, 1980. L’incominciamento, 1983. ` un rosseggiar di peschi e d’albicocchi, 1986. E Il dormiveglia: Sicilia-Luna-New York, 1988. Lip to lip, 1988. Ghigo`, 1990. Apologhetti, 1991. Il dottor Bilop, 1994. Silvinia, 1997. L’infinito lunare, 1998. Il verde ramo oscillo`: fiabe di folli, 1999 (with Giuseppina Bonaviri). Il vento d’argento: un racconto con dodici finali, 2002. Acqua d’argento e altre storie, 2003. Il vicolo blu, 2003.

Poetry ‘‘Martedina e il dire celeste,’’ 1976. ‘‘Il dire celeste e altre poesie,’’ 1979. ‘‘Nel silenzio della luna,’’ 1979. ‘‘Di fumo cilestrino,’’ 1981. ‘‘Quark,’’ 1982. ‘‘corpo sospiroso,’’ 1982. ‘‘L’asprura,’’ 1986. ‘‘Il re bambino,’’ 1990. ‘‘Poemillas espan˜oles ed altri luoghi,’’ 2000. ‘‘I cavalli lunari,’’ 2004.

Plays

Giuseppe Bonaviri was born in Mineo (Catania), 11 July 1924, the first of five children. Began to write poems and stories before he was 10; enrolled in medical school at the University of Catania, 1943; graduated in 1949; was drafted and sent to the Accademia Militare in Florence, 1950; specialized in cardiology, 1955; practiced as a doctor and health official in Mineo, then moved to the Ciociaria region and married Raffaella Osario, 1957; they had two children (Pina and Emanuele); began private practice as a cardiologist in Frosinone, 1964. Awarded the Campiello prize Dolcissimo, 1978. His work has been widely translated. Currently lives in Frosinone. ANNA SICA Selected Works Fiction Il sarto della stradalunga, 1954. La contrada degli ulivi, 1958. Il fiume di pietra, 1964. La divina foresta, 1969. Notti sull’altura, 1971; as Night on the Heights translated by Giovanni R. Bussino, 1990. Le armi d’oro, 1973. L’isola amorosa, 1973. La Beffa`ria, 1975. L’enorme tempo, 1976. Dolcissimo, 1978; as Dolcissimo translated by Umberto Mariani, 1990. Il treno blu, 1978.

Follia, 1976. Giufa` e Gesu`, edited by Sarah Zappulla Muscara`, 2001.

Nonfiction L’arenario, 1984. Minuetto con Bonaviri, with Sarah Zappulla Muscara` and Roberto Bertoni, 2004.

Edited Work Settimo Bonaviri, L’Arcano, 1975. Fiabe Siciliane, 1990. Giufa` e altre storie della terra di Sicilia, 1996.

Further Reading Bertoni, Roberto, ‘‘Bonaviri ermetico: il motivo del rito di passaggio,’’ in Italianist, 16 (1996): 161–175. Di Biase, Carmine, Bonaviri e l’oltre: l’opera intera, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2001. Di Biasio, Rodolfo, Giuseppe Bonaviri, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Iadanza, Antonio, and Marcello Carlino (editors), L’opera di Giuseppe Bonaviri, Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1987. Mauri, Paolo, L’opera imminente: diario di un critico, Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Musarra, Franco, Scrittura della memoria, memoria della scrittura: l’opera narrativa di Giuseppe Bonaviri, Florence: Cesati-Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999. Zangrilli, Franco, Bonaviri e il mistero cosmico, Abano Terme: Piovan, 1985. Zangrilli, Franco, Il fior del ficodindia: saggio su Bonaviri, Acireale (CA): La cantinella, 1997. Zappulla Muscara`, Sarah (editor), Giuseppe Bonaviri, Catania: G. Maimone, 1991. Zappulla Muscara`, Sarah, and Enzo Zappulla (editors), Bonaviri Inedito, Mineo (CA): La cantinella, 2001

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MASSIMO BONTEMPELLI

MASSIMO BONTEMPELLI (1878–1960) Bontempelli’s literary career unfolded in several stages, each a mirror of issues at the forefront of twentieth-century history. Poetry was his first genre; he began with traditional forms (the eclogue and sonnet) and then moved to avant-garde forms with a Futurist edge. Bontempelli eventually disavowed nearly all his entire poetic production and after 1919 wrote only short stories, novels, theater and various forms of journalism and criticism (literary, film, music). The author’s strong convictions about the social and political value of aesthetic forms were instrumental in his changes in styles over the years. This makes his output fascinating from a historical perspective. What remained from avant-garde experiments was an antirealist bent coupled with a profound disgust for ‘‘anemic’’ nineteenth-century naturalism. The antinaturalist viewpoint implied the conviction that literary change would occur only if the practice of copying an all-too-prosaic and overmaterialistic world were abandoned in favor of fictions striving for what Bontempelli called stupore (wonderment) or miracolo (miracle). In the work that Bontempelli produced right after World War I, he used jarring, even boggling literary forms such as the micronovel or the comic halfpage dialogue. La vita intensa (Intense Life, 1920), first published serially in L’Ardita in 1919, collects a series of miniature novels, one of which tells the minimalist ‘‘adventures’’ of one man in a city, Milan, between 12:00 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. on a single day. Serialized in 1920 in Industrie Italiane Illustrate and collected in a volume in 1921, La vita operosa (Productive Life) tells the story of a soldier who returns to Milan from the front. It illustrates Bontempelli’s attempt to avoid an overrealist style by drawing together descriptions of the city and hallucinatory landscapes that in some sections are close to science fiction—for instance, when the protagonist imagines frightening new devices such as a prototelevision set. Bontempelli’s literary thinking was by the mid1920s consolidated into a critical voice that became influential in the interwar years. As editor-in-chief of the literary review ‘900, Bontempelli articulated positions that are considered points of reference in literary history. He produced a theory and practice 286

of realismo magico (magical realism) that was linked in distinctive ways both to his advocacy of European literary culture and his critique of twentieth-century culture in Italy, which he found provincial and rotting. A supranational outlook was a key element of his position in the crucial debates in the interwar years. In the context of Fascist politics of culture, Bontempelli stood for an urban viewpoint dubbed stracitta` (ultracity) as opposed to a rural, traditional, nationalist one called strapaese (ultracountry). At issue was which of these two contrasting cultural heritages might be the way of the future and how each might serve the Italian nation by providing a system of values suited to a culture moving into modernity. The meaning of ‘‘modernity’’ is, and has always been, hard to pin down. What concerns Bontempelli is how the cultural imagination will interact with the historical realities of modernization. The growing dominance in Europe of industrialized nations threatened an Italian sense of national identity based on the longevity and splendor of its heritage, so that modern Italian literary texts often lament the alienating effects of a modernity that separates its population from comforting and magnificent traditions. In this sense, Bontempelli undertakes a critique of a potentially dangerous modernity, and even of ‘‘rationality,’’ and he engages these issues in both fiction and nonfiction (including editorials, journalism, and travel writing). No reactionary, however, he did not advocate a return to former eras. His works attempt to blend elements of the tradition with an attack on what he sees as a dominant middle-class ideology that refuses revolutionary changes in modern society. The parts of tradition that Bontempelli held on to were narrative coherence over fragmentary temporalities, and spatial cohesion over the deformed spatialities of Futurist writing and cubist painting. While his style of writing is lucid, he inserted the ‘‘jarring’’ element of fantasy in his works in order to shake up his readers. The blend of tradition and experiment that Bontempelli forged was consonant with Fascist policies and aesthetic ideals. Since Mussolini both engaged in a rhetoric of revolutionary change and at the same time harked back to the imperial grandeur

MASSIMO BONTEMPELLI of ancient Rome, Fascism appeared to Bontempelli to be a hybrid movement with a potential for conservative innovation. He theorized that Fascism was the dawn of a new era in world history: First the Roman world collapsed and then Christian Europe ended with the cataclysm that was World War I. This schema was complicated by the author’s views on European unity. Disdainful of institutions such as the League of Nations, which has not furthered Italian territorial demands, he believed that the writer’s task in modern society was the invention of new myths for this new, Fascist epoch. Fascist Italy became the model in his view for a new European collectivity rooted in Latin and Mediterranean culture (Italy being the link). In the good graces of Mussolini and the head of the Fascist writers’ union for several years in the mid-1920s and 1930s, Bontempelli advocated Fascism wholeheartedly as a bulwark against both plutocratic capitalism and Soviet communism. In time, his dissent from Fascism cohered around nonnationalist positions. Italian writers were in his view in a unique position to invent new myths, yet culture cannot be contained by national borders. Bontempelli resisted the idea that specific political formulations should dictate any literary themes and styles, since that would kill all spontaneity and stupore. He argued against the institution of a government authorization for the work of the critic. In 1938, Bontempelli was officially censored by the regime for criticizing Fascist leaders. His party card was confiscated with the result that he was not allowed to speak in public—although he was able to continue to publish in the press. He was allowed to reside only in Venice. Significantly, when Bontempelli was offered the position of a noted Jewish scholar, Attilio Momigliano, forced to resign from the university because of the racial laws of 1938, he refused it. Bontempelli’s refusal to accept domination by one political outlook is not wholly surprising for another reason: It was typical of Bontempelli’s way of composing his works to dramatize belief systems at odds with one another. Evidence of multiple viewpoints and their complex interactions is found in the deep structure of his texts. Frequently, an enigmatic or ‘‘magical’’ event is imagined; that in turn stimulates controversial interpretations stemming from clashing viewpoints. He adds openly social and political contents to the theme of the ‘‘relativity’’ of subjectivity. His novel Il figlio di due madri (The Boy with Two Mothers, 1929) is exemplary. Set in the year 1900, this novel tells the story of a miraculous eruption of the past into

the present: A 7-year-old boy becomes another boy who had died seven years earlier, and so he comes to have two mothers—each with her own ‘‘reality.’’ The boy represents a knot of enigma that cannot be untied. Bontempelli orchestrates a contradiction meant to put old paradigms of the unity of being into question. This undefined being, named Mario and Ramiro, articulates a series of fearful doublings in the novel. Maternal love, which ought to be prime and indivisible, is split into two conflicting loves and thus two worlds. Gendering is an important signifying discourse in this effort. Men are cast as the representatives of the institutions that have murdered the imagination and thus the possibility of leaving behind profane, materialist modernity: They are callous businessmen, narrow-minded doctors, and grasping lawyers. None believes in miracles or magic. The triumphant mother in the novel, Luciana, is, instead, a kind of ‘‘new woman.’’ She undergoes an apotheosis founded on her association with the richness of flux, with journeys, and with a liberating rootlessness. She befriends a gypsy (in this exceptional case, a male) who is an emblem of transformation in the book and who attempts to retrieve the lost son. Bontempelli associates ‘‘Woman’’ with a fecund distance from a post-Risorgimento, preFascist Italy. Realistic narrative logic is also stymied. When two universes (death and life) enter into contact, the temporal progression one expects in a novel comes to a halt. The novel cannot propel itself forward toward a conclusion because the enigma introduced cannot be resolved by any of the characters. This device suits Bontempelli’s realismo magico; mystery does not evoke a spirit world, or a national spirit, but instead it opens up a perspective onto social dilemmas inseparable from the culture’s myths. Bontempelli puts into relief in other works of fiction the defects in familial, legal, economic, and government institutions that are the bases of social stability and yet at the same time are causes of social stagnation. Vita e morte di Adria e i suoi figli (The Life and Death of Adria and Her Children, 1930) dramatizes the degeneration of the social institutions of post-Risorgimento Italy. The ruling classes (made up principally of property owners), the bourgeois family, and gender conventions all are put under a microscope in the narrative of one mother, the beautiful and extremely fashionable Adria, who becomes the cult object of Roman high society. Adria lives only to propagate and preserve her beauty; she decides at age 30 to wall herself up before she begins aging. Bontempelli’s 287

MASSIMO BONTEMPELLI novel takes on tragic tones when Adria forsakes her children and husband, interrupting life cycles that had always been presumed to be natural. Even natural death is at issue for the modern citizen, for example in Gente nel tempo (People in Time, 1937), in which a family member mysteriously dies on the same day at five-year intervals. In the play Nostra Dea (Dea by Dea, 1925), another fashionable protagonist changes personalities each time she changes outfits. Constructed identities constitute mere cogs in wheels of industry—fashion or otherwise. In the drama Minnie la candida (Candid Minnie, 1929), Bontempelli moves away from the family context toward even broader categories: The naı¨ve protagonist believes that a race of soulless, artificial beings is taking over humanity. The high purpose of the literary imagination and the writer’s work as Bontempelli conceived them was to move modernity out of its paralysis and dullness and to usher in a new era in world history. Fiction is an expose´ and at the same time it draws its readers away from that soulless modern world into a ‘‘magical’’ one that exists in the pages of the book. The war years delivered little by the way of either fantastical or literal escapes to Bontempelli, however, as he remained confined in Venice and his writing veered away from fiction. Full of hope for the future of Italy when Fascism began losing ground and battles, and eager to redeem a nowsuspect past by means of enduring anti-Fascist activity, he was in 1948 elected to office in Tuscany as a senator on a Popular Front ticket. Because of his association with Fascism, however, Bontempelli was not allowed to be seated in the Parliament of the newly minted Italian Republic.

Biography Born 12 May 1878, in Como; 1897, he enrolls in Turin University and earns two degrees, in classics and philosophy; adheres to Fascism in 1924 and in the same year founds the Teatro degli Undici with Luigi Pirandello; the first issue of ‘900 appears in 1926; appointed to the Accademia d’Italia in 1930; in 1933 he founds the architectural journal Quadrante; in 1938 he is confined to Venice by the Fascist government; in 1948 he is elected as a senator for the Popular Front party but is not seated because of his collaboration on a textbook in the Mussolini years; L’amante fedele wins the Strega prize in 1953; died in Rome, 21 July 1960. KEALA JEWELL 288

Selected Works Collections Racconti e romanzi, edited by Paola Masino, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1961. Opere scelte, edited by Luigi Baldacci, Milan: Mondadori, 1978. Nostra Dea e altre commedie, edited byAlessandro Tinterri, Turin: Einaudi, 1989.

Poetry ‘‘Verseggiando: Intermezzo di rime,’’ 1905. ‘‘Amori,’’ 1910. ‘‘Purosangue e L’Ubriaco: Poesie nuove,’’ 1919.

Fiction Sette savi, 1912. La vita intensa, 1920. La vita operosa, 1921. La scacchiera davanti allo specchio, 1922. Eva ultima, 1923. La donna dei miei sogni, 1925. Il figlio di due madri, 1929; as The Boy with Two Mothers, translated by Estelle Gilson, 2000. Vita e morte di Adria e i suoi figli, 1930; as The Life and Death of Adria and Her Children, translated by Estelle Gilson, 2000. Mia vita, morte e miracoli, 1931. ‘‘522’’: Racconto di una giornata, 1932. Gente nel tempo, 1937. Giro del sole, 1941. L’amante fedele, 1953.

Nonfiction La donna del Nadir, 1924. L’avventura novecentista, 1938. Pirandello, Leopardi, D’Annunzio: Tre discorsi, 1938. Dignita` dell’uomo (1943–1946), 1946.

Plays La guardia alla luna, 1920. Siepe a nordovest, 1922. Nostra Dea, 1925; as Dea by Dea, translated by Anthony Oldcorn, 1994. Minnie la candida, 1929. Bassano padre geloso, 1934.

Further Reading Airoldi Namer, Fulvia, Massimo Bontempelli, Milan: Mursia, 1979. Amigoni, Ferdinando, ‘‘Putting Ghosts to Good Use: Savinio, Bontempelli, Landolfi,’’ in Italica 77, no. 1 (2000): 69–80. Amoroso, Giuseppe, Il Realismo Magico di Bontempelli, Messina: Editrice Universitaria, 1964. Baldacci, Luigi, Massimo Bontempelli, Turin: Borla, 1967. Bo, Carlo, Massimo Bontempelli, Padova: CEDAM, 1943. Caesar, Ann Hallamore, ‘‘Changing Costume, Changing Identity: Women in the Theatre of Pirandello, Bontempelli and Wedekind,’’ in Romance Studies, 20 (1992): 21–29. Cecchini, Carlo, Avanguardia, mito e ideologia: Massimo Bontempelli tra futurismo a fascismo, Rome: Il Ventaglio, 1986.

BONVESIN DA LA RIVA Donati, Corrado, and Fulvia Airoldi Namer (editors), Massimo Bontempelli: Scrittore e intellettuale, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992. Fontanella, Luigi, Storia di Bontempelli. Tra i sofismi della ragione e le irruzioni dell’immaginazione, Ravenna: Longo, 1997. Lapini, Lia, Il teatro di Massimo Bontempelli. Dall’avanguardia al novecentismo, Florence: Vallecchi, 1977. Mascia Galateria, Marinella, Tattica della sorpresa e romanzo comico di Massimo Bontempelli: Saggio su ‘‘La vita intensa’’ e ‘‘La vita operosa,’’ Rome: Bulzoni, 1977. Masino, Paola, Io, Massimo e gli altri: Autobiografia di una figlia del secolo, edited by Maria Vittoria Vittori, Milan: Rusconi, 1995.

Piscopo, Ugo, Massimo Bontempelli: Per una modernita` delle pareti lisce, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2001. Saccone, Antonio, Massimo Bontempelli. Il Mito del ’900, Naples: Liguori, 1978. Somigli, Luca, ‘‘Modernism and the Quest for the Real: On Massimo Bontempelli’s Minnie la candida,’’ in Italian Modernism, edited by Luca Somigli and Mario Moroni, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Urgnani, Elena, Sogni e visioni. Massimo Bontempelli fra surrealismo e futurismo, Ravenna: Longo, 1991.

BONVESIN DA LA RIVA (CA. 1240/1250–CA. 1313/1315) Bonvesin da la Riva lived in Milan and Legnano, where he was a teacher, educating the children of the wealthy classes. He is the most important author of the didactic literature written in Northern Italy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and composed approximately 20 poems in the old Milanese vernacular, amounting to a total of about 9,000 lines, as well as three works in Latin. Bonvesin’s poems in the vernacular are contained in eight manuscripts of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, the two most significant ¨ ffentliche Wisof which are now in Berlin (O senschaftliche Bibliothek) and in Milan (Biblioteca Ambrosiana). Like most Northern Italian didactic poems, they consist mainly of vernacular adaptation of medieval Latin and French didactic and hagiographic literary texts. Bonvesin wrote the majority of them in monorhymed alexandrine quatrains and intended for them to be recited in front of wide, popular audiences with the practical aim of enhancing moral and religious beliefs. Ezio Levi, who brought this didactic literature to scholarly attention in the 1920s, argued that its genesis was connected with heretical movements (I poeti antichi lombardi, 1921). Levi’s thesis is now generally rejected, and it is commonly agreed that no heterodox element is present in any of the texts of this literary tradition. Bonvesin, in particular, was a lay tertiary of the Humiliati—a religious group that

originated from mid-twelfth-century pauperistic and evangelic movements in Northern Italy—and his religiosity is, as Gianfranco Contini argues, mite e ordinaria (mild and ordinary). In addition to being some of the earliest and most extended documents in old Milanese, Bonvesin’s poetry therefore also conveys the common beliefs and culture of the time in which it was written. Bonvesin’s vernacular poems can be grouped in three categories: debates, expository, and narrative poems, and didactic poems. Of the six debates, three—Disputatio rose cum viola (The Debate of the Rose and the Violet), Disputatio musce cum formica (The Debate Between the Fly and the Ant), and Disputatio mensium (The Debate of the Months)—convey a moral and, albeit not explicit, sociopolitical message. Maria Corti locates the sociopolitical implication in the contrast between the rose and the violet, which for the first time has the humble violet (the people and merchants of Milan) win against the arrogant rose (the powerful magnates) (‘‘Il genere disputatio e la transcodificazione indolore di Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ 1973). In his 1987 edition of the Volgari scelti, Ruggero Stefanini extends such sociopolitical overtones to the other two poems. However, unlike the Disputatio rose cum viola and the debate between the lazy fly and the zealous ant—which also praises the humbleness and industriousness of the communal 289

BONVESIN DA LA RIVA class—the Disputatio mensium (where the months of the year contest the leadership of January but fail) expresses the claims of the new signories and indicates that a leader is necessary. Bonvesin’s remaining three debates are more overtly religious, and the Virgin Mary, who is at the core of Bonvesin’s spirituality, is the protagonist of two of them. The De peccatore cum Virgine (The Sinner and the Virgin) depicts Mary’s contrast with a sinner and deals with the familiar theme of Mary’s ties with the rest of humankind. The De Sathana cum Virgine (Satan and the Virgin), on the other hand, is one of the most original poems written by Bonvesin and portrays Satan arguing with Mary about why, unlike all other sinners, he was not granted the opportunity to repent. As Francesco Zambon shows, Mary’s words here represent the official doctrine of the church against the beliefs of Cathar heresy as they were defended in the anonymous Liber de duobus principiis, a mid-thirteenth-century treatise contesting the principle of free will (‘‘Bonvesin e il libero arbitrio degli angeli,’’ 1993). The lively and sophisticated figure of Satan, who denies his responsibility and refuses to accept the irrevocability of his condemnation, is one of Bonvesin’s best (and most tragic) figures and has often been related to the logician devil of Dante’s Inferno 27. The last debate is the De anima cum corpore (Soul and Body), a dialogue between the body and the soul on Earth, after physical death and at the Resurrection. It is an original variation of a common genre and attests to the great interest in the afterlife frequently found in Northern Italian didactic poetry. Three of Bonvesin’s expository and narrative poems are in fact eschatological descriptions that aim to convince audiences to follow Christian precepts on earth. The ‘‘De die iudicij’’ (Judgment Day) and the ‘‘De quindecim miraculis que debent apparere ante diem iudicij’’ (The Fifteen Marvels Which Are to Appear Before the Day of Judgment) are short poems concerned with the traditional preoccupation with the end of time and the Last Judgment, while ‘‘Il Libro delle tre Scritture’’ (Book of the Three Scriptures) is a long poem expressing the newer interest in the experience of separated souls during the eschatological time between physical death and the Resurrection. As the author of ‘‘Il Libro delle tre Scritture’’, Bonvesin has often been considered—together with Giacomino da Verona—as one of Dante’s precursors. The poem is divided into three parts: Nera (Black Scripture), which describes the 12 pains of 290

hell; ‘‘Rossa’’ (Red Scripture), which gives a detailed account of Christ’s Passion and physical sufferings; ‘‘Dorata’’ (Golden Scripture), which describes the 12 glories of Heaven. ‘‘Il Libro delle tre Scritture’’ illustrates the significance that medieval culture attributed to the body as a component of human identity and to physical pain as a productive experience of change. Bonvesin’s poem is also important as a document of contemporary eschatology, and a joint analysis of the ‘‘Scrittura Rossa’’ and Dante’s Purgatorio reveals the tight connection between the suffering body of Christ and the transformative power of pain in purgatory (Manuele Gragnolati, Experiencing the Afterlife, 2005). The religious and moral didacticism of Bonvesin’s eschatological texts also informs some of his other expository poems: the ‘‘De Vanitatibus’’ (On Vain Things), which is composed of two parables contrasting the deceptive and transient possessions of Earth to the eternal rewards of Heaven; the ‘‘De falsis excusationibus’’ (On False Excuses), which refutes the pretexts usually adduced by men in order to neglect Christian obligations, and pushes its audience—as Bonvesin often does—toward humility, moderation and acceptance; and the ‘‘Vulgare de elymosinis’’ (On Almsgiving), which recommends the practice of almsgiving and exemplifies its value through a series of parables. In this text, Bonvesin shows great narrative technique and achieves some of his best results, as in the ‘‘exempla De Ortulano’’ (The Gardener) and ‘‘De patre cuiusdam Donati’’ (Donatus’ Father). Three poems are hagiographic and offer more positive examples of acceptance and humility— the virtues that transform suffering into a productive experience: the ‘‘Vulgare de passione Sancti Job’’ (The Suffering of Saint Job), which retells the Job story from the Bible; the ‘‘Vita Beati Alexi’’ (The Life of Saint Alexis), which translates a tenth-century account of a Roman nobleman who endorsed a life of suffering and penitence; and the ‘‘Laudes Virginis Mariae’’ (In Praise of the Virgin Mary), which begins by praising Mary’s greatness and ends with five exempla of people—including the prostitute Mary of Egypt and the humble ‘‘friar Ave Maria’’—being saved or benefited by her. The remaining two expository poems are related to Bonvesin’s intense devotion to Mary and to Christ: the ‘‘Rationes quare Virgo tenetur diligere peccatores’’ (Reasons Why the Virgin Is Obligated to Help Sinners), which is very similar to the ‘‘De peccatore cum Virgine,’’ and the fragmentary ‘‘De Cruce’’ (On the Cross), which narrates the legend of Christ’s cross.

BONVESIN DA LA RIVA The last two poems in Bonvesin’s corpus in the vernacular provide secular teachings and attest to Bonvesin’s civic and social commitment: the Expositiones Catonis (An Exposition of Cato’s Distichs), which translates the popular Distica Catonis from Latin, and the Quinquaginta curialitatibus ad mensam (Fifty Table Manners), which outlines 50 rules about appropriate dining behavior. Although the two texts are also written in alexandrine quatrains, the quatrains are not monorhymed (as they are in the rest of Bonvesin’s vernacular poetry) but rhymed instead according to the scheme AABB. Bonvesin’s three extant works in Latin are contained in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. The De controversia mensium (The Contrast of the Months) is written in hexameters and is similar to the vernacular debate between the months of the year. The De vita scholastica (The School Life), which is written in couplets and was widely read until the late Renaissance, adapts the anonymous poem Rudium doctrina and is also connected to Bonvesin’s work as a schoolteacher. It instructs students how to attain wisdom and also briefly offers advice to teachers about teaching effectively. The De magnalibus urbis Mediolani (The Marvels of Milan) is the only text in prose and is a panegyric of Milan. Written in 1288, it narrates the events of Milanese history until the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250. It praises the city first for its material excellence (location, buildings, inhabitants, and wealth) and then for its moral distinction (fortitude, loyalty, freedom, and nobility). The text differs from the conventions of the genre and supports the rhetorical praise of Milan with the accuracy of archival research and the liveliness of real-life observations. It was usually read as a nostalgic idealization of Milan’s past, but, in their critical editions, Guido Orlandi and Paolo Chiesa argue that a more pragmatic Bonvesin is siding with the Viscontis (who were consolidating their power in Milan when the work was written).

Biography The son of Petrus de Laripa, Bonvesin was most likely born in Milan between 1240 and 1250. He was a successful and wealthy teacher of Latin in a private capacity in both Legnano and Milan. A tertiary of the Humiliati and arguably also of the Franciscans, he was committed to constant charitable activity, such as donations to public hospitals and participation in the administration

of charity institutions. He was married twice and died between 1313 (the date of his last testament) and 1315. MANUELE GRAGNOLATI Selected Works Collections Le opere volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva, edited by Gianfranco Contini, Rome: Societa` Filologica Romana, 1941; as Volgari scelti: Selected Poems, edited and translated by Patrick Diehl and Ruggero Stefanini, 1987.

Works in the Vernacular Poeti del Ducento, edited by Gianfranco Contini, vol. 1, 1960; reprint 1995. De Cruce. Testo frammentario inedito, edited by Silvia Isella Brusamolino, 1979. Le cinquanta cortesie da tavola, edited by Mario Cantella and Donatella Magrassi, 1985. I volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva: Testi del ms. berlinese, edited by Adnan Go¨kc¸en, 1996. Expositiones Catonis, edited by Carlo Beretta, 2000. I volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva. Testi dei mss. Trivulziano 93 (vv. 113-fine); Ambrosiano T. 10 sup., N 95 sup.; Toledano Capitolare 10–28, edited by Adnan Go¨kc¸en, 2001.

Works in Latin De magnalibus urbis Mediolani (1288); as Grandezze di Milano, edited by Angelo Paredi, 1967; as Le meraviglie di Milano, edited by Giuseppe Pontiggia, introduction by Maria Corti, 1974; edited by Paolo Chiesa, 1998. Quinque claves sapientiae. Incerti auctoris rudium doctrina. Bonvicini de Ripa Vita scolastica, edited by Anezka Vidmadova´-Schmidtova´, 1969. De controversia mensium, in Giovanni Orlandi, ‘‘Letteratura e politica nei Carmina de mensibus (De controversia mensium) di Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Felix olim Lombardia. Storia di studi padani dedicati dagli allievi a Giuseppe Martini, 1978, 103–195.

Further Reading Avalle, D’Arco Silvio, ‘‘Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 1, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970. Bologna, Corrado, ‘‘La letteratura dell’Italia settentrionale del Ducento,’’ in Letteratura italiana: Storia e geografia, directed by Alberto Asor Rosa, vol. 1, Turin: Einaudi, 1987. Cerroni, Monica, ‘‘Tipologia dell’allegoria e dinamiche del vero in Giacomino da Verona e Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Strumenti critici, 15 (2000): 53–74. Corti, Maria, ‘‘Il genere disputatio e la transcodificazione indolore di Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Strumenti critici, 7 (1973); rpt. in Il viaggio testuale, Turin: Einaudi, 1978. Degli Innocenti, Mario, ‘‘L’ Elucidarium o l’Elucidario in antico milanese fonte di Bonvesin da la Riva?’’ in Italia medioevale e umanistica, 25 (1982): 125–149. Garbini, Paolo, ‘‘Sulla Vita scolastica di Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Studi medievali, 31 (1990): 705–737.

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BONVESIN DA LA RIVA Gragnolati, Manuele, ‘‘From Decay to Splendor: Body and Pain in Bonvesin da la Riva’s Book of the Three Scriptures,’’ in Last Things: Death and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Gragnolati, Manuele, Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005. Leonardi, Lino, and Francesco Santi, ‘‘La letteratura religiosa,’’ in Storia della letteratura italiana, directed by Enrico Malato, vol. 1, Rome: Salerno, 1995. Levi, Ezio, I poeti antichi lombardi, Milan: Cogliati, 1921. Marri, Fabio, Glossario al milanese di Bonvesin, Bologna: Patron, 1977. Mussafia, Adolfo, ‘‘Darstellung der altmaila¨ndischen Mundart nach Bonvesins Schriften,’’ in Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosoph.–histor. Klasse), 59 (1868): 5–40.

Orlandi, Giovanni, ‘‘Note sul De magnalibus Mediolani di Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Studi Medievali, series 3, no. 17 (1976): 863–906. Orlandi, Giovanni, ‘‘Letteratura e politica nei Carmina de mensibus (De controversia mensium) di Bonvesin da la Riva,’’ in Felix olim Lombardia: Storia di studi padani dedicati dagli allievi a Giuseppe Martini, Milan: [s.n.], 1978. Pasquini, Emilio, ‘‘La letteratura didattica e allegorica,’’ in La letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, edited by Carlo Muscetta, vol. 1, Bari: Laterza, 1970. Rossi, Aldo, ‘‘Poesia didattica e poesia popolare del Nord,’’ in Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 1, Milan: Garzanti, 1965. Sasse Tateo, Barbara, Tradition und Pragmatik in Bonvesin’s ‘‘De Magnalibus Mediolani,’’ Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991. Zambon, Francesco, ‘‘Bonvesin e il libero arbitrio degli angeli,’’ in Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena, Padua: Editoriale Programma, 1993.

BOOK CULTURE The history of printing presupposes a neat separation between the manuscript and the book, between a culture of the manuscript and one of the printing press, differentiated within the history of communication. The history of printing, however, does not concern simply ancient books, but books in all of their forms, including the nonbook form that cannot be ignored. The history of printing is often restricted to manual printing, incunabula, cinquecentine, seicentine, eighteenth-century books, with the important appendix that reaches to 1830, and manually printed nineteenth-century books. Yet all of this keeps the modern book trade out of the discussion, although it too must be the object of the history of printing. There is also another aspect to touch upon, namely the confusion in the history of printing between production and product. Concepts such as Renaissance book, Baroque book, Bodoni’s neoclassicism, and so on are useful in connecting the book-product to literary history, art history, and aesthetic history, but they say little about the specific history of printing. One can decide to leave aside technology, but an exclusive approach to the book as product places its origins in the history of ideas, of arts, and, letters. Indeed this is sufficient when 292

considering the history of the book as literary history, but it does not suffice from the point of view of a history of printing that takes into account the processes of production, which occurs according to determinate materials, that generate, accordingly, new materials. The material component of the book is a reality long denied, because, particularly in Italian culture, an entire system of humanistic knowledge founded on idealistic premises has always considered the book separately from the text. The book as a material object remains in some sense scandalous, because the habit of considering it an intellectual object has given way to deeply rooted automatism. The concept of the book as material object transgresses the common perception of the book as fetishized object, the neutral container of an idea. On the contrary, the container sometimes contains more information than the content, provided that it is considered the fruit of a process, specifically, the history of printing as determined by technological variables. Technology and investment of capital also change the concept of author, as editors follow the book from the incision of the characters, to the accuracy of the text, to the construction of the binding. Presiding over such a process are the alpha and omega of the history of

BOOK CULTURE the Italian book: Aldo Manuzio (ca. 1452–1515), whose creative innovations have left an enduring mark in publishing, and Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), who brought the art of printing to great heights in pursuit of neoclassical beauty. In this way, the uniqueness of the author is divided and multiplied; one can no longer speak of the author if not in the sense indicated by the rules of cataloguing. The author is responsible for the intellectual content of the text, but in the sixteenth century he is already surrounded by coauthors responsible, in modern terms, for the editing. This happens above all in the author’s absence: For example, when planning for the publication of an edition by a classical author, highly qualified support was requested by Humanist philologists; or in the case of other publications, the publisher and typographer would seek the advice of an expert of the language and of texts to prepare the definitive edition of the manuscript to send to the presses. Aside from some charismatic authors who followed their book in the phases of typographical production (from Ludovico Ariosto to Giambattista Vico to Alessandro Manzoni), there exists another typology of publication that requires the participation of people specialized in the preparation of editions dealing with the question of context, including printing costs, the graphic aspect, decorations, and the illustration of the book. In the archives, there also exist other traces that help us reconstruct the contexts of production that can relate to either private or public laws, as evidenced in the form of records and documents relating to the history of printing (contracts, licenses, etc.). In the analysis of these documents, three main figures stand out: typographer, publisher, and author, or alternatively, the translator or other figures not recorded in the book. Legal permission was conceded to the book, not to each of its reprinting, excluding short works and loose sheets, The classical formula cum gratia et privilegio at times does not apply in some editions. The privilege covered a span of a number of years, which were requested by the publisher himself to safeguard his assets. In the case of Francesco Colonna’s famous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strife of Love in a Dream, 1499), for example, the publisher, Leonardo Grassi, obtained a 20-year privilege that he successively renewed in 1519, and it expired around 1540. He is thus a figure who appears in the paratext, only in the dedicatory letter, and not in the explicit capacity of publisher, nor with a proper typographical mark that, in any case, in 1499, was not yet conceived with protective criteria.

From one of the hieroglyphs contained in that book, Aldo Manuzio derives the mark of the Anchor and Dolphin that will be the same used in 1545 when the heirs of the great Humanist-printer (who had preserved the xylographs of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili) republished the work, considering it by then a text of distinction. Several historians of printing value the Aldine edition of Colonna’s remarkable novel as the most beautiful book printed during the Italian Renaissance. Until the modern era there does not exist a homogeneous form of protection of publishing rights. From the second half of the sixteenth century forward, in order to in some way protect literary property, which did not exist in modern terms, some printers began to record the concession of privilege after the colophon. When the censorship of the Indice dei libri proibiti impoverished, from 1550 onward, publishers’ catalogues, the way to escape a relatively strict control was to use pseudonyms to falsify the names of the censored authors or auctores damnati (for example, from Pietro Aretino to Partenio Etiro). Conferring a centrality to the editions, the history of printing becomes the history of publishing. In the fifteenth century, considering the Roman and Venetian editions of Cicero, there exist an exorbitant number with respect to the effective demands of the community of literate people. Regarding classics that were part of the Humanist library more generally, if one adds up the editions produced from Italian presses, those of French presses and, in particular those of Lyon that always competed with the Italian catalogues, it is evident how, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Italian market was relatively saturated. However, leafing through the inventories of the libraries of men of letters until the end of the nineteenth century, we do not yet find first editions in their libraries used as the definitive editions. The incunabulum is considered a reliable edition until the beginning of the nineteenth century, while in the seventeenth century, there is little reason to reprint either Cicero or the classics. The realm of the ancient book also comprises brief printed texts, in octaves or smaller formats, on one printing folio. Furthermore, in the history of printing, there is also a nonbook production, that is to say, a type of production not centered on the printing of booklets, but rather on one side of the page for the printing of loose sheets, calendars, and posters. This is the nonbook trade use of texts, to be hung in public or private places, or affixed in the act of selling, at fairs, in markets, or in piazzas. 293

BOOK CULTURE Regarding formats, in the fifteenth century, two formats prevail: in-folio and in-quarto; in the sixteenth century, the dominant commercial format becomes the octavo that anticipates the folding of the folio three times. This is the ‘‘pocket-edition’’ format, corresponding to an increasing demand for transporting a book as a more personal object, a need emerging from documents and private writings of the time. But classic editions also emerge in the form of the octavo, as demonstrated by the collection by Aldo Manuzio of ‘‘enchiridia’’ (reference books) that emerged from his press with personalized binding, giving the qualified reader an elegant, finished product that combines textual reliability, printed equilibrium, and aesthetic uniformity (including binding ‘‘in the Greek style’’). The seventeenth century is a century of crisis, above all in the realm of technology: old machines, shoddy paper, and acid ink. But it has its dimension: dramatic editions in duodecimo and sextodecimo format, destined for the theater-going public, find a style and a market position, rendering this typology specific to the historical epoch. In the seventeenth-century book, there is a mistake connected to the birth of the antiporta (the page that precedes the frontispiece): The Baroque book must ‘‘overflow,’’ or ‘‘escape the edge’’ by definition from the frontispiece, occupying an extra page with its own rhetoric of graphic communication. In truth, the antiporta arises in the high Renaissance, with the goal of summarizing an entire text in a single image, reaching maturation only in the eighteenth century. One of the most important editions of the first half of the eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico’s Principi di scienza nuova (The New Science), emerged in three editions between 1725 and 1744 and is characterized by an antiporta conceived and designed by the author himself. The antiporta cannot alone define the book of the seventeenth century, which remains, like the eighteenth century, a century still little known from this point of view. Finally, in the modern definition of the activity of printing works for distribution and profit, publishing did not emerge in Italy as a business venture independent from typesetting until the nineteenth

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century, and even during the twentieth century some prominent publishers, who had began as printers (Mondadori, Laterza, to name a few), continued to retain a combined printing/publishing activity. ALESSANDRO SCARSELLA See also: Printing and Publishing Further Reading Baldacchini, Lorenzo, Il libro antico. Nuova edizione aggiornata, Rome: Carocci, 2001. Baldacchini, Lorenzo, Lineamenti di bibliologia, Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1992. Braida, Lodovica, Stampa e cultura in Europa tra 15 e 16 secolo, Rome: Laterza, 2000. Fahy, Conor, Saggi di bibliografia testuale, Padua: Antenore, 1988. Febvre, Lucien P. V., The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800, edited by Geoffrey NowellSmith and David Wootton, London: NLB, 1976. Infelise, Mario, Prima dei giornali: alle origini della pubblica informazione, secoli XVI e XVII, Rome: Laterza, 2002. Nuovo, Angela, Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998. Petrucci, Armando, Libri, scrittura e pubblico nel Rinascimento: Guida Storica e critica, Bari: Laterza, 1979. Romani, Valentino, Bibliologia: avviamento allo studio del libro tipografico, Milan: Sylvestre Bonnard, 2000. Santoro, Marco, Storia del libro italiano: libro e societa` in Italia dal Quattrocento al Novecento, Milan: Bibliografica, 1994. Sorella, Antonio (editor), Dalla textual bibliography alla filologia dei testi italiani a stampa, Pescara: Libreria dell’Universita`, 1998. Stoppelli, Pasquale (editor), Filologia dei testi a stampa, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987. Tavoni, Maria Gioia, Precarieta` e fortuna nei mestieri del libro in Italia: dal secolo dei lumi ai primi decenni della restaurazione, Bologna: Pa`tron, 2001. Tortorelli, Gianfranco (editor), Fonti e studi di storia dell’editoria, Bologna: Baiesi, 1995. Tortorelli, Gianfranco (editor), Gli archivi degli editori: studi e prospettive di ricerca, Bologna: Pa`tron, 1998. Zappella, Giuseppina, Il libro antico a stampa: struttura, tecniche, tipologie, evoluzione, 2 vols., Milan: Bibliografica, 2001–2004. Zappella, Giuseppina, Manuale del libro antico: guida allo studio e alla catalogazione, Milan: Bibliografica, 1996.

GIUSEPPE ANTONIO BORGESE

THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER See Il libro del Cortegiano (Work by Baldassare Castiglione)

GIUSEPPE ANTONIO BORGESE (1882–1952) Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, a writer known for his critical and political writing, is a rare example of a scholar who published the entirety of his creative works—aside from an early volume of poetry— during his 40s and 50s. His first novel, Rube` (Rube`), was published in 1921, and his last volume of prose, Tempesta nel nulla (Tempest into Nothingness), in 1931. Rube` is one of the first Italian novels to relate World War I. Told in the first person, this semiautobiographical novel tells the story of a young Sicilian lawyer recently relocated to the continent in search of fortune and success. Filippo Rube` deludes himself with a quest for serenity in his professional career, in his marriage to the docile Eugenia, in the campaign in support of Italy’s involvement in the war, in the war itself (which he survives wounded), and in his amorous affair with the beautiful Celestina. Constantly dissatisfied and incapable of reconciling his superhuman desire for self-elevation with the mundane difficulties of life, Rube` dies in 1919, while casually involved in a political demonstration during the turbulent postwar period in Italy. He is clutching the black and red flags of the Fascist and Communist parties. Both the Italian and foreign critics (especially the French) read Rube` through a political and ideological lens (as a representation of the intellectual petite bourgeoisie and of a general rendition of Italian history during the Great War), thus foreseeing the protagonist as unfit for living, a reference to the inept antiheroes in the fiction of Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi, or Alberto Moravia. Only from

1986 onward do critics like Giuseppe Langella and Luciano Parisi highlight the hopeful component seeded in the novel. In fact, the defeated character of Filippo Rube` is contrasted in essence with a religious armature of metaphors, symbols, and allusions. Borgese’s other literary works met with minor attention from both camps of critics and publishers. Most of these works have not been re-edited since the 1950s. Among them is his second novel, I vivi e i morti (The Living and the Dead, 1923). The main character, Eliseo Gaddi, is in a way successor to Rube`. In the vein of Tozzi’s Remigio in Il podere or Tolstoy’s Levin in Anna Karenina, the intellectual Gaddi, tired by urbane existence, retires to an unsuccessful endeavor in agriculture with his mother. Lacking practical affinities as well as an interest in life itself, Eliseo subsequently refuses Sofronia’s advances (a woman he nevertheless loves); abandons his agricultural pursuits; stops reading occult books—through which he had aspired to seek his raison d’etre. Eventually he allows himself to die detached from the reality of all political events. Borgesse’s two plays, L’arciduca (The Archduke, 1924) and Lazzaro (Lazarus, 1925) are also untouched by current events. L’arciduca accounts for the last days in the life of Rodolfo of Hapsburg, the prince heir to the imperial crown, before committing suicide together with his lover Maria Ve´tzera in Mayerling, 1889—an event historically reconstructed by Borgese in La tragedia di Mayerling (The Tragedy of Mayerling, 1925). Lazzaro tells the story of the biblical character’s resurrection 295

GIUSEPPE ANTONIO BORGESE through a distinctive religious exaltation. Lazzaro toils with accepting the idea of his own resurrection because he will have to face death yet again, and he is indebted to Jesus. Borgese’s three volumes of short stories, La citta` sconosciuta (The Unknown City, 1925), Le belle (Beautiful Women, 1927) and Il sole non e` tramontato (The Sun Has Not Set, 1929), republished with very few alterations as Il pellegrino appassionato (The Passionate Pilgrim, 1933) are equally neglected by critics. Borgese’s stories are clear examples of geographical and historical abstraction, as well as of the classical style encumbered by Gabriele D’Annunzio’s influence, which marks Borgese’s narrative up until the last novel, Tempesta nel nulla. Set in Engadine, this novel tells the story in the tradition of Nietzsche, of a man who, during the course of a stroll through the mountains, comes to believe he has discovered the secret of existence itself and ascended into Man-God; only later he realizes that he has been mistaken and committed the mortal sin of pride. The resulting Christian lesson in humility is Borgese’s conscious and zealous aim, pervasive throughout his novels, stories, and plays. The other key to understanding the writer is his reaction against the ‘‘fragmentism’’ and impressionism that has marked Italian literature in the first three decades of the 1900s. He reflects on the problem of the juxtaposition of lyricism and storytelling, and between these two poles, he chooses the latter. Even on critical grounds, Borgese rails against those whom he calls (using a term he minted) ‘‘calligraphers.’’ He accuses these refined novelists and the literary milieu of La ronda of sacrificing literature’s moral voice for the superficial aesthetic product of the ‘‘pretty page.’’ In order to follow his view on this matter, it is important to read Tempo di edificare (Time to Build, 1923), whose title bears two intended meanings of Borgese’s. One relates to the personal sphere: Borgese explains that time for criticism has expired—to be allotted to the devices of the youth—and time for literary creation has begun. The other, more general meaning is the incitement to return to a kind of fiction that is architectural, organic, capable of conjugating form and human vibrancy, and modeled on the great novelists of the 1800s—first among them Alessandro Manzoni, Giovanni Verga, and Dostoyevsky. Borgese passionately favors and pursues with a characteristic provocative predilection the narrative over the lyrical. Even in Le poesie (Poems, 1922), his verses are consecrated to the prosaic in their rhythm and flow, 296

written using the colloquial long line. He also coined the term crepuscolari (twilight poets), now commonly used to identify a number of poets such as Guido Gozzano, Aldo Palazzeschi, and Sergio Corazzini. Borgese pays particular attention to foreign works (German, French, English, American, Russian, Scandinavian) in the three volumes of La vita e il libro (Life and the Book, 1910–1913), in Studi di letterature moderne (Studies of Modern Literatures, 1915), and again in Ottocento europeo (Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1927). Within these books, the weight attributed to foreign literatures (Borgese had for a long time been a professor of German literature) is directed above all to the narrative and theater. Borgese’s critical career had an early start. Already in 1903, as a 21-year-old university student in Florence, Borgese contributed to Giovanni Papini’s Leonardo, Enrico Corradini’s Il regno, and Benedetto Croce’s La critica. The latter quickly remarked the youth’s talent. In 1904, he founded the literary review Hermes (which folded in 1906), influenced by D’Annunzio both artistically and politically. In the editorial manifesto printed in the first issue, Borgese writes: ‘‘Aristocratic in our own art...we are pagan and D’Annunzian. And yes: we love and admire Gabriele D’Annunzio more than any other of our modern poets, whether dead or alive, and from him we set off within our own art.’’ In 1905, he publishes, thanks to Croce’s favoritism, his thesis entitled Storia della critica romantica in Italia (History of Romantic Criticism in Italy). Borgese is usually described as an ambitious, charismatic and fiery youth. In 1903, he nearly crosses swords with Prezzolini. According to Giacomo Debenedetti’s famous statement, Borgese ‘‘already from recruitment seemed to have the marshal’s stick in his satchel’’ (Il romanzo del Novecento, 1971). In 1909, he publishes the essay entitled Gabriele D’Annunzio, trying to define once and for all the poet’s work while at the same time expressing the will to supercede the D’Annunzian aesthetic. In 1911, he launches into his 40-year collaboration with the newspaper Il corriere della sera. Borgese will prove to be among the most important collaborators to Editor Luigi Albertini, and within the pages of that newspaper will recognize the budding talents of young writers such as Guido Piovene, Mario Soldati, and Moravia. His review of Moravia’s first novel, Gli indifferenti (1929), is particularly relevant. Furthermore, Borgese is one of the first to perceptively remark on the merit of the narrative voice of Tozzi, whom he befriends and whose posthumous works Ricordi di un impiegato

GIUSEPPE ANTONIO BORGESE (1920), Gli egoisti (1923), and L’incalco (1923) he edits. Borgese’s last important critical work is Poetica dell’unita` (Poetics of Unity, 1934). With it he insists on the literary impetus to transcend man’s cognitive barriers and to sublimate oneself into what he calls ‘‘the unity of idea.’’ Elsewhere he speaks of ‘‘representing the world as a form of perfection and eternity; a virtual world which exists as a sublimation or transfiguration of that which we live’’ (Il senso della letteratura italiana, 1931). In Poetica dell’unita`, rather than focus on the narrative character of literature, Borgese insists upon its symbolic and idealistic aspects, thus re-addressing at a distance the 1911 dispute with Croce over the essay Filosofia di Giambattista Vico (1910). In support of the Italian involvement in World War I, he publishes mostly political (though not nationalistically extreme) works—Guerra di redenzione (War of Redemption, 1915); Italia e Germania (Italy and Germany, 1915); La guerra delle idee (War of Ideas, 1916); L’Italia e la nuova alleanza (Italy and the New Alliance, 1917)—and often carries out diplomatic services in Switzerland. After the declaration of peace and at the recommendation of Luigi Albertini, Borgese plays an important role in the establishment of the Italian-Yugoslavian accords. His self-imposed exile to the United States in 1931—where he remained to avoid the Fascist oath—as well as his marriage to Thomas Mann’s daughter, Elizabeth, have served critics as events indicative of his firm antitotalitarian and liberal principles. This interpretation is seconded by Goliath, the March of Fascism (1937), a fluent English language study of Fascism, aimed to support peace and the vision of a world republic. For further reading on this subject, refer to Common Cause (1944) and Foundations of the World Republic, published posthumously in 1953, as well as Idea della Russia (The Idea of Russia, 1951) related to the same utopian ideal.

Biography Born in Polizzi Generosa, in Sicily, 12 November 1882. Studied literature at the University of Palermo and then at the University of Florence, 1903; married Maria Freschi, with whom he had two children, Leonardo and Giovanna; contributor to Leonardo, Il regno, and La critica, 1913; established Hermes, 1904–1906; lived in Germany as correspondent for Il mattino (Naples) and La stampa (Turin), 1907–1908; taught German literature at the universities of Turin and Rome, 1909–1917;

contributor to Il corriere della sera, 1911–1952; established La nuova cultura, 1913, later published under the name Il conciliatore; publicly intervened in support of anti-Fascist Gaetano Salvemini, 1925; taught aesthetics and history of criticism, at the University of Milan, 1926. In 1930, several members of the Association of Fascist Academics obstructed his courses; took refuge to the United States, 1931; taught at Berkeley, 1931–1932; Smith College, 1932–1936; the University of Chicago, 1936–1948; U.S. citizen, 1937; divorced from Maria Freschi, married Elizabeth Mann, 1937; returned to Italy, 1948; resumes his chair of aesthetics at the University of Milan, 1949. Died in Fiesole (Florence), 4 December 1952. GIAN PAOLO GIUDICETTI Selected Works Fiction Rube`, 1921; as Rube`, translated by Isaac Goldberg, 1923. I vivi e i morti, 1923. La citta` sconosciuta, 1925. Le belle, 1927; as Beautiful Women, translated by John Shepley, 2001. Il sole non e` tramontato, 1929. Tempesta nel nulla, 1931. Il pellegrino appassionato, 1933. La Siracusana, 1953.

Plays L’arciduca, 1924. Lazzaro, 1925.

Poetry ‘‘La canzone paziente,’’ 1910. ‘‘Le poesie,’’ 1922.

Nonfiction Gabriele d’Annunzio: Da ‘‘Primo Vere’’ a ‘‘Fedra,’’ 1909. La nuova Germania, 1909. La vita e il libro, 3 vols., 1910–1913. Studi di letterature moderne, 1915. Guerra di redenzione, 1915. Italia e Germania, 1915. La guerra delle idee, 1916. L’Italia e la nuova alleanza, 1917. Tempo di edificare, 1923. La tragedia di Mayerling: Storia di Rodolfo d’Austria e di Mary Ve´tzera, 1925. Ottocento europeo, 1927. Autunno di Costantinopoli, 1929. Escursioni in terre nuove, 1931. Il senso della letteratura italiana, 1931. Poetica dell’unita`, 1934. Atlante americano, 1936. Goliath, The March of Fascism, 1937. Common Cause, 1944. Idea della Russia, 1951. Foundations of the World Republic, 1953.

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GIUSEPPE ANTONIO BORGESE Da Dante a Thomas Mann, 1958. La citta` assoluta e altri scritti, 1962.

Letters Olivieri, Mariarosaria (editor), Lettere a Giovanni Papini e Clotilde Marghieri, 1988. Stentella Petrarchini, Giuliana (editor), Lettere a Giovanni Gentile, 1998. ——— (editor), Per una cultura europea: Le lettere di Giuseppe Antonio Borgese a Otto von Taube (1907– 1952), 2002.

Further Reading Cavalli Pasini, Annamaria, L’unita` della letteratura: Borgese critico scrittore, Bologna: Pa`tron, 1994. Debenedetti, Giacomo, Il romanzo del Novecento, Milan: Garzanti, 1971. Gentili, Sandro, Gli anni di apprendistato di Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Verona: Gutenberg, 1991.

Langella, Giuseppe, ‘‘Borgese e Manzoni,’’ in Aevum, 60 (September-December 1986): 397–414. Licata, Vincenzo, L’invenzione critica: Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Palermo: Flaccovio, 1982. Parisi, Luciano, Borgese, Turin: Tirrenia, 2000. Rampolla del Tindaro Dominici, Ida (editor), Atti del Convegno su G. A. Borgese (Polizzi Generosa 11–12 settembre 1982), Polizzi Generosa, Palermo: Comune di Polizzi Generosa, 1984. Santangelo, Giovanni Saverio (editor), G. A. Borgese: La figura e l’opera. Atti del convegno nazionale (PalermoPolizzi Generosa 18–21 aprile 1983), Palermo: Stass, 1985. Sciascia, Leonardo, Per un ritratto dello scrittore da giovane, Milan: Adelphi, 2000. Sipala, Paolo Mario (editor), Borgese, Rosso di San Secondo, Savarese: Atti del convegno di studio CataniaRagusa-Caltanissetta 1980–1982, Rome: Bulzoni, 1983.

RAFFAELLO BORGHINI (1537–1588) A typical representative of the Florentine courtesan literary environment in the late sixteenth century, characterized by the Counter-Reformation academic spirit and bigoted religiosity, besides the treatise Il riposo (The Rest, 1584), Borghini wrote poetical works, translations, and plays, some of which he signed with the significant pseudonym of Filarete. Born into a noble and historically wealthy family, alternating between hostility and good relations with the Medicis, Raffaello in his early period appears to have been in a relationship with their opponents (1567–1573), as the canzone addressed to Archbishop Antonio Altoviti attests. Later Borghini also wrote a canzone on the death of Cosimo I (1574), another one on the death of Grand Duchess Giovanna (1578), and was in contact with all the noble families who collaborated with the grand duke. Borghini’s first poetical work is the still-unpublished short poem La veglia amorosa (The Love Vigil, 1565), addressed to Filippo Spina, whose original manuscript is catalogued at the Vatican Library (Fondo Patetta, n. 361). This allegorical-pastoral composition, rich in mythological and classical influences, is based on examples by Giovanni Boccaccio and Angelo Poliziano; it tells the tragic story 298

of Alcee’s love for the beautiful Luclitia, enriched with a discussion about Platonic and carnal love. Apart from a few sonnets and the canzone on the death of the duchess, all of Borghini’s poetical works are recorded in an autograph manuscript entitled Rime di R. B. detto Filarete (Rhymes by Raffaello Borghini, Called Filarete, undated) in Florence at the Biblioteca Nazionale (ms. II. IX.18), with notes and corrections by the author himself. The Rime include a large number of love sonnets, sonnets of religious or moral theme, five canzoni, short poems in ottave, like the Stanze alla Ninfa Tabelista (Stanzas for the Nymph Tabelista, undated) or the Stanze alla Ninfa Trialuce (Stanzas for the Nymph Trialuce, undated), and a group of sonnets on the death of Piero di Gherardo Capponi (1586). In the manuscript, Borghini was careful in evaluating his own work, and separates those poems he considered his best from the ones he rejected. The Rime were edited by Domenico Moreni only in 1882, and were published together with the poetry of court artist Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572). As a translator from French into Tuscan volgare, Borghini edited the Trattato di Giovanni Marco Villa sopra l’Origine de’ Tempii de’ Giudei, de’ Cristiani e dei Gentili, e la infelice morte di quelli che gli hanno saccheggiati, spogliati e ruinati (Treatise by

RAFFAELLO BORGHINI Giovanni Marco Villa on the Origins of Jewish, Christian and Pagan Temples and the Doomed Death of Those Who Sacked, Spoiled, Damaged Them, 1577). This is a curious historical work written in 1563 by Jean de Marcouville, which concerns the origins of temples of various religious denominations and the tragic destiny reserved to those who desecrated them. Borghini also authored theatrical plays: La donna costante (The Constant Woman, 1578) and L’amante furioso (The Delirious Lover, 1583), the latter written during his second trip to France (1579–1580). La donna costante is based on the dramatic story of Romeo and Juliet, which Borghini adapted from an anonymous literary source but chose to take to a happy end. Instead, L’amante furioso, which is more fragmentary than the earlier play, is characterized by a complex plot where particular attention is given to the female characters. Moralizing and pathetic elements also prevail, with some spectacular events. Finally, the pastoral play Diana pietosa (Merciful Diana, 1586) unfolds a pathetic plot, in accordance with the taste of the period. In 1584, Borghini wrote his most famous work, Il riposo, a treatise in the form of dialogue, first published in Florence with a dedication to Giovanni de’ Medici, Cosimo’s illegitimate son. It is divided into four books: the first two are theoretical in nature, the others historical. The dialogue derives its title from the name of the villa in which the author imagines it was held: Il riposo, the property of Bernardo Vecchietti, an art collector. The interlocutors, besides Vecchietti himself, are the sculptor Rodolfo Sirigatti and the Florentine noblemen Baccio Valori and Girolamo Michelozzi. Much of the treatise lacks originality, because Borghini, who could be considered Vasari’s successor, somehow relies on Giorgio Vasari’s Vite (Lives, 1568) for most of his background data. The prose style is often academic and pedantic notwithstanding a certain brilliance in the dialectical Platonic form, modeled on authors from the late antiquity (Athenaeus and Macrobius), rather than on Plato himself. Anyway, Il riposo remains an important source of information reflecting the oral culture of its age, because Borghini accurately describes art works exhibited in Tuscan villas, palaces, and churches, as well as the prevailing tastes of contemporary Florentine society. In the historical section of the treatise, when the author departs from his Vasarian source, he provides a valuable discussion of Florentine (and also non-Florentine) artists of the second half of the cinquecento.

Biography Born in Florence, in 1537 or 1541, probably from Francesco and Alessandra Buontempi. In his early period an opponent to the Medicis; forced to move to Provence (1572–1575), changing both name and activity and probably becoming a dance master. Back to Florence, wrote plays and published translations (1575–1586). A second trip to France is documented in 1579–1580. Often distressed because of economical reasons, by the end of his life his circumstances improved because of closer relations with Florentine nobility. Some register him as a Benedictine monk in 1584, but there is no real evidence for this. Died in Florence on 26 December 1588 and is buried in the church of Santa Croce. MARIA AGNESE CHIARI MORETTO WIEL Selected Works Treatises Il Riposo di R. B. in cui della pittura e della scultura si favella, de’ piu` illustri pittori e scultori e delle piu` famose opere loro si fa mentione, e le cose principali appartenenti a dette arti s’insegnano, 1584; as Il riposo, translated by L. H. Ellis, 2002.

Plays La donna costante, 1578. L’amante furioso, 1583. Diana pietosa, 1586.

Poetry ‘‘La veglia amorosa’’ 1565. ‘‘Canzone in morte della Serenissima Reina d’Austria Granduchessa di Toscana,’’ 1578. ‘‘Rime,’’ edited by Domenico Moreni, 1882.

Translations Trattato di Giovanni Marco Villa sopra l’Origine de’ Tempii de’ Giudei, de’ Cristiani e dei Gentili, e la infelice morte di quelli che gli hanno saccheggiati, spogliati e ruinati, 1577.

Further Reading Avanzini, Elena, Il Riposo di Raffaello Borghini e la critica d’arte nel Cinquecento, Milan: Gastaldi, 1960. Barocchi, Paola, Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento, Turin: Einaudi, 1977–1979. Blunt, Anthony, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1540–1600, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. Ceserani, Remo, ‘‘Borghini, Raffaello,’’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Rome: Istituto Enciclopedico Treccani, 12 (1970): 677–680. Ellis, L.H. Jr., Raffaello Borghini’s ‘‘ Il Riposo ’’: A Critical Study and Annotated Translation: Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University, 2002.

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RAFFAELLO BORGHINI Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘Le commedie di Raffaello Borghini,’’ in La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 78 (1969): 37–63. Geerts, Walter, Annick Paternoster, and Franco Pignatti (editors), Il sapere delle parole. Studi sul dialogo latino e italiano del Rinascimento, Rome: Bulzoni, 2001.

Rosci, Marco, introduction to Raffaello Borghini, Il riposo, 2 vols, Milan: Labor riproduzioni e documenti, 1967. Schlosser Magnino, Julius, Die Kunstliteratur (1924); as La letteratura artistica, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977.

VINCENZIO MARIA BORGHINI (1515–1580) A leading figure in the Florence of Cosimo I, Borghini divided his time between the duties of administering the Spedale degli Innocenti (and other works of piety) and participation in the cultural life of the city, which saw him among the protagonists of a society still enjoying the splendor of the High Renaissance. With a solid classicist formation, and an excellent knowledge of Greek, the Benedictine monk, beginning in his youth, assured himself a constantly growing prestige with those whom he knew, and soon began to collaborate with the duke himself (and later grand duke) Cosimo de’ Medici, who made him one of the cornerstones of his cultural policy. In fact, Cosimo kept him bound to the exacting tasks of administration, but at the same time gave him rewards: in the literary circles toward which his most authentic callings drew him; and in the milieu of artists, for whom Borghini did not hesitate to acknowledge ‘‘singolare inclinazione e affezzione’’ (singular inclination and affection). From 1563 as the lieutenant of the ‘‘Accademia del disegno’’ (Academy of Drawing) that has its seat in the new sacristy of San Lorenzo, Borghini enjoyed final say and influence on the disputes and debates of the artists, and his activity as an inventore (inventor) was diverse: from his various interventions as a deviser of pictorial subjects, often in collaboration with his friend Giorgio Vasari (among others, the scenography of the Sala dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in 1565); the preparation of Michelangelo’s obsequies in 1564; the displays for the marriage of Prince Francesco and Giovanna d’Austria in 1565; the obsequies of the Grand Duke Cosimo himself in 1574. His industriousness in public celebrations and in apparati effimeri (ephemeral displays) developed 300

in parallel to his studies of and interests in antiquity and in the history of Florence’s origins: His activity as an inventore is a channel in which his erudition and his talents gradually found an outlet and concrete realization. On the other hand, the greater part of his writings—works that are long and laborious, meticulous and erudite, most often unfinished—was not published. This is noteworthy when we consider his friendship and collaboration with Florentine typographers. He wrote a letter to Filippo Giunta (in the Florence codex, Biblioteca Nazionale, Filze Rinuccini 21, 11) about an edition of Matteo Villani, an edition later printed for Giunta press. The edition of Michelangelo’s Esequie (Obsequies) was also published by Iacopo Giunta. With Torrentino, Borghini collaborates on an edition of Vasari’s Vite (Lives, 1550), compiling its illustrations. Later, Borghini continued to help Vasari in improving his grand biographical work until its publication by Giunta in 1568. In 1565, his debate with Girolamo Mei on the origins of Florence was important in countering the thesis that the city was rebuilt by the Longobards on a different site from that of Augustus’ ancient colony. Borghini demonstrated that Mei’s idea of a supposed refoundation by the Longobards was based on a forgery by Annio da Viterbo. It is believed that an early development of this correspondence with Mei prompted the idea for a short treatise on the mode of conducting literary polemics, a treatise that survives in manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, II.X.107), published in the nineteenth century with the title Dello scrivere contro alcuno (On Writing Against Someone). The composition was first begun between November and December of 1559, and remains in

VINCENZIO MARIA BORGHINI draft form. In this work, Borghini intends to formulate an etiquette of writing, or, better yet, a breviary of literary polemic, excluding the subject matters of satire and those of religious polemic. Borghini was concerned, among other things, with an argument close to his heart: his Florentine tongue, defended many times by those who are unqualified to do so—hence his accusations against Ludovico Dolce and Girolamo Ruscelli. He identifies the border that separates humanistic studies from those that conceal, on the other hand, personal attitudes unworthy of the high function of writing, and in this way become ‘‘studi di bestialita`’’ (studies of beastiality). We can see not only the originality of the theme, but also its timeliness, when we consider that the fierce polemic between Annibal Caro and Ludovico Castelvetro on the so-called canzone of the gigli d’oro had already broken out, in which many Italian literati participate, and about which, in 1559, Castelvetro published in Modena the contest’s final document, entitled Ragione d’alcune cose segnate nella canzone d’Annibal Caro (The Reason for Certain Things Recorded in the Canzone of Annibal Caro). The polemic with Mei, moreover, produced a decisive turning point in the historical studies of Borghini, whose antiquarian investigations are begun at the end of the 1540s with a vast work on the names and history of Roman families, and with a small treatise on the Conviti degli antichi (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Strozzi XXVIII, 52; Feasts of the Ancients), and which are followed by studies on Florence in the high medieval period that served him well for the frescoes of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1565. He then developed his design for a history of Florence, from its origins through the times preceding the famous chronicles of fourteenth-century Florentine writers, with studies like the Trattato della chiesa e vescovi fiorentini (Treatise on the Church and Florentine Bishops), published in the posthumous Discorsi (Dicourses, 1584–1585); and he began to occupy himself with other historical disciplines: with coins, in Trattato sulle monete fiorentine (Treatise on Florentine Coins, 1577), and with heraldry, in particular with the escutcheons of the Florentine nobility. The last of the three books of his grand project foresaw a treatise on the language of Florence, on its origin, its characteristics, and the reasons it should not be contaminated by foreign tongues. In Borghini’s judgment, not only had Pietro Bembo not ‘‘compreso il tutto della lingua’’ (understood the language in its entirety), but Benedetto Varchi himself had been unequal to the task. The Trattato

della lingua (Treatise on the Language), planned as an appendix to the treatise on origins, began to be conceived as an autonomous treatise. It is based on the language of the fourteenth-century writers, and is open to the so-called minori (minor ones) as long as they are Florentine, to the vernacular editions, and to a wide range of documents, including domestic writings and family memoirs, which represent for Borghini ‘‘la lingua pura e propria del popolo’’ (the pure, true language of the people). Borghini’s great ability in linguistic matters had a foundation in his solid philological preparation. The ascertaining of the original reading, which he practiced in the school of Pier Vettori on Greek and Latin classical texts, was primary for Borghini, and demanded resorting to the manuscript tradition. It is not coincidental that it is precisely to the texts recommended by Bembo as models for prose—that is, Boccaccio’s Decameron and Giovanni Villani’s Cronaca—that Borghini dedicated his most difficult studies in the field of the vernacular: He was in fact the organizer of the grand philological undertaking at the basis of the edition of the Decameron (published in 1573), and prepared, without being able to publish it, the text of Villani’s Cronaca. The edition of the Decameron put back into circulation a work that according to the Roman Inquisition contains passages contrary to religion. The Inquisitors in Rome sent a copy with the incriminating passages to Duke Cosimo himself, who presided at a commission of Florentine men of letters, the so-called deputati alla rasettatura, which included Borghini himself. The deputati, with Borghini at their head, exploited this chance to revise the manuscript tradition of Boccaccio’s work, so that, although producing a severely altered text, they improved the readings of the vulgata (vulgate), making use especially of the oldest manuscripts and particularly of the one they called l’ottimo (the very best), which is to say the manuscript transcribed in 1378 by Francesco d’Amaretto Mannelli. The endeavor of Borghini and the deputati is documented by a book entitled Annotazioni et discorsi sopra alcuni luoghi del Decameron (Annotations and Discourses on Some Places of the Decameron, 1574), that is in fact a philological commentary on the text. Borghini refused, on the subject of language, to accept fixed norms, and therefore conceived that the work of restoration as well cannot obey rigid rules. However, while he worked on Villani and on the Decameron, he had the idea of gathering his approach on the ways of emending ancient texts, and in particular on the problem of the choice of 301

VINCENZIO MARIA BORGHINI the best manuscripts and of the recognition of a good reading: ‘‘che regola ci ha da conoscere la miglior lezione dalla men buona o pure autorita` da risolversene’’ (what rule there is to know the better reading from the worse one, or else what authority to resolve it). Once again, a completed book does not emerge, but rather a work halfway between a responding letter (addressed to an unnamed friend) and a short treatise, of which we have the autograph manuscript, and which has been published in modern times under the title Lettera intorno a’ manoscritti antichi (Letter on Ancient Manuscripts, 1995). It is a short treatise of Italian philology, and as such it is unique among Italian studies on philological method in the sixteenth century and for long afterwards. At the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared the studies of Michele Barbi, whose nuova filologia (new philology), fundamental for the textual studies of the twentieth century, has strict presuppositions in Borghini’s philology.

Biography The fourth son of Domenico and of Mattea di Agnolo Capponi is born on October 29, 1515. He dons the Benedictine habit in the Abbey of Florence in 1531. He studies in the Benedictine abbeys, and primarily in the Florentine Abbey: among his teachers are Francesco Verino the elder, Chirico Strozzi, and Francesco Zeffi. But his most important teacher is the great philologist Pier Vettori, who from 1538 on is lector of Greek and Latin in the Florentine studio, and with whom the young Borghini collaborates on the publication of classical texts. In 1539, he visits with his abbot the Benedictine monasteries of southern Italy during a long trip, in the course of which he meets Pope Paul III with his cardinals, among whom is Gaspare Contarini, a protector of the Benedictine Order. In 1541, he is ordained a deacon and moves from the Florentine abbey to the abbey of San Fiore d’Arezzo. In 1542, he is temporarily moved to the monastery of San Benedetto in Mantova, where he teaches Greek, and in 1544 he is in Venice, where he stocks up on books. In 1553, he assumes the post of Spedalingo degli Innocenti, a position he maintains for his entire life, and which will occupy much of his time. In 1563, he inaugurates the Accademia del Disegno, of which he is named lieutenant. In the first months of 1571, he works on the correction of the manuscript of the Decameron. By order of Cosimo, the Florentine academicians chosen to compile the ‘‘regole della lingua toscana’’ (rules of the Tuscan language) consult with Borghini and with Giovan 302

Battista Adriani on everything. On June 22, 1574, he writes his testament, and is able to make a will— subject to papal permission—in favor of his nieces, Baccia and Maria, the daughters of his brother Lorenzo. He dies on August 15, 1580, in Florence, where he has a tomb in the church of the Spedale degli Innocenti. In the papers of the Florentine notary Raffaello Eschini, there survives an inventory, composed after his death, of his books and goods (unpublished in its entirety). GINO BELLONI Selected Works Collections Raccolta di prose fiorentine. Parte Quarta. Volume quarto contenente lettere, Florence: Stamperia Ducale, Tartini e Franchi, 1745. Scritti inediti o rari sulla lingua, edited by John R. Woodhouse, Bologna: Commissione dei testi di lingua, 1971. Vincenzio Borghini dall’erudizione alla filologia. Una raccolta di testi, edited by Gino Belloni, Pescara: Libreria dell’Universita` editrice, 1998.

Philological Writings Annotazioni, 1574; Le Annotazioni e i Discorsi sul Decameron del 1573 dei Deputati Fiorentini, edited by Giuseppe Chiecchi, 2001. Lettera intorno a’ manoscritti antichi, edited by Gino Belloni, 1995. Annotazioni sopra Giovanni Villani, edited by Riccardo Drusi, 2001.

Historical Treatises Discorsi recati in luce da’ Deputati per suo testamento, 2 vols., 1584–1585. Storia della nobilta` fiorentina, edited by John R. Woodhouse, 1974.

Other Dello scrivere contro alcuno. Discorso inedito di V. Borghini, edited by Giuseppe Aiazzi, 1841; rpt. in Opuscoli inediti e rari di classici ed approvati scrittori, vol. 1, 1844. Ruscelleide, ovvero Dante difeso dalle accuse di G. Ruscelli, edited by Carlo Arlia, 2 vols., 1898. Considerazioni sopra l’allogare le donne degli Innocenti, fuori dal maritare o monacare, edited by Giorgio Bruscoli, 1904. Ricordi intorno alla sua vita, edited by Antonio Lorenzoni, 1909. Carteggio artistico inedito, edited by Antonio Lorenzoni, 1912. Il Carteggio di V.B., vol. I (1541–1552), edited by Daniela Francalanci, Franca Pellegrini, and Eliana Carrara, 2001.

Further Reading Barbi, Michele, ‘‘Degli studi di Vincenzio Borghini sopra la storia e la lingua di Firenze,’’ in Il Propugnatore, new

POGGIO BRACCIOLINI series, 2 (1889): 87–131; rpt. in Vincenzio Borghini dall’erudizione alla filologia. Una raccolta di testi, edited by Gino Belloni, Pescara: Libreria dell’Universita` editrice, 1998. Belloni, Gino, ‘‘Borghini. Dello scrivere contro altrui: un abbozzo di galateo per lapolemica letteraria,’’ in Bufere e molli aurette. Polemiche letterarie dallo Stilnovo alla ‘Voce,’ edited by Maria Grazia Pensa, Milan: Guerini, 1996. Belloni, Gino, ‘‘Notizia di un nuovo documento per la biblioteca del Borghini,’’ in Il filodella ragione. Studi e testimonianze per Sergio Romagnoli, edited by Enrico Ghidetti e Roberta Turchi, Venice: Marsilio, 1999. Belloni, Gino, and Riccardo Drusi (editors), Vincenzio Borghini. Filologia e invenzionenella Firenze di Cosimo I, Florence: Olschki, 2002. Bertoli, Gustavo, ‘‘I quaderni storico-linguistici di Vincenzio Borghini,’’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana,’’ 176 (1999): 85–93.

Bertoli, Gustavo, and Riccardo Drusi (editors), Fra lo «Spedale» e il Principe. Vincenzio Borghini. Filologia e invenzione nella Firenze di Cosimo I. Atti del Convegno (Firenze 21–22 Marzo 2002), Padua: il Poligrafo, 2005. Folena, Gianfranco, ‘‘Borghini Vincenzio,’’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 12, Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970. Gigli, Ottavio (editor), Studi sulla ‘Divina Commedia’ di Galileo Galilei, Vincenzo Borghini e altri, Florence: Le Monner, 1855. Legrenzi, Ada, Vincenzo Borghini. Studio critico, Udine: Del Bianco, 1910. Pozzi, Mario, Lingua e cultura del Cinquecento. Dolce, Aretino, Machiavelli,Guicciardini, Sarpi, Borghini, Padua: Liviana, 1975. Tapella, Claudia, and Mario Pozzi, ‘‘L’edizione del ‘Decameron’ del 1573: lettere edocumenti della rassettatura,’’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 165 (1988): 54–84, 196–226, 366–398, 511–544.

POGGIO BRACCIOLINI (1380–1459) Like many other Humanists of his time, Poggio Bracciolini owed his fame to treatises, dialogues, and letters as much as to his own biography. Praised first and foremost for his role as a restitutor antiquitatis (meaning at once he who ‘‘returns to’’ and ‘‘restores’’ the ancient past), Bracciolini’s life is so exemplary that it has often overshadowed his literary merits. Undoubtedly, the accounts regarding his enthusiastic recovery of hitherto unknown masterpieces of classical literature embody all too perfectly those pioneering qualities that were attributed to Humanism as a whole. In connection with his discoveries, Bracciolini rejected Gothic bookhand and invented a new graphic system drawn from elements of Carolingian script, which is an antecedent of contemporary Roman type. Bracciolini’s lifelong quest led him through the monasteries and abbeys of Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and France where he discovered, among others, works by Cicero, Lucretius, Valerius Flaccus, and the complete text of Quintilian’s Institutiones Oratoriae. However, this yearning for rare manuscripts should not be seen as the only significant aspect of his life. Bracciolini also witnessed the decline and end of that first golden age of cultural rebirth, which took place in Florence between the

last decades of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. Over the course of his life Bracciolini mourned, one by one, the deaths of his mentors and chief interlocutors—among them, Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, and Niccolo` Niccoli—and proudly, albeit unsuccessfully, resisted the methodological suggestions advanced by the upcoming generation of Humanists. Absorbed as he was by practical missions (his journeys and duties as secretary to several popes), Bracciolini began circulating his ideas in written form at a mature age. Taken singularly, his works touched upon most of the subjects that were debated in his own time. One of the first and most notable is certainly the dialogue De avaritia (On Avarice), which he sent to the Venetian senator and Humanist Francesco Barbaro in 1428. In this work, differing views regarding the topical subject of human greed were argued in utramque partem (on both sides of the question) according to the best norms of Renaissance moral dialogues. While rehashing many of the commonplaces concerning the theme of avarice, Bracciolini had one of his characters, Antonio Loschi, present a firm and quite novel defense of capitalist acquisition. Together with the more elaborated ideas developed in Leon Battista Alberti’s I Libri della Famiglia 303

POGGIO BRACCIOLINI (The Family in Renaissance Florence, 1433–1441), Antonio’s words represented a definitive acknowledgment of the shift of values that went hand in hand with the rise of a mercantile society. In the De avaritia, Antonio affirms that everyone, even children, desire money and this proves that such a yearning is natural to human beings. Avarice, which in the character’s words is taken to define an appropriate approach to civic life rather than a mere vice, is thus identified as the true force spurring both practical labor and intellectual activity. Bracciolini’s dialogue sets the standard for a moral philosophy the terms of which are no longer dictated by either religious or philosophical doctrines, but rather by a sound and appreciative observation of social life. Qui enim sunt isti qui publicum quaerant bonum seposito privato emolumento? Ego ad hunc diem neminem cognovi, qui id quidem posset impune. Dicuntur eiusmodi nonnulla a philosophis de praeponenda utilitate communi magis speciose quam vere. Sed vita mortalium non est exigenda nobis ad statheram philosophiae. Who, in fact, are those who setting aside their private advantage go after the public good? Up until this day I have not met anyone who could afford to do this. The philosophers maintain something of this kind, namely that the common use should take precedence over one’s own, but this is more of a pretended argument than a true one. We cannot weigh human life with the scale of philosophy.

Bracciolini’s relativistic approach to the definition of human virtue—an interest that is fully elaborated in the dialogue De Vera Nobilitate (On True Nobility, 1440)—was coterminous with his attack upon the ascetic values advocated in those very same years by religious preachers such as Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444). If read within the social and economic framework of the De Avaritia, Bracciolini’s criticism of the existential model advanced by the observants emerges as an updated restatement, in terms of the opposition between poverty and wealth, of the medieval dispute over the relative merits of the active and the contemplative life. Bracciolini’s moral philosophy found ready application in later attempts to define human virtue within a societal and urban context as, for example, in the work of Giovanni Pontano. Later, in his Contra hypocritas (Against Hypocrites, 1447–1448), Bracciolini developed the antimonastic and anticlerical sentiments first adumbrated in the dialogue on avarice. Such an indictment of those who preach the withdrawal from civic life was made in a tone at once sardonic and 304

injuriously polemical that Bracciolini contributed to legitimize as a viable form of expression and for which he would be criticized by, among others, Erasmus of Rotterdam. In view of Bracciolini’s celebration of every aspect of active life, the De Avaritia and the Contra hypocritas delineated a moral philosophy that was reminiscent of Lorenzo Valla’s Christian Epicureanism: an ethos in which the principles of Christian charity were assimilated to the values inherent to secular life. Bracciolini’s conclusions are less surprising if one considers that his views must have been greatly influenced by his reading of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, a text that he himself had rediscovered. The salacious language and the criticism of contemporaries found in the Contra hypocritas is also at the basis of the work that made Bracciolini internationally known and turned him into an unchallenged model for satirical writing: His notorious Facetiae, a term that can be translated as ‘‘witticisms’’ or ‘‘jests,’’ written between 1438 and 1452. The anecdotes and short stories that comprise the collection lay bare the fallibility and ludicrous nature of human beings. Even though the clergy is reserved a special treatment, Bracciolini’s insightful eye considers every possible human typology. While the Facetiae were soon translated into the vernacular, Bracciolini himself asserted in his preface to the collection that he meant to prove that Latin could be made to accommodate a subject as base as his. The straightforward nature of his language, which never shies away from calling things by their proper name, is definitely part of the background of any polemical discourse against the linguistic abstruseness of the literati up until and including Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno. The Humanist who could so skillfully portray the essence of human existence was also the author of a series of pessimistic works such as De infelicitate principum (On the Unhappiness of Princes, 1440), De varietate fortunae (On the Vicissitude of Fortune, 1448), and De miseria humanae condicionis (On the Misery of the Human Condition, 1455). In these later works the vicissitudes that Bracciolini himself had pointed out as being at the basis of human existence led him to less celebratory conclusions. Bracciolini’s surliness, however, was not merely a pose struck in order to reject what he had accepted as an essential part of human earthly experience. Rather, his pessimism should be interpreted as the reaction of an older man who, throughout his entire life, made it his priority to take in and elaborate as many aspects of the social

POGGIO BRACCIOLINI world as possible. Certainly, Bracciolini was also motivated to write these dialogues by the negative example set by the Roman Curia under the pontificate of Eugenius IV. Among these works, the most significant is probably De varietate fortunae, in which Bracciolini explores the topography of ancient Rome by strolling through the city’s ruins. As had been the case for Petrarch, the visit leads him to considerations regarding the power of fortune and the objective causes of the decline of ancient majesty. These musings give way in books II and III to contemporary history, evidence of an interest for historiography that Bracciolini also developed in a work that he never brought to completion, the Historiae Florentini populi (History of the Florentine People), later translated into Italian by his son Jacopo as Historia fiorentina (History of Florence, 1476). Of particular significance, finally, is the last book of De varietate fortunae, in which the disquisition on fate is now continued by Niccolo` de’ Conti, a traveler through whose eyes Bracciolini described exotic India. In addition to his dialogues, Bracciolini is a crucial figure for our understanding of the fifteenth century because of his vast corpus of letters as well as a series of polemical texts and invectives. In these works, which should be read alongside those penned by his adversaries, Bracciolini engaged in fierce controversies with some illustrious contemporaries such as Guarino Veronese (1374–1460) and Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), and most notably with Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457) over the approach to ancient texts, authors, and their language. His controversy with Valla, in which he defended the authorities of the classical period from the intrusion of the new philological science, gave Bracciolini the label of conservative and reactionary. In truth, he was the last representative of a world that also owed its decline to the force of the individualism that he defended.

Biography Born in Terranuova (Arezzo) in the Arno Valley on February 11, 1380; received his first education in Arezzo before moving to Florence and training as a notary. Moved to Rome in 1403 where through the mediation of Coluccio Salutati he was employed as a scribe in the papal curia. Worked for Popes Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and Gregory XII as well as the antipopes of the Pisan party Alexander V and John XXIII, the latter of which appointed

him apostolic secretary. After the deposition of Pope John at the Council of Constance in 1415, Bracciolini remained in Germany looking for rare manuscripts of classical works, traveling then also to Switzerland and France. Between 1418 and 1423 he lived in England and worked for the bishop of Winchester, Henry Beaufort. Returning to Rome as apostolic secretary to Martin V, he worked for the Roman Curia until 1453, when he moved to Florence and succeeded Carlo Marsuppini as the city’s chancellor. Died in Florence on October 30, 1459. ROCCO RUBINI See also: Humanism Selected Works Collections Opera omnia, edited by Riccardo Fubini, 4 vols., Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1964–1969.

Dialogues De avaritia, 1428. De Infelicitate Principum, 1440. De Vera Nobilitate, 1440. Contra hypocritas, 1447–1448. De Varietate Fortunae, 1448. Facetiae, 1452; as The Facetiae, translated by Bernhardt J. Hurwood, 1968. De miseria humanae condicionis, 1455.

Historical Works Historia fiorentina di Messer Poggio, 1476.

Other Lettere, edited by Helene Harth, 3 vols., 1984–1987. La Controversia di Poggio Bracciolini e Guarino Veronese su Cesare e Scipione, edited by Davide Canfora, 2001.

Further Reading Bisanti, Armando, ‘‘Dall’‘exemplum’ alla facezia: L’apologo dell’asino,’’ in Esperienze letterarie, 19, no. 3 (1994): 37–50. Bradley, Dennis R., ‘‘Poggio’s Noble Dialogue: Textual Variations in Three Early Printed Editions,’’ in Renaissance Quarterly, 8, no. 1 (1994): 1–12. Castelli, Patrizia (editor), Poggio Bracciolini, un toscano del ’400 (1380–1459), Arezzo: Sant’Agnese, 1980. Flores, Enrico, Le scoperte di Poggio e il testo di Lucrezio, Naples: Liguori, 1980. Fubini, Riccardo, Umanesimo e secolarizzazione da Petrarca a Valla, Rome: Bulzoni, 1990. Marsh, David, The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.

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POGGIO BRACCIOLINI Oppel, John W. ‘‘Poggio, S. Bernardino of Siena, and the Dialogue on Avarice,’’ in Renaissance Quarterly, 30, no. 4 (1977): 564–587. Poggio Bracciolini, 1380–1980: Nel VI centenario della nascita, Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1982. Struever, Nancy S., The Language of History in the Renaissance. Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in

Florentine Humanism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970. Ullman, Berthold L., The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960

ROBERTO BRACCO (1861–1943) Roberto Bracco was a poet, short-story writer, playwright, critic, musicologist, and journalist. A complex personality, he had intense relations with such intellectuals as Marco Praga, Renato Simoni, and Lucio D’Ambra. Through his theatrical and musical criticism, Bracco also contributed to the diffusion of Ibsen’s theater in Italy and helped overcome the hostility against Wagner, especially in Naples. He was the author of several successful popular songs (often written upon request or in response to a current fashion), including ‘‘Salamelic’’ (1882), which he wrote for the Piedigrotta Festival at Martino Cafiero’s request, ‘‘La frangetta’’ (1884), ‘‘Come te voglio ama`’’ (1887). He wrote verses in Neapolitan dialect, dealing with the themes of love, social matters, oddities (the bicycle), current events (the war of Africa). He even wrote duet scenes or tragicomic fantasias with a clear theatrical structure. An original and nonconformist writer, he was attracted, in both his journalistic writings and in his literary works, by such matters as spiritualism, women, the animal kingdom, and by social and moral themes, such as the celibacy of priests, which he addressed both in a text published in volume 25 of Opere (Works, 1935–1938), the author’s complete works, and in Il piccolo santo (The Little Saint, 1910), one of his best-known works. In Il piccolo santo, the protagonist Don Fiorenzo, a priest-saint, tries to suppress his feelings for the young Annita, but Barbarello, an insane young man, acting on thoughts the priest has not confessed to himself, kills Don Fiorenzo’s brother Guido, to whom Annita is engaged. Bracco also won great theatrical acclaim with works such as Infedele (Unfaithful, 1895), in which the protagonist, Clara, who, though faithful 306

and in love with her husband, is unwilling to abdicate her freedom. She avenges all the wrongs she has suffered by making fun of her husband and her several suitors. The title character of Don Pietro Caruso (1895), memorably interpreted by the great actor Ermete Zacconi, is a shady and deceitful fellow, but also a loving father and protector of his only daughter. He commits suicide when he feels responsible for the negative example he has given her. The protagonists of Sperduti nel buio (Lost in Darkness, 1901) are two foundlings, Pauline and Nunzio, who, in a shady and disreputable Naples, suffer abuses and degradation. The work of Bracco’s full artistic maturity was I pazzi (The Madmen, 1922), dealing with madness and the uncertain boundary between sanity and insanity, a frequent theme in the early twentieth century’s theater, especially in Pirandello. Notwithstanding the success of his works, Bracco was an outsider in Naples, which seemed to him the last outpost before the desert. Unhappy with himself and with the world of the theater, he often burned or wished to burn his plays, despite being one of the most translated and staged playwrights outside Italy, known even in America, where one of his most famous works, Infedele, was performed in New York to great acclaim. This strong feeling of exclusion pervades his texts, and led to the revision of his entire corpus, the last edition of which, for the publisher Carabba (1935–1938), was edited by himself. His drama belonged to the neoidealistic and Ibsenian current that spread throughout Italy at the end of the nineteenth century. His constant search for new cultural themes and tendencies spurred him to welcome enthusiastically the new experiences of the twentieth century, even anticipating the

ROBERTO BRACCO psychoanalytic and surrealist theater. To Bracco, the theater was a valid medium for representing the reality of human emotion. There was a strong link between his narrative and theatrical productions: Many short stories were sketches for future plays and in them, as in the theater, tragic and humorous elements, sometimes eccentrically burlesque, alternated. The title of his two 1909 short story collections, Smorfie gaie (Cheerful Grimaces) and Smorfie tristi (Cheerless Grimaces), confirmed this double intent, where the grimace is the grotesque deformation of the truth. Interested in novelties, he could not be indifferent to the invention of silent films. In 1914, he consented to the cinema version of his drama Sperduti nel buio, directed by Nino Martoglio and starring Gianni Grasso and Maria Carmi. During the next decade, several of Bracco’s plays were adapted, including Don Pietro Caruso (1916), La piccola fonte (1917), Il perfetto amore, 1918), and Il piccolo santo (1920). Friends with such actresses as Adelaide Ristori, Eleonora Duse, Tina Di Lorenzo, Irma and Emma Grammatica, and actors such as Ermete Novelli and Ermete Zacconi, he had strong relationships with such intellectuals as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Salvatore Di Giacomo, Ferdinando Russo, and Luigi Pirandello. He was friends with Raffaele Viviani and Peppino De Filippo, and strongly appreciated by Matilde Serao, who wrote the preface to an anthology of Bracco’s texts, Col permesso del babbo (With Daddy’s Permission, 1926). Due to Fascist persecution, his texts, in the last years of his life, were censored.

Biography The date of Bracco’s birth is uncertain; Bracco himself did not clarify the several hypotheses and gave the date as ‘‘Naples, 1861,’’ without indicating the day. Son of Achille and Rosa De Ruggiero, who belonged to a noble family. Self-taught; at 17 the manager of Il mattino d’Italia, Martino Cafiero, invited him to contribute to the newspaper. Wrote under the pseudonym of Baby. Also wrote for Il corriere del Mezzogiorno, Capitan Fracassa, Il piccolo, and Il corriere di Napoli. In 1914, at the age of 56, married 20-year-old Laura Del Vecchio. In 1924, joined the ‘‘Unione nazionale’’ of Giovanni Amendola in opposition to Fascism, and was later persecuted and boycotted for his political position. After refusing an allowance the Fascist government

had offered him, retired to Sorrento, where he died on 20 April 1943. ANTONIA LEZZA Selected Works Collections Col permesso del babbo: versi dialettali, teatro, novelle, scritti vari, Palermo: R. Sandron, 1926. Opere, 25 vols., Lanciano: Carabba, 1935–1938.

Plays Infedele, 1895. Don Pietro Caruso, 1895; as Don Pietro Caruso, translated by Carl A. Swanson, 1948. Maschere: dramma in un atto; Le disilluse: fiaba in un atto per marionette, 1896. Uno degli onesti, 1900. Il diritto di vivere, 1900. Sperduti nel buio, 1901. La piccola fonte, 1906. Il piccolo santo, 1910. Il perfetto amore, 1913. I pazzi, 1922.

Fiction Il diritto dell’amore, 1898. Smorfie umane, 1906. Smorfie gaie, 1909. smorfie tristi, 1909.

Poetry ‘‘Vecchi versetti,’’ 1910. ‘‘Versi napoletani: con postille, glossario e una chiaccherata dell’autore; poi Pulcinella innamorato,’’ 1939.

Essays Frottole di baby, 1881. Spiritismo di baby, 1886. Donne, 1893. Lo spiritismo a Napoli nel 1886, 1907. Tra le arti e gli artisti, 1919. Tra gli uomini e le cose, 1921. Tra i due sessi. Fioretti di esperienza, 1921.

Letters Lettere a Laura, edited by Pasquale Iaccio, 1994. Roberto Bracco e la societa` teatrale fra Ottocento e Novecento: lettere inedite a Stanislao Manca, Adolfo Re Riccardi, Luigi Rasi, Francesco Pasta, edited by Antonella Di Nallo, 2003.

Further Reading Brunetta, Gian Piero, Storia del cinema italiano 1895–1945, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979. Croce, Benedetto, La letteratura della nuova Italia, vol. 6, Bari: Laterza, 1945. Frascani, Federico, ‘‘Riflessioni in un cinquantenario: la parte viva del teatro di Roberto Bracco,’’ in Misure critiche, 88–89 (1993–1994): 139–149.

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ROBERTO BRACCO Giovanelli, Paola Daniela, ‘‘...i posteri sapranno che siamo stati amici.’’ Lettere di Roberto Bracco a Sabatino Lopez e Dario Niccodemi, Marano di Napoli: GraficArte, 2002. Gobetti, Piero, Scritti di critica teatrale, Turin: Einaudi, 1974. Iaccio, Pasquale, L’intellettuale intransigente. Il fascismo e Roberto Bracco, Naples: Guida, 1992. Kuitunen, Maddalena, ‘‘Ibsen and the Theatre of Roberto Bracco,’’ in Petrarch to Pirandello: Studies in Italian Literature in Honour of Beatrice Corrigan, edited by Julius Molinaro, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Lezza, Antonia, ‘‘La casa editrice Carabba e la cultura italiana ed europea tra Ottocento e Novecento,’’ in

La casa editrice Carabba e la cultura del Novecento, edited by Gianni Oliva, Rome: Bulzoni Editori, 1999. Palomba, Salvatore, La canzone napoletana. La storia, i testi, gli autori, Naples: L’a`ncora del Mediterraneo, 2001. Pedulla`, Gianfranco, Il teatro italiano nel tempo del fascismo, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994. Salsano, Roberto, Intrighi e dissonanze: sondaggi critici e percorsi di lettura in Bracco novelliere, Citta` di Castello: Edimond, 2002. Stau¨ble, Antonio, Tra Ottocento e Novecento: il teatro di Roberto Bracco, Turin: ILTE, 1959. Venditti, Mario, Roberto Bracco, Naples: Marotta, 1962.

VITALIANO BRANCATI (1907–1954) A vital link between the tradition of nineteenthcentury verismo and the generation of Leonardo Sciascia, Vitaliano Brancati was a key transitional figure in the evolution of contemporary Sicilian literature. A writer of short stories, novels, essays, plays, and film scripts, he began his literary career as a follower of Gabriele D’Annunzio. In his youth he adhered to Fascism, deluding himself that the regime would help Sicily out of its inertia. His early works, in which Brancati favored drama, are to be understood in this context. The play Fedor (1928), for instance, is a ‘‘myth’’ whose protagonists are, metaphorically, D’Annunzio and Fascism. In the play, Prometheus orders the sculptor Fedor to make a series of statues of the Titans to place at the summit of several mountains. In the name of art, Fedor renounces his life and discovers too late that he has made a mistake. The play exalts strength and vitality, in accordance with the demands of the Fascist regime. Brancati’s encounter in 1930 with Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, perhaps the critic who best understood his psychology and work, constituted a turning point in his intellectual maturation. Borgese sowed the seeds of doubt in the mind of the young Fascist playwright, who rose above his D’Annunzian apprenticeship to conceive a radically new approach to writing in which the example of the veristi played a notable part. Abandoning every illusion, he developed a skeptical and pessimistic worldview. He translated this pessimism narratively into the atmosphere of death and corruption that 308

pervades much of his fiction, in which he implacably describes the decline of the contemporary bourgeoisie. After his youthful enthusiasm, Brancati no longer believed either in the myth of ‘‘progress’’ or in the church. He transformed himself into a radical heretic, a critic who suspected every dogmatic institution (political or ecclesiastical) and supported liberal views. Brancati’s fiction now focused on a Sicily filled with ambitious and foolish ‘‘Don Juans,’’ failed rakes defeated by life who live in a world of sensual fantasies, and amazing, erotic adventures (the so-called Italian ‘‘gallismo’’). In a Catania beaten by the sirocco, which numbs and blocks all vital impulses, his characters often fall into a condition of total inertia, metaphorically represented by long afternoon siestas and by vain gossip, the sole subject of which is women. The characters’ murky eroticism, which is expressed only on the level of fantasy, is seen as the manifestation of a Mediterranean sensuality that is closely intertwined with a fatal sense of imminent death. The protagonists of Brancati’s works are thus unable to carry out actual transgressions (even their desire to escape to the North ends in failure when put into practice), and their main ambition is to live a ‘‘normal’’ and conformist life. Brancati’s characters cannot really communicate with others. Living on dreams on which they were incapable of acting, they represent the soul of the Sicilians. When he had written his thesis on Federico De Roberto (1861–1927) for his university degree in

VITALIANO BRANCATI 1929, Brancati had criticized the static conception of history expressed in I vicere´ (The Viceroys, 1894), one of the most important works of Italian verismo. He completely reversed himself in his later years when he contributed to the antibourgeoisie and anticonformist debate and compared himself with another master of verismo, Giovanni Verga. He looked at turn-of-the-century literature with a growing sense of nostalgia, and completely identified with the realist and skeptical tradition. His style shifted from the D’Annunzian pomposity of his youth to a more careful and synthetic prose, and he attempted to reach the extreme essentiality of Verga. For this reason, he disowned his early works, and placed himself in that ‘‘impure,’’ demystifying, and materialistic line that makes the literary history of Sicily unique, up to and including Leonardo Sciascia and Andrea Camilleri. When Brancati abandoned Fascism in 1934, he started to write the first novel that he did not repudiate in his later years: Gli anni perduti (The Lost Years, 1941). The novel represents a group of bored, young noblemen in Catania, tired of both the Fascist regime and D’Annunzianism, who devote their energies to building a tower. In the end, their project fails and its originator, Buscaino, is forced to leave the city. The plot, which emphasizes the Southern aristocratic and petty bourgeois incapacity for action, was a turning point in Brancati’s career. The same theme reoccurs in Sogno di un valzer (Dream of a Waltz, 1938), the story of Ottavio Carruba, a defrocked priest who is charged with organizing a ball in the Sicilian city of Caltanissetta and in the end is assassinated. Don Giovanni in Sicilia (Don Juan in Sicily, 1941), the grotesque story of Giovanni Percolla, a 40-year-old man from Catania who is roused from his inertia after his marriage to the Florentine Ninetta, was Brancati’s most successful attempt at a ‘‘comic’’ novel (it was also made into a film directed by Alberto Lattuada in 1967). When he moved to Milan, Giovanni underwent another metamorphosis, or at least he appeared to conform perfectly to the industrial city. But when he returned to Sicily he fell once more into a deep depression, as if his return to his homeland had brought his authentic character back to the surface. The comedy of the novel lies in its parodic overturning of every form of heroism and in the bizarre figures that crowd Fascist Catania, all condemned to a grey, monotonous existence with no possibility of escape. Paradoxically, the female characters display a greater practical

sense and energy, even though Brancati appears to favour a male (and aristocratic) point of view in his works. Not by chance, Brancati returned to the ‘‘myth’’ of Don Juan, turning the character once again into an ambitious fool in Don Giovanni involontario (The Involuntary Don Juan, 1943). The decadence of the nobility was described in a muted way in Il vecchio con gli stivali (The Old Man in Boots, 1946). Its protagonist is Aldo Piscitello, a clerk who was forced to become a party member during the Fascist era in order to keep his job. After the fall of the regime the mayor, a true Fascist, fires him for political reasons. In the society represented by Brancati, there is no space for redemption and the sufferings caused by Fascism have not taught anything. Brancati’s works for the theater suffered from the censure of the Fascist regime and, after the war, the hostility of the church: Indeed, a number of scenes had to be deleted when his play Raffaele (1946) was first staged. Political satire is present also in some other of Brancati’s later theatrical works, such as Questo matrimonio si deve fare (This Marriage Must Happen, 1936), the story of Pierina Monelli who, in order not to marry the extremely powerful Paolo Pannocchietti, prefers to remain a spinster. In other dramas, such as the gloomy La governante (The Governess, 1952), in which the Calvinist Caterina Leher conceals that fact that she is a lesbian behind an apparently rigid morality, Brancati revisits the theme of the hidden tensions behind the fac¸ade of bourgeois society. In the end, everything goes back to its initial state, with the privileged and the ‘‘astute’’ returning to their places of command. The bitter metaphoric situation of Paolo Castorina, the protagonist of Brancati’s last, unfinished novel Paolo il caldo (Paolo the Hot, 1955) presents familiar themes through the perspective of the author’s concerns about postwar Italy. In order to escape from an existence of increasing boredom, Castorina lives in a state of growing anxiety fed by an overactive sensuality. The novel also testifies to a crisis of faith in reason, which now appears unable to affirm itself in the triumph of sensuality. Above all, it demonstrates the disappointment of the writer faced with Italian society of the 1950s, a society characterized by a Ritorno alla Censura (Return to Censorship, 1952), as he had put it in the title of a polemical pamphlet, and by the victory of the most bigoted form of clericalism. Nor could Brancati find consolation in Communism, like 309

VITALIANO BRANCATI many other Italian intellectuals did, as he considered it as inimical to freedom as Fascism itself.

Il bell’ Antonio, 1949; as Bell’Antonio, translated by Stanley Hochman, 1978. Paolo il caldo, 1955.

Biography

Plays

Born in Pachino (Siracusa) on 24 July 1907; his father was a fairly rich lawyer. Spent the first years of his life in Sicily where he became close to his paternal grandfather, while experiencing difficult relations with his mother; attended the ‘‘Liceo Ginnasio’’ in Modica with excellent results; moved to Catania, 1920; joined the Fascist Party, February, 1922; university degree in literary studies with a thesis on Federico De Roberto, 1929; moved to Rome and became a collaborator of the newspaper Il Tevere, 1929; met Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, 1930, and Benito Mussolini, 1931. His novel Singolare avventura di viaggio was hindered by censorship, 1934; returned to Sicily and taught in Caltanissetta, 1934; returned to Rome, 1941, where he met the actress Anna Proclemer; married Proclemer, 22 July 1946; after World War II, retired from teaching and worked for several periodicals including L’europeo, Cronache, and Il corriere della sera; daughter Antonia was born, 1947; met Benedetto Croce, 1947; worked as scriptwriter, 1947–1954; awarded the Bagutta prize for Il bell’Antonio, 1949; separated from Proclemer, 1953. Died in Turin on 25 September 1954 during surgery to remove a cyst. ALFREDO SGROI Selected Works Collections Teatroi, Milan: Bompiani, 1957. Opere, edited by Angelo Guglielmi, Milan: Bompiani, 1974. Opere 1932–1946, edited by Leonardo Sciascia, Milan: Bompiani, 1987. Opere 1947–1954, edited by Leonardo Sciascia, Milan: Bompiani, 1992. Tutti i racconti, edited by Domenica Perrone, Milan: Bompiani, 1994. Romanzi e saggi, edited by Marco Dondero, Milan: Mondadori, 2003. Racconti, teatro, scritti giornalistici, edited by Marco Dondero, Milan: Mondadori, 2003.

Novels L’amico del vincitore, 1932. Singolare avventura di viaggio, 1934. Sogno di un valzer, 1938. In cerca di un sı`, 1939. Don Giovanni in Sicilia, 1941. Gli anni perduti, 1941; as The Lost Years, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1992. Il vecchio con gli stivali, 1945.

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Fedor, 1928. Everest, 1931. Piave, 1932. Questo matrimonio si deve fare, 1936. Don Giovanni involontario, 1943. Raffaele, 1946. La governante, 1952.

Essays I piaceri: (parole all’orecchio), 1943. I fascisti invecchiano, 1946. Ritorno alla censura, 1952. Le due dittature, 1952. Diario romano, edited by Sandro De Feo and Giovanni Antonio Cibotto, 1961. Il borghese e l’immensita`: scritti 1930–1954, edited by Sandro De Feo and Giovanni Antonio Cibotto, 1973. De Roberto e dintorni, edited by Rita Verdirame, 1988.

Letters Lettere da un matrimonio, with Anna Proclemer, 1978.

Further Reading Amoroso, Giuseppe, Brancati, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Brancati, Corrado, Vitaliano mio fratello, Catania: Edizioni Greco, 1991. Dombroski, Robert, ‘‘Brancati and Fascism: a profile,’’ in Italian Quarterly, 13 (1969): 41–63. Ferretti, Gian Carlo, L’infelicita` della ragione: nella vita e nell’opera di Vitaliano Brancati, Milan: Guerini, 1998. Gazzola Stacchini, Vanna, Il teatro di Vitaliano Brancati. Poetica, mito e pubblico, Lecce: Milella, 1972. Gesu`, Sebastiano (editor), Vitaliano Brancati. Incontri con il cinema, Acicatena: Incontri con il cinema, 1989. Gioviale, Fernando, Intermezzi serio-comici e idilli imperfetti, Cosenza: Marra, 1992. Lauretta, Enzo, Invito alla lettura di Vitaliano Brancati, Milan: Mursia, 1973. Mangiavillano, Sergio, I piaceri dell’umorismo: Vitaliano Brancati a Caltanissetta (1937–1938), Caltanissetta: Salvatore Sciascia, 2004. Perrone, Domenica, Vitaliano Brancati: le avventure morali e i ‘‘piaceri’’ della scrittura, Milan: Bompiani, 1997. Puppa, Paolo, ‘‘La scena disturbata di Vitaliano Brancati,’’ in Storia della Sicilia, vol. 8, edited by Natale Tedesco, Rome: Editalia, 2000. Schiliro`, Massimo, Narciso in Sicilia: lo spazio autobiografico nell’opera di Vitaliano Brancati, Naples: Liguori, 2001. Spera, Francesco, Vitaliano Brancati, Milan: Mursia, 1981. Tedesco, Natale, La scala a chiocciola: scrittura novecentesca in Sicilia, Palermo: Sellerio, 1991. Traina, Giuseppe (editor), Vitaliano Brancati scrittore del Novecento, Ragusa: Centro studi Feliciano Rossitto, 1995.

VITALIANO BRANCATI Zappulla Muscara`, Sarah (editor), Vitaliano Brancati, Catania: Maimone, 1986. Zarcone, Stefano, La carne e la noia: la narrativa di Vitaliano Brancati, Palermo: Facolta` Magistero di Palermo, 1989.

IL BELL’ANTONIO, 1949 Novel by Vitaliano Brancati

In a letter to the publisher Bompiani dated 21 September 1948, Vitaliano Brancati defined Il bell’Antonio (Bell’Antonio), first entitled Il gallo non ha cantato (The Rooster Did Not Crow), ‘‘la mia opera piu` completa’’ (my most complete work). It was a lucid judgment, as the novel is a polyphonic work in which all narrative forms typical of Brancati’s fiction found their best expression. The text is formally balanced, thanks to a classically limpid prose enhanced by lyrical interludes, concise descriptions of settings and characters, and refined psychological analysis. At the center of the novel is Antonio Magnano, a very handsome man who attracts all the women he meets. Antonio, however, is a Narcissus with a defect, a defect made worse in a Fascist Italy that exalts the myth of virility: Antonio is impotent. His impotence is a metaphor for Italy under Fascism and its cult of power and strength. The novel thus runs along two parallel lines: the history of Fascist Italy and the personal story of Antonio. Catania, the city in which the characters move and act, is crowded with grotesque figures, metaphors of a nation that is going to the dogs. Antonio’s cousin, Edoardo Lentini, first tries to become the ‘‘podesta`,’’ but eventually develops a profound disgust for the empty rituals of the regime, represented by Calderara, who exhibits his uncontrolled sexual desire in a whorehouse in Catania. The degradation of the dominant social class

finds its sharpest expression in Antonio: Once his reputation as a Don Juan is dispelled, even his old father Alfio is dragged into ruin and shame. The novel is set against a crepuscular and nocturnal background in a Catania suffocated by the warm sirocco winds. The tragedy of the Anglo-American invasion looms on the horizon and the church positions itself to be on the side of the victor. A novel in the style of Stendhal, as Leonardo Sciascia wrote in his introduction to Brancati’s Opere 1947–1954 in 1992, Il bell’Antonio has been compared to Armance. Yet the novel is much richer in its implications and should be read with great care. For example, the final telephone conversation between Antonio and Edoardo is significant (and well-staged in Mauro Bolognini’s 1960 film adaptation starring Marcello Mastroianni). Two typical representatives of a world in ruins face each other: the defeated Edoardo, who believed he could change the course of history, and Antonio, the dreamer locked in his own private world. Ultimately, the bourgeoisie is condemned to sterility and death. ALFREDO SGROI Edition First edition: Il bell’Antonio, Milan: Bompiani, 1949. Translation: Bell’Antonio, translated by Stanley Hochman, New York: Ungar, 1978.

Further Reading Di Grado, Antonio, ‘‘Per i quarant’anni del Bell’Antonio,’’ in Da Malebolge alla Senna, Palermo: Palumbo, 1993. Di Grado, Antonio, ‘‘Brancati o Vittorini? L’intellettuale al bivio,’’ in La parola quotidiana, edited by Fernando Gioviale, Florence: Olschki, 2004. Lo Curzio, Guglielmo, Scrittori siciliani, Palermo: Novecento Editrice, 1989. Mineo, Nicolo`, Letteratura in Sicilia, Catania: Tringale, 1988. Schiliro`, Massimo, ‘‘Tempo del privato e tempo della storia. Il XII capitolo del Bell’Antonio,’’ in La letteratura, la storia, il romanzo, edited by Mario Tropea, Caltanissetta: Edizioni Lussografica, 1998. Sciascia, Leonardo, and Salvatore Guglielmino (editors), Narratori di Sicilia, Milan: Mursia, 1967. Sciascia, Salvatore, Introduction to Vitaliano Brancati, Opere 1947–1954, Milan: Bompiani, 1992.

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LEONARDO BRUNI

LEONARDO BRUNI (CA. 1370–1444) Leonardo di Cecco Bruni d’Arezzo, hence also known as Leonardo Aretino, is a leading figure of Florentine Humanism. A diplomat at the papal curia and chancellor of the Florentine republic, he significantly contributed to Humanist historiography and translation theory. Crucial to his intellectual formation were his decision to study Greek with the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1355–1415) and his lifelong friendship with Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), the learned chancellor of the Florentine republic. Influenced by Salutati, Bruni pursued an ideal of erudition that places classical antiquity at the core of civic education, supporting Salutati’s ideals of republicanism and freedom. His works show the synthesis of culture and politics he exemplarily achieved in life. Bruni’s contribution to the theory and practice of translation is remarkable. For him translation had both political and moral purposes. In divulging and preserving the glory of the Greco-Roman civilization and in providing society with valuable ethical and political models, the translator becomes with Bruni a paradigmatic figure of Humanist. His translation of Saint Basil’s Oratio ad adolescentes (Letter to the Youth, 1400–1403) is dedicated to Salutati, who was engaged in a controversy with the Camaldulese monk Giovanni of San Miniato on the beneficial study of pagan literature, and offers him an authoritative Christian opinion in support of the study of classical literature. Basil argues that, by inspiring virtue, classical poetry is not only compatible with, but also valuable to, Christianity. Controversial but of great influence are Bruni’s Latin translations of Aristotle’s Ethics (1417–1418), Economics (1420–1421), and Politics (1437), in which he reaffirms the compatibility of Aristotle’s moral philosophy with Christian doctrine and stresses the importance of introducing moral philosophy in the educational curriculum. Complementing these translations is the Isagogicon moralis disciplinae (Introduction to Moral Philosophy, ca. 1421), a commentary to Aristotle’s ethics in which Bruni supports a universal ideal of happiness founded on classical virtue. Attacked by his contemporaries, Bruni defended his translations in the De recta interpretatione (On Correct Interpretation, 312

1420–1426). Although his method rested on grammatical and rhetorical expertise, Bruni abandoned the medieval ‘‘word by word’’ translation to adopt an ‘‘ad sensum’’ criterion whereby the translator must adhere to the meaning of the original text. To achieve this goal, he must combine command over both the original and the target languages with the ability to imitate the stylistic elegance of the original texts. Bruni’s translations had exceptional diffusion in Italy and Europe. Furthermore, he translated from Homer (Iliad book IX), Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch’s Vitae, and from Eschynes and Demosthenes’ orations, and offered Latin paraphrases of some of the works of Polybius and Xenophon. In these selected translations, through the exemplary deeds of illustrious men of the Roman republic and Greek city-states, Bruni celebrates his republican ideal. His Latin version of Giovanni Boccaccio’s novella of Ghismonda and Guiscardo (Decameron IV.1) is also notable. Political and literary writings represent another important aspect of Bruni’s activity as a ‘‘civic’’ Humanist. Among these, the most significant is the Laudatio Florentinae urbis (Panegyric of the City of Florence), written before 1405. Although almost a rhetorical exercise, this oration already shows the fundamental traits of a mature historian. Modeled on Panathenaicus by Aelius Aristides (117–181), it conveys the idea that political freedom produces cultural supremacy and presents Florence as an ideal city, built on Roman republican foundations and equal to Athens in its cultural achievements. In the oration, the defensive war against the Visconti of Milan becomes the paradigmatic war against tyranny in defense of freedom. The Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum (Dialogues for Pier Paolo Vergerio), dedicated to Pietro Paolo Vergerio and probably composed between 1401 and 1406, is a work of particular interest for its humanistic themes. Modeled on the genre of the ‘‘pro-con’’ debate, it establishes the literary value of the vernacular canon of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. In the first book, the Humanist antiquarian Niccolo` Niccoli attacks the poets by contrasting their inelegant language with the eloquence of the ancients. In the second book, Niccoli offers a

LEONARDO BRUNI palinody of his previous speech by arguing that excellence in the vernacular is comparable with excellence in any ancient language. The work shows Bruni’s rhetorical dexterity and, in a typical Humanist way, does not solve the question posed. Ultimately, it celebrates the cultural supremacy of Florentine genius. Bruni rarely engages in pure literary production. Among his works are an early carmen composed for the descent in Italy of Emperor Venceslaus (1397–1398); a Latin play, Gracchus et Poliscena (Gracchus and Poliscena, 1407–1408); and a canzone morale (Moral Song, 1421), restating the principles exposed in the Isagogicon moralis disciplinae. Of particular relevance is the educational treatise on De studiis et litteris tractatulus ad Baptistam Malatestam (A Treatise on Literary, 1423–1426), dedicated to the wife of Galeazzo Malatesta from Pesaro, in which Bruni expounds the principles of the studia humanitatis and insists on the harmonization of classical and Christian education. Two biographies, Vita di Dante (Life of Dante) and Vita di Petrarca (Life of Petrarch), both of 1436, set a model for studies on Dante and Petrarch and posit the equal literary dignity of vernacular and Latin literatures. From a Humanist perspective, Bruni praises Dante for his civic commitment over the solitary Petrarch. During his diplomatic career, Bruni wrote many orations, from the funeral orations for Ottone Acciaiuoli (1406) and Giovanni Strozzi (1428), to the antimonastic polemic of the Oratio in hypocritas (Oration against Hypocrites, 1417). In all, Bruni celebrates Florentine libertas. He also significantly contributed to the formation of Humanist historiography. His most important historical work is the Historiae Florentini populi (History of the Florentine People) completed by 1430, and written in classicizing Latin. Although in some books Bruni maintains the annalistic structure and oratorical digressions typical of medieval historiography, his accurate archival research, his philological approach to the analysis of the documents, and his effort to distinguish facts from imagination, evidence a Humanist imprint. Introducing an innovative perspective, the author presents the local history of Florence as reflecting universal history. The narrative shows that ideals of peace and freedom have constantly inspired the presence of republican institutions in Florence and determined the crucial political role the city achieved in Bruni’s time. He thus expresses similar views to those already articulated in his Vita Ciceronis (Life of

Cicero, ca. 1415), which celebrates the orator as defender of the Roman republic. The Rerum suo tempore gestarum commentaria (Commentary on the Events of His Own Time), written between 1440 and 1441, contains Bruni’s autobiographical account of the main historical events that occurred between 1378 and 1440, when the Battle of Anghiari ended the war against Milan. It is followed by De bello italico adversus Gothicos libri IV (On the Italian War against the Goths, 1441), a rather free adaptation of an earlier classical history by Procopius. The most celebrated Humanist after Petrarch, Bruni’s political thought aimed at reconciling the popular Florentine republicanism with the rise of the oligarchy, later ruled by the Albizzi and Medici families.

Biography Born in Arezzo around 1370. In the 1380s, the Ghibelline victory affects his family, and he moves to Florence after his mother and father die. Because of the political turmoil in Arezzo, Bruni completes his secondary education relatively late, in Florence, where he studies with Giovanni Malpaghini. From 1397 until 1400, he studies Greek with Manuel Chrysoloras, the first Byzantine scholar Coluccio Salutati had called to teach Greek in Florence. In the Florentine intellectual circles of Chrysoloras, Ambrogio Traversari, and Coluccio Salutati, he meets great Humanists such as Niccolo` Niccoli, Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Pier Paolo Vergerio, and Francesco Filelfo. In 1405, Poggio recommends Bruni for a secretarial post at the papal curia of Innocent VII. The political complexity of the period, in which three popes claimed to be the legitimate Roman bishop (Western Schism), makes this position important and delicate as diplomatic letter writing requires rhetorical skills rather than technical legal competence. Bruni remains apostolic secretary during the vicissitudes of Innocent VII and, after his death in 1406, to Gregory XII. In 1409, when Florence withdraws its support to Gregory XII, Bruni leaves the curia and moves to Pisa, called by the cardinals who elect Alexander V. Bruni maintains his post after the death of Alexander V in 1410, and during the first months of John XXIII’s papacy. From November 1410 to April 1411, he accepts the chancellorship of the Florentine republic. Probably attracted by better economic conditions, he returns to his secretarial post in Rome and in early 1412, he marries Tommasa della 313

LEONARDO BRUNI Fioraia, of a noble Florentine family. In 1416, Bruni becomes a Florentine citizen and, after the Council of Constance deposes John XXIII, he settles in Florence. The council elects Martin V in 1417, and the new pope decides to move his residence to Florence from 1419 to 1420. In this period, Bruni resumes his secretarial offices, but when the pope returns to Rome, he does not follow him. From 1420 to 1427 Bruni resides and works in Florence as a private citizen. From 1427 to 1444, Bruni is chancellor of the Florentine republic. Bruni grew in authority during the Florentine residence of Pope Eugenius IV (1434–1443) and during the Council of Florence (1439–1445). He plays an important role in the war against Lucca and in the long struggle with the Visconti of Milan, which ends with the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. He assists in the rise of the Medici political power under Cosimo I, but does not see the end of the republic and the establishment of the Medici Signoria. Bruni died in Florence on March 9, 1444. The city celebrates Bruni’s funeral with solemn public honors, in recognition of his prestige. Giannozzo Manetti pronounces the eulogy and crowns his teacher and friend with the laurel wreath. Bernardo Rossellino is the sculptor of Bruni’s funeral monument in the Church of Santa Croce. SUSANNA BARSELLA See also: Humanism Selected Works Collections Opere letterarie e politiche, edited by Paolo Viti, Turin: Utet, 1996.

Latin Works Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, 1401–1406; critical edition by Stefano U. Baldassarri, 1994. Laudatio Florentine urbis, before 1405; critical edition by Stefano U. Baldassarri, 2000. Vita Ciceronis, ca. 1415. Oratio in hypocritas, 1417. Isagogicon moralis disciplinae, ca. 1421. De recta interpretazione, 1420–1426. De studiis et litteris tractatulus ad Baptistam Malatestam, 1423–1426. Historiae Florentini populi, 1430; critical edition by Emilio Santini and Carmine Di Pierro, 1914; as History of the

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Florentine People, translated by James Hankins, 2 vols., 2001–2004. Rerum suo tempore gestarum commentaria, 1440–1441; critical edition by Carmine Di Pierro in Rerum Italicarum Scriptors, 19, no. 2 (1926). De bello italico adversus Gothicos libri IV, 1441.

Vernacular Works Vita di Dante, 1436; as Life of Dante, translated by Francesco Basetti-Sani, in The Earliest Lives of Dante, 1963. Vita di Petrarca, 1436.

Plays Gracchus et Poliscena, 1407–1408.

Letters Epistolarium libri VIII, edited by L. Mahus, 1741.

Further Readings Baron, Hans, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Baron, Hans, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, Chicago: Newberry Library and The University of Chicago Press, 1968. Baron, Hans, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Garin, Eugenio, ‘‘Retorica e Studia humanitatis nella cultura del Quattrocento,’’ in Rhetoric Revalued: Papers from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, edited by Brian Vickers, Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982. Griffiths, Gordon et al. (editors), The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987. Hankins, James, ‘‘The ‘Baron Thesis’ after Forty Years and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni,’’ in Journal of the History of Ideas, 56, no. 2 (1995): 309–338. Ianziti, Gary, ‘‘A Life in Politics: Leonardo Bruni’s Cicero,’’ in Journal of the History of Ideas, 61, no. 1 (2000): 39–58. Luiso, Francesco Paolo, Studi su l’Epistolario di Leonardo Bruni, edited by Lucia Gualdo Rosa, Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1980. Vasoli, Cesare, ‘‘Bruni, Leonardo,’’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 14, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1972. Viti, Paolo, Leonardo Bruni e Firenze: studi sulle lettere pubbliche e private, Rome: Bulzoni, 1992. Viti, Paolo (editor), Leonardo Bruni cancelliere della repubblica di Firenze, Florence: Olschki, 1990. Wilcox, Donald J., The Development of Florentine Historiography in the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

GIORDANO BRUNO

GIORDANO BRUNO (1548–1600) The life and thought of Giordano Bruno have always symbolized, in Italian culture, the conflict between the Counter-Reformation and intellectual freedom. In fact, aside from being the consequence of the harsh, repressive conditions that ruled Italy during the Counter-Reformation, Giordano’s death was an integral part of his life, the result of his particular character and philosophy. For the most part, those who came before the inquisitors of Sant’Uffizio recanted and thus saved their lives. That Bruno refused to retract his writings, and on 17 February 1600 was burned at the stake in Rome in the Campo de’ Fiori, constitutes an inescapable comment on his philosophy. Like many Italian intellectuals of the sixteenth century, especially those from Southern Italy, Bruno donned the habit of the Dominicans without ever taking up their intellectual beliefs. He therefore soon came up against inquisitorial investigations. He faced them while being subjected to trials and beginning an itinerant life that led him first throughout Italy, and later to Geneva and France. In Geneva, Bruno joined the Calvinist Church but soon found himself in conflict with the city’s academic authorities. He resumed his travels and arrived in France, where after much wandering he settled in Paris. Here his intellectual efforts followed the philosophy of knowledge inspired by Lull’s Ars Magna and the art of memory. In 1582, he published De umbris idearum (Shadows of Ideas), in which he re-elaborated Lull’s work in a mnemotechnic register, developing the Platonic principle of the correspondence between the physical world and the world of ideas. This work was followed by the publication of the Cantus Circaeus (The Incantation of Circes, 1582), two dialogues in which he offered a concrete mnemotechnic application of the principles laid out in De umbris idearum. The second dialogue of Cantus Circaeus in fact constitutes a short treatise on the art of memory based on the theory of shadows: Sensible images are the appearances of the real forms that in turn represent the appearances of the ideas. The book served to introduce him to the court of Henry III, where an interest in the secrets of the art of memory was quite strong. In Paris, Bruno also had his sole experience of the theater, publishing Il

Candelaio (Candlebearer, 1582), a burlesque comedy featuring a bitter polemic against the humanistic and university culture of the day. But the Brunian philosophy truly emerges in the great dialogues published in London, where the philosopher moved in 1583 to live at the residence of the tolerant French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. In a rapid series of texts published in the brief two-year span of 1584–1585, Bruno set forth the core of his philosophy, the concept of ‘‘infinity’’ as a constitutive problem for cosmology as much as for the relation between God and the world, the human intellect and truth. In La cena de le ceneri (The Ash-Wednesday Supper, 1584), a literary adaptation in the form of a dialogue of a real incident that occurred on 11 February 1584 (Ash Wednesday) at the residence of Sir Fulke Greville, Bruno defends the Copernican theory while extending it to embrace his own cosmological conception of the infinite universe populated by multiple worlds and innumerable stars. These stars are animate and eternal, distinct from the tiny individuals inhabiting them, who are subjected instead to death and the transmigration of the soul. Bruno ontologically grounds this conception of an infinite and spiritual universe in De la causa, principio, et uno (Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584): Form, or soul, and matter are indissolubly united in the one who is ‘‘whole.’’ Life is an infinite material effect constituted by innumerable stars, ‘‘grand intellectual souls’’ inhabited by simple and composite individuals. In De l’infinito universo et mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584), the theory of the infinity of the universe and of the plurality of worlds at last receives a theological foundation. The infinite cause can only produce an infinite effect: God therefore cannot have produced a finite universe. In De l’infinito universo et mondi, the new cosmological doctrine inevitably raised the question of its relation to the theological doctrines of the world’s creation taught by the contemporary churches. Bruno resolves the conflict by recurring to Averroes’ doctrine that philosophy and religion are complementary: Philosophy teaches the rational truth that can be understood by the learned, while religion dresses rational content in a mythic 315

GIORDANO BRUNO form suited for the minds of the unlearned majority. The solution posited in De l’infinito universo et mondi thus established a complementarity between philosophical truth and ecclesiastical teaching based not only on the supremacy of the first over the second, but also on the esoteric fate of truth, inevitably limited to narrow circles. This solution, however, constituted only one aspect of Bruno’s philosophy, since the pages of De l’infinito universo et mondi were shortly followed by Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584), in which he wrote about the subject of the moral universe, and with it of the Christian religion. Constructed in a satiric register probably derived from the burlesque dialogues of Niccolo` Franco (1515–1570), which in turn were composed in the mode of Lucian, Bruno’s dialogue develops a critique of Christian morality turning on a critique of the Pauline theology of justification through faith. This doctrine, according to Bruno, destroys the necessary and real relation between works and the fate of the soul, and hence dissolves the justice that can only exist through communication between the human and the divine. In the same way, it destroys magic, which, like justice, is founded on communication between the human and the divine. The departure of the gods, lamented by Hermes Trismegistus in Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, alludes to this decline of the effectual relation between the human and the divine, upon which the operations of magic, as well as human justice, are founded. The task of hermetic reform will therefore be to restore such a relation. As for the reform of the current religion, the solution offered by Spaccio de la bestia trionfante is ambivalent, since on the one hand Christianity is destined to be overcome by hermetic reform and the return of the gods among men, and on the other hand, pending the reform of the current church, it is temporarily left in place. To crown his grand theoretical effort in London, he published the Eroici furori (The Heroic Frenzies, 1585), in which the question of the infinite is seen under the gnoseological aspect of the encounter of the exceptional spirit, the frenzied hero, with the intelligible species of emanations from the divine infinity. As the place of the coincidence of contraries, the infinite is also where the subject and the object coincide. To know infinite being is also to be a being known by the infinite, to become an object of knowledge. On the whole, the world of the Reformation rejected Bruno, academically as much as religiously. This occurred in Geneva and at Oxford. He 316

suffered a better fate in Germany, where he nevertheless lacked a position within the university circles that alone would have allowed his teachings to flourish. The fact is that Bruno was a total foreigner to the Protestant culture of Northern Europe because his departure from Catholic orthodoxy pointed in precisely the opposite direction from the one taken by Reformation theologians: While these men abandoned justification through ‘‘works,’’ leaving only ‘‘justification through faith,’’ Bruno instead abandoned justification through faith and allowed only for justification ‘‘through works,’’ establishing a direct relation between merit and the place of the soul’s transmigration. The only political and intellectual environment in Europe that Bruno found congenial, therefore, belonged to the French politiques, the more tolerant Catholic current that sought a settlement of the wars of religion based on a common submission to the ruler’s sovereignty. The North of Europe was able to offer Bruno a somewhat greater degree of freedom than Italy, where the Inquisition was operating, but it could not furnish him a greater intellectual affinity with its culture. This was the cause of such substantial uneasiness that when the intolerant Pope Sextus V died, Bruno decided to return to Italy, and after a brief stay in the university city of Padova settled in Venice. Here, however, he fell into the clutches of the Inquisition, prompted by the denunciation of Giovanni Mocenigo, the nobleman who had invited and then hosted Bruno so that he would teach him the art of memory outlined in De minimo (On the Minimum, 1591). Thus began the last stage of Bruno’s life, the period of the inquisitorial trial that lasted eight years and kept him detained first in Venice and then in Rome, where he was extradited in February 1593. The lengthy trial was based on the accusatory testimony of Giovanni Mocenigo and the doctrines contained in Bruno’s books. Bruno’s writings were thus subjected to a new type of reading: judiciary examination by the censors of Sant’Uffizio. Bruno’s defense at his trial was the one traditionally adopted by writers in his position: It consisted in denying the gravest accusations, taking shelter behind the ‘‘Averroist’’ distinction between philosophical and theological discourse. What was not traditional was the conclusion of the trial at the end of 1599, when Bruno, after proposing various compromises with the judges’ demands, determined that a recanting of his entire philosophy was not possible, and faced the punishment the Inquisition reserved for impenitent heretics.

GIORDANO BRUNO

Biography Born in Nola (Napoli) in January or February 1548; in 1562 comes to Naples where he takes lectures in dialectic taught by Giovan Vincenzo Colle, and in logic taught by the Augustinian Teofilo da Vairano; on 15 June 1565 enters the novitiate of the Dominican Order in the great convent of San Domenico Maggiore; in February 1572 is ordained a priest; on 21 May 1572 registers for the course in theology in the studium of the convent of San Domenico Maggiore; in 1576 flees Naples as a result of a trial instigated by the provincial father for heresy relating to the concept of incarnation; takes refuge in Rome, where he resettles in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva at the end of March; caught up in a new judicial inquiry and leaves Rome for Genova; after two years of wandering through various Italian cities, in 1578 comes to Geneva; registers in the local university, making a living as an editor of proofs in a print shop; is brought to trial on the charge of defaming a professor of philosophy; reaches an honorable settlement, but, disillusioned with Calvinist discipline, leaves Geneva and comes to Paris in 1581; in April 1583, travels to London, armed with letters of recommendation from King Henry III and is received by the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau; in June 1583, visits Oxford and there first disputes with the theologian John Underhill and then participates in a series of conferences on cosmology and the immortality of the soul; in October 1585, returns to Paris with the French ambassador; in June 1586, leaves Paris for Germany; in March 1592, comes to Venice as a guest of the nobleman Giovanni Mocenigo; on 23 May is detained and then denounced as a heretic by Mocenigo; on 19 February is extradited to Rome to be subjected to the direct justice of the cardinal congregation of Sant’Uffizio; on 21 December 1599 refuses to retract the errors drawn from his writings; on 20 January 1600 is condemned as a formal, impenitent heretic; on 17 February 1600 is led to the Roman piazza of Campo de’ Fiori, tied to a stake and burned alive. VITTORIO FRAJESE Selected Works Collections Opera latine conscripta, edited by Felice Tocco et alia, 3 vols., Naples-Florence: Le Monnier, 1879–1891; rpt. Stuttgart: Holzboog, 1961–1962.

Scritti scelti, edited by Luigi Firpo, Turin: UTET, 1949. Opere di Giordano Bruno e di Tommaso Campanella, edited by Augusto Guzzo and Romano Amerio, MilanNaples: Ricciardi Editore, 1956. Dialoghi italiani, annotated by Giovanni Gentile, edited by Giovanni Aquilecchia, Florence: Sansoni, 1958. Opere latine, edited by Carlo Monti, Turin: UTET, 1980. Opere italiane, edited by Giovanni Aquilecchia, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1991; edited by Nuccio Ordine, Turin: UTET, 2002. Oeuvres comple`tes, edited by Yves Hersant and Nuccio Ordine, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993–1999. Dialoghi filosofici italiani, edited by Michele Ciliberto, Milan: Mondadori, 2000. Opere magiche, edited by Simonetta Bassi et alia, Milan: Adelphi, 2000. Opere mnemotecniche, edited by Marco Matteoli et alia, Milan: Adelphi, 2004.

Philosophical Writings De umbris idearum, 1582; as Arte della memoria: Le ombre delle idee, edited by Manuela Maddamma, 1996. Cantus Circaeus, 1582. La cena de le ceneri, 1584; edited by G. Aquilecchia, 1955. Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, 1584; edited by M. Ciliberto, 1985; edited by Eugenio Canone, 2001; as The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, translated and edited by Arthur D. Imerti, 1964. De l’infinito universo et mondi, 1584. De la causa, principio, et uno, 1584; edited by G. Aquilecchia, 1973; edited by Augusto Guzzo, 1985; as The Infinite in Giordano Bruno: Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One translated by Sidney Greenburg, 1950, rpt. 1978; as Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1962; translated and edited by Robert De Lucca, with Essays on Magic, translated and edited by Richard J. Blackwell, 1998. De gl’eroici furori, 1585; as The Heroic Enthusiasts: An Ethical Poem, translated by L. Williams, 1887–1889; as The Heroic Frenzies, translated by Paul Eugene Memmo, 1964. Cabala del cavallo pegaseo, 1585; edited by Carlo Sini, 1998; as The Cabala of Pegasus, translated by Sidney L. Sodergard and Madison U. Sowell, 2002. De minimo, 1591.

Plays Il Candelaio, 1582; as Candlebearer, translated by Gino Moliterno, Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 2000.

Further Reading Aquilecchia, Giovanni, Giordano Bruno, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2000. Ciliberto, Michele, Lessico di Giordano Bruno, 2 vols., Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo e Bizzarri, 1979. Ciliberto, Michele, Giordano Bruno, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1990. Ciliberto, Michele, Dialogo recitato: per una nuova edizione del Bruno Volgare, Florence: Olschki, 2002. De Le´one-Jones, and Karen Silvia, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis, New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1997. Firpo, Luigi, Il processo di Giordano Bruno, edited by Diego Guaglioni, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1993.

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GIORDANO BRUNO Gatti, Hilary, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1999. Gentile, Giovanni, Giordano Bruno e il pensiero del Rinascimento, Florence: Vallecchi, 1920, rpt. 1925. Ingegno, Alfonso, Cosmologia e filosofia nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Ingegno, Alfonso, La sommersa nave della religione: Studio sulla poemica anticristiana del Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985. Ingegno, Alfonso, Regia pazzia: Bruno lettore di Calvino, Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1987. Mercati, Angelo, Il sommario del processo di Giordano Bruno, Citta` del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1942. Nappi, Andrea G., Giordano Bruno, quattro tempi drammatici, Naples: Guida, 1982. Ordine, Nuccio, La cabala dell’Asino: Asinita` e conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Liguori, 1987. Ordine, Nuccio, La soglia dell’ombra: Letteratura, filosofia e pittura in Giordano Bruno, Venice: Marsilio, 2003. Ricci, Saverio, La fortuna del pensiero di Giordano Bruno (1600–1750), Florence: Le Lettere, 1990. Sacerdoti, Giliberto, Sacrificio e sovranita`: Teologia e politica nell’Europa di Shakespeare e di Bruno, Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Singer, Dorothea, Giordano Bruno: His Life and Thought, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1950, rpt. 1977 (with a translation of On the Infinite Universe and Worlds). Vedrine, He´le`ne, Censure et pouvoir: Trois proce`s, Savonarola, Bruno, Galile´e, Paris-La Haye, Mouton, 1976. Vincenzo Spampanato, Vita di Giordano Bruno con documenti editi e inediti, Messina: Principato, 1921. Yates, Frances Amelia, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Yates, Frances Amelia, Giordano Bruno e la cultura europea del Rinascimento, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1978.

IL CANDELAIO 1582 Play by Giordano Bruno

Il Candelaio (The Candlebearer) is a comedy written in Italian that Giordano Bruno published in Paris, but which he probably sketched out in Italy and completed in the summer of 1582. This play, Bruno’s sole theatrical production, is divided into five acts, as the ancient and humanistic canon demanded, but it is preceded by a series of unusual 318

literary materials: a burlesque sonnet recited by the book, a dedicatory letter to ‘‘Madama Morgana B.,’’ a tripartite ‘‘argument,’’ and finally a prologue, also in three parts. If the division into five acts is canonical, the long introduction constitutes instead a pyrotechnic phantasmagoria of inventions with which Bruno establishes his distance from the humanistic tradition and from the models of the contemporary culture, literary as well as philosophical and religious. And indeed the comedy is written in a language that is rich in terms drawn from spoken Neapolitan, and that absorbs the realistic and burlesque practice of Aretino and Berni, mixing it with parodic echoes of classical and ecclesiastical rhetoric. The result is a contamination of linguistic planes, rhetorical levels, and literary genres that yields a violent critique of the learned language, which is reduced to a repertory of formulas, and that transports onto the social plane the coincidence of ‘‘greatest’’ and ‘‘least,’’ infinitely large and infinitely small, illustrated in the cosmological dialogues. Candelaio is a play of action, of gesture, and above all of word. It is a theater of sight, but more particularly a theater of the ear. As occurs in many Renaissance dialogues and comedies, the characters are not the bearers of particular dramatic tasks (to which specific speeches are attributed) but are the occasion for witticisms, jokes, plays on words, judgments, and interventions by the author himself. The action unfolds in Naples in 1577, near the Nilo quarter and thus not far from the convent of San Domenico, which had hosted Bruno during his stay in that city. The theme of the comedy consists of the interweaving of three jokes concerning the fixations of three characters: ‘‘the love of Bonifacio, the alchemy of Bartolomeo, and the pedantry of Manfurio.’’ Bonifacio is an ancient ‘‘candle-bearer,’’ an obscene allusion to the practice of anal sex, who wants to restore the normal relation with a woman, and to do this he chooses Vittoria, whom he courts as a grand lady but who is in reality a cunning courtesan who tries to steal his money. Bartolomeo is a dilettantish alchemist who seeks to transform base metals into gold, while Manfurio is a Humanist pedant who adopts a ridiculous language. Each of the three characters will be mocked for his improper desires or ridiculous habits. Deceived by the classical expedient of the substitution of another person, the ‘‘candle-bearer’’ will only be able to go to bed with his own wife, will have his unfaithful intentions discovered, and will be punished in turn by his wife, Carubina, with her love for the painter Giovan Bernardo, and then by

GIORDANO BRUNO his arrest and scorn. Bartolomeo will be cheated by the cunning Cencio and then beaten, and the same fate will befall the pedant Manfurio, who is mocked and then beaten in order to put an end to his unbearable language. We are dealing therefore with a traditional comedy of mockery, where each character, through his behavior, deserves the mockery he suffers and is punished for an unbridled desire or improper attitude. While in the traditional structure of Renaissance comedy the peripeteia of the character leads to a happy ending, an improvement of his original condition (through marriage, social advancement, wealth, etc.), in Candelaio the happy ending is replaced by the simple enactment of the mockery itself, which assumes the moral function of a ‘‘just recompense’’ for the characters’ stupidity. We thus see applied the correlation between deed and destiny that is at the foundation of Bruno’s ethics. The entire comedy is subjected to a philosophical lesson illustrated by Bruno in the dedicatory letter to Madama Morgana B., according to which ‘‘time takes everything away and gives everything, everything changes, nothing is destroyed; there is only one who cannot change, only one who is eternal and can persist eternally as one, similar and the same.’’ Of this fundamental ontology, the comedy lays out the moment of ‘‘vicissitude,’’ of the contrariety and mutability ordained by the correspondence of distinct elements within the one who is universal. And this principle implies on the gnoseological plane the mnemotechnical designs set forth in the Latin works. The comedy thus develops a bitter satire against the insipid lover, the sordid miser, and the foolish pedant, and through these figures against Petrarchan love, bourgeois greed, and academic knowledge. Both on the linguistic level and in the weaving of the scenic action, Bruno challenges institutional knowledge in a provocative, or ‘‘avantguardistic’’ way, as Ba´rberi Squarotti defines it (‘‘La struttura del Candelaio,’’ 1993). And he also rejects the false lyricism of the spiritualized lover, who is deceived by the reality of economic interest; the illusions of alchemical science, which is mocked for its desire for easy gain; the empty formulas of the humanistic language, which is reduced to pure grammatical declamation; and finally, the deceptive versatility of biblical quotations, which are always subject to deformations and double meanings. And this is precisely the function of the frequent obscene allusions throughout the comedy. These perform the task, for the most part traditional, of ‘‘bringing down’’ the formulas of ritual

language in order to subject them to the critique of popular materialism. VITTORIO FRAJESE Editions First edition: as Candelaio, Paris: Guillaume Julien, 1582. Critical editions: in Opere, edited by Augusto Guzzo and Romano Amerio, Milan: Naples: Ricciardi, 1956; edited by Giorgio Ba´rberi Squarotti, Turin: Einaudi, 1964; as Chandelier, bilingual edition by Giovanni Aquilecchia, in Oeuvres comple`tes, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993. Translations: as Candlebearer, translated by Gino Moliterno, Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 2000.

Further Reading Ba´rberi Squarotti, Giorgio, ‘‘La struttura del Candelaio,’’ in Ariel, vol. 7, no. 1 (1993): 51–66. Borrelli, Clara, ‘‘Spoglio linguistico del Candelaio di Giordano Bruno,’’ in Misure critiche, vol. 10, nos. 35–36 (1980): 25–67. Borsellino, Nino, ‘‘Necrologio della pazzia,’’ in Rozzi e intronati: Esperienze e forme di teatro dal Decameron al Candelaio, Rome: Bulzoni, 1974. Ferrone, Siro, ‘‘Il Candelaio: Scienza e letteratura,’’ in Italianistica, vol. 2, no. 3 (1973): 518–543. Hodgart, Amelia Buono, Giordano Bruno’s The CandleBearer: An Enigmatic Renaissance Play, LewstonQueenston-Lampeter: Mellen, 1997. Quarta, Daniela, ‘‘Sul Candelaio di Giordano Bruno,’’ in Il mago, il cosmo, il teatro degli astri: Saggi sulla letteratura esoterica del Rinascimento, edited by Gianfranco Formichetti, Rome:Bulzoni, 1985. Quarta, Daniela, ‘‘De umbris idearum, Candelaio, Cena delle Ceneri: Considerazioni e osservazioni sulle strutture comunicative nei primi dialoghi bruniani,’’ in Il dialogo filosoficonel ‘500 europeo, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Milan, 28–30 May 1987), edited by Davide Bigalli and Giorgio Canziani, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990.

EROICI FURORI, 1585 Philosophical Dialogue by Giordano Bruno

Eroici furori (The Heroic Frenzies) was published in England and dedicated to Philip Sidney, a prominent member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. It was the last philosophical dialogue written in the 319

GIORDANO BRUNO course of Bruno’s stay in London at the residence of the French ambassador to England, Michel de Castelnau. On the literary level it is presented as 10 dialogues in Italian, constructed as a commentary on a sonnet (set out in the course of the dialogue) whose symbolic significance is uncovered. The interlocutors of the dialogues are two inhabitants of Nola, Bruno’s birthplace, or else friends of Bruno’s father. After having shown in the cosmological dialogues the relation that exists between the infinite cause and the infinite universe that is its effect, which is to say the relation between God and the worlds, Eroici furori illustrates the process through which the knowledge of the heroic frenzy is united with the infinite cause and, passing beyond the apparent wisdom of sensible knowledge, rises to knowledge of the truth. Finite reality, a shadow of the shadow of the infinite cause, is marked by the opposition of contraries. The infinite, on the other hand, is the place where contraries coincide—center and circumference, potentiality and action, matter and spirit. The movement of spirit toward the infinite is thus the movement through which the contraries present in the frenzy achieve their union. The path of the intellect toward truth is represented through the myth of the hunter Actaeon, symbol of the intellect, who seeks Diana, symbol of the supreme intelligible species of the divine. While in Spaccio de la bestia trinofante, the false Diana, symbol of the false representation of divinity, transformed Actaeon into a beast; the perception of the true Diana, which is to say the intelligible forms produced by divinity, transforms Actaeon into the hunted, that is, the subject into an object and the seeker of the first cause into that which is sought by it. At the end of the path, therefore, the understanding of the intelligible species achieved by the soul coincides with the being composed of these forms. Having attained the sight of the infinite cause, the intellect is converted into it, and as the knower is changed into the known through the operation of the act of love. The intellect of the heroic frenzy no longer has to seek outside of itself for what it has ‘‘drawn’’ into itself. This path of the intellect toward the infinite cause is conceived by Bruno in terms of an initiation: It is

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not a path open to all, but a fate reserved for the few. Hence the particular kind of Averroeism set forth in La cena de le ceneri and De l’infinito universo et mondi: Only few can know and unite themselves with philosophical truth, while the multitude must be content with the representations offered by the religious leges or laws. The heroic destiny is thus reserved only for the frenzied man. VITTORIO FRAJESE Editions First edition: De gli eroici furori, Paris: Antonio Baio, 1985. Critical editions: De gli eroici furori, in Opere, edited by Augusto Guzzo and Romano Amerio, Milan-Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1956; as Gli eroici furori, edited by Nicoletta Tirinnanzi, Milan: Rizzoli, 1999; as Des fureurs he´roiques, bilingual edition by Giovanni Aquilecchia, commentary by Michelangelo Granada, in Oeuvres comple`tes, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999; De gli eroici furori, in Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, edited by Michele Ciliberto, Milan: Mondatori, 2000. Translations: as The Heroic Enthusiasts: An Ethical Poem, translated by L. Williams, London: G.Redway, 1887– 1889; as The Heroic Frenzies, translated by Paul Eugene Memmo, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1964.

Further Reading Aquilecchia, Giovanni, ‘‘Dialoghi tassiani e dialoghi bruniani: Per una comparazione delle fonti,’’ in Nuove schede di italianistica, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1994. Badaloni, Nicola, ‘‘Note sul bruniano De gli eroici furori,’’ in Scienza e filosofia: problemi teorici e di storia del pensiero scientifico. Studi in onore di Francesco Barone, edited by Silvestro Marcucci, Pisa: Giardini, 1995. Canziani, Guido, Le metamorfosi dell’amore: Ficino, Pico e i Furori di Bruno, Milan: CUEM, 2001. Ellero, Maria Pia, ‘‘Allegorie, modelli formali e modelli tematici negli Eroici furori di Giordano Bruno,’’ in La rassegna della letteratura italiana, vol. 98, no. 3 (1994): 38–52. Farinelli, Patrizia, Furioso nel labirinto: Studio su Degli eroici furori di Giordano Bruno, Bari: Adriatica, 2000. Ingegno, Alfonso, ‘‘L’unita` dell’opera bruniana e il significato degli Eroici furori,’’ in Il dialogo filosofico nel ‘500 europeo, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Milan, 28–30 May 1987), edited by Davide Bigalli and Giorgio Canziani, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990. Nelson, John Charles, Renaissance Theory of Love: The Context of Giodano Bruno’s ‘‘Eroici Furori,’’ New York: Columbia UP, 1958.

GESUALDO BUFALINO

GESUALDO BUFALINO (1920–1996) Sicilian novelist and poet Gesualdo Bufalino had been teaching in a secondary school in Comiso, his hometown, for some 25 years when he published his first novel, Diceria dell’untore (The PlagueSower), in 1981, and became an overnight success at the age of 61. Bufalino fell passionately in love with writing at a very early age, secretly composing verses since he was 10. His omnivorous reading habits, equaled by his relentless moviegoing, afforded him imaginative escape from provincial Sicilian life. Drafted in 1942, he brought along, as part of his baggage, a thick notebook of verses by Baudelaire, Montale, and Dante. At the end of the war he continued to write and, with the encouragement of a friend, Angelo Romano`, one of the most important editors of Officina, contributed to various newspapers. He soon withdrew, however, from all public engagements and publishing ventures. At the beginning of the 1970s, Bufalino completed a novel, a kind of a fable that recounted his stay at a sanatorium between 1944 and 1947. In 1978, he found some old nineteenth-century photographs in an attic. He decided to organize an exhibition and write the introduction to the catalogue. The publisher Sellerio put them together as a book, Comiso ieri (Comiso Yesterday, 1978). Persuaded to submit his manuscripts, he reluctantly sent Diceria dell’untore. After the remarkable critical reception of his debut novel, Bufalino published many books and essays. Le menzogne della notte (The Night’s Lies, 1988), which was translated into 16 languages, won the coveted Strega prize. The eminent author and literary critic Pietro Citati would write about Bufalino: Per lui, esiste soltanto il libro [...] Il libro e` l’oggetto supremo, che raccoglie in se´ tutta la vita reale—quel bambino che in questo momento attraversa la strada, quella nuvola che proprio ora splende sotto i raggi del sole—e la vita fantasticata, immaginata, irreale, impossibile; e questa mescolanza lo affascina come la piu` inebriante delle bevande For him, only the book exists [...] The book is the supreme object, which encloses actual life—that kid who is crossing the street, that cloud that is shining under the rays of the sun—and fantastic life, that which is imagined, unreal, impossible; and this mixture fascinates him like the most inebriating drink (‘‘Cannibale divoratore di libri,’’ 1988).

Thus, for Bufalino, to read is to renounce living. Literature exists apart and beyond empirical reality. The artist engages in a kind of personal resistance toward the raw experiences and facts of life. In an autobiographical portrait sketched for the Antologia del ‘‘Campiello’’ 1981, he wrote: Una vita come tante [...] un cristianesimo ateo e tremante, inetto a capire se l’universo sia salute o metastasi, grazia o disgrazia; un odio della storia: lastrico di fossili ideologici, collana inerte di errori; un trasporto per cio` che dura e resiste—luoghi, solidali gerghi, abitudini oneste, strette di mano-nel fondo della mia provincia sperduta. In letteratura un amor di menzogna e di musica, purche` radicate nel punto favoloso e geometrico del dolore e della memoria My life is like many others [...] a Christian faith, fickle and atheistic, unfit to understand whether the universe is healthy or cancerous, grace or damnation; a hatred of History: paved with ideological fossils, an inert series of errors; a transport for what lasts and endures—places, sound jargons, honest customs, firm handshakes—in my secluded region. In literature, a love for the untrue and music, provided they are rooted in the fantastic and geometric dimension of suffering and memory; cited in Nunzio Zago, Gesualdo Bufalino, 1987.

The appeal of Bufalino’s literary production is in this self-integrated conception of life and in Bufalino’s sensory evocations of Sicily: its light, sound, and odor, which stimulate his own self-creativity. He was preoccupied with writing, an art he mastered after a long apprenticeship in reading—primarily the work of Baudelaire, Proust, Montale, and Dante. His syncopated style, characterized by a certain ironic distance and Baroque tendency, is whimsical, transparent, objective, and yet utterly personal. Much of his nonfiction, with sensitive portrayals of the local people of his childhood and adolescent years, depicts the vanishing culture of Comiso and its surroundings. During the early 1980s, Bufalino became, with Vincenzo Consolo, whose Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (The Smile of the Unknown Mariner, 1976) had also set new standards for the historical novel, the main figure in the revival of the great tradition of Sicilian fiction. Diceria dell’untore was followed by a number of remarkable books: the 321

GESUALDO BUFALINO autobiographical Museo d’ombre (Museum of Shadows, 1982), a fantastic-historical portrait of Comiso and its vanishing past, and Argo il cieco, ovvero, i sogni della memoria (Blind Argus, or, The Fables of the Memory, 1984), a story about love and memory, an elegant diary recoding the painfulness of aging; the short stories of L’uomo invaso e altre invenzioni (The Keeper of Ruins and Other Inventions, 1986); the verses of L’amaro miele (Bitter Honey, 1982); a collection of aphorisms, Il malpensante (The Evil-Minded, 1987), and a theatrical pie`ce, La panchina (The Bench, 1989). Bufalino’s essays and journalistic articles are collected in two volumes, Cere perse (The Lost Wax) and La luce e il lutto (Light and Mourning, 1988). Among his later major works: Calende greche (On the Greek Calends, 1990) and Qui pro quo (1991), a parody of the detective novel. Although Bufalino’s work has been translated into several languages, the first English edition of The Plague-Sower appeared only in 1988, with a preface by Leonardo Sciascia. In 1988, Bufalino returned to fiction with the widely acclaimed Le menzogne della notte, which many consider his masterpiece. This intellectually subtle novel is remarkable and intriguing in its use of wordplay. It is set in an inhospitable islandfortress where four political prisoners—a baron, a poet, a soldier, and a student—await death for plotting against the Bourbon Monarchy. On the eve of their execution, the governor proposes a last-minute reprieve: If only one of them were to reveal the identity of their leader, they would all go free. The prisoners sit through the night telling stories of love and war, loyalty and revenge. As they see the scaffold being set up, each searches into his past for a memory that will give meaning to approaching death. Through the narrators’ inventions, one unequivocal fact surfaces: Whether their leader will be betrayed or not, the truth will rescue them anyway. Magnificently structured, Le menzogne della notte is the work of a magical poet in full control of his writing powers. Bufalino’s storytelling is deeply rooted in such narratives as Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1350–1352) and the tales of the Arabian Nights. His is fabulist territory evocative of Italo Calvino’s best fiction. It is indeed metafiction in the most ancient tradition. Le menzogne della notte is a book that transcends the formal constrictions of literature. It reveals Bufalino’s vision of the fate of man: We are nothing, he says, but ‘‘paper tropes,’’ ‘‘uncreated symulacra,’’ and ‘‘unsubstantial non-existences’’ on the stage of a pantomime of ashes, bubbles blown by 322

the straw of a hostile conjurer. Bufalino indulges in stories and, like a cinematic spectator, finds shelter in the darkness of the screening room: His writing is private, touching upon the meaning of existence through mystification, ambiguity, and the tricks of the human tongue. As Leonardo Sciascia has pointed out in his introduction to the English edition of Diceria dell’untore, ‘‘a book, indeed, is a theatre of ‘untruth’—‘untruth’ that has become ‘truth.’’’ In all of his works, Bufalino uses a highly stylized form of Italian, which he purposely cultivates. In his last novel, Tommaso e il fotografo cieco (Thomas and the Blind Photographer, 1996), he uses elaborate realistic and fantastic imagery to present paradoxical attitudes toward life. Bufalino introduces the motifs of sickness and memory and emphasizes the healing of his protagonist, Gesualdo, the same Gesualdo, whom Bufalino had named, since Argo il cieco ‘‘lo stesso autore, forse, ma forse no, a dispetto della coincidenza onomastica’’ (the same author, perhaps, but perhaps not, notwithstanding the onomastic coincidence). Gesualdo, whoever he may or may not be, revisits himself from novel to novel in search of a long lasting recovery. Bufalino is aware of the lack of stability of the human condition. All of his leading characters know that they are condemned. Their creator offers no solution, no superior vision of the death awaiting all. Not even art has the power to transcend the absurdity of living. Bufalino’s work speaks of a nature and tradition particular to Sicilian narrative from Luigi Pirandello to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Sciascia. Unlike them he is not moralizing in his representations of Sicily. The world is represented as a theater where life is played, as a game, a labyrinth, a chessboard. He wonders in Cere perse: si scrive per popolare il deserto, per non essere piu` soli nella volutta` di essere soli; per distrarsi dalla tentazione del niente o almeno procrastinarla. A somiglianza della giovane principessa delle Mille e una Notte, ognuno parla ogni volta per rinviare l’esecuzione, per corrompere il carnefice One writes to populate the desert; not to be alone in the voluptuousness of being alone; to distract oneself from the temptation of nothingness or at least to postpone it. Like the young princess in the Arabian Nights, one speaks each time to delay death, to bribe the executioner.

Gesualdo Bufalino is the mythical island’s magic man of letters, who was able to translate his uneventful life into fictional themes of loneliness and dread. Bufalino also made an important contribution to the field of literature with his translations; above

GESUALDO BUFALINO all, with his translations of Hugo, Baudelaire, Toulet, and Giraudoux.

Biography Born in Comiso (Ragusa) on 15 November 15 1920, to Biagio, a blacksmith, and Maria Elia, a housewife. Began his studies in Comiso; his scholastic accomplishments included a first prize in Latin prose for high school students bestowed upon him by the Institute of Roman Studies, 1939; this award encouraged him to attend the university, but he was drafted in the Italian Army in 1942 and so interrupted his studies. After the Armistice (8 September 1943), was taken prisoner by the Germans; escaped and hid at first with a family of peasants and later in Scandiano (Emilia), where he remained until the winter of 1944, when he contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to the local hospital. After liberation, went to a sanatorium, ‘‘La Rocca,’’ situated between Monreale and Palermo, where he stayed until February 1947. Returning to Comiso, he took up private tutoring and substitute taught until he was appointed to a permanent position in 1951. Taught humanities in a high school for 25 years; retired from teaching in 1976. Diceria dell’untore published in 1981. In 1982, met and befriended Leonardo Sciascia, and married in December. That same year, lost his father. He retired in Comiso in voluntary isolation, until his death in a car crash, on 14 June 1996. GAETANA MARRONE-PUGLIA Selected Works Collections Opere 1981–1988, edited by Maria Corti and Francesca Caputo, Milan: Bompiani, 1992.

Poetry ‘‘L’amaro miele,’’ 1982; enlarged edition, 1989.

Fiction Diceria dell’untore, 1981; as The Plague-Sower, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, 1988: as The Plague-Spreader’s Tale, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1999. Museo d’ombre, 1982. Argo il cieco, ovvero, i sogni della memoria, 1984; rpt. 1990; as Blind Argus, or , The Fables of the Memory, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1989. L’uomo invaso e altre invenzioni, 1986; as The Invaded Man and Other Inventions, translated by Kathrine Jason, 1990: as The Keeper of Ruins and Other Inventions, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1994. Le menzogne della notte, 1988; as Night’s Lies, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1990 (English edition); as Lies of the Night, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1991 (American edition).

Calende greche, 1990; rpt. 1992. Qui pro quo, 1991. Bluff di parole, 1994. Tommaso e il fotografo cieco, 1996; as Tommaso and the Blind Photographer, translated by Patrick Creagh, 2000.

Theater La panchina, in Trittico: Bufalino Consolo Sciascia, edited by Antonio Di Grado and Giuseppe Lazzaro Danzuso, 1989.

Aphorisms Il malpensante, lunario dell’anno che fu, 1987.

Essays Cere perse, 1985. La luce e il lutto, 1988. Saldi d’autunno, 1990.

Anthologies Dizionario dei personaggi di romanzo da Don Chisciotte all’Innominabile, 1982; rpt. 1989 Il matrimonio illustrato: testi d’ogni tempo e paese scelti per norma dei celibi e memoria dei coniugati (with Giovanna Bufalino), 1989.

Other Comisso ieri, 1978. Saline di Sicilia, 1988. Il guerrier meschino: Frammento di un’opera dei Pupi, 1993. Carteggio di gioventu`, 1943–1950 (with Angelo Romano`), edited by Nunzio Zago, 1994. Il fiele ibleo, 1995. Il languore e le furie: Quaderni di scuola (1935–38), 1995. In corpore vili: Autoritratto letterario, 1997.

Further Reading Amoroso, Giuseppe, ‘‘Gesualdo Bufalino,’’ in La realta` e il sogno: Narratori italiani del Novecento, edited by Gaetano Mariani and Mario Petrucciani, vol. 1, Rome: Lucarini, 1987. Ba`rberi Squarotti, Giorgio (editor), Gli eredi di Verga, Catania: Letteratura Amica, 1984. Cinquegrani, Alessandro, La partita a scacchi con Dio: Per una metafisica dell’opera di Gesualdo Bufalino, Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2002. Citati, Pietro, ‘‘Cannibale divoratore di libri,’’ in Il corriere della sera, 22 April 1988, p. 3. Curry, Corrada Biazzo, ‘‘La sicilianita` come teatralita` in Sciascia e Bufalino,’’ in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 22, no. 2 (2001): 139–157. Hainsworth, Peter, ‘‘Gesualdo Bufalino: Baroque to the Future,’’ in The New Italian Novel, edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Lino Pertile, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993. Lo Curzio, Guglielmo, Scrittori siciliani, Palermo: Novecento Editrice, 1989. Monastra, Rosa Maria, ‘‘Bufalino e il linguaggio biblicocristiano: Tra pieta` empieta`,’’ in Rivista di Studi Italiani, 19, no. 2 (2001): 107–118. Neri, Francesca, and Giampiero Segneri, ‘‘Reshaping Memory: Bufalino, Consolo and the Sicilian Tradition,’’ in European Studies, 18 (2002): 91–105.

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GESUALDO BUFALINO Nigro, Salvatore, ‘‘Gli specchi scritti: Sciascia e Bufalino,’’ in Scrivere in Sicilia: Vittorini ed oltre,’’ Syracuse: Ediprint, 1985. Rizzo, Cettina (editor), Le voleur de feu: Bufalino e le ragioni del tradurre, Florence: Olschki, 2005. Sciascia, Leonardo, Introduction to Gesualdo Bufalino, The Plague-Sower, Hygiene, CO: Eridanos Press, 1988. Zagarrio, Vito, ‘‘La moviola della memoria: Il caso Bufalino,’’ in Studi Novecenteschi, 28, no. 61 (2001): 199–213. Zago, Nunzio, Gesualdo Bufalino: La figura e l’opera, Marina di Patti (ME): Pungitopo, 1987. Zago, Nunzio (editor), Simile a un colombo viaggiatore: per Bufalino, Comiso: Selarchi Immagini, 1998. Zampardi, Arnaldo, ‘‘Bufalino e la memoria,’’ in Studium, 2, no. 2 (March-April 1986): 268–271. Zampieri, Walter, ‘‘Notes from an Invisible Orchestra: Gesualdo Bufalino as Historical Novelist,’’ in Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture: Revisiting the Nineteenth-Century Past in History, Narrative, and Cinema, edited by Norma Bouchard, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Zappulla Muscara`, Sarah (editor), Narratori siciliani del secondo dopoguerra, Catania: Maimone, 1990.

DICERIA DELL’UNTORE, 1981 Novel by Gesualdo Bufalino

When Gesualdo Bufalino’s most celebrated book, Diceria dell’untore (The Plague-Sower), was published in Italy in 1981, it became the major literary event of the year, winning the Campiello prize. A high school teacher until his retirement in 1976, Bufalino, who had lived in enforced seclusion from the literary world, captivated the attention of the Palermitan publisher Elvira Sellerio through a photography book on his hometown. Eventually, he agreed to surrender a manuscript he had begun to write in 1950, completed in 1971, and subjected to several revisions. The plot of Diceria dell’untore exemplifies Bufalino’s economy of style and the themes that preoccupied him. In 1946, in a sanatorium near Palermo, an estranged group of people find themselves brought and bound together by disease and destiny. All survivors of the war, they are kept 324

waiting in the antechamber of death. Life for them pulsates with a monotonous, wearisome beat, but their gestures and words enact a cathartic ritual. As the narrator-protagonist recalls at the end of chapter 2, ‘‘Oh sı`, furono giorni infelici, i piu` felici della mia vita’’ (Ah yes, those were unhappy days, the happiest of my life). Bufalino’s memory evokes the most extraordinary characters: Il Gran Magro (The Great Thin One), who is the direct opposite of the young narrator; a doctor/ director who orchestrates the spectacle of life and death; Father Vittorio, the military chaplain; Sebastiano, who throws himself down a spiral staircase; Angelo, for whom ‘‘la morte e` un paravento di fumo fra i vivi e gli altri’’ (death is a mere screen of smoke between the living and the others); Marta, a Jewish deportee from the Nazi camps, the main female character, a mysterious ballerina the protagonist passionately loves. Feverish, vibrant, sensuous, Baroque, atoned by an atmosphere that envelops hyperbole and excess, intemperance and passion; a striking blend of irony and theatricality: these are some of the distinguishing features cited by the reviewers of Diceria dell’untore. The novel begins memorably with a dizzying opening confession: O quando tutte le notti—per pigrizia, per avarizia— ritornavo a sognare lo stesso sogno: una strada color cenere, piatta, che scorre con andamento di fiume fra due muri piu` alti della statura di un uomo; poi si rompe, strapionba sul vuoto [...] mi sorprende un ribrezzo di pozzo, e con esso l’estasi che solo un irrisorio pedaggio rimanga a separarmi...da che? O that time when each night-out of laziness or greed—I would dream the same dream: a flat, ash colored road, running with a river’s flow between two walls taller than a man; then it breaks off, jutting over the void [...] suddenly I am overwhelmed by the horror of the pit, accompanied by delight at the knowledge that a trifling toll is all that separates me... from what?

With this bravura opening, Bufalino establishes the tone and the boundaries of that unique literary form that is ‘‘diceria,’’ that vivacious rigmarole through which the protagonist will recount his personal story as well as memories. In Bufalino’s novel, the traumatic experience of the war and the hallucinatory impressions recorded at ‘‘La Rocca’’ sanatorium, near Palermo, produce a complex representation of reality and a lucid investigation into the agony of being. At the end, we are told why the protagonist is the only survivor: M’aspettava una vita nuda, uno zero di giorni previsti, senza una brace ne´ un grido. Uscire mi toccava dalla

GESUALDO BUFALINO cruna dell’individuo per essere uno dei tanti della strada, che amministrano umanamente la loro piccina saviezza d’alito e d’anni. Ma, allo stesso modo dell’istrione in ritiro che ripone nel guardaroba i corredi sanguinosi di un Riccardo o di un Cesare, io avrei serbato i miei coturni, e le tirate al proscenio dell’eroe che avevo presunto di essere, in un angolo della memoria. Per questo forse m’era stato concesso l’esonero: per questo io solo m’ero salvato, e nessun altro, dalla falcidia: per rendere testimonianza, se non delazione, d’una retorica e d’una pieta` A naked life awaited me, a nothingness of predictable days, without a sparkle or voice. I had to come out from the eye of my selfhood in order to be one of the many men in the street who humanly administer the petty wisdom of their breath and years. Like a retired actor putting back into the closet the bloody vestments of King Richard or Caesar, I would lay aside my buskins, and the soliloquies of the hero that I had pretended to be, in a corner of my memory. Perhaps this was why I had been granted a pardon, why I alone, and no one else, had survived the massacre: to bear witness to, if not denounce, a rhetoric and pity.

In his first novel, the artist offers a poetic tribute to his memories of Sicily, her people and her traditions. The Mediterranean island becomes a mythic place where stories are told through highly expressive words. As Bufalino explained in his ‘‘Istruzioni per l’uso’’ of Diceria dell’untore, originally addressed only to his friends, he devised his narrative rhetoric with great care: Confesso che il primo capitolo che scrissi (non e` il primo nell’ordine canonico e non conta dire qual e`) nacque come un gioco serio, la scommessa di trovare intrecci plausibili fra 50 parole scelte in anticipo per timbro, colore, carica evocatoria comuni. Qualcosa di meno maniacale delle matematiche di Raymond Roussel... I must confess that the first chapter I wrote (it is not the first in the definitive order, and there is no need to say which one it is) was born of a serious game, the challenge of finding plausible interconnections among fifty words chosen beforehand for their common tone, color, and evocative charge. Something a bit less maniacal than the mathematics of Raymond Roussel.

Such connections are neither esoteric nor cabalistic, but are born ‘‘da una parentela e coalizione

espressiva e musicale’’ (of a kinship and an expressive and musical coalition). He strives to construct, through literature, a mythopoeic self. Diceria dell’untore is a successful experiment in self-critical autobiography. It was adapted to the screen in 1991 by director Beppe Cino, with a remarkable Vanessa Redgrave playing the role of Suor Crocifissa. GAETANA MARRONE Editions First edition: Diceria dell’untore, Palermo: Sellerio, 1981. Other editions: in Opere 1981–1988, edited by Maria Corti and Francesca Caputo, Milan: Bompiani, 1992. Translations: as The Plague-sower, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, with an introduction by Leonardo Sciascia, Hygiene, CO: Eridanos Press, 1988; The Plague-Spreader’s Tale, translated by Patrick Creagh, London: Harvill, 1999.

Further Reading Aronica, Salvatore, ‘‘La trama della menzogna in Diceria dell’untore,’’ in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 16 (1995): 289–293. Cattanei, Luigi, ‘‘Per la poetica di Gesualdo Bufalino,’’ in Otto/Novecento, 19 (March-April, 1995): 215–222. Di Biase, Carmine, ‘‘Il mistero della more in ‘Diceria dell’untore,’’’ in Studium, 77, no. 5 (September-October 1981): 603–608. Hainsworth, Peter, ‘‘Imagining Losers in Bufalino’s Diceria,’’ in European Memories of the Second World War, edited by Helmett Peitsch, Charles Burdett and Claire Gorrara, Oxford and New York: Berghan Books, 1999. Klopp, Charles, ‘‘The Return of the Spiritual with a Note on the Fiction of Bufalino, Tabucchi and Celati,’’ in Annali d’Italianistica, 19 (2001): 93–102. Marrone, Gianfranco, ‘‘Gesualdo Bufalino: Diceria dell’autore,’’ in Nuove effemeridi (Palermo), 4, no. 13 (1991): 4–11. Papa, Enzo, ‘‘Gesualdo Bufalino,’’ in Novecento, edited by Gianni Grana, Milan: Marzorati, 1989. Raspanti, Antonino, ‘‘La domanda sulla morte in Gesualdo Bufalino,’’ in Letteratura siciliana del novecento. Le domande radicali, edited by Massimo Naro, Caltanissetta-Roma: Sciascia, 2002. Zago, Nunzio, ‘‘Gesualdo Bufalino,’’ in Gli eredi di Verga, edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, Catania: Letteratura Amica, 1984.

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MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI (1475–1564) God sent Michelangelo down to Earth, Giorgio Vasari writes in the last chapter of Vite de’ piu` eccellenti pittori, scultori, architetti (Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1568), because he saw that modern artists were struggling to compose a perfect imitation of nature in the attempt to attain ‘‘quella somma cognizione che molti chiamano intelligenza’’ (that supreme knowledge that many call intelligence). Vasari portrays Michelangelo as a second Christ who has descended from Heaven ‘‘per cavarci da tanti errori’’ (to take us away from all our errors) caused by our ‘‘arroganza’’ (arrogance). Living in the darkness of our fruitless efforts, we now can turn to Michelangelo to receive God’s enlightenment, what he defines as ‘‘intelligenza.’’ In Vasari’s view, Michelangelo is not only the greatest artist who has ever lived, but his art has a deeply moral and religious significance as well. Accompanied by a profound knowledge of ‘‘filosofia morale’’ (moral philosophy) and of ‘‘dolce poesia’’ (sweet poetry), Michelangelo is a divine model of perfection. As Vasari states in a later passage of his biography, his ‘‘bellissime canzoni’’ (beautiful canzoni) and his ‘‘stupendi suoi sonetti gravemente composti’’ (wonderful sonnets that he composed with grave care) are read and debated in all Italian academies. Michelangelo’s ‘‘dolce poesia,’’ as Vasari says, is the most original collection of poetry of the Italian Renaissance, an unprecedented and candid autobiographical account, a unique meditation on the relationship between visual and verbal expression, and a heartfelt meditation on religious enlightenment. Michelangelo’s Rime bear a close resemblance with Shakespeare’s canzoniere because of their essential themes: the love for a young man and for a woman, who is also but not exclusively Vittoria Colonna. In these two collections of poetry, the tone and philosophical influences are also very similar. Walter Pater’s powerful definition of ‘‘Michelangelesque,’’ which expresses ‘‘sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an energy of conception that seems at every moment about to 326

break through all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural things,’’ is in part applicable also to Michelangelo’s poetry (The Renaissance, 1877). ‘‘Strength’’ more than ‘‘sweetness’’ dominates the artist’s texts. ‘‘Loveliness’’ in his poetry becomes the painful struggle to bring out the concept lying dormant within the matter, as we see in his unfinished four sculptures called Schiavi (Slaves) for the tomb of Julius II. Thus the legacy of Michelangelo’s poetry might truly lie in his tormented and unfinished compositions, which challenge the traditional metrical forms of Petrarchan poetry. Only a few of Michelangelo’s poems were published during his life. His Rime (more than 302 pieces) were composed between 1503 and 1560. In a letter to Vasari dated September 19, 1554, from his vast epistolary, Michelangelo jokes about his crazy decision to write sonnets in such a late period of his life. His poems often defy the metric and structural rules of the Italian lyric tradition. Along with some 80 sonnets and some 100 madrigals on habitual themes such as the love experience, we find numerous ‘‘fragments,’’ isolated stanzas, but also single verses written in a seemingly spontaneous manner, for instance on the back of letters or next to his sketches. Michelangelo’s canzoniere is both a product alternative to his figurative works and the invaluable means through which the artist meditates upon his expression. Thematically, Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonism, primarily his De amore (On Love, 1469), a seminal rewriting of the Symposium, exerts a central influence on Michelangelo, together with Pico della Mirandola’s Commento sopra una canzone de amore composta da Girolamo Benivieni (Commentary on a Canzone of Benivieni, 1486), which is considered one of the first treatises on love. In terms of poetic models, Dante’s Comedia deeply influenced Michelangelo’s Petrarchan language. Michelangelo’s ‘‘fragmentary’’ poetry must be related to the debate on the ‘‘nonfinito’’ (unfinished) in his sculpture, that is, the artist aims at giving form to a ‘‘concetto’’ (concept), a

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI key term of Renaissance art theory. He dedicates some of his most famous sonnets to this theme, for instance ‘‘Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto’’ (The best of artists never has a concept), which is a perfect, albeit very dense, synthesis of Michelangelo’s artistic view. The poet contends that a great artist succeeds in bringing out the ‘‘concept’’ that a marble block contains (‘‘in se´ circonscriva’’) within its husk (‘‘suo superchio’’) only if his hand follows the intellect (‘‘la man che ubbidisce all’intelletto’’). That is, hand and mind must work together to give life to the artist’s insight. This sonnet was the object of a famous lecture of the philosopher Benedetto Varchi at the Florentine Academy in 1546. Varchi underscores that a ‘‘concept’’ is an act of the imagination, and it stands for ‘‘form,’’ ‘‘idea,’’ ‘‘example,’’ ‘‘similitude,’’ ‘‘image,’’ but first of all for the Aristotelian forma agens, which exists in the artist’s mind and compels him to create an immaterial hybrid, something between seeing and sensing. The presence of Aristotelian philosophy in Michelangelo’s poetics, usually underestimated, plays in fact a major role in shaping the artist’s idea of ‘‘concept.’’ For Michelangelo, a ‘‘concept’’ is both an act of imagination and a synonym for ‘‘form’’ and ‘‘image,’’ thus his incomplete texts materialize his effort to give form to a ‘‘concept,’’ and therefore are fragmentary only from a metrical point of view. Take for example the fragment ‘‘Ben fu, temprando il ciel tuo vivo raggio’’ (To me Heaven was surely merciless), which is part of a brief sequence of three poems (two complete sonnets and a fragment) dedicated to a young man, Febo del Poggio, all of them focusing on the end of their friendship. In a letter written before September 23, 1534, Michelangelo shares with Poggio his decision of leaving Rome for Florence and reassures him of his unflinching love and dedication. The letter also reveals that some sort of disagreement has tainted their relationship. In ‘‘Ben fu, temprando il ciel tuo vivo raggio,’’ Michelangelo offers a deeply spiritual analysis of his love for Febo, in which self-discovery and self-abandonment coincide. By punning on the name of his young friend, ‘‘Febo’’ (Phoebus) and ‘‘poggio’’ (hill), in only eight verses the poet visualizes the act of falling in love through sight (the sun’s rays descend on those who love the young man-Phoebus) as a blinding experience and as an actual fall from the hill (poggio) to which the beloved Febo had decided to fly. This intense, obscure ‘‘fragment,’’ which rephrases the opening lines of Canto 28 of Dante’s Purgatorio (the pilgrim’s walking up the hill over the forest of Eden),

works as a cogent concetto, that is, as an insight that transcends expression. Its main source is Ficino’s De raptu Pauli (Paul’s Rapture, ca. 1476), in which the Florentine philosopher interprets the apostle Paul’s ascension to the third heaven in connection with his Neoplatonic vision of Christian theology. Michelangelo had explored a similar theme in some of his famous sketches for Tommaso Cavalieri, such as Il ratto di Ganimede (Ganymede’s Rapture) and La caduta di Fetone (The Fall of Phaeton). Michelangelo’s poetry could be thus seen as an original form of anti-Petrarchism, which questions the strict rhetorical structures of Italian poetic tradition, its trite metaphors, and its empty and redundant language. The influence of Ficinian Platonism is apparent in Michelangelo’s concept of love. However, it is important to bear in mind his unique interpretation of the meaning and role of the body in the love experience. In the sonnet ‘‘D’altrui pietoso e sol di se´ spietato’’ (With grace to all, to itself only scorn), written for Tommaso Cavalieri, Michelangelo describes himself as a lover who, like a snake, wishes to shed his own skin in order to protect the limbs of his beloved. The extent of Michelangelo’s allegiance to Renaissance Florentine thought is still the object of an intense academic discussion. The fundamental emphasis on the transcendence inherent in human physicality is at once accepted and modified in Michelangelo’s poetic works. In this regard, aging and death become recurrent themes, only partly justifiable by the fact that most of his literary production corresponds to a mature phase of his life. Images of tortured, flayed, dissected bodies recur both in his verses and his figurative works (such as his self-portrait in the Giudizio universale). In Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the saints manifest signs of their martyrdom according to traditional Christian iconography, whereas St. Bartholomew, who was flayed to death, holds his skin like a shroud. The face we see on the saint’s crumpled skin is Michelangelo’s. Michelangelo turns the act of sculpting into a metaphor for a process of self-revelation that can be attained only through suffering. He himself is the matter or stone from which an inner form is chipped forth. The act of molding, or better yet, bringing to the surface one’s own identity by means of hammering or melting becomes the key metaphor of Michelangelo’s verses. But similar to the ‘‘nonfinito’’ in sculpture, the poet’s self-image can only be a work in progress that defies the static rules of poetic rhetoric. The concetto expressed through poetry is a partial reflection of an inner image that lies under 327

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI the aegis of human physicality, as in the beginning lines of the long poem ‘‘I’ sto rinchiuso come la midolla/da la sua scorza, qua pover e solo’’ (I live shut up here, like the doughy middle/inside the bread crust, poor and all alone). Michelangelo’s poems on visual art (primarily sculpture) are particularly original. The opening section includes poems that address the figurative arts and the artist’s work. They comprise important autobiographical references, like the famous ‘‘I’ ho gia` fatto un gozzo in questo stento’’ (I’ve got myself a goiter from this strain), in which he humorously describes his painful working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Other lyrics present his philosophical view of artistic expression, where Michelangelo emphasizes the power of art to produce beauty and thus self-knowledge, according to the well-known concepts of Florentine Platonism. In a compelling manner, the artist envisions love as a form of sculpture: He does not visualize the beloved’s beautiful forms in order to make them eternal (a common topos of the Petrarchan tradition) but contends that it is the beloved who, through the power that love has granted her or him, is able to give form to the lover. For Michelangelo, the beloved is a sculptor that ‘‘carves’’ out the truthful, and beautiful, form of the lover. The beloved, as he writes in a madrigal dedicated to Vittoria Colonna, has the power to strip away the bark that hides the good lying inside the poet. The last part comprises a handful of compositions in which Michelangelo speaks of divine creation as a form of artistic expression. Of particular relevance for a correct understanding of Michelangelo’s poetic writing is his complex relationship with Vittoria Colonna, whose influence on the artist’s religious expression has been the object of intense critical scrutiny. In 1546, Michelangelo made a selection of his verses in the attempt to create a coherent canzoniere, as the manuscript Vaticano Latino 3211 proves. This project failed also because of Vittoria Colonna’s death in 1547. In his poetic anthology, Michelangelo excluded his ‘‘realistic’’ and occasional compositions and emphasized his love verses. The artist created two female interlocutors, a mysterious ‘‘donna bella e crudele’’ (a beautiful and cruel woman) and Vittoria Colonna, who became the sole recognizable addressee of the entire selection. Critics have noted that Michelangelo’s important anthology does not offer spiritual compositions, although spiritual concerns later become a central component of Michelangelo’s poetic production. Michelangelo continues his dialogue with Vittoria 328

Colonna after her death by appropriating and responding to some of her deeply religious sonnets. Students of sixteenth-century Italian Catholicism have debated Michelangelo’s possible adherence or interest in Italian Protestantism. Vittoria Colonna, who was in contact with the followers of Juan Valde´s’ reform spirituality, gave Michelangelo a manuscript of her poetry (MS Vaticano Latino 11539), which exclusively focuses on her love for Christ and thus challenges the traditional structure of a Renaissance Petrarchan canzoniere. Michelangelo began writing explicitly religious poetry also in response to Vittoria Colonna’s religious canzoniere. Michelangelo’s canzoniere can be roughly divided into three periods. A first group of poems (written between 1503–1532) covers a variety of different themes, but apart from the self-ironic sonnet on the labor in the Sistine Chapel, it focuses, at times with uneven results, on the love experience using basic topoi of Petrarchan language (the vision of love as inner fire, sight as the origin of love). For instance, ‘‘La vita del mie amor non e` ‘l cor mio’’ (What sets my love alive is not my heart), ‘‘I’ fe’ degli occhi porta al mie veneno’’ (I let my eyes become my poison’s gate), and ‘‘Dagli occhi del mie ben si parte e vola’’ (A burning beam from my beloved’s eyes). The most famous section of the canzoniere is the series of poems composed between 1532–1547, including the sonnets for the young Tomaso Cavalieri considered to be the highest poetic expression of the Florentine Neoplatonic notion of homoerotic love. Among them, the stunning ‘‘Sento d’un foco un freddo aspetto acceso’’ (I feel how a cold face that fire has lit), in which the poet gives new life to the trite theme of the paradoxical nature of love (cold and burning), a recurring topos in his early lyrics. These also comprise a handful of intense compositions on the young Febo del Poggio, 50 epitaphs in memory of the young Cecchino Bracci, and the better-known poems for Vittoria Colonna. The final part of the canzoniere (between 1547 and 1560) is primarily made of spiritual texts and meditations on death.

Biography Born in Caprese, Arezzo, on March 6, 1475, he first studied with the Humanist Francesco Galatea of Urbino and the painter Francesco Granacci. In 1488, he joined the Florentine bottega of the painters Domenico and David Ghirlandaio, who gave him a three-year contract. At Lorenzo de’ Medici’s, he met Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI Poliziano. He became acquainted with Florentine Neoplatonic thought. He left Florence before the arrival of Charles VIII’s armies, moving first to Venice and then to Bologna. In 1496, in Rome he sculptured the Bacco, which is at the Bargello. In 1498, he began working on the Pieta` now in St Peter’s. In 1501, he was back in Florence. In 1502, his first poetic works. In 1504, he painted the Tondo Doni. On September 8, 1504, his David was placed in Piazza della Signoria. In May 1508, he embarked on the project for the frescoes on the vault of the Sistine Chapel, which occupied him until 1512. In 1509, he described his travail in a sonnet for Giovanni da Pistoia. In 1513–1515, for the tomb of Pope Julius II, he completed the Mose` in St Peter’s in Vincoli and the Schiavi in the Louvre. In 1526, for Giuliano’s tomb, he completed the Notte e Giorno. In 1528, his brother Buonarroto died. In 1532, he met Tommaso Cavalieri in Rome, where he was working on a new project for the tomb of Julius II. In 1534, the death of his elderly father, Ludovico, occurred. He moved to Rome in September to plan the Giudizio universale in the Sistine Chapel, which he started in 1535, the same year of his last letter to the young Febo del Poggio. In 1536, he became friends with Vittoria Colonna, who died in 1547. In 1544, he sketched the tomb for Cecchino Bracci, to whom he dedicated a series of epitaphs. In 1561, he completed the great model in wood for the cupola of St. Peter’s. Died on February 18, 1564. ARMANDO MAGGI See also: Literature and Visual Arts Selected Works Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti, raccolte da Michelagnolo suo nipote, Florence: Giunti, 1623. This seminal edition (137 poems) is deeply flawed because of its editor’s frequent subjective interventions. Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti, pittore, scultore e architetto, edited by Cesare Guasti, Florence: Le Monnier, 1863. Rime, con varianti, apparato, nota filologica, edited by Enzo Noe` Girardi, Bari: Laterza, 1960; as The Complete Poems of Michelangelo, translated by Joseph Tusiani, New York: Noonday Press, 1960; as The Poetry of

Michelangelo: an Annotated Translation, edited by James M. Saslow, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991 (this is the only recent translation including the original Italian texts); as The Complete Poems of Michelangelo, edited by John Frederick Nims, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. The Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo, translated by Creighton Gilbert, New York: Modern Library, 1965. Carteggio di Michelangelo, edited by Giovanni Poggi, 5 vols., Florence: Sansoni, 1965–1983.

Further Reading Altizer, Alba B., Self and Symbolism in the Poetry of Michelangelo, John Donne, and Agrippa d’Aubigne´, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Barsella, Susanna, ‘‘Michelangelo. Le rime dell’arte,’’ in Letteratura e arte, 1 (2003): 213–225. Binni, Walter, Michelangelo scrittore, Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1965. Cambon, Glauco, Michelangelo’s Poetry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Clements, Robert John, The Poetry of Michelangelo, New York: New York University Press, 1965. Colonna, Vittoria, Sonnets for Michelangelo: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Abigail Brundin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, 1–45. Fedi, Roberto, La memoria della poesia, Rome: Salerno, 1990, 264–305. Francese, Joseph, ‘‘On Homoerotic Tension in Michelangelo’s Poetry,’’ in Modern Languages Notes, 117, no. 1 (2002): 17–47. Girardi, Enzo Noe`, Studi sulle Rime di Michelangelo, Florence: Olschki, 1974. Maggi, Armando, ‘‘L’immagine del concetto d’amore: Una lettura del frammentomichelangiolesco ‘Ben fu, temprando il cielo tuo vivo raggio,’’’ in Revue d’e´tudesitaliennes, 46, nos. 3–4 (2000): 259–268. Pater, Walter, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, New York: Macmillan, 1877; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Ryan, Christopher, The Poetry of Michelangelo. An Introduction, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. Scarpati, Claudio, ‘‘Michelangelo poeta dal ‘canzoniere’ alle rime spirituali,’’ in Aevum, 78 (2003): 593–613. Summers, David, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. Vecce, Carlo, ‘‘Petrarca, Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo. Note di commento a testi e varianti di Vittoria Colonna e di Michelangelo,’’ in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, 44 (1992): 101–125. Wallace, William E. (editor), Michelangelo, selected scholarship in English, 5 vols., New York: Garland, 1995.

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IL BURCHIELLO (DOMENICO DI GIOVANNI)

IL BURCHIELLO (DOMENICO DI GIOVANNI) (CA.1404–1447/1449) Domenico di Giovanni, generally known as Il Burchiello, was a Florentine barber as well as a poet. His barbershop is considered one of the most interesting cultural centers of fifteenth-century Florence, and was frequented by prominent poets and intellectuals of the day, including the architect Leon Battista Alberti. Contemporary perspectives on his biography and literary work are often influenced by a nineteenth-century myth that portrayed him as a second Dante and a rebellious poet sent into exile because of his unconventional personality. More recently, archival research and Michelangelo Zaccarello’s 2000 critical edition of his poems have helped to clarify his complex literary career. A considerable number of fifteenthcentury Italian manuscripts attribute the authorship of a varying number of poems to Burchiello, under the title Sonetti del Burchiello (Burchiello’s Sonnets). This poetic corpus includes about 220 sonetti caudati, that is, sonnets characterized by the addition of at least one tercet to the customary 14 lines. While most of the poems are indeed by Burchiello, some are by different authors; thus, the Sonetti del Burchiello was a work in progress, rather than a compact collection of poems, organized into a book only in later editions such as Anton Francesco Grazzini’s I sonetti di Burchiello, et di Messer Antonio Alamanni, alla burchiellesca (Burchiello’s Sonnets and Those of Antonio Alamanni in the ‘‘Burchiellesca’’ Fashion, 1552) and Anton Francesco Doni’s Le rime del poeta Burchiello (Burchiello’s Poems, 1553). In addition, the texts circulated independently and were often rewritten, transformed, and renamed by new writers. Defining the genre of the sonnets is a problematic task. The corpus is a synthesis of at least three Tuscan literary traditions: comic-realistic poetry, and the oral traditions of motti (witty sayings) and facezie (witty remarks). In addition, it documents the formation of a new poetic style, the so-called stile alla burchia. The comic-realistic component is evident in certain poems that transform typical situations of the medieval tradition. Sonnet CVXXIII, ‘‘Ardati il fuoco vecchia puzolente’’ 330

(May fire burn you, stinking old woman), for instance, develops the topos of the vituperation of an old woman, and Burchiello respects the conventional elements of this tradition, which fuses the goliardic genre of the vituperium with the motifs of misogynist literature. The elaboration of such elements results in a caricatural deformation: The woman’s ‘‘veder sottile’’ (attentive sight) may refer either to her habit of splitting hairs or to her wrinkled and feeble eyes. The comic-realistic tradition is also rich in models that are suitable to express autobiographic experiences. A night spent in bad lodgings, for instance, is a common situation and also a comic topos: the so-called mala notte (bad night) or malo albergo (bad lodging). This traditional situation is present in sonnet LXXXII, ‘‘Borsi spetial, crudele e dispietato’’ (Oh Borsi the apothecary, cruel and pitiless), where the poet describes the night he spent on a disgusting bed filled with fleas, bedbugs, and lice, and compares his pain to a religious penitence. Time spent in prison, on the other hand, is both a documented autobiographical detail (Burchiello was indeed arrested in Siena in 1439) and a literary situation modeled on Cecco Angiolieri’s poetry. Burchiello’s lament is rich in grotesque and visionary elements, such as the hyperbolic description of how his stomach rumbles for food: ‘‘El corpo m’urla spesso e fa rimbombo / onde un dı` mi rispose una colomba / la qual credette ch’i’ fussi un colombo’’ (My body howls and echoes so loudly / that one day a female dove answered me, for she believed I was a male dove). The oral tradition of the motti and facezie is represented, for instance, by sonnet CXCVI, vv. 9–11, in which a cat confuses his owner’s testicles with a mouse and attacks him; or in sonnet LXXIX, ‘‘Prestate nobis de oleo vestrosso’’ (Lend us some of your oil), which reports the dialogue of two ignorant ambassadors who, forgetting the text of their speech, misquote Matthew’s Gospel and engage in a pointless argument. Both anecdotes are documented, respectively, in Franco Sacchetti’s Trecentonovelle (Three Hundred Tales, 1390s) and in Poggio Bracciolini’s Facetiae (1452).

IL BURCHIELLO (DOMENICO DI GIOVANNI) The sonnets written in alla burchia represent the originality of the Sonetti del Burchiello. This locution literally means ‘‘pell-mell’’ in that it refers to the way a certain kind of boat (‘‘burchiello’’) is usually loaded with everyday goods like food, tools, and sundry items. Some critics suggested that the locution might also refer to written inventories of goods, as numbers introduce most of the lists used in the poems. The Florentine painter, architect and poet Andrea di Orcagna (ca. 1308–1368), whose poems are included in the main corpus, invented this poetic style. Burchiello, however, took this literary game a step further, turning it into a veritable poetic genre. According to the definition given by Emilio Pasquini, the style alla burchia consists of a ‘‘decomposition of reality into its elements and their subsequent recomposition on a different level of visionary and oneiric reality’’ (‘‘Letteratura popolareggiante, comica e giocosa, lirica minore e narrativa volgare del Quattrocento,’’ 1996). The effect is an optical illusion in which objects of daily life and names of real places are fused and connected to mythological, biblical, and literary names, or an everyday creature, such as a duck, is said to produce milk and butter. As Zaccarello noted in his introduction to Sonetti del Burchiello (2004), the poet reinterprets reality through an ‘‘illogical and visionary creative syntax, which constantly threatens the conventional linearity (causal, chronological, narrative) of the text with unexpected developments and verbal associations.’’ Sonnet XCIX, ‘‘A meza notte, quasi in sulla nona’’ (At midnight, almost at the ninth hour) is a good example of the new technique. The incipit of the text is a chronological detail and also an oxymoron, as ‘‘in the ninth hour’’ corresponds to three in the afternoon. The second line introduces two characters, a fictional hero from the Carolingian tradition, ‘‘Bravieri,’’ and a Florentine physician and geographer, ‘‘Pozzo Toscanegli’’ (whose name is also misspelled). The two characters are engaged in the quaint activity described in the third line: ‘‘presono una nidiata di bacegli’’ (they caught a nest of peapods). The setting of the action is described with a geographical oxymoron, ‘‘tra il corso degli Strozi e Pampalona’’ (between Strozzi street and Pamplona), which are respectively a street in Florence and a Spanish town. Sometimes Burchiello’s poems are rich in obscene double meanings associated with the carnivalesque tradition. Sonnet CCXXVII, ‘‘Qualunque al bagno vuol mandar la moglie’’ (He who wants to send his wife to the thermal waters), for instance, explains a remedy for infertility in women, thermal

baths, which implies abundant sexual activity described with rather explicit sexual metaphors. Obscenity, however, is not the only way to interpret Burchiello’s poems, and frequently this reading is deceptive. For instance, sonnet LXXVII, ‘‘Ficcami una pennuccia in un baccello’’ (Stick me a little pen in a pod) is only apparently vulgar; according to Zaccarello, it should in fact rather be read in the context of other sonnets about prison, so that the opening line explains a way to hide a pen for a prisoner. The alla burchia style neither obscures nor foreshadows the poetics of the absurd or surrealism, as has been rather anachronistically suggested. Rather, Burchiello and the other poets collected in the Sonetti del Burchiello sought a new way of practicing literature. This is documented specifically by autobiographical poems that do not exactly fit the comic-realistic cliche`s. For example, sonnet XCIII, ‘‘Va in mercato Giorgin, tien qui un Grosso’’ (Go to the marketplace, Giorgin, here is a Grosso) seems to follow the traditional scheme of the shopping list. Since ‘‘Grosso’’ is the name of a Florentine coin whose value is not enough to buy all the things on the list, however, Burchiello transforms this traditional scheme into a new discourse meant to be imaginary, rather than realistic. The essential elements of this new poetics are more evident in sonnet CXXVI, ‘‘La poesia contende col rasoio’’ (Poetry argues with the razor), and sonnet CXIX, ‘‘Fior di borrana, se vuoi dire in rima’’ (Herbaceous flower, if you want to write verses). In the first sonnet, Burchiello, barber and poet, refers to himself in a fictional discussion between the allegorical figure of his literary activity, poetry, and the symbol of his work, the razor. For parodic purposes, both characters adopt the language and the style of lyric poetry; only the poet, in the end, stops the conversation with a statement of practical wisdom, by saying: ‘‘Non piu` romore, / ch’e’ non ci corra la secchia al bacino, / ma chi meglio mi vuol mi paghi il vino’’ (No more quarrel: / so that the pail and the bowl are not in danger, / rather, let the one who loves me best pay for some wine). In ‘‘Fior di borrana, se vuoi dire in rima,’’ Burchiello defines his innovative idea of poetry. He counsels the poet to refuse erudition and philosophical doctrine; rather, daily life should be the only source of inspiration in order to write ‘‘naturale e facilmente’’ (naturally and easily), while fantasy should be the only method for editing. Burchiello thus contributes a new idea of poetry to Renaissance literature. Culturally speaking, his literary production is an alternative to the imitation of Petrarch and to 331

IL BURCHIELLO (DOMENICO DI GIOVANNI) the Humanist idea of art. Ideologically, his poetry and its considerable number of imitators reflect a rejection of institutions like the court, the academy, and the university and instead favor the manual arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Biography Born in Florence, near Santa Maria Novella, 1404. His mother was a weaver, and his son a carpenter. Began to work as a barber, 1427. Involved in a trial against a barber named Giovanni de’ Nobili, 1428. Involved in another trial, against a barber named Cambio di Marco, 1431. Admitted to the ‘‘Arte dei Medici e Speziali,’’ 1432. Rented his barbershop, 1432. Exiled from Florence by Cosimo de’ Medici because of his political ideas, 1434. Arrested in Siena on charges of robbery, 1439. Joined the Vatican court, 1443. Died in Rome, sometime between 1447 and 1449. MATTEO SORANZO Selected Works I sonetti di Burchiello, et di Messer Antonio Alamanni, alla burchiellesca, edited by Anton Francesco Grazzini, Florence: Giunti, 1552. Le rime del poeta Burchiello, edited by Anton Francesco Doni, Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1553. Sonetti del Burchiello, critical edition by Michelangelo Zaccarello, Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 2000.

I Sonetti del Burchiello, edited by Michelangelo Zaccarello, Turin: Einaudi, 2004.

Further Readings Alfie, Fabian, ‘‘I’ son sı` magro che quasi traluco: Inspiration and Indebtedness among Cecco Angiolieri, Meo Dei Tolomei and Il Burchiello,’’ in Italian Quarterly, 35, no. 135–136 (1998): 5–28. Avellini, Luisa, ‘‘Metafora ‘regressiva’ e degradazione comica nei sonetti del Burchiello,’’ in Lingua e stile, 8 (1973): 291–319. Corsaro, Antonio, ‘‘Burchiello attraverso la tradizione a stampa del ’500,’’ in ‘‘La fantasia fuor de’ confini.’’ Burchiello e dintorni a 550 anni dalla morte (1449– 1999), edited by Michelangelo Zaccarello, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002. De Robertis, Domenico, ‘‘Una proposta per Burchiello,’’ in Rinascimento, 8 (1968): 3–120. Pasquini, Emilio, ‘‘Letteratura popolareggiante, comica e giocosa, lirica minore e narrativa volgare del Quattrocento,’’ in Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. 3, Il Quattrocento, edited by Enrico Malato, Rome: Salerno, 1996. Smith, Alan K., ‘‘Fraudomy: Reading Sexuality and Politics in Burchiello,’’ in Queering the Renaissance, edited by Jonathan Goldberg, Durham-London: Duke University Press, 1994. Tartaro, Achille, ‘‘Burchiello e i Burchielleschi,’’ in La letteratura italiana. Storia e testi, edited by Carlo Muscetta, vol. 3, tomes 1–2, Il Quattrocento. L’eta` dell’Umanesimo, edited by Francesco Tateo and Achille Tartaro, Bari: Laterza, 1972. Zaccarello, Michelangelo (editor), ‘‘La fantasia fuor de’ confini.’’ Burchiello e dintorni a 550 anni dalla morte (1449– 1999), Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002. Zaccarello, Michelangelo, Introduction to I Sonetti del Burchiello, Turin: Einaudi, 2004.

ALDO BUSI (1948–) Aldo Busi is one of the most prolific and controversial writers in the contemporary Italian literary landscape. At the age of 14, he decided to leave his family and school to travel around Europe, study languages, and earn a living working as a waiter in restaurants and hotels. His literary debut came in 1984 with the publication of an autobiographical bildungsroman, Seminario sulla gioventu` (Seminar on Youth). The story begins in Busi’s hometown, Montichiari, where the young Barbino is carefully observing his own world: his mother’s harsh life, 332

the labour in the country, his father’s shortcomings, his peculiar interest and love for the world of women, and, finally, the violent and traumatic discovery of his sexual diversity. Barbino understands that he has to escape from the ghetto of his family, overcoming the limits of his condition and education, and this escape is the subject of the early chapters. The core of the novel, however, is dedicated to Barbino’s new life in Milan, where, working as a barman, he follows his homosexual sensibility, even as it leads him to extremely violent

ALDO BUSI experiences with strange and complex characters such as the Colonel and Adel the Egyptian. As Walter Pedulla` points out in La letteratura italiana contemporanea (1998), for all its humor and irony, the huge success of this novel is due to its fascinating mixture of the protagonist’s inner life and current popular culture, especially in the second part. Moreover, Seminario sulla gioventu` came totally unexpected upon the Italian literary scene of the 1980s. Although then-current critical debates focused on the so-called ‘‘death of the novel’’ and on the quest for new forms of experimental novel, Busi’s work was able to revitalize the genre. His postmodern fiction signaled a new beginning and was especially praised for its extravagant plot, for the spontaneity and audacity of the narrative and the language, and for its literary style. In the following years, Busi published a number of novels that continued to defy conventional expectations of genre, mixing stream of consciousness narrative with the explicit representation of contemporary life (particularly for sexual encounters between men). Works such as Vita standard di un venditore provvisorio di collant (The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman, 1985), La delfina bizantina (The Byzantine She-dolphin, 1986), Sodomie in corpo 11 (Sodomies in Elevenpoint, 1988), Altri abusi: viaggi, sonnambulismo e giri dell’oca (Uses and Abuses: Journeys, Sleepwalking and Fool’s Errands, 1989) display a similar Baroque mixture of mannerism and parody of sentimental pathos. From this point of view, Vendita galline Km 2 (Chicken for Sale 2 Km, 1993), a book characterized by a complex structure and an elaborate style, marks a turning point. The novel is the long autobiographical monologue of a dead Argentinean woman, Delfina Unno Pastalunghi, a proud lesbian who rebels against her family and her society, whose corruption and hypocrisy she carefully reports. In recounting her love story with a poor Sardinian musician, Caterina Multimuoriu, Delfina mercilessly describes the Italian ruling class, its thirst for power, its dishonesty. Busi is influenced by the trials for corruption held in Milan after 1991—the so-called ‘‘Mani Pulite’’ operation—that laid bare the utmost degeneration of the political class. Casanova di se stessi (Casanova to Yourself, 2000), apparently structured as a mystery, is more obviously satirical. A judge, Eros Torellino, and a schoolmaster, Amato Perche, are found dead and stark naked in a chalet on the Lake of Iseo. Nearby, investigators discover a copy of

Gian Giacomo Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie. Subi, the homosexual narrator and thinly disguised alter-ego for Busi himself (his name is an anagram of the author’s) tries to solve the mystery and to tell the story of the victims because he does not trust heterosexuals to truly understand it. Casanova’s autobiography, a book viewed as a mere product of vanity and egoism, is a symbol of this lack of understanding. Busi’s latest works, often couched ironically in the guise of manuals and guidebooks, challenge both gender roles and social institutions. Manuale della perfetta Mamma: con qualche contrazione anche per il Papa` (Guidebook for the Perfect Mother: With a Few Contractions for Dad, 2000) tends more toward the portrayal of an idealized mother figure. On the contrary, Manuale del perfetto papa`: beati gli orfani! (Guidebook for the Perfect Father: Orphans Are Lucky!, 2001) is a fierce indictment of the cult of virility because, for Busi, masculinity (and above all paternity) signifies spite, violence, caginess, and an inability to listen to others. Busi’s eclectic interests have driven his literary career in various directions, including the cinema. In his quest to develop a personal language and style, he has translated European classics, among them Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Friedrich Schiller’s works. But his most controversial work of ‘‘translation’’ is undoubtedly his rewriting into contemporary Italian of Boccaccio’s Decameron (1991) and Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortigiano (1993). Busi’s fascination with the icons of mass media culture has resulted in numerous articles on celebrities, which were collected, along with other pieces on ‘‘commoners’’ he had met during his lecture tours, in the volume Sentire le donne (Listening to Women, 1991). With his latest book, E io, che ho le rose fiorite anche d’inverno? (And I, Who Has Roses Blossomed even in Winter?, 2004), Busi returns to the genre of the travel memoir, already exploited in Cazzi e canguri. Pochissimi i canguri (Cocks and Kangaroos. Very Few Kangaroos, 1994). In its seven chapters, E io, che ho le rose fiorite anche d’inverno? tells the story of the author’s travels to Paris, Moscow, Argentina, and New Zealand. In the end, he finds himself alone, but not altogether unhappy with his life.

Biography Born in Montichiari (Brescia), on 25 February 1948, the son to a family of farmers. Left his hometown in 1962 to work and study around Europe; excluded from military service because of his 333

ALDO BUSI homosexuality, 1968; traveled and lived in France, England, Germany and Spain, 1969–1974; completed high school in Florence, 1976; graduated from the University of Verona with a thesis on the American poet John Ashbery, 1981; tried for obscenity and acquitted, after the publication of Sodomie in corpo 11, 1990; edits the series ‘‘I classici classici’’ for publisher Frassinelli, 1995. Works as a freelance journalist, translator, and consultant for various publishers and media. Lives in Brescia. STEFANO ADAMI

Baldassare Castiglione, Il Cortigiano, with Carmen Covito, 1993. Friedrich Schiller, Intrigo e amore, 1994.

Other Sentire le donne, 1991. Manuale del perfetto Gentilomo, 1992. Manuale della perfetta Gentildonna, 1994. Nudo di madre: manuale del perfetto scrittore, 1997. Per un’Apocalisse piu` svelta, 1999. Manuale della perfetta Mamma: con qualche contrazione anche per il Papa`, 2000. Manuale del perfetto papa`: beati gli orfani!, 2001. Manuale del perfetto single: e della piu`ccheperfetta fetta per fetta, 2002. Incipit, 2004.

Selected Works Fiction Seminario sulla gioventu`, 1984; as Seminar on Youth, translated by Stuart Hood, 1988. Vita standard di un venditore provvisorio di collant, 1985; as The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, 1989. La delfina bizantina, 1986. Sodomie in corpo 11. Non viaggio, sesso e scrittura, 1988; as Sodomies in Elevenpoint, translated by Stuart Hood, 1992. Altri abusi: viaggi, sonnambulismo e giri dell’oca, 1989; as Uses and Abuses: Journeys, Sleepwalkings and Fool’s Errands, translated by Stuart Hood, 1995. Vendita galline km 2, 1993 Madre Asdrubala: all’asilo si sta bene e s’imparan tante cose, 1995. Grazie del pensiero, 1995. Casanova di se stessi, 2000. La signorina Gentilin dell’omonima cartoleria, 2002. Guancia di Tulipano, 2003.

Plays Paˆte´ d’homme: tragoedia peninsulare in tre atti, uno strappo, due estrazioni e taglio finale, 1989.

Poetry ‘‘L’amore trasparente (canzoniere),’’ 1997.

Travel Writing Cazzi e canguri. Pochissimi i canguri, 1994. Aloha!!!!!: gli uomini, le donne e le Hawaii, 1998. La camicia di Hanta: viaggio in Madagascar, 2003. E io, che ho le rose fiorite anche d’inverno?, 2004.

Translations John Ashbery, Autoritratto in uno specchio convesso, 1983. Giovanni Boccaccio and Aldo Busi, Decamerone da un italiano all’altro, 2 vols., 1990–1991. Lewis Carroll, Alice nel paese delle meraviglie, 1993.

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Further Reading Ammirati, Maria Pia, Il vizio di scrivere: letture su Busi, De Carlo, Del Giudice, Pazzi, Tabucchi e Tondelli, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1991. Bacigalupo, Massimo, ‘‘Aldo Busi: Writer, Jester and Moral Historian,’’ in The New Italian Novel, edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Lino Pertile, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993. Camarota, Francesca Romana, ‘‘Aldo Busi ovvero l’opposto nelle Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino,’’ in Piccole finzioni con importanza: Valori della narrativa italiana contemporanea, edited by Nathalie Roelens and Inge Lanslots, Ravenna: Longo, 1993. Capoferri, Federica, ‘‘Barocco e i suoi fratelli: Busi sceneggia Boccaccio tra cinema e letteratura,’’ in Quaderni dell’archivio Barocco, 7 (2001): 125–156. Ferme, Valerio C., ‘‘Aldo Busi’s Gay Detectives: The Otherness of Homosexual Discourse as a MysterySolving Tool,’’ in Pacific Coast Philology, 33.1 (1998): 58–68. Giusti, Eugenio, ‘‘Aldo Busi: Writer, Translator, Celebrity,’’ in World Literature Today, 71.2 (1997): 325–330. Jansen, Monica, ‘‘Verso il nuovo millennio: Rappresentazione dell’apocalisse nella narrativa italiana contemporanea (Benni, Busi, Vassalli),’’ in Narrativa, 20–21 (2001): 131–150. Neiger, Ada (editor), Il vampiro, don Giovanni e altri seduttori, Bari: Dedalo, 1998. Papotti, Davide, ‘‘Lo spazio violentato: Strategie di descrizione spaziale in Sodomie in Corpo 11 di Aldo Busi,’’ in Tropos, 22:1 (1996): 83–97. Pedulla`, Walter, La letteratura italiana contemporanea, Rome: Newton Compton, 1998. Raimondi, Ezio, Barocco moderno, Milan: Mondadori, 2003. Sommavilla, Giorgio, Peripezie dell’epica contemporanea, Milan: Jaca Book, 1983.

DINO BUZZATI

DINO BUZZATI (1906–1972) There is an Italian writer, recorded in his birth registry as Dino Buzzati Traverso, who has had a rather peculiar fate. On the one hand, he has been much read and widely known abroad; in Italy, on the other hand, proportionately much less so. Today this division has weakened, and we can speak of him as a classic author in Italy as well. Buzzati was an artist greatly fascinated by the obscure and occult side of things, so that he considered his masters to be writers like Edgar Allan Poe or Ernst Theodor Hoffmann, insofar as he found in them an explicit attention to mystery, the invisible, and the unknowable. His most famous novel is Il deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe, 1940), which is followed in importance by the collection Sessanta racconti (Sixty Tales), composed and published in periodicals between 1942, as Temporale sul fiume (A Storm on the River), and 1958, with the title Appuntamento con Einstein (An Appointment with Einstein). Buzzati began his career as a journalist with Il corriere della sera in 1928. He occupied himself with news, and hence with crime and gossip, but also with mountain climbing, a grand passion that would accompany him throughout his life, and with theater and music criticism. He remained a journalist until the end of his life, becoming one of the most authoritative and respected names in Italian journalism of the time. Some of his memorable work includes his legal reporting on the Fort murder case, his pieces as a war correspondent, the articles dedicated to mountains, among which is ‘‘Una grande notizia’’ (Big News), in which he comments on the Italian conquest of K2, and the epic pages as a correspondent on the Giro d’Italia, in which, reliving his youthful passion for cycling, he harkens back to the image of Achilles slaying Hector in order to describe the duel between the legendary cyclists Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali. But there is also Buzzati the painter and illustrator. Right from his adolescence, he was enamored of painting and drawing—he often represented, for example, images of mountains or of bicycles in the letters he wrote to his friend Brambilla. This passion expressed itself in a series of experiments of great figurative interest, albeit of scant technical value, often supported by ideas or rhetorical suggestions

of high impact. Drawings and other types of illustration emerged from this that are devoted to his first literary compositions, both in verse and in prose. In particular, Buzzati personally illustrated the fable La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia (The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily), which was designed in 1945 and immediately afterwards adorned with captions as well. Buzzati also wrote texts for the theater, even though they are of minor literary value. The most important of these is Un caso clinico (A Clinical Case), adapted for the stage by Giorgio Strehler and performed for the first time in 1953 at the Piccolo Teatro in Milano. The work reached the stage in Paris in 1955, and thanks to the role played by Albert Camus in the French translation and reworking of the script, was a success. The success of this theatrical show allowed the French translation of Il deserto dei Tartari to enjoy a noteworthy circulation, to the point that it even became a classic in French-speaking countries. Buzzati also composed the monologues Sola in casa (Home Alone, 1958) and L’orologio (The Clock, 1959), both written for the famous actress Paola Barboni, in which the technique of kammerspiele conjures a claustrophobic atmosphere with grotesque implications; as well as Piccola passeggiata (A Little Walk, 1942) and Drammatica fine di un noto musicista (The Dramatic End of a Famous Musician, 1955), in which we find the Nordic and neo-Gothic motif, taken from August Strindberg and Maurice Maeterlinck, of the arrival of death personified or announced by strange noises, and which is taken up as well in Il mantello (The Cloak, 1960), an adaptation of the story of the same name in the collection I sette messaggeri (The Seven Messengers, 1942), a story imbued with a strong antimilitarist polemic. In particular, for its unusual experimental openness, we must single out La fine del borghese (The End of the Bourgeoisie, 1968), with a dramaturgical syntax articulated by nursery rhymes, in which the parody of family and of perbenismo (good behavior) is mixed with the apocalyptic denunciation of Marxist ideologies and the specter of social revolution. Buzzati also wrote several librettos for operas. Among these, for the music of Luciano Chailly, is Ferrovia sopraelevata (The Elevated 335

DINO BUZZATI Rail, 1955), which tells the story of the devil Max who, having fallen in love with his prey, sacrifices himself in order to save her. The text foreshadows many themes that will be treated in Poema a fumetti (A Poem in Comics, 1969), one of whose frames actually represents the devil’s train emerging from the clouds. Among Buzzati’s novels, in addition to Il deserto dei Tartari, of note before all else are his first two efforts as a young man, Ba`rnabo delle montagne (Ba`rnabo of the Mountains, 1933) and Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio (The Secret of the Old Forest, 1935), both markedly different from the stories, which often draw their origins from journalistic ideas, insofar as they are set in a simple, natural world. Ba`rnabo delle montagne is the story of a forest guard who is fired for having fled during a firefight with some brigands. Readmitted into the service many years later, in the same mountains, he finds himself once again face to face with the same brigands, and he might easily take revenge by killing them, but he ‘‘pensa a quante inutili pene gli hanno riempito la vita’’ (thinks about how many useless troubles have filled his life) and lets them go. With this novel, which is of notable importance in his development as a writer, Buzzati expressly proposed writing something dedicated to the mountains—dedicated not in a superficial, but rather in a slightly unusual manner. It is enough to consider that, speaking of its genesis in a letter to Brambilla, he writes: ‘‘Io sto cercando una storia in cui la montagna si riveli da sola, semplicemente’’ (I am attempting a story in which the mountains are revealed in themselves, simply). Such a perspective is decidedly peculiar because normally we do not think of the mountain as an object of liberation. Buzzati’s debut novel was awarded a prize by, among others, Il popolo di Lombardia, which had already published some of his stories (including satires) and vignettes. Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio is structured like a fable. Within a fantastical setting consisting once again of forests and mountains, its protagonists, along with humans, are various beings, such as the genii of the forest and the powers of nature. It is the story of a bitter and surly old man, the colonel Sebastiano Procolo, who freezes to death in the forest while he searches for his nephew Benvenuto, whom he fears has been overwhelmed by an avalanche. The book closes with the unforgettable page devoted to the extreme ascent by the wind Matteo, who, having recounted to Benvenuto his uncle’s noble end, dissolves into the high mountain peaks. 336

During the 1960s, Buzzati’s life underwent some noteworthy changes determined by his encounters with two women: Silvana Costa, whom he met in St. Moritz, and Almerina Antoniazzi, whom he met in Milan during a photographic assignment and married six years later. The theme of the woman, presented above all as a negative being, particularly in the novels Il grande ritratto (Larger than Life, 1960) and Un amore (A Love Affair, 1963) thereafter becomes very important in his works. This can be considered a limitation of Buzzati’s poetic world—having represented the female world only under certain aspects. The woman also returns in the minor stories, and is for the most part an ambiguous figure. In Il grande ritratto, which tells the story of a scientist in the grips of a mysterious machine (an enormous electronic brain in which Laura, the woman he loved, is reincarnated), the role given to science fiction is emphatic. It is immediately defined as the first novel of Italian science fiction that is not mere entertainment. Un amore, on the other hand, is the story of the architect Antonio Dorigo, who is overcome by a morbid and desperate love for a Milanese prostitute, Laide, ‘‘creatura verde, spavalda, impertinente, autentica’’ (a young, arrogant, impertinent, authentic creature). It is a fascinating novel, not only for the themes already noted, but also for two other important elements: its language, full of fractures and symbolic expressions, and the utterly crucial role assumed in it by the city of Milan. And in this case the style seems intended, in its way, to brush up against the flux of consciousness, to represent the emotional and depressive disorientation of the protagonist, the victim of the senses and of the anxiety of possession. In these same years, Buzzati devoted much time to painting, and as an art critic. In this role, new fundamental ideas entered into his maturation as an artist, as he frequented, among others, the studios of artists of the ‘‘pop art’’ movement in New York. They, together with the surrealists and the metaphysicists, had a discernible influence on Buzzati’s art. Important examples from this period are the ex voto collected in I miracoli della Val Morel (1970). Buzzati has also written numerous stories, which, along with the novels, are, taken as a whole, the most important part of his oeuvre. His first collection, I sette messaggeri, contains stories published in Il popolo di Lombardia (a weekly newspaper of the fascist federation of Milan) and in La lettura (an illustrated monthly magazine with Il corriere della sera). These stories succeed in

DINO BUZZATI expressing, in an extraordinary way, many things about life, man, and his destiny; they succeed in condensing emblematic incidents, and moral and emotional tensions, into a few pages, through an undisputable talent of narrative montage. His second collection, Paura alla Scala (Fear at La Scala, 1949), contains perhaps Buzzati’s finest story of the same title, and one of the most complex, since it plumbs not only the human aspect but also the sociopolitical one at a particular historical moment for Italy: We are on the eve of the political elections of 1948. And it is in the foyer of the celebrated theater, the gathering place of the Milanese bourgeoisie, that the fear spreads of some kind of revolution underway in the city. Like the first two collections, Il crollo della Baliverna (The Fall of the Baliverna, 1957) also contains 18 stories, all characterized by the sense of catastrophe, of the unexpectedness of things, through which we may find ourselves at the collapse of a house or in another terrifying situation without having any apparent responsibility and without understanding anything. In this case as well, the most important story is the one that gives its name to the entire collection. La Baliverna is a ‘‘squallido e torvo’’ casermone (squalid and forbidding housing project) that crumbles in a domino-like effect when a rusted iron pole, which the protagonist off-handedly grabs and begins to climb, collapses. Esperimento di magia (A Magic Experiment, 1958) groups together stories of a previous age. Part of this fourth collection is ‘‘Ehi, ce l’hai tu un cavallino’’ (Hey, you got a horse?), a unique story for its originality and inventiveness. The protagonist, a young boy, badly wants a little horse. At a certain point he finds one, like a kind of gift, and he does not know from whom it could have come. This sense of seemingly implausible gratuity leaves everyone astonished. I sessanta racconti also collects texts published previously. The most interesting thing is that Buzzati is able to express his best work within the form of the short story. The first 36 stories come from the first three collections. In the second block, we have less important stories that are characterized by a decidedly repetitive common thread: the negative woman, who betrays and deceives, or, only through a discourse of speculative projection, the man who does the same to her. The privileged theme remains fear and the impending, indeterminate threat. The fear is private before all else, as in ‘‘La notte’’ (The Night), which presents a handbook-like summary of noises and shadows, but it is also a collective fear, as in ‘‘Qualcosa era

successo’’ (Something Happened), a story in which the passengers on a train appear inexorably drawn toward the place of a mysterious catastrophe. And it is, finally, a class fear, as in the case of ‘‘Paura alla Scala.’’ But it is not the short stories that characterize the second part of Buzzati’s life and artistic production. His most interesting work is in fact Poema a fumetti, in which both his experience as a writer and as an illustrator come together simultaneously, with a whole series of extremely suggestive crossreferences. The work re-creates the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in a modern key. And it places the entrance to Hades in the imaginary via Saterna, between the famous via Solferino (the locale of the newspaper, Il corriere della sera), and Corso Garibaldi, in the very center of a nocturnal Milan where witches fly around the Velasca tower. The city of Milan is also the protagonist of another important part of Buzzati’s activity during this period: verse poetry. The most interesting aspect is surely that of the double binary he attempts in this period: a binary in which decidedly satirical moments and references to the news are mixed together. Apart from the short poem entitled ‘‘Tre colpi alla porta’’ (Three Knocks at the Door), which is connected with the satirical journal Il caffe´, the thematic and ideal center of this new nucleus of poetic inspiration is for the writer the city of Milan, of which he furnishes a particularly lively, personal, and new image: the Milan of the glass mountains, of numerous license plates and of billboards, where already the wheel of Theobroma with its chocolate smell evokes nostalgia and memory.

Biography Born in Belluno on 16 October 1906, the second son of four, among whom is also the nuclear physicist Adriano, born in 1913. Having obtained a high-school diploma in classics, he enrolls in 1924 at the Facolta` di legge, where he graduates in 1928 with a thesis on canonical law. He is hired as a trainee reporter with Il corriere della sera on July 10 of the same year, and, promoted to editor in 1929, remains there until his death. In 1941 he participates as a war correspondent in the battle of Capo Matapan. In 1951, he wins the Napoli prize for his collection Il crollo della Baliverna, and in 1958 he wins the Strega prize for his collection Sessanta racconti. In 1966, he marries Almerina Antoniazzi. In 1967, he takes on the post of art critic at Il corriere della sera. In 1970, he paints I miracoli della Val Morel. He dies in Milan on 337

DINO BUZZATI January 28, 1972, of pancreatic cancer, like his father. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. NELLA GIANNETTO Selected Works Collections Teatro, edited by Guido Davico Bonino, Milan: Mondadori, 1980. Romanzi e racconti, edited by Giuliano Gramigna, Milan: Mondadori, 1982. Opere scelte, edited by Giulio Carnazzi, Milan: Mondadori, 1998.

Novels Ba`rnabo delle montagne, 1933. Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio, 1935. Il deserto dei Tartari, 1940; as The Tartar Steppe, translated by Stuart C. Hood, 1952. Il grande ritratto, 1960; as Larger than Life, translated by Henry Reed, 1962. Un amore, 1963; as A Love Affair, translated by Joseph Green, 1965.

Short Stories ‘‘I sette messaggeri,’’ 1942. ‘‘Paura alla Scala,’’ 1949. ‘‘In quel preciso momento,’’ 1950. ‘‘Il crollo della Baliverna,’’ 1957. ‘‘Esperimento di magia,’’ 1958. ‘‘Sessanta racconti,’’ 1958. ‘‘Il colombre,’’ 1966. ‘‘Le notti difficili,’’ 1971; as Restless Nights, translated by Lawrence Venuti, 1983.

Plays and Librettos Piccola passeggiata, 1942. Un caso clinico, 1953. Drammatica fine di un noto musicista, 1955. Ferrovia soprelevata, 1955. Sola in casa, 1958. L’orologio, 1959. Procedura penale, 1959. Il mantello, 1960. Fantasmi al Grand-Hotel, 1960. Battono alla porta, 1963. Era proibito, 1963. La fine del borghese, 1968.

Poetry

Le montagne di vetro, 1989. Il buttafuoco: Cronache della guerra sul mare, 1992. La nera di Buzzati, 2002.

Further Reading Arslan Veronese, Antonia, Invito alla lettura di Buzzati, Milan: Mursia, 1974; rpt. 1988. Asquer, Renata, La grande torre: Vita e morte di Dino Buzzati, Lecce: Manni, 2002. Baumann, Barbara, Dino Buzzati: Untersuchungen zur Tematik in seinem Erza¨hlwerk, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1980. Cavallini, Giorgio, Buzzati: Il limite dell’ombra, Rome: Studium, 1997. Chailly, Luciano, Buzzati in musica: L’opera italiana nel dopoguerra, Turin: Eda, 1987. Crotti, Ilaria, Buzzati, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Gianfranceschi, Fausto, Dino Buzzati, Turin: Borla, 1967. Giannetto, Nella, ‘‘Buzzati a teatro: Rassegna,’’ in Quaderni veneti, 14 (1991): 117–146. Giannetto, Nella (editor), Il pianeta Buzzati, Milan: Mondadori, 1992. Giannetto, Nella (editor), Dino Buzzati: La lingua, le lingue, Milan: Mondadori, 1994. Giannetto, Nella, Il sudario delle caligini: Significati e fortune dell’opera buzzatiana, Florence: Olschki, 1996. Giannetto, Nella, Buzzati giornalista, Milan: Mondadori, 2000. Lagana` Gion, Antonella, Dino Buzzati: Un autore da rileggere, Venice: Corbo and Fiore, 1983. Panafieu, Yves, Les miroirs e´clate´s, Paris: Y.P. E´ditions, 1988. Panafieu, Yves, Le myste`re Buzzati, Liancourt-Saint-Pierre: Y.P. E´ditions, 1995. Stempel, Ute, Realita¨t des Phantastischen: Untersuchungen zu den Erza¨hlungen Dino Buzzatis, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1977.

IL DESERTO DEI TARTARI, 1940 Novel by Dino Buzzati

‘‘Il capitano Pic e altre poesie,’’ 1965. ‘‘Due poemetti,’’ 1967. ‘‘Poema a fumetti,’’ 1969.

Other La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia, 1945; as The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, translated by Frances Lobb, 1947. Egregio signore, siamo spiacenti di..., 1960. Buzzati al giro d’Italia, 1969. Cronache terrestri, 1972. Lettere a Brambilla, edited by I. Simonelli, 1985.

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Il deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe) was written by Dino Buzzati before the outbreak of World War II, between 1938 and 1939. It is therefore incorrect to consider this novel as a war narrative. The story is inspired by life, in all of its absurdities and contradictions: the protagonist, Giovanni Drogo, is a border soldier who lives in a fortress at

DINO BUZZATI the edges of a strange, surreal kingdom. The Tartar steppe is one of the countries bordering this kingdom, and certainly the most significant, on the symbolic level as well. Of the other bordering countries, we have the impression that the author prefers to identify them for us with the minimum number of characteristics, in such a way as to accentuate the mystery that looms within. Drogo, arriving at the Bastiani Fortress for his first assignment, spends his life waiting for the enemy. When at last ‘‘l’armata del Nord’’ (the army of the North) approaches, Drogo, old and sick, is forced to flee. He goes to close out his life in the dark room of an inn. The plot, terse and peculiar, takes place within an equally suggestive setting, which is dominated by the yellowed color of the fortress’s walls, the ever-swirling dust in the desert, called ‘‘Il sudario delle caligini’’ (the shroud of mist), which is a favorite phrase of Buzzati’s, and the strange sounds that are always the same, which repeat themselves to the point of exasperation, like the cloc cloc of the boiler, which strikes Drogo the first night of his arrival at the fortress. Buzzati was interviewed many times about the genesis of this novel. Among the most famous interviews, the oldest was published on May 26, 1959, in Milan’s Il giorno, and conducted by Guido De Monticelli, a literary critic and dramatist: ‘‘in the monotonous routine of composing at night...very often I had the impression that this would go on forever, that it would thus uselessly consume my life. It’s a common feeling, I think, for the majority of men, especially if they are pigeonholed in an existence within the timetable of the city. The transposition of this idea into a fantastic military world was, for me, instinctive: Nothing better than a fortress at the extreme frontier, it seemed to me, could be found to express precisely this strain of waiting.’’ Buzzati extends this argument to all of existence, which is understood by him as the stressful, albeit motivating, expectation of something that does not come, in this respect connecting himself explicitly to a certain twentieth-century tradition of absurdism and nihilism, ranging from Franz Kafka to Samuel Beckett. What tie is there between the novel’s protagonist, Drogo (and his alter-ego, the author himself ),

and life? What ties Drogo (and the author himself) to life is precisely his way of looking at it. Both of the story’s protagonists, the one in the literal sense of the word (the Drogo who goes in search of his fortune in a remote fortress in the mountains), the other in a more symbolic sense (Buzzati, who sets up his post at Il corriere della sera), both spending their lives in pursuit of an important goal without being able to reach it. At this point, the choice that the writer makes for Drogo is to confront death in a dignified manner. What becomes important in the novel’s epilogue is not life, but rather death and the way in which it is accepted and confronted by Drogo in definitively stoic terms: ‘‘poi nel buio, benche´ nessuno lo veda, sorride’’ (then in the dark, although no one sees it, he smiles). NELLA GIANNETTO Editions First edition: Il deserto dei Tartari, Milan-Rome: Rizzoli, 1940. Critical edition: in Opere scelte, edited by Giulio Carnazzi, Milan: Mondadori, 1998. Translations: The Tartar Steppe, translated by Stuart C. Hood, New York: Avon Books, 1952; rpt. 1985; rpt. 2000.

Further Reading Biaggi, Pietro, Buzzati: I luoghi del mistero, Padua: Messaggero, 2001. Biondi, Alvaro, ‘‘Metafora e sogno: La narrativa di Buzzati tra ‘Italia magica’ e ‘Surrealismo italiano,’’’ in Il pianeta Buzzati, edited by Nella Giannetto, Milan: Mondadori, 1992. Carlino, Marcello, Come leggere ‘‘Il deserto dei Tartari’’ di Buzzati, Milan: Mursia, 1976. De Monticelli, Roberto, ‘‘L’uomo libero Buzzati cerca un uniforme per vincere la paura,’’ in Il giorno (Milan), 26 May 1959. Giannetto, Nella, Il coraggio della fantasia: Studi e ricerche intorno a Dino Buzzati, Milan: Arcipelago, 1989. Giannetto, Nella, Il sudario delle caligini: Significati e fortune dell’opera buzzatiana, Florence: Olschki, 1996. Ioli, Giovanna, Dino Buzzati, Milan: Mursia, 1988. Livi, Franc¸ois, Le De´sert des Tartares de Dino Buzzati: Analyse critique, Paris: Hatier, 1973. Panafieu, Ives, Dino Buzzati: Un autoritratto, Milano: Mondadori, 1973.

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C GIACOMO CA’ ZORZI See Giacomo Noventa

ROBERTO CALASSO (1941–) Since the beginning of the 1980s, Calasso has been engaged in a complex project of investigation of myths and knowledge, which incorporates philosophy, literary criticism, and anthropology. He has so far published four volumes. The first, La rovina di Kasch (The Ruin of Kasch, 1983), is a book constructed of fragments and digressions, anecdotes and aphorisms, in a sort of search of what Italo Calvino called the ‘‘fonti avvelenate del ‘moderno’’’ (poisoned sources of the ‘modern’) in his ‘‘La rovina di Kasch e quel che resta’’ (1995). At the center of the narration is the historical figure of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, the prototype of the turncoat and the supporter of the concept of the legitimacy of power but also a marginalized figure in the salons of the period after the Congress of the Vienna. Calasso also articulated a theory of sacrifice as ‘‘cerchio vibrante dell’ordine antico’’ (vibrating circle of ancient order), to which the title alludes, inspired by an African legend that was narrated by Frobenius. Other topics include douceur (sweetness),

‘‘Clever fellow, that Calasso,’’ Theodor W. Adorno is reported to have said. ‘‘He’s read everything I’ve written and even some things I haven’t had the time to write yet’’ (Andrea Lee, ‘‘The Prince of Books,’’ 1993). Adorno’s comment finds an echo in the experience of many readers of Roberto Calasso’s works: Indeed, he seems to have read all the books, both present and future. His very first work, L’impuro folle (The Impure Madman, 1974), already conveys this impression. It is, ideally, the sequel of Denkwu¨rdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken (1903), by Daniel Paul Schreber, the president of the Royal Superior County Court of Dresden who was detained in an asylum between 1893 and 1902, from whom Sigmund Freud derived his theory of paranoia. Here Calasso described the slow collapse of the dogma of the immateriality of the soul, the rediscovery of the nervous system as the prison of the psyche, medical research on the material conditions of brain activity, and the dependence of spirit and ethics on the body. 341

ROBERTO CALASSO taste as a ‘‘sigillo dell’esistenza’’ (seal of existence) that replaces esoteric knowledge, and repetition as an instance that can warn about the ‘‘debolezza e precarieta` del gesto fondatore di ogni cultura’’ (weakness and precariousness of the foundation act of every culture). At the same time, the figure of the ‘‘grande tappeto’’ (great carpet) or of the ‘‘smisurato tappeto senza margini’’ (immeasurable carpet without edges) returns constantly as a symbol of continuity and of the correspondence between sky and earth, space and time, myth and destiny. The second volume, the encyclopedic Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, 1988), was a best seller in Italy and has enjoyed a great international success in translation in many languages. The book is a vision of ancient Greece through some of its cultural mythologies, in a complex plot whose climax is finally reached ‘‘nel silenzio della mente’’ (in the silence of the mind) and with the introduction of the alphabet by Cadmus, as told in a passage by Nonnus of Panopolis’s Dionysiaca (fifth century AD). Calasso investigated the rules governing the parallelisms between myths and events that stem from the remote depths, thus giving back to myth, as to language, integrity even in a fragmented state and distinguishing it from ritual. He ultimately viewed myths from a modern perspective, as the source of human behavior and aesthetics. In his third book, Ka (1996), Calasso applied the procedure used in Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia to the literary tradition of archaic India, from the Veda (the sacred books of Aryan Indians from the first half of the second millennium BC) to Buddha (sixth century BC). The title Ka, which literally means ‘‘Who,’’ is the initial syllable of a hymn, ‘‘Essence of the Veda, estuary toward the hidden Ocean,’’ in which, starting with the question, a new interrogation is generated: the ‘‘secret name’’ of the original father god, whose sacrifice implies the loss of plenitude and the origin of finitude. Finally K. (2002) explores the work of Franz Kafka. It is neither an essay nor an interpretation but rather a quest for traces that may enlighten against the common places and the most overused critical readings of the writer. The starting point is precisely the letter of the alphabet through which Kafka narrates the world and thus completely renames it. Calasso’s essays on subjects ranging from Karl Kraus to Max Stirner to Coca-Cola are collected in the volume I quarantanove gradini (The Forty-Nine Steps, 1991), a title is derived from the Talmudic doctrine of the degrees of meaning of every passage of Torah, with which Walter Benjamin introduced 342

his experience of allegorical exegesis. In 2000, Calasso was visiting professor at Oxford, where he held the Weidenfeld Lectures, later collected in the volume La letteratura e gli de`i (Literature and the Gods, 2001). STEFANO TOMASSINI

Biography Roberto Calasso was born in Florence on 30 May 1941. He studied in Rome under Mario Praz and wrote a dissertation on I geroglifici di Sir Thomas Browne. In 1962, Calasso joined the small intellectual group directed by Roberto Bazlen and Luciano Foa` and worked on the program for a new publishing house, Adelphi, founded in 1963. He became its publishing director, 1969, then managing director and president, until 1999. He was awarded the Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre E´tranger, 1991. He was appointed Literary Lion in New York, 1993, and appointed Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2000. He is married to the writer Fleur Jaeggy and lives in Milan. Selected Works Narrative Works L’impuro folle, 1974. La rovina di Kasch, 1983; as The Ruin of Kasch, translated by William Weaver and Stephen Sartarelli, 1994. Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia, 1988; as The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, translated by Tim Parks, 1993. Ka, 1996; as Ka, translated by Tim Parks, 1998. K., 2002; as K., translated by Geoffrey Brock, 2005.

Essays I quarantanove gradini, 1991; as The Forty-Nine Steps, translated by John Shepley, 2001. La letteratura e gli de`i, 2001, as Literature and the Gods, translated by Tim Parks, 2001. Cento lettere a uno sconosciuto, 2003. La follia che viene dalle Ninfe, 2005.

Further Reading Calvino, Italo, ‘‘La rovina di Kasch e quel che resta,’’ in Saggi 1945–1985, Milan: Mondadori, 1995. Di Biase, Carmine, ‘‘Il mito, o la riconquista dell’armonia,’’ Esperienze letterarie, 14:3(1989), 115–117. Doniger, Wendy, ‘‘The Ancient Postmoderns,’’ The New Republic, 7 December 1998, 42–45. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘Scritture saggistiche,’’ in Storia della letteratura italiana. Il Novecento, Turin: Einaudi, 1991. Giuliani, Alfredo, ‘‘Franz Kafka: Nel mondo disadorno la normalita` e` terrorizzante,’’ La Repubblica, 1 November 2002, 38–39.

ITALO CALVINO Kirby, John T., ‘‘The Revestiture of Myth. Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,’’ in Secret of the Muses Retold, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Lee, Andrea, ‘‘The Prince of Books,’’ The New Yorker, 26 April 1993, 43–51. Manguel, Alberto, ‘‘Mnemonic waves,’’ TLS, 13 September 2002, 6–7. Nigro, Salvatore S., ‘‘Il mondo in un risvolto,’’ Il Sole 24 ore, 12 October 2003, 33.

Pieri, Marzio, ‘‘Casa Greci: La letteratura italiana moderna e la provocazione della grecita`,’’ in Nicola Villani, Trettanelo`: Poesie sopra Venetia, edited by Marzio Pieri, Parma: Zara, 1989. Shorrock, Roberto, ‘‘The Artful Mythographer: Roberto Calasso and The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,’’ Arion, 11:2(2003), 83–99. Simic, Charles, ‘‘Paradise Lost,’’ The New York Review of Books, 48:14(2001), 62–64.

ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) At the time of his death in 1985, Italo Calvino was widely acclaimed as Italy’s most prominent contemporary writer. Calvino began his literary career in the period immediately following World War II with a novel considered both neo-Realist and fantastic. He ended his career internationally acknowledged as Italy’s most original postmodernist. Never an easy author to label, Italo Calvino explored the nature, limits, and role of literature in both his fiction and his essays. The author’s fictional creations, ranging from the baron in the trees, to Le cosmicomiche’s Qfwfq, to the nearsighted Mr. Palomar, engage in a never-ending search for a map of the universe, a compass by which to navigate in a labyrinthine world. Calvino’s first novel, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest of Spiders, 1947), tells the story of a band of Resistance fighters from the perspective of a young boy, Pin. Critics have debated where this novel fits in the context of the neoRealist movement, which focused on telling the story of the Resistance and the immediate postwar period in Italy. While Calvino’s novel is a testimonial to the partisan experience, it differs from other neo-Realist novels in that it is narrated from an ideologically neutral perspective, that of the young Pin. Furthermore, it exhibits a ‘‘fantastic’’ quality that would characterize much of the author’s later fiction. That quality was first noted by the novelist Cesare Pavese, one of early Calvino’s mentors. Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno was followed by Ultimo viene il corvo (Adam on Afternoon, and Other Stories, 1949), another look at the Resistance period but from a darker, less triumphant perspective. Calvino then began work on two projects that

would be faithful to the tenets of neo-Realism by focusing on the present day from an ‘‘objective’’ perspective: Il bianco veliero and I giovani del Po. As a diversion from the project, which stalled for several years, Calvino wrote, in the space of only three months, the first novel in the trilogy, Il visconte dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount, 1952). Apparently worlds apart from the neo-Realist concern with documenting the immediate social and political reality, the fantastic novels of I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors, 1960) tell the stories of a viscount cloven in half in a battle between Christians and Turks, an eccentric Italian nobleman who lives in the trees and a nonexistent knight in Charlemagne’s army. These otherworldly tales may be read as allegories, as the author himself has suggested. The nonexistent knight whose only identity is an empty suit of armor, the symbol of the chivalric code that dominates his every action, serves as an allegory of modern ‘‘organization man.’’ Cosimo’s ‘‘aloofness’’ dramatizes the need for evasion and escape from the heaviness of the world, or, conversely, symbolizes the intellectual’s need to establish a critical distance in order to intervene in the world’s affairs. The cloven viscount stands for the divided self, the mutilation of modern man. As J. R. Woodhouse has suggested, however, ‘‘It would be pedantic and dull to interpret the three stories simply as moral allegories’’ (Italo Calvino, 1968). The trilogy is a fantastic romp through the fictional woods of Calvino’s imaginary universe. The second novel in the trilogy, Il barone rampante (The Baron in the Trees, 1956), chronicles the development of the main character from his youthful determination to defy his father and live out his life 343

ITALO CALVINO in the trees to his mastery of his new environment and overcoming of such obstacles as forest fires and invading Turkish pirates, from the youthful pangs of first love to maturity to the wisdom and indignities of old age. Cosimo’s story contains in nuce many of the motifs of Calvino’s fiction. The importance of nature and modern man’s loss of contact with the natural world, the need for political solidarity, and the potential for disillusionment in the political arena, the utopian craving that can never be satisfied, the role of literature and its didactic function are recurring themes in the author’s work. In Marcovaldo, ovvero le stagioni in citta` (Marcovaldo, or the Seasons in the City, 1963), Calvino returns to the reality of postwar Italy from the ‘‘otherworldliness’’ of the fantastic trilogy. Marcovaldo is a collection of stories set in an unnamed, industrialized city. The protagonist, an alienated worker struggling to feed his family on his meager salary, wants nothing more than to participate in the prosperity surrounding him. In ‘‘Marcovaldo al supermarket,’’ he takes his family to window shop in a supermarket filled with brightly packaged merchandise. Dazzled by these riches, his family and the paterfamilias himself cannot follow Marcovaldo’s advice, ‘‘Look but don’t touch.’’ In the surreal, deus ex machina ending, Marcovaldo, his wife, and their children each escape with brimming shopping carts through a hole in the supermarket wall only to be confronted by a monstrous crane that devours the family’s stolen booty. The conclusion underscores the painful reality that Marcovaldo will never participate in the prosperity surrounding him. In each of the stories in the volume, this Chaplinesque character doggedly perseveres in his attempts to offer his family a better life, only to be defeated by the modern industrial city. Marcovaldo, ovvero le stagioni in citta` reflects the growing uneasiness, the dark underbelly of the ‘‘miracolo economico,’’ the economic miracle that brought prosperity to some of Italy after World War II. Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics, 1965) and ti con zero (T zero, 1967) are loosely related stories featuring a chameleonic protagonist, Qfwfq. Qfwfq narrates his adventures from the time of the Big Bang to the present day as he changes form. Qfwfq’s metamorphoses, from a dinosaur, to a mollusk, to an amphibian, to a human, cannot be contained within the confines of a traditional narrative persona. The only thing that Qfwfq’s various incarnations have in common is their exercise of language in the function of storytelling. One section of ti con zero, ‘‘Il conte di Montecristo’’ (The 344

Count of Monte Cristo) features Edmond Dante`s and Faria imprisoned in the Castle of If in a fanciful rewriting of the Dumas story. Although Dante`s and Faria do not escape at the end of Calvino’s fiction, the story dramatizes the potential of the literature of the labyrinth to serve as a challenge to the complexity of the world. Le citta` invisibili (Invisible Cities, 1972) is Calvino’s rewriting of Il Milione, Marco Polo’s account of his travels to the East. The novel is composed of a dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, interspersed with Marco Polo’s description of the cities in Kublai Khan’s vast empire. The emperor is at Polo’s mercy for any knowledge he has of his boundless realm. The Khan experiences a sense of relief when he begins to perceive order in his chaotic realm. He is convinced that he can arrive at a generative model from which to deduce all the possible cities in his empire. That model is symbolized by the chess board. The emperor decides he need no longer send Marco Polo on expeditions throughout his realm. Instead, he engages Polo in interminable games of chess in which he generates various combinations that would correspond to the cities in his empire. But the Khan’s is a pyrrhic victory. By reducing his world to an abstract model, a system of pure differences, he has lost its richness and variety. Through his persistent storytelling Polo undermines the Khan’s attempt to reduce his empire to an abstract, relational model. Marco Polo cannot describe a city without entering into its specificity by telling a story. Storytelling transforms the reductive model and acknowledges the inexhaustible richness of the world. Calvino’s fascination with literature as a combinatory game inspired one of his most intriguing texts: Il castello dei destini incrociati (The Castle of Crossed Destinies, 1973). The novel is divided in two parts. The first, ‘‘Il Castello dei destini incrociati,’’ tells the story of wayfarers who lose the power of speech in an enchanted forest. They take shelter in an inn where they use tarot cards to exchange the stories of their adventures. The narrative unfolds as each player lays down a sequence of cards, reproduced in the margins of the text. The written text poses as just one of many possible interpretations of the tarot cards. When the cards are read in reverse, they produce entirely new stories. Ariosto’s tale of Astolfo on the moon, for example, when read in reverse becomes the story of Helen of Troy. In both ‘‘Il castello dei destini incrociati’’ and ‘‘La taverna dei destini incrociati,’’ Calvino uses the tarot cards to represent the minimal units or fictional universals of which all stories

ITALO CALVINO are composed. Calvino’s perception of narrative as a combinatory game in which a limited number of prefabricated elements is combined and recombined is outlined in his essay ‘‘Cibernetica e fantasmi’’ (‘‘Cybernetics and Ghosts’’). Calvino’s essay was inspired by his reading of Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1968) and of the structuralist critics, including Roland Barthes, A. J. Greimas, and Tzvetan Todorov. ‘‘Cibernetica e fantasmi’’ serves as a companion piece to the combinatory game masterfully played by Calvino in Il castello dei destini incrociati. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this experimental text is the way in which it underscores the importance of the reader in the creation of fiction. Although the stories of ‘‘The Castle’’ and ‘‘The Tavern’’ are composed of a finite number of elements, the combinatory potential of the narrative system is portrayed as infinite. As Calvino’s text unfolds, the reader sees that the same card may be read in a variety of ways. This underscores the idea, articulated in several of Calvino’s essays, that it is ultimately the reader who invests the fictional text with meaning. Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, 1979) is a series of beginnings of novels, contained by a framing story that recounts a search for the ideal novel. The protagonist of the novel is the reader, ‘‘tu’’ (you). The search for the missing book leads the reader-protagonist to a writer-in-crisis and a charlatan, Ermes Marana, whose jealousy of the writer has inspired a diabolical plot to produce a literature of apocrypha, false attributions, and pastiches. This postmodern pastiche acknowledges what John Barth calls the ‘‘exhaustion’’ of literary forms and lays bare the Borgesian notion that the writer, a mere a translator or annotator, can only rewrite. Palomar (Mr. Palomar, 1983) is an ambitious and highly original work of fiction. Calvino’s protagonist is in search of nothing less than ‘‘la chiave per padroneggiare il mondo’’ (the key to master the universe). Palomar attempts to master the phenomenal world—a wave, a lizard, a flock of birds—through observation. As the author explained in a 1983 lecture in New York, he adopted a phenomenological approach to ‘‘il mare dell’oggettivita`’’ (sea of objectivity) surrounding him: ‘‘An important international trend in the culture of our century, what we might call the phenomenological approach in philosophy, the estrangement effect in literature, urges us to break through the screen of words and concepts and see the world as if it appeared for the first time to our sight’’ (‘‘The Written and Unwritten Word,’’ The

New York Review of Books, 12 May 1983). The phenomenological approach translates in the novel into the narrative technique known as estrangement or defamiliarization. As Palomar observes the awkward lovemaking of two turtles, an otherwise familiar scene is ‘‘defamiliarized’’ by the comical addition of the turtles’ cumbersome shells. He attempts to give order to the multiformity of the world through the catalog. In ‘‘Un chilo e mezzo di grasso d’oca,’’ the catalog poses as the key to mastering the external world. The enumeration of delicacies in a Parisian shop seems to capture the richness and heterogeneity of the world. However, the catalog ultimately fails as a means to shape an intelligible reality. As the various delicacies are swallowed up in shopping bags coated with mayonnaise, the multiplicity of forms that the catalog strives to capture disintegrates into a formless, amorphous mass. In each story of Palomar the hapless, nearsighted, ineffectual protagonist exercises his powers of observation with dogged determination. Each time the protagonist’s good intentions give way to a sense of bemused perplexity. Palomar provides no easy answers or reassuring consolation to the reader. It does embody, however, Calvino’s conviction that literature should represent not a surrender but rather a challenge to the labyrinthine complexity of the world. Calvino’s early works, while often sparking controversy, were widely discussed and generally acclaimed. His genius was immediately recognized by his mentors, the novelists Elio Vittorini and Cesare Pavese. Although never formally a member of the Gruppo 63, Calvino was loosely affiliated with many of the writers of that Italian experimentalist movement. His move to Paris and the increasing degree of experimentalism in his fiction baffled many Italian critics, as Renato Barilli has pointed out: ‘‘Gone was a solely Italian Calvino, son of the Resistance, heir apparent to Cesare Pavese’’ (‘‘My ‘Long Infidelity’ Towards Calvino,’’ 1989). Gradually, the ‘‘new’’ Calvino came to be accepted, admired, and virtually revered in Italy and throughout Europe. No other twentieth-century Italian writer is more widely recognized and read in North America than Italo Calvino. As Rebecca West shows, Calvino was ‘‘discovered’’ and popularized in the United States by several American writers, Gore Vidal, John Barth, and John Updike (‘‘L’identita` americana di Calvino,’’ 1987). Gore Vidal’s ‘‘Fabulous Calvino’’ published in New York Review of Books (30 May 1974) introduced Italo Calvino to the American public. Articles by John Barth and John Updike followed. Barth’s 345

ITALO CALVINO ‘‘The Literature of Replenishment’’ (1980) gave the English-speaking world a ‘‘label’’ to attach to Calvino’s work and a perspective from which to understand him. Barth cites Calvino’s Le cosmicomiche and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as examples of works that approach an ideal, postmodernist program. From the mid-1970s until his death in 1985, Calvino enjoyed tremendous popularity in North America. His 1956 collection, Fiabe italiane, was published in English translation (Italian Folktales) in 1980 to rave reviews. His subsequent works were immediately translated in English by William Weaver and favorably reviewed in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. The invitation to deliver the 1985 Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard, lectures never delivered due to his untimely death on the eve of his departure, was a further sign of Calvino’s international stature. Five of the six Norton lectures were published posthumously under the title Lezioni americane (Six Memos for the Next Millennium, 1988). This volume, like the author’s earlier volumes of essays, Una pietra sopra (The Uses of Literature, 1980) and Collezione di sabbia (Collection of Sand, 1984), provide the reader with a useful interpretive framework in which to read Calvino’s fiction.

Biography Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, La Habana, Cuba, 15 October 1923, where his parents worked as botanists. He moved to Italy in 1925. Calvino studied agriculture at the University of Florence for one year, 1943; then Literature at the University of Turin. He joined the Resistance movement in 1944 and fought with the Garibaldi brigade in the Alps. After the Liberation, Calvino worked in Turin for the publisher Einaudi. He married Esther Judith Singer, ‘‘Chichita,’’ in La Habana, 19 February 1944. Calvino was awarded the Premio Bagutta for I racconti in 1959 and the Premio Feltrinelli in 1972. His daughter Giovanna was born in Rome, 1965. He moved to Paris, 1967. Calvino was awarded the prestigious Legion d’Honneur in 1981. For Adam Pollock, who directs every summer in Tuscany the baroque opera festival Musica nel Chiostro, Calvino wrote a ‘‘frame’’ for Mozart’s unfinished opera Zaide, 1981. Calvino died of brain hemorrhage in Siena, 18 September 1985. JO ANN CANNON 346

Selected Works Collections Romanzi e racconti, vol. 1, Milan: Mondadori, 1991. Romanzi e racconti, vol. 2, Milan: Mondadori, 1992. Fiabe italiane, Preface by Mario Lavagetto, Milan: Mondadori, 1993. Romanzi e racconti, vol. 3, Milan Mondadori, 1994. Saggi, 2 vols., Milan: Mondadori, 1995.

Fiction Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, 1947; as The Path to the Nest of Spiders, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, 1976. Ultimo viene il corvo, 1949; as Adam One Afternoon and Other Stories, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, 1957. Il visconte dimezzato, 1952. L’entrata in guerra, 1954. Il barone rampante, 1957; as The Baron in the Trees, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, 1959. Il cavaliere inesistente, 1959; as The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, 1962. La giornata d’ uno scrutatore, 1963; as The Watcher and Other Stories, translated by William Weaver, 1971. Marcovaldo, ovvero le stagioni in citta`, 1963; as Marcovaldo or The Seasons in the City, translated by William Weaver, 1993. La formica argentina, 1965. Le cosmicomiche, 1965; as Cosmicomics, translated by William Weaver, 1968. Ti con zero, 1967; as T zero, translated by William Weaver, 1969; Also known as Time and the Hunter, translated by William Weaver, 1993. Gli amori difficili, 1970; as Difficult Loves. Smog, A Plunge into Real Estate, translated by William Weaver, 1985. Le citta` invisibili, 1972; as Invisible Cities, translated William Weaver, 1974. Il castello dei destini incrociati, 1973; as The Castle of Crossed Destinies, translated by William Weaver, 1977. Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore, 1979; as If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, translated by William Weaver, 1992. Palomar, 1983; as Mr. Palomar, translated by William Weaver, 1992. Sotto il sole giaguaro, 1986; as Under the Jaguar Sun, translated by William Weaver, 1993. La strada di San Giovanni, 1990; as The Road to San Giovanni, translated by Tim Parks, 1993.

Edited Works Fiabe Italiane, 1956; as Italian Folktales, translated by George Martin, 1980.

Nonfiction Una pietra sopra, discorsi di letteratura e societa`, 1980; as The Uses of Literature, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1986. Collezione di sabbia, 1984. Lezioni americane, 1988; as Six Memos for the Next Millennium, translated by Patrick Creagh, 1988.

Further Reading Asor Rosa, Alberto, Stile Calvino. Cinque studi, Turin: Einaudi, 2001.

ITALO CALVINO Barilli, Renato, ‘‘My ‘Long Infidelity’ Towards Calvino,’’ in Calvino Revisited, edited by Franco Ricci, Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989. Barth, John, ‘‘The Literature of Replenishment’’, The Atlantic (January 1980): 65–71. Belpoliti, Marco, L’occhio di Calvino, Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Belpoliti, Marco, Settanta, Turin: Einaudi, 2001. Benedetti, Carla, Pasolini contro Calvino, per una letteratura impura, Turin: Boringhieri, 1998. Bruner, Jerome, Actual Minds, Possibile Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Cannon, JoAnn, Postmodern Italian Fiction: The Crisis of Reason in Calvino, Eco, Sciascia, Malerba, Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989. Jeannet, Angela, Under the Radiant Sun and the Crescent Moon: Italo Calvino’s Storytelling, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Lavagetto, Mario, Dovuto a Calvino, Turin: Boringhieri, 2001. Lucente, Gregory, Beautiful Fables: Self-Consciousness in Italian Narrative from Manzoni to Calvino, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. McLaughlin, Martin, Italo Calvino, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Milanini, Claudio, L’utopia discontinua, saggio su Italo Calvino, Milan: Garzanti, 1990. Quaderni d’Italianistica, 5 (1984): issue devoted to Calvino. Re, Lucia, Calvino and the Age of Neorealism: Fables of Estrangement, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Ricci, Franco (editor), Calvino Revisited. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989. Rushdie, Salman, Imaginary Homelands, London: Granta, 1991. Scarpa, Domenico, Italo Calvino, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1999. Vidal, Gore, ‘‘Fabulous Calvino,’’ New York Review of Books, 30 May 1974, 13–21. West, Rebecca, ‘‘L’identita` americana di Calvino,’’ Nuova corrente, 34(1987): 363–374. Woodhouse, J. R., Italo Calvino: A Reappraisal and an Appreciation of the Trilogy, Hull: Hull University Press, 1968.

I NOSTRI ANTENATI, 1960 Novels by Italo Calvino

In his 1960s trilogy, I nostri antenati (Our Ancestors), Italo Calvino apparently left behind the problems that animated Italian neo-Realist fiction of the postwar period. The first novel, Il visconte

dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount, 1952) tells the story of a viscount, Medardo of Terralba, who is cloven in two halves in a battle between the Christian forces and the Turks. Medardo’s evil half returns to his homeland and wreaks destruction in his path. The good half returns to Terralba. Order is restored after the two halves fall in love with the same woman, fight a duel, and are miraculously sewn together by Dr. Trelawny. Il visconte dimezzato is not unequivocally an allegory of human wholeness or good and evil. Martin McLaughlin cites the conclusion to Il visconte dimezzato in support of this supposition. The whole Medardo at the end ‘‘does not inaugurate ‘an era of marvelous happiness; . . . obviously a whole Viscount is not enough to make all the world whole’’’ (Italo Calvino, 1998). In his preface to the trilogy Calvinosuggests that the figure of the cloven viscount is an allegory of contemporary man: ‘‘Dimidiato, mutilato, incompleto, nemico a se stesso e` l’uomo contemporaneo; Marx lo disse alienato, Freud represso; uno stato d’antica armonia e` perduto, a una nuova completezza si aspira’’ (Mutilated, incomplete, an enemy against himself, that’s contemporary man. Marx called him alienated, Freud repressed. We have lost an ancient harmony, and aspire to a new completeness). In Il barone rampante (The Baron in the Trees, 1956), the second book in Calvino’s fantastic trilogy, the protagonist is an eighteenth-century nobleman, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo`. As a 12-year-old, Cosimo defies his dictatorial father and climbs into the trees, vowing never to return to terra firma. The story, as narrated by Cosimo’s younger brother, Biagio, has an episodic, picaresque quality. Cosimo overcomes trials and obstacles, much like Calvino’s folktale heroes whose stories constitute ‘‘il catalogo dei destini che possono darsi’’ (the catalog of potential destinies) beginning with ‘‘la giovinezza, dalla nascita . . . al distacco dalla casa, alle prove per diventare adulto e poi maturo, per confermarsi come essere umano’’ (youth . . . then the departure from home, and finally, through the trials of growing up, the attainment of maturity and the proof of one’s humanity) (Introduction to Fiabe italiane, 1956). Cosimo fights savage cats and Turkish pirates. When Ombrosa is threatened by forest fires, Cosimo organizes a volunteer fire brigade and discovers the joy of solidarity in a common cause. This youthful episode of activism and camaraderie undoubtedly reflects Calvino’s participation in the Italian Resistance movement. But Cosimo’s political activism, like Calvino’s, is short lived and ends in disillusionment. 347

ITALO CALVINO Cosimo opts instead for mapping out plans for a utopian society in the trees. The protagonist’s utopianism might at first seem to brand him as a disengaged, aloof, misanthrope. But Calvino himself articulated another interpretation of Calvino’s withdrawal from the world. Cosimo’s aloofness is characterized as a necessary condition for true commitment. This is made clear when Biagio is questioned by Voltaire about his eccentric brother Cosimo: ‘‘Mais c’est pour approcher du ciel, que votre frere reste la` haute?’’ (But is it to be nearer the sky that your brother stays up there?). The brother explains, ‘‘Mio fratello sostiene che chi vuole guardare bene la terra deve tenersi alla distanza necessaria’’ (My brother considers that anyone who wants to see the earth properly must keep himself at a necessary distance from it.). This need for a critical balance between activism and withdrawal from the world, between contemplation and action, is also articulated in the ‘‘Leggerezza’’ (Lightness) chapter of Lezioni americane (Six Memos for the Next Millennium, 1988). Many of the motifs of Calvino’s later, experimental works may be located in Il barone rampante. Entering the exotic garden of the neighboring Ondariva family, Cosimo navigates the garden through the sense of smell. Later in the novel, the protagonist begins to master his arboreal realm through the sense of touch. He classifies the various trees in the vicinity of Ombrosa using a tactile classification system. Cosimo’s enriched, multisensory access to the world foreshadows the posthumously published novel of 30 years later. The desire to draw upon all five senses, much like primitive man, is a theme that inspired Sotto il sole giaguaro (Under the Jaguar Sun, 1986). The protagonists of Sotto il sole giaguaro fail in their attempts to use the five senses as a means of mastering the world. By contrast, Cosimo confidently and masterfully draws upon his five senses in Il barone rampante in order to navigate his arboreal realm. Another theme of the novel is the self-conscious exploration of the status and limitations of language. This is evident in the chapter describing Cosimo’s madness. Il cavaliere inesistente (The Nonexistent Knight, 1959) is a fanciful rewriting of the exploits of Charlemagne’s knights. The protagonist, Agilulfo, an empty suit of armor, represents ‘‘inesistenza munita di volonta` e coscienza’’ (nonexistence furnished with will and conscience). His companion, Gurdulu, is his specular opposite, ‘‘uno che c’e` ma non sa d’esserci’’ (one who exists but does not know he exists). As Calvino has explained in his 348

introduction to the trilogy, Agilulfo, who is entirely defined by his devotion to the laws of an institution, in this case chivalry, represents contemporary ‘‘organization man’’ in consumer society. The other characters in the novel include two couples, Rambaldo and Bradamante and Torrismondo and Sofronia. Rambaldo and Torrisomondo are familiar character types in Calvino’s work, young men on the brink of maturity who define themselves by overcoming trials and obstacles. One of the more interesting aspects of the novel is the figure of the narrator. The early chapters seem to be narrated by an undramatized, omniscient narrator. At the beginning of Chapter Four, however, we learn that the story is being told by a nun, Sister Teodora. At the conclusion of the novel, it is revealed that Sister Teodora and Bradamante, the warrior maiden of Carolingian legend and heroine of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, are one and the same. With this conclusion, Calvino is attempting to unite the realms of contemplation and action, writing and engagement in society. The conclusion anticipates similar moments in Calvino’s later fiction, where the man of contemplation, the Hermit, is equated with the man of action, the Knight of Swords. The desire to reconcile the apparent incompatibility between contemplation and action, art and life, withdrawal and commitment, is a constant theme in Calvino’s works. JO ANN CANNON Editions First Editions Il visconte dimezzato, Turin: Einauadi, 1952. Il barone rampante. Turin: Einauadi, 1957. Il cavaliere inesistente, Turin: Einaudi, 1959. As I nostri antenati with author’s preface, Turin: Einaudi, 1960.

Critical Editions In Romanzi e racconti, vol. 2, edited by Mario Barenghi and Bruno Falcetto, Milan: Mondadori, 1991.

Translations The Baron in the Trees, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, New York: Random House, 1959. The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, New York: Random House, 1962.

Further Reading Adler, Sara, Calvino: The Writer as Fablemaker, Potomac: Jose Porrua Turanzas, 1979. Bolongaro, Eugenio, Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

ITALO CALVINO Bonura, Giuseppe, Invito alla lettura di Italo Calvino, Milan: Mursia, 1972. McLaughlin, Martin, Italo Calvino, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Woodhouse, J. R., Italo Calvino: A Reappraisal and an Appreciation of the Trilogy, Hull, U.K.: Hull University Press, 1968.

LE COSMICOMICHE, 1965 Stories by Italo Calvino

Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics) is one of Calvino’s most engaging and well-received texts. Inspired by the author’s reading of books on cosmology, astronomy, and non-Euclidean geometry, Le cosmicomiche has often been described as science fiction. For Calvino, however, science fiction deals with the future, while his stories deal with the origin and evolution of the universe. The protagonist of Le cosmicomiche is one Qfwfq, a chameleonic consciousness and observer of the universe from the Big Bang onward. Qfwfq takes many forms, including a mote of cosmic dust, a one-celled organism, a dinosaur, and a university researcher. As Qfwfq adapts to his ever-changing universe, he speculates about time and space, predictability and randomness, the birth of language. Each tale is an encounter between Qfwfq and the ‘‘Mare dell’oggettivita`’’ (sea of objectivity) surrounding. Each begins with an italicized epigraph summarizing a scientific theory on the origins of the universe or the evolution of the species. The epigraph is followed by the introduction of a human consciousness, Qfwfq. In ‘‘Gli anni-luce’’ (The LightYears) Qfwfq, observing the night sky through his telescope, spots an admonishing sign from a faraway galaxy: ‘‘TI HO VISTO’’ (I Saw You). He calculates that the unspecified, shameful action witnessed occurred two million light-years earlier. Qfwfq frets about the injustice of being captured in an uncharacteristically unflattering moment and wrestles with ways to correct the bad impression

the universe has formed of him. Toying with excuses such as ‘‘LASCIATE CHE VI SPIEGHI’’ (Let me explain) and ‘‘AVREI VOLUTO VEDERE VOI AL MIO POSTO’’ (I would have liked to have seen you in my place), he settles on responding with a terse sign of his own: ‘‘E CON ` ?’’ (What of it?). As the story continues, CIO Qfwfq takes comfort in the fact that his many subsequent, decent actions will by now have reached the distant galaxies that have so misjudged him. Alas, he patiently waits the millions of lightyears for the distant galaxies to see him at his best, only to read the evidence that his hopes have been ` ,’’ dashed. The signs reading ‘‘TRA LA LA LA ` ? VATTELAPESCA’’ (Who Can It ‘‘CHI SARA Be? Go Figure) and ‘‘HAI LA MAGLIA DI LANA’’ (You Have a Woolen Sweater) indicate the bitter reality that the universe has become indifferent. In the conclusion, Qfwfq resigns himself to being misunderstood, misjudged, and, finally, ignored. A fanciful conte philosophique, Le cosmicomiche provides a poignant glimpse at the human condition. John Barth calls it ‘‘beautifully written, enormously appealing space-age fables . . . whose materials are as modern as the new cosmology and as ancient as folktales, but whose themes are love and loss, change and permanence, illusion and reality’’ (‘‘The Literature of Replenishment,’’ 1980). JO ANN CANNON Editions Le cosmicomiche, Turin: Einaudi, 1965. As La memoria del mondo e altre storie cosmicomiche, Milan: Club degli editori, 1968 (Including Le cosmicomiche and Ti con zero, Turin: Einaudi, 1967). As Cosmicomiche vecchie e nuove, Milan: Garzanti, 1984.

Critical Editions In Romanzi e racconti, vols. 2 and 3, edited by Mario Barenghi and Bruno Falcetto, Milan: Mondadori, 1991.

Translation As Cosmicomics, translated by William Weaver, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. T zero, translated by William Weaver, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1969.

Further Reading Barth, John, ‘‘The Literature of Replenishment,’’ The Atlantic (January 1980): 65–71. Bernardini, Napoletano Francesca, I segni nuovi di Italo Calvino. Da ‘‘Le cosmicomiche’’ a ‘‘Le citta` invisibili,’’ Rome: Bulzoni, 1977.

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ITALO CALVINO Carter, Albert Howard, Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. Hume, Kathryn, Calvino’s Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Olken, Ilene, With Pleated Eye and Garnet Wings: Symmetries of Italo Calvino, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Ricci, Franco, Painting with Words, Writing with Pictures, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Weiss, Beno, Understanding Italo Calvino, Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993.

SE UNA NOTTE D’INVERNO UN VIAGGIATORE, 1979 Novel by Italo Calvino

breach the gap between signifier and signified mirrors Calvino’s own anxiety. In essays such as ‘‘The Written and the Unwritten Word’’ (1983) and throughout his fiction Calvino explores the nature, limitations, and inadequacies of literary language. The centrality of the reader, a recurring theme in Calvino’s work, is embodied in Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore in the character of Ludmilla. An avid reader, Ludmilla becomes the object of Flannery’s obsession. His desire to seduce the reader comes to symbolize the writer’s always unrealized desire to endow literature with power. The encounter between Arkadian Porphyritch and the reader further dramatizes the importance of the reader in determining literature’s influence. The Director of the Archives of the unnamed Police State points out that, in countries where there is no censorship, literature descends to the status of ‘‘un passatempo innocuo e senza rischi’’ (an innocuous pastime without risks). Only the police state acknowledges the true power of the pen. This novel explores the relationship between fiction and society, writer and reader, reader and text. The novel ultimately defends the supremacy of reading over writing while it poignantly portrays the writer’s unquenchable desire to ‘‘seduce’’ the reader through the pleasure of the text. JO ANN CANNON

Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler) is one of Calvino’s most experimental and self-referential texts. The protagonist is a reader who opens a book by Italo Calvino and becomes immersed in the text. Unfortunately, through an error in the binding, the first 32 pages repeat over and over throughout the book. The reader goes to the bookstore to return the defective book, only to discover that the Calvino book was accidentally switched with another novel. This is the novel that has captured the reader’s attention. Thus begins a search for the missing book. Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore is a series of interrupted fragments embedded one within the other and interspersed with the protagonist’s search for the original, authentic text. The repeated interruptions of the novels within the novel function as an extended metaphor on the fragility and inconclusiveness of literary communication. This deficiency is captured in the character of Silas Flannery, the hack detective novelist who has lost his ‘‘fiducia nella comunicazione’’ (faith in communication) because his novels fail to capture or compete with the material world. The hack detective novelist is a comical authorial surrogate. Flannery’s inability to 350

Editions First Edition Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore, Turin: Einaudi, 1979.

Critical Edition In Romanzi e racconti, vol. 3, edited by Mario Barenghi and Bruno Falcetto, Milan: Mondadori, 1991.

Translations As If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, translated by William Weaver, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981.

Further Reading Calvino, Italo, ‘‘The Written and the Unwritten Word,’’ The New York Review of Books, 12 (May 1983), 38–39. Cannon, JoAnn, Italo Calvino: Writer and Critic, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1981. Contini, Gianfranco, Schedario di scrittori italiani moderni e contemporanei, Florence: Sansoni, 1978. Feinstein, Wiley, ‘‘The Doctrinal Core of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, in Calvino Revisited, edited by Franco Ricci, Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989. Ferretti, Gian Carlo, Le avventure di un lettore. Calvino, Ludmilla e gli altri, Lecce: Piero Manni, 1997. Milanini, Claudio, L’utopia discontinua. Saggio su Italo Calvino, Milan: Garzanti, 1990.

MARIO CAMERINI

MARIO CAMERINI (1895–1981) Mario Camerini’s long and influential career as a film director began with Jolly, clown da circo (Jolly, Circus Clown, 1923), featuring a carnivalesque setting to which he would return in Daro` un milione (I’ll Give a Million, 1935). His subsequent silent films—Voglio tradire mio marit o (I Want to Betray My Husband, 1925) a version of C. B. DeMille’s successful Hollywood comedy Why Change Your Wife (1920); Maciste contro lo sceicco (Maciste Against the Sheik, 1925), one of the many adventure films produced during the silent era involving the popular superhero, Maciste; and Kiff Tebbi (As You Please, 1927), a romantic adventure film set in Africa, a location to which Camerini would return in Il grande appello (The Last Roll Call, 1936)—are rich with signs of his directorial promise. Many of his films, once unknown to the postFascist world, were finally screened during a 1975 retrospective at Ancona, enabling an overdue critical reassessment of his style and of Italian popular culture during Fascism. The screening of these films not only revealed that the Italian cinema of the Fascist era was innovative but became an occasion to rethink the complex relations between the culture and politics of those years. Camerini’s first notable achievement as director was the silent melodrama Rotaie (Rails, 1929), reissued as a sound film in 1931. Not a propagandistic text in behalf of the regime, the film is notable for its experimentation with camera work and editing, heralding new directions in an Italian cinema struggling to regain its former commercial and international prestige. Rotaie follows the vicissitudes of a young petit bourgeois couple, led astray by the promises of wealth via gambling but ultimately converted to acceptance of a working-class milieu, a narrative common to many of his subsequent films. The style of the film exploits the image of train wheels linked to that of a roulette wheel. The reiterative circular images of the wheels, the rhythmic editing, and the chiaroscuro lighting develop a tension between the couples’ entrapment in a selfdestructive life and their struggle to extricate themselves from an obsession for wealth that almost destroys their relationship. Camerini’s films were not overtly political, despite Fascism’s authoritarian, theatrical, and

propagandistic tendencies. They have been described as ‘‘escapist,’’ similar in certain ways to pre–World War II Hollywood cinema with its indirect but meaningful insights into the changes induced by modernity and the rise of mass culture. With the coming of sound (1929), Camerini directed films in genres that were to become his trademark: in particular, sentimental light comedies and melodramas that were tinged with pathos. His first successful sentimental comedy, Gli uomini che mascalzoni... (Men What Rascals, 1932), starred Vittorio De Sica as a chauffeur-mechanic trying to impress a young woman by pretending to be a wealthy man whose affectations threaten the relationship. The romance is coupled to the landscape of modernity: the automobile, industry, commerce—and the fast pace of life inherent to it. The dynamic character of landscape is developed through a mobile camera and the use of location setting (in the street scenes, at an inn, and at the Milan Trade Fair). The film’s popularity was enhanced by Cesare Bixio’s song, ‘‘Parlami d’amore Mariu`.’’ The film elevated De Sica to stardom, and his collaboration with Camerini left a mark on De Sica’s later films as a director. The comedies that followed—Gli uomini che mascalzoni, Il signor Max (Mr. Max, 1937), Daro` un milione, Batticuore (Heartbeat, 1938), and I grandi magazzini (Department Stores, 1939)—pair De Sica with Assia Noris and feature a motif common to Camerini’s films: impersonation. A millionaire masquerades as a beggar and a beggar as a millionaire. A newspaper vender assumes the identity of an upper-class gentleman. A young woman, the graduate of a school for thieves, assumes the role of an aristocrat. A delivery driver seeks to extort money from a department store. In the spirit of Frank Capra’s films, with their sympathetic focus on petit bourgeois protagonists, the culprit in Camerini’s films is the vain and destructive desire for wealth, success, and upward mobility expressed through the protagonists’ attempts to escape their everyday existence. After their encounters in the upper-class world, the protagonists find safety in restored familial, if not community, relationships. Daro` un milione was remade in Hollywood by Walter Lang as I’ll Give a Million (1938) and 351

MARIO CAMERINI Batticuore as Heartbeat in 1946. Camerini was also responsible for remakes of his earlier films— T’amero` sempre (1933; I’ll Love You Always, 1943) and Il cappello a tre punte (The ThreeCornered Hat, 1934) retitled as La bella mugnaia (The Miller’s Wife, 1955) based on the short novel by Pedro de Alarc¸on. Il cappello a tre punte, set in the eighteenth century, is a satire on the abuse of power, focusing on a lecherous, vain, and incompetent governor who seeks to seduce a miller’s wife. The film, unlike other Camerini films, was subject to censorship, cut, and denied approval for several months. The witty dialogue, the exaggerated characterization (thanks to the famous Neapolitan comic actors Eduardo and Peppino De Filippo), the vivid character of the pastoral setting, and the use of song are characteristic of Camerini’s comedic style, which invites comparison with the French director Rene´ Clair in the ironic and self-conscious focus on the cinematic medium, masquerade, and carnival. Camerini’s melodramas also portray conflicts between domesticity and the desire for adventure and leisure. T’amero` sempre highlights the fate of a young woman abandoned by her aristocratic lover. Pregnant and alone in the city, she seeks to rebuild her life. The film’s opening introduces images reminiscent of documentaries produced by LUCE (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa) on maternity but veers in a darker direction in its portrait of the female protagonist, whose early blighted life is presented through flashbacks of her mother’s death, life in an orphanage, and meeting with the Count. Through vignettes, the film presents a contrast between the leisurely and extravagant life of the aristocracy and the modest life of workers, ending not in reconciliation with the Count but in her engagement to a modest accountant. Come le foglie (Like Falling Leaves, 1934) portrays a wealthy family almost destroyed by the social pretensions of the maternal figure and her playboy son. The beleaguered family that appears in so many of his films is not a celebration of Fascist familial ideology but a critical flight from the harsh realities of contemporary life. Camerini’s images of Italian modernity often portray images of upperclass life while at the same time disavowing their appeal. His only film that qualifies as conforming to the Fascist ideology of nationalism is Il grande appello, and even that film is tempered by the pathos of the father-and-son relationship that overwhelms the patriotic and nationalist motifs. Not often commented on by critics, Camerini’s oeuvre also includes adaptations of Italian literary 352

and dramatic classics to film. His version of Luigi Pirandello’s Ma non e` una cosa seria (It’s Really Not Serious, 1936) is set in a boardinghouse run by an aging and unappreciated woman whose life changes when a handsome rake, weary of womanizing, proposes marriage to her in jest and thereby alters her life. Parallels are evident between Camerini’s comic treatment of bourgeois life and marriage and Pirandello’s use of humor to dissect the folly of romantic love, sexual intrigue, and self-deception. The filmmaker’s adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1941) is another instance of a compatible union between the filmmaker and his literary source. Though he had to scale down characters and episodes, Camerini’s film creates a dramatic sense of the novel’s historical milieu and conveys the filmmaker’s populist predilection for dramatizing the disruption of familial and class solidarity through abuses of power by the upper classes and through elevating the virtues of religious belief and modest aspiration. In the immediate postwar era, Camerini made Due lettere anonime (Two Anonymous Letters, 1945), which displays ‘‘almost the same intensity as Roma, citta` aperta’’ (Gili, 1993). From the 1950s to the early 1970s, he directed a variety of genres: comedies, dramas, crime films, and the superproduction Ulisse (Ulysses, 1954), another adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. Camerini’s last film was another literary adaptation, based on a Giovanni Guareschi novel, Don Camillo e i giovani d’oggi (Don Camillo and Today’s Youth, 1972), a congenial vehicle for a filmmaker who excelled in a form of comedy that was critical of crude materialism, elevated common sense as a strategy for survival, and displayed a sympathy for religious piety, though not a devotee of individualism. Camerini continued to be actively involved in legal, cultural, and political issues affecting postwar Italian cinema.

Biography Mario Camerini was born in Rome, 6 February 1895, and educated at the Lyce´e le Tasse in Rome. He worked as scriptwriter, 1913, and abandoned his intention to study law and served as officer in the Italian light infantry from 1914–1918. He was taken as prisoner of war by the Austrians in 1917 and repatriated to Italy in 1919. Camerini worked as scriptwriter and assistant to the prominent director, Augusto Genina, 1919–1923; he debuted as a

MARIO CAMERINI director of silent cinema with Jolly, clown da circo; 1923, and had his first directorial successes with Rotaie and Gli uomini che mascalzoni, 1930, 1933. Camerini married Assia Noris, who starred in several of his films, in 1940. They were divorced in 1943, and he married Mathilde ‘‘Tully’’ Hruska, 1943. The couple had two children. Camerini retired from filmmaking in 1972. He was the featured speaker at the Ancona retrospective of films of the Fascist era, 1975. A retrospective of his films was shown at the 45th Locarno Festival in 1992. Camerini died of pneumonia at Gardone Riviera, 4 February 1981. MARCIA LANDY Selected Works Films Jolly, Clown da circo, 1923. Saetta principe per un giorno, 1924. La casa dei pulcini, 1924. Voglio tradire mio marito (based on the play by Ermanno Geymonat), 1925. Masciste contro lo sceicco, 1925. Kiff Tebbi (based on the novel by Luciano Zuccoli), 1927. Rotaie, 1929. La riva dei bruti (based on Victory by Joseph Conrad), 1930. Figaro e la sua gran giornata (based on the play Ostrega che sbrego! by Arnaldo Fraccaroli), 1931. Gli uomini che mascalzoni..., 1932. T’amero` sempre, 1933. Giallo (based on The Man Who Changed His Name by Edgar Wallace), 1933. Il cappello a tre punte (based on El sombrero de tres picos by Antonio Pedro de Alarc¸on), 1934. Come le foglie (based on the play by Giuseppe Giacosa), 1934. Daro` un milione, 1935. Ma non e` una cosa seria (based on the play by Luigi Pirandello), 1936. Il grande appello, 1936. Il signor Max, 1937. Batticuore (based on a short story by Lilly Janu¨sse), 1938. I grandi magazzini, 1939. Centomila dollari, 1940. Una romantica avventura (based on The Loves of Margery by Thomas Hardy), 1940. I promessi sposi (based on the novel by Alessandro Manzoni), 1941.

Una storia d’amore (based on the novel by Mary McDougal Axelson), 1942. T’amero` sempre, 1943. Due lettere anonime, 1945. L’angelo e il diavolo, 1946. La figlia del capitano (based on the novel by Aleksander Pushkin), 1947. Molti sogni per le strade, 1948. Il brigante Musolino, 1950. Due mogli sono troppe, 1950. Moglie per una notte (based on the play L’ora della fantasia by Anna Bonacci), 1952. Gli eroi della domenica, 1952. Ulisse (based on the Odyssey by Homer), 1954. La bella mugnaia (re-make of Il cappello a tre punte), 1955. Suor Letizia, 1956. Vacanze a Ischia, 1957. Primo amore, 1958. Via Margutta (based on the novel Gente al Babuino di Ugo Moretti), 1960. I briganti italiani, 1961. Kali-Yug, la dea della vendetta, 1963. Delitto quasi perfetto, 1966. Io non vedo, tu non parli, lui non sente, 1971. Don Camillo e i giovani d’oggi (based on the novel by Giovanni Guareschi), 1972.

Further Reading Apra`, Adriano, and Patrizia Pistagnesi, I favolosi anni trenta: Cinema italiano 1929–1944, Milan: Electa, 1979. Brunetta, Gian Piero, Storia del cinema italiano: Il cinema muto 1895–1929, vol. 1, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2001. Brunetta, Gian Piero, Storia del cinema italiano: Il cinema del regime, 1929–1945, vol. 2, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2001. Farassino, Alberto, Mario Camerini: Sous la direction de Alberto Farassino, Belgium: Editions Yellow Now, 1992. Gili, Jean A., ‘‘Etre cine´aste en Italie pendant les anne´es du fascisme,’’ Dossier Mario Camerini, Positif, 301 (March 1986): 38–43. Gili, Jean A., ‘‘Terzo tempo: Retrospective Mario Camerini,’’ Positif, 384 (February 1993): 70–71. Grmek Germani, Sergio, Mario Camerini, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980. Landy, Marcia, Fascism in Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema 1931–1943, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Savio, Francesco, Cinecitta` anni trenta: Parlano 116 protagonisti del secondo cinema italiano (1930–1943), vol. 1, Rome: Bulzoni, 1979.

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ANDREA CAMILLERI (1925–) Although a contemporary of his distinguished literary colleague and often-acknowledged font of inspiration Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri began his own prolific narrative production much later in life. His first novel, Il corso delle cose (The Way Things Go), was published in 1978, and his publicly acclaimed series of works dedicated to the investigations of the Commissario Montalbano began with the publication of La forma dell’acqua (The Shape of Water) in 1994. Like Sciascia, Camilleri has produced numerous works of historical and investigative fiction, rooted firmly in the geographic, linguistic, and historical context of Sicily. His novels engage topics of contemporary interest to Sicily and to Italy, such as the controversy over police brutality at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, which is a source of great professional and personal frustration for Montalbano, in Il giro di boa (Rounding the Buoy, 2003), or the problems posed by waves of immigration from northern Africa, subject of La gita a Tindari (Excursion to Tindari, 2000). These novels take as inspiration microhistorical episodes from chronicles, elaborating narratives around such events as public opposition to the opening of a theater in Caltanissetta as in Il birraio di Preston (The Brewer from Preston, 1995). His historical fiction, set in large part in at the end of the nineteenth century, criticizes the immobility of the Sicilian bureaucracy, the corruption of the clergy, and the insidious presence of the Mafia. But Camilleri, who has frequently paid homage in both novels and in interviews to Sciascia and to other eminent Sicilian literary predecessors, including Verga, Pirandello, De Roberto, Brancati, and Toma`si di Lampedusa, shapes a Sicily markedly different from that of his regional peers. This difference is exemplified in the Montalbano series, which creates a serialized, demystified Sicily in which the police chief confronts the laws of omerta` and the difficulties of bureaucratic inefficacy with ironic humor: He can meet with and come to grudging understandings with Mafia bosses or ridicule the practice of sending anonymous letters by writing them, strategically and contemptuously, to himself. The weighty, cyclical nature of Sicilian history depicted in Verga’s I Malavoglia, Tomasi di 354

Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo, or Sciascia’s Il consiglio d’Egitto is replaced by the linear functioning of the classical detective story, proceeding from the commission of a crime through its investigation and eventual resolution. Camilleri’s Sicily is marked by a grudging optimism, the hesitant belief in the possibility for change; and his detective hero, as head of the police force of Viga`ta, works to successfully fight crime from within the very system of bureaucracy that he perpetually critiques. The resulting narrative structure enjoys the epistemological stability made possible in a context where evidence is provided and questions answered, a framework that derives more directly from the tradition of detective fiction than from the workings of Sicilian literature, which often depicts obscure, destabilized foundations of knowledge and thus dysfunctional or unresolved detective narratives (such as Sciascia’s A ciascuno il suo, in which the detective-figure is killed). In fact, the author acknowledges in part his appreciation of traditional detective fiction in the very name of his protagonist, which besides being a common last name in Sicily also recalls Manuel Vasquez-Montalba`n, a prolific Catala`n writer of detective fiction. Like Maigret and Pepe Carvalho, Vasquez-Montalba`n’s detective, Montalbano is an outsider in a system that privileges an ever-greater reliance on technology. He relies on old methods of detection and a traditional sense of integrity and morality in his administration of justice and does not adhere strictly to the procedural or legal tenets of the police bureau. As in the canonical detective fiction of his investigative fictional muses, Montalbano employs reason and the gift of intuition to combat bureaucratic and societal complications and unravel the intricacies of the mysteries he confronts. Camilleri’s fiction develops in great detail the regional qualities that tie his writing firmly to his native island. Both historical and detective fiction occupy a universe centered around the fictional town of Viga`ta, situated between the hills and the sea and near the real city of Porto Empedocle in the province of Agrigento. Recurrent themes such as Montalbano’s passion for Sicilian delicacies, like the beloved arancini, or rice balls, of the title of the short story collection Gli arancini di Montalbano

ANDREA CAMILLERI (Montalbano’s Arancini, 1999), or his affection for a gnarled olive tree under which he contemplates difficult cases, contribute to the creation of Camilleri’s characteristic atmosphere of sicilianita` (‘‘Sicilianness’’). Foremost among the distinguishing features of Camilleri’s cultural landscape is his language, a dialect-inflected, inventive version of standard Italian that creates the lingua franca of his narrative universe and serves as a unifying force throughout his literary production. The most elaborately developed language is Sicilian in derivation, but his linguistic innovation also extends to other regional varietals, including a Tuscanized Italian in Il birraio di Preston, the Spanish-influenced language of Il re di Girgenti (The King of Girgenti, 2001), and various passages in a Genoese-inspired Italian in La mossa del cavallo (The Knight’s Move, 1999). These idiosyncratic ‘‘dialects’’ are used to differentiate social strata and regional appurtenance of the characters, to distinguish their particular humor, or to shed light on their relationships with other characters. The most important function of Camilleri’s version of Sicilian, however, is the creation of the contextual theater in which the narrative action unfolds. Virtually all of the direct and indirect discourse in his work is reported in some version of this dialect, but the narrative voice, too, employs the fictional regional language to create the colorful backdrop against which the action is set. In order to facilitate the reading of the sometimes unfamiliar vernacular, the narrative often explains the significance of Sicilianisms, either defining them directly or including the standard Italian version alongside them. This linguistic stage, then, upon which both the historical and the contemporary plots are performed, lends a sense of coherence and continuity to Camilleri’s fiction, linking the Viga`ta of the past to that of the present. The peculiar language that initially caused editors concern about the comprehensibility and wide public appeal of Camilleri’s work has ultimately become one of the most celebrated and critically discussed characteristics of his fiction. While the Sicilian landscape predominates in Camilleri’s work, the author’s books are also filled with references to other literary traditions that allow him to situate himself stylistically, thematically, and philosophically in a global literary context. All of Camilleri’s writing is marked by literary self-consciousness, sometimes present thematically in his work (as when Montalbano, for example, deciphers a clue in the short story ‘‘La sigla’’ by remembering the plot of a short story by Edgar

Allan Poe), and sometimes employed as part of the form of the text itself (as in Il birraio di Preston, in which the first sentence in each chapter is a citation from a famous work of fiction). The often playful pastiche of literary reference also contributes to the tone that predominates throughout Camilleri’s production, one of ironic self-awareness, often described as farcical, in which even the most biting critiques or tragic occurrences are rendered humorous or curious. This sense of distance from the subjects of his works has been a topic of criticism for those who perceive it as a lack of seriousness, although for Camilleri irony represents a mode of self-defense in the face of the problems confronted by Sicily and Italy. The tradition of detective fiction in which Camilleri participates, and which has also been criticized as indicative of a lack of literary seriousness, has provided a model not simply for narrative creation but also for the enthusiastic popular success of his work. The philosopher and cultural critic Antonio Gramsci famously noted in his Quaderni dal carcere (written in the late 1920s and 1930s, the ‘‘golden age’’ of detective fiction), that Italy lacked a national popular literature and that even detective fiction had failed to flourish among Italian-language writers. Camilleri’s works arguably fill the literary gap of which Gramsci made note; his success is discussed among critics as the ‘‘caso Camilleri,’’ the literary and publishing phenomenon that his writing represents. Critical interest in the Sicilian author follows on the heels of overwhelming, unprecedented public success, both in Italy and abroad (as in 2000, when he was the Italian writer most read in France). Thanks to his resulting status as a public figure of note, Camilleri also regularly contributes short stories, essays, and articles on literature, culture, and politics to Italian periodicals, including Il messaggero, La repubblica, and La stampa. His writing career was preceded by a long stint as director of works for radio, television, and theater, during which he produced two television series, the first Tenente Sheridan and the second based on Georges Simenon’s Chief Maigret mysteries for the RAI. It was in deconstructing and reconstructing the narrative lines for the television public that he became skilled in exploiting the mechanisms of the detective story. Almost a half-century later, the former television producer has collaborated in writing scripts for the popular adaptations of his own Montalbano works for television and radio by the RAI, with Luca Zingaretti playing the part of the renowned detective. 355

ANDREA CAMILLERI

Biography Andrea Camilleri was born in Porto Empedocle (Agrigento), 6 September 1925. He married in 1957 and is the father of three children. Camilleri studied at the University of Palermo, where he wrote his dissertation on Mallarme´; he completed further study at the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica in Rome under Orazio Costa. Beginning in 1942, Camilleri directed numerous theatrical productions, including works by Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov, T. S. Eliot, and Pirandello. He worked as assistant to Ruggero Jacobbi, noted director and poet; together with Jacobbi, he directed Pirandello’s La Sagra del Signore della Nave in Agrigento. Commencing in 1958, Camilleri produced television and radio series on the theater of Eduardo De Filippo, the investigator Tenente Sheridan, and adaptations of Georges Simenon’s Maigret series, Commissario Maigret, starring Gino Cervi. He taught at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, 1958–1965 and 1968–1970, and held the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica ‘‘Silvio D’Amico,’’ chair in directing, 1977–1997. Camilleri has been a contributor to several periodicals, including Il messaggero, La stampa, and La repubblica. He was winner of the Gela prize for Un filo di fumo, 1980; the Vittorini prize for Il birraio di Preston, 1995; the Elsa Morante prize for La mossa del cavallo, 1999; and the Flaiano prize for La voce del violino, 1998. ELENA PAST See also: Detective Fiction Selected Works Fiction Il corso delle cose, 1978. Un filo di fumo, 1980. La strage dimenticata, 1984. La stagione della caccia, 1992. La bolla di componenda, 1993.

La forma dell’acqua, 1994; as The Shape of Water, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, 2002. Il gioco della mosca, 1995. Il birraio di Preston, 1995. Il cane di terracotta, 1996; as The Terra-Cotta Dog, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, 2002. Il ladro di merendine, 1996; as The Snack Thief, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, 2003. La voce del violino, 1997; as The Voice of the Violin, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, 2003. La concessione del telefono, 1998. Un mese con Montalbano, 1998. La mossa del cavallo, 1999. Gli arancini di Montalbano, 1999. La gita a Tindari, 2000. La scomparsa di Pato`, 2000. Biografia del figlio cambiato, 2000. Il re di Girgenti, 2001. L’odore della notte, 2001. La paura di Montalbano, 2002. Il giro di boa, 2003. La prima indagine di Montalbano, 2004.

Other I teatri stabili italiani (1898–1918), 1959. Interviste impossibili, 1975–1976.

Further Reading Capecchi, Giovanni, Andrea Camilleri, Fiesole: Cadmo, 2000. De Montis, Simona, I colori della letteratura: Un’indagine sul caso Camilleri, Milan: Rizzoli, 2001. Lodato, Saverio, La linea della palma: Saverio Lodato fa raccontare Andrea Camilleri, Milan: Rizzoli, 2002. Lupo, Salvatore, et al., Il caso Camilleri: Letteratura e storia, Palermo: Sellerio, 2004. Pistelli, Maurizio, ‘‘Montalbano sono’’: Sulle tracce del piu` famoso commissario di polizia italiano, Florence: Le Ca`riti, 2003. Santoro, Antonella, ‘‘I romanzi storici di Andrea Camilleri,’’ Quaderni d’italianistica, 22:2(2001): 159–182. Sorgi, Marcello, La testa ci fa dire: Dialogo con Andrea Camilleri, Palermo: Sellerio, 2000. Vitale, Armando, Il mondo del commissario Montalbano: Considerazioni sulle opere di Andrea Camilleri, Caltanissetta: Terzo Millennio, 2001. Vizmuller-Zocco, Jana, ‘‘I test della (im)popolarita`: Il fenomeno Camilleri,’’ Quaderni d’Italianistica, 22:1(2001): 35–46.

FERDINANDO CAMON (1935–) The poet, novelist, and critic Ferdinando Camon occupies a special place in Italian literature. His concern for and understanding of country life in the Italian northeast are rooted in his own 356

experience because he comes from a peasant family, a very unusual occurrence in the world of Italian letters. He has explored in depth the conflict between oral culture and the culture of the written

FERDINANDO CAMON word. He has elaborated a most personal medium to write about that chasm and about war violence, both of which he experienced personally. He has addressed in his fiction the most disturbing phenomena of post–World War II Italy, terrorism and consumerism, reaching a varied and responsive readership. Il mestiere di poeta (The Poet’s Trade, 1965) and Il mestiere di scrittore (The Writer’s Trade, 1973) are collections of interviews that focus on the ‘‘craft’’ of writing. The dialogues, which Camon called ‘‘spoken criticism,’’ explore the relationship between technique and experience, writer and audience, and the place of literature in a society in rapid transformation. This last topic inspired Camon’s most influential critical work, Letteratura e classi subalterne (Literature and the Subordinate Classes, 1974). Language is the place where conflicts between past and present social realities are revealed: On the one hand there is a literary tradition whose medium is the Italian written language, and on the other hand there is the dialectal orality of the subproletariat. Camon, however, was not concerned with the fate of industrial workers, city proletariat, and lower-level bourgeoisie. His ambition—which he felt was almost a compulsion and a curse—was to give a voice to the forgotten humanity that still lived in the plains bordering the Po river, ‘‘a pocket of Third World, unchanging and on the verge of extinction, at the heart of one of the most rapidly changing European nations,’’ as he wrote in Romanzi della pianura (Novels of the Plain, 1988), ‘‘people who did not know their nation’s language, either written or spoken, anchored in ancient beliefs.’’ Camon’s poems and a volume of newspaper articles, Avanti popolo (Go Ahead, People, 1977), also address the persistence of memories from a phantom world and the monstrosity of a soulless postindustrial culture. His first novel, Il quinto stato (The Fifth Estate, 1970), is utterly original in form and thematics. It is the story of the ‘‘fifth estate,’’ the despised subproletariat who lived and died in the harsh environment of the marshy lands along the Po. A firstperson narrator, a boy, relates his experience of a way of life that is bound toward extinction. His sudden discovery of a different world, the alien and marvelous cities of the Italian ‘‘economic miracle,’’ fills him with awe and yearning. But moving away from ‘‘the plains’’ in which the boy is rooted and being reborn in that other wondrous place is a transgression that brings loneliness, rage, and the torments of a divided consciousness. Language is the witness of that betrayal and the instrument of

salvation. Un altare per la madre (Memorial, 1978) is an homage to the different codes of expression, celebration, and interpretation of the two universes, the one that was left behind and the writer’s present home. An altar handmade by a widower in memory of his lifelong companion is paralleled by the written memorial of their estranged son. La vita eterna (Life Everlasting, 1972) completes the ‘‘ciclo degli ultimi’’ (cycle of those who come last). It revisits the same landscape during the many wars that unleashed unspeakable ferocity on its inhabitants. The peasant world does not distinguish between armies and causes, years and centuries; it remains immobile, subjected to violence, and eternally last. La malattia chiamata uomo (The Sickness Called Man, 1981) is one of the most original Italian novels of the second half of the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis provides the tools to probe deeper in the dislocation caused by the disappearance of an entire social class that existed since prehistoric times and a man’s choice to enter the world of the city and written language. Instead, Occidente (The West, 1989) and La storia di Sirio: parabola per la nuova generazione (The Story of Sirio: A Parable, 1991), components of a ‘‘Cycle of Terror,’’ record the effects of terrorism during a period of Italian life filled with mysterious assassinations. Later novels excoriate the trends of contemporary society and speak about today’s chaotic human migrations. But in 2004, Camon returned with a hard-won serenity to the fields that lie along the Po River. La cavallina, la ragazza e il diavolo (The Young Mare, the Girl and the Devil) is a novella about the pleasure and beauty one can find in that earth. Animals and plants elicit the admiration and love of the narrator, who praises the wisdom of those who have remained faithful to the land.

Biography Ferdinando Camon was born in San Salvaro d’Urbana (Padua), 14 November 1935. He studied in Montagnana (Padua), then at the University of Padua in the School of Letters and Philosophy. He taught at the University of Padua and Bologna (1976), then became a functionary of the Ministry of Public Instruction. In 1973, he began a career in journalism as a columnist for several major Italian newspapers. He was editor of Nord-Est, a collection of short essays he authored and/or edited (1987–1989). Camon writes for La Stampa, l’Unita`, L’Avvenire, and a number of newspapers in the Italian northeast. He is married to Gabriella Imperatori, a journalist. They have two sons, Alessandro 357

FERDINANDO CAMON and Alberto. He has won many prizes, including the Viareggio Prize (1973), the Campiello Prize twice, the Strega Prize (1978), and the Giovanni Verga Prize (2004). ANGELA M. JEANNET Selected Works

I miei personaggi mi scrivono, 1987. Autoritratto di Primo Levi, 1987; republished as Conversazione con Primo Levi, 1991; as Conversations with Primo Levi, translated by John Shepley, 1989. Alberto Moravia: io e il mio tempo, intervista, 1988. Perche´ scrivete? Rispondono 109 scrittori italiani 1989. Il Santo assassino: dichiarazioni apocrife, 1991.

Further Reading

Fiction Il quinto stato, 1970; as The Fifth Estate, translated by John Shepley, 1987; definitive version in Romanzi della pianura, 1988. La vita eterna, 1972; reprinted, 2001; as Life Everlasting, translated by John Shepley, 1987; definitive version in Romanzi della pianura, 1988. Occidente, 1975. Un altare per la madre, 1978; as Memorial, translated by David Calicchio, 1983. La malattia chiamata uomo, 1981; as The Sickness Called Man, translated by John Shepley, 1993. Storia di Sirio: parabola per la nuova generazione, 1984; as The Story of Sirio: A Parable, translated by Cassandra Bertea, 1985. La donna dei fili, 1986. Romanzi della pianura, 1988 (includes Il quinto stato and La vita eterna). Il canto delle balene, 1989. Il Super-Baby, 1991. Mai visti sole e luna, 1994. La terra e` di tutti, 1996. La cavallina, la ragazza e il diavolo, 2004.

Poetry ‘‘Liberare l’animale,’’ 1973. ‘‘Dal silenzio delle campagne: tori, mucche, diavoli, contadini, drogati, mercanti di donne e serial killer, scene e raccontini in versi,’’ 1998.

Critical Writing Il mestiere di poeta, 1965; reprinted, 1982. La moglie del tiranno, 1969; republished with one addition as Il mestiere di scrittore, 1973. Letteratura e classi subalterne, 1974. Avanti popolo, 1977. Nord-Est, 1987–1989.

Albu-Stanescu, Ion, ‘‘Die Kontinuitat eines Krisenbewusstseins: Ferdinando Camon,’’ Weimarer Beitrage, 33(1987), 222–235. De Michelis, Cesare, ‘‘Ferdinando Camon,’’ Studi novecenteschi, 12(1985), 7–35. De Michelis, Cesare, ‘‘Camon, Ferdinando,’’ in Dizionario critico della letteratura Italiana, Torino: UTET, 1987. Dornetti, Vittorio, ‘‘Sociologia e letteratura nel Quinto stato di Camon,’’ Otto-Novecento, 3(1979), 329–340. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘Conversazione con Ferdinando Camon,’’ Italian Quarterly, 29(1988), 59–68. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘Ferdinando Camon,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Italian Novelists Since World War II, 1965–1995. Vol. 196, edited by Augustus Pallotta, Detroit, Washington, DC, and London: Gale, 1998. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘The Worlds of Ferdinando Camon,’’ in Italiana, edited by Albert N. Mancini, Paolo Giordano, and Pier Raimondo Baldini, River Forest, IL: Rosary College, 1988. Liucci, Raffaele, ‘‘Ferdinando Camon,’’ Belfagor, 55(2000), 545–560. Madrignani, Carlo A., ‘‘Il rosso e il nero del ‘cittadino’ Camon,’’ Quaderni piacentini, 58–59(1976), 19–195. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, ‘‘Ferdinando Camon: Letteratura e classi subalterne,’’ in Scritti corsari, Milan: Garzanti 1975. Pesetti, Nada, ‘‘Camon: lingua e narrazione dei ‘vilani,’’’ L’immagine riflessa, 1(1977), 182–198. Postman, Sheryl-Lynn, ‘‘From Amorphous Nuances to Specific Visions: The Use of Memory in Ferdinando Camon’s The Fifth Estate,’’ Rivista di Studi Italiani, 12(1994), 91–100. Toscani, Claudio, ‘‘Ferdinando Camon,’’ in Novecento. Gli scrittori e la cultura letteraria nella societa` italiana, edited by Gianni Grana, vol. 11, part 2, Milan: Marzorati, 1989.

DINO CAMPANA (1885–1932) ‘‘Dino Campana, even independently of the merits of his poetry, would remain one of the most striking, dramatic, and exciting figures of Twentieth Century Italian literature, and certainly one 358

of the most controversial.’’ Thus wrote Luigi Bonaffini in his preface to his 1991 translation of Campana’s single work, Canti orfici (Orphic Songs, 1914). Bonaffini inadvertently raised a sore point:

DINO CAMPANA Campana, widely translated into English, was famous and beloved, not (or not exclusively) for the merits of his poetry but for the mythical quality of his poetic biography. Campana’s life was undoubtedly characterized by misunderstandings and confusion. Impulsive in temper, even morbid from childhood, he spent a considerable part of his short life in prisons and asylums. Like Rimbaud, Campana made his life into a sort of book of his own existence. More than in Rimbaud’s case, his fame as a poet was conditioned by the myth of the man—a myth that Campana himself was careful to nurture. His restless, nomadic life was full of actions that, in the context of provincial Tuscany in the beginning of the last century, appeared strange and eccentric. His wanderings, his disregard for his appearance, his total rejection of social and literary conventions, played a great part in the creation of his personal myth of the cursed poet, adventurous and unstable. This mythology of the maudit poet has undermined the understanding of Campana’s poetic production, hiding the logical approach underlying his literary researches. Campana’s poetry reflects a wide array of mundane and intellectual experiences, the extraordinary breadth of his readings and travels, his knowledge of the world and of foreign languages. Thanks to his familiarity with the languages and literatures of the rest of Europe, with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson, Campana was able to sketch a complex cultural project, one that sought to filter the primacy of contemporary German philosophical thought through the theories of primitivism he detected in the Italian tradition. Campana’s travels first took him through all of northern Italy and Switzerland. His wanderings then took him to South America, to Montevideo and other parts of Argentina, from which he returned to Europe by way of Odessa. At the beginning of 1909 Campana was in Saint-Gilles, Belgium, where he spent two months in prison for vagrancy. After his prison term he was transferred, because of his eccentric behavior (and, no doubt, because the specification ‘‘demented’’ appeared on his passport), directly to the mental asylum of Tournay, where he remained, however, for only a few days. Released, he returned to Florence, where he was again committed, under duress, to a mental clinic. Once he left the clinic, however, he experienced what was probably the most tranquil and productive period of his life. He returned to Marradi, his hometown near Florence, to work on a project, left untitled and referred to simply as

Taccuino (Notebook). These writings were subsequently repudiated by the author and published only posthumously in 1949. In 1912 he published a small group of poems in Il papiro, the Bolognese student magazine with which he had remained in contact since his years at the university. Spending time with the members of the Florentine avantgarde, he befriended Ardengo Soffici, Giovanni Papini, and the new generation of poets who were crowding the issues of La Voce and Lacerba. Late in 1912 he began to compose verse and lyrical prose for the Canti orfici, which he presented to Soffici and Papini as a manuscript entitled Il piu` lungo giorno (The Longest Day), a title derived from a novel by Gabriele D’Annunzio, hoping that they would agree to publish it in the series Quaderni della Voce. However, in what was to become the most famous controversy of Italian literature, Soffici lost the manuscript. It was rediscovered in 1971, among the papers of the Soffici archive in Florence, and published in 1973. Overcome with grief, and having threatened Soffici with death on several occasions, Campana returned to Marradi to reconstruct the text from memory and notes. He published the work privately as Canti orfici in 1914. A fog of facts and legends surround the book’s publication. It is true that Campana, oppressed by the rumors about him in Marradi, inserted the polemical subtitle ‘‘Die Trago¨die des letzen Germanen in Italien’’ (The Tragedy of the Last of the Germans in Italy), and dedicated the entire work to ‘‘Guglielmo II, Imperatore dei Germani’’ (William II, Emperor of the Germans) at the very moment when Italy was about to enter the war against Germany. But he later regretted this act, and biographies tell of how he wanted to use a penknife to cut the dedication out of all the printed copies. Probably mere legend, on the other hand, is the story that he used to tear out the pages containing poems that, in his opinion, the purchaser of the book would not be capable of understanding, and that the copy sold to F. T. Marinetti retained only the front and back cover. It is certain that sales of the book in Florentine cafe´s did not make him any richer or more famous than he had already become for his eccentricities. And so Campana again began to wander. Not even the love of his life, the writer Sibilla Aleramo, could make him happy, even though she did everything she could to help him, even standing surety for him when, in 1917, he was committed to the asylum of Novara. Campana began writing verse again for Aleramo, composing poems that have since been 359

DINO CAMPANA incorporated into the critical editions of the Canti orfici. But their love story was doomed from the beginning by Campana’s mental instability. In 1918 he was definitively rejected by the military authority of Florence and was transferred to the asylum of Lastra a Signa, which he would never leave. It is easy to understand how these biographical details, coupled with Campana’s visionary, ‘‘orphic’’ poetic vocation, gave rise to the legend of the crazed, vagabond poet. Even the intelligent and thoughtful biography written in the form of a novel by Sebastiano Vassalli still tends toward the romantic description of Campana as the pure artist trapped in a hostile, philistine environment. Only recently have Campana’s angst, his irresistible impulse to wander, the recklessness of his character, that is to say everything that were once regarded as the symptoms of madness, been seen as signs of his uniqueness, a psychological uniqueness that translates into a unique poetic production. Campana’s poetry aims at the absolute, transcending the cultural horizons and literary movements of his epoch. Even if the reference to symbolism is unavoidable in describing his poetry, philological scholarship has demonstrated that the Canti orfici owes much more to Dante than to Campana’s poetic contemporaries. Above all, the Canti orfici is indebted to the author’s experience. As Ruggero Jacobbi notes, ‘‘Campana pursues a lyrical ideal, a personal expressive note, and failing to establish it fully, he multiplies his approaches and experiments, he attacks the problem from different points of view, always starting over from the beginning, and in so doing he introduces psychological data and vague philosophical references, always however in pursuit of poetry. [...] It is poetry, in conclusion, that justifies a life otherwise wasteful and senseless; it is in poetry that this life burns itself out and, at the same time, defines itself as whole’’ (Invito alla lettura di Campana, 1976). Campana’s protest against society and flight from the world was expressed in dark, desperate tones that often clash with the music derived from Giosue` Carducci’s ottonari. An example is this line from ‘‘La petite promenade du poe`te’’ (The Poet’s Short Walk): Me ne vado per le strade Strette oscure e misteriose: Vedo dietro le vetrate Affacciarsi Gemme e Rose. ... E cammino poveretto Nella notte fantasiosa,

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Pur mi sento nella bocca La saliva disgustosa. Via dal tanfo Via dal tanfo e per le strade I go walking through the streets Mysterious dark and narrow: Behind the windowpanes I see Gems and Roses looking out.... And poor wretch I keep on walking In the whimsy of the night, Still I feel inside my mouth The disgust of my saliva. Away from the Stench From the stench and through the streets

The maudit expressions of such lyrics did not, however, make Campana a hopeless pessimist: On the contrary, he opened up the aspirations of the flaneur to the entire world. He lingered over the themes of departure and voyage and descriptions of port cities, transforming them into fabulous and syncretic images that blended mysterious nocturnal atmospheres, chimerical echoes, and the secret voices of the arcane, as in ‘‘Il canto della tenebra’’ (The Song of Darkness): La luce del crepuscolo si attenua: Inquieti spiriti sia dolce la tenebra Al cuore che non ama piu`! Sorgenti sorgenti abbiam da ascoltare, Sorgenti, sorgenti che sanno Sorgenti che sanno che spiriti stanno Che spiriti stanno a ascoltare... Ascolta ... The twilight is waning: Unquiet spirits may darkness be sweet To the heart that no longer loves! Springs springs we must listen to, Springs, springs that understand Spring that understand that spirit stand That spirits stand by and listen... Listen ....

Campana’s orphic technique is well represented here: a pattern of repetitions, accumulations, and successive augmentations of the phrases. The resulting rhythm is very recognizable (an accented syllable and two nonaccented syllables) and recalls, once again, Carducci’s experiments. But the vortexes of sounds and the suggestions derived from the verbal accumulations reveal a carefully considered poetic heritage: Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose influence is apparent in the use of ‘‘Ascolta’’ (Listen) in the poem just cited. Precisely because he was unique, Campana very early on became a sort of litmus test for aesthetic theories, which championed or discarded him according to the objectives they sought to achieve.

DINO CAMPANA He was despised by Umberto Saba and all others who aspired to any measure of classicist formalism. However, the Hermetic movement saw in him the founder, in Italy, of its own orphic experience, and the neo-avant-garde appreciated above all his challenging of literary institutions.

Biography Dino Campana was born in Marradi (Florence), 20 August 1885. He had a turbulent childhood and a troubled relationship with scholastic authority. Around his fifteenth year, the first manifestations of aggression were recorded, involving his mother. After graduating from the Liceo classico, he studied general chemistry in Bologna, then pharmaceutical chemistry in Florence and Genoa, 1903–06, but he never earned his degree. After being committed, for the first time, to the mental hospital in Imola, 1906, he was released after two months at the request of his father and against the advice of his doctors: This first diagnosis of mental instability marked him for life. In the following year he began the wanderings described in the Canti orfici: He was first in France, then in Argentina, Russia, Belgium, and again in France. By late 1908, Campana returned to Marradi and was again committed, for a fortnight, to a Florentine clinic. He submitted the manuscript of Il piu` lungo giorno to Papini and Soffici, but the manuscript was lost, 1913. He returned to Marradi and rewrote the manuscript, privately printed by Ravagli, a local publisher, 1914. At the outbreak of World War I, he sought to enlist as a volunteer but was rejected on grounds of insanity and was again sent to a clinic. He returned to live with his father in Lastra a Signa, near Florence. He met Sibilla Aleramo, with whom he had a tempestuous relationship that lasted only a few months, 1916. After a second examination by the military authority, he was committed to the asylum of Castel Pulci, 1918. Campana died from septicemia in Castel Pulci, March 1, 1932. See also: Hermeticism

GIUSEPPE GAZZOLA

Selected Works Collections Opere e contribute, edited by Enrico Falqui, 2 vols., Florence: Vallecchi, 1973.

Poetry ‘‘Canti orfici,’’ 1914; as Orphic Songs, translated by Charles Wright, 1984; as Orphic Songs, translated by Luigi Bonaffini, 1991. ‘‘Inediti,’’ edited by Enrico Falqui, 1942. ‘‘Taccuino,’’ edited by Franco Matacotta, 1949. ‘‘Taccuinetto faentino,’’ edited by Domenico De Robertis, 1960. ‘‘Fascicolo marradese,’’ edited by Federico Ravagli, 1972. ‘‘Il piu` lungo giorno,’’ 2 vols., edited by Domenico De Robertis, 1973.

Letters Lettere, with Sibilla Aleramo, edited by Niccolo` Gallo, 1958. Le mie lettere sono fatte per essere bruciate, edited by Gabriel Cacho Millet, 1978. Souvenir d’un pendu. Carteggio 1910–1931, edited by Gabriel Cacho Millet, 1985. Un viaggio chiamato amore, Lettere 1916–1918, with Sibilla Aleramo, edited by Bruna Conti, 1987.

Other Dolce illusorio sud: autografi sparsi 1906–1918, edited by Gabriel Cacho Millet, 1997. Dino Campana: sperso per il mondo: autografi sparsi 1906–1918, edited by Gabriel Cacho Millet, 2000.

Further Reading Bazzocchi, Marco A., Campana, Nietzsche e la puttana sacra, Lecce: Manni, 2003. Bernardini Napoletano, Francesca (editor), Dino Campana nel Novecento, il progetto e l’opera, Rome: Officina, 1992. Bonaffini, Luigi, ‘‘Introduction,’’ to Orphic Songs and Other Poems, translated by Luigi Bonaffini, New York: P. Lang, 1991. Bonifazi, Neuro, Dino Campana, Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1968. Capodaglio, Arturo, Un’idea di poetica: nuovo saggio su Dino Campana, Galatina: Congedo, 1991. Cudini, Piero (editor), Materiali per Dino Campana, Lucca: Fazzi, 1986. Dino Campana oggi, Florence: Vallecchi 1973. Gentilini, Anna Rosa (editor), Dino Campana alla fine del secolo, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999. Jacobbi, Ruggero: Invito alla lettura di Campana, Milan: Mursia, 1976. Mazza, Riccardo, La forza, il nulla, la chimera: saggio su Dino Campana, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1986. Millet, Cacho Gabriel, Dino Campana fuorilegge, Palermo: Novecento, 1985. Vassalli, Sebastiano, La notte della cometa: il romanzo di Dino Campana, Turin: Einaudi, 1984; as The Night of the Comet, Manchester: Caracanet, 1989.

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DINO CAMPANA

CANTI ORFICI, 1914 Poetry by Dino Campana

The Canti orfici (Orphic Songs) is Campana’s unius libri, as he himself (re)wrote and organized it. The construction is more solid than might appear at a first reading. As Mario Luzi pointed out in his important essay ‘‘Al di qua e al di la` dell’elegia’’ (1973), Campana grafted the tradition of symbolist prose poetry onto the form of the Dantean prosimetrum of La vita nova (New Life, 1294), which is, indeed, cited within the text. But it was Dante’s other work, the Comedia (1305–1321) that provided the inspiration for the tripartite structure of the Canti orfici: an initial descent into the infernal city in section one, ‘‘La notte’’ (The Night); a purgatorial, artistic pilgrimage in the second section, ‘‘Notturni’’ (Nocturnes) and ‘‘Immagini del viaggio e della montagna’’ (Images of the Journey and of the Mountain); and an ascent, though not to Paradise, in the third section. The book’s ‘‘trajectory,’’ however, is not only vertical: The poem’s horizontal movement, an account of the vagrant wanderings for which Campana was stigmatized by the medical authorities of his day, metaphorically represents the experience par excellence of sensory knowledge and of the human condition. The biographical element, though it has assumed a mythical character or rather has been deliberately adapted in the work of art, is fundamental for the Canti orfici. The poet is not only the author of the work, even within the text itself, but is also the privileged object of the poem, the first-person speaker who comprehends all the other themes of the book: the erotic instinct (purged, however, of the homosexual references found in Campana’s early poems); poetry in all its incarnations and manifestations (whether the Chimera, or Michelangelo’s sculpture, or the bordello owner); the wanderings of the first-person narrator (Faenza, Genoa, the Argentine pampas, even the asylums and hospitals). However, it should be said that to explain fully the Canti orfici would be an oxymoronic undertaking and would, indeed, be contrary to the very essence of the text. Starting with the title itself, the book refers to a lyric that takes leave of logic 362

and that, by invoking the figure of Orpheus, openly declares its own mystical and esoteric component, while suggesting its tragic character. The Orpheus-poet sacrifices himself, becoming literally the scapegoat who makes poetry possible. Both the subtitle of the book, ‘‘Die Trago¨die des letzten Germanen in Italien’’ (The Tragedy of the Last of the Germans in Italy), where Campana understood ‘‘German’’ as the superior moral type, a perspective that, at the dawn of World War I, did not yet carry the stain of racism; and the epigraph, ‘‘They were all torn / and cover’d with / the boy’s / blood,’’ which is a modified quotation of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself (‘‘The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood,’’ v. 894), articulate the idea that sacrifice is required in order for the poet to realize his destiny and for poetry to cross the boundary of knowledge and of expression. GIUSEPPE GAZZOLA Editions First edition: Canti orfici, Marradi: Tipografia F. Ravagli, 1914. Critical editions: Canti orfici e altri scritti, edited by Enrico Falqui, Florence: Vallecchi, 1952; Canti orfici, edited by Fiorenza Ceragioli, Florence: Vallecchi, 1985; Canti orfici, edited by Giorgio Grillo, Florence: Vallecchi, 1990; Canti orfici e alter poesie, edited by Renato Martinoni, Turin: Einaudi, 2003. Translations: as Orphic Songs, translated by I. L. Salomon, New York: October House, 1968; translated by Charles Wright, Oberlin: Oberlin College, 1984; as Orphic Songs and Other Poems, translated by Luigi Bonaffini, New York: P. Lang, 1991.

Further Reading Asor Rosa, Alberto, ‘‘Canti orfici di Dino Campana,’’ in Letteratura Italiana: Le opere, vol. 4, Il Novecento, part 1, L’eta` della crisi. Turin: Einaudi, 1987. Contini, Gianfranco, ‘‘Dino Campana,’’ in Esercizi di lettura, Florence: Parenti, 1939. Del Serra, Maura, L’immagine aperta. Poetica e stilistica dei ‘‘Canti orfici,’’ Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1973. Falqui, Enrico, Per una cronistoria dei ‘‘Canti orfici,’’ Florence: Vallecchi, 1960. Li Vigni, Ida, Orfismo e Poesia in Dino Campana, Genoa: Il Melangolo, 1983. Luzi, Mario, ‘‘Al di qua e al di la` dell’elegia,’’ in Dino Campana oggi, Florence: Vallecchi, 1973. Martinoni, Renato, ‘‘Introduction’’ to Dino Campana, Canti Orfici e altre poesie, Turin: Einaudi, 2003. Parronchi, Alessandro, ‘‘‘Genova’ e il senso dei colori nella poesia di Campana,’’ in Artisti toscani del primo Novecento, Florence: Sansoni, 1958. Savoca, Giuseppe, Concordanza dei Canti orfici di Dino Campana: testo, concordanza, liste di frequenza, indici, Florence: Olschki, 1999.

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA (1568–1639) Campanella was a Calabrian philosopher, magician, and astrologer who spent most of his adult life in prison, where he wrote the vast majority of his works. He therefore constitutes one of the most important cases of prison writing in Italian cultural history. An inexhaustibly prolific writer and poet, a man of surprising physical resources and extraordinary vitality, he was able to survive horrendous torture and a desperate legal predicament to regain, after a long imprisonment, a prophetic role in the Europe of Urban VIII and Richelieu. His was an exceptional human journey. In the communist messianism that animated his political-religious ideals—and that was later readapted in a form of authoritarian messianism—we can glimpse the representation of the profound hopes of the rural world from which he came and whose imprint he never lost. On the philosophical level, he was a theorist of the identity of God and Nature, a philosophy that, during his imprisonment, he pushed toward a reconciliation, or an attempt at reconciliation, with Christianity. Whether this was done with full conviction or with a degree of dissimulation is a question that cannot be resolved, and in any case is hardly pertinent in the Italy of the Counter-Reformation. The extraordinary harshness of his life, in fact, only compelled Campanella, moreso than others, to the conditions of dissimulation generally imposed by the repressive apparatus of the Inquisition on all those who wrote. These circumstances prevented him from being either a rigorous system builder or a great innovator in philosophy, but they let him perceive with an extraordinary sensibility the cultural structures of his time and to arrange them in grandiose and brilliant syntheses. In order to understand an oeuvre that can sometimes appear contradictory, it is therefore necessary to connect it with the life to which it was indissolubly tied. Born to a working-class family—his father was a cobbler—in one of the poor provinces of Southern Italy, Campanella donned the habit of the Dominicans when he was 14 and went to study first in Placanica, then in San Giorgio Morgeto, and afterward to Nicastro, ending up at the great Dominican school of Cosenza to receive the traditional Thomistic theological formation appropriate to

the order. He quickly distanced himself from Thomism, however, and was drawn to the philosophy of nature propounded by Bernadino Telesio, a compatriot whose De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) he read. From this cultural encounter sprang various writings, among which was Philosophia sensibus demonstrata (Experimental Philosophy, 1591)—the only text we possess that we know to have been written before his imprisonment—in which Campanella attacked Aristotle and defended Telesio, expounding the idea that the divine essence may be contained in an anima mundi (spirit of the world) that permeates the universe, rendering it sensible and intelligible. Just as hungry for human experiences as he was for intellectual ones, in 1589 he abandoned the Calabrian province and went to live in the Naples, at that time the largest city in Italy, where he took up residence in the convent of San Domenico, a political and intellectual center rather liberal in its discipline and politically inclined toward the lower classes. It was here that he formed his first cultural politics. Subjected to an investigation within the order for his Telesian philosophy and asked to return to Calabria and to San Tommaso, he left instead in the opposite direction and came to Padova, which at that time contained the most anti-Curial university and intellectual atmosphere in Italy. The great rebellion, a radical attitude of thought and practice of which today we are only able to make out faint traces, had begun. In Padova, in fact, Campanella traveled in heterodox circles and was investigated for the first time for ‘‘acts of sodomy’’ toward the general of his order, and hence was subjected by the Inquisition to a trial that, beginning on more limited grounds, quickly expanded to include accusations of heresy and atheism. The trial came to an end in Rome in October 1595 with a recantation, followed by a condemnation of his writings and a confinement that lasted until the end of 1597. Returning to Calabria, Campanella tried at first to win the goodwill of the Spanish authorities by writing Monarchia di Spagna (A Discourse Touching the Spanish Monarchy, 1633)—an astrological defense interwoven with Machiavellian hints of the universal mission assigned to Spain—but was then involved in 1599 in a plot aimed at having Calabria 363

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA rise up against the Spanish. Campanella’s contribution to the plot was announcing that the stars indicated a political-religious revolution for the year 1600 and preaching the advent of a new age of love and brotherhood ruled by natural law and communal life. After the plot was uncovered through an informer, he was arrested and transferred to a Neopolitan jail where his Dominican habit protected him from the judgment of the Spanish tribunal—which would have immediately sentenced him to death—in order to subject him instead to an ecclesiastical trial based on a doctrinal scrutiny of his preaching. At the Neapolitan trial there emerged evidence of his pantheism; his political-Machiavellian explanation of miracles, religious dogmas, and ceremonies; along with his self-proclamation as a new messiah entrusted by an astrological conjunction of the stars with the task of reforming humanity. Because he had recanted in his previous trial of 1594–1597, even the ecclesiastical tribunal would have sentenced him to death, and, in order to escape it, on 2 April 1600 his formidable theatrical talent helped him to simulate madness. Subjected on May 4 and 5 of 1601 to the terrible torture of the veglia (36 hours suspended from a rope with dislocated bones) in order to legally certify the authenticity of his madness, he passed the test and thus escaped a death sentence. He then began his life sentence in Neapolitan jails, an imprisonment in the course of which Campanella reelaborated the themes of his Calabrian preaching. He wrote the Aforismi Politici (Political Aphorisms, 1601), in which he recast in a propapal key his previous religious Machiavellianism, and La citta` del sole (The City of the Sun, 1602), in which he described the kind of communist hierocracy promoted in his revolutionary designs. Between the end of 1605 and the first half of 1606 he portrayed his own conversion to Catholicism in mournful poems and in Atheismus triumphatus (Atheism Defeated, 1631), an autobiographical journal of his own philosophical evolution from initial disbelief to discovery of the identity of Christianity and natural law. Following the conflict between Rome and Venice in 1606, Campanella tried to earn merit in the eyes of the new pope, Paul V, and of the congregation of Sant’Uffizio, on whom his future fate depended, by compiling various writings against the Venetians. The most important of these was La Monarchia del Messia (The Monarchy of the Messiah, 1633), in which Campanella reelaborated the messianic prophecy he had preached during the Calabrian 364

plot, altering it to support the pope and his rights. The reign of the new messiah there took on the connotations of the church, and the future city was identified with all humanity reunited in one flock under the reformed papal power. The temporal powers reclaimed in the conflict with the Venetians were therefore no different, for Campanella, from the powers possessed by the sacerdotal prince described in La citta` del sole. In the following long years of his Neopolitan imprisonment, Campanella dedicated himself to the composition of grand systematic works. He wrote the Filosofia epilogistica (Epilogist Philosophy), dividing it into the three parts of Physics, Ethics, and Politics; wrote a Medicina (Medicine) in two books; reelaborated his Metaphysica (Metaphysics); compiled a Philosophia rationalis (Rational Philosophy) composed of Rhetoric, Dialectics, Poetics, and Historiography; and drafted a Theologia (Theology, 1623–1624) and a large part of the seven books of the Astrologicorum. On the philosophical level, this last work entailed a grandiose project of constructing a system of universal philosophy that would be a compendium of all knowledge, from metaphysics to politics. On the theological and religious levels, it involved an attempt to reconcile the primitive identification of God and Nature with Christianity. The keystone of such a reconciliation is the ‘‘discovery’’ of the identity of Christianity and natural reason, based in turn on the identification of Christ–Divine Logos with ‘‘first reason’’ or universal rationality. From this premise derived several Campanellian ideas: that the truths known through revelation are not qualitatively different from those known through natural illumination, but rather constitute a completion of them made necessary by the limitation of our minds; that the truth of the Bible is no different from any other true book; and that Christianity is reason perfectly unfolded and adds nothing to nature except the sacraments, which are intended to be natural signs of rational truths. But, in turn, such an identification of Christ-Divine Logos with universal reason has as its necessary premise the identification of God and Nature. We are not dealing therefore with a denial of his previous philosophy but simply with its recapitulation in a Catholic key. In 1626, Campanella was finally able to leave the Neapolitan prisons and to have himself extradited to Rome, where, however, he was once again locked up until 1629 for further judicial investigations. In 1629, after 33 years in prison, he began the

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA last phase of his life as a free man, in the course of which Campanella obtained a certain degree of credit in Rome by earning the favor of the new pope, Urban VIII, and his title of Magister in theology, thanks especially to his astrology. He now tried to publish the works he wrote in prison and was able to publish La Monarchia del Messia (1633) and Atheismus triumphatus in Latin, not to mention, in Lyon, the Astrologicorum (1629). But the persistent doctrinal ambiguity of his works, together with the harsh condemnation of astrology emerging in 1631, put him in new difficulties in the papal circles, causing him to leave for the more hospitable Paris at the end of 1634. There he received a warm welcome from Richelieu and the French cultural establishment, but as an old man he was unable to enter fully into the circle of the court. He died in Paris at peace with the church and above all with his order which, on the whole, had never denied him its protection.

Biography Giovanni Domenico, in religion Tommaso, was born in Stilo, in Calabria, 5 September 1568, the son of Geronimo, a cobbler, and of Caterina Martello. In 1582, he entered as a novice the Dominican convent of Placanica, near Stignano; having completed the year of apprenticeship, he was sent to the convent of the Annunciation, in San Giorgio Morgeto, where he undertook his first philosophical studies. In the autumn of 1586 he was transferred to the convent of the Annunciation of Nicastro, where he completed his philosophical formation. In the summer of 1588, he was sent to Cosenza for theological studies, but at the end of the year he was exiled to the convent of Altomonte. In 1589, he came to Naples, where he took up residence at the grand convent of San Domenico Maggiore. In 1592, he was subjected to an investigation within the order and sentenced to return to Stilo. On 5 September 1592, he left Naples for Rome and then Florence. The Grand Duke Ferdinand I refused him the assignation of a post as lecturer in the school at Pisa. At the beginning of 1593, he was in Padova. He was involved in a trial for sodomy, and at the beginning of 1594 he was put on trial by an inquisition for heresy; he tried to escape imprisonment in Padova. He was extradited to Rome and locked up in the prisons of the Sant’Uffizio. On 30 October 1595, he was condemned to recant de vehementi; he remained shut up in Rome in various convents. On 17 December 1597, all of his

books were banned, and Campanella was sent to Calabria, where he was put under surveillance. In September 1599, he was arrested for having participated in an anti-Spanish plot and transferred to a Neapolitan prison. On 2 April 1600 Campanella staged his madness. On 4–5 June 1601, he survived the atrocious torture of the veglia and thus avoided a death sentence. On 13 November 1602, Campanella was sentenced to life in prison; he remained detained in Neapolitan prisons until 23 May 1626, when he was extradited to Rome, where he arrived on 8 July 1626 and was locked up in the jails of the Sant’Uffizio. He left the Sant’Uffizio prison on 27 July 1628 and was lodged in the Dominican convent of Minerva pro loco carceris; on 11 January 1629 he was set free; and on 6 April 1629 his name was crossed out from the Indice dei proibiti (Index of Banned Books). On 2 June 1629 the chapter-head of the Dominicans conferred on Campanella the title of Magister in theology, and he entered into the good graces of Urban VIII. On 21 October 1634, he left Rome dressed as a brother of the Minimi in order to escape Spanish reprisals and the ever-growing distrust of the Romans. Arriving on 1 December 1634 in Paris, he endorsed the policies of Richelieu. He died in Paris, 21 May 1639, and was buried in the nearby Church of the Annunciation. VITTORIO FRAJESE See also: Utopian Literature Selected Works Collections Scritti scelti, edited Luigi Firpo, Turin: UTET, 1949. Opere di Giordano Bruno e di Tommaso Campanella, edited by Augusto Guzzo and Romano Amerio, MilanNaples: Ricciardi, 1956. Opere letterarie, edited by Lina Bolzoni, Turin: UTET, 1977.

Political and Philosophical Treatises Philosphia sensibus demonstrata (1591), edited by L. De Franco, 1974. Monarchie d’Espagne (1598), as La monarchia di Spagna, 1600; first Latin edition 1640; edited by Germana Ernst, 1997; as A Discourse Touching the Spanish Monarchy, translated by Edmund Chilmead, 1654. Aforismi politici (1601), edited by Luigi Firpo, 1941. La citta` del sole (1602), edited by Luigi Firpo, 1997; as The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, translated by Daniel J. Donno, 1981. Del senso delle cose e della magia (1604), first Latin edition, 1620; edited by Antonio Bruers, 1925. Antiveneti (1606), edited by Luigi Firpo, 1945.

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TOMMASO CAMPANELLA Atheismus triumphatus (1607), 1631. Articuli prophetales (1608–09), critical edition by Germana Ernst, 1977. Teologia (1613–24), edited by Romano Amerio, 1936; 1950; 1955. Apologia pro Galileo (1616); as Apologia di Galileo, edited by Luigi Firpo, 1968; A Defence of Galileo, translated by Richard J. Blackwell, 1994. La Monarchia del Messia (1606), first Latin edition 1633; edited by Vittorio Frajese, 1995. De libris propriis et recta ratione studendi syntagma (1632), edited by Vincenzo Spampanato, 1927; edited Armando Brissoni, 1996. Epilogo Magno (Fisiologia italiana), edited Carmelo Ottaviano, 1939. Astrologicum (1629), as Opuscoli astrologici, edited by Germana Ernst, 2003.

Poetry

Yates, Frances Amelia, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964; 2002.

` DEL LA CITTA SOLE, 1602 A Philosophical Dialogue by Tommaso Campanella

‘‘Poesie, edited by Giovanni Gentile,’’ 1915; edited by Francesco Giancotti, 1998.

Letters Lettere, edited by Vincenzo Spampanato, 1927. Lettere 1595–1638, edited by Germana Ernst, 2000.

Trial Proceedings Amabile, Luigi, Fra Tommaso Campanella, la sua congiura, i suoi processi e la sua pazzia, 3 vols., Naples: Morano, 1882. Firpo, Luigi, Il supplizio di Tommaso Campanella: Narrazioni, documenti, verbali delle torture, Rome: Salerno, 1985. Firpo, Luigi, I processi di Tommaso Campanella, Rome: Salerno, 1998.

Further Reading Amabile, Luigi, Fra Tomaso Campanella ne’ castelli di Napoli, in Roma e in Parigi: Narrazione con molti documenti, 2 vols., Naples: Morano 1887. Amerio, Romano, Introduzione alla teologia di Tommaso Campanella, Turin: SEI, 1948. Amerio, Romano, Il sistema teologico di Tommaso Campanella, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1972. Blanchet, Le´on, Campanella, Paris: Alcan, 1920. De Mattei, Rodolfo, Studi campanelliani, Florence: Sansoni, 1943. Dentice D’Accadia, Cecilia, Campanella, Florence: Vallecchi, 1921. Ernst, Germana, Tommaso Campanella: Il libro e il corpo della natura, Rome: Laterza, 2002. Firpo, Luigi, Ricerche campanelliane, Florence: Sansoni, 1947. Frajese, Vittorio, Profezia e machiavellismo: Il giovane Campanella, Rome: Carocci, 2002. Gardner, Edmund, Thomas Campanella and His Poetry, Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1923. Headley, John M., Tommaso Campanella and the Transformation of the World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Kvacˇala, Jan, Thomas Campanella, ein Reformer der ausgehenden Renaissance, Berlin: Trowitzsch and Sohn, 1909.

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La citta` del sole (The City of the Sun) is a short text in the form of a dialogue, composed by Tommaso Campanella in 1602, nearly three years after his arrest in September of 1599 for agitating against the Spanish in Calabria and little more than a year after his terrible torture by the veglia. The small text is presented as the tale of a navigator who has discovered a perfect city established on a lost island in the ocean. The traveler is ‘‘a Genovese helmsman of Columbus,’’ and the city has good reason to be called a new world, though it is found in the Orient, not the Occident, on the island of Taprobana—Ceylon, south of India—and is populated by ‘‘people who came from India.’’ The city is a perfect image of the universe. It is divided into seven concentric circles spread along the slopes of a hill and ‘‘named after the seven planets.’’ Four intersecting roads traverse and end at the summit of the hill, at the central and highest point, where a circular temple is topped by a cupola representing the sky with all of its major constellations. At the center of the temple is an altar above which ‘‘there is only a rather large globe, where all of the heavens are depicted, and another which depicts the earth.’’ Nature is at once the model of the city and the object of its cult. The two globes placed above the altar are means of influencing the heavens and represent the object of the cult of the solari (the inhabitants of the city of the sun), which is, in the strictest sense, a religion of nature. As Francis Yates has written, ‘‘it is clear that the temple is a model of the world, intricately described, and that the elaborate cult must be a cult of the world’’ (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1964). This religion has an extensive basis in the

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA philosophy of Campanella, a philosophy that identifies God and Nature, and hence Christ and reason, Christian and natural law. Aside from its description in La citta` del sole, such a religion of nature, with its cult of the sun and the planets, was practiced by Campanella during his years of imprisonment. The government of the city, in its turn, repeats the theological structure of God-Nature: It is entrusted to a supreme philosopher-king named ‘‘Sole’’ (‘‘Sun’’) and to ‘‘three collateral princes, Pon, Sin, Mor: which mean Power, Wisdom, Love’’ corresponding to the three ‘‘divine primal qualities’’ in which God-Nature reveals itself. Therefore, in its form, government, and religion, the city recapitulates the structure of the universe. Campanella, who practiced astrology, constructed an astrological city built so as to capture celestial causality, and, what is more, to influence it. Sowing, harvesting, mating, and reproduction are ordained as a ‘‘second science’’ by priest-astrologers who know the conjunctions of the stars and, according to those conjunctions, rule all economic activity. In this sense, his city furnishes us with a perfect example of the ‘‘microcosmic city’’ in which social organization and the institutions and form of government are meant to echo nature and harness its powers. The literary inventio at the heart of the text that assures its lasting reputation consists in the extraordinary Campanellian intuition that the utopian genre inaugurated by Thomas More can provide the most suitable and persuasive narrative frame for representing the unity of messianic prophecy, the myth of the Golden Age, and the Platonic doctrine of the ideal republic, which is essential to Campanella’s political thought. The defining trait of La citta` del sole, in fact, is that it is not only a literary text but also one that Campanella forcefully preached to Calabrian conspirators during the messianic agitation of 1599, which he was to pay for with two episodes of torture and 27 years of prison. This city is discovered by a follower of Columbus, but it is a new world in the Orient and arises from the most ancient of civilizations. These ambivalent characteristics respond to the astral character of La citta` del sole, which retains a literary frame and important ideas from More’s Utopia even as it transplants them into a substantially different ideological soil. Despite the characteristics of this frame—the story of the voyage and its presentation as a lost happy isle in the ocean—that seem to make it a utopia, La citta` del sole does not have much in common with the literary playfulness and humanistic irony of Thomas More’s treatise.

For Campanella, it is grounded on a prophetic model—something hoped for and anticipated for the future. La citta` del sole is a messianic writing or, more precisely, the place in which the propheticmessianic tradition spills into a new utopian genre. Its political construction constitutes the realization of the ideal Platonic republic and is located in the time of the new messianic advent, when the return of the heavenly bodies to their positions at the birth of Christ will lead to the reunification of all mankind into one fold, under one pastor. La citta` del sole possesses all the characteristics attributed by Campanella’s prophetic preaching to the happy age of the new messiah: the community of goods, the well-regulated procreation of the virtuous, the unity of sacerdotal and political power, the rational religion that will be professed, the white clothes of its citizens, and the radiance that distinguishes it. Rather than a utopia, it therefore constitutes an event that, far from taking place in no particular place, discovers its justification in divine and astral prophecies and assigns itself to a not-too-distant future. VITTORIO FRAJESE Editions First Edition La citta` del sole appears first in a Latin translation as Civitas Solis, Appendix Politicae, in Thoma Campanella, Realis philosophia epilogistica, Frankfurt: Typis Egenolphi Emmeli, 1623; enlarged edition in Philosophia realis, Paris: Denis Houssaye, 1637; first Italian published edition by Edmondo Solmi Modena: Tip. Lit. della Provincia, 1904; edited by Giuseppe Paladino, Naples: Giannini, 1920; edited by Norberto Bobbio, Turin: Einaudi, 1941.

Critical Editions Edited by Luigi Firpo in Scritti scelti di Giordano Bruno e Tommaso Campanella, Turin: UTET, 1949. As La citta` del sole, new updated edition by Luigi Firpo, Bar: Laterza, 1997.

Translations The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, translated by Daniel J. Donno, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. The City of the Sun: A Poetic Dialogue, translated by A. M. Elliot and R. Miller, London: Journeyman Press, 1981.

Further Reading De Mattei, Rodolfo, La politica di Campanella, Rome: Anonima Romana Editoriale, 1927.

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TOMMASO CAMPANELLA Firpo, Luigi, ‘‘La Cite´ ideale de Campanella et le culte du soleil,’’ in Le soleil a` la Renaissance, Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1965. Firpo, Luigi, ‘‘L’Utopia politica della Controriforma,’’ in Lo stato ideale della Controriforma, Bari: Laterza, 1957. Frajese, Vittorio, ‘‘La Monarchia del Messia di Tommaso Campanella: Identificazione di un testo tra profetiamo e Controriforma,’’ Quaderni storici, 3(1994): 723–768. Kelly-Gadol, Joan M., ‘‘Tommaso Campanella: The Agony of Political Theory in the Counter Reformation,’’ in

Philosophy and Humanism Renaissance: Essays in Honor of P. O. Kristeller, edited by E. P. Mahoney, Leiden: Brill, 1976. Solari, Gioele, ‘‘Di una nuova edizione critica della Citta` del Sole e del comunismo del Campanella,’’ Rivista di filosofia, 32(1941): 180–197. Treves, Paolo, La filosofia politica di Tommaso Campanella, Bari: Laterza, 1930. Yates, Frances, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964.

CRISTINA CAMPO (VITTORIA GUERRINI) (1923–1977) Cristina Campo, a pseudonym of Vittoria Guerrini, was a poet, essayist, and translator. Her fate is a typically literary one. She was marginalized by critics while she was alive, perhaps because her works, permeated by the spiritualism for which she had exchanged aestheticism, were foreign to the Italian trend that demanded realism and political commitment from writers. She was reevaluated only at the end of the 1990s, due to, above all, the interest of her friends Alessandro Spina and Margherita Pieracci and of the publishers Scheiwiller and Adelphi. Cristina Campo spent her youth in Florence, where she developed under the guidance of private tutors. During World War II, she published her first translations (of Bengt von To¨rne and Katherine Mansfield) and met Leone Traverso, who introduced her to the circle of Florentine literati and to the work of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who became for Campo a stylistic model. In the 1950s, she began to collaborate on the literary review Paragone and initiated the column ‘‘La posta letteraria’’ in Corriere dell’Adda with Gianfranco Draghi. In the meantime, her house in Florence became a gathering spot and was frequented by Margherita Pieracci, Mario Luzi, Piero Bigongiari, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Maria Chiavacci, Maria Chiappelli, the Draghi brothers, and the De Robertis family. It is in this context that Mario Luzi had her read Simone Weil’s La pesanteur et la graˆce (Gravity and Grace, 1947). Campo discovered deep affinities with the French writer and began to translate her works into Italian; most importantly, she shared 368

with her the constant and patient quest for ‘‘attenzione’’ (attention). She took up this concept again, in fact, in the programmatic essay Attenzione e poesia (Attention and Poetry, 1953), in which Campo wrote that l’attenzione e` il solo cammino verso l’inesprimibile, la sola strada al mistero’’ and ‘‘chiedere a un uomo di non distrarsi mai, di sottrarre senza riposo all’equivoco dell’immaginazione, alla pigrizia dell’abitudine, all’ipnosi del costume, la sua facolta` di attenzione, e` chiedergli di attuare la sua massima forma. Attention is the only path toward the inexpressible, the only road to mystery’’ and ‘‘to ask a man never to distract himself, ceaselessly to withdraw his faculty of attention from the ambiguity of imagination, the laziness of habit, and the hypnosis of custom, is to ask him to realize his highest form.

It is thus that that Campo understood her distance from the contemporary world, which is banal and heedless, and she began to seek another value that earthly reality had forgotten: perfection. ‘‘La tensione continua verso la perfezione,’’ wrote Luzi in the essay ‘‘L’imperdonabile voglia di poesia’’ (1966), ‘‘era il segno di una incontentabilita` vera, Cristina Campo ha pubblicato pochissimo e quando lo ha fatto se ne e` sempre scusata come se la sua opera non fosse quella che secondo lei avrebbe dovuto essere’’ (the continuous straining toward perfection was the sign of a true insatiability; Cristina Campo published very little, and when she did she always apologized for it, as though her work were not,

CRISTINA CAMPO (VITTORIA GUERRINI) according to her, what it ought to have been). Hence the driving force of Campo’s literary production was precisely this quest for perfection, which was to be achieved both from the point of view of form and of content. Her move from Florence to Rome marked a fundamental break in her young life. The need to erase the signs of past experiences can be seen in the request she made her to friends to destroy every letter predating 1957, and especially in Passo d’addio (Farewell Time, 1956), her first and only collection of poems published during the poet’s lifetime. The 11 compositions of the slender plaquette (some of them anticipated in the private Quadernetto, or notebook, which she gave to her friend Pieracci) retrace the painful incidents of an impossible, irrecoverable love to which her memory returns, distinguishing its now-vanished traces in the Florentine landscape. The theme is condensed in the beautiful lines of ‘‘Moriremo lontani’’ (We will die far apart): ‘‘E` rimasta laggiu`, calda, la vita / Ora non resta che vegliare sola’’ (Life remained down there below, warm / Now there is only waking up alone). It is not so much a love song or a journal of summer, but, as Pietro Gibellini suggested, a ‘‘canzoniere dello spirito’’ (songbook of the spirit), a movement from profane love to sacred love, a perfecting of the soul, an education toward the forsaking of vain things (La poesia di Cristina Campo, 2001). Campo returned to poetry after another ten years of silence, a sign that a new existential season had opened within her. The new poems, intended for a new but uncompleted plaquette entitled Le temps revient, attest to the tormented, endless interior quest of the poetic animus in desperate search for a stable resting place. This yearning for spirituality became more marked at the end of the 1960s, when the death of her parents and Vatican Council II, which put an end to the liturgy in Latin, increased Campo’s sense of loss and detachment and the desire to withdraw into complete solitude. In this regard the poems ‘‘La Tigre assenza’’ (Tiger Absence) and ‘‘Missa romana’’ (Roman Mass) are emblematic. Campo emerged from this retreat only to attend the Collegium Russicum in Aventino, where she celebrated the orthodox rites. The splendid final poems of Diario bizantino (Byzantine Diary), published in Conoscenza religiosa along with the announcement of her death in 1977, are really the spiritual testament of the poet who had finally found peace and interior serenity due to primitive Christianity.

Ultimately, poetry was for Campo a spiritual exercise, intimate and unsharable. For her, composing poems meant seeking to achieve the highest degree of perfection—a long and tiring path that entailed complete involvement. During her years in Rome, Campo met Ele´mire Zolla, who introduced her to Eastern philosophies, to mysticism, and to esotericism. Together they participated in the Italian group of La voce, which sought to stop the liturgical reform effected by the Church after the Vatican Council II (1962–1965). Zolla turned Campo toward new reading, and thus Campo’s interests moved from Hofmannsthalian aestheticism to religion and Western and Eastern asceticism. With Zolla, she edited the anthology I mistici (The Mystics), which was published in 1963. In these years she also made the acquaintance of the Greek poet Margherita Dalmati, Bobi Bazlen, and Alessandro Spina. To the latter she remained bound by a deep friendship, which began with Storia della citta` di rame (A History of the Copper City, 1963), translated from the Arabic by Spina and introduced by Campo and which was nourished by the correspondence Lettere ad un amico lontano (Letters to a Distant Friend, 1998), a conversation between two writers outside the mainstream. From the second half of the 1950s, Campo dedicated herself entirely to translating—German novels, the seventeenth-century mystics, William Carlos Williams, and Donne, which can be read in part in La Tigre assenza (1991), which also collects all of her poems. She began a close correspondence with the American poet before the publication of Il fiore e` il nostro segno (The Flower Is Our Sign, 1958), a selection of 16 poems by Williams translated by Campo. A wider collection, with the addition of translations by Vittorio Sereni, was published by Einaudi in 1961. Her first collection of essays, Fiaba e mistero (Fable and Mystery) was published in 1962 and was partially merged with Il flauto e il tappeto (The Flute and the Carpet, 1971), which includes other unpublished writings or those already published in magazines. Finally, Gli imperdonabili (The Unforgivable, 1987) gathers all of the essays contained in the works already cited and other contributions that appeared in magazines. Sotto falso nome (Under a False Name, 1998), on the other hand, collects all of her scattered writings and includes some contributions to radio during her collaboration with RAI. Campo did not write literary essays in the common sense of the term, but her discourse is filled 369

CRISTINA CAMPO (VITTORIA GUERRINI) with references that are precious gems of interpretation. We find ourselves confronted with dense and perfect texts that approach various themes. One of the most important of these is fable. Fable, according to Campo, hides a path of initiation that, if observed with ‘‘attention,’’ reveals to us our destiny. The same message is contained in the parables of the evangelists and in the lives of the saints, monks, and the hermits. Abandoning oneself to one’s destiny is the way that leads to perfection, and those who make this choice are ‘‘imperdonabile’’ (unforgivable) to the common person, who is not able to strain toward a higher reality where beauty, truth, and spirit converge. Campo thus dedicated her essays to those few authors who have contrasted to the horror of the world the ‘‘sapore massimo di ogni parola’’ (the greatest taste of each word), that is, absolute linguistic perfection. Her two principal models are, as noted earlier, Hofmannsthal and Weil (the cult of beauty and the impulse to charity), but we can add D’Annunzio, Dante, Borges, Proust, and Shakespeare. The language of the poems and of her poetic translations unites the rich images of hermeticism with a great precision and elegance. The same musical perfection can be found in her essays and in the ardent, crystalline letters to her closest friends (Pieracci, Spina) that have been only partly published and that are useful in reconstructing the stages of her life and, more importantly, her literary and spiritual evolution.

Biography Cristina Campo was born in Bologna on April 28, 1923, the only daughter of Guido Guerrini, a music teacher, and Emilia Putti. Because of a congenital heart defect, which made her health precarious, she did not pursue a regular course of studies but spent her childhood in San Michele in Bosco, near the residence of her uncle Vittorio Putti in the park of the Istituto Rizzoli in Bologna. In 1928, she moved to Florence, where her father was director of the Conservatorio Cherubini. She met Leone Traverso, who became her companion for a number of years, 1946–1954; later, in 1955, she moved to Rome, again following her father, who headed the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia. There she met Ele´mire Zolla, with whom she formed an intense emotional and intellectual relationship. At this time, Campo collaborated with RAI and wrote for numerous magazines, among which are Conoscenza religiosa, Elsinoire, La Chimera, Palatina, Paragone, Questo 370

e altro, and Stagione. The loss of her mother (December 1964) and of her father (June 1965) caused such pain that she moved from her home at the Foro Italico first to a pensione in the San Anselmo Hotel in Aventino and then, in May 1968, to a nearby apartment. Campo died in Rome on January 10, 1977 of a heart attack. NICOLA

DI

NINO

Selected Works Poetry ‘‘Passo d’addio,’’ 1956. ‘‘Diario bizantino,’’ 1977. ‘‘La Tigre Assenza,’’ edited by Margherita Pieracci Harwell, 1991.

Essays Attenzione e poesia, 1953. Fiaba e mistero e altre note, 1962. Il flauto e il tappeto, 1971. Gli imperdonabili, edited by Margherita Pieracci Harwell, 1987. Sotto falso nome, edited by Monica Farnetti, 1998.

Translations Bengt Von To¨rne, Conversazioni con Sibelius, 1943. Katherine Mansfield, Una tazza di te` ed altri racconti, 1944. Eduard Morike, Poesie, 1948. Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Viaggi e saggi, 1958. William Carlos Williams, Il fiore e` il nostro segno, 1958; enlarged edition as Poesie, 1961 (with Vittorio Sereni). Virginia Woolf, Diario di una scrittrice, 1959 (with Giuliana De Carlo). Storia della Citta` di Rame, 1963 (with Alessandro Spina). Simone Weil, Venezia salva, 1963; new edition, 1987. John Donne, Poesie amorose. Poesie teologiche, 1971. Racconti di un pellegrino russo, 1973. Simone Weil, La Grecia e le intuizioni precristiane, 1974 (with Margherita Pieracci Harwell). Detti e fatti dei Padri del deserto, 1975 (with Piero Draghi).

Other

I mistici (with E´lemire Zolla), 1963. Lettere a un amico lontano, 1998. Lettere a Mita, edited by Margherita Pieracci Harwell, 1999. Il fiore e` il nostro segno. Carteggi e poesie, 2001 (with William Carlos Williams and Vanni Scheiwiller).

Further Reading Bianchi, Enzo, and Pietro Gibellini (editors), Cristina Campo, Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001. Cristina Campo, Florence: Citta` di Vita, 1996. De Stefano, Cristina, Belinda e il mostro. Vita segreta di Cristina Campo, Milan: Adelphi, 2002. Di Nino, Nicola, ‘‘Commento a ‘Passo d’addio’ di Cristina Campo,’’ Il Nuovo Baretti, 1(2003), 277–317.

ROSSANA CAMPO Di Nino, Nicola, ‘‘Cristina Campo: ritratti e carteggi,’’ Rivista di letteratura italiana, I(2004), 185–199. Farnetti, Monica, and Giovanna Fozzer (editors), Per Cristina Campo, Milan: All’insegna del pesce d’oro, 1998. Ghibellini, Pietro, ‘‘La poesia di Cristina Campo: un ‘passo d’addio,’ ’’ Humanitas, 3(2001), 333–340.

Luzi, Mario, ‘‘L’imperdonabile voglia di poesia,’’ Citta` di Vita, 6(1996), 551. Pieracci Harwell, Margherita, Cristina Campo e i suoi amici, Rome: Studium, 2005. Spina, Alessandro, Conversazione in Piazza Sant’Anselmo e altri scritti. Per un ritratto di Cristina Campo, Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002.

ROSSANA CAMPO (1963–) Rossana Campo belongs to a generation of Italian writers who in the 1990s experimented with a new approach to the novel; among them are Silvia Ballestra, Niccolo` Ammaniti, Enrico Brizzi, Tiziano Scarpa, Aldo Nove, Giuseppe Caliceti, and Giuseppe Culicchia. Calvino’s latest work and that of the neo-avant-garde (Sanguineti, Balestrini, early Celati) supplied Campo with a departure point into a narrative course all her own. From the first she chose an easygoing and ironic tone used by youth culture of the media. The language is interspersed with obscenities and literary and cinematographic references: The exaggerated language of her first novel, the uninterrupted mimesis of oral speech overwhelmingly present starting with Mai sentita cosı` bene (I Never Felt So Good, 1995) represent her attempt to be in touch with reality. However, the reality that usually emerges from her novels (mostly narrated in the first person) proves void, deformed, tragically loaded with unanswerable questions about the world even when transfigured into a comic vision. The paradoxical and at times surreal comic aspect arises first in the title of her first novel, In principio erano le mutande (It Began with Underwear, 1992)—the book that inspired the namesake film starring Stefania Rocca, directed by Anna Negri in 1999. It tells the story of a lonely, idle girl who describes, employing vivid language, her romantic failures, her passion for bakers, lady-killer gynecologists, mama’s-boy psychologists, and depressed archeologists. It all comes to an end when she encounters a bizarre portly man, semialcoholic as the protagonist herself, and true love happens. Rossana Campo’s world is purely feminine— with the immutable setting of Paris in the background—and inhabited by somewhat unstable and

outcast Italian girls with a strong sense of life. They live by their wits in a postmodern bohemian world and cross paths with ostracized characters in a world naturally populated by alcohol, drugs, and homosexual encounters. In some ways, the young and coarse protagonists of these novels are the rebellious followers of the small, frail, disorganized, and straying, nonetheless charming women populating the novels and dramaturgy of Natalia Ginzburg. Il pieno di super (Fill It up with Premium, 1993) tells the story of a group of sexually curious young girls who run into an unpredictable coming-to-terms face-off: the racist teacher, sexual repression leading up to the disappointing discovery of boys. Mai sentita cosı` bene is a true conversational novel wherein nothing seems to happen. It is a collection of eccentric, quasi-theatrical stories told on a September afternoon by a group of Italian girlfriends living in Paris. The featured men, despised though obsessed over constantly, are dull muscle-heroes, frustrated writers, and obese psychoanalysts. They are the underside of a reality that revokes happiness as it nonetheless accepts games and slapstick humor even throughout the telling of the stories: ‘‘O un uomo e` uno stronzo che ti considera una specie di cosa di sua proprieta`, e in tal caso le corna se le merita, oppure e` un tipo a posto che ti capisce e non rompe i coglioni’’ (Men are either assholes who consider you property, in which case they deserve to be cheated on, or they’re someone all right who understands you and doesn’t bust your balls). In L’attore americano (The American Actor, 1997), the protagonist travels from Paris to New York to follow the American actor who made her fall desperately in love. She is in possession of her own fundamental theory: ‘‘Comunque al primo posto per me c’e` la liberta`, 371

ROSSANA CAMPO sı`, andarmene in giro col naso per aria e vaffanculo alla sicurezza’’ (the number one thing for me is freedom, yeah, going around with my nose in the air and ‘‘fuck you!’’ to safety). Campo’s other works feature complicated love stories of women, as in Il matrimonio di Maria (Maria’s Wedding), a radio drama aired in 1997 and published in 1998, whose protagonist agrees to an arranged marriage with a crazy musician. However, on the night of their wedding, the fake husband and wife end up making love, and Maria becomes pregnant. In Mentre la mia bella dorme (While My Darling Is Sleeping, 1999), Campo experiments with the detective novel. There are obvious allusions to the Parisian detective novels of Daniel Pennac. La gemella buona e la gemella cattiva (The Good Twin, the Bad Twin, 2000) recalls for Campo the world of her childhood. In Sono pazza di te (I’m Crazy About You, 2001), she describes the tumultuous life of a painter who rediscovers in Paris the father who abandoned her at an early age. The most recent novel, L’uomo che non ho sposato (The Man I Never Married, 2003), narrated in the third person, is the well-choreographed and enthralling story of Rosi, who after 20 years reencounters her first love. Throughout Rossana Campo’s novels, a vital life-vision prevails over the often negative conclusion of the stories otherwise filled with a sense of disappointment and emptiness. The reader emerges from her work with the idea that one can make light of life’s bad tidings.

Biography Campo was born in Genova as Rossana Iannantuomo, of Neapolitan origins, 17 October 1963. She attended the University of Genova (influenced by the courses of Edoardo Sanguineti and anthropologist Ernesta Cerulli) and graduated with a degree in literature, June 1987. Campo collaborated as translator to Feltrinelli publishers and became an occasional contributor to L’espresso; she won the Capri Prize for first literary work for In principio erano le mutande, 1992. She made her debut as a painter in 2002 and exhibited at the Baruchello Foundation in Rome, 2003; some of her drawings

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have graced the covers of her novels. She lives in Rome and Paris with her companion, writer Nanni Balestrini. SILVANA TAMIOZZO GOLDMANN Selected Works Fiction La storia di Gabri, in Narratori delle riserve, edited by Gianni Celati, 1992. In principio erano le mutande, 1992. Il pieno di super, 1993. Mai sentita cosı` bene, 1995. L’attore americano, 1997. Mentre la mia bella dorme, 1999. La gemella buona e la gemella cattiva, 2000. Sono pazza di te, 2001. L’uomo che non ho sposato, 2003. Duro come l’amore, 2005.

Plays Il matrimonio di Maria, 1998.

Further Reading Barilli, Renato, ‘‘Campo, due donne sole e un padre randagio,’’ Il corriere della sera, 19 June 2001, p. 33. Barilli, Renato, ‘‘Maschio di celluloide cercasi, scopo erotico,’’ Il corriere della sera, 13 March 1997, p. 33. Guglielmi, Angelo, ‘‘Rossana Campo ritorna a Parigi sempre spregiudicata e rivoltosa,’’ Tuttolibri, 21 July 2001, p. 3. La Porta, Filippo, La nuova narrativa italiana: Travestimenti e stili di fine secolo, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Lepri, Laura, ‘‘Donne che si prendono in giro,’’ in Tirature ‘96, edited by Vittorio Spinazzola, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1996. Pellini, Pierluigi, ‘‘Tra noir e romance,’’ L’immaginazione, no.160 (September 1999): 27–28. Rosa, Giovanna, ‘‘Giovani scrittrici nella ‘citta` proibita,’’’ in Tirature ’93, edited by Vittori Spinazzola Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1993. Tamiozzo Goldmann, Silvana, ‘‘Un nuovo studio sull’uomo,’’ L’immaginazione, no.141 (September– October 1997): 30–31. Tamiozzo Goldmann, Silvana, ‘‘Ragazze sguaiate e tenere conversano,’’ L’immaginazione, no.124 (November 1995): 23. Turchetta, Giovanni, ‘‘Romanzo comico: Sette specie di comicita`,’’ in Tirature 2000, edited by Vittorio Spinazzola, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2000.

CANNIBALI

THE CANDLE-BEARER See Il Candelaio (Work by Giordano Bruno)

CANNIBALI Giovani cannibali is the name accorded a group of emerging writers who have been active from the mid-1990s onward. The Cannibali groups together writers of such disparate style, content, and narrative strategies as Aldo Nove, Simona Vinci, Tiziano Scarpa, Isabella Santacroce, Daniele Luttazzi, Silvia Ballestra, Enrico Brizzi, Rossana Campo, Elena Stancanelli, Niccolo` Ammaniti, Luisa Brancaccio, Carlo Lucarelli, and Guiseppe Caliceti. The name was derived from an anthology of stories, Gioventu´ cannibale: La prima antologia dell’orrore estremo (Cannibal Youth: The First Anthology of Extreme Horror, 1996), published by Einaudi in the ‘‘Stile libero’’ series. Prior to its publication, several of these authors had already found small publishers; after publication, they were acknowledged by a large number of reluctant critics and literary journalists. Because of their visible, if often critical, fascination with American mass culture, these new writers were quickly characterized as purveyors of pulp and ‘‘splatter’’ fiction, that is, with a subliterary mode of writing. They all seemed to have been creatively stimulated by the consumerism of today’s open market, which sells the belief that merchandise can bring happiness. After the 1996 symposium Narrare dopo Pulp Fiction, the Cannibali have often been described as cultivators of the cinematic narrative approach of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. The term ‘‘Italian pulp’’ is more useful as a point of comparison, however, since there were actually few structural, thematic, or contextual commonalities between the Italian literary movement and American cinema during approximately the same period. Indeed, the Cannibali reject any artistic resemblance, and

their blood-and-splatter narratives are limited to superficial effects. The editor of the anthology, Daniele Brolli, contended that academic moralism, reacting against their cutting edge subject matter, gritty narrative approach, and the ambiguity inherent in their everyday stories of violence, has prevented the Cannibali from being widely accepted or seriously read. Brolli further claimed that dictating what a writer can or cannot say prevents literature from becoming a legitimate source of reference for future readers who would like to study the society and popular culture of the 1990s as it was represented in contemporary fiction and not merely in newspapers. Cannibali narratives are disturbing, even if we are aware that they present only a simulation of reality. The Cannibali were encouraged, however, by Pier Vittorio Tondelli and Ricercare, the annual meeting held in Reggio Emilia that showcases emerging talents in poetry and fiction. Furthermore, the endorsement by Renato Barilli and Edoardo Sanguineti, former members of Gruppo 63, has contributed to their success, while giving renewed notoriety to the old guard of Gruppo 63. The works of the Cannibali mirror the heterogeneous provenance of their authors. For example, Cannibali tales of metropolitan horror are generally set in disturbing postindustrial urban and suburban landscapes (chiefly Milan and Rome, although Emilia-Romagna and Bologna are also common settings), which breed alienation and nihilistic action. The depiction of urban chaos and squalid hinterlands at the peripheries of Italian larger cities often alludes to the authors’ own marginalization, both in real life and in their creative expression. 373

CANNIBALI Apart from the unrelenting commercialism in the works of Nove, Scarpa, Ammaniti, and others, there are serious reservations about the Cannibali’s calculated use of subcultural codes and the manner in which they downplayed linguistic experimentation. Their jargon derives directly from regional expressions: for instance, the Milanese urban slang identifying Nove’s characters; the Venetian idioms of Scarpa; the Romanesque-Italian of Ammaniti’s ‘‘Seratina,’’ published in Gioventu´ cannibale. They use the language the average Italian speaks every day; the regional elements in their work help give the ‘‘pulp’’ phenomenon an even stronger Italian resonance. The Cannibali challenge an arcane literary mannerism that they believe had entrenched itself in Italian narrative since the death of Italo Calvino in the mid-1980s. What worked for them was the ‘‘market,’’ in particular, mass media. They thus became part of the so-called globalization of ‘‘the false.’’ The splatter and the blood and the stress on violent action in their works signal, however, their need to tear reality apart. Some of the most interesting examples of Cannibali fiction are Enrico Brizzi’s Jack Frusciante e` uscito dal gruppo (Jack Frusciante Left His Group, 1994) and Niccolo` Ammaniti’s Branchie (Gills, 1994), which became a cult novel, and Fango (Mud, 1996). Ammaniti always strikes readers with his vivid characters, often retelling stories taken from the newspapers’ cronaca (news). Unlike the shady characters of Vinci and Santacroce, Ammaniti proposes clear-cut situations in which protagonists face choices. Aldo Nove’s syntax in Woobinda e altre storie senza lieto fine (Woobinda and Other Stories without a Happy Ending, 1996) and Superwoobinda (1998) shows his innate ability to recreate, in poetic ways, the squalor of industrialized northern Italy. The imagery in his settings is paralyzing, even in the literary flop Puerto Plata Market (1997). He wrote two Proustian novels, Amore mio infinito (My Endless Love, 2000) and La piu´ grande balena morta della Lombardia (The Biggest Dead Whale in Lombardy, 2004). Amore mio infinito remains poetic even when we read about Milan. But Nove’s elegy to Milan—further exemplified in his city guide Milano non e` Milano (Milan Is Not Milan, 2004)—is written according to his style. It is spectacular, ironic, satiric, a rap version of Lombard history. Along with Scarpa and Raul Montanari, Nove published Nelle galassie oggi come oggi (In the Galaxies Today as Today, 2001), a collection of poems based on the lyrics of some of the most 374

popular songs of the period. Once again high-low, hybrid culture, poetry, and musical texts are mingled, illustrating the Cannibali dictum that the very existence of an uncorrupted culture is impossible. Even though Silvia Ballestra, Isabella Santacroce, and Simona Vinci were not initially included in Gioventu´ cannibale, they share similar aims and literary methods. For example, with Compleanno dell’iguana (The Birthday of the Iguana, 1991), Ballestra (1969–) establishes herself as a famed writer of slangy fiction focused on urban youth, mostly in Milan where she lives. In 1996, Santacroce formed, with Scarpa and Nove, the group SS9. This year was important in the history of the Cannibali because so many of their works were published at that time, including Santacroce’s own Destroy; Tiziano Scarpa’s Occhi sulla graticola (Eyes on the Grill, 1996), an exhilarating love story notable for its offbeat sense of irony; and Aldo Nove’s Woobinda e altre storie senza lieto fine. While the fragment in Nove’s prose is devoid of any lexical refinement and deliberately flat and banal, Santacroce’s uses oxymoron and paradox to visualize a world turned upside-down. She writes in short sentences (unusual for Italian literary style). Thus far the legacy of Santacroce is to show that female narrative is more open in its presentation of sexuality. While Santacroce represents sexuality as transgressive and desperate, Simona Vinci writes about ambiguous sexuality with very different results. Aside from the different literary itineraries these writers have chosen, it is important to recognize their inexhaustible desire for describing a society in which people seem to have lost a clear sense of who they are and where they want to go. The desire to speak of human (or posthuman) beings is still the founding premise of the work of the Cannibali. In a world where the unbelievable happens all the time, fragmentary discourse, excessive lyricism, and merchandisable narrative become tools for representation. STEFANIA LUCAMANTE See also: Niccolo` Ammaniti, Rossana Campo, Simona Vinci Further Reading Barengo, Mario, Oltre il Novecento: appunti su un decennio di narrativa (1988–1998), Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 1999.

GINO CAPPONI Barilli, Renato, E` arrivata la nuova ondata: dalla neo alla neo-neoavanguardia, Turin: Testo & immagine;, 2000. Barilli, Renato, Nanni Balestrini, et al. (editors), Narrative Invaders: Narratori di Ricercare 1993–1999, Turin: Testo & immagine, 2000. Brolli, Daniele, Introductio to Gioventu´ Cannibale: la prima antologia dell’orrore estremo, Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Lucamante, Stefania (editor), Italian Pulp Fiction: The New Narrative of the Giovani Cannibali Writers,

Madison-Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh-Dickinson University Press, 2001. Ottonieri, Tommaso, La plastica della lingua: stili in fuga lungo un’eta` postrema, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000. Pezzarossa, Fulvio, C’era una volta il Pulp: corpo e letteratura nella tradizione italiana, Bologna: Clueb, 1999. Sinibaldi, Marino, Pulp: la letteratura nell’era della simultaneita`, Rome: Donzelli, 1997.

CANTOS See Cinque Canti (Work by Ludovico Ariosto)

GINO CAPPONI (1792–1876) Count Gino Capponi is considered one of the most influential personalities amongst the intellectuals who lived during the Italian Risorgimento. He was not only a politician, but also an economist, a philologist, an educator, a historian and one of the advisors of the founders of the Italian nation. He passionately read St. Augustine, Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal and formulated his personal pedagogical theories combining the thought of John Locke and Etienne de Condillac with that Anthony Shaftesbury and Jean Jacques Rousseau. He had also a close and fruitful relationship with Giampietro Viesseux, whose pedagogical ideas he shared. He developed an ethical-religious and personal notion of education that rejected any form of intellectual analysis of the educational process, whether on a philosophical basis, as in the case of the Jesuits, or on a scientific basis, as in the case of positivism. Capponi favoured the establishment of a public school system administered by the state and firmly believed both in the superiority of the study of the humanities over that of the sciences and in the preeminence of family and maternal education over that provided by public

schools. However, he did not produce any single work that can witness to the greatness of his intelligence, the breadth of his culture, and the strength of his style. Fragmentation seems to be the most evident characteristic of his literary production. Rich in critical acumen and expository clarity, Capponi’s prose displays evident classical influences in the articulation of its rhetorical structure. His Storia della Repubblica di Firenze (A History of the Republic of Florence, 1875) is one of the most significant products of Tuscan political thought of the Risorgimento. In 1843 the French writer Hortense Allart published the Histoire de la Republique de Florence. Upon the author’s request, Capponi contributed to it by adding some notes and by expanding or reducing certain sections. In the end, he wrote his own Storia, which was influenced by his disappointment over the failure of his government and the consequent return of the Grand Duke at the head of the Austrian troops after his overthrow in 1848. Because of its complex and troubled genesis, this is not an organic work, and it lacks unity in spite of some wonderful pages full of historical truth and the simple and effective writing style. 375

GINO CAPPONI The first book is an introduction to the city from its origins to the triumph of the Guelfs. The central section, which constitutes the core of the work, is more than a thousand pages long. The last ten pages describe in a concise way the historical events of the state from the collapse of the Republic to the wise rule of Leopoldo I. Storia di Pietro Leopoldo (A History of Pietro Leopoldo, 1877), one of his minor works, was begun in 1823 and never finished. Only the first chapter, which concisely analyses the origins and the characteristics of the absolute monarchies in Europe, and some other fragments remain. Capponi’s interest in Pietro Leopoldo, whose government of Tuscany in the eighteenth century was one of the most significant examples of enlightened despotism, clearly demonstrates his reformist attitude, which he shared with other liberal Tuscans. Capponi’s most significant work is Frammento sull’educazione (Fragment on Education, 1845). It can be considered the most important essay on education of the first half of the nineteenth century and certainly the one that best shows how Catholic thought influenced the liberal reform in Italy. Capponi starts by observing that, with the French Revolution, education shifted from the clergy to secular teachers, something that the Restoration was unable to change. The responsibility for this shift lay not with the Enlightenment but with the Jesuits who had inspired it. Pushed to its extreme consequences, the Enlightenment had denied itself, and Romanticism had risen from its ashes. After Napoleon’s fall, realizing the impossibility of going back to the old ways, people had begun reading Rousseau, and most misinterpreted him by taking him literally. Rousseau describes the kind of abstract education that must be avoided by educators at all costs. The core concept of his work is that, in the educational process, synthesis must prevail over analysis. Capponi condemns everything that makes reason prevail over the emotions and art over nature: Indeed, it is absurd to encourage sentiments by means of reason. Education should find its grounds within the family, with the support and the enlightenment of the ethical values of Catholicism. Profoundly sceptical regarding the validity of the educational methods of his times, Capponi saw history as a progressive unfolding, and, as good Catholic, he considered positively the educational function of the papacy. His conclusion was that the spiritual personality of the educator himself holds the secret for good results, but these results depend only on the will of the Divine Providence. Arguing further that education must also arise from the 376

history of a people and not from the solitary mind of a reformer, Capponi reached an obvious contradiction.

Biography Capponi was born on 13 September 1792 into an old and illustrious Florentine family. He traveled extensively throughout Italy, France, England (where he befriended Ugo Foscolo), Switzerland, Holland, and Germany; in Florence, he worked within the academies and other cultural associations and became a prominent personality in the Tuscan liberal Catholic party. He married the Marchioness Riccardi in 1811. Capponi founded the periodical L’Antologia with Giampietro Viesseux in 1821. He was elected senator of the Kingdom of Tuscany in 1848 (he was Prime Minister between 17 August and 12 September 1848). He supported annexation of Tuscany to Italy in 1859 and was senator of the Kingdom of Italy from 1860 to 1864. Capponi died in Florence, 3 February 1876. ANDREA BOSELLO Selected Works Collections Scritti editi e inediti di Gino Capponi, edited by Marco Tabarrini, 2 vols., Florence: Barbera, 1877. Scritti inediti, edited by Guglielmo Macchia, Florence: Le Monnier, 1957.

Historical Writings Sulla dominazione dei longobardi in Italia, 1844. Storia della Repubblica di Firenze, 1875. Storia di Pietro Leopoldo, 1877.

Letters Niccolo` Tommaseo e Gino Capponi. Carteggio inedito, dal 1833 al 1874, edited by Isidoro Del Lungo and Paolo Prunas, 1911–1932. Lettere di Capponi e di altri a lui, edited by Alessandro Carraresi, 1882–1990. Carteggio Capponi-Galiotti (1845–1875), edited by Aglaia Paoletti Lange´, 2002. Carteggio Capponi-Ridolfi (1817–1863), edited by Aglaia Paoletti Lange´, 2002.

Other Cinque lettere di economia toscana, 1845. Frammento sull’educazione, 1845.

Further Reading Bagnoli, Paolo (editor), Gino Capponi. Storia e progresso nell’Italia dell’Ottocento, Florence: Olschki, 1994. Bonafede, Giulio, La pedogogia di Gino Capponi, Palermo: Fiamma Serafica, 1971.

PAOLA CAPRIOLO Gambaro, Angiolo, La critica pedagogica di Gino Capponi, Bari: Laterza, 1956. Gentile, Giovanni, Gino Capponi e la cultura toscana nel secolo XIX, Florence: Vallecchi, 1922. Gentili, Rino, Gino Capponi, un aristocratico toscano dell’800, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974. Nencioni, Giovanni, Gino Capponi: linguista, storico, pensatore, Florence: Olschki, 1977.

Paoletti Lange´, Aglaia, Gino Capponi, un fiorentino europeo, Florence: Le Monnier 2000. Sestan, Ernesto, La Firenze di Vieusseux e di Capponi, Florence: Olschki, 1986. Spadolini, Giovanni, La Firenze di Gino Capponi fra restaurazione e romanticismo, Florence: Le Monnier, 1985. Treves, Piero, Ottocento italiano fra il nuovo e l’antico, Modena: Mucchi, 1992.

PAOLA CAPRIOLO (1962–) Much of Capriolo’s fiction might be classified as fantastic. In La spettatrice (The Woman Watching, 1995), for example, an actor turns to stone, Don Giovanni-style. In La grande Eulalia (The Great Eulalia, 1988), a young woman falls in love with a man inside a mirror and is at once magically transformed from an impoverished waif into a musical phenomenon and grande dame. An accomplished translator from German, including works of Goethe and Thomas Mann, Capriolo writes fiction often characterized by a gothic feel, creating labyrinthine, puzzling, often feudal or restorationstyle spaces whose inhabitants seem ghostly and ethereal. The appellations ‘‘fantastic’’ or ‘‘magical’’ cannot, however, capture the complexities of Capriolo’s works. The singularity of her style within the panorama of contemporary prose derives from the exceptional direction Capriolo’s fantastic bent takes. The scholar Gianfranco Contini observed in his introduction to the collection Italia magica (1988) that the literary sensibility toward ‘‘magic’’ appears too often geographical specific: It reigns, we think, in the foggy North or in the Orient. On the contrary, Italy, with its overbearing classical tradition, is usually considered to be bereft of ‘‘gothic’’ sensibilities, and authors of fantastic literature not fitting into the gothic or horror mode are said to belong in modern times to the currents of magical realism or, perhaps, surrealism. Yet these particular currents have characteristics that do not apply to Capriolo’s brand of fantasy. Contini noticed that Italian fantastic literature is often crossed with the burlesque mode. Paola Capriolo stands out as an exception because she creates subtly magical atmospheres and plots without including comic

or satirical notes. In her fiction, philosophy and the fantastic are blended in a masterly elegance of style. Combining psychological insights about the instability of the self with modern philosophical discourse on the relativity of individual perceptions, one of Capriolo’s most important themes is the labyrinth of existence. Her texts are often visionary, imagining in detail other, metaphysical, worlds—as when a character steps into a mirror world. Her novels are closely focused on characters in pursuit of something intangible that often proves their undoing. These characters are far from types, though, and their courageous flights into creativity (imagining lovers, for example) are unforgettable. Many live out obsessions that verge on madness. Though rife with visual and musical metaphors, Capriolo’s short stories and novels tend to leave settings and historical epochs indeterminate and enigmatic. For this reason and because of her use of magical elements, critics have often used the word ‘‘fable’’ to describe these narratives. The short novel Barbara (1998) provides an excellent example of a fablelike story with gothic elements. In it, a young knight’s father, fearful of losing his fiefdoms, arranges the son’s marriage to Barbara, the daughter of a nouveau riche family. The distant, cryptic Barbara insists that her betrothed, utterly smitten by her despite her ordinary looks, carry out the task of recovering a precious ring. In obtaining it, the handsome but naive knight commits a crime, murder; the marriage match is dissolved, the father’s lands are lost, and the son is eventually imprisoned. The protagonist seeks for years to unravel the enigma of the woman, embarking on exploits of various kinds, yet he is unable to 377

PAOLA CAPRIOLO exact the vengeance that he passionately desires. The symbolically unnatural, cruel, and unmaternal Barbara so puzzles the protagonist that he ‘‘creates’’ for himself an otherworldly, distant, nearly mythic being who becomes his only raison d’eˆtre. Perversely, she inspires him to ‘‘author’’ his own life and worldview, and as such she is a fearsome muse—a sadistic Beatrice or Laura of lyric fame. Ultimately, the knight’s destruction is complete. Only as an impoverished old man can he put together what now appear to him as the fragments of a lifetime around the empty space of Barbara’s mysterious aberrations. Barbara is not Capriolo’s only work to undertake a revision of a familiar genre such as the knight’s tale. Capriolo’s sophisticated rewritings of well-known myths and motifs of European intellectual life take the form of metafictions and are particularly well represented by the novel Vissi d’arte (Floria Tosca, 1992). The focus is diverted from the Tosca of the operatic narrative to the lustful, villainous Baron Scarpia, the police chief who tracks down political dissidents and arranges the hero’s execution and, indirectly, Tosca’s suicide. Written in diary form, the novel reformulates the problem of sadistic violence. Rather than follow a suspenseful melodrama, the reader learns the inner workings of perverse desire in the form of metafiction. In another accomplished novel, Una di loro (One of Them, 2001), echoes of nineteenthcentury Europe resonate in a love story between a hotel guest and an immigrant maid. The protagonist, a writer, discovers that a colony of poor and apparently homeless people have taken over an abandoned, eerie, grand-style hotel that once housed the aristocratic elite on holiday. The dense woods surrounding the unearthly place are menacing; and, in a twist on gothic romance, tree boughs are sporadically laden with trash from floods instead of serving as bandits’ lookouts. Capriolo presents us the decay of the European continent but also brings the elegant prose style and narrative wealth of its earlier eras into the new contexts of contemporary literature and its postmodern experimentation.

Biography Paola Capriolo was born in Milan on 1 January 1962. She earned her degree in philosophy from the University of Milan. Her first work of fiction, La grande Eulalia, won the Giuseppe Berto Prize in

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1988; Il nocchiero won the Premio Selezione Campiello in 1991. Capriolo works as a translator from German and writes for the culture section of the Corriere della sera. She lives in Milan. KEALA JEWELL Selected Works Fiction La grande Eulalia, 1988. Il nocchiero, 1989; translated as The Helmsman by William Weaver, 1991. La ragazza dalla stella d’oro e altri racconti, 1991. Il doppio regno, 1991; translated as The Dual Realm by Gillian Ania and Doug Thompson, 2000. Vissi d’amore, 1992; translated as Floria Tosca by Liz Heron, 1997. La spettatrice, 1995; translated as The Woman Watching by Liz Heron, 1998. Un uomo di carattere, 1996; translated as A Man of Character by Liz Heron, 2000. Barbara, 1998. Il sogno dell’agnello, 1999. Una di loro, 2001. Qualcosa nella notte: storia di Gilgamesh, signore di Uruk, e dell’uomo selvatico cresciuto tra le gazzelle, 2003.

Nonfiction L’assoluto artificiale: Nichilismo e mondo dell’espressione nell’opera saggistica di Gottfried Benn, 1996.

Further Reading Ania, Gillian, ‘‘At Capriolo’s Hotel: Heaven, Hell, and Other Worlds in Il Doppio Regno,’’ Italian Studies, 54 (1999): 132–156. Ania, Gillian, ‘‘Inside the Labyrinth: The Thematics of Space in the Fiction of Paola Capriolo,’’ Romance Studies, 18:2(2000): 157–171. Ania, Gillian, ‘‘Simulated Bodies: Transforming Relationships in Capriolo’s ‘La Donna di Pietra’ and Un Uomo di Carattere,’’ Spunti e Ricerche, 18(2003): 53–76. Basili, Sonia, ‘‘Il doppio regno e Oceano mare: Punti di confine e alibi di fuga nei personaggi di Paola Capriolo e Alessandro Baricco,’’ Narrativa, 10(1996): 185–206. Contini, Gianfranco (editor), Italia magica, Turin: Einaudi 1988. De Luca, Giovanna, ‘‘Un uomo di carattere di Paola Capriolo: Il movimento impossibile,’’ Quaderni d’Italianistica, 19: 2(1998): 137–143. Hipkins, Danielle, ‘‘Evil Ambiguities: The Fantastic Flight from Interpretation in Dino Buzzati’s Il deserto dei Tartari and Paola Capriolo’s Early Fiction,’’ Spunti e Ricerche, 13(1998): 81–98. Wilson, Rita, ‘‘The Space(s) of Myth in Paola Capriolo’s Con i miei mille occhi,’’ Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe/Italian Studies in Southern Africa, 12:2(1999): 37–57.

GIORGIO CAPRONI

GIORGIO CAPRONI (1912–1990) ‘‘Oggi tutti gli de`i e tutte le dee son morti’’ (All Gods and Goddesses are dead today): This quotation recalls the title of one of Giorgio Caproni’s most representative ‘‘scritture in versi’’ (verse writings), as he called them. Indeed, ‘‘il congedo’’ (farewell) is a favorite subject of his poetic speculation. His is departure without redemption, between despair and joy, often taking allegorical forms peculiar to musical variations, almost a sentimental oxymoron. In his life, he experienced a number of farewells, as when he left Genoa to move to Rome and also when he left Livorno—where he was born—for Genoa. He adopted the Ligurian capital and was linguistically educated there, if not in a dialectical sense, in the actual structure of the language, in its mentality. In fact, he remembered and lived Genoa as ‘‘citta` di continua musica per il vento,’’ ‘‘citta` dagli amori in salita’’ (the city of never-ending music for the wind, the city of climbing loves) (‘‘Sirena’’). Caproni is one of the most individual of modern Italian poets and one of the most inattuali (out-of-date), along with Vittorio Sereni and Attilio Bertolucci, often in opposition to Montale’s nobler and better-known literary position. Recently, renewed interest in twentieth-century counterpoetics—whose main representative is Pier Paolo Pasolini—has led to a new interest in Caproni. His interviews, correspondence, and essays are now read again, and even his work as a narrator, journalist, critic, and translator, though partially edited, is deemed important. After studying violin and composition, Caproni demonstrated a talent for narration, and his initial immediacy and sensory easiness, experienced in his first poetic works, gradually became a complex achievement. As a mature author, especially after fighting in World War II and then as a partisan in the Resistance, Caproni began to expose the inner tragedy of human life; he explored anatomically the pain of enduring loss while facing the void, a testament to the absence of God, even though it did not mean atheism, necessarily, as the poet himself often stated. As a youth he read both Spanish and South American Surrealists widely. He then felt the need for a more astute analysis of the poetical word,

from Giosue` Carducci to Umberto Saba and Carlo Betocchi’s musical realism. Thanks in part to his discovery of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s ‘‘word economy,’’ Caproni composed Come un’allegoria (Like an Allegory, 1936), his first collection, gathering 16 poems, 11 of which had already been published in literary reviews. Aldo Capasso, who wrote the preface, defined it as ‘‘descriptive poetry’’; poetry of things, almost a macchiaiolo style of writing, a lyricism based on rhythm and timbre, yet with some crepuscolare tones. Caproni experimented with being concise, through skilful variations; his images, almost allegorical signs, echo something that eludes reason and are therefore inevitably unattainable. In the sensory universe of Ballo a Fontanigorda (Dance at Fontanigorda, 1938), women begin to appear. The collection’s main subject is youth, described by Caproni as painfully fragile. These first two collections also outline the landscapes and emblematic milieu of his homely minded style, such as the image of the sea as a metaphor of female sensuality in ‘‘Spiaggia di sera’’ (Beach by Night); the Ligurian landscape and its dialect; the succession of days in a symbolic cycle of death, exemplified by the night in ‘‘Fine di un giorno’’ (End of a Day); and rebirth in ‘‘Prima luce’’ (First Light), a title in Latin from Julius Caesar’s Prima luce Caesar profectus est, which hints at dawn. In Finzioni (Deceitfulness, 1941) and Cronistoria (Chronicle, 1943), Caproni continually experimented with the closed form of the sonnet—as in the series of 18 ‘‘Sonetti dell’anniversario’’ (Anniversary Sonnets)—according to a new structure the poet himself defined as a ‘‘monoblocco’’ (‘‘monoblock’’). The formal technique consists of a steady use of enjambments, a modern style that also adheres to tradition, in accordance with Stravinsky’s modernist experimentalism in a still tonal language, an example that Caproni followed. Between 1940 and 1947 he wrote three short stories published in 1984 in Il labirinto (The Labyrinth), including ‘‘Giorni aperti’’ (Open Days), a recollection of war, and ‘‘Il labirinto,’’ on the Resistance struggles for liberation. These first literary documents— about the Italian army at the Western front and the partisan war—were written chronologically in 379

GIORGIO CAPRONI direct connection with the action and the events described. The following collection, Stanze della funicolare (Funicular Rooms, 1952), describing a funicular connecting the two very different sections of Genoa, seems to lead Caproni’s poetry further toward the themes of the metaphysical journey and the meeting with the limit, or as he calls it ‘‘il muro della terra o l’ultimo borgo’’ (the Earth’s wall or the last stop), the unknowable. Instead, Il passaggio d’Enea (The Passage of Aeneas, 1956) alludes to a monument in Genoa dedicated to Virgil’s hero, a monument for which no suitable place was found in the city squares. Caproni’s Virgilian antihero—‘‘figlio e nel contempo padre, Enea sofferse tutte le croci e le delizie che una tale condizione comporta’’ (son and father at the same time, Aeneas suffered both joys and pains for such a condition)—becomes the symbol of modern humankind, exiled and unable to cope under the weight of tradition and who need support following the fall of the myth. The sonnet form dominates the section entitled ‘‘Gli anni tedeschi’’ (The German Years), which is overwhelmed by the slaughter of war. Caproni gradually mistrusted the word, to the point of perceiving its ‘‘insufficienza’’ (inadequacy), dispelling the object it names, moving toward the exile of pure nominalism: ‘‘E chi si salvera` dal vento / muto sui morti — da tanto distrutto / pianto’’ (Who will survive the wind/ dumb on the dead / who will survive such a painful cry; ‘‘I lamenti 1’’). Il seme del piangere (The Seed of Weeping, 1959), a title taken from Dante’s Paradiso (Canto XXXI, v. 46), includes the important section ‘‘Versi livornesi’’ (Livornese Verses,), dedicated to the memory of his beloved mother, whose figure is celebrated in a loving relationship with a young girl. His rhymed couplets suggest the poetic desubjectification of the characters, if only in defying tradition (specifically, the Sicilian canzone and Guido Cavalcanti’s ballad). From the mid-1960s, the poet took on forms that were distinctively ironic. In the collection Congedo del viaggiatore cerimonioso & altre prosopopee (The Ceremonious Traveler’s Farewell and Other Prosopopoeis, 1965), which gathers the work of four years (September 1960–November 1964), his writing shows a theatrical, meta-literary bent, giving the (anonymous) characters a voice: Caproni called it ‘‘simulazione teatrale’’ or theatrical simulation (with a dedication to the actor Achille Millo). Il muro della terra (The Wall of the Earth, 1975), the title of which is the incipit of Canto X of Dante’s Inferno and hints at the boundaries of the walled city of 380

Dite, opened Caproni’s final poetic season. Repetition and the ironic use of parenthesis obstruct the prosodic stream, which is more typical than that of Caproni’s former works, up to the paradox of ‘‘Ritorno’’ (Going Back): ‘‘Sono tornato la` / dove non ero mai stato’’ (I went back there / where I had never been). Some of his last collections are ambitious poetic works as well. In Il Conte di Kevenhu¨ller (The Earl of Kevenhu¨ller, 1986), the theme of the hunt for evil (embodied by the Beast), partly anticipated in his 1982 Il franco cacciatore (The Free Hunter), carries on the game of ‘‘simulazione teatrale.’’ It was inspired by an eighteenth-century Avviso, or note, Caproni found, in which the Earl promised fifty sequins to the man who would kill a fierce beast infesting Milan. Res amissa (Lost Thing, 1991) leads instead to the edge of the darkness. This collection, published posthumously, is dedicated to the theme of Evil and Lost Good represented by the indefinite object hinted at in the title; it is perhaps the Grace given ab origine to humanity, who would not thus need any further Grace, what St. Augustine violently rejected in Pelagius’s notion of ‘‘admissible Grace.’’ As Giorgio Agamben noted in his introduction to the collection, nostalgia becomes a hopeless loss, clearing out a landscape almost totally empty, ‘‘taking leave of the farewell itself while entering the regions of extreme disengagement between man and God.’’ A definitive congedo is the main theme of Caproni’s last poetry that, beyond Redemption and Fall, expresses the joy of not belonging to worldly things. As in ‘‘Tombeau per Marcella’’ in Res amissa: ‘‘Ma che vale il lamento? / La legge e` la separazione’’ (What is grief worth? / Departing is the law).

Biography Giorgio Caproni was born in Livorno on January 7, 1912, to Attilio, an accountant, and Anna Picchi. From 1922 to 1938 he lived in Genoa, where he studied music and taught at the elementary school until 1973. He fought as a soldier in World War II and later in the anti-Fascist armed resistance in Alta Val Trebbia. In 1938, Caproni married Rina (Rosa Rettagliata) and had two children, Silvana and Mauro. In 1945 he moved to Rome. He was a delegate at The First World Intellectuals for Peace Congress in Wroclaw (Breslavia), Poland, August 25–28, 1948. Caproni was awarded the Viareggio Prize for Le stanze della funicolare (1952) and

GIORGIO CAPRONI Il seme del piangere (1959). In 1982, he received the Feltrinelli Prize for Poetry. Caproni died January 22, 1990, and is buried in Loco di Rovegno, in Val Trebbia; as he requested, only his name is on his grave. STEFANO TOMASSINI Selected Works Collections Poesie, 1932–1986, Milan: Garzanti, 1989. L’opera in versi, critical edition by Luca Zuliani, Milan: Mondadori, 1998.

Poetry ‘‘Come un’allegoria (1932–1935),’’ 1936. ‘‘Ballo a Fontanigorda,’’ 1938. ‘‘Finzioni,’’ 1941. ‘‘Cronistoria,’’ 1943. ‘‘Stanze della funicolare,’’ 1952. ‘‘Il passaggio d’Enea,’’ 1956. ‘‘Il seme del piangere,’’ 1959. ‘‘Congedo del viaggiatore cerimonioso & altre prosopopee,’’ 1965. ‘‘Il muro della terra,’’ 1975, as The Wall of the Earth (1964– 1975), translated by Pasquale Verdicchio, 1992. ‘‘Erba francese,’’ 1979. ‘‘Il franco cacciatore,’’ 1982. ‘‘Il Conte di Kevenhu¨ller,’’ 1986. ‘‘Res amissa,’’ edited by Giorgio Agamben, 1991. ‘‘L’opera in versi,’’ edited by Luca Zuliani, 1998. ‘‘I faticati giorni: quaderno veronese 1942,’’ edited by Adele Dei, 2000.

Fiction Giorni aperti. Itinerario di un reggimento dal fronte occidentale ai confini orientali, 1942. Il gelo della mattina, 1954. Il labirinto, 1984; reprinted, 1992. La valigia delle Indie e altre prose, edited by Adele Dei, 1998. Aeroporto delle rondini e altre cartoline di viaggio, 2000. Aria celeste e altri racconti, 2003.

Nonfiction Frammenti di un diario (1948–1949), edited by F. Nicolao, 1995. La scatola nera, edited by Giovanni Raboni, 1996.

Carissimo Giorgio, Carissimo Mario: Lettere 1942–1989, edited by Stefano Verdino, 2004. ‘‘Era cosı` bello parlare’’: conversazioni radiofoniche con Giorgio Caproni, 2004.

Translations Marcel Proust, Il tempo ritrovato, 1951. Rene´ Char, Poesia e prosa, 1962. Louis-Ferdinand Ce´line, Morte a credito, 1964. Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, 1965. Andre´ Fre´naud, Il silenzio di Genova e altre poesie, 1967. Andre´ Fre´naud, Non c’e` paradiso, 1971. Guillaume Apollinaire, Poesie, 1979. Gustave Flaubert, L’educazione sentimentale, 1997. Quaderno di traduzioni, edited by Enrico Testa, 1998.

Further Reading Baroncini, Daniela, Caproni e la poesia del nulla, Pisa: Pacini, 2002. De Marco, Giuseppe, Caproni poeta dell’antagonismo e altre occasioni esegetiche novecentesche, Genoa: Il melangolo, 2004. Dei, Adele, Le carte incrociate: Sulla poesia di Giorgio Caproni, Genoa: Edizioni San Marco dei Giustiniani, 2003. Dei, Adele, Giorgio Caproni, Milan: Mursia, 1992. Frabotta, Biancamaria, Giorgio Caproni: Il poeta del disincanto, Rome: Officina, 1993. Frabotta, Biancamaria, ‘‘Il seme del piangere di Giorgio Caproni,’’ in Letteratura italiana. Le Opere, vol 4, pt. 2, Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Genova a Giorgio Caproni, edited by Giorgio Devoto and Stefano Verdino, Genoa: San Marco dei Giustiniani, 1982. Leonelli, Giuseppe, Giorgio Caproni: Storia d’una poesia tra musica e retorica, Milan: Garzanti, 1997. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, ‘‘Giorgio Caproni,’’ in Poeti italiani del Novecento, Milan: Mondadori, 1978. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, ‘‘Per la poesia di Giorgio Caproni,’’ in Giorgio Caproni, L’opera in versi, edited by Luca Zuliani, Milan: Mondadori, 1998. Orlando, Roberto, La vita contraria: Sul Novecento di Giorgio Caproni, Lecce: Pensa, 1998. Scarpa, Raffaella, Sintassi e respiro nei sonetti di Giorgio Caproni, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004. Surdich, Luigi, Giorgio Caproni: Un ritratto, Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1990. Surdich, Luigi, Le idee e la poesia: Montale e Caproni, Genoa: Il Melangolo, 1998.

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LUIGI CAPUANA

LUIGI CAPUANA (1839–1915) A novelist and critic, Luigi Capuana played a crucial role in opening up Italian culture to the newest European trends at the end of the nineteenth century. Influenced by the theory of the death of poetry expressed by Angelo Camillo De Meis (1817–1891) in his autobiographical novel Dopo la laurea (After the Degree, 1868), Capuana formulated the hypothesis that the novel was the modern artistic form par excellence and that literary genres, like natural beings, are subject to the law of evolution. Thus, the novel represents the modern version of the ancient epic, a ‘‘mixed genre’’ whose realism, voided of fantastic and supernatural elements, fully expresses the modern sensibility dominated by the advent of positivist science. His wide-ranging interests led him to the discovery of the theories of physiologist Claude Bernard (1813–1878) and of sociologist Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), as well as those of E´mile Zola (1840–1902), to whom he dedicated many essays. He was profoundly influenced by literary realism, admiring especially the works of Victor Hugo, Honore´ de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert, while in philosophy he read Hegel’s works and absorbed the idealist doctrine. In 1865 he wrote his first short story, ‘‘Il dottor Cymbalus’’ (The Doctor Cymbalus) and planned the novel Adriana, which he never wrote. However, Capuana’s first important contribution to the literary debate were the theatrical reviews that he wrote between 1864 and 1868, while he lived in Florence, and later collected in the volume Il teatro italiano contemporaneo (Italian Contemporary Theatre, 1872), published in Palermo with the active cooperation of his friend Giuseppe Pitre´ (1841–1916), the founding figure in the study of folk culture in Sicily. In addition to the influence of the intellectual figures mentioned above, the volume witnesses to Capuana’s debt to the Florentine cultural milieu and in particular to the painter Telemaco Signorini and the critic Enrico Nencioni. From the latter, he took the notion of the need to redefine the canons of an authentically modern art, based on the observation of real events and their transposition onto paper. Consequently he revised his opinions about the theater and forcefully argued for the superiority of the novel over all other 382

artistic forms. His articles of literary criticism published between 1877 and 1882 and later included in the two volumes of Studi sulla letteratura contemporanea (Studies on Contemporary Literature, 1880–1882) also exemplify his scientific and evolutionary approach to literary forms. Articulating his theory of the modern novel, Capuana explained the meaning of the ‘‘positive method’’ in literature: The new art must set aside every form of subjectivity and adopt the method of modern science. For the text to be realistic and objective, the author must be invisible in his works and simply let realistic events with realistic characters unfold. Nevertheless, Capuana did not accept the naturalistic theories of Zola wholesale, preferring to consider naturalism simply as a method. The task of the artist should be to organize the narration in an organic way, but art cannot limit itself to photographing reality. Art is form, or rather the organization of data according to set principles in which the artist must use his imagination and not only represent what he sees. His involvement, however, must remain hidden, and this is the norm of the so-called canon of impersonality. In a later volume of criticism, Gli ismi contemporanei (Contemporary Isms, 1898), Capuana recognized the crisis of the novel and suggested some solutions to overcome it. Most importantly, he now considered the different schools as outdated and called for a return to realism interpreted, however, as a simple method of composition. In his last major theoretical statement La scienza della letteratura (The Science of Literature, 1902), Capuana’s theories found yet another arrangement, linking materialism and evolutionism, Taine and Darwin. Capuana was an eclectic writer and in his career wrote numerous short stories, novels, plays, and fables. Indeed, his eclecticism is evident in his themes as well, since while exalting the scientific method, he also cultivated his interests for the occult world, about which he wrote two important essays, Spiritismo? (Spiritualism?, 1884) and Mondo occulto (The Occult World, 1896), in addition to conducting experiments such as photographing ectoplasms. He also wrote works devoted to Sicilian traditions and history, including the provocative

LUIGI CAPUANA L’isola del sole (The Island of the Sun, 1898), in which he examined the phenomenon of ‘‘brigantaggio’’ and of the Mafia, arguing, against the false image of Sicily then common in Italy, that the island was not a land inhabited by violent and wild people but rather that its misery was quite common all over the world. In fact, the representation of Sicilian social reality constitutes an essential element in Capuana’s art, and many of his novels and short stories are set on the island. For example, he presented its corrupted clergy in the short story ‘‘Breviario di quaranta fogli’’ (A Forty-Sheet Breviary), from the collection Dalla terra natale (From the Native World, 1915), which features the figure of Dean Monitore, who prefers playing cards to performing his priestly office, or in ‘‘I bestia’’ (The Animals), from Anime a nudo (Naked Souls, 1900), in which the priest Don Bastiano devotes himself above all to the pleasures of the table. Indeed, all classes, including peasants and the bourgeoisie, come under scrutiny and are described realistically, with their financial or psychological problems. Capuana made his literary debut in 1877 with the collection of six short stories Profili di donne (Portraits of Women), which presents women involved in a variety of love relations. In every story, the plot is slight, as the writer was more interested in focusing on the psychology of his characters, articulating a phenomenology of love based on a series of fixed stereotype, and contrasting the passionate temperament of women to the superficiality and egoism of men. Following a fortunate trend of nineteenth-century fiction, Capuana privileged the portrayal of the middleclass and of drawing-room environments, where superficial amorous intrigues develop. The psychology of the characters is analysed using a scientific and analytical method, and as a result the passion of love is derived from psychological factors linked to organic physiology, especially in women. In ‘‘Fasma,’’ for instance, the author considered the repercussions on the body of a psyche tormented by the sentiment of love. At the same time, Capuana attempted to apply the principles of realism by writing some tranches de vie, ‘‘slices’’ of reality presented in an objective way, a task in which he had some difficulties, especially with language. In an attempt to overcome his Sicilian dialect, he wrote in a language that was too close to literary Tuscan and too rich in archaic words to sound like common speech. The problem is present also in Giacinta (1879), a ‘‘documento umano’’

(human document) in the vein of Zola, to whom it is dedicated. The novel, based on a true story told to the author by his friend the Senator Lorenzo De Luca during one of their walks in Rome, revolves around Giacinta, a woman who as a young girl was raped by the cruel Beppe. As an adult, this event marks her psychology. She falls in love with Andrea Gerace and takes him as a lover, preferring to marry a dull suitor, and accepting with full awareness the role of dishonored woman to which she was predestined after the rape. The growing mental illness that will lead her to commit suicide is examined by Doctor Follini, Capuana’s alter ego. The internal world of the character is thus scientifically analyzed in all its aspects, and such analysis represents the most important element in the novel. Giacinta thus effected a clear and revolutionary break with the Catholic tradition, represented by Alessandro Manzoni, and as a result was branded immoral upon publication. For its adherence to the principles of Zola’s naturalism, the novel is considered a sort of manifesto of early Italian verismo. The novel Profumo (Perfume, 1892), first published in instalments in Nuova Antologia, shows a partial overcoming of Capuana’s previous influences and his adhesion to the new cultural models of decadent culture, from Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Verlaine to Joris Karl Huysmans and Gabriele D’Annunzio. As a result, the decadent theme of ‘‘disease’’ becomes the focal point of the new novel, the protagonists of which are Patrizio Moro-Lanza and his wife Eugenia. Their family life is disturbed by Gertrude, Patrizio’s mother. In a backward, patriarchal Sicily, the tragedy of a man torn between his love for his wife and the Oedipal love for his mother is enacted. After many torments, Eugenia falls prey to a terrible hysterical crisis, and she inexplicably emanates a perfume of orange blossom from her skin. However, she is far from mad: On the contrary, she plans an adulterous relationship with the young man Ruggiero. However, the affair does not happen, and the woman finally rejoins her husband, now finally free from the morbid bond with his mother. The most relevant element in this novel lies not in the setting but in the acute psychological analysis of the main characters and in particular of what Freud will later call the unconscious, although still considered from a fundamentally objective and external perspective. Without a doubt Capuana’s masterpiece is Il marchese di Roccaverdina (The Marquis of 383

LUIGI CAPUANA Roccaverdina). The product of a long gestation, the novel appeared in 1901, when the age of realism was almost at an end. Once again, the topic is a family tragedy. A Sicilian nobleman, the Marquis of Roccaverdina, kills his lover Agrippina Solmo’s husband, and as a result an innocent is accused of the crime and dies in prison. The marquis now lives in the pangs of remorse, made worse by the lawyer Don Aquilante’s fondness of spiritualism, as he declares that he is in touch with the spirit of the dead man. At the end the marquis can no longer bear the weight of his guilt and commits suicide. In addition to the careful representation of the protagonist’s mental breakdown, the novel also offers an effective rendition of the life of a Sicilian village of the nineteenth century, Rabbato, described using the usual objective method. The reality that emerges is one still dominated by feudal social relations, in which the rich and proud aristocrats can abuse their subordinates and live outside the law. Capuana also wrote for the stage. His most successful theatrical works were his plays in dialect, contaminated by Italian to express the language of the Sicilian petit bourgeoisie. While he turned to the theater for its financial rewards and the hope of recognition (but also following the example of his friend Giovanni Verga), his naturalism presented a number of original elements. In Malia, first produced in 1891 and published in Teatro dialettale siciliano (Theater in Sicilian Dialect, 1911–1912), the protagonist Jana lives a lacerating inner drama that leads her to death. The traditional ingredients of the theater of verismo (honor, passion, greed) are thus reinterpreted in a new framework. His best-known work, however, is Lu paraninfu (The Paranymph, 1914), the story of a retired officer, Don Pasquali Minnedda, whose only obsession is arranging marriages, from which ensue all kinds of misunderstandings and comic situations, thanks also to a lively cast of ridiculous secondary characters leading up to the inevitable happy ending. After the publication of Il Marchese di Roccaverdina, Capuana worked intensely and published numerous volumes of short fiction and essays in which he confirmed his sensitivity and receptiveness for the new literary tendencies of the time but above all expressed an increasingly disenchanted and sceptical vision of the world. He thus gradually overcame his previous adhesion to the canons of positivism and reached the belief that the ‘‘isms’’ that had flourished in literature all had a relative value. 384

Biography Luigi Capuana was born in Mineo (Catania) on 29 May 1839, the firstborn son of a large rich family, and spent his childhood in Mineo, influenced by his Uncle Antonio, who educated him and convinced him to study law. He moved to Catania, 1857, where he befriended poets and men of letters, showing a natural inclination for classical studies. He worked with the Sicilian poet Lionardo Vigo on the composition of a collection of Sicilian songs, some invented but passed off as more ancient works. Capuana supported the national unification process and devoted his life to intense political activity, 1859. He lived in Florence, 1864–1869, where he met Giovanni Verga and worked as a theater critic. He served as mayor of Mineo, 1870–1876. He lived in Rome where he remained, 1888–1902, where he contributed to periodicals such as Fanfulla della domenica and Cronaca Bizantina and established relationships with critics and writers like Gabriele D’Annunzio. He taught at the university, 1890. In 1902 he returned to Catania, where he taught at the local university, 1910. He married Adelaide Bernardini, 1908. Luigi Capuana died on 29 November 1915. ALFREDO SGROI See also: Verismo Selected Works Novels Giacinta, 1879; Giacinta: secondo la prima edizione del 1879, edited by Marina Taglieri, 1998. Profumo, 1892. Il marchese di Roccaverdina, 1901. Rassegnazione, 1907; edited by Luciana Pasquini, 2000.

Short Stories ‘‘Profili di donne,’’ 1877. ‘‘Storia fosca,’’ 1883. ‘‘Homo,’’ 1883. ‘‘Fumando,’’ 1889. ‘‘Le appassionate,’’ 1893. ‘‘Le paesane,’’ 1894. ‘‘Nuove ‘‘paesane,’’ 1898. ‘‘Anime a nudo,’’ 1900. ‘‘Il Decameroncino,’’ 1901. ‘‘Delitto ideale,’’ 1902. ‘‘Un vampiro,’’ 1907. ‘‘Passa l’amore,’’ 1908. ‘‘Nel paese della Za`gara,’’ 1910. ‘‘La volutta` di creare,’’ 1911. ‘‘Gli ‘‘Americani’’ di Rabbato,’’ 1912. ‘‘Dalla terra natale,’’ 1915. ‘‘Le ultime paesane,’’ 1922.

VINCENZO CARDARELLI Poetry ‘‘Semiritmi,’’ 1888.

Plays Garibaldi, 1861. Giacinta, 1890. Teatro dialettale siciliano, vols. 1–3, 1911–1912; vols. 4–5, 1920–1921. Lu paraninfu, 1914. Ribelli: dramma inedito, edited by Gianni Oliva, 1981.

Essays Il teatro italiano contemporaneo, 1872. Studi sulla letteratura contemporanea, 2 vols., 1880–1882. Spiritismo?, 1884. Per l’arte, 1885; edited by Riccardo Scrivano, 1994. Libri e teatro, 1892. Mondo occulto, 1896; edited by Simona Cigliata, 1995. Gli ismi contemporanei, 1898. L’isola del sole, 1898. La scienza della letteratura, 1902.

Letters Carteggio Verga-Capuana, edited by Gino Raya, 1984. Luigi Capuana e le carte messaggiere, edited by Sarah Zappulla Muscara`, 2 vols., 1996. Lettere inedite a Lionardo Vigo (1857–1875), edited by Luciana Pasquini, 2002.

Further Reading Gallini, Clara, La sonnambula meravigliosa. Magnetismo e ipnotismo dell’Ottocento italiano, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983. La Monaca, Donatella, Il marchese e la maestrina: Luigi Capuana e altri studi, Caltanissetta: Sciascia, 2003. Madrignani, Carlo Alberto, Capuana e il naturalismo, Bari: Laterza, 1970. Pestelli, Carlo, Capuana novelliere. Stile della prosa e prosa in ‘‘stile,’’ Povegliano Veronese: Gutenberg, 1991. Raya, Gino, Bibliografia di Luigi Capuana, 1839–1968, Rome: Ciranna, 1969. Romagnoli Robuschi, Giuseppina, Luigi Capuana, scrittore per l’infanzia, Milan: Le stelle, 1969. Santangelo, Vincenzo, Luigi Capuana e i suoi critici, Rome: Ciranna, 1969. Scalia, Samuel Eugene, Luigi Capuana and His Times, New York: Vanni, 1952. Sipala, Paolo Mario, Capuana e Pirandello: storia e testi di una relazione letteraria, Catania: Bonanno, 1974. Storti Abate, Anna, Introduzione a Capuana, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1989. Traversa, Vincenzo, Luigi Capuana, Critic and Novelist, The Hague: Mouton, 1968. Tropea, Mario, Nomi ethos follia negli scrittori siciliani tra Ottocento e Novecento, Caltanissetta: Lussografica, 2000.

VINCENZO CARDARELLI (1887–1959) Writer and poet Vincenzo Cardarelli is mostly considered in relation with the literary experience of the periodical La Ronda, of which he was one of the founders, and, for a short time, also director, as well as the main theoretician. Self-taught, he consolidated his culture through readings of modern and contemporary authors, with a preference for French writers such as Blaise Pascal, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Charles Pe´guy. Later on, he ‘‘discovered’’ Giacomo Leopardi, and particularly his Operette morali (Moral Essays, 1827), who became the principal model in his new poetics. He in fact began advocating a return to formal classicism, based on a refined prose, freed from sentimentalism and controlled by reason. Thus, Cardarelli intended to distance himself from the literary tendencies of the early twentieth century, characterized by experimentalism and the refusal of the Italian literary canons. He discarded the Italian authors after Leopardi, particularly

Giovanni Pascoli, to whom he dedicates a rather polemical survey in La Ronda, Gabriele D’Annunzio, the Futurists, the crepuscolari poets, the early works of Ungaretti, and also the experience of La Voce, a journal with which he had previously collaborated. Against the extremism of the avant-gardes, Cardarelli proposed a form of ‘‘ritorno all’ordine’’ (return to order), meaning that the literary discourse should be characterized by a quiet regularity, a classical prose, intellectual and meditative tones, the richness of a solid morality, and should avoid any autobiographical gratification. In fact, though Cardarelli’s works show autobiographical references, they are changed into a profound meditation, a means for measuring human destiny and its relationship with nature. The stream of his poetry is constantly interrupted by the determination of explaining, commenting, motivating his choice for a chosen subject and style of writing. In this way, Cardarelli intended ‘‘to 385

VINCENZO CARDARELLI show an absolute model of prose, and he succeeds in this by denying any form of eloquence, any emotional writing, any verbal gratification (Folco Portinari, et al., ‘‘Il secondo Ottocento e il Novecento,’’ 1996). It is difficult to isolate a single work in Cardarelli’s production, as his whole opus is characterized by a continuous stylistic commitment to create an authentic ‘‘prosa d’arte.’’ His first work, Prologhi (Prologues, 1916), is often considered by critics as his best. It is a collection of prose and poetic writings, structured according to a scheme that will return also in the following works, Viaggi nel tempo (Journeys in Time, 1920) and Favole e memorie (Fables and Memories, 1925). The collection comprises 12 lyrics and a prose section that has the form of a poem in prose. The Prologhi begins with the author presenting himself and his art, underlining his limits, the clashes in his soul, and his aspirations. It is an internal dialogue that already reveals some of Cardarelli’s central themes, such as the sentiment of time, solitude, and the search for an elegant language. Viaggi nel tempo, which reproposes the same mixed structure of prose and poetry, is a transitional work. Here, Cardarelli enriched the precedent selection of topics with the theme of the encounters: encounters with nature, women, or historical literary figures such as Socrates, Ibsen, and Leopardi. The journeys of the title are quests for the meaning of life, and they start from the awareness that Cardarelli found in Leopardi’s works of the flowing of time and the endless repetition of the seasons, which underline the precariousness of the self. By alternating prose and poetry the poet also moved between instinctive and meditative moments, in the second of which he submitted his soul to the control of reason. In Prologhi, viaggi, favole (Prologues, Journeys, Tales, 1929), the author attempted a new vision of the universe with a journey at the origins of time. He searched for the self through the myths of humanity that he read with a Leopardian allegorical eye. He then reproposed and reread the biblical tales since the creation of humanity, and a sense of human suffering powerfully emerges. Poesie (Poems, 1936), published in successive stages (enlarged editions appeared in 1942 and 1946), accompanied Cardarelli throughout his artistic life. In comparison with the prose writings, his lyrics appear more linear and communicative, openly opposing the hermetic poetry that was becoming established in the same years. His poems unfold with linearity and clarity, yet not without a meditative tone and stylistic elegance. They show a 386

tendency to prose, however, often allowing for long passages of landscape descriptions, portraits of women, melancholic evocations of the end of youth, and the despair for the end of a love. Through his entire artistic production, Cardarelli incessantly returned to the question of the sentiment of death, and, with it, to related themes such as the consuming action of time, life’s progression to its extreme limit, youth yielding to old age. Yet, before death, the author dwelled also on solitude, though with illusory moments of trust in friendship, as in the poem ‘‘Amicizia’’ (Friendship, 1936): Noi non ci conosciamo. Penso ai giorni che, perduti nel tempo, c’incontrammo, alla nostra incresciosa intimita`. Ci siamo sempre lasciati senza salutarci, con pentimenti e scuse da lontano. Ci siam rispettati al passo, bestie caute, cacciatori affinati, a sostenere faticosamente la nostra parte di estranei. Ritrosie disperanti, pause vertiginose e insormontabili, dicevan, nelle nostre confidenze, il contatto evitato e il vano incanto. Qualcosa ci e` sempre rimasto, amaro vanto di non ceduto ai nostri abbandoni, qualcosa ci e` sempre mancato we do not know each other. I think of the day that, lost in time, we met, our unfortunate regrettable intimacy. We always left without saying goodbye, with regrets and apologies from far away. We showed respected at the step cautious animals, keen hunters, laboriously bearing our role as strangers. Despairing reluctances, vertiginous and insurmountable pauses, they spoke, in our confidences, of the avoided contact and the vain enchantment. Something was always left, sour pride of not surrendering to our abandons something we always missed

Other recurrent themes in Cardarelli’s lyrics are disappointment, refusal of love, the departing from beloved people and things, and the ultimate conclusion, where everything is canceled out. All

VINCENZO CARDARELLI these themes are then related to the sentiment of time, which almost entirely dominates his poetry. The apprehension and uncertainty characterizing his art find an explanation in his awareness of the changing of the self, in the recognition of the inexorable passage of the seasons and life. Thus, the poet needs to travel back in time to find the origins and the explanations of human life. These are journeys both in time and space, either to physical or imaginary places, often intended to exorcize death and exalt life. Yet, his journeys to the past also presuppose returns and rediscoveries, such as the one in Il sole a picco (The High Sun, 1929), in which the author experienced the land of his origins, the Etruscan civilization, the places of his childhood, and its beloved people, getting a grasp of the self through memory. Another important theme in Cardarelli’s art is nature, not only in the descriptions of seasons, nocturnal landscapes, dawns, and sunsets, but also in the evocation of the places of his childhood, magnified through the eyes of the imagination. Without surrendering to Romanticism, the author transferred his state of mind onto nature and found a perfect consonance between humanity and the surrounding landscape, between imagination and reality. In the rich variety of topics characterizing Cardarelli’s poetry, there is however a stylistic and inventive consistency, which, as Carmine Di Biase showed, ‘‘focuses and revolves around the central theme of the sentiment of time-space, whose passing and changing mark the very rhythm of life’’ (Invito alla lettura di Vincenzo Cardarelli, 1975).

Biography Vincenzo Cardarelli (pseudonym of Nazareno Caldarelli) was born in Corneto (today Tarquinia, Viterbo) on May 1, 1887. From a modest family, he spent the first part of his life in his native town, where he attended school, though irregularly because of his father’s opposition. After his father’s death, he left Tarquinia to Rome, where he began his cultural and journalistic apprenticeship as theater critic for the Socialist newspaper Avanti!, 1906. Cardarelli met the writer Sibilla Aleramo, with whom he had a relationship until 1912. He contributed to cultural journals such as Il Marzocco, La Voce, and Lirica. After a period in Florence (1911– 1914), he settled definitely in Rome, where, in 1919, he founded, together with Riccardo Bacchelli, Emilio Cecchi, and Antonio Baldini, the literary magazine La Ronda, from where he fought for a

classicist restoration modeled on Leopardi’s example. He traveled to Russia as a reporter for the newspaper Il Tevere, 1928. During World War II and in the postwar years, Cardarelli suffered from a physical paralysis and retreated in increasing isolation, which reinforced his reputation as an unsociable person. He was awarded the Strega Prize for Villa Tarantola, 1948. He directed the periodical La Fiera Letteraria and was a theater critic for the daily Il Tempo, 1949–1955. Cardarelli died on June 18, 1959, in Rome, at the hospital of the Polyclinic from a thrombosis complicated by bronchial pneumonia. PAOLO QUAZZOLO Selected Works Collections Opere complete, edited by Giuseppe Raimondi, Milan: Mondadori, 1962.

Prose Terra genitrice, 1924. Favole e memorie, 1925. Il sole a picco, 1929. Prologhi, viaggi, favole, 1929. Parole all’orecchio, 1929. Parliamo dell’Italia, 1931. Il cielo sulle citta`, 1939. Rimorsi, 1944. Lettere non spedite, 1946. Solitario in Arcadia, 1947. Villa Tarantola, 1948. Il viaggiatore insocievole, 1953. Viaggio d’un poeta in Russia, 1954.

Poetry ‘‘Prologhi,’’ 1916. ‘‘Viaggi nel tempo,’’ 1920. ‘‘Giorni in piena,’’ 1934. ‘‘Poesie,’’ 1936; expanded edition, 1942; expanded edition, 1948. ‘‘Poesie nuove,’’ 1946. ‘‘Invettiva e altre poesie disperse,’’ edited by Bruno Blasi and Vanni Scheiwiller, 1964.

Further Reading Benevento, Aurelio, Vincenzo Cardarelli: l’opera in versi e in prosa, Naples: Loffredo, 1996. Boni, Massimiliano, Cardarelli, Montale, Tilgher: appunti per un ritratto e quattro note, Bologna: EDIM, 1980. Burdett, Charles, Vincenzo Cardarelli and His Contemporaries: Fascist Politics and Literary Culture, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1999. D’ Alerio, Dante, Vincenzo Cardarelli sindacalista rivoluzionario: politica e letteratura in Italia nel primo Novecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 2005.

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VINCENZO CARDARELLI Di Biase, Carmine, Invito alla lettura di Vincenzo Cardarelli, Milan: Mursia, 1975. Fuselli, Roberto, Sul cammino di Cardarelli, Bologna: Massimo Boni, 1985. Grasso, Giuseppe, La poesia di Vincenzo Cardarelli, Rome: Cadmo, 1982. Martellini, Luigi (editor), Vincenzo Cardarelli: il sogno, la scrittura, Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2003. Piccioni, Leone, Cardarelliana, Florence: Panati, 1993.

Portinari, Folco, et al., ‘‘Il secondo Ottocento e il Novecento,’’ in Storia della civilta` letteraria italiana, edited by Giorgio Ba`rberi Squarotti, vol. 6, Turin: UTET, 1996. Romani, Bruno, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1972. Vecchio, Salvatore, Vincenzo Cardarelli: l’etrusco di Tarquinia, Rome: Edizioni Italiane di Letteratura e Scienze, 1989.

GIOSUE` CARDUCCI (1835–1907) Whether considered as a late and even anachronistic chapter in the history of Italian classicism, or as an anticipation of the ‘‘dark’’ and disillusioned sensibilities of post-Romantic scapigliatura, Giosue` Carducci’s anti-Romantic poetry, written in the critical years 1857–1899, is representative of all the passions, illusions, and disillusionments inspired by the Italian Risorgimento. Raised in the provincial, dormant Tuscan Maremma and then educated in Florence at the Jesuit College of the Scolopi by the hyper-classicist and ‘‘Tuscanist’’ Father Geremia Barsottini, Carducci soon found himself caught up in the querelle of classicists and romantics that characterized Florentine intellectual life in the 1850s. As the heir of an artistic patrimony—Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Renaissance—that had been eclipsed by the recent cultural hegemony of Milan, Florence resisted all trends coming from the new cultural capital. The novel, above all, which Milanese Alessandro Manzoni had theorized and promoted as the Romantic genre par excellence, was denounced by the local intelligentsia as a fundamentally un-Italian literary form. Against the ‘‘foreign’’ novels of Walter Scott and Manzoni, the academies and journals of Florence advocated, with a mixture of narrowmindedness and sheer dilettantism, a return to the classical genres and forms (such as the sonnet) of the great Tuscan writers of the trecento. Under the slogan ‘‘we ought to be Italians,’’ Carducci gave intellectual coherence and poetic substance to this otherwise sterile parochialism, which, by 1856, has been institutionalized in the academic circle of the Amici Pedanti. The program of the Amici Pedanti led by Carducci had one single 388

objective, which was political and cultural at the same time. First, after the failure of the revolutions of 1848, the Amici called for a departure from radical Jacobean politics fashioned on the model of the French Revolution and proposed a more Italian type of liberal or socialist reformism. Second, from a cultural perspective, they felt the need to dispose of the Romantic experience as a whole, since it was responsible for the contamination of Italian culture with foreign models. For Carducci and his circles, the Risorgimento and the Unification were inseparable from the question of national culture. On May 18, 1856, Carducci wrote to his Pedante friend Giuseppe Chiarini complaining that the peninsula was not only occupied militarily but was also subject to a literary invasion. From this xenophobic point of view, a return to classicism meant nothing less than a resistance against all foreign yokes, and the restoration of the civic poetry of Dante and Petrarch, as well as Alfieri, Foscolo, and Leopardi. That Carducci, in his spirited defenses of national culture, often assumed that what is national equals Tuscan, remains one of the critical problems about his work. He is deeply convinced, for instance, that the question of national language, which engaged the likes of Alessandro Manzoni and Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, was but an irrelevant one. Despite all evidence to the contrary, for Carducci, Italians had one language, and that language was Tuscan. Furthermore, the Tuscan one found in Dante or Leopardi was not the highly individualized language of the Romantic bourgeoisie but a classicist encounter of aristocratic and popular language. In sum, it was national and popular.

GIOSUE` CARDUCCI Carducci’s first poetic collections, the Rime (Rhymes, 1857), or Rime di San Miniato from its place of publication, and the Juvenilia (Poems of Youth), which were published in Levia gravia (Light and Heavy, 1868), show such a mixture of professed nationalism and anti-Manzonism. In adherence to classicist precepts of imitatio, these collections can be viewed as early exercises in which the aspiring poet learns the art of the trade by emulating established models: for love poetry (Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Petrarch), for elegy (Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi), and for satirical invective (Giuseppe Giusti). The praise of the ancients as examples of high style and lofty civic engagement, which provides the material for many poems, is indeed explicit in the Dedication and Preface of Juvenilia. It is also a pretext to chastise contemporary ‘‘sophists and poets.’’ Thus, for Carducci, the rich apparatus of classical citations, allusions, and reminiscences represents a form of poetic militancy against the corruption of both taste and virtue in present-day Italy. Classicism becomes a cultural program that identifies poetic value with the overcoming of Romantic sentimentalism and a return to the civic morality of the poet-patriot. An interesting by-product of such an exercise in classicism is, paradoxically, linguistic hybridism: The more Carducci reverts to a classical (if not archaic) lexicon, the more he is forced to coin neologisms in order adequately portray present-day reality. In this coexistence of Homeric battlefields and cannonballs with Republican Rome and ‘‘liverpolica’’ (Liverpoolian) England, of Horace with ‘‘Voltero’’ (Voltaire), lies perhaps the most interesting aspect of Carducci’s early poems, which are an important chapter in the history of the modernization of Italian literary language. In 1860, Carducci moved from Florence to Bologna, where he was called to teach at the university. The change was an important one because it offered him the possibility to mold, as a teacher and academic, future generations of educators and poets (Giovanni Pascoli was among his students). Leaving Florence also meant a widening of his cultural horizon well beyond the Amici Pedanti. From this point on, Carducci no longer resisted foreign literary invasions and began to read the socialist Proudhon, the Romantic Sainte-Beuve, and even the European Romantics par excellence, Heinrich Heine and Victor Hugo. He was also exposed to the radical environment of Bolognese revolutionaries. For example, the ‘‘Inno a Satana’’ (Hymn to Satan, 1865), like many of the poems composed in the 1860s and published in Levia

Gravia (under the pseudonym of Enotrio Romano), reacts to the historical events that were shaping the new Italy. Carlo Pisacane’s heroic expeditions to Ponza and Sapri to free the Italian patriots from Austrian jails, and, most importantly, Giuseppe Garibaldi’s liberation of Sicily from the Bourbons in 1860, created a climate of revolutionary euphoria, in which Carducci poetically partook. In ‘‘Inno a Satana’’ (a William Blake–like allegory of Revolution and Reaction, which he would later disclaim as youthful radicalism), he singled out two forces driving European history: Satan, symbolizing health, progress, democratic freedom, and the revolutionary will of the people; and the anti-Satan, embodying the force of despotism, malady, and decadence institutionalized in the forms of political and religious power. Attacked by contemporaries not for its anticlericalism but for being antidemocratic (its populist celebration of revolutions is imbued with obscure classicist allusions), the ‘‘Inno a Satana’’ sets the tone of youthful rebellion, maudit Satanism, Baudelairian posing, and moralistic denunciation of petty bourgeois mentality. In other poems more overt is the sense that Satan’s work is unstoppable, and that the poetry of revolution, in the 1860s, has decayed into the prose of a mediocre political reality. Levia Gravia is perhaps the most ambivalent of Carducci’s collections: along with a certain euphoria for Italy’s Unification, there is a profound sense of disillusionment, exemplary of an entire generation, for the incompleteness of the Unification (papal Rome was annexed only in 1870). Carducci’s dismay at the inability of the Italians, whose virtues he had sung in the Juvenilia, to achieve anything without international negotiations and foreign aide, is genuine. Giambi ed epodi (Iambics and Epodes, 1882), collecting poems from 1867 to 1879, reaffirms Carducci’s civic indignation and social denunciation already present in Levia gravia but also begins, from its very title, a new epoch of metric experimentation. The iambics Carducci had in mind were those of Greek and Latin classical satiric poetry, notably Archilocus and Horace. The term ‘‘epodes’’ alludes to the rhythm and prosody of ancient satire. The overall satiric tone attests to Carducci’s continued faith in the loftiest ideals of civic life and to his frustration at a less heroic reality that fails to meet his high standards. While still indebted to the model of civic and even militant poetry, Giambi ed epodi introduces a new dimension to Carducci’s poetics of disillusionment: the impotence of poetry to change or even influence 389

GIOSUE` CARDUCCI historical reality. But what the poet could not accomplish, indeed il popolo (the people) can: This is truly the leitmotif of the collection. Carducci’s popolo is endowed with the whole repertoire of Romantic virtues: uncontaminated instincts and superior ideals, always ready to fight for a new cause, always ready for martyrdom and heroism. It is utterly committed and selfless. Carducci, who was once accused of writing about revolutions but never participating in one, excused himself on the account of having to feed his family. The antithesis of such popular virtues is of course Italy’s hegemonic ruling class, the despicable bourgeoisie of parliamentary negotiations and half measures, but also, and more importantly, the intellectuals, like Carducci himself, who failed to lead the people to their just historical nemesis. As Giambi ed epodi concludes with the poet’s mea culpa, the annexation of Rome and the normalization of the political situation seem to relieve Carducci from his defiant civic responsibilities. The satirical Muse made room for a more docile, homely Muse. In a letter to his old friend Chiarini dated 10 December 1871, Carducci communicated his intention to leave satirical poetry behind in favor of a pure form of art for art’s sake. As a matter of fact, by disposing of the tone of invective that had defined Giambi ed epodi, the poet also relinquished the mythical Frankenstein he had contributed to create: that is, the people. Convinced by now that the Italian Unification process had exhausted its historical course, Carducci believed that internal peace should be the next goal. But internal peace was jeopardized by peasants asking for the longpromised redistribution of lands and church estates; by workers’ strikes in Milan and Turin; by the formation of a revolutionary International; and by the panic caused by news of the Paris Commune spreading in Italy. It is therefore not surprising that the diagnosis was that the people should be stopped and the bourgeoisie protected. Carducci turned monarchist. He wrote a poem entitled ‘‘Alla regina d’Italia’’ (To the Queen of Italy. 1878) and even a curious essay, ‘‘Eterno femminino regale’’ (The Eternal Regal Feminine, 1882), which claimed that the monarchy was, in Italy, the only ‘‘realized ideal.’’ The transformation of the revolutionary poet into an institutional one, and the shift from invective to more elegant tones, ensured the possibility of Carducci becoming the literary giant, the best seller of the new Italy. In these years, working-class crowds cheered him, the bourgeois bought his books, and the nobility courted his presence in its salons: Carducci had become a 390

national icon—responsible for shaping the cultural and poetic physiognomy of a unified country. Rime nuove (New Lyrics, 1887) and the third edition of Odi barbare (Barbaric Odes, 1893) collect the poems written during these years of celebrity. Conscious of his role as national poet and cultural conscience of Italy, Carducci sought inspiration from the once-abhorred foreign literatures. Along with the usual classical authors (Archilocus, Sappho, Anacreon), the Rime nuove and the Odi barbare reveal the poet’s more modern literary preoccupations: Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe for their bleakness, Leconte de Lisle for the myth of barbarism, and then Heine, Goethe, and Hugo for the tone of classicist sentimentalism. Although such opening to European literatures widened the scope of Carducci’s poetry, both the Rime nuove and the Odi barbare are hardly experimental. Long past was the time when Carducci searched for his own poetic voice: The poems composed after 1870 show the confidence of a poet consciously and solemnly planning, without taking too many risks, his ultimate canonization. Carducci’s last collection, Rime e ritmi (Rhymes and Rhythms, 1899), is stylistically a composite of all preceding ones, and it combines traditional verses reminiscent of Juvenilia with the more experimental classicist meters of Giambi ed epodi and Odi barbare. Thematically, this new collection is characterized by a radicalization of Carducci’s monarchic reactionary nationalism that may well irritate even the most conservative of modern readers. A conviction in Italy’s historic mission was at the basis of his decision to poetically celebrate the most important episodes of Italian history. In these poems, the Risorgimento becomes myth, and all the frictions between realists and revolutionaries, republicans and monarchists (let alone the invectives against Italian quiescence) that characterized the history of the Risorgimento are set aside to make room for mere hagiography. Along with the celebration of popular heroes who sacrificed their lives for the nation, Rime e ritmi introduces the new (for Italian poetry) topic of colonialism. Written before the defeat of Adowa, Ethiopia, in 1896, these poems about Italian colonial glories exercised some influence on Gabriele D’Annunzio. Carducci stopped writing poetry long before his death. Already Rime e ritmi did not indicate any new direction for Carducci’s poetry except the revisitation of old meters and modes. Much of its success seems to derive from its anachronistic tone: It must have sounded, especially after Adowa, like a reminiscence from the days of Risorgimento heroics.

GIOSUE` CARDUCCI Carducci’s prose production is gathering particular interest today as an example of an ‘‘Italian style’’ of eloquence that defined the institutional rhetoric (public speeches, eulogies, praises of heroes, commemorative plaques) of post-1870 Italy until, and arguably past, the Fascist era. Along with epigraphs and the celebratory pieces, characterized by an archaic and baroque language, worth mentioning are the political and militant pamphlets, and the pieces of literary criticism, in which Carducci distanced himself not only from Manzoni’s Romanticism but also from the historical Hegelianism of Francesco De Sanctis. Read in postwar Italy as a typical document of positivist criticism, reevaluated in the 1970s for its prescient attention to formal values, and praised in the 1990s for its attention to geographical and regional differences, Carducci’s critical writings are at times rather naı¨ve, especially when compared to those of De Sanctis. They remain, nonetheless, extremely important to understand the formation of a generation of writers and critics (the so-called northern philologists versus De Sanctis’s Neapolitan school) that Carducci taught in Bologna between 1860 and 1904. Finally, especially instructive are Carducci’s book reviews, which remain perhaps the highest achievement in the cynical art of the stroncatura, the savage trashing of both book and writer.

Biography Giosue Carducci was born in Val di Castello (Lucca) on July 27, 1835; the family moved to Bolgheri (Livorno), in the Tuscan Maremma, 1838. His father Michele, suspected of revolutionary activities, moved to Bolgheri, 1848. In Florence, Carducci attended the College of the Scolopi, 1849. He became a founding member of the classicist Accademia dei Filomusi, 1852, and studied at the Universita` Normale Superiore of Pisa, 1853–1956. He was active in the controversies between classics and romantics and constituted the group of the ‘‘Amici Pedanti,’’ 1856. He taught rhetoric at the high school of San Miniato (Florence), where he published his first collection of poems, 1857. Carducci married his cousin Elvira Menicucci, 1859. The Minister of Education offered him a professorship in ‘‘Italian Eloquence’’ at the University of Bologna, 1860, but he was fired from the University of Bologna for alleged conspiratorial activities, 1867. He was reinstated at the university and published Levia gravia, 1868. His son Dante died on November 9, 1870. He conducted an epistolary correspondence with Carolina Cristofori-Piva,

whom the poet addressed with the more classical name of Lidia, 1871, and had an affair with Lidia, 1872. Carducci met the royal family in Bologna, 1878. He collaborated with the philo-monarchic journal Fanfulla della domenica, 1879. He met Annie Vivanti, his last love affair, 1890. He was contested by his students at the University of Bologna for his radicalized monarchism, 1891. He defended Francesco Crispi’s colonial policies even after the Italian defeat at Adowa, 1894–1895. He published Rime e ritmi, 1899. He retired from the University of Bologna, 1904 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, 1906. Carducci died in Bologna on February 16, 1907. ROBERTO M. DAINOTTO Selected Works Collections Edizione nazionale delle opere di Giosue` Carducci, 30 vols., Bologna: Zanichelli, 1935–1940. Lettere, 20 vols., Bologna: Zanchelli, 1938–1957. Selected verse, translated by David H. Higgins, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1994.

Poetry ‘‘Rime,’’ 1857. ‘‘Levia gravia,’’ 1868. ‘‘Odi barbare,’’ 1877. ‘‘Giambi ed epodi,’’ 1882. ‘‘Nuove odi barbare,’’ 1882. ‘‘C ¸ a ira: settembre 1792,’’ 1883. ‘‘Rime nuove,’’ 1887; as The New Lyrics of Giosue` Carducci, translated by William Fletcher Smith, 1942. ‘‘Terze odi barbare,’’ 1889. ‘‘Odi barbare,’’ 1893; as Odi barbare, translated by William Fletcher Smith, 1950. ‘‘Rime e ritmi,’’ 1899.

Other Prose critiche, edited by Giovanni Falaschi, 1987. Carteggio, ottobre 1888–aprile 1904, edited by Torquato Barbieri, 2000.

Further Reading Binni, Walter, Carducci e altri saggi, Turin: Einaudi, 1960. Caccia, Ettore, Poesia e ideologia per Carducci, Brescia: Paideia, 1970. Contarino, Rosario, and Rosa Maria Monastra, Carducci e il tramonto del classicismo, Bari: Laterza, 1975. Croce, Benedetto, Giosue` Carducci: studio critico, Bari: Laterza, 1920. Della Torre, Renato, Invito alla lettura di Giosue` Carducci, Milan: Mursia, 1985. Flora, Francesco, La poesia e la prosa di Giosue` Carducci, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1959. Getto, Giovanni, Carducci e Pascoli, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1957.

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GIOSUE` CARDUCCI Masini, Pier Carlo, Poeti della rivolta: da Carducci a Lucini, Milan: Rizzoli, 1978. Panzini, Alfredo, and Renato Serra, Carducci, Santarcangelo di Romagna: Fara, 1994. Pascoli, Giovanni, Commemorazione di Giosue` Carducci nella nativa Pietrasanta, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1907. Pasquazi, Silvio, Antimanzonismo del Carducci e altri saggi, Florence: Le Monnier, 1966. Pavarini, Stefano, Carducci, Palermo: Palumbo, 2003. Piromalli, Antonio, Introduzione a Carducci, Bari: Laterza, 1988. Russo, Luigi, Carducci senza retorica, Bari: Laterza, 1970. Scalia, Euge`ne, Carducci: His Critics and Translators in England and America 1881–1932, New York: Vanni, 1937. Toppani, Innocente, Carducci e il mondo latino, Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1973.

ODI BARBARE, 1893 Poetry by Giosue` Carducci

Odi barbare (Barbaric Odes) were initially published in three separate volumes as Odi barbare (1877), Nuove Odi barbare (New Barbaric Odes, 1882), and Terze Odi barbare (Third Book of Barbaric Odes, 1889). In 1893, Carducci restructured these volumes into a single one, divided into two parts. Composed at a time when he was preparing an edition of the Rime nuove (New Rhymes, 1887), the Odi barbare comprise many of the themes and concerns of his previous collection, most notably, the poet’s adherence to a classicist model of poetry understood as civic engagement. The novelty of the Odi barbare is stylistic. These poems represent an attempt to return to classical meters and transpose them into modern verse. The ancient system of versification, typically Greek or Latin, organized the verse according to the length, and not, as is normative in modern poetry, according to the rhythmic accentuation of the syllables. By now well secured within the boundaries of official culture, Carducci was confident that he could take some formal risks. Whereas in the Rime nuove he had conformed to the taste of the intellectual e´lites and his classicism was perceived as a continuation of the poetic discourse advanced 392

by Ugo Foscolo and Giacomo Leopardi, in the Odi barbare, Carducci felt that he no longer needed to abide to any models. He abandoned the blank verse of Foscolo and the canzone of Leopardi, recapturing instead the architectural complexity of Petrarch’s canzone as well as the rhythmic experimentation of classical lyrics. Thus the Odi barbare attest to and call for a new reform of the classic tradition. They are so entitled, with a clear allusion to Leconte de Lisle’s Poe`mes barbares (1862), because they experiment in adapting ancient odes into Romance languages, born from the corruption of Latin. For Carducci, such a conversion would have been viewed as ‘‘barbaric’’ by the ancients. However, his position is not that of a naı¨ve return to a mythical past but rather a critical operation that involves reviving and confronting the classics with the demands of present-day poetic experimentations. Although some models are easy to discern (Horace, Gabriello Chiabrera, and the neoclassic Giovanni Fantoni), this collection includes some of Carducci’s more original and memorable lyrics. This return to classical meters also has social and political implications. Carducci assimilated Greek metrics not by direct imitation of Pindar and Sappho but through the mediation of Horace, in whose style he identified the model suited for unified Italy. Thus it is Rome, not Athens, that inspires the nationalist myth of Carducci’s classicism; and to Rome he devoted an impressive number of the poems. After the dissemblement of the Papal States and their annexation to the kingdom of Italy in 1870, the myth of Rome was a central preoccupation for the new nation. Carducci participated in such epochal discussions by pitting the myth of the great empire of the past against the decay of the present. Albeit liberated, Rome was no longer what it ought to be. His poetry entered into a more conservative phase. In ‘‘Alle fonti del Clitumno’’ (At the Sources of the Clitumno), he depicted emblematically the old happiness of a pastoral world of peasants and simple sentiments corrupted by the ruling of the Catholic Church. Nationalism and anticlericalism resurface in ‘‘Nell’annuale della fondazione di Roma,’’ written for the celebrations of the 2,630th anniversary of the founding of Rome (1877). For Carducci, the pontiff was accountable for the loss of all the ancient glories, and these poems are reminiscent of his polemical secularism in ‘‘Inno a Satana’’ (Hymn to Satan, 1865) as well as the coeval attacks of Italian patriots against the Pope’s ‘‘betrayal’’ of the Risorgimento. With its

GIOSUE` CARDUCCI preaching of asceticism and renunciation, Christianity was primarily responsible for the decline of Roman civilization. ‘‘Dinanzi alle Terme di Caracalla’’ (Before the Baths of Caracalla), a poem in sapphic stanzas, translates this discrepancy between the grandeur of past and the miseries of the present into the Romantic figure of the ruins: What remains of the Empire is nothing but a heap of rubble, a site where ‘‘uomini novelli’’ (new men) desecrated the monuments of antiquity, now mere subject matter for a poetic archeology of what no longer exists. This recurrent feeling of belonging to a great civilization now gone, of being excluded from a heroic past, transformed the poet into an elegist living the contradictions of his own epoch as a formal dichotomy between old meters and modern barbarisms. Old meters, like ancient civilizations, cannot be fully restored; and the poet’s experimental e´lan is a constant negotiation of past and present. Compared to the Rime nuove, the Odi barbare reveal a sort of Romantic melancholic disenchantment, which intensifies in the second part of the collection, when the poet focused more and more on his sorrow rather than on the larger canvas of public history. Whereas in the Rime nuove Carducci could still find shelter from the present in the memories of the uncontaminated Tuscan Maremma of his youth, in the Odi barbare no recollection of Rome, or any other place for what matters, can prevent the observation of its present corruption. Reality is nothing more that the perception of a world devoid of meaning; a world at its twilight. Landscapes become funereal, dark and frigid: for example, in ‘‘Nevicata’’ (Snowfall), where the premonitory signs of death are highlighted by the winter storm; or in ‘‘Alla stazione in una mattina d’autunno’’ (At the Station, on an Autumn Morning), composed in alcaic stanzas, where the poet describes the departure of his beloved on a cold, rainy morning at the Bologna railway station. Both poems evoke the gloomy atmosphere that underlines much northern Romantic poetry. In Odi barbare, the sense of a larger epochal disillusionment coincides with a more intimate sense of melancholia: Carducci, the late descendant of a once-glorious race, experienced the sadness of a man who has reached the winter of his life. His ‘‘barbaric’’ odes attest to the epochal distance between the old tone of the epic and the modern mood of angst, grief, and spleen. The classical model of civic poetry became, at times, mere self-commiseration. ROBERTO M. DAINOTTO

Editions First editions: Odi barbare, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1877; Nuove odi barbare, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1882; Terze odi barbare, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1889; collected as Odi barbare, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1893. Critical editions: Odi barbare, edited by Gianni A. Papini, Milan: Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori, 1988. Translations: as Odi barbare, translated by William Fletcher Smith, New York: S.F. Vanni, 1950

Further Reading Allan, Alberto, Dizionario delle voci, delle forme e dei versi notevoli contenuti nelle Odi barbare e in Rime e ritmi di G. Carducci, Pavia: Mattei, 1913. Caruso, Carlo, ‘‘Metri barbari, verso libero,’’ in Poe´tiques barbares/Poetiche barbare, edited by Juan Rigoli and Carlo Caruso, Ravenna: Longo, 1998. Ferrari, Demetrio, Commento delle Odi barbare di Giosue` Carducci, 3 vols., Bologna: Zanichelli, 1919–1922. Giordani, Maria Anna, Le Odi barbare di Giosue` Carducci, Mantua: CITEM, 1968. Lopriore, Giuseppe Italo, ‘‘Saggio d’una lettura critica delle ‘Odi barbare,’’’ Preludio, 1(1950), 1–47. Papini, Gianni A., Osservazioni sugli autografi delle ‘‘Odi barbare’’ carducciane, Florence: Sansoni, 1964. Petrini, Mario, Letture delle prime Odi barbare (1877), Pisa: Libreria goliardica, 1962. Petrini, Mario, Postille al Carducci barbaro, Messina and Florence: G. d’Anna, 1963. Piromalli, Antonio, ‘‘Giosue` Carducci: Le ‘Odi barbare,’’’ Cristallo, 30:3(1988), 19–36. Robecchi, Franco, Carducci, poeta barbaro, Milan: Cooperativa libraria I.U.L.M., 1981.

RIME NUOVE, 1887 Poetry by Giosue` Carducci

Published in the heyday of Giosue` Carducci’s popular and critical fame, the Rime nuove (New Lyrics) assembles poems previously included in other collections or that appeared in literary journals. By then Carducci was conscious of his new role as the bard of a nation. The title alludes not so much to newly composed poems, but rather to their selection and critical arrangement carefully orchestrated by Carducci himself: These 105 poems, divided into nine books and ranging from 1861 to 1887, represent a kind of autobiography in verse, the story of a 393

GIOSUE` CARDUCCI poetic education; an ambitious project aimed at providing an authoritative manifesto of his poetics. The collection enjoyed instant success, and, with the Odi barbare, became the capstone of Carducci’s oeuvre. Rime nuove opens, significantly, with an Anachreontic ode entitled ‘‘Alla rima’’ (To Rhyme), in which Carducci proclaimed his continued faith in the rhythmic pacing of classical vernacular poetry and attacked modern experiments in the area of blank verse. Other poems present the author as the heir of a classical, more specifically Italian tradition that harks back to the Tuscan Middle Ages and humanism: among them, ‘‘Al sonetto’’ (To the Sonnet), ‘‘Omero’’ (Homer), ‘‘Virgilio’’ (Virgil), ‘‘Dante,’’ and ‘‘Commentando il Petrarca’’ (Commenting on Petrarch). Carducci also wanted to be remembered as an innovator capable of revitalizing old meters and rhymes. Then he chose poems with a modern sensibility, which display a more personal inspiration: the sentimental ‘‘Pianto antico’’ (Ancient Lament) and ‘‘Funere mersit acerbo’’ (Plunged in Bitter Death), in which he lamented the sudden passing of his 3-year-old son, Dante, and painfully summoned his dead brother to welcome the soul of his little boy; the gothic ‘‘Notte d’inverno’’ (Winter Night); the melancholic ‘‘Nostalgia’’; and the picturesque ‘‘Traversando la maremma toscana’’ (Crossing the Tuscan Maremma). Whereas earlier collections were bound by a strict adherence to conventional models, the Rime nuove proposes a lighter version of classicism, tempered by Romantic sentimentalism. Though ancient lyric genres (sonnet, ode, and canzone) are still predominant, modern forms (such as ballad) were also included. Arguably the most modern of Carducci’s compositions remains ‘‘Davanti San Guido’’ (In front of San Guido), a masterpiece of intimate and solipsistic sentimentalism beginning with the poet traveling on a train in the midst of a bucolic countryside after meeting his beloved Lina. Nostalgia for the abandoned lover soon turns into nostalgia for his carefree childhood. The translation of melancholic sentiment onto the soothing beauty of nature, which was at the basis of the Romantic experience of Heine and Wordsworth, is a striking novelty for Italian lyrics and would later inspire Gabriele D’Annunzio and Giovanni Pascoli. By the time Carducci published the Rime nuove, he had politically shifted from a distinctively

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republican sensibility to one of monarchic conservatism; however, he selected a few poems written earlier in the spirit of the liberal and Jacobin ideals. One of 12 sonnets devoted to the events of 1792, ‘‘C ¸ a ira!’’ (It Will Happen), titled after the songmanifesto of the French Revolution, ignited heated discussions in 1887. Carducci felt compelled to answer his critics with an apologetic essay, also titled ‘‘C ¸ a ira!,’’ in which he assured that the poem was just a poem and not a revolutionary anthem. The ninth and last book is devoted to a single poem, ‘‘Congedo’’ (Farewell), in which Carducci celebrated himself as an exemplary prophet-poet: Neither courtier nor clown, the poetic genius forged artifacts out of humankind’s loves, memories, nostalgias, hopes, and disillusionments. This poem, an apt conclusion to the Rime nuove, is a synthesis of Carducci’s poetics. ROBERTO M. DAINOTTO Editions First edition: Rime nuove, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1887. Critical edition: Rime nuove, edited by Pietro Paolo Trompeo and Giambattista Salinari, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1961. Translation: as The New Lyrics of Giosue` Carducci, translated by William Fletcher Smith, Colorado Springs: Privately printed, 1942.

Further Reading Baldacci, Luigi, ‘‘Motivazioni oscure di una poesia troppo chiara,’’ Bimestre, 2:1(1970), 1–5. De Michelis, Eurialo, ‘‘Il ‘silenzio verde,’ o della sinestesia in Carducci,’’ Nuova antologia, 493(1965), 463–482. Gorni, Guglielmo, ‘‘Il melograno, l’asino e il cardo (su due ‘Rime nuove’ del Carducci),’’ Studi di filologia italiana, 50(1992), 183–195. Jeannet, Angela M., ‘‘Nell’officina carducciana,’’ Italica, 43:3(1966), 264–275. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, ‘‘Una lettura di ‘Pianto antico’ (con un’appendice),’’ Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate, 57:2(2004), 169–178. Papini, Gianni A., ‘‘Ipotesi e realta` per dieci primavere elleniche,’’ Studi di filologia italiana, 32(1974), 205–282. Ruggiero, Gerardo, ‘‘Tempo, natura e storia nel ‘Comune rustico’ di Giosue` Carducci,’’ Critica letteraria, 16:1 (1988), 141–150. Salinari, Giambattista, ‘‘Storia ed interpretazione della lirica carducciana ‘Brindisi funebre,’’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 135(1958), 304–316.

ANNIBAL CARO

ANNIBAL CARO (1507–1566) Annibal Caro was a poet, playwright, translator of Latin and Greek, and diplomat who perhaps most vividly realized sixteenth-century classicism. A cleric and courtier, Caro was also the protagonist in one of the greatest literary quarrels of the Renaissance. The young Caro’s friendship with the humanist man of letters Benedetto Varchi introduced him to the literary circle of Giovanni Gaddi, clerk of the Apostolic Chamber and a patron of the publication of classical and contemporary works, to whom he became private secretary. Through Gaddi, he made the acquaintance of literary figures such as Cardinal Bembo and Benvenuto Cellini and became a member of the Roman Accademia dei Virtuosi, a society of literati and papal secretaries who showed off their technical ability through literary dialogues. In the company of the academy, Caro penned at least three burlesque parodies and became well known for his comic writing. Gli straccioni (The Scruffy Scoundrels, 1582), Caro’s only published play, seems to integrate the author’s comic sensibility and linguistic interests with ‘‘realistic’’ aspects of life in contemporary Rome. The structure of the play combines elements of erudite comedy and poesia bernesca, a burlesque satirical style (named after Francesco Berni) that reverses conventional literary models and portrays deformed images of reality and social values. Three loosely connected plots are delineated: the story of the two straccioni, based on well-known Roman citizens, brothers Giovanni and Battista, who don the clothing of beggars after their unsuccessful lawsuit against the Bank of San Giorgio; the love story, derived from Achilles Tatius’s Greek romance Leucippe and Cleitophon, of Tindaro and his Giulietta, who is abducted and assumed dead, only to reappear before Tindaro is forced to marry another woman; and finally the revelation of Argentina as the long-lost niece of the straccioni. The secrecy with which Caro treated the play’s production and the jealousy with which he thereafter guarded it from publication have caused some scholars to suggest that the play served a purpose of more than mere entertainment. Pier Luigi Farnese, son of Pope Paul III, commissioned Caro to write the play upon employment as his private secretary

in 1543 and seems to have taken an active role in its development. The result is a masterpiece in Tuscan vernacular prose fulfilling all of the expectations in the tradition of the commedia erudita but with a propagandistic subtext, promoting specific enterprises by the Farnese family. The play is set in a new Rome under the Farnese reforms in which the ‘‘hero’’ and the only rational character in the play, the attorney Messer Rossello, acts as representative of the Farnese regime and restorer of order. Scholars further suggest an allusion in the title to the 1531 revolt of the straccioni, a reference to the poor citizens of Lucca in defense of whom Caro’s former employer, Monsignor Guidiccioni, wrote a well-known speech, the Orazione ai nobili di Lucca (Speech to the Noblemen of Lucca, 1557). Diplomatic assignments and the assassination of Pier Luigi prevented Caro from staging Gli straccioni. Long after his patron’s death, however, the author repeatedly refused permission for the play to be copied or performed. His insistence that its moment had passed, testified by several letters, suggests the existence of an outdated political aim. It was published posthumously in 1582, and only in 1942 was it edited according to its original manuscript (Vaticano Urbinate 764). Caro’s poetry is important for its stylistic and linguistic experimentation and is said to exemplify the height of the development of the verso sciolto, or blank verse, in Italy. His place in poetic history, however, is perhaps secured by his well-known antagonism toward the critic Ludovico Castelvetro (1505–1571) in one of the greatest literary and philological disputes of the sixteenth century. The dispute is centered around the poem ‘‘Venite all’ombra dei gran gigli d’oro’’ (Come to the shade of the great golden lilies), one among the 100 sonnets and five canzoni in a collection commissioned by Alessandro Farnese in 1553 in praise of the French house of Valois. Castelvetro criticized not only Annibal Caro’s lack of Petrarchan style but also his use of non-Tuscan and unconventional or vernacular linguistic elements. Incensed by this critique, Caro launched a bitter attack against Castelvetro, writing a defense of linguistic invention in the Apologia degli Accademici di Banchi contra messer Lodovico Castelvetro (Apology of the Banchi 395

ANNIBAL CARO Academics against Ludovico Castelvetro, 1558), a series of texts in which fictitious characters emphasize the importance of enriching literary Tuscan with components of the spoken language. The popular volume was reprinted three times by the original publisher in Parma and later printed in Florence, Milan, Venice, and Turin. Castelvetro replied with Ragioni d’alcune cose segnate nella canzone d’Annibal Caro: Venite a l’ombra de gran gigli d’oro (Argument on Some Things Noted in the Canzone of Annibal Caro, 1559). Caro, greatly insulted by the criticism, accused Castelvetro of heresy and denounced him to Church authorities. Although the accusations were found false, Castelvetro left his native Modena and eventually Italy. After Caro’s death, Benedetto Varchi further defended his position in L’Ercolano, subtitled Dialogo nel quale si ragiona generalmente delle lingue e in particolare della fiorentina e della toscana (Ercolano: Dialogue in Which One Argues Generally about Languages, in Particular about Florentine and Tuscan, 1570). In addition to his legacy as a poet and playwright, Caro left behind a number of translations and a vast collection of letters. A talented translator, he enjoyed exploiting the expressive possibilities of the vernacular and adroitly transformed the languages of antiquity into some of the most classical poetry in Italian. His earliest translation, written between 1537 and 1539, was Longus’s Gli amori pastorali di Dafni e Cloe (The Pastoral Love of Daphnis and Chloe, 1784), followed by Aristotle’s Rettorica (Rhetorics, 1570) and the works of Saints Cyprian and Gregory Nazianzen. Undoubtedly his most famous translation is the Aeneid of Virgil. Written in hendecasyllables and published in 1581, Caro’s Aeneid endured until the twentieth century as a standard text in Italian schools. The epistles, published in two volumes entitled Lettere familiari (Familiar Letters, 1573–1575), provide a detailed history of the period, painting a colorful portrait of life in sixteenth-century Italy. The 800 letters document the complex and at times artificial social relationships in the writer’s daily life.

Biography Annibal Caro was born in Civitanova Marche (Macerata), June 19, 1507; his father was an apothecary and clothes merchant, his mother a noblewoman. He moved to Florence to study, 1525, and became private secretary to Giovanni Gaddi, 1529. He served Monsignor Guidiccioni, Bishop of Frossombone, 1542, and became secretary to Pier Luigi 396

Farnese, 1543. Gli straccioni was completed, June 28, 1543. Caro was appointed administrator of justice in Piacenza, 1545, but he fled Piacenza upon assassination of Pier Luigi Farnese (1547) when rumors that he was in collusion surfaced. He moved to Rome and became secretary to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, 1547. He engaged in a literary dispute with Lodovico Castelvetro, 1553– 1560. He retired to his own villa near Frascati, 1563. Caro died in Rome, November 20, 1566. ERIN M. MCCARTHY See also: Ludovico Castelvetro Selected Works Collections Opere, 8 vols., Milan: Classici italiani, 1807–1812. Opere, edited by Vittorio Turri, Bari: Laterza, 1912. Opere, edited by Stefano Jacomuzzi, Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1974.

Poetry ‘‘Commento di ser Agresto da Ficaruolo sopra la prima ficata del Padre Siceo,’’ 1539. ‘‘Nasea o vero diceria de’ nasi,’’ 1539. ‘‘La statua della Foia ovvero di Santa Nafissa. Diceria al Sesto Re della Virtu`,’’ 1547. ‘‘Rime,’’ 1569.

Play Gli straccioni 1582; as The Scraffy Scoundrels, translated by Massimo Ciavolella and Donald Beecher, 1980.

Other Apologia degli accademici di banchi di Roma contra messer Lodovico Castelvetro, 1558. Lettere familiari, 1573–1575.

Translations Aristotle, Rettorica, 1570. Virgil, Eneide, 1581. Longus, Gli amori pastorali di Dafni e Cloe, 1784.

Further Reading Aurigemma, Marcello, Studi sulla letteratura teatrale ed eroica del Rinascimento, Rome: A. Signorelli, 1968. Battaglia, Salvatore, ‘‘Tradizione e attualita` nella coscienza linguistica di Annibal Caro,’’ Lingua parlata e lingua scritta: Convegno di studi 9–11 novembre 1967, Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici, 1970. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘Mutazione’’ e ‘‘Riscontro’’ nel teatro di Machiavelli e altri saggi sulla commedia del Cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1972. Greco, Aulo, Annibal Caro, cultura e poesia, Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1950. Olivieri, Caterina, L’Eneide del Caro, Turin: Paravia, 1965.

LUIGI CARRER Phillips-Court, Kristin, ‘‘Emblematic Narrative in Caro’s Gli straccioni (with an Eye to Titian’s Paul III),’’ Italica 81:2(2004), 184–199. Samuels, Richard S., ‘‘An Addition to Annibal Caro’s Lettere familiari: Notes on a Letter to Benedetto Varchi,’’ Renaissance Quarterly, 27:3(1974), 300–305.

Sarri, Francesco, Annibal Caro: saggio critico, Milan: L’Universita` del Sacro Cuore, 1933. Ward, Michael T., ‘‘Benedetto Varchi and the Social Dimensions of Language,’’ Italica, 68:2(1991), 176–194.

LUIGI CARRER (1801–1850) Polymath, romantic, Venetian: Luigi Carrer joined the cultural and political movements of his era through his intense activity as a writer, philologist, biographer, and translator, but above all for his poetry and his work in theater, for which he is most widely known. The theater was the first object of his study. At 16, after having heard the famous Tuscan improviser Tommaso Sgricci in Venice, he attempted to emulate him. He appeared at the Accademia degli Invulnerabili in two improvised tragedies, Saul (1818) and La morte di Agrippina (The Death of Agrippina, 1818). Success gained him enormous fame and countless invitations for similar performances in the houses of noble families and academies. He became famous at the impromptus held at the salon of Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi (1760–1836), where he improvised a tragedy on the theme of Medea in front of Sgricci in person; another performance was witnessed with enthusiasm by Byron; his Atalia was hailed by Luigi Pezzoli (1772– 1834) as a return to the tragic form of the Greeks in the light of the poetry of Vittorio Alfieri. Of these performances, subsequently repudiated by the author, along with the two years of tourne´es throughout the Veneto region in which he was acclaimed as ‘‘Ovid brought back to life,’’ only La Morte di Agag (The Death of Agag) remains. It was included in his first collection of verse, Saggio di poesie (Essay of Poems, 1819) along with comments on the failure of La sposa di Messina (The Wife of Messina), a pie`ce written in imitation of the tragedy of the same name by Schiller and staged in Venice in 1821 by actor-impresario Gustavo Modena (1803– 1861). Disenchanted with the theater, Carrer would only write one more complete tragedy, Giulia Cappelletti (1837), a weak rewriting of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare and a short story by Luigi Da Porto, that was eventually published in the

anthology Il teatro contemporaneo italiano e straniero (The Italian and Foreign Contemporary Theater, 1837–1839). L’ultimo colloquio di Antonio Foscarini (The Last Conversation of Antonio Foscarini) remained unfinished, although he did publish a few scenes from it in 1839. His interest turned to biographical studies, such as the three-volume Vita di Carlo Goldoni con notizie della commedia italiana prima di lui (Life of Carlo Goldoni with Notes on Italian Comedy before Him, 1824–1825), in reality a compendium of Goldoni’s own Me´moires (1784). The Vita contained a superficial classification of the works of the famous Venetian playwright as ‘‘familiari, romanzesche, popolari, eroiche’’ (familiar, romantic, popular, heroic) and a dissertation on the theater taken from the monumental work by Pietro Napoli Signorelli (1731– 1815). Despite its excesses, such as the criticism of Goldoni’s language as ‘‘la piu` abbietta e trasandata che dare si possa’’ (the most contemptible and slovenly to be used), the work was the first mournful defense of Italian dramaturgy against the European ‘‘nordiche novita`’’ (Nordic novelties). His classical education, his admiration for Vittorio Alfieri and Ugo Foscolo, and his acquaintance with Vincenzo Monti did not prevent his reacting to the romantic influences reaching him from Europe through Bu¨rger, the early Schiller, and Byron himself. His work became more and more a personal me´lange of classicism, innovation, and nationalistic ideals. For example, he composed Clotaldo (1826), a short story in blank verse on the Venice revolt against foreign dominion; the first of 15 unfinished poems of La fata vergine (The Virgin Fairy), which was published in 1840 but written in 1827; a small volume of Poesie per nozze Papadopoli-Mosconi (Wedding Poems for Papadopoli-Mosconi, 1831). He revealed himself 397

LUIGI CARRER as a poet to a wider public with the publication of 14 Ballate (Ballads, 1834), some of which had already appeared the previous year in the periodical Il Gondoliere (formerly La Moda), which Carrer had transformed into a new literary journal, frequently filled with civil and patriotic invective, which enjoyed a great following. Carrer’s successes are also attributable to his having been one of the first to introduce the romantic ‘‘ballad’’ into Italy, with its historical, legendary subject matter and polymetric structure. It is not by chance that, at a time when his creative vein and civic inspiration are becoming more reconciled, he wrote his best prose work, Anello di sette gemme o Venezia e la sua storia. Considerazioni e fantasie di Luigi Carrer (The Ring of Seven Jewels or Venice and Its History. Considerations and Fantasies by Luigi Carrer, 1837), in which he narrated the history of Venice through its seven most brilliant jewels: Giustina Renier Michie`l, Catterina Corner, Gaspara Stampa, Bianca Cappello, Eufemia Giustinian, Irene da Spilimbergo and Elena Corner Piscopia. Carrer’s activity as a critic and philologist, aimed at a revival or ‘‘risorgimento’’ of national culture, also deserves attention. After a youthful edition of Petrach’s Rime (Rhymes, 1826) and the compilation, together with the Abbot Fortunato Federici, of the Dizionario della lingua italiana (Dictionary of the Italian Language, 1827–1830), Carrer set to work on an old, titanic project, a ‘‘Biblioteca classica italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti’’ (Classical Italian Library of Science, Literature and Art, 1839–1841), managing to finish the prefaces and comments for 27 volumes of the 100 initially planned. He also assumed the trusteeship of the economic series, ‘‘Scelte opere d’italiani illustri antichi e moderni’’ ( Selected Works of Illustrious Italians, Ancient and Modern, 1842) and, for the same publisher Tasso, undertook the management of an encyclopedia. Lastly, he edited the complete works of Ugo Foscolo, the major inspiration of his youth, availing himself of unpublished documents and the poet’s collection of correspondence: Prose e poesie edite e inedite di Ugo Foscolo (Published and Unpublished Prose and Poetry by Ugo Foscolo, 1842). Perhaps this marked the highpoint of Carrer’s militancy as a critic. Carrer planned, but never finished, a history of Italian literature as an expression of the reviving spirit of nationalism.

Biography Luigi Carrer was born in Venice on February 12, 1801. From 1814, he attended high school at Treviso, 398

then continued his studies in Venice; he received a law degree in Padua. At the age of 22, he fell ill with tuberculosis. He taught high school at Castelfranco Veneto until 1823. Once again in Venice, and later in Padua, he managed the Minerva Printing Works. He married Brigida Palicala`, 1825. In 1827 his daughter Elena was born, and he was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Padua, a post he held until 1830. In 1832 Carrer returned to Venice, separating from his wife. He was a professor of literature and geography at the Venice technical school, 1842–1844. He also held the positions of vicesecretary of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti; secretary and later vice-president of the Ateneo Veneto; and curator of the Correr Museum, 1846. In 1847 his daughter died. With the failure of the insurrection of 1848, some patriotic poems led to his dismissal; this measure was revoked at the price of his disavowal. Ill, aided by Adriana Renier, an organizer of a salon of artists and a neighbor to whom he would leave his manuscripts, he died in Venice on December 23, 1850. ROBERTO CUPPONE Selected Works Collections Opere di Luigi Carrer, con cenni biografici dell’autore, edited by Francesco Prudenzano, Naples: Rossi, 1852. Scritti critici, edited by Giovanni Gambarin, Bari: Laterza, 1969.

Poetry ‘‘Saggio di poesie,’’ 1819. ‘‘Clotaldo,’’ 1826. ‘‘La Gerusalemme liberata col riscontro della Conquistata,’’ 1828. ‘‘Poesie per nozze Papadopoli–Mosconi,’’ 1831. ‘‘Ballate (La sorella, La vendetta, Jerolimina, Il cavallo di Estremadura),’’ 1834. ‘‘Poesie edite e inedite,’’ 1845.

Fiction Racconti, 1857.

Plays Ultimo colloquio di Antonio Foscarini, 1839.

Prose Discorso sopra la rappresentazione de La sposa di Messina, tragedia di Luigi Arminio Carrer, 1822. Vita di Carlo Goldoni con notizie della commedia italiana prima di lui, 3 vols., 1824–1825. Anello di sette gemme o Venezia e la sua storia. Considerazioni e fantasie di Luigi Carrer, 1837. Prose edite e inedite, 1846. L’amore infelice di Gaspara Stampa, 1851.

GIACOMO CASANOVA Edited Works Dizionario della lingua italiana (with Fortunato Federici), 7 vols., 1827–1830. Prose e poesie edite e inedite di Ugo Foscolo, 1842.

Further Reading Abrate, Mario, L’opera poetica di Luigi Carrer, Turin: Paravia & C., 1905. Cattelan, Levi Clotilde, Tracce dell’arte giovanile di Luigi Carrer nelle opere della sua maturita`, Venice: Libreria Emiliana Editrice, 1927. Crotti, Ilaria, ‘‘Carrer biografo di Goldoni,’’ Rivista di Letteratura Italiana, 18(2000), 2–3. Damerini, Gino, Tommaseo amico e nemico di Carrer. Con lettere e documenti inediti, Venice: Per la fondazione Omero Soppesa, 1934.

Dani, Aristide, ‘‘Lettere inedite di L. Carrer a P. Mistrorigo,’’ in Studi in onore di F. M. Mistrorigo, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1958. Giachino, Monica, In ignorata stanza: studi su Luigi Carrer, Treviso: Canova, 2001. Lattes, Laura, ‘‘Luigi Carrer, la sua vita, la sua opera,’’ in Miscellanea di storia veneta, series 3, 10(1916), 216–245. Molmenti, Pompeo, ‘‘Pier Luigi Carrer di Pompeo Molmenti,’’ in Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 58:2(1898–1899), 7–88. Sartorio, Guido, Luigi Carrer, Rome: Societa` Editrice Dante Alighieri, 1900. Tommaseo, Niccolo`, ‘‘Notizie sulla commedia italiana, compilate da Luigi Carrer, Venezia 1824,’’ Antologia (August 1826), 52–62.

GIACOMO CASANOVA (1725–1798) In Casanova’s own biography, not even his birth escapes the ambiguity and mystification that enshrouds his entire life. In the first pages of his masterpiece, Histoire de ma vie (The History of My Life, 1826–1837), Casanova claimed to be the son of actors Gaetano Casanova and Zanetta Farusso (Farussi), both performing at the San Samuele theater in Venice. This version contradicts his booklet Ne´ amori ne´ donne; ovvero la stalla ripulita (Neither Loves nor Women, or The Stable Cleaned Out, 1782) in which he declared to be the illegitimate son of a Venetian noblemen, Michele Grimani. Commonly with Casanova, it is difficult to verify the historical accuracy of such statements. Yet, the ambiguity about his origins highlights an important aspect of his personality. Beginning with Edmund Wilson’s article ‘‘Uncomfortable Casanova’’ (1941), scholars have consistently pointed out the simultaneous presence in Casanova of a sense of pride in being a self-made man and a strong inferiority complex due to his obscure origins. The personal myth he tried to build through his eccentric life and great literary output can be seen as a desperate attempt to make a place for himself in the social and intellectual e´lite of the old re´gime. His autobiographical works certainly played a fundamental role in this struggle to become a prominent protagonist of his age.

As Gilberto Pizzamiglio wrote in his Englishlanguage edition of Histoire de ma vie (2000), the monumental work should not be seen as an isolated literary achievement but rather as the final product of an autobiographical project that was started in 1780 with Il duello (The Duel). Published in Opuscoli miscellanei, a monthly journal written entirely by Casanova during his last Venetian sojourn (1774–1783), it presents a lively account of his encounter with Count Branicki 14 years earlier in Warsaw. The composition of Il duello coincided with a difficult moment for Casanova, whose libertine and transgressive past was preventing him from finding a role in Venetian society. This work can therefore be seen as an attempt to restore its author in the eyes of the establishment, presenting Casanova as a defender of national honor grievously offended by the statements of a Polish nobleman. In spite of being an editorial failure, the booklet, combining autobiography and novelistic writing, represents an important artistic accomplishment and is the first step toward the perfect merging of life and literature that characterizes the author’s subsequent works. In 1785, Casanova accepted the position of librarian offered to him by Count Waldstein, a Bohemian nobleman. In the Castel of Dux, the former adventurer spent his last years saddened 399

GIACOMO CASANOVA by loneliness and constantly quarreling with the count’s servants. In spite of the inconveniences of his new accommodations, however, Casanova during this period was able devote himself fully to his literary activity. The results of his efforts amounted to an enormous number of manuscripts, ranging from history to mathematics and philosophy, which demonstrate his openness and versatility. Among the published works is the noteworthy Soliloque d’un penseur (The Soliloquy of a Thinker, 1786), a pamphlet attacking Giovanni Balsamo, otherwise known as Count Cagliostro. There is little doubt that this work was motivated by selfinterest in order to obtain the sympathy of Emperor Joseph II and an offer of employment. Nevertheless, the opportunistic invective against the necromancer becomes an indirect way of reckoning with his own past. By demolishing Cagliostro’s myth, Casanova abjured, not without a streak of irony, his brilliant career as adventurer and unscrupulous gambler. The same autobiographical and apologetic attitude emerges openly in the Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la Re´publique de Venise qu’on appelle les Plombs (Story of My Escape from the Prisons of the Republic of Venice Called ‘‘I Piombi,’’ 1787), an account of Casanova’s spectacular escape from the jails of the Venetian government in 1756. The episode, with which he had entertained princes, mentors, and friends for over 30 years, was later reelaborated and included in his autobiography. There is critical agreement over the fact that in the Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la Re´publique de Venise qu’on appelle les Plombs, Casanova can be seen at his best as a writer. Far from stifling the narrative, the detailed descriptions help the reader visualize the scene of action, creating the condition for involvement in the story, and the result is one of the most engaging and suspenseful texts of eighteenth-century literature. Even though the public’s immediate reaction did not match the author’s expectations, the relative success of the work encouraged Casanova to undertake more challenging and ambitious artistic enterprises. A year later, he completed an extravagant novel in five volumes that he entitled Icosameron. Published in Prague in 1788, it is the heir of the eighteenth-century tradition of allegoricalphilosophical tales best typified by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Voltaire’s Candide (1759). However, it is also possible that Casanova was inspired by other minor works such as Charles de Fieux de Mouhy’s novel, Lamekis ou les Voyages extraordinaires d’un Egyptien dans la Terre inte´rieur (1734), and La de´couverte australe 400

par un Homme-Volant (1781) by Restif de la Bretonne. In deference to its genre, the plot of Icosameron is thin and straightforward: Two brothers, following a shipwreck, fall to the center of the earth. Here, they encounter the ‘‘Megamicrons,’’ a race of small, brightly colored people, with whom they live for 81 years, studying in depth their social organization. In fact, the detailed description of the customs and habits of the Megamicrons serves as a pretext for the insertion of learned digression on every field of human knowledge. The most interesting pages are devoted to scientific and technological problems. With an imagination comparable to Julius Verne’s, Casanova foresaw the motorcar, the airplane, television, and several other inventions that were not realized for more than a century. The Icosameron thus displays the encyclopedic knowledge of its author, showing an important aspect of his personality often overshadowed by the more famous image of Casanova as lover and adventurer. It is significant that the idea of a novel concerned with an escape to a perfect society dates back to 1782, when the author, at odds with the Venetian aristocracy, was forced to leave his homeland. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to look at it as a work animated by a revolutionary spirit. Far from being a Jacobin project, the perfectly organized world of Megamicrons is presented as an idealized picture of the Old Regime. Like the Histoire de ma vie, the Icosameron was written in French, in order to reach a wider European audience. The complete disregard of readers for a work on which Casanova bestowed so much care disappointed and embittered the author. In the spring of 1789, he fell gravely ill, showing signs of deep melancholy, and Dr. James Columb O’Reilly ordered him to suspend his philosophical and mathematical research. Knowing Casanova’s temperament, he suggested a form of entertainment that he considered more restful: writing his reminiscences. The patient followed the prescription, relying not just on his prodigious memory but also on a great bundle of notes (the so-called capitulares) that he had carried with him throughout the years all over Europe. According to a letter addressed to Johann Ferdinand Opiz, he had completed the first draft by July 27, 1792. From that time to the eve of his death six years later, Casanova was constantly retouching and redrafting his monumental work. The more than 3,600 manuscripts later entitled Histoire de ma vie represent an original literary achievement that is difficult to classify among traditional autobiographical genres.

GIACOMO CASANOVA By describing a dissolute life, Casanova distinguishes his work from the more sober autobiographies of the early eighteenth century in which the authors, usually historians or philosophers, would present themselves as models to be imitated. Not less significant is the fact that a title like Confessiones, already used by St. Augustine and by the hated Rousseau, had to be discarded as an option for his work, writing in a letter to Opiz dated February 20, 1792: ‘‘I cannot, as man of honor, give these memories the title of Confession, for I repent of nothing and without repentance one cannot, as you know, be absolved.’’ It would be wrong to consider these statements simply as the product of an impenitent effrontery. Scholars have pointed out the influence exerted on Casanova by Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), the French philosopher who, during the seventeenth century, tried to blend the ideas of Epicurean philosophy with Christian morality. From his readings of Gassendi, Casanova most likely developed the belief that satisfying the sexual appetite is in conformity with natural and divine laws. According to these philosophical argument, ‘‘pleasure is not simply entirely emancipated from feelings of guilt but also indefinitely and happily repeatable,’’ as Giorgio Ficara has written (Casanova e la malinconia, 1999). Literary activity plays an important role in this hedonistic Weltanschauung. As Casanova explicitly emphasized, writing his autobiography allowed him to live his life again, recalling happy experiences with retrospective pleasure. From this premise, his decision to end his account in the year 1774 seems clear: After the age of 40, all he would have to record would be a tale of declining vigor and increasing melancholy. Born with a therapeutic aim, the Histoire de vie soon became the last and most accomplished literary enterprise of the Venetian writer. With this work, which was put on the Index even before it was finished, past experiences were reinterpreted through the conventions of the novel. Casanova was able to make a mark in the literary world and finally establish his place in the European literary canon. The image of Casanova that we get from this work, far from being uniform and consistent, is chameleonic and fluid: an actor able to change masks and roles while simultaneously keeping his inner authenticity and genuineness. The history of Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie often seems nearly as complicated as the story of his life itself. On his deathbed, the author gave the manuscript to Carlo Angiolini, the son-in-law of his sister Maria Maddalena. In 1820, Angiolini’s son in turn sold the

manuscript to the Leipzig publishing firm Brockhaus for the small sum of 200 thalers. The text was first published between 1822 and 1828 in a German translation and adaptation by Wilhelm von Schu¨tz. While the German edition was being readied for publication, Herr Brockhaus employed Jean Laforgue, a professor of French at Dresden, to revise the original manuscript and correct Casanova’s vigorous but often somewhat Italianate French. His edition actually presents wholesale changes in Casanova’s original. James Rives Childs has noted that the French editor ‘‘had omitted few episodes he found overly licentious and, on other occasions, he had disfigured Casanova’s generally chaste prose with offensively prurient details’’ (Casanova, 1961). Being an anticlerical republican, he ignored many of Casanova’s professions of Christian faith and expurgated most of the passage in which the Venetian violently inveighs against the ‘‘execrable’’ French revolution. This ‘‘revised’’ text was published in 12 volumes, the first two in 1826, the third and fourth in 1828, the fifth to the eighth in 1832, and the ninth to the twelfth in 1837. Unfortunately this edition became the most accepted and authoritative version of Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie and the text upon which nearly all other editions and translations would be based for over 130 years. It was not until 1960 that Brockhaus allowed the unexpurgated, uncut, and ‘‘unpolished’’ publication of Casanova’s manuscript. In his 1976 film Casanova, Federico Fellini, who was initially reluctant to adapt the (in) famous libertine’s memoirs, lavishly visualized Casanova’s picaresque erotic stories as a somber journey leading to self-annihilation. Fellini’s images, charged with the baroque opulence of eighteenth-century Venice and decadent sexual symbolism, fully translate the ambiguity and vulnerability of the protagonist’s existential quest.

Biography Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice on April 2, 1725. He studied law at the University of Padua from 1738 to 1742. After having attempted the military and ecclesiastic career, Casanova became a friend and adopted son of the Venetian patrician Matteo Giovanni Bragadin (1745). Suspected by the Inquisition, Casanova fled Venice in 1749 and traveled to Lyon (where he joined the Masonic order) and then to Paris (1750–1752), Dresden, Prague, and Vienna. After returning to Venice in 1753, Casanova was arrested in 1755, on suspicion of being a Freemason and a magician, and was cast 401

GIACOMO CASANOVA into the state prison, I Piombi, from which he escaped on the night of October 31, 1756. In 1757, Casanova returned to Paris where he instituted the French State Lottery, amassing a large fortune that he promptly lost. Beginning in 1759, Casanova traveled throughout Europe, stopping in Spain, England, Poland, and Russia. On November 15, 1774, the Venetian government allowed Casanova to return to his homeland after a long exile. In Venice he devoted himself to writing and also to his position as a theatrical producer. He became a secret agent for the Inquisitors at the end of December 1776. In 1782, he published Ne´ amori ne´ donne; ovvero la stalla ripulita, a satirical pamphlet on the Venetian aristocracy, which focused specifically on the powerful Grimani family. The book provoked an uproar that forced him to leave the city on January 17, 1783. In 1784, Casanova met Count Josef Karl Emmanuel von Waldstein, who offered him a position as a librarian at his castle in Dux (now in the Czech Republic). Casanova spent the rest of is life in Dux, where he suffered from depression as a result of partial isolation. In April 1798, Casanova became ill with a urinary tract infection and died on June 4, 1798. According to Prince de Ligne, his last words were: ‘‘I have lived as a philosopher, and die as a Christian.’’ MATTIA BEGALI Selected Works Collections Saggi, libelli e satire, edited by Piero Chiara, Milan: Longanesi, 1968.

Autobiographical Works Il duello, 1780; as The Duel, translated by J. G. Nichols, 2003. Ne´ amori ne´ donne; ovvero la stalla ripulita, 1782. Soliloque d’un penseur, 1786. Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la Re´publique de Venise qu’on appelle les Plombs, 1787. Histoire de ma vie (1789–1798), 12 vols., 1826–1837; critical edition, 12 vols., 1960–1965; as History of My Life, translated by Willard R. Trask, 12 vols., 1966; as The Story of My Life, edited and abridged by Gilberto Pizzamiglio, translated by Stephen Sartarelli and Sophie Hawkes, 2000.

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Fiction Icosameron, 1788; as Casanova’s Icosameron, translated and abridged by Rachel Zurer, 1986.

Essays Confutazione della Storia del Governo Veneto d’Amelot de la Houssaie, 3 vols., 1769. Istoria delle turbolenze della Polonia, 3 vols., 1774. Scrutinio del libro ‘‘Eloges de M. de Voltaire par diffe´rents auteurs,’’ 1779.

Letters Epistolario (1759–1798), edited by Piero Chiara, 1969. Lettere di Lorenzo da Ponte a Giacomo Casanova, 1791– 1795, edited by Giampaolo Zagonel, 1988. A Giacomo Casanova: lettere d’amore di Manon Balletti ed Elisa von der Recke. edited by Vittorio Orsenigo, 1997.

Further Reading Abirached, Robert, Casanova ou la dissipation, Paris: Grasset, 1961. Aruta Stampacchia, Annalisa, Passione e gioco della moda nell’Histoire de ma vie di Giacomo Casanova, Naples: De Frede, 2000. Boatto, Aldo, Casanova e Venezia, Rome: Laterza, 2002. Capaci, Bruno, Le impressioni delle cose meravigliose: Giacomo Casanova e la redenzione imperfetta della scrittura, Venice: Marsilio, 2002. Childs, James Rives, Casanova, A Biography Based on New Documents, London: Allen and Unwin, 1961. Childs, James Rives, Casanoviana, Vienna: Nebehay, 1956. Ficara, Giorgio, Casanova e la malinconia, Turin: Einaudi, 1999. Flem, Lydia, Casanova, ou, L’exercice du bonheur, Paris: Seuil, 1995. Luna, Marie‐Franc¸oise (editor), Casanova fin de sie`cle, ´ diteur, 2002. Paris: Honore´ Champion E Luna, Marie‐Franc¸oise, Casanova me´morialiste, Paris: Honore´ Champion E´diteur, 1998. Parker, Derek, Casanova, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2002. Pieri, Piero, Duelli di penna: Casanova, Goudar e Caterina II, Rome: Bulzoni, 1994. Pizzamiglio, Gilberto (editor), Giacomo Casanova tra Venezia e L’Europa, Florence: Olschki, 2001. Poulet, Georges, ‘‘Casanova et le temps,’’ in Sensibilita` e razionalismo nel Settecento, edited by Vittore Branca, Florence: Sansoni, 1967. Roustang, Franc¸ois, Le bal masque´ de Giacomo Casanova, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1984. Serra, Francesca, Casanova autobiografo, Venice: Marsilio, 2001. Sollers, Philippe, Casanova l’admirable, Paris: Plon, 1998. Wilson, Edmund, ‘‘Uncomfortable Casanova,’’ in The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature, Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.

CARLO CASSOLA

CARLO CASSOLA (1917–1987) Carlo Cassola, a prolific author and intellectual, is recognized as an emblematic figure of a Tuscan literary tradition that spans from Federigo Tozzi to Vasco Pratolini and Mario Tobino. Cassola himself disclaimed any labels and was often in disagreement with the specific ideas endorsed by contemporary literary currents such as neo-Realism or the neo-avant-garde. His writing distinctively identified with a poetics of the subliminal experience (subliminare) that is found in the intensely emotional experience that lies below the threshold of consciousness and awareness. His narrative is characterized by an antiheroic vision of the world, and recurrent themes include an opposition to any repressive force, whether physical or psychological, and the material life of working people. Cassola disclosed his literary inclination at the age of 15, when, as a student of the popular Liceo Tasso in Rome, he became involved in an antiFuturist movement called ‘‘Novismo.’’ In 1935, he entered the University of Rome to study law. At the same time, he continued reading Italian and foreign classics, particularly James Joyce. Indeed, Joyce’s Dubliners provided a significant inspiration for Cassola’s earliest works, a series of short stories written in the late 1930s for periodicals such as Il meriadiano di Roma and Letteratura and later collected in two volumes, Alla periferia (On the Outskirts, 1942) and La visita (The Visit, 1942). Both collections portray ordinary people and their uneventful existence over the course of one day: Young women, adolescents, widows, soldiers, hunters, all are involved in chance encounters described in an unsophisticated language that relies on paratactic structures and avoids an elegiac tone. The result is nevertheless poetic, as Cassola, evoking Joyce’s ‘‘epiphanies,’’ attempted to represent, through linguistic sublimation, the sense of the Absolute that lies behind the ordinary and its manifestations. In the essay ‘‘Il film dell’impossibile’’ (The Film of the Impossible), published in 1961 in the journal Tempo di letteratura, the writer rejected the naturalistic narrative of the nineteenth century and proclaimed that the role of narration is not to portray reality as the result of observation and experience but rather to evoke an image of reality that is divested of any ideological, psychological,

scientific, or moral content. During the postwar years, Cassola was often criticized for his lack of political commitment. Like many artists and intellectuals of his generation, Cassola joined the anti-Fascist Resistance movement in 1942. His family was no stranger to political activity, as his father had been the editor of the socialist newspaper L’Avanti, but Carlo viewed his war experience not so much in terms of his political engagement and growth but rather as an opportunity to become more closely acquainted with ‘‘la gente del popolo’’ (the common people), as he wrote in his introduction to the 1965 Einaudi edition of Il taglio del bosco (The Cutting of the Woods, 1959, but first published in Paragone in 1949). After the war, he began a new phase in his writing career, moving toward longer works in which the autobiographical element becomes clearly visible. Following his wife’s sudden death (1949), Cassola faced a period of profound crisis, aching unceasingly from the loss of his beloved. He stopped working on Il taglio del bosco for a few months, and, when he resumed writing, he started his Resistance novel Fausto e Anna (Fausto and Anna, 1952). A new edition appeared in 1958 with major structural and linguistic changes. Here Cassola enriched his previous poetics of subliminare, adopting new narrative strategies that called for a more traditional approach in tune with the historical events, a greater attention to detail, and a deeper articulation of the psychological dimension of the characters. Set against the background of Fascism and the war, the novel tells the story of Fausto Errera and Anna Mannoni, who meet during a summer holiday and fall in love. Fausto, a selfcentered intellectual with a complicated personality, embraces those very bourgeois values that he also fiercely challenges. Anna, a quieter individual, becomes increasingly fascinated by the young man’s intellectual appeal and urban life. They separate and write letters, but Fausto’s jealousy, which turns into verbal abuse, takes a toll on their relationship. Eventually Anna marries the simple but reliable Miro, while Fausto joins the Resistance fight. They will meet again, one last time, when the Allied forces arrive and the Resistance comes to an end. A complex novel, Fausto e Anna weaves 403

CARLO CASSOLA together several themes, from Fausto’s existential struggle, to ideological and political disillusionment, to the conflict between the private dimension and history. It was also Cassola’s first best seller, although it was attacked for its structural and stylistic ambiguity as well as for its unflattering depiction of the partisans. The author’s defence stressed his refusal to submit literature to any political and ideological propagandistic purpose. But it was with his second major work, La ragazza di Bube (Bebo’s Girl, 1960), which was awarded the Strega Prize, that Cassola achieved notoriety. The novel, a best seller, was translated into some 20 languages and was adapted to the screen by Luigi Comencini, with popular stars (a young Claudia Cardinale and George Chakiris). Again, the author deals with life’s expectations, history, love, chance, political involvement, and hope. The novel, based on a true story, is divided into four parts and is carefully structured. Arturo Cappellini, also known as Bube, is a former partisan whose nickname is ‘‘the Avenger’’; Mara Castellucci is a young girl, beautiful and self-confident. After the war, they fall in love and get engaged, but Bube has to flee the country after committing a murder partly justified by the rancors of his past fight. Mara has to choose between him and Stefano, whom she had met in the meantime, eventually deciding to stay with Bube, who is in jail serving a 14-year sentence. Far from simply being a story of love, sacrifice, and destiny, the novel calls for a deeper understanding of its themes, which include loyalty and ethics in a broad sense: loyalty toward a lover but also a role, that of the ‘‘avenger,’’ construed by political ideology. The novel reflects Cassola’s explicit disenchantment from the ideals of the Resistance. At the awards ceremony for the Strega Prize, Pier Paolo Pasolini uttered a funerary oration, ‘‘In morte del realismo’’ (Upon the Death of Realism, 1960), patterned after Anthony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which he cast Cassola as Brutus and blamed him for betraying his socialist ideas and for indulging into a kind of ‘‘lyrical’’ writing that sealed the death of Realism. Negativity takes over in Un cuore arido (An Arid Heart, 1961), which offers vividly detailed descriptions of objects and places that, for Cassola, encompass the authenticity of human existence. The novel is not set in any specific historical context nor does it indulge in naturalistic portrayals of reality. Clearly, Cassola had no intention of abiding by the neo-Realistic mandate, but 404

rather of finding a model in authors such as the late-nineteenth-century English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The same process of distillation of life into a revealing moment returns in his fourth novel Paura e tristezza (Fear and Saddness, 1970), where the condition of ‘‘fear’’ and the sentiment of ‘‘sadness’’ for an ill-fated life are not simply related to the miserable existence of the protagonist, Anna Dell’Aiuto, but more generally to an a priori universal human condition, torn between the impossibility of understanding each other and the unknown destiny to which human beings are subject. In the same anti-Realist vein, Cassola wrote Monte Mario (Portrait of Helen, 1973) in the form of a dialogue that elucidates the incommunicability of his protagonists, following a tradition that, from Luigi Pirandello to Alberto Moravia, highlighted the psychological condition of the characters. Cassola also wrote numerous essays on a wide range of topics: from the role of literature to political engagement and social change, to antimilitarism and disarmament. Some of the most significant are Viaggio in Cina, (Journey to China, 1956), describing his experiences in Maoist China, perhaps with an overly appreciative tone; and I minatori della Maremma (Miners in Maremma, 1956), written in collaboration with Luciano Bianciardi, which offers a sensitive and compelling reportage of the poor working conditions of miners in southern Tuscany. In the 1970s Cassola took up an antinuclear stance, and his writings such as Diritto alla sopravvivenza (The Right to Survival, 1982) and La rivoluzione disarmista (The Unarming Revolution, 1983) attest to a continuous interest in the pacifist movement.

Biography Carol Cassola was born in Rome on March 17, 1917, and educated at the Liceo Tasso, where he joined the anti-Futurist movement of ‘‘Novismo.’’ He published his first poems in the student journal Anno XIII, 1935. He entered the Faculty of Law of the Universita` ‘‘La Sapienza’’ in Rome, 1935, and graduated with a thesis on civil law, 1939. After the armistice of September 8, 1942, Cassola joined the Resistance movement in Tuscany, where he had moved with his family. He spent most of his life in Grosseto, in southern Tuscany; he taught in high school, 1949–1962; his wife died, 1949. He remarried and had a daughter, 1951. Cassola travelled to China, 1955. He was awarded the Strega Prize for La ragazza di Bube, 1960; and was

CARLO CASSOLA awarded the Napoli Prize for Una relazione, 1969. He collaborated with peridocals such as Il corriere della sera and Il mondo and the literary journals Il ponte and La fiera letteraria. Cassola died in Montecarlo (Lucca) on January 29, 1987, after a long illness. MARIA LAURA MOSCO Selected Works Fiction Alla periferia, 1942. La visita, 1942. Fausto e Anna, 1952; as Fausto and Anna, translated by Isabel Quingley, 1960; reprinted, 1975. Il taglio del bosco, 1949; expanded as Il taglio del bosco: racconti lunghi e romanzi brevi, 1959. La casa di Via Valadier, 1956. Un matrimonio del dopoguerra, 1957. Il soldato, 1958. La ragazza di Bube, 1960; as Bebo’s Girl, translated by Marguerite Waldman, 1962. Un cuore arido, 1961; as An Arid Heart, translated by William Weaver, 1964. Il cacciatore, 1964. Tempi memorabili, 1966. Storia di Ada, 1967. Una relazione, 1969. Paura e tristezza, 1970. Monte Mario, 1973; as Portrait of Helena, translated by Sebastian Roberts, 1975. Gisella, 1974. L’uomo e il cane, 1977. La disavventura, 1977. Un uomo solo, 1978. Ferragosto di morte, 1980. La morale del branco, 1980. La zampa d’oca, 1981. Gli anni passano, 1982. Colloquio con le ombre, 1982. Mio padre, 1983. Le persone contano piu` dei luoghi, 1985.

Nonfiction Viaggio in Cina, 1956. I minatori della Maremma, with Luciano Bianciardi, 1956. Poesia e romanzo, with Mario Luzi, 1973. Fogli di diario, 1974. Ultima frontiera, 1976.

La lezione della storia, 1978. Contro le armi, 1980. Il romanzo moderno, 1981. Diritto alla sopravvivenza, 1982. La rivoluzione disarmista, 1983.

Letters La nascita dei Minatori della Maremma: il carteggio Bianciardi–Cassola–Laterza e altri scritti, edited by Velio Abati 1998.

Further Reading Asor Rosa, Alberto, Scrittori e popolo: saggio sulla letteratura populista in Italia, Rome: Samona e Savelli, 1965. Bertacchini, Renato, Carlo Cassola: introduzione e guida allo studio dell’opera cassoliana, Florence: Le Monnier, 1977. Calvino, Italo, ‘‘Due domande su La ragazza di Bube,’’ Mondo Operaio, 13(1960), 87–100. Carlo Cassola: letteratura e disarmo, San Giovanni Valdarno: Lega per il disarmo unilaterale, 1988. D’Agostino, Annamaria and Mariantonietta Mariotti, Cassola: l’intellettuale dimenticato, Empoli: Ibiskos, 1988. Falaschi, Giovanni (editor), Carlo Cassola. Atti del convegno (Firenze, Palazzo Medici–Riccardi, 3–4 Novembre 1989), Pontassieve: Becocci Editore, 1993. Ferretti, Gian Carlo, Letteratura e ideologia: Bassani, Cassola, Pasolini, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1964. Jodi Macchioni, Rodolfo, Cassola, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1967. Luperini, Romano, ‘‘Il sentimento della vita in Cassola saggista,’’ Paragone, 478(1989), 32–42. Madrignani, Carlo, L’ultimo Cassola: letteratura e pacifismo, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1991. Napoleone, Patrizia, Carlo Cassola e la ragazza di Bube, Turin: Loescher, 1997. Pedroni, Peter N., Existence as Theme in Carlo Cassola’s Fiction, New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Rutter, Itala T. C., ‘‘Carlo Cassola: Partigiano nella vita,’’ Italian Culture, 11(1993), 301–310. Spinazzola, Vittorio, Il realismo esistenziale di Carlo Cassola, Modena: Mucchi, 1993. Turchetta, Gianni, ‘‘Dall’ ‘epifania’ al ‘film dell’impossibile’: il giovane Cassola e il giovane Joyce,’’ in Studi vari di lingua e letteratura italiana in onore di Giuseppe Velli, Milan: Cisalpino, 2000. Valori, Massimo, Ipotesi di lavoro su La ragazza di Bube e Carlo Cassola, Florence: Libra, 1992.

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LUDOVICO CASTELVETRO

LUDOVICO CASTELVETRO (1505–1571) Ludovico Castelvetro is generally known as the critic and commentator of Aristotle’s Poetics who codified the rules for the unity of time and the unity of place. Yet his works reflect an independence of thought and a tireless devotion to close reading, and his acute and original observations on a wide variety of literary and philosophical texts make him one of the outstanding critics of the sixteenth century. Castelvetro’s most important work is his commentary on the Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta (The Poetics of Aristotle Translated and Explicated, 1570), to which he devoted the last years of his life, which he spent in exile. He also commented on Dante’s Inferno (1305–1308) and Petrarch’s Canzoniere (ca.1342–1374) and I Triumphi (The Triumphs, 1354–1374). His work on Petrarch was first published posthumously in 1582 but was already well developed by 1545. Castelvetro’s minor critical notes are selected in Lodovico Antonio Muratori’s 1727 edition, which includes observations on such diverse topics as Roman comedy, poetic inspiration, and the role of poetry in society. In addition, there are short essays on Plato, Euripides, Julius Caesar, Virgil, and Boccaccio, among others. During the twentieth century, important discoveries concerning Castelvetro’s authorship led to a number of publications of his work. In 1903, for example, Giuseppe Cavazzuti identified a manuscript, in Castelvetro’s hand, comprising his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. Francesco Donati traced and published in 1970 a series of notes on Aristotle’s Rhetoric (‘‘Un commento inedito del Castelvetro: ‘In tertium rhetoriches Aristotelis’’’). In his 1963 essay entitled ‘‘Castelvetro’s Annotations to the Inferno: A Second Look at a Scarcely Known Manuscript,’’ Robert Melzi made the case that Castelvetro wrote a commentary on not only the first 29 cantos of the Inferno but on the entire Comedia. This work was presumably lost in Lyons in 1567, when the author had to flee the city. Castelvetro’s literary scholarship consistently disclosed a sharp and uncompromising mind, at times impertinent and pedantic. His fierce polemic with the academician Annibal Caro (1507–1566), a poet of wide renown and the secretary of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, spanned across a period of 406

nearly 20 years. The dispute began in 1553 when he attacked Caro’s canzone, ‘‘Venite all’ombra dei gran gigli d’oro’’ (Come to the shade of the great golden lilies), because it praised the Farnese family as well as the French throne. Often rancorous and distasteful, their exchange, consisting of four major documents, nevertheless reflects many aspects of the contemporary debates on language and literary models. As a defense to Castelvetro’s initial critique, Caro wrote a commentary of his poem, entitled Apologia degli Accademici di Banchi contra messer Lodovico Castelvetro (Apology of the Banchi Academics against Ludovico Castelvetro, 1558). Here he focused on the linguistic liveliness of the canzone and his desire to imitate the spirit rather than the language of Petrarch. Castelvetro’s reply engages in a more detailed criticism of the disputed poem, Ragioni d’alcune cose segnate nella canzone d’Annibal Caro: Venite a l’ombra de gran gigli d’oro (Argument on Some Things Noted in the Canzone of Annibal Caro, 1559). Then Caro enlisted the support of Benedetto Varchi, who prepared a first draft of a response as early as 1560, but his dialogue, the Ercolano, remained unpublished until 1570. Varchi aimed at discussing broader issues of linguistic relevance, not at a mere refutation of Castelvetro’s arguments. But Castelvetro’s response, Correttione d’alcune cose del Dialogo delle lingue di Benedetto Varchi (Correction of a Few Things in the Dialogue on Language by Benedetto Varchi, 1572), rejects Varchi’s position and indeed expands the controversy to include his handling of dramatic dialogue as a genre. At times too restrictive, Castelvetro’s criticism is dictated by a strong sense of the need for verisimilitude, a close attention to the text, and a concern for philological rigor. For him, poetic license indicates lack of artistic skills. Such a thorough reading of texts represents his strongest asset. For example, Castelvetro’s commentary on Petrarch stands out for its meticulous references to the original sources (Dante in particular) and an ability to break away from orthodox views when they compromise a rational inquiry. His commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics also reveals how he defined his work as an effort to fill in what others had missed by emphasizing the main theme of the text, or the poetic act.

LUDOVICO CASTELVETRO Yet his goal was not to elucidate Aristotle’s ideas but rather to interpret, expand, and correct the incomplete text for the benefit of the reader: ‘‘quello anchora che doveva o poteva essere scritto per utilita` piena di coloro che volessero sapere come si debba fare a comporre bene poemi’’ (what still he should or could have written for the full benefit of those who want to know what they must do to compose poems well). He singled out some inconsistencies and erroneous assumptions in Aristotle’s text and highlighted, at the same time, the powerful effects on the soul of melodia (melody) and vista (vision). Castelvetro set out to ‘‘supplire anchora quello che manca’’ (supply what is missing), when he proposed three types of plots by subdividing Aristotle’s category of complex plots into plots that have only one change in fortune and those with multiple changes. Thus Castelvetro used Aristotle’s Poetics as a point of departure for his own treatise on poetics, so much so that he extended his discussion to include contemporary works as well as sources not available to Aristotle (from the classical Latin period to Dante, Boccaccio, and Marguerite de Navarre). For Castelvetro, the plot was the fundamental element of the work of art, and it should imitate human action. This led him to draw a close connection between history and poetry: The poet must look to history in order to know what action is probable and possible. Yet, he cannot merely put into verse known historical events; he must contrive a story that does not imitate any specific event but rather a possible action. Furthermore, Castelvetro rejected the commonplace that poetry ought to teach and delight (docere delectando); instead it ought to give only pleasure to the audience, whom he viewed as an uneducated throng. This is the reason why he expelled science from poetry (science was meant to teach). Somehow Castelvetro was faithful to Aristotle, since the latter never mentioned poetry’s ‘‘instruction,’’ even though he seemed to admit its moral effect on the audience. In one of his most interesting expansions on Aristotle, when he explored the complexity of the tragic effect, Castelvetro allowed that after an initial displeasure at viewing a fortunate evil man or an unfortunate good man, the audience experiences a kind of pleasure, because a sense of justice is revealed: ‘‘Onde godiam per quel dispiacere della riconoscenza della nostra giustizia’’ (whence through this displeasure we enjoy the recognition of our own justice). This passage shows that Castelvetro recognized that poetry ‘‘may’’ instruct, even if that is not its primary function.

Castelvetro’s polemical vein resurfaces in the commentary. He contested the opinions of such authorities as Quintilian, Cicero, and Horace; he labeled Terence and Plautus (who take their plots from the Greeks), not poets of invention but mere versificatori (verse-makers) and traslatori (translators). In the end, even Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto are classified as ‘‘thieves’’ for their various stages of borrowing.

Biography Ludovico Castelvetro was born in 1505 in Modena to Jacopo Castelvetro and Bartolomea dalla Porta. He studied law at the University of Siena and became a member of the Accademia degli Intronati. After earning his degree in law, he abruptly left Rome for Siena, where he immersed himself in the study of literature. To appease his father, he returned to Modena but continued his studies, despite his chronic ill health. In Modena, he promoted the study of Greek, Latin, and law in the public schools. By the early 1540s he had joined the Accademia di Modena. Active in civic work, in 1551 he was on the governing counsel of Modena. In 1555, the Inquisition began an investigation of him and in 1560, after a period in hiding, he went to Rome to face charges of heresy. In custody, but not willing to be on trial indefinitely, he escaped with his brother, also held by the Inquisition in Rome. He spent more than two years in Chiavenna and then went to Lyons where he composed his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics (1563–1567). Because of religious violence in Lyons and his sudden flight from his house in 1567 there, many of his works were lost. From Lyons, Castelvetro went to Geneva for several days, before he returned to Chiavenna, where he gave private lessons in Greek. He then joined his brother Giovan-Maria in Vienna, where he was received by Massimiliano II in 1569 and first published his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics in 1570. Because of the threat of the plague in Vienna, Castelvetro moved back to Chiavenna, where he died on February 21, 1571. THOMAS E. MUSSIO See also: Annibal Caro Selected Works Collections Opere varie critiche di Lodovico Castelvetro, edited by Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Bern: Pietro Foppens, 1727.

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LUDOVICO CASTELVETRO Commentaries Ragioni d’alcune cose segnate nella canzone d’Annibal Caro: Venite a l’ombra de gran gigli d’oro, 1559. Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta, 1570; critical edition by Werther Romani, 2 vols., 1978–1979; as Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry: An Abridged Translation of Ludovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata, et sposta, edited and translated by Andrew Bongiorno, 1984. Correttione d’alcune cose del Dialogo delle lingue di Benedetto Varchi, 1572. Le Rime del Petrarca brevemente sposte, 1582. Sposizione di Lodovico Castelvetro a XXIX canti dell’Inferno dantesco, ora per la prima volta data in luce da Giovanni Franciosi, 1886.

Further Reading Adams, Hazard (editor), Critical Theory since Plato, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971. Cavazzuti, Giuseppe, Lodovico Castelvetro, Modena: Societa` Tipografica Modenese, Antica Tipografia Soliani, 1903. Charlton, Henry Buckley, Castelvetro’s Theory of Poetry, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1913. Crane, Ronald Salmon (editor), Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. Donadi, Francesco, ‘‘Un commento inedito del Castelvetro: ‘In tertium rhetoriches Aristotelis.’’’ Lettere italiane, 22(1970), 545–581.

Drusi, Riccardo, La lingua ‘‘cortigiana romana’’: note su un aspetto della questione cinquecentesca della lingua, Venice: Il Cardo, 1995. Jossa, Stefano, ‘‘Petrarchismo e umorismo: Ludovico Castelvetro poeta,’’ Lettere italiane, 57:1(2005), 65–86. Marazzini, Claudio, ‘‘Varchi contro Castelvetro: ‘Tipologie’ linguistiche in una polemica letteraria del sec. XVI,’’ in Kontinuita¨t und Innovation: Studien zur Geschichte der romanischen Sprachforschung vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Gerda Haler and Ju¨rgen Storost, Mu¨nster: Nodus, 1997. Mazzacurati, Giancarlo, ‘‘Aristotele a corte. Il piacere e le regole: Castelvetro e l’edonismo,’’ in Culture et socie´te´ en Italie du Moyen Age a` la Renaissance, Paris: Universite´ de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1985. Melzi, Robert C., Castelvetro’s Annotations to The Inferno: A New Perspective in Sixteenth Century Criticism, The Hague: Mouton, 1966. Melzi, Robert, C., ‘‘Castelvetro’s Annotations to the Inferno: A Second Look at a Scarcely Known Manuscript,’’ Italica, 40:4(1963), 306–319. Nasta, Michel, Le fonctionnement des concepts dans un texte ine´dit de Castelvetro, Padua: Antenore, 1977. Perocco, Daria, ‘‘Lodovico Castelvetro traduttore di Melantone (Var. Lat. 7755),’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 156(1979), 541–547. Romani, Werther, ‘‘Lodovico Castelvetro e il problema del tradurre,’’ Lettere italiane, 18(1966), 152–179. Weinberg, Bernard, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE (1478–1529) Baldassare Castiglione, the man whom Emperor Charles V called one of the finest gentlemen in the world, was born into an old noble family of Mantua. Castiglione had an active, successful, and sometimes difficult life, earning the reputation of an exemplary courtier. He served in the most brilliant courts of the age for families such as the Gonzaga, the Sforza, the Montefeltro, and the Della Rovere. Through such experiences, he gained deep insights into the realities of courtly life and politics that underlie his idealized and nostalgic portrait of the court of Urbino, Il libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528), which had a remarkable influence on the behavior and manners of European courts for over two centuries. He also wrote Italian and Latin poems, a eulogy, and a

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substantial body of private letters and diplomatic correspondence. Castiglione’s poetry reflects the classical and vernacular traditions. His ten sonnets and four canzoni are derivative efforts that describe lover and lady with the standard Petrarchan images and phrases—love as a burning fire, rivers of weeping, fire and ice. Authentic emotion is far more apparent in letters written to his wife, Ippolita. The sonnet ‘‘Cesare mio, qui sono ove il mar bagna...’’ (My dear Cesare, I am here where the sea bathes...) describes the disastrous French campaign of 1503 in southern Italy with Petrarchan language that reveals his misgivings about war. The splendid sonnet, ‘‘Superbi colli e voi sacre ruine’’ (O lofty hills and you, sacred ruins), inspired by the past glory

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE of Rome and its inevitable decline, was often imitated but never surpassed. His canzone ‘‘Manca il fior giovenil de’ miei primi anni’’ (Gone is the youthful flowering of my early years) laments the loss of youth and the folly of his amorous passions. Castiglione’s Latin carmina regularly appeared in collections of Latin poetry over the next two centuries. Most are fashionable and technically good imitations of classical eclogues and elegies, and sincere sentiments enliven some of them. Expressing his sorrow over the death of his dear friend Falcone (ca. 1505), Castiglione’s eclogue Alcon imitates Virgil’s fifth eclogue, from which he takes the name Alcon as well as the setting, meter, and metaphors. With its deeply felt sorrow, this elegiac poem inspired the ‘‘Alcon’’ of William Drummond of Hawthornden on the death of his friend Sir William Alexander (1648) and the ‘‘Epitaphium Daminis’’ (1640) John Milton wrote on the death of his friend Charles Diodati. His wife’s complaints at his absence from Mantua inspired his touching ‘‘Elegia qua fingit Hippolyten suam ad se ipsum scribentem’’ (Elegy to Himself Supposedly Written by His Wife Hippolyta), written while he was serving as Federico Gonzaga’s ambassador at the papal court. Although it draws inspiration from an elegy of Propertius, the affection Castiglione depicts between husband and wife is fresh and new. He also wrote an elegy on the death of his friend Raphael, who had painted his portrait and to whom he provided assistance in producing a survey of classical monuments in Rome, ‘‘De morte Raphaelis pictoris’’ (On the Death of Raphael, Painter). To celebrate carnival in 1506 and to pay tribute to the duke and duchess of Urbino, he composed the dramatic eclogue Tirsi (Thyrsis), collaborating with his cousin Cesare Gonzaga. Written in ottava rima, Tirsi takes place in a pastoral countryside, where three shepherds, Iola, Tirsi, and Dameta, tell a tale of unrequited love. Iola laments the cruelty of the nymph Galatea for rejecting his love; in traditional pastoral fashion, all of nature joins in his sorrow. Attracted by the song, Tirsi arrives and goes with Dameta to the goddess’s court, a splendid environment like the one created by Duchess Elisabetta at Urbino. Over this pastoral kingdom the good shepherd, representing Duke Guidobaldo, keeps watch, ensuring a peaceful existence. Meant to entertain the aristocrats at court, Tirsi also reminds them of the importance of good government and the rewards of service, notions central to Il Cortegiano. When King Henry VII gave the ailing Guidobaldo a knighthood, Castiglione went to England

in 1507 to receive the honor on his behalf. At the Italianate English court, he met the English king and his son, the future Henry VIII, eulogized in the Il Cortegiano. After Guidobaldo’s death, Castiglione sent the English king a Latin eulogy, ‘‘Ad Henricum Angliae regem Epistola de vita et gestis Giudubaldi Urbini Ducis’’ (To Henry, King of England, Epistle on the Life and Deeds of Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino), which commemorates Guidobaldo’s great virtues, decorum, self-restraint, and stoicism, qualities indispensable to courtiership in Il Cortegiano. Castiglione’s own broad knowledge and experience inform Il Cortegiano, which looks back to precedents such as Plato’s Symposium, Cicero’s De oratore, humanistic models like Marsilio Ficino and Leon Battista Alberti, and Pietro Bembo’s dialogue, Gli Asolani. The book is set in Urbino on four evenings during the visit of Pope Julius II in March 1507. The characters, from Julius’s retinue and Guidobaldo’s court, form a cross section of Italian society and a range of personalities and opinions. Although Castiglione’s depiction of the court at Urbino is idealized, the use of historical figures lends an element of realism, and multiple viewpoints on the issues debated reflect the ambiguities of courtly environments. Each book in Il Cortegiano contains a philosophical exordium by the author, who claims he was not present at the gathering in Urbino and that he is only recounting the conversations at second hand. In book one, Castiglione’s fiction of nightly conversations as a form of courtly entertainment permits him to create a less formal atmosphere in which topics are discussed from different perspectives and at different degrees of seriousness. His physical and moral portrait of the courtier draws on Cicero’s Roman orator, the medieval chivalric code, and classical and contemporary humanist ideals. By requiring a noble background for his courtier, Castiglione conservatively ties nobility to family origins rather than individual merit, but his view conforms to the social prejudices typical of courtly settings. An aptitude for both physical and intellectual activities is crucial, but the goal of the courtier’s training is to enable him to act with grazia (grace). The courtier achieves grace through self-restraint, mastery of the social conventions, and sprezzatura, an ideal invented by Castiglione to refer to a certain nonchalance or casualness in word and deed, often associated with disinvoltura (natural spontaneity). Since the chief tool of action at court is wit, the courtier needs a sophisticated knowledge of the 409

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE humanities, essential to developing verbal skills, sound judgment, and morality. Thus, the humanist ideal becomes an integral part of the education of the courtier, the prototype of the gentleman, but his learning must never be obvious, just as affectation and pedantry must be avoided. Graceful behavior must be seemly, reflecting the classical ideal of the ‘‘golden mean.’’ Castiglione’s courtier is well rounded, able to adjust his behavior to every person or situation, and the second book focuses on how the courtier should exercise his talents, emphasizing the importance of acting with discretion and good timing. Such adaptability is an invaluable, practical skill in a profession that had to navigate adroitly through the complex, even perilous, courtly environment. The model courtier avoids flattery, provides honest counsel, and tries to avoid serving a wicked ruler. He chooses proper fashions and friends, because first impressions matter at court. The discussion of humor and laughter at the end of this book grows rather naturally out of the emphasis on the role of wit in the courtier’s success. In Castiglione’s courtly world, all human relationships are defined through words, and humor may provide a kind of safety valve to deflect the tensions that lie beneath the polished surface. In the third book, the ladies move the conversation to the courtly lady, who creates the refined environment of a court. Beauty and circumspection are more important for the courtly lady, but she must be the courtier’s equal: She must come from a noble family, exhibit liveliness of mind, be clever in conversation, shun affectation, engage in appropriate exercise, know how to dress herself, and possess natural grace and virtue. She needs sufficient wit to maintain an atmosphere of goodwill, while entertaining all kinds of people; she must be adept in matters of love. Her essence lies in her affabilita` piacevole (pleasing affability) and in conduct and speech measured against una certa mediocrita` difficile (a certain difficult mean). In a lively debate that opposes misogynistic attacks and protofeminist positions, the idea that a woman can be as worthy as a man is supported with classical examples. Women create the sophisticated background against which the courtier displays his talents. Relationships between the prince and the courtier and between men and women are at the center of courtly life. In book four, the discussion moves beyond role playing and appearances, assigning to courtiership tangible moral and political goals. Whereas book two leaves moral distinctions to the courtier’s discretion, book four expands the courtier’s role to teaching the prince the difference 410

between reality and appearance, truth and falsehood, good and evil. Machiavelli and other political theorists ascribed Italy’s political chaos to corrupt leadership. Castiglione’s courtier addresses the problem by teaching the prince an essentially Platonic morality, linked to knowledge and choice of the good. A second radical ideal transforms courtiership. The perfect courtier must be in love, because love can lead him to the divine. Modeled on Plato’s Symposium and the writings of Marsilio Ficino and Pietro Bembo, the debate contrasts physical love and ideal love. The vision of earthly, corporeal beauty eventually leads the courtier up the ‘‘ladder of love’’ toward ideal beauty and the divine. The courtier must love the lady in her beauty of mind no less than that of her body. Aided by the senses of sight and hearing, this rational love involves no physical contact. Moving away from one beauty to the contemplation of many beauties allows him to form a universal concept of beauty, which liberates his soul from its earthly prison and guides it to a purifying introspective, intellectual experience allowing the soul to see in itself a spark of the divine. Finally, it experiences a mystical union with the divine, leaving behind all the senses and rational discourse. The company is spellbound by Bembo’s final discussion of ideal beauty, but the book ends on a playful note that brings both the speakers and the reader back to reality. Used as a book on etiquette and a guide to life at court, Il libro del Cortegiano earned a large public audience all over Europe. Others have seen it as an idyllic picture of a dazzling and fleeting moment in Italian culture. Yet, Castiglione clearly has more serious goals—an exploration of wit and humor in human society, the nature of women, the goal of providing wise counsel to the prince, spirituality and Platonic love, and the pleasures of living in a refined environment. Il Cortegiano moves beyond a sorrowful preoccupation with the past: Its primary concern is the formation and education of a moral individual. At his best, the courtier reflects the humanistic ideal of realizing one’s potential and living a rewarding life, a matter of concern to aristocrats, the wealthy bourgeoisie, artists and writers in societies centered around the institution of the court. As a courtier and diplomat, Castiglione may have sought the reputation of a wise and moral counselor, and his tone in Il Cortegiano would have appealed to the age, which reacted so negatively to Machiavelli’s realistic portrait of princes. Charles V kept the book by his bedside, along with the Bible and, interestingly, Il Principe.

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE Unable to retrieve the copy he had given to Vittoria Colonna, Castiglione hurried to publish his book at the famous Aldine Press in Venice, where it appeared in April 1528 according to his meticulous instructions. Castiglione’s future as a courtier and diplomat seemed secure, because of Charles V’s favor and the historical situation pointing to Spanish supremacy in Italy and central Europe. In early 1528, he was offered the bishopric of Avila, which he did not accept; it was rumored that Pope Clement was considering him for a cardinalate. But the capricious fortune that took away so many of his friends and family denied him his reward. At his death in 1529, he also left behind a significant diplomatic and personal correspondence that offers the reader a fascinating view into Renaissance society.

Toledo Cathedral, his remains were carried back to Italy in 1530 and buried next to his beloved wife in a church outside Mantua. JULIA CONAWAY BONDANELLA Selected Works Collections Opere volgari e latine, edited by Gianni Antonio e Gaetano Volpi, Padua: Comino, 1733. Poesie volgari e latine, edited by Pierantonio Serassi, Rome: Pagliarini, 1760. Opere, edited by Giuseppe Prezzolini, Milan‐Rome: Rizzoli, 1937. Libro del cortegiano con una scelta delle opere minori di Baldesar Castigione, edited by Bruno Maier, Torino: Unione tipografico–editrice torinese, 1964.

Dialogues

Biography Baldassare Castiglione was born into an old noble family on December 6, 1478, at Casatico (Mantova), his father’s estate, and named for his paternal grandfather. He moved to Milan in 1492, where he completed his education and gained experience while enjoying the cultural attractions at the court of Ludovico Sforza, Il Moro. Castiglione returned to Mantua after his father’s death in October and assumed his father’s responsibilities at the court of Francesco Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua. He witnessed the French invasion of Milan and the fall of Ludovico in the autumn of 1499. He worked for the French alliance for five years, accompanying Gonzaga on the ill-advised campaign against the Spanish in the Kingdom of Naples in 1503. Castiglione remained as Gonzaga’s representative in Rome, cultivated the papal Curia, and met Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and his wife, Elisabetta Gonzaga. He entered Duke Guidobaldo’s service at the court in Urbino in 1504, much to Gonzaga’s displeasure, and remained with Francesco Maria della Rovere after Guidobaldo’s death. He participated in several military campaigns organized by Julius II between 1509 and 1514 and again entered the service of Francesco Gonzaga, when Pope Leo X removed Francesco Maria as Duke of Urbino. Castiglione married Ippolita Torelli in 1516 and had three children before her death in 1520. During this period he again represented the Marquis of Mantua in Rome. He was appointed papal nuncio to Spain in July 1524 by Clement VII and gained the favor of Charles V. He died on February 7, 1529. Although he was buried in

Il Cortegiano, 1524; as The Book of the Courtier, edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles Singleton, 2002.

Letters Lettere, edited by Pierantonio Serassi, 1769–1971. Lettere inedite e rare, edited by Guglielmo Gorni, 1969. Le Lettere. Tomo primo (1497–March, 1521), edited by Guido. La Rocca, Milan: Mondadori, 1978.

Further Reading Cartwright, Julia, The Perfect Courtier Baldassare Castiglione: His Life and Letters, 1478–1529, 2 vols., New York: E. P. Dutton, 1927. Cian, Vittorio, La Lingua di Baldassarre Castiglione, Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1942. Cox, Virginia, The Renaissance Dialogue: Literary Dialogue in Its Social and Political Contexts, Castiglione to Galileo, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Finucci, Valeria, The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Fucilla, Joseph G., Superbi colli e eltri saggi, Florence: Olschki, 1963. Hanning, Robert W., and David Rosand (editors), Castiglione. The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Harrison, Thomas Perrin, Jr., ‘‘The Latin Pastorals of Milton and Castiglione,’’ Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 50(1935): 480–493. Ossola, Carlo, Dal Cortegiano’’ all’ ‘‘ Uomo di mondo’’: Storia di un libro e di un modello sociale, Turin: Einaudi, 1987. Saccone, Eduardo, ‘‘The Portrait of the Courtier in Castiglione,’’ Italica, 64(1987): 1–18. Scarpati, Claudio, and Uberto Motta. Studi su Baldassarre Castiglione, Milan: ISU Universita` cattolica, 2002. Woodhouse, John R., Castiglione: A Reassessment of ‘‘The Courtier,’’ Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978.

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BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE

IL LIBRO DEL CORTEGIANO, 1528 Dialogue by Baldassare Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione worked on Il libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier) for nearly 20 years between around 1508 and 1524. He hurriedly sent the manuscript to the Aldine Press in Venice, because he feared a copy in the hands in Vittoria Colonna might be printed without his permission. After publication in April 1528, its popularity extended across Europe and made Castiglione’s model of civilized conduct a useful and enduring one, despite the idealized character of the work, which honors Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and the illustrious court of Urbino. The earliest plans for Il Cortegiano appear in a manuscript notebook dating from around 1508. After returning to Francesco Gonzaga’s service in Mantua in 1514, Castiglione had two manuscripts for his book prepared: The first dates from 1514– 1515; the second, which contains the first version of Il Cortegiano, from 1515–16. He revised and enlarged a second version of Il Cortegiano in three books around 1520–1521. The final manuscript, composed of four books, dates from 1524, after most of the characters in Il Cortegiano were dead. The dedicatory letter to Don Michel de Silva dates from 1527. Written as a dialogue or symposium in four books, Il Cortegiano has both classical and humanistic antecedents. Although Castiglione claims Cicero’s De oratore as his model, the form of the work is closely related to that of Plato’s Symposium. Besides the dedicatory letter to the work, each book contains an address to Alfonso Ariosto by the author. The book’s fiction is that Castiglione himself was in England at the time of the gathering in March 1507 at Urbino’s ducal palace, and that he is only setting down in writing a detailed account he heard of the lively conversations that took place as part of the entertainment, after the arrival of Pope Julius II and his entourage. The participants include a variety of notable historical figures, who lend an element of realism to the idealized picture of this brilliant court. 412

In book one, the speakers decide to amuse themselves by defining an ideal courtier. At the center of his physical and moral attributes lies grace that arises from sprezzatura, often defined as nonchalance or a kind of artful naturalness. They focus on the courtier’s nobility; his devotion to arms and sport; his education, especially in letters as the foundation of moral character; his cleverness in speaking and writing; and his expertise in social interactions. The second book focuses upon such issues as sound judgment, good timing, offering honest counsel, avoiding affectation, and following the classical rule of moderation. The long analysis of humor and the role of laughter in human life relates to the necessity of wit in the often dangerous courtly environment. When the question of the courtier’s behavior with women arises, the ladies insist that the courtier must have a woman who is his equal. The courtly lady, the topic of book three, has a civilizing function at court. While a natural kind of beauty is important, a lady must be circumspect and cautious in her behavior. Yet, many of her traits are identical to those of the courtier: liveliness of mind, appropriate physical exercise, prudence, virtue, skill in conversation, and securing goodwill. The courtly woman must exhibit a pleasing affability while observing a certain difficult mean. Some of the speakers defend women from misogynistic attacks through ancient examples, suggesting that women can be as worthy as men. Finally the concern with appearances is superseded by the question of the courtier’s political functions and higher aspirations, in particular toward Platonic love. The courtier’s principal goal serves an important political function, that of guiding his prince toward virtuous thoughts and actions. Furthermore, the perfect courtier must be in love, because love can lead him to the divine and spiritual, to true virtue. Rather than mere physical sensation, love becomes, in the words of Bembo, a purifying force inspired by the sense of sight rather than touch. Modeled on Plato’s Symposium and the writings of Marsilio Ficino and Pietro Bembo, the vision of earthly, corporeal beauty leads the courtier up the ‘‘ladder of love’’ toward ideal beauty and, ultimately, the divine. Talking until dawn, the company is captivated by the final discussion of ideal beauty that transforms the woman into an inspiration to lead the soul to the good or God. The book ends on a playful note that brings both the speakers and the reader back to reality.

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE Il Cortegiano is about the education of the ruling classes, but it offers a higher purpose. The contemplative ideal of love complements the active life of guiding the prince. The enthusiastic reception of this work demonstrates the power of its advice in European courtly circles for nearly two centuries. It appeared in over 150 editions in various European languages between 1528 and the end of the eighteenth century. JULIA CONAWAY BONDANELLA Editions First Edition Il libro del Cortegiano, Venice: Aldus, 1528.

Critical Editions Il libro del Cortegiano, edited by Vittorio Cian, Florence: Sansoni, 1897, reprinted in 1947. Il libro del Cortigiano, edited by G. Preti, Turin: Einaudi, 1960. As Il libro del Cortegiano con una scelta delle Opere minori, edited by Bruno Maier, Turin: UTET, 1964. Il libro del Cortigiano, edited by Giulio Carnazzi, Milan: Rizzoli, 1987. Il libro del Cortigiano, edited by Walter Barberis, Turin: Einaudi, 1998.

Translations As The Book of the Courtier, edited by Daniel Javitch, translated by Charles Singleton, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Further Reading Berger, Harry, The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicionin, Two Renaissance Courtesy Books, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Burke, Peter, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1995. Cavallo, JoAnn, ‘‘Joking Matters: Politics and Dissimulation in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier,’’ Renaissance Quarterly, 53(2000): 402–424. Motta, Uberto, Castiglione e il mito di Urbino: studi sulla elaborazione del ‘‘Cortegiano,’’ Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2003. Motta, Uberto, ‘‘Per Elisabetta: Il ritratto della Duchessa di Urbino nel Cortegiano di Castiglione,’’ Lettere Italiane, 56(2004): 442461. Patrizi, Giorgio, and Amedeo Quondam (editors), Educare il corpo, educare la parola: nella trattistica del Rinascimento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1998. Pugliese, Olga Zorzi, ‘‘L’evoluzione della struttura dialogica nel Libro del cortegiano, ’’ in Il sapere delle parole: Studi sul dialogo latino e italiano del Rinascimento, edited by Walter Geerts, Annick Paternoster, and Franco Pignatti, Rome: Bulzoni, 2001. Quint, David, ‘‘Courtier, Prince, Lady: The Design of the Book of the Courtier,’’ Italian Quarterly, 37(2000): 185–195. Quondam, Amedeo, ‘‘Questo povero Cortegiano,’’ Castiglione, il Libro, la Storia, Rome: Bulzoni, 2000. Rebhorn, Wayne, Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s ‘‘ Book of the Courtier,’’ Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978. Wirth, Petra, ‘‘Il libro del cortegiano: La figura femminile– segno ideale nel mondo illusorio del cortigiano,’’ Romance Review, 8(1998): 38–59.

THE CASTLE OF FRATTA See Le confessioni d’un italiano (Work by Ippolito Nievo)

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CATHERINE OF SIENA (CATERINA BENINCASA)

CATHERINE OF SIENA (CATERINA BENINCASA) (1347–1380) Dominican tertiary, mystic, theologian, canonized saint, doctor of the Catholic Church, and patroness of Italy, Catherine is the most prominent mystic of the fourteenth century. She was the author of 382 Lettere (Letters, ca. 1374–1380), 26 Orazioni (Prayers, ca. 1376–1380), and one book, the Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza (Dialogue of Divine Providence), also known as Dialogo della Divina Dottrina, or Dialogo delle Rivelazioni (Dialogue of Divine Doctrine, or Dialogue of Revelations), or simply as Dialogo (Dialogue). Catherine was the first woman to have left substantial amounts of writing in the Italian vernacular. Despite her lack of education and her social class, Catherine broke the boundaries of feminine conventions for her times. Rather than remaining within the confines of the household or monastery, as would have been customary for a religious woman, she became a public figure and a strong presence in the civic, ecclesiastical, and political struggles of the fourteenth century. She gained unprecedented power, to the point of being consulted by the pope for advice and being asked to lecture the College of Cardinals on its dutiful loyalty to the pope. Her influence on two major historical occurrences is particularly noteworthy: convincing the pope to return to Rome from Avignon and contributing to a peace agreement between Florence and the pope. Living at the time of papal residency at Avignon, Catherine actively committed herself to the pope’s return to Rome and eventually succeeded in convincing him to abandon his political intrigues and to revert to his traditional role as bishop of Rome. Pope Gregory XI moved the court back to the Vatican in 1378. In March of the same year, at the pope’s request, Catherine departed on a mission to Florence, which was then under papal interdict, in order to bring peace between the two contending states. In Florence, she witnessed the Ciompi revolt in June. Catherine imposed herself on popes and princes by means of her wisdom and her simple but profound rhetoric. Her written works are a unique specimen of what may be called ‘‘ecclesiastical mysticism.’’ They are nothing more than an inspired 414

exposition of basic Catholic creeds, which Catherine renewed and presented in a more approachable fashion, thanks to her acquired closeness to God. Traditional criticism focused on the retelling of Catherine’s life and began while she was still alive. In 1374 Tommaso della Fonte and Bartolomeo Dominici wrote hagiographic texts on her life. In 1398 her secretary Raymond of Capua wrote the Legenda maior (Major Legend), the first biography, from which over 40 subsequent lives would draw their material for edifying purposes. In recent years, Catherine’s mystical writing has received more attention, both for its theological content and for its literary value. After being proclaimed Doctor of the Catholic Church in 1970, her written works have been investigated more thoroughly, paying particular attention to the originality of her theological approach and her unique style. Catherine overcame the obstacle of her own illiteracy with the help of her spiritual director and secretary, the Dominican friar Raymond of Capua, who was a theologian and a scholar in his own right. Despite her initial ignorance, the constant interaction and discussion about theological and spiritual issues with her cohort of followers, most of whom were literate and knowledgeable people, and the continuous reading of mystical and theological texts helped Catherine develop a cultural background of her own. Although at some point she may have learned how to write her own texts, she always preferred to dictate her writings to her numerous followers who served as her secretaries. Through her writings, Catherine contributed strongly to the spreading of the vernacular, which was at its beginning stages of development as a written language. She wrote in Sienese dialect, and her works, besides being crucial theological investigations, gain importance from a literary and linguistic point of view, because they were written at a time when literary language was not yet definitively formed. After a long period of prayerful solitude climaxed in an unexpected ‘‘mystical marriage’’ with Christ at the age of 21, Catherine came to the realization that the love of God must be complemented by service to her fellow human beings. She

CATHERINE OF SIENA (CATERINA BENINCASA) began by tending to the indigent and underprivileged, but soon her service would involve civic, political, and ecclesiastical commitments. Catherine quickly became well known for her ecstasies and also gathered around herself a large number of followers, whom she named famiglia, the Italian for ‘‘family.’’ Some of her followers were secular, but most of them were religious belonging to different orders. The formation of the group around her is important because theologically Catherine was influenced by the four major mystical schools of the Middle Ages: Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Benedictines. Some of her followers were Dominicans like herself (Raimondo da Capua, Tommaso Caffarini, Bartolomeo Dominici), others were Franciscans (Gabriele da Volterra, Lazzarino da Pisa), still others were Augustinians (Giovanni Tantucci and other hermits of Lecceto, as well as William Flete), and one was the Vallombrosan Benedictine Giovanni dalle Celle. Catherine’s Lettere constitute indispensable documents of cultural and historical significance. The variety of her correspondents and abundance of situations offer an opening into the real life of fourteenth-century Europe. Catherine corresponded with friends, relatives, strangers, prisoners, prostitutes, popes, queens, and kings. To all of them she imparted advice, counsel, and information, in an attempt to find a spiritual explanation and moral maturation for their private or public condition. She wrote most of her letters between 1370 and 1380, at a most difficult time in the history of the Church, when the Avignon ‘‘captivity’’ underwent important changes, before a permanent solution was found. For this reason, some of the letters addressed to the pope or to government officials attest to Catherine’s political stance. Her undeniable political naı¨vete´ transpires through her observation of every situation from a moral and spiritual perspective. She maintained deference and subordination in her relations with state and clerical officials, but she surpassed the confines of her sex and role, when she clearly voiced judgment and expressed condemnation. While hiding behind the rhetorical shield of misogynistic inferiority, she made strong arguments to support her opinions. In literary history, at the time of the diatribe over the standardization of the Italian language, her letters would be considered a model of Sienese dialect to be contrasted with the Florentine dialect. The Lettere were the subject of numerous critical studies in the course of the nineteenth century. Given the historical approach of most scholarship in that period of time, the letters offer abundant

material for investigation into the crucial questions linked to the papal exile in France. Catherine wrote the Dialogo between 1377 and 1378, dictating it to her secretaries, who were already used to writing the letters she dictated. In this case, they transcribed what the saint uttered during her ecstatic moments, when she was rapt in visions. As suggested by the title, the structure of the book is that of a dialogue with God the Father, in which Catherine reports her experience of Christ and concerns herself with the whole spiritual life of human beings. The dialogic form of this work derives directly from Catherine’s composition technique, because the book was divinely inspired and the result of her prayerful exchanges with God. It is divided into six sections: an Introduction (Chapters 1 to 8), the ‘‘Trattato della Discrezione’’ (Treatise on Discretion, Chapters 9 to 64), the ‘‘Trattato dell’Orazione’’ (Treatise on Prayer, Chapters 65 to 134), the ‘‘Trattato della Divina Provvidenza’’ (Treatise on Divine Providence, Chapters 135 to 153), the ‘‘Trattato dell’Obbedienza’’ (Treatise on Obedience, Chapters 154 to 167), and the ‘‘Devota rivelazione’’ (Devout Revelation) or ‘‘Dialogo breve’’ (Brief Dialogue). In the Dialogo, Catherine concentrates on the suffering body of Christ. The incarnate Word and above all the crucified Christ originate all her revelations, which then become expanded to the mystical body of Christ, the Church. The underlying theological concept involves a refutation of self-love, which is the root of all vices, and the desire to achieve perfect virtue, which is the gift of charity and must be complemented by the service of others. The Dialogo is an expansion of the revelation that Catherine had in a vision, after receiving Holy Communion on the feast of the Blessed Virgin. It gathers together the spiritual teachings she had already scattered in the various letters. Its language attempts to express the ineffable essence of God in the symbolism of its own times. Catherine’s Orazioni follow the same compositional technique as the Lettere and the Dialogo. The prayers report words she uttered during her ecstasies, which were recorded by her secretaries, possibly without her consciousness of it. The majority of her prayers were recorded in the last few months of her life, during her stay in Rome between 1379 and 1380. Catherine’s exchanges with God in the Orazioni are rhetorically and spiritually not very dissimilar from the Dialogo, because they are conceived as reporting revelations inspired in her by the Spirit during ecstatic moments. Judgment on Catherine’s theological thinking varies greatly. Far from trying to develop a 415

CATHERINE OF SIENA (CATERINA BENINCASA) systematic theology, she more simply offered her spiritual intuitions and pastoral suggestions. Catherine’s mystical theology concentrates on imagery rather than theoretical conceptualization. Some of her images are particularly significant, such as the ‘‘bridge.’’ The humanity of the divine Christ, the incarnate Word, stands as the bridge between prayer and action, heaven and earth, humans and God, contemplation of God and service of others, time and eternity. The cross of Christ becomes the bridge uniting humanity and divinity; three most important constitutive parts of the cross are the three steps of the bridge: Christ’s feet nailed to the Cross, his pierced side, and his mouth reveal in ascending succession his ineffable love and peace. The ‘‘inner cell’’ or cell of the mind is another such powerful image. It signifies the bringing into the interior of the prayerful practice of contemplation. Living in the world, Catherine made her own monastic cell inside herself; even while living in the troublesome family environment in her youthful years, she gained isolation by retreating in her private cell of the mind. Other concrete images include the ‘‘rope’’ of charity, which binds God and humans together, and the tree of life, which was dead but has been restored to new life thanks to its grafting with the love of God; it is now a new and fruitful tree. Catherine’s novelty is stylistic more than conceptual. She used very concrete and graphic images to account for her theological arguments. Morality, truthfulness, and strong imagery are some of the chief qualities of her literary work, which manages to express even the most complex and sublime theological concepts in popular style and simple, direct language. The depth of Catherine’s spiritual revelations shaped her humble rhetoric into inspiring images that can be easily comprehended by scholarly and ignorant readers alike.

Biography Catherine of Siena was the twenty-fourth child born to Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa, middle class wool-dyers from Siena, in southern Tuscany. Prophetic indications of her religious mission have been identified in her date of birth, March 25, 1347, which coincides with the feast of the annunciation to Mary and the miraculous conception of Christ, in the fact that Catherine was the only one of 25 children to be nursed by her mother, and also in her death in 1380 at the age of 33, traditionally the age of Christ. Catherine displayed clear signs of her religious vocation from a very early age. She 416

decided not to marry, in order to devote herself entirely to the service of God. After her first vision at the age of 6, she made a vow of virginity. In defiance of her parents’ marriage plans for her, Catherine cut off her hair and lived as a recluse in the basement of her family home. At 16, she took the habit of the Sisters of Penance of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, the Mantellate, which up to that time had been an order solely for widowed women. She devoted her life to praying, fasting, physical penance, and the service of her family members. Catherine received no formal education and taught herself how to read and write during the years of isolation at home. When she was 20, Christ instructed her in one of her visions to conduct an active life of service in the world. She gathered around herself a large group of followers, from every station of life and rank. Most of her followers were older, more educated, and socially higher than she. She even gained the faith of popes, cardinals, politicians, kings, and queens, who exchanged letters with her in search of advice. On April 1, 1375, while in Pisa on a mission, she received the stigmata. She also convinced Pope Gregory XI to move the papacy back to Rome from Avignon, thereby ending the 70-year ‘‘captivity’’ in 1378. In the same year, she witnessed the Ciompi revolt in Florence, where she was sent by the pope to pacify the city. At the death of Gregory XI, she became deeply involved in the dispute between the newly elected Pope Urban VI and the anti-Pope Clement VII, which started the Great Schism of the western Church. Having been called to Rome by the pope to be on his side, Catherine lived in Rome for the last two years of her life and died on the Sunday before the Feast of the Ascension, on April 29, 1380, after offering her life for the unity of the Church. Since Catherine’s death, her relics have been credited with numerous miracles. Upon the demand of the Sienese people for the saint’s body to be returned, Catherine’s head was severed and sent to Siena to be venerated as a relic. She was canonized in 1461 and proclaimed patroness of Italy in 1939 and doctor of the Church in 1970. ALESSANDRO VETTORI See also: Religion and Literature Selected Works Libro della divina dottrina: Barduccio Canigiani, Epistola della morte di S. Caterina (written in 1377–1378), ca. 1475. Epistole: Orazioni scelte, edited by Bartolommeo da Alzano, 1500.

CARLO CATTANEO Il Dialogo (written in 1377–1378), edited by Giuliana Cavallini, as The Dialogue (1968), translated by Suzanne Noffke, 1980. Le orazioni (written in 1376–1380), edited by Giuliana Cavallini, 1993, as The Prayers of Saint Catherine of Siena, translated by Suzanne Noffke, 1983. Epistolario di Santa Caterina da Siena (written in 1374– 1380), edited by Eugenio Dupre´ Theseider, 1940; as The Letters of Saint Catherine of Siena, 2 vols., translated by Suzanne Noffke, 2000–2001.

Further Reading Anodal, Gabriella, Il linguaggio cateriniano: indice delle immagini, Siena: Cantagalli, 1983. Bell, Rudolph M., Holy Anorexia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Cavallini, Giuliana, Catherine of Siena, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1998. Fawtier, Robert, and Louis Canet, La double expe´rience de Sainte Catherine Benincasa, 6th edition, Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1948.

Foster, Kenelm, and Mary John Ronayne, editors, I, Catherine: Selected Writings of Catherine of Siena, London: Collins, 1980. Getto, Giovanni, Saggio letterario su S. Caterina da Siena, Florence: Sansoni, 1939. Hilkert, Mary Catherine, Speaking with Authority: Catherine of Siena and the Voices of Women Today, New York: Paulist Press, 2001. Levasti, Arrigo, My Servant, Catherine, translated by Dorothy M. White, Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1954. Noffke, Suzanne, O.P., Catherine of Siena: Vision through a Distant Eye, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996. Papa`sogli, Giorgio, Sangue e fuoco: Santa Caterina da Siena, Rome: Citta` Nuova, 1986. Raimondo da Capua, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, translated by George Lamb, London: Harvill, 1960. Zanini, Lina, Bibliografia analitica di s. Caterina da Siena: 1901–1950, Rome: Edizioni Cateriniane, 1971.

CARLO CATTANEO (1801–1869) The Milanese philosopher and economist Carlo Cattaneo launched his career as a writer in 1822, publishing a review of his university professor Gian Domenico Romagnosi’s influential book Assunto primo della scienza del diritto naturale (The First Thesis of the Science of Natural Law, 1820) in the Florentine journal Antologia di Vieusseux. Romagnosi (1761–1835) was the most important figure in Cattaneo’s formation; in his article, Cattaneo strongly supported Romagnosi’s esteem for the French Enlightenment, especially as exemplified in Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedie. In 1839 Cattaneo founded Il Politecnico: Repertorio mensile di studi applicati alla prosperita` e alla cultura sociale (The Polytechnic: Monthly Index of Studies Applied to Welfare and Social Culture), which became the most important cultural journal of its time. Il Politecnico continued to be published until 1844, then resumed in 1859, continuing under Cattaneo until 1862 and ceasing publication in 1868. As its editor, he sought to analyze the Italian and European situation from historical, sociological, and economic perspectives and to disseminate news of the latest scientific advances among his readers. Cattaneo also wrote on literary matters from a quasi-anthropological perspective, addressing the

problem of romanticism, the status of the ‘‘modern’’ novel in Italy, and the relationship among literature, history, and responsible citizenship within the context of national customs. He analyzed and recommended such books as Vita di Dante (Life of Dante, 1839), by Cesare Balbo and the Romancero del Cid, translated into Italian by Pietro Monti in 1839, while criticizing works like Niccolo` Tommaseo’s Fede e Bellezza (Faith and Beauty, 1840), which he faulted for its weakness in ideas and style. In 1843 he was appointed to the Istituto Lombardo-Veneto, composed of scholars in economic and historical studies, and was entrusted to prepare a guide of Lombardy for the scholars who were to come to Milan for the Congress of Scientists in 1844. Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia (Natural and Civic Notes on Lombardy, 1844) is a two-volume analysis of the scientific and social history of the region that concludes with a discussion of its contemporary problems. Between 1846 and 1847, Cattaneo published Alcuni scritti (Some Writings), a collection of essays elaborating his political hopes for independent European states. In 1848 he was part of Consiglio di Guerra, which organized the ‘‘cinque giornate,’’ the ‘‘five days’’ of political insurgency in Milan, of which he wrote a 417

CARLO CATTANEO vigorous account in French, L’Insurrection de Milan (The Insurrection of Milan, 1848). Cattaneo abandoned active political involvement when King Carlo Alberto and his ministers, who considered him an unreliable reactionary, became the leaders of Risorgimento. Cattaneo’s position was, in fact, a republican federalist one: He was hostile to the unification strategy of Giuseppe Mazzini and Camillo Cavour. In Cattaneo’s view, Mazzini’s politics were idealistic, mystic, and visionary, while Cavour took the opportunistic and utilitarian line of a professional politician. Cattaneo held that social and political policy should be based on an objective analysis of all the relevant economic and historical factors. In his view, the vision of the leaders of the Italian Risorgimento was a vast idealistic synthesis that lacked a scientific foundation. The very first step of the Risorgimento movement, the unification between developed Lombardy and the backward Piedmont, was a social and economical mistake in Cattaneo’s view, an example of such unrealistic idealism. Cattaneo’s attitude was in any case the attitude of a scholar who worked to apply the principles of the French Enlightenment to contemporary realities. Analysis should be based on experimental observation, on a lucid and considered rational judgement, on a scientific culture, able to mediate, as he wrote in the introduction to his Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia, between ‘‘le meditazioni dei pochi e i costumi e le necessita` dei molti’’ (the thoughts of the few and the habits and needs of the many). He hoped to ‘‘render fertile il campo d’azione e di pratica’’ (to fertilize the field of action and pratice) by inspiring a series of social and economical structural reforms. Cattaneo was profoundly hostile to the ideas of the ‘‘primato morale e civile degli italiani’’ (the moral and civic preeminence of the Italians) introduced and promoted by the republican philosopher Vincenzo Gioberti. In 1860 Cattaneo published a collection of his complete essays in economics, Memorie di economia pubblica (Memoirs of public economics). As he wrote there: ‘‘L’Italia dovrebbe muoversi all’unisono con l’Europa, per conquistare una nobile posizione nell’associazione scientifica d’Europa e del mondo, poiche` gli scopi del popolo son gli stessi, coerenti, unici e comuni: una scienza, un’arte, una cultura, una societa`’’ (Italy should move in unison with Europe, to assume a noble position in the scientific association of Europe and the world, because the aims of the people are the same, consistent and common ones: one science, 418

one art, one culture, one society). Switzerland was a political model for him. In the ancient League of the Free Cantons, it gave birth to a new constitution in which political rights and individual freedom were guaranteed; it had a common army, security policy, and government, but the economic and social individuality of each of the cantons was respected. In Switzerland Cattaneo published his Corso di filosofia (Course in Philosophy, 1852), in which, in powerful and incisive language and images, he discussed the economic value of free enquiry and the importance of combining intellectual with scientific, technical research. When he resumed publication of Il Politecnico in 1860, he published an essay dedicated to the poet Ugo Foscolo and his fight for Italian independence and autonomy. After 1867 Cattaneo became an elected member of the Italian Parliament, but he never exercised his mandate, being deeply disappointed by the way in which a united Italy was achieved and ruled. Cattaneo’s ideological positions were revived during World War II when Elio Vittorini launched a literary and cultural review called Il Politecnico (1945–1947).

Biography Born in Milan, on 15 June 1801, Cattaneo studied law in Pavia under Gian Domenico Romagnosi and graduated in 1824. He worked as a professor in various high schools in Milan and as a German translator for the Lombard publisher, Londonio. He became a leader of the 1848 ‘‘cinque giornate’’ insurrection in Milan. When the Austrians regained their power, Cattaneo took refuge first in Lugano, then in Paris, where he sought French republican support to the Italian independence movement. He moved to Lugano in 1855. In 1860, he joined Garibaldi in Naples. He was elected a member of the Italian Parliament in 1867. Cattaneo died in Castagnola (Switzerland), on 6 February 1869. STEFANO ADAMI See also: Risorgimento Selected Works Collections Opere, edited by Alessandro Bertani, Florence: Le Monnier, 1881. Le piu` belle pagine di Carlo Cattaneo, edited by Gaetano Salvemini, Milan: Treves, 1922.

GUIDO CAVALCANTI Scritti filosofici, edited by Norberto Bobbio, Florence: Le Monnier, 1960. Tutte le opere, edited by Luigi Ambrosoli, Milan: Mondadori, 1967. Opere scelte, edited by Delia Castelnuovo Frigessi, 4 vols., Turin: Einaudi, 1972. Scritti filosofici letterari e vari, edited by Franco Alessio, Florence: Sansoni, 1990. L’innovazione come leva dello sviluppo: Scritti e discorsi per la Societa` d’Incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri di Milano, edited by Carlo G. Lacaita, Florence: Le Monnier, 2001.

Philosophic, Political, and Economic Writings Notizie naturali e civili su la Lombardia, 1844. Alcuni scritti, 1846–1847. Dell’insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva guerra, edited by Norberto Bobbio, 1949. Corso di filosofia, 1852. Memorie di economia pubblica, 1860.

Letters Epistolario, edited by Rinaldo Caddeo, 1949–1956.

Further Reading Armani, Giuseppe, Carlo Cattaneo, una biografia, Milan: Garzanti, 1997. Bracaloni, Ruggero, Cattaneo, un federalista per gl’italiani, Milan: Mondadori, 1995. Cafagna, Luciano (editor), Atti di intelligenza e sviluppo economico. Saggi per il bicentenario della nascita di Carlo Cattaneo, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001. Della Peruta, Franco, Carlo Cattaneo politico, Milan: Angeli, 2001. Frabotta, Biancamaria, Carlo Cattaneo, Lugano: Fondazione Ticino, 1971. Gili, Antonio, Carlo Cattaneo (1801–1869) un italiano svizzero, Lugano: Casagrande Editore, 2001. Levi, Alessandro, Il positivismo politico di Carlo Cattaneo, Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano, 2001. Moos, Carlo, L’altro Risorgimento: L’ultimo Cattaneo tra Italia e Svizzera, Milan: Angeli, 1992. Puccio, Ugo, Introduzione a Cattaneo, Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Rotelli, Ettore, L’eclissi del federalismo: da Cattaneo al Partito d’Azione, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003.

GUIDO CAVALCANTI (CA. 1259–1300) Guido Cavalcanti was one of the most distinctive poetic voices of the dolce stil nuovo; indeed, in the Vita Nuova, Dante refers to him as his ‘‘first friend.’’ Cavalcanti’s poetic compositions, 52 in all (2 canzoni, 2 cobbole, 11 ballate, 36 sonnets, and 1 mottetto), are collected in more than 100 manuscripts, among which the oldest and most authoritative are three in the Vatican Library (Chigi L.VIII.305, Lat. 3214, and Barb. 3953), two in Florence (Laurentian Rediano 9 and Banco Rari 217, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale), one in Spain (Escorial e.III.23), one in Verona (Capitolare 445), and one in Milan (Ambrosiano O.63 sup.). Cavalcanti’s poetry is generally dedicated to the exploration of amorous phenomena and may be divided into several distinctive and broad categories defined both by subject and style: the doctrinal and intellectual disquisition on the nature of love and loving; the praise of love and the lady’s beauty; the complaint over the harshness of love’s tyranny; humorous caricature in the comic-realistic vein; and poetry of more popular inspiration. No fewer than eight of his sonnets are in correspondence (tenzoni) with other poets. Of these, perhaps

the earliest ‘‘historically datable’’ one was written in response to the younger Dante’s first sonnet in the Vita Nuova,‘‘A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core,’’ which requests an interpretation of his erotically charged dream. In his responsive sonnet, ‘‘Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore,’’ Guido provides an explanation that, at the time of its composition, may have been plausible, but one that, in retrospect, Dante found wanting. In the category of tenzoni, some poems directed to other poets do not appear to have had a response, or at least none has survived, as, for example, the two sonnets he addressed to Dante—‘‘Dante, un sospiro messagger del core’’ and ‘‘Se vedi Amore, assai ti priego, Dante’’— and particularly the one he addressed to Guittone d’Arezzo, ‘‘Da piu` a uno face un sollegismo.’’ In this latter sonnet Guido takes the older poet to task for the lack of clear logical procedures and structures in his poetry. As was the case with most of the important poets of the age, Cavalcanti both borrowed from the lyric tradition and contributed to it; he was an imitator as well as an innovator. Nevertheless, his poetic voice almost always has a fresh and distinctive 419

GUIDO CAVALCANTI quality. Cavalcanti was a poet with many faces, perhaps as many as five different aspects. In poems such as ‘‘Fresca rosa novella’’ and ‘‘Avete ‘n vo’ li fior’ e la verdura,’’ we may observe the more ‘‘traditional’’ Cavalcanti, for here he shows himself to be the master of the relatively uncomplicated poetry of praise that imitates both the Sicilian School and Guido Guinizzelli. In sonnets such as ‘‘Tu m’a`i sı` piena di dolor la mente’’ and ‘‘Voi che per li occhi mi passaste il core,’’ we may view the poet’s darker, tragic side, particularly in his seeming obsession with the ‘‘spiritelli’’ (little spirits) and with the torment occasioned by love that leads to death. In other poems, such as the sonnet ‘‘Guata, Manetto, quella scrignutuzza,’’ Cavalcanti displayed his ability to write effectively and humorously in the lower stylistic register of the goliardic poets and the ‘‘rimatori comico-realistici,’’ such as Rustico di Filippo and others. In the ballata ‘‘In un boschetto trova’ pasturella,’’ Cavalcanti demonstrated his awareness of the troubadour tradition of the pastourelle and his skill in composing in a more popular genre. Finally, in his doctrinal canzone ‘‘Donna me prega,’’ he gave ample evidence of his intellectual powers and exegetical talents—of what Dante termed in Inferno 10 Guido’s ‘‘altezza d’ingegno’’ (v. 59). Indeed, Cavalcanti’s reputation as a ‘‘natural philosopher,’’ a follower of Epicurus and Averroes, is attested by the chroniclers Giovanni and Filippo Villani and by Giovanni Boccaccio, who cast him as such in the ninth tale of the sixth day of the Decameron. These philosophical strands found their way into many of his poems and into ‘‘Donna me prega’’ in particular. Cavalcanti was obsessed with the psychology of love, and in many of his poems he represented, externalized, the inner struggle of the soul afflicted by contrasting emotions, which he personified as spiritelli. The tragic, mournful quality of his lyrics attests to the mental and physical anguish induced by love and often reflects the abject state of the lover, as in the following sonnet, which also marks a new development in the history of the form: L’anima mia vilment’ e` sbigotita de la battaglia ch’ell’ave dal core: che s’ella sente pur un poco Amore piu` presso a lui che non sole, ella more. Sta come quella che non ha valore, ch’e` per temenza da lo cor partita; e chi vedesse com’ ell’ e` fuggita diria per certo: Questi non ha vita. Per li occhi venne la battaglia in pria, che ruppe ogni valore immantenente,

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sı` che del colpo fu strutta la mente. Qualunqu’ e` quei che piu` allegrezza sente, se vedesse li spirti fuggir via, di grande sua pietate piangeria. My soul suffers harsh anguish because of the battle the heart wages on it: if it senses that Love is closer to it than normal, it will die. It remains as one that has no power and is through fear separated from the heart; whoever would see how it has fled would say for certain: ‘‘This one is not alive.’’ The battle first came through the eyes and immediately broke down all resistance, such that the mind was devastated by the blow. Whoever may be in a state of great happiness, if he were to see my spirits fleeing, he would weep from pity

This intentionally asymmetrical and unique rhyme scheme (ABBB BAAA CDD DCC) is the metrical counterpart to the emotional disequilibrium, to the disordered state of the poet-lover’s existence brought about by love. Relying neither on fragmented syntax nor on harsh language, Cavalcanti was able to convey the sense of imbalance through subtle manipulation of the rhyme scheme. As is customary, the poet-lover’s amorous affairs are acted out with ‘‘real’’ characters, the personifications of his soul, mind, and heart. Cavalcanti’s doctrinal canzone ‘‘Donna me prega’’ is structured along the lines of a philosophical and scientific treatise and was intended to be a sort of scientific proof (a ‘‘natural dimostramento’’) that defines the origin, nature, and effects of love. The first stanza of the canzone announces the several questions about love that the poet will seek to resolve: Donna me prega, — per ch’io voglio dire d’un accidente — che sovente — e` fero, ed e` sı` altero, — ch’e` chiamato amore: sı` chi lo nega — possa ’1 ver sentire! Ed a presente — conoscente — chero, perch’io no spero — ch’om di basso core a tal ragione porti canoscenza: che`, senza — natural dimostramento non ho talento — di voler provare la` dove posa, e chi lo fa creare, e qual sia sua vertute e sua potenza, l’essenza — poi e ciascun suo movimento, e ’l piacimento che ’l fa dire amare, e s’omo per veder lo po` mostrare. A lady beseeches me, and therefore I am willing to treat of an accident that is often fierce, and yet so majestic, which is called Love: so that those who disbelieve in it may hear the truth. And now I require an intelligent audience, because I have no hope that people of inferior quality can muster sufficient understanding for a discussion of this kind. For I am not inclined to try, without

GUIDO CAVALCANTI scientific exposition, to demonstrate where it resides, and who brings it into existence, and what its virtue and its power are, and then its essence and all its movements, and the attraction that earns for it the name of loving, and whether one can show it so that it can be seen. [Translated by J. E. Shaw]

Although the exact meaning and sources of the canzone are still the subject of much debate, certain points emerge as valid: The lover, gazing upon a real woman, formulates within himself his own idea of beauty, and this ideal conception then completely dominates his mind, causing him to strive anxiously and ceaselessly to obtain its earthly manifestation, that is, a real woman. The anguish and torment of this vain pursuit (vain because the real can never measure up to the ideal) ultimately deprives the lover of reason and causes death. Cavalcanti’s poetry, for the most part, has as its subject the externalization, with appropriate personifications, of this inner struggle. While Cavalcanti is well known for his distinctively ‘‘tragic’’ poetry, not all of his lyrics are concerned with the anguish of the lover. The ballata ‘‘Fresca rosa novella’’ is a fine example of his richly flowing and exuberantly optimistic love lyrics, which demonstrate his strong ties to the poetic tradition. The first line evokes the colorful contrasto of Cielo d’Alcamo, ‘‘Rosa fresca aulentissima,’’ as well as a host of other poems that feature the Natureingang with the related floral and seasonal imagery of springtime: Fresca rosa novella, piacente primavera, per prata e per rivera gaiamente cantando vostro fin presio mando — a la verdura. Fresh, new rose, pleasing springtime, through meadows and streams joyously singing I proclaim your worth to all the countryside

The first two verses contain the almost ecstatic double invocation of the lady who is both rose and spring, flower and season. The adjectives ‘‘fresca,’’ ‘‘novella,’’ and ‘‘piacente’’ focus on her marvelous aspects: vitality, newness, and beauty. These are the qualities that combine to form the lady’s worth— her ‘‘presio’’— that the poet will evoke in his song of praise and that will echo throughout the springtime landscape, denoting the universality of Cavalcanti’s message. The ballata form, not common among the earlier poets, became for Cavalcanti a major vehicle for expression. This five-line ripresa contains the essential elements of the composition,

and its repetition after each strophe would ensure that the poem’s message—the celebration of the woman’s beauty, worth, and miraculous qualities—was proclaimed unequivocally and universally. The ballata is then a prime example of what we might call Cavalcanti’s overt adherence to the Guinizzellian ‘‘poetics of praise’’ and, more generally, to the celebration of the lady’s beauty and worth that is integral to a large part of duecento poetry. In a related vein, the sonnet ‘‘Bilta` di donna e di saccente core’’ belongs to the genre of the Provenc¸al plazer, which is intended to evoke those things that bring pleasure to the poet. One of many topoi in the thirteenth-century lyric is the presentation of the scene describing the encounter between the lover and the lady on the street (e.g., Giacomo da Lentini’s ‘‘Meravigliosamente’’; Guinizzelli’s ‘‘Io vogl’ del ver la mia donna laudare’’; Dante’s ‘‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare’’; Cino da Pistoia’s ‘‘Tutto mi salva il dolce salutare’’). Cavalcanti’s variation on this particular theme, the sonnet ‘‘Chi e` questa che ve`n, ch’ogn’om la mira’’ (Who is she who comes, that every man admires), demonstrates his attempt to bridge the distance between the joyful and the tragic styles. While Cavalcanti was obviously not the first poet to speak of the pains and anguish of love, his poetry is distinguished because of the intensity of the emotion and the dramatic qualities of the poetic mise-en-sce`ne. In a number of finely tuned lyrics, mainly sonnets, Cavalcanti demonstrated his ability to describe the state of desolation wrought by love, to stage a dramatic scene of conflicting emotions that results in the harsh reality of a battlefield of love strewn with the victims of passion, as, for example in the sonnet ‘‘Voi che per li occhi mi passaste il core,’’ which presents a fantastic vision of Love who destroys the poet’s inner self. Cavalcanti’s preoccupation with the tragic dimension of amorous passion found followers in two of the minor members of the dolce stil novo, Dino Frescobaldi and Gianni degli Alfani. For his many fine qualities and numerous innovations Cavalcanti has a place of prominence in the poetic tradition of the thirteenth century.

Biography Guido Cavalcanti was born in Florence sometime in the 1250s (and not later than 1259) into a wealthy and powerful Guelf family. Guido’s father, Cavalcante, participated in the battle of Montaperti (1260) that resulted in the defeat of the Guelfs 421

GUIDO CAVALCANTI and the six-year reign of the Ghibellines in Florence (1260–1266). In 1267 Guido was married to Bice, a daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, the leader of the Florentine Ghibellines, in an attempt to make peace between the warring political factions of the city. They had two children, Tancia and Andrea. Guido was active in Florence politics. In the peace concluded by Cardinal Latino in 1280 he was one of the guarantors for the Guelf party, and in 1284 he served, together with Brunetto Latini and Dino Compagni, on the Consiglio Generale del Comune. In his chronicle, Compagni refers to the animosity between Guido and Corso Donati, a hatred based on political affiliations (Guido was a white Guelf, Corso a leader of the black Guelf faction), and this enmity led to Corso’s attempted assassination of Guido while he was on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Compostella (1293–1295). The passage of the Ordinances of Justice in 1295 effectively excluded Guido from serving in the Florentine government. Fierce partisan rivalry continued, however, and Guido took part in an attack on the Donati family in Florence and was wounded. On June 24, 1300, Guido and other leaders of both the white and the black factions of the Guelf party were exiled to Sarzana in an attempt to restore civic order. On August 19, 1300, the ban was lifted, but Guido had contracted an illness, probably malaria, and died shortly after his return to Florence on August 29. CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ See also: Dolce stil novo Selected Works Collections Rimatori del Dolce Stil Novo, edited by Luigi di Benedetto, Bari: Laterza, 1939. La poesia lirica del Duecento, edited by Carlo Salinari, Turin: UTET, 1951. Le rime, edited by Guido Favati, Milan–Naples: Ricciardi, 1957; as Rime, edited by Giulio Cattaneo, Turin: Einaudi, 1967; as Rime con le rime di Iacopo Cavalcanti, edited by Domenico De Robertis, Turin: Einaudi, 1986; as Rime, edited by Letterio Cassata, Rome: Donzelli, 1993; as The Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti, edited and translated by Lowry Nelson, Jr., New York: Garland, 1986; The Complete Poems, translated by Marc Cirigliano, New York: Italica Press, 1992.

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Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols., edited by Gianfranco Contini, Milan–Naples: Ricciardi, 1960. Poeti del dolce stil nuovo, edited by Mario Marti, Florence: Le Monnier, 1969.

Selected Translations Pound, Ezra, Translations, New York: New Directions, 1963. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History, edited and translated by Frederick Goldin, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973. The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry, translated by Joseph Tusiani. New York: Baroque Press, 1974. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, The Early Italian Poets [1861], edited by Sally Purcell, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Wilhelm, James J., Lyrics of the Middle Ages, New York: Garland, 1990.

Further Reading Ardizzone, Maria Luisa, Guido Cavalcanti: The Other Middle Ages, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Ardizzone, Maria Luisa (editor), Guido Cavalcanti tra i suoi lettori, Fiesole: Edizioni Cadmo, 2003. Barolini, Teodolinda, Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Calenda, Corrado, Per altezza d’ingegno: Saggi su Guido Cavalcanti, Naples: Liguori, 1976. Cecchi, Emilio, and Natalino Sapegno (editors), Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. 1: Le origini e il Duecento, Milan: Garzanti, 1965. Corti, Maria, La felicita` mentale: nuove prospettive per Cavalcanti e Dante, Turin: Einaudi, 1983. Corti, Maria, ‘‘La fisionomia stilistica di Guido Cavalcanti,’’ Rendiconti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 8(1950): 530–552. Dronke, Peter, The Medieval Lyric, New York: Harper & Row, 1968; 2nd ed., 1977. Favati, Guido, Inchiesta sul Dolce stil nuovo, Florence: Le Monnier, 1975. Fenzi, Enrico, La canzone d’amore di Guido Cavalcanti e i suoi antichi commenti, Genoa: Il Melangolo, 1999. Kleinhenz, Christopher, The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–1321), Lecce: Milella, 1986. Malato, Enrico, Dante e Guido Cavalcanti: Il dissidio per la ‘‘ Vita nuova’’ e il ‘‘disdegno’’ di Guido, Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1997. Marti, Mario, Storia dello stil nuovo, 2 vols., Lecce: Milella, 1973. Pasquini, Emilio, and Antonio Enzo Quaglio, Lo stilnovo e la poesia religiosa, Bari: Laterza, 1971. Russell, Rinaldina, Tre versanti della poesia stilnovistica: Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, Dante, Bari: Adriatica, 1973., Shaw, James E., Guido Cavalcanti’s Theory of Love: The ‘‘Canzone d’Amore’’ and Other Related Problems, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949.

PATRIZIA CAVALLI

PATRIZIA CAVALLI (1947–) ‘‘Qualcuno mi ha detto / che certo le mie poesie / non cambieranno il mondo. / Io rispondo che certo sı` / le mie poesie / non cambieranno il mondo’’ (Someone said to me / that for sure my poems will not change the world. / I replied that for sure / my poems / will not change the world). These verses from a poem that supplies the title of Patrizia Cavalli’s first collection, Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo (My Poems Will Not Change the World, 1974), have been taken as the motto of her poetry since her debut. Cavalli’s profound awareness of being immersed in a subjective reality in which absolute truth is elusive or unknowable is reflected in her clear conviction that poetry cannot provide salvation and cannot change the ‘‘present.’’ The claim that her work has no pragmatic consequences demonstrates an intellectual honesty that denies any larger role for poetry. At the same time, this claim also leads her to focus on the personal experience of everyday life. Most of her poems are sharp, concise sketches or portraits of ordinary human experience. The poetic world of Patrizia Cavalli, dominated as it is by erotic themes, in some ways resembles that of a modern-day Sappho. Her poems are often populated with unspecified lovers who so lack a specific identity that they are often indistinguishable from each other. Cavalli offers constant reflections on life that show her ability to perceive lucidly and directly every event in the very moment in which it happens. She thus conveys the feeling that the present is temporary and unstable. As in Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo, emotions are often presented as fleeting: ‘‘Ridero`, sparlero` / raccontero` bugie. / E domani l’avro` gia` dimenticato’’ (I’ll laugh, I’ll defame, / I’ll tell lies. / And tomorrow / I will have already forgotten). Cavalli employs stylistic devices that place her poetry outside traditional lyric modes without surrendering to experimentalism. Her poetic diction excludes the rhetorical exhibition of literary forms in favor of transparency and clarity. There is consequently a minimal gap between the language of her poems and spoken language. Colloquialisms are completely absorbed into her work, which occasionally presents ‘‘streetlevel’’ treatment of certain words and phrases in an amusing and provocative way.

In form and structure, she shows a preference for brevity. Her poems are short, as are the measures of her lines and verses. Her poems assume the style of conversations, diaries, and above all, epigrams, without renouncing rhythm and musicality. Her style encompasses a wide range of registers and tones: ironic, calmly thoughtful, or tender and melancholy. In their variety, her poems recall important poets in the Italian canon such as Guido Gozzano, Aldo Palazzeschi, and, above all, Sandro Penna. In Cavalli’s poems the first person is omnipresent. The poet herself explains the nature of the continuous use of io (I) in a poem entitled ‘‘L’io singolare proprio mio’’ (The Singular I, Really Mine, 1992): ‘‘Se quando parlo dico sempre io / non e` attenzione particolare e insana / per me stessa, non e` compiacimento / che´ anzi io mi considero soltanto / un esempio qualunque della specie, / percio` quell’io verbale non e` altro / che un io grammaticale’’ (If I always say I when I talk, / it’s not because of a particular and unhealthy self-obsession / it’s not self-gratification / because I consider myself just / an ordinary example of the human species, / therefore that word I is nothing more / than a grammatical I). As Stefano Giovanardi noted, Cavalli casts doubt upon the origin of the poetic ‘‘I’’ in a self-derisory manner (‘‘Patrizia Cavalli,’’ 1996). The ‘‘I’’ therefore becomes a voice without any expressed identity and acts as a vehicle for collecting, examining, and transmitting to the reader the multiple fragments of reality. The diction used in the poems has a theatrical quality. This tendency is particularly evident in the collection Sempre aperto teatro (Always Open Theatre, 1999), which follows a narrative line that is clearly autobiographical, with a troubled selfaware undertone. The story represents a relationship between two female protagonists who play their respective parts in a very modern yet ancient human tragedy of unsatisfied and empty love. Although her poetry is thematically oriented toward erotic subjects, one can also see in the poems wider references to the life of contemporary society. However, Cavalli’s poetic world is characterized by its strong passions, which are expressed in a vital, colloquial style and centered on everyday life. Cavalli has also translated plays by Molie`re and Shakespeare. 423

PATRIZIA CAVALLI

Biography

Fiction

Patrizia Cavalli was born in Todi (Perugia), 17 April 1949. She studied at the University of Rome, ‘‘La Sapienza,’’ and graduated with a thesis in musical aesthetics. Besides being a poet, she is also a theater translator. Her translation of Molie`re’s Amphitryon was staged by Carlo Cecchi in 1980, and her translation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was staged by Elio De Capitani in 1987 as well as by Carlo Cecchi in 1997. She travels in Italy and abroad giving poetry readings, among them at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York City, 1997; the San Francisco International Poetry Festival, 2003; Auditorium in Rome, 2005; Salon international du livre, Geneva, 2005. She was awarded the Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Sempre aperto teatro, 1999. Cavalli currently lives in Rome. ANNA MAUCERI TRIMNELL Selected Works Collections Poesie: 1994–1992, Turin: Einaudi, 1992; as My Poems Will Not Change the World. Selected Poems 1974–1992, edited by Barry Callaghan and Francesca Valente, translated by Judith Baumel et al., 1998.

Poetry ‘‘Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo,’’ 1974. ‘‘Il cielo,’’ 1981. ‘‘Sempre aperto teatro,’’ 1999. ‘‘La guardiana,’’ 2005.

‘‘Ritratto,’’ in Narratori delle riserve, edited by Gianni Celati, 1992. ‘‘Arrivederci addio,’’ in Il pozzo segreto, edited by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, 1993.

Translations William Shakespeare, Sogno di una notte d’estate, 1996. Molie`re, Anfitrione, 1981. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by Paolo Bertinetti, 2002.

Further Reading Cecchetti, Valentino, ‘‘Patrizia Cavalli: Poesie,’’ Nuovi Argomenti, 46(1993), 109–112. Giovanardi, Stefano, ‘‘Patrizia Cavalli,’’ in Poeti italiani del Secondo Novecento 1945–1995, edited by Maurizio Cucchi and Stefano Giovanardi, Milan: Mondadori, 1996. Manacorda, Giorgio, ‘‘Per la poesia. Manifesto del pensiero emotivo,’’ Poesia, 66(1993), 71–72. Merola, Nicola, ‘‘Vecchie fedi e nuovi credenti in alcuni esemplari della recente poesia italiana,’’ Filologia antica e moderna, 8(1995), 217–229. Nunez Garcia, Laureano, ‘‘Patrizia Cavalli: la poesia que no cambiara el mundo,’’ in Lengua y lenguaje poetico. Actas del IX congreso nacional de italianistas, edited by Porra Castro Soledad, Valladolid: Universitad de Valladolid, 2001. O’Brien, Catherine, ‘‘Poetry 1870–2000,’’ in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, edited by Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pautasso, Sergio, Gli anni Ottanta e la letteratura. Guida all’attivita` letteraria in Italia dal 1980 al 1990, Milan: Rizzoli, 1991. Pontiggia, Giancarlo, ‘‘Patrizia Cavalli,’’ in Poesia italiana del Novecento, edited by Ermanno Krumm and Tiziano Rossi, Milan: Skira, 1995. Raboni Giovanni, ‘‘Patrizia Cavalli,’’ Tabula, 2(1979), 35–36.

LILIANA CAVANI (1937–) One of Italy’s most challenging and controversial filmmakers, Liliana Cavani began her career at RAI, Italy’s national television network, in the early 1960s as a director of historical documentaries and investigative programs. Her four-part documentary series La storia del terzo Reich (History of the Third Reich, 1961–1962), which chronicles the rise of the Nazi regime, was the first

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historical investigation of German totalitarianism to appear on television. Among her subsequent documentaries are L’eta` di Stalin (The Stalin Years, 1962), an investigation into the massive abuse of power perpetuated by the Soviet leader, and Philippe Pe´tain: Processo a Vichy (Trial at Vichy, 1965), on Pe´tain’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. The issues of power, its negotiation and

LILIANA CAVANI abuse, are investigated in depth in her early work for television and reappear in many of her subsequent feature films. Cavani’s interest in ‘‘heretical’’ idealists also dates from her early career. Francesco di Assisi, her highly acclaimed first feature film, produced by RAI in 1966, reconstructs the life of the radical idealist who became Italy’s most popular saint. In a spare, minimalist style that evokes to some extent the work of Roberto Rossellini, the film focuses on the youthful defiance of the legendary St. Francis, whose spiritual conversion led him to divest himself of all the possessions that were his birthright as the son of a wealthy merchant. Years later, availing of more sophisticated production values, a cast of internationally recognized actors (Mickey Rourke, in the title role, and Helena Bonham Carter, as Chiara) and more complex stylistic strategies, Cavani explored a different aspect of the same medieval figure. Francesco (1989) presents a wearier, more mature Francis who struggles in tormented fashion not with his family and society but with his own religious calling. Milarepa (1974), similarly inspired by a story of spiritual searching, invokes the figure of the eleventh-century Buddhist saint Milarepa. Shifting in setting from the contemporary world to a timeless, imaginary Asian landscape, the narrative unfolds on two levels, as contemporary characters become the reincarnations of ancient Tibetan figures. Like Francesco di Assisi, this is a story of radical divestiture, of idealism and heroic transgression. Milarepa, however, has a more complex narrative structure than the earlier film and points forward to the stylistic assurance of the director’s mature work. Galileo (1968), also commissioned by RAI, was the first of Cavani’s dramatic films to fall prey to censorship. This film, which relies heavily on dialogue, focuses on the ‘‘heretical’’ struggle of the seventeenth-century scientist Galileo Galilei to maintain his intellectual integrity in the face of official censure. Purportedly as the result of its provocative depiction of the battle of the intellectual against the vested interests of ecclesiastical authority, RAI administrators deemed the film unsuitable for broadcast. Eventually sold to Cineriz, it was cut from 105 minutes to 92 for theatrical release. I cannibali (The Cannibals, 1969), Cavani’s first independently produced feature film, is also concerned with acts of resistance by courageous individuals in the face of oppressive rule. An allegorical drama that unfolds in an urban setting in the near future, it is loosely based on Sophocles’s

Antigone and recounts the struggle of the young protagonists Antigone and Tiresias against the inhuman cruelties of a tyrannical state. Though Cavani’s early films did not attain broad international distribution, they received high praise from contemporary Italian critics and commentators, who appreciated their stylistic freshness and originality of inspiration. The power of her early work is symptomatic of the wave of creativity and innovation that invigorated Italian cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and she was acclaimed, along with her contemporaries Bernardo Bertolucci and Marco Bellocchio, as part of a new, talented generation of Italian filmmakers. It was not until the release of Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, 1974), however, that Cavani’s work came to the attention of audiences throughout the world. Though the film was received with widespread acclaim, it also provoked a degree of scandalized perplexity. Set in Vienna in the 1950s, the narrative focuses on the accidental reunion of Lucia, a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp played by Charlotte Rampling, and Max (Dirk Bogarde), the former SS officer who sexually abused her as a 14-year-old prisoner. Cavani’s screenplay puts into the foreground not only the woman’s compulsion to reenact the scene of her earlier, enforced submission, but also the man’s obsessive dedication to renewing their transgressive bond, despite the threat of death at the hands of his former comrades. In the course of the years that followed, Cavani directed Al di la` del bene e del male (Beyond Good and Evil, 1977) and Interno berlinese (The Berlin Affair, 1985), which similarly contextualize private, transgressive relationships within a specific sociohistorical framework. Along with Il portiere di notte, these films constitute what Cavani describes as her ‘‘German trilogy.’’ Unfolding mainly in German or Austrian settings, the three films construct a series of striking erotic scenarios against a background of crucial moments in modern German history: the consolidation of Bismarckian nationalism in the late nineteenth century, the tightening grip of Nazi terror in the 1930s, and the horror of the concentration camp system in the 1940s. In contrast to the austerity of much of Cavani’s earlier work, the films of the trilogy are reminiscent of the sumptuous visual style of the late director Luchino Visconti. Al di la` del bene e del male offers a fictionalized account of the triangular friendship established by Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Re´e, and Lou AndreasSalome´ in the 1880s. In a lavish, almost operatic 425

LILIANA CAVANI style that alternates realistic sequences with surreal, hallucinatory tableaux, the film sketches the course of a highly unconventional relationship from its intense beginnings to its painful aftermath, ending with Nietzsche’s descent into madness and Re´e’s untimely death. The negotiation of power and transgression, prohibition and freedom, attachment and independence is central to the erotically charged struggle played out among the characters. Only the figure of Salome´ survives the struggle intact, as she internalizes the lessons of Nietzsche, defying convention and rejecting personal attachments to pursue her own fiercely independent path. In ironic contrast to Salome´, Cavani’s Nietzsche is vulnerable, undisciplined, and unable to transcend his own human weaknesses. Since the film is ultimately more concerned with exploring the negotiation of desire and the pull of sociohistorical forces than with constructing a factual biography, it was criticized by those reviewers who had anticipated a more conventional presentation of the events of Nietzsche’s life. Interno berlinese is similarly concerned with an intense triangular relationship, though its characters are entirely fictional. Loosely based on the novel Manji by Junichiro¯ Tanizaki, the plot focuses on the wife of a German government official who embarks on a passionate affair with a young daughter of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin at the height of the Nazi moralization campaign. By shifting the setting of the novel from Osaka in the 1920s to Berlin in the late 1930s and introducing the element of racial difference, Cavani invests a narrative that might otherwise have been interpreted simply as melodrama with a provocative political dimension. Here, as in much of Cavani’s work, there is a blurring of the lines between victims and victimizers, obsession and opportunism, domination and divestiture. At the heart of the German trilogy lies Cavani’s concern with the connections among sex, politics, power, and knowledge, issues that are explored in each film through the prism of a transgressive relationship that is simultaneously linked to and set against the forces of political or societal repression. In response to critics’ heated comments and occasional hostility toward Il portiere di notte and Al di la` del bene e del male, the director’s controversial approach to the representation of politics and sexuality was praised and defended at various junctures by such prominent figures as Michel Foucault, Fe´lix Guattari, Alberto Moravia, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. 426

Cavani’s choice of film projects has sometimes puzzled even her keenest supporters. La pelle (The Skin, 1981), which is adapted from a novel by the politically controversial writer Curzio Malaparte, met with a sharply divided response. Set in Naples during the Allied occupation in 1943, the film offers a bitterly ironic depiction of the ‘‘liberation’’ of the city’s residents from wartime suffering. One of the harshest portrayals of the deprivations of war ever presented by a filmmaker, La pelle is a deliberately disturbing film. In its unflinching portrayal of human degradation, it stands in sharp contrast with the constructions of the same historical period presented by other Italian filmmakers. After completing Francesco in 1989, Cavani directed only two feature films over the course of the next 16 years. Offering a sensitive portrayal of the relationship between two deaf mutes, Dove sei? Io sono qui (Where Are You? I’m Here, 1993) took critics by surprise. Though some themes characteristic of Cavani’s cinema, such as resistance to the influence of a bourgeois family system, reappear here, it has a gentler, more intimate tone than any of her previous films. In 2002 she directed Ripley’s Game, based on the eponymous thriller by the American novelist Patricia Highsmith, which focuses on the relationship between the ruthless, yet sympathetic, Ripley and the hapless man he obliges to become his accomplice in murder. Though the film echoes some of the themes present in Il portiere di notte (the intimate complicity of victim and victimizer) and Al di la` del bene e del male (Ripley’s effort to fashion himself as a type of Nietzschean Overman), it is shot through with a mordant humor, unusual in Cavani’s work, that undercuts the dramatic potential of the narrative events. Though Liliana Cavani has been recognized as one of the most gifted film directors working in Italy since the 1960s, she remains a self-declared outsider. In an era dominated by the values of mass media, she is uncompromising in her efforts to pursue an independent artistic vision. Indifferent to imperatives of political correctness, she embraces a purely aesthetic vocation. Since the late 1970s, she has increasingly devoted her energies to the production of operas, a medium to which she brings her unique directorial skills and striking visual imagination. She returned to filmmaking in 2005, however, with De Gasperi, a film produced by the RAI network, which undertakes an original investigation into the personal and political life of one Italy’s most popular Catholic leaders and reformists, Alcide De Gasperi.

LILIANA CAVANI

Biography Liliana Cavani was born in Carpi in Modena Province, January 12, 1937. She studied literature and philology at the University of Bologna, then moved to Rome and enrolled in the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Italy’s national film school) to study directing in 1960. She began working at RAI (Italian national television network) in 1961 as a producer of documentaries and made several documentaries between 1961 and 1965, including Philippe Pe´tain: Processo a Vichy, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival (documentary section), 1965. She directed her first feature film, Francesco di Assisi, in 1966. Her film Galileo was suppressed by RAI in 1968. I cannibali was shown at the New York Film Festival in 1969. Il portiere di notte received international distribution and won widespread acclaim in 1974. In 1979, Cavani began directing operas with Wozzeck in Florence; subsequent operas include Iphigenie in Taurus and Medea at the Ope´ra de Paris, 1984, 1986; Cardillac in Florence, 1991; La vestale at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, 1993; La cena delle beffe in Zurich, 1995; Cavalleria rusticana at the Ravenna Festival, 1996; Il ballo in maschera and La traviata in Milan, 2001–2002. Carpi, her hometown, has established the Associazione Fondo Liliana Cavani, where her films are preserved and made available for consultation. She was appointed to the administrative board of RAI in 1996. Awards include Labaro d’oro for Francesco di Assisi at the Valladolid Film Festival, 1966; Premio Cineforum for Galileo, 1968; Premio Riccione and Consorzio Stampa Cinematografica for Il portiere di notte, 1974; Palladio d’oro and Nastro d’Argento for Al di la` del bene e del male, 1977; Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival for Dove siete? Io sono qui, 1993. She was also awarded the title of Commendatore by the President of the Italian Republic, in 1986, and the Vittorio De Sica Prize for career achievement in 1998. She lives in Rome. ´ INE O’HEALY A Selected Works Documentary Films La vita militare, 1961. Gente di teatro, 1961. Storia del Terzo Reich, 1961–1962. L’eta` di Stalin, 1962. L’uomo della burocrazia, 1963. Assalto al consumatore, 1963. La casa in Italia, 1964.

Gesu` mio fratello, 1964. Il giorno della pace, 1965. La donna nella Resistenza, 1965. Philippe Pe´tain: Processo a Vichy, 1965.

Feature Films Francesco di Assisi, 1966. Galileo, 1968. I cannibali (The Cannibals), 1969. L’ospite (The Guest), 1971. Milarepa, 1973. Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter), 1974. Al di la` del bene e del male (Beyond Good and Evil), 1977. La pelle (The Skin), 1980. Oltre la porta (Beyond Obsession), 1982. Interno berlinese (The Berlin Affair), 1985. Francesco, 1989. Dove siete? Io sono qui, 1993. Ripley’s Game, 2002. De Gasperi, 2005.

Screenplays ‘‘Uno ‘Spiritual cinematografico’: Black Jesus,’’ Fiera letteraria, 12 December 1965, 6–7 (with Ludovico Alessandrini; unfilmed). ‘‘Francesco di Assisi,’’ Part 1, Rivista del cinematografo, 41 (August 1968): 503–512. ‘‘Francesco di Assisi,’’ Part 2, Rivista del cinematografo, 41 (September–October 1968): 577–587. ‘‘Galileo,’’ Cineforum, 78(October 1968): 598–624. Francesco e Galileo: Due film, Turin: Gribaudi, 1970. ‘‘I cannibali,’’ Sipario, 25(February 1970): 40–49 (with Italo Moscati). Milarepa, edited by Italo Moscati, Bologna: Cappelli, 1974. Il portiere di notte, Turin: Einaudi, 1974. Lettere dall’interno: Racconto per un film su Simone Weil, Turin: Einaudi, 1974 (with Italo Moscati; unfilmed). Al di la` del bene e del male, Turin: Einaudi, 1977 (with Franco Arcalli and Italo Moscati). Oltre la porta, Turin: Einaudi, 1982 (with Enrico Medioli). Francesco, Milan: Leonardo, 1989 (with Roberta Mazzoni). Dove siete? Io sono qui, Venice: Marsilio, 1993 (with Italo Moscati).

Further Reading Buscemi, Francesco, Invito al cinema di Liliana Cavani, Milan: Mursia, 1996. Marrone, Gaetana, The Gaze and the Labyrinth: The Cinema of Liliana Cavani, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. ´ ine, ‘‘Desire and Disavowal in Liliana Cavani’s O’Healy, A ‘German Trilogy,’’’ in Queer Italia, edited by Gary Cestaro, New York: Palgrave, 2004. Silverman, Kaja, ‘‘The Female Authorial Voice,’’ in The Acoustic Mirror, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Tallarigo, Paola, and Luca Gasparini (editors), Il cinema di Liliana Cavani: Lo sguardo libero, Florence: La Casa Usher, 1990. Tiso, Ciriaco, Liliana Cavani, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975. Waller, Marguerite, ‘‘Signifying the Holocaust: Liliana Cavani’s Portiere di notte,’’ in Feminisms in the Cinema, edited by Laura Pietropaolo and Ada Testaferri, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995.

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ERMANNO CAVAZZONI

ERMANNO CAVAZZONI (1947–) Starting with his first novel, Il poema dei lunatici (The Voice of the Moon, 1987), which inspired Federico Fellini’s 1990 film La voce della luna, Cavazzoni’s interests lie with the theme of the relationship (both complex and comical) between reality and fiction: The genre best fit to describe Cavazzoni is, as the author himself declares, the tradition of the fantastical, which runs the gamut from Teofilo Folengo to Ariosto, and all the way to Gogol. The self-styled inspector Savini’s exploits happen within a moon cycle and show the reader, against the background of the Padan plains, extravagant dreams and strange illusions—like voices that leap from wells and speak or the imagined cityscape as theatrical backdrop. Savini accomplishes his eccentric investigations flanked by an ex-prefect in disgrace, Gonnella. The investigation stories are paradoxical in their referral to the secret regions of the soul and involve those who are assailed by great doubts. It is a voyage within people’s habits and customs that burrow in our thoughts: obsessive echoes, pigeons that resemble the Madonna, minute worms, deserts of melancholy, characters and enterprises that are extraordinary or just simply bizarre. Among these the following stand out: Alessandro Magno, who saddles alligators and water snakes; Nestor and his insatiable wife, who resembles a steam engine; Father Solimano, who does not know how to officiate the mass; the gravedigger, who dresses up the dead in evening attire; the Visigoths, who do not manage to impress anyone. The full moon, with its influence, creates more charms and paradoxical stories, leading up to the story of Judas Iscariot, who symbolizes a nonsensical world. The skeptical glance cast on the human world and the mistrust in its great positive moral systems are the common denominator in Cavazzoni’s novels, who uses as countermeasure an easygoing though sometimes harsh comical voice derived from the incoherence inherent to the story. In this respect, Cavazzoni resembles Ariosto, whose emblematic theme was that of considering human life one great idiocy: ‘‘The knights of Ariosto and the idiots I try to describe are like insects in a field. They have no sense of birth, life, death, the beyond, or God [...] The idea of the beauty in living without 428

seeing the sense of living has always attracted me’’ (Peter Kuon and Hermann H. Wetzel, Cavalieri, santi, lunatici, idioti... e scrittori inutili, 1997). In Le tentazioni di Girolamo (Jerome’s Temptations, 1991), Cavazzoni continued to focus on eccentric characters: Jerome (allusion to the saint bearing this name) searches for an impossible place of peace and quiet in a library inhabited by strange nocturnal creatures. In Vite brevi di idioti (The Short Lives of Idiots, 1994), the main theme is that of the idiot as maniac but also as philosopher who tries to give an explanation to the problems of the world: The character of Primo Apparuti, for example, reveals his personal take on moral philosophy through his compassion for ordinary objects, mistreated and snubbed by people. The short stories, inspired by evangelical parables, though without any teaching aspirations, descend also from lengthy research conducted by the author in the archives of the insane asylums of Emilia Romagna. Thus, the free translation of Leggenda aurea by Jacopo da Varagine (ca. 1229–1298) recreates the moving yet comical simplicity of the socalled miracles of the saints shown as inadaptable, as nuts that lead incomprehensible lives in the eyes of common men. Cavazzoni’s narratives proceed by accumulation: The ‘‘main’’ story unfurls into digressions, which in turn spin off autonomous stories into a sort of ‘‘word relay’’ from one protagonist on to the next. Cirenaica (Cyrenaic, 1999) sets up flawed characters, ‘‘life failures’’ who populate a ‘‘lowly world,’’ a place where they arrive by train and where everything is lacking: There are only the dreams entrusted to the movie by the same name (‘‘Cirenaica’’), gradually worn out by the endless screenings in the only theater of the place. The characters are also actors who live for the spectacle, unaware of the true identity of their spectators. The protagonist who roams this fantastical city at a certain point reemerges in the central train station of Milan and discovers that in the real city one cannot distinguish between being and seeming. The novel of great stature is very theatrical in its choral effects (the grand nocturnal scenes, the sudden apparitions). In an enjoyable though bitter catalogue, Gli scrittori inutili (Useless Writers, 2002), Cavazzoni illustrated the indispensable

ERMANNO CAVAZZONI seven vices to becoming a ‘‘useless’’ writer: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, envy, anger, and pride. The novel is a manual that presents, in an impious and surreal way, the contemporary literary world: from writers who are ‘‘slaves of other writers’’ to ‘‘obsolete’’ writers; from alcoholics to those who love inflatable dolls, leading up to his final delirious tale of pride, which concludes the work. A lateral but significant side to Cavazzoni is that of play, of ‘‘oulipian’’ exercises in the vein of Perec, like the brief text Morti fortunati (The Fortunate Dead, 2001), or the literary jokes of I sette cuori (Seven Hearts, 1992), in which the comical aspect emerges from the incongruous coexistence of different discursive registers.

Biography Ermanno Cavazzoni was born in Reggio Emilia on June 5, 1947. He lives in Bologna. He was educated through the school of Luciano Anceschi and is currently teaching aesthetics at the University of Bologna. In 1994 he cofounded, with Gianni Celati and Stefano Benni, the magazine Il semplice, published by Feltrinelli. Cavazzoni serves as codirector, with Gianni Celati and Walter Pedulla`, of the bimonthly Il caffe` illustrato. He worked as a screenwriter for La voce della luna of Fellini, based on his Il poema dei lunatici, 1990. He has been awarded various literary prizes, among which are the Arcangeli prize for Il poema dei lunatici and the Comisso prize for Cirenaica. His novels have been translated into English, French, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Turkish. SILVANA TAMIOZZO GOLDMANN Selected Works Fiction Il poema dei lunatici, 1987; as The Voice of the Moon, translated by Ed Emery, 1990. Le tentazioni di Girolamo, 1991. Vite brevi di idioti, 1994. Cirenaica, 1999.

Morti fortunati, 2001. Gli scrittori inutili, 2002.

Other I sette cuori, 1992. Jacopo da Varagine Le leggende dei santi, 1998 (translation and adaptation). Galleria san Francesco (libretto for Tristan Honsinger), 2002. Anatra al sal (text for Lucia Ronchetti), 2002.

Further Reading Budor, Domenique, ‘‘En e´coutant la voix des lunatiques,’’ Chroniques italiennes, 63–64(2000): 419–430. Caddeo, Rinaldo, ‘‘I nomi e le cose (resoconto di un viaggio a ritroso nell’incubo labirintico del romanzo di Ermanno Cavazzoni Le Tentazioni di Girolamo),’’ Arenaria, 9:29–30(1994): 10–22. Cavazzoni, Ermanno, ‘‘Risposte al questionario,’’ Il verri, 19(May 2002): 51–54. Ceserani, Remo, Treni di carta. L’immaginario in ferrovia: L’irruzione del treno nella letteratura moderna, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002. Cortellessa, Andrea, ‘‘In favore di un testo frenologico: Piccolo avviamento a Cavazzoni,’’ in Stupidi e idioti, edited by Felice Ciro Papparo, Rome: Sossella, 2000. Deshoulie`res, Vale´rie, Le don d’idiotie, Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 2003. Jaccard, Roland, ‘‘Humor macabre,’’ Critique, 53(1997): 412–413. Kuon, Peter, and Hermann H. Wetzel (editors), ‘‘Cavalieri, santi, lunatici, idioti... e scrittori inutili: A colloquio con Ermanno Cavazzoni,’’ Sonderdru¨ck aus Italienisch, 38(November 1997): 5–20. La Porta, Filippo, La nuova narrativa italiana: Travestimenti di fine secolo, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Morbiato, Luciano, ‘‘Di una varieta` padana nel sogno raccontato: Cavazzoni tra ‘‘poema e tentazioni,’’ in Il sogno raccontato, Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Rende, 12–14 November, 1992), edited by Nicola Merola and Caterina Verbaro, Vibo Valentia: Monteleone Stampa, 1995. Pedulla`, Walter, Le caramelle di Musil, Milan: Marietti, 1993. Tamiozzo Goldmann, Silvana, ‘‘Che cosa e` ancora narrabile?’’ in Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amori: Poema e romanzo: La narrativa lunga in Italia, edited by Francesco Bruni, Venice: Marsilio, 2001. Tani, Stefano, Il romanzo di ritorno: Dal romanzo medio degli anni Sessanta alla giovane narrativa degli anni Ottanta, Milan: Mursia, 1990.

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EMILIO CECCHI

EMILIO CECCHI (1884–1966) Emilio Cecchi was a conservative literary and art critic, a mannerist writer, and an ‘‘official’’—although radically anti-academic—intellectual. He was awarded the highest Italian prizes and honorary posts and worked for the most prestigious cultural institutions of pre-Fascist, Fascist, and postFascist Italy, including the film institute Cines (1932–1934) and the newspaper Il corriere della sera (1927–1966). His literary works mainly consist of prose d’arte and journalistic essays, which were collected in a number of books, the most famous of which are Pesci rossi (Red Fishes, 1920), L’osteria del cattivo tempo (The Tavern of Bad Weather, 1927), and Corse al trotto (Trotting Races, 1936). Pesci rossi includes 12 capriccios that previously appeared in the journal La Ronda, and eight articles written, from London, for the newspaper La Tribuna. The book represents the best example of Cecchi’s lyrical prose and his aptitude for elegant critical discourse, midway between Tuscan idiomatic literary speech and Roman academism. In 1910, Cecchi started his career of literary critic, collaborating with other periodicals such as Il Leonardo, Il Regno, Hermes, and Il Nuovo Giornale. Cecchi was deeply influenced by Gabriele D’Annunzio and by the idealistic aesthetics of Bendetto Croce, with whom he started a long-lasting correspondence. Croce’s conception of the autonomy of art is well represented by Cecchi’s prosa d’arte, a rhetorical device meant to create an Alexandrine literary atmosphere, a formally elaborated and refined style. This literary taste was applied by Cecchi to both criticism and journalism and represents his most original contribution to Italian cultural discourse. During his critical apprenticeship at Giuseppe Prezzolini’s La Voce (1909–1912), Cecchi developed a literary vision, marked by the attempt to connect Italian literary tradition with British literature (such as in his 1911 Rudyard Kipling) and visual arts (Note d’arte a Valle Giulia, 1912). Most the articles of La Voce, which were mainly devoted to the exploration of D’Annunzio’s and Pascoli’s poetry (such as his 1912 La poesia di Giovanni Pascoli), were later collected in Studi critici (Critical Studies, 1912). A self-taught art critic and a 430

follower of Bernard Berenson, whom he translated into Italian, Cecchi wrote extensively on figurative art and coedited, with the influential art historian and critic Roberto Longhi, the periodical Vita artistica. Although technically naı¨ve, his books and catalogs on nineteenth-century Italian painting, Piero Lorenzetti, Giovanni Fattori, Giotto, Donatello, and the Florentine sculpture of the quattrocento showed a coherent project: A fervent anti-avant-gardist, Cecchi tried to counteract the revolutionary aesthetics of Futurism. He therefore elaborated a historicist defense of classicism, opposing Greek-Florentine classicism to AngloAmerican pragmatic visual culture and grounding on a classical and ethical dimension the constellation of words, images, and human nature that same reality that Futurism directed toward a utopian renovation of mankind, driven by technology. Cecchi’s name is commonly associated not only with his literary and critical contributions but also with the rebellion against avant-gardism of La Ronda, the literary magazine that Cecchi helped to found at the end of the war and the closing of Prezzolini and De Robertis’s La Voce. A refuge for liberal intellectuals, many of whom then joined Fascism, La Ronda pursued, in an age of militant art, the dream of a national classicism and a petrified literary language, able to communicate universally within the realm of art. Influenced by Giacomo Leopardi’s classicism and Renato Serra’s ideology of stylistic balance, the founders of La Ronda (Vincenzo Cardarelli, Riccardo Bacchelli, Lorenzo Montano, Bruno Barilli, and Antonio Baldini) affirmed in the midst of political turbulence the absolute value and purity of art: The rhetorical elegance of Cecchi’s prosa d’arte was a telling expression of this program, which Fascist despotism helped to overcome. Cecchi, the travel writer and the snobbish ruler of aesthetic taste, is well represented by his reportage, written mainly for Il corriere della sera and then assembled as Messico (Mexico, 1932), Et in Arcadia ego (1936), America amara (Bitter America, 1940), and Appunti per un periplo dell’Africa (Notes for a Periplus of Africa, 1954). In his travel accounts of Mexico, the United States, Africa, and Greece, Cecchi

EMILIO CECCHI explicitly underlined the exotic, sacred, and demonic sides of cultural difference. However, in America amara he offered a polemic and derisory account of Roosevelt’s New Deal. In Mexico his approach to America was less schematic: Cecchi, who resolutely discredited Diego Rivera’s paintings and the Communist revolutionary ideology, gave voice to his irrational fascination for the marvels of the New World, describing both the pagan religion of Mexico and California’s cultural industry. Cecchi, who went to London as a correspondent, befriended writers such as Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Lytton Strachey and was an admirer of Rudyard Kipling and Charles Lamb, as well as a passionate critic of British literature, which he introduced in Italy with his Storia della letteratura inglese nel secolo XIX (History of British Literature in the Nineteenth Century, 1915). He also translated works by Shelley, Shakespeare, and Chesterton. Cecchi also worked in the cinema and published several collections of poems, among them Inno primo (First Hymn, 1908), Liriche (Lyrics, 1913), and L’uva acerba (Sour Grapes, 1947). Emilio Cecchi, once strongly criticized for his political and cultural conservatism, remains an influential voce as a literary and art historian as well as a prolific journalist. This is attested by his important collection of essays Ritratti e profili (Portraits and Profiles, 1957) and by the project that he coedited, with Natalino Sapegno, of the Storia della letteratura italiana (History of Italian Literature, 1965–1969).

Biography Emilio Cecchi was born in Florence, July 14, 1884. He was educated in Prato and Florence, where he attended the Istituto di studi superiori until 1910, studying literature but not taking the ‘‘laurea’’ (which he received ad honorem in 1958). He joined the Gabinetto Vieusseux, 1901. Cecchi moved to Rome in 1906. He married Leonetta Pieraccini in 1911; their daughter Giuditta was born in 1913, their daughter Suso was born in 1914, and their son Dario was born in 1918. Cecchi was a captain in the army during World War I, 1915–1918. He collaborated on a number of literary journals and newspapers, such as Il Leonardo, Il Regno, Hermes, La Voce (1909–1912); La Critica, Primato, La Tribuna (1910–1923); Il Secolo, La Stampa, Il corriere della sera (1927–1966); and the Manchester Guardian (1919–1025). Cecchi founded the literary periodical La Ronda in 1919. He was a professor of Italian culture at the University of California at

Berkeley (1930–1931) and was nominated director of film productions for Cines, 1932. He became Accademico d’Italia in 1940. Cecchi joined the Accademia dei Lincei, 1947. He was awarded the literary prize Penna d’oro, Presidenza della Repubblica italiana, in 1961. Cecchi died in Rome, September 5, 1966. FEDERICO LUISETTI See also: History of Literary Criticism Selected Works Poetry ‘‘Inno primo,’’ 1908. ‘‘Inno,’’ 1910. ‘‘Liriche,’’ 1913. ‘‘L’uva acerba,’’ 1947.

Prose Writings Pesci rossi, 1920; critical edition by M. Ghilardi, 1989. L’osteria del cattivo tempo, 1927. Messico, 1932. Corse al trotto, 1936. Et in Arcadia ego, 1936. America amara, 1940. Appunti per un periplo dell’Africa, 1954. Taccuini, edited by N. Gallo and P. Citati, 1976.

Literary and Art Criticism Rudyard Kipling, 1911. Studi critici, 1912. La poesia di Giovanni Pascoli, 1912. Note d ’arte a Villa Giulia, 1912. Storia della letteratura inglese nel secolo XIX, 1915. Pittura italiana dell’Ottocento, 1926. Trecentisti senesi, 1928; as The Sienese Painters of the Trecento, translated by Leonard Penlock, 1931. Pietro Lorenzetti, 1930. Giotto, 1937; as Giotto, translated by Elizabeth Andrews, 1960. Donatello, 1942. Scultura fiorentina del Quattrocento, 1956. Ritratti e profili, 1957. Piaceri della pittura, 1960. I macchiaioli toscani, 1963. Ricordi crociani, 1965. I cipressi di Bolgheri, 1970. Fiorentinita` e altri saggi, 1985.

Edited Works Storia della letteratura italiana, 1965–69 (with Natalino Sapegno).

Translations P. B. Shelley, La difesa della poesia, 1911. G. C. Leibniz, Nuovi saggi sull’intelletto umano, 1911. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Opere scelte, 1956. William Shakespeare, Le allegre comari di Windsor; Otello, in Teatro di William Shakespeare, 1946–1947. Bernard Berenson, I pittori italiani del Rinascimento, 1965.

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EMILIO CECCHI Further Reading Bolzoni, Francesco (editor), Fra Buster Keaton e Visconti, Rome: Centro Sperimentale per la Cinematografia, 1995. De Crescenzo, Assunta, La forma gordiana: classicismo e romanticismo in Emilio Cecchi, Naples: Giannini, 1988. Dei, Adele, La scacchiera di Cecchi, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1984. Di Biase, Carmine, Emilio Cecchi, Florence: Nuova Italia, 1982. Fedi, Roberto (editor), Emilio Cecchi oggi, Florence: Vallecchi: 1981.

Jeannet, Angela, and Louise Barnett (editors), New World Journeys: Contemporary Writers and the Experience of America, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. Leoncini, Paolo, Cecchi e D’Annunzio: Cecchi critico tra novecentismo, Rome: Bulzoni, 1976. Luzi, Giorgio, ‘‘Emilio Cecchi,’’ in Letteratura italiana: I critici, Milan: Marzorati, 1969. Macchioni Jodi, Rodolfo, Emilio Cecchi, Milan: Mursia, 1983. Scudder, Giuliana (editor), Bibliografia degli scritti di Emilio Cecchi, Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1970.

CAMILLA CEDERNA (1921–1997) Camilla Cederna belongs to a tradition of Italian literature in which literature and journalism converge. This tradition, which developed especially in the late 1960s and 1970s, is recent but prestigious, and includes, among others, Luigi Barzini, Indro Montanelli, Enzo Biagi, and Oriana Fallaci. Their writings enrich popular literature with books that, through critical comment and analysis of current events, create a historical perspective on the present. Cederna’s attention was initially focused exclusively on fashion and lifestyle; for this reason it is also possible to place her in the ranks of Matilde Serao and many other contemporary female journalists. Her unique style is characterized by a great liveliness, accessibility, and simplicity. She is light but never frivolous and can be caustic and cutting in her descriptions. As Giulia Borgese wrote in the preface to the 2000 edition of Cederna’s Il lato debole (The Weak Side), first published in 1977, her writing is elegant and humorous, easy to read, yet severe. She had the ability to observe and convey social reality through small details. People’s gestures express their habits, their manner of speaking reflects the moral and material world they inhabit. How people dress and behave in Milanese high society thus comes to signify their underlying ambition and what they strive to become. Cederna’s habit of using apparently light subjects to comment on society is already evident in an article entitled ‘‘Moda nera’’ (Black Fashion), written for Il corriere della sera on 7 September 1943, the day before the armistice between Italy and the Allies during World War II. The article discussed 432

the dress of women in the Fascist hierarchy, in particular Claretta Petacci, Mussolini’s lover. Because of the article, she was arrested by the Fascist police and subsequently sent to prison. After the war, Cederna wrote for magazines and periodicals that had wide circulation, including L’europeo and L’espresso. She concentrated her critical observations on the habits, vices, slang, and fashion of the rapidly changing Italian society of the 1950s and 1960s. She commented on the first postwar trips to the United States and first holidays in exotic locations made by the nouveaux riches. She recorded the effects of the so-called Italian economic miracle by describing the manifestations of luxury, such as the increase in antique shops and interior designers and the enthusiasm of women on receiving expensive gifts. Her articles, which portrayed stereotypical women from Milanese high society, offered a detailed typology: the Single Woman, the Boring Lover, the ManHunter, the Efficient Woman, the Shrink-Obsessed Woman, the Snob, and so on. She also wrote cutting portraits of artists, including conductor Arturo Toscanini, popular singer Wanda Osiris, soprano Maria Callas, film director Federico Fellini, as well as of young entrepreneurs like Silvio Berlusconi. This long and intense work gave rise to numerous books of criticism on Italian lifestyle and habits: Noi siamo le signore (We Are the Ladies, 1958), La voce dei padroni (The Masters’ Voice, 1962), Signore & Signori: personaggi illustri e meschini della vita pubblica e privata dell’Italia d’oggi (Ladies and Gentlemen: Famous and Squalid Figures of

CAMILLA CEDERNA Public and Private Life in Italy Today, 1966), and Callas (1968). She also began to write about current events and politics: investigative reports on the city of Avellino and its politicians and on the femminielli (transvestites) of Naples; articles on Algeria, China, Greece under the dictatorship of the colonels; and the rebirth of neo-Fascism in Germany. September 12, 1969, the day of the terrorist bombing at the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, marked a turning point in Cederna’s career. Being among the first to reach the scene, she was forced to report on the horror of what she witnessed and could not distance herself from what had happened. In spite of sharp criticism from her colleagues, first among them Montanelli, the focus of her work became increasingly political and her journalistic activities more investigative, including denunciations and accusations. Although she continued her lifestyle column, ‘‘Il lato debole,’’ in L’espresso until 1976, she wrote increasingly on the events of the day. Concurrently, the lightness that had always characterized her style and tone gradually gave way to seriousness. Her capacity to observe details remained intact, but her observations took on the character of an investigation marked by a scrupulous examination and analysis of the facts. At the same time, however, her work remained focused on the men and women caught up in events. Her books and articles were still populated with complex characters and personalities, with the important difference that these figures were no longer the Milanese stereotypes of her earlier works but real people: the victims of the Piazza Fontana slaughter, their relatives, and the survivors. She also turned her attention to the victims of injustice and the silence and lies of the authorities and the police. In 1971, she published Pinelli: una finestra sulla strage (Pinelli: A Window on the Slaughter), dedicated to the controversial case of Giuseppe Pinelli, the anarchist accused of the Piazza Fontana bombing who died after falling out of Police Commissioner Calabresi’s office window. In Sparare a vista: Come la polizia del regime DC mantiene l’ordine pubblico (Shoot on Sight: How the Police of the Christian Democrat Regime Maintain Public Order, 1975), she investigated the police violence, especially during political demonstrations. Toward the end of the 1970s, her militant journalistic activity focused on political corruption. Reacting against the unaccountability of powerful politicians, she examined the personality and actions of the then president of the republic, Giovanni Leone.

The result was Giovanni Leone. La carriera di un president (Giovanni Leone. The Career of a President, 1978), in which she accused him of having various suspect connections. The book was a big success, selling more than 700,000 copies, and the president was forced to resign. However, because of some inaccuracies in her book, Cederna was found guilty of defamation of character, and all remaining copies were ordered destroyed. Cederna’s works touch a wide variety of subjects, but they all exhibit, as she writes in Sparare a vista, the same profound principles: the search for truth and the desire to ‘‘capire...denunciare, spiegare a tutti’’ (understand...denounce and explain to everyone). These principles explain the value of her work for deepening our understanding of the difficult years of the 1970s and 1980s.

Biography Camilla Cederna was born in Milan, 21 January 1921. She graduated from the University of Milan with a degree in Latin literature and a thesis on feminine luxury in the view of the minor Greek philosophers and the founding fathers of the Church. Cederna wrote for L’Ambrosiano, 1939, and Secolo Sera, 1940. She wrote an article on the fashion of Fascist women, 1943, and was subsequently sent to prison for a month. She worked for the new magazine L’Europeo, writing a column called Societa`, 1945–1955. She was a columnist and special correspondent and for L’Espresso, 1956–1981 and then wrote for Panorama, 1981–1997. Camilla Cederna died of cancer in Rome on 5 November 1997. ANNA MAUCERI TRIMNELL See also: Journalism Selected Works Noi siamo le signore, 1958. La voce dei padroni, 1962. Signore & Signori: personaggi illustri e meschini della vita pubblica e privata dell’Italia d’oggi, 1966. Callas, 1968. Le pervestite, 1968. Pinelli: una finestra sulla strage, 1971. Sparare a vista: Come la polizia del regime DC mantiene l’ordine pubblico, 1975. Il lato debole, 1977. Giovanni Leone. La carriera di un presidente, 1978. Nostra Italia del miracolo, 1980. Il mondo di Camilla, with Grazia Cherchi, 1980. Casa nostra, 1983 Vicino e distante: gente, ambienti, salotti, usi, costumi: impressioni sull’Italia di ieri e di oggi, 1984.

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CAMILLA CEDERNA De gustibus, 1986. Il meglio di Camilla Cederna, 1987. Il lato forte e il lato debole, 1991. Quando si ha ragione: cronache italiane, edited by Goffredo Fofi, 2002.

Further Reading Ajello, Nello, ‘‘La svolta politica,’’ La repubblica, 12 February 2000, 39. Aspesi, Natalia, ‘‘Quel lato forte della frivolezza,’’ and ‘‘Camilla Cederna, giornalista contro,’’ La repubblica, 10 November 1997, 9. Bellesia, Giovanna, ‘‘Camilla Cederna: Portrayer of Italian Society,’’ in Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renaissance, edited by Sante Arico`, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.

Borgese, Giulia, ‘‘La Camilla,’’ in Camilla Cederna, Il lato debole, edited by Giulia Borgese and Anna Cederna, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000. Bossi Fedrigotti, Isabella, ‘‘Tutta la forza del lato debole. Dal salotto alla rabbia civile,’’ Il corriere della sera, 10 November 1997, 23. Cagnetta, Mario, Il giornalismo di denuncia di Camilla Cederna, Milan: Associazione Culturale Ponte della Ghisolfa, 1999. Del Buono, Oreste, ‘‘Preface,’’ to Camilla Cederna, Il meglio di Camilla Cederna, Milan: Mondadori, 1987. Fofi, Goffredo, ‘‘Preface,’’ to Camilla Cederna, Quando si ha ragione: cronache italiane, Naples: L’a`ncora del Mediterraneo, 2002. Polese, Ranieri, ‘‘La fiera Camilla armata di penna contro la sua Manhattan,’’ in Il corriere della sera, 28 February 1992, 21.

GIANNI CELATI (1937–) Gianni Celati began to publish essays in the 1960s, at a time when the neo-avant-garde was at its height of activity in Italy. This early work, appearing in journals associated with the neo-avantgarde, such as ll verri and Quindici, was on writers and theorists such as Joyce, Ce´line, and Bakhtin, and it often took as its starting point a critique of institutionalized and traditional forms and ideas about language and literature. Celati was, from the first phase of his career, a writer with strong ties to scholarly pursuits; he was a professor of AngloAmerican literature at the University of Bologna for many years, and he is an accomplished translator of works from French and English. His first fictional work, the 1971 Comiche (Slapstick), was included in an Einaudi series, ‘‘La Ricerca Letteraria,’’ edited by Davico Bonino, Giorgio Manganelli, and Edoardo Sanguineti, and oriented toward the presentation of first works by young experimental writers. It was introduced by Italo Calvino, who admired Celati’s brand of experimentalism and comic flair. Calvino describes Celati’s book as being made up completely of ‘‘verbal gags, lapses, malapropisms, ecolalia, and incomplete actions’’ (‘‘Gianni Celati Comiche,’’ 1971). He also highlights the importance of the cinema to Celati’s mode of writing, which is inspired by spoken rather than literary language and is akin to 434

slapstick comic films such as those of Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Comiche is recounted in the voice of its protagonist, a professor who finds himself in a strange place, which is some sort of repressive institution, be it a school, a regimented inn for seaside vacationers, or a psychiatric hospital. The professor is persecuted by phantom voices as well as by the eccentric and menacing people who share this odd place with him, and the book is not so much plot driven as fuelled by the sound of language as spoken and heard by a person in the grips of extreme (and comic) paranoia. Celati was to remain friends with Calvino for the rest of the latter’s life, and they enjoyed many years of informal collaboration as writers strongly committed to literary creation and innovation. Celati’s second novel, Le avventure di Guizzardi (The Adventures of Guizzardi, 1973), is the culmination of his early interest in linguistic and stylistic experimentation based on spoken language and filmic techniques. The book is a tour de force, maintaining throughout the comically grotesque, agrammatical language of Guizzardi, a clownish figure who flees his oppressive family home only to end up embroiled in seemingly endless mishaps and adventures that are reminiscent once more of those of cinematic comics such as Chaplin, Harry Langdon, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx

GIANNI CELATI Brothers. In 1976 and 1978 were published, respectively, La banda dei sospiri (The Gang of Sighs) and Lunario del paradiso (Paradise Almanac), books that embodied avant la lettre what would become, in the late 1980s and 1990s, the trend in Italian fiction of novels by, for, and about youth. These books, called racconti comuni (everyday tales) by Celati himself, take as their inspiration the daily, common vicissitudes of the family and of young men seeking love and their place in the world, and they, like the first two novels, were written in a comic, if less linguistically extreme, style. The stories they recount are picaresque and somewhat autobiographical, mirroring Celati’s own experience as a young man who traveled about looking for independence, love, and some future direction in his life. These three books were published in a single volume in 1989, with an entirely rewritten version of Lunario del paradiso, under the title Parlamenti buffi (Funny Chatter). Celati continued to teach and to write essays and do translations throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s; however, after the positive critical response to his early fictional works, which resulted in the award of the coveted Bagutta Prize in 1973 for Le avventure di Guizzardi, for example, he nonetheless felt the need to withdraw from the literary scene in order to rethink his approach to writing prose fiction. He therefore remained essentially absent from the mainstream publishing world until 1985, when his collection of short stories, Narratori delle pianure (Voices from the Plains), appeared, to great interest on the part of readers and critics alike. This was an apparently entirely different Celati; from the exuberant linguistic experimentation of his early fiction, he had moved to a minimalist style and a more somber and, for some, dark thematic emphasis on the loneliness and alienation of contemporary life. Celati had become interested in the work of photographers during his period of silence, and his collaboration with Luigi Ghirri and others as they traveled around the Po Valley in search of photographs of landscapes and everyday scenes strongly influenced his thinking about and elaboration of the stories included in the new collection. He and Ghirri shared a deep conviction about the necessity of avoiding aesthetically contrived effects and of instead validating quotidian experience in all of its apparent banality and lack of extreme spectacle, the latter of which they believed had come to dominate art and media in the contemporary world with very deleterious effects. Celati therefore sought to lower the threshold of his prose’s tonalities and to reach after a

mode of recounting allied to ancient forms of shared oral storytelling. His stories of this period are moving, quirky, and sometimes sad tales of people living their lives in the desolation of a world more and more shaped by today’s impersonal technology, solitude, fears, and loss of human companionship once provided by traditions of shared histories and styles of daily life. He wrote essays and gave interviews in which he described his poetics of the everyday, which has an ethical as well as aesthetic basis. Celati believes that only by finding our common links as mortals and by facing the limits of our own existences, embracing without desperation caducity and our own death, can we escape the negative effects of an increasingly impersonal and spectacularized Western society. Storytelling is one of the means by which we can share our common humanity, and language is the medium of this sharing, language that is itself a repository of centuries of common usage, modes of life, and culture. Since moving to England in the mid-1980s, when he gave up his teaching career at the University of Bologna, Celati has continued to write fiction and essays and to translate, and he began to make art films, starting with Strada provinciale delle anime (Provincial Road of Souls, 1991). He has since then directed two documentary films, Il mondo di Luigi Ghirri (Luigi Ghirri’s World, 1998) and Visioni di case che crollano (Crumbling Houses, 2003), and another, on the culture of the Dogon people in Northwest Africa, was prepared for release in 2005. His interest in Africa is of long standing, and in 1998 he published a travel diary, Avventure in Africa (Adventures in Africa). Celati was a cofounder of the short-lived literary journal, Il Semplice: Almanacco delle prose (Almanac of Prose Writings), which appeared in six issues between 1995 and 1997, and he often contributes essays and stories to newspapers such as Il manifesto. Celati has become an important model for and mentor of younger writers, especially those with an interest in Emilia-Romagna, his region of origin and inspiration for much of his more recent work. Celati is a peripatetic and restless soul, always on the move and always searching for an understanding of his art and of human existence. His preferred authors include Boiardo, Melville, Tomaso Garzoni, and Leopardi, upon whose works he has written illuminating essays. In 1991 he published his translation of Melville’s famous story ‘‘Bartleby,’’ with a deeply thoughtful introduction that was the fruit of many decades of contemplation of the tale, and in 1994 he published 435

GIANNI CELATI a prose version of Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love), which he has recited in many venues in Europe and North America to the delight of rapt audiences. Celati is a genuine scholar and theorist of literature, as well as a completely original fiction writer and filmmaker. He is one of contemporary Italy’s most richly talented voices, a multifaceted artist and thinker who has never stopped honing his craft through hard work, experimentation, and risk taking. Although it might seem that his body of work is eclectic, there are certain interests and orientations that run throughout it and condition his large production: a belief in the ethical and human value of artistic creations; disdain for the institutional and hierarchical aspects of the literary and academic worlds; a preference for the marginalized, the eccentric, and the muted aspects of experience and expressive modes; a love for travel, discovery, and alterity of both the personal and cultural kinds. His central importance to the contemporary Italian and European literary world is by now evident, and he has joined the ranks of those few creative individuals who, through their books and their films, have shaped post–World War II Italian culture both by returning to its regional and local riches and by deprovincializing it through serious attention to its ties to other literary and cultural traditions.

Selected Works Fiction Comiche, 1971. Le avventure di Guizzardi, 1973. Il chiodo in testa, 1974. La banda dei sospiri, 1976. Lunario del paradiso, 1978. Narratori delle pianure, 1985; as Voices from the Plains, translated by Robert Lumley, 1989. ‘‘Condizioni di luce sulla via Emilia,’’ in Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia, edited by Giulio Bizzarri, 1986. La farsa dei tre clandestini: Un adattamento dai Marx Brothers, 1987. Quattro novelle sulle apparenze, 1987; as Appearances, translated by Stuart Hood, 1991. ‘‘Il paralitico nel deserto,’’ Dolcevita (1987): 19–23. ‘‘Verso la foce (estratti da un diario di viaggio)’’, in Narratori dell’invisibile: Simposio in memoria di Italo Calvino, edited by Beppe Cottafavi and Maurizio Magri, 1987. Verso la foce, 1989. Parlamenti buffi, 1989. L’Orlando innamorato raccontato in prosa, 1994. ‘‘Fata Morgana,’’ Il Semplice: Almanacco delle prose, 2 (January 1996): 15–30. Recita dell’attore Vecchiatto nel teatro di Rio Saliceto, 1996. ‘‘Notizie sul popolo dei Gamuna,’’ Altofragile, 7(February 1997): 1. Avventure in Africa, 1998; as Adventures in Africa, translated by Adria Bernardi, 2000. Cinema naturale, 2001. Fata Morgana, 2004.

Edited Work

Biography Gianni Celati was born in Sondrio, 10 January 1937. His family origins were in Ferrara. Celati studied at the University of Bologna and graduated with a thesis on James Joyce. He was a visiting professor at Cornell University, 1970–1972 and professor of Anglo-American literature at the University of Bologna, 1972–1978 and 1980–1985. Celati moved to Brighton, England, 1985. He was a visiting professor at the University of Caen, France, 1986–1987; Brown University, 1989–1990 and 2000; Princeton University, 1999; and the University of Chicago, 2003. Celati has been the winner of several literary awards, including the Bagutta Prize for Le avventure di Guizzardi, 1973; Cinque Scole and Grinzane–Cavour Prizes for Narratori delle pianure, 1983; Mondello Prize for Parlamenti buffi, 1990; Zerilli-Marimo` Prize for Avventure in Africa, 1998; and the Chiara and Settembrini Prizes for Cinema naturale, 2001. His books have been translated into eight languages. REBECCA WEST 436

The Celebrated Art of U.S. Short-Story Writing, with Guido Fink, 1986. Narratori delle riserve, 1992.

Translations Jonathan Swift, Favola della botte, 1966; new ed., 1990. William Gerhardie, Futilita`, 1969. E. T. Hall, Il linguaggio silenzioso, 1969. Louis-Ferdinand Ce´line, Colloqui con il professor Y, 1971. Louis-Ferdinand Ce´line, Il ponte di Londra, 1975. Jack London, Il richiamo della foresta, 1986. Herman Melville, Bartleby lo scrivano, 1991. Stendhal, La certosa di Parma, 1993. Friedrich Ho¨lderlin, Poesie della torre, 1994. Jonathan Swift, I viaggi di Gulliver, 1997. Joseph Conrad, La linea d’ombra, 1999. Henri Michaux, Altrove, 2001.

Other ‘‘Salvazione e silenzio dei significati,’’ Marcatre´, 14–15 (1965): 112–113. ‘‘Parlato come spettacolo,’’ Il verri, 26(1968): 80–88. ‘‘Il sogno senza fondo,’’ Quindici, 9(1968): 6. ‘‘Anatomie e sistematiche letterarie,’’ Libri nuovi, 5 August 1969; rpt. in Riga, edited by Mario Borenghi and Marco Belpoliti, 14(1998): 84–87. ‘‘Al bivio della letteratura fantastica,’’ Periodo ipotetico, 6 (1972): 10–12. ‘‘Il racconto di superficie,’’ Il verri, 1(1973): 93–114.

BENVENUTO CELLINI ‘‘Finzioni occidentali,’’ Lingua e stile, 2(1974): 289–321. Finzioni occidentali: Fabulazione, comicita` e scrittura, Turin, Einaudi, 1975; 2nd edition, 1986. ‘‘Il bazar archeologico,’’ Il verri, 12(1975): 11–35. ‘‘Il corpo comico nello spazio,’’ Il verri, 3(1976): 22–32. ‘‘La bottega dei mimi,’’ Nuovi argomenti, 50(1976): 9–20. La bottega dei mimi, Pollenza and Macerata: La Nuova Foglio, 1977. ‘‘Oggetti soffici,’’ Iterarte, 17(1979): 10–15. Frasi per narratori, 1984. ‘‘Finzioni a cui credere,’’ Alfabeta, 67(1984): 13. ‘‘Commento su un teatro naturale delle immagini,’’ in Luigi Ghirri, Il profilo delle nuvole, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1989. ‘‘Morte di Italo,’’ Riga, 9(1995): 204–208. ‘‘Le posizioni narrative rispetto all’altro,’’ Nuova corrente, 43(1996): 3–18. ‘‘In memoria di Enzo Melandri,’’ with Ivan Levrini, Il semplice, 3(1996): 171–177. ‘‘Il narrare come attivita` pratica,’’ in Seminario sul racconto, edited by Luigi Rustichelli, West Lafayette, IN: Bordighera, 1998.

Films Strada provinciale delle anime, 1991. Il mondo di Luigi Ghirri, 1998. Visioni di case che crollano, 2003.

Further Reading Almansi, Guido, ‘‘Celati, uno, due, tre,’’ Nuovi Argomenti, 59–60(1978): 74–90. Barile, Laura, ‘‘Un ostinato inseguimento: Linguaggio e immagine in Calvino, Celati, Perec, e l’ultimo Beckett,’’ Forum Italicum, 26:1(1992): 188–200. Benedetti, Carla, ‘‘Celati e le poetiche della grazia,’’ Rassegna europea di letteratura italiana, 1(1993): 7–33. Caesar, Michael, ‘‘Caratteri del comico nelle Avventure di Guizzardi,’’ Nuova corrente, 97(1986): 33–46. Calvino, Italo, ‘‘Gianni Celati Comiche,’’ in G. Celati, Comiche, Turin: Einaudi, 1971.

Hanne, Michael, ‘‘Narrative Wisdom in Celati’s Narratori delle pianure,’’ Rivista di studi italiani, 14:1(1996): 133–152. Iacoli, Giulio, Atlante delle derive: Geografie da un’Emilia postmoderna: Gianni Celati e Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2002. Kuon, Peter, ‘‘La vita naturale, cosa sarebbe? Modernita¨t und Identita¨t in Gianni Celati’s Narrratori delle pianure,’’ Italianistica, 37(1997): 24–37. Lumley, Robert, ‘‘Gianni Celati’s Fictions to Believe In,’’ in The New Italian Novel, edited by Zigmunt G. Baranski and Lino Pertile, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993. Manica, Raffaele, ‘‘La pianura e la frontiera di Celati,’’ in Discorsi interminabili, Naples: Societa` Editrice Napoletana, 1987. Moroni, Mario, ‘‘Il paradigma dell’osservazione in Verso la foce di Gianni Celati,’’ Romance Languages Annual, 4 (1992): 307–313. Nocentini, Claudia, ‘‘Celati, artigiano della narrativa,’’ Civilta` italiana, 19:1(1995): 129–139. Novero, Cecilia, ‘‘Baratto di Gianni Celati e l’affermazione passiva del pudore,’’ Romance Languages Annual, 4 (1992): 314–318. Piazza, Roberta, ‘‘The Usual Story: The Narrative Imperfect in Celati as an Indicator of Information Already Familiar to the Reader,’’ Sguardi sull’Italia: Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari, Leeds: The Society for Italian Studies, 1997. Piccolo, Pina, ‘‘Gianni Celati’s Silence, Space, Motion, and Relief,’’ Gradiva., 4:2(1988): 61–65. Picone, Generoso, ‘‘Da Walser a Celati: Materiali per un’ecologia dello sguardo,’’ Grafica, 8(1989): 9–16. Rizzante, Massimo, Il geografo e il viaggiatore: Variazioni su I. Calvino e G. Celati, Fossombrone (Pesaro): Tipografia Metauro, 1993. ‘‘Scritture Contemporanee: Gianni Celati,’’ Nuova Corrente, 97(1986) (special issue on Celati). Sironi, Marco, Geografie del narrare: Insistenze sui luoghi di Luigi Ghirri e Gianni Celati, Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2004. West, Rebecca, Gianni Celati: The Craft of Everyday Storytelling, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

BENVENUTO CELLINI (1500–1571) A celebrated artist and writer, Benvenuto Cellini composed the first surviving modern autobiography. Written between 1558 and 1562, Cellini’s Vita (My Life) was not published until 1728. Two English translations followed in 1771 and 1822; Goethe himself translated it into German (1798). Stendhal had enormous enthusiasm for the book,

and it inspired Hector Berlioz’s famous opera Benvenuto Cellini (1838). Not surprisingly, Cellini’s work appealed to the Romantic mythology of the solitary, brilliant, bold, and misunderstood artist. In recent times, Cellini has inspired a variety of undertakings, which reflect the tastes of the twentieth century, including psychoanalytic studies by 437

BENVENUTO CELLINI Paul Courbon, Francesco Querenghi, Luigi Roncoroni, and George E. Price; several films, including the 1934 The Affairs of Cellini, adapted from Edwin Justus Mayer’s 1924 play The Firebrand by Bess Meredyth and directed by Gregory La Cava; the operetta, The Firebrand of Florence, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music by Kurt Weill (1934), also inspired by Mayer’s play; an issue of Classic Comics’ Classics Illustrated series (No. 38) in 1947; and, in 2001, an off-Broadway play, Cellini, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the script for Moonstruck. Cellini now appears in recent anthologies or works on gay literature. Cellini, whose life spanned most of the sixteenth century, depicted himself as an individual of vast talent, while providing fascinating insights into his life and times and into the nature of his crafts, both goldsmithing and sculpture. He left over 100 poems, several discourses on art, many letters, and a prose commentary on two dream poems. Cellini, who had no formal university training, began the transition from artist to writer after his conviction for sodomy. His works mirror social, intellectual, and historical tendencies and tensions of the age of Counter-Reformation, revealing much about social and economic relationships; codes of male behavior, including homoeroticism; the system of patronage; the education and technical knowledge of artists; their relationship to antiquity; and the nature of creativity. His Vita depicts him as a multitalented artist of special excellence (virtu`), whose lineage, which he traced back to Roman Florence and the staff of Julius Caesar, made him the equal of any aristocrat. His birth and childhood were punctuated by miraculous events. His struggle with his father over whether he would study music or goldsmithing revealed the power of his artistic vocation. His constant competition with other artists disclosed his incomparable talent in whatever he touched—jewelry, medals, coins, vases, and finally large bronzes and marble. Cellini’s superhuman feats as a soldier during the 1527 Sack of Rome, of later escaping from the prison there, of surviving a second imprisonment, and of casting his Perseus against all odds show him in a heroic and saintly light. Toward the end of his second incarceration in a horrible dark, humid dungeon, God himself blessed Cellini with a mystical vision, reflecting the religious fervor of the Counter-Reformation. During the casting of his great Perseo, Cellini arose from his sickbed, warned by yet another divine vision, to save his imperiled masterwork from the ignorance of his workers and the elements of wind, rain, and fire. 438

Although Cellini’s story of his halo can be traced to the scientific phenomenon of the Heiligenschein (halo effect), it is more difficult to determine whether or not he killed the commander of the imperial forces, Charles de Bourbon, during the assault on the Castel Sant’Angelo; whether Pope Clement compared his medal favorably to the ancients; whether Pope Paul III said that uniquely talented men like Benvenuto are above the law; or whether King Francis called him ‘‘mon ami’’ and said that his works surpassed those of the ancients. Cellini’s life was a continual series of struggles and competitions with jealous rivals, stingy patrons, and ignorant women, whose knowledge of the arts was never as great as they assumed. Occasionally his confrontations resulted in physical violence or death, but he was absolved by popes. Cellini was arrogant, impatient, and argumentative with prelates, kings, dukes, their wives and servants, not to mention his fellow artists, because they failed to appreciate his genius, his painstaking methods, or the Herculean labors (fatiche) needed to produce extraordinary artistic achievements. His Renaissance-style individualism seemed somehow out of step with the authoritarian Counter-Reformation culture, but it reflected his attempt to elevate the social and professional status of the artist. Against the background of these struggles, Cellini’s unique talents appear in sharp relief. Demonstrating his worth as an artistic adviser and a witty interlocutor, he regularly offered his judgments of other artists’ work. Contributing to scholarly discourse on art, he also discussed his own works of art in detail. In the case of the conception of the famous Saliera di Francesco I, he competed with intellectuals at the court of the Cardinal of Ferrara, insisting that his own ideas were superior to their suggestions and that he alone knew how to create such a work. All of these elements contributed to Cellini’s desire to transform his own image and status as well as those of his fellow artists. Cellini proved himself a master goldsmith and sculptor, capable of working in both bronze and marble. By moving from sculptures in bronze to marble, he provided a worthy conclusion to his great success story, in which originality and mastery of materials and techniques were key. At Fontainbleau, Cellini’s Giove (now lost) outshone Il Bologna’s copies of classical statues. Cosimo observed that the Perseo (Perseus) could become the most beautiful work in the square, thereby surpassing Donatello’s Giuditta e Oloferne (Judith and Holofernes) and Michelangelo’s David. Even Vasari, no friend to Cellini, described his cantankerous

BENVENUTO CELLINI contemporary in the Vite not merely as terribile (forceful) but as terribilissimo, the special adjective he reserved for Michelangelo. Cellini’s technical writing, poetry, and letters contain many links to the Vita. These works, setting forth his boschereccia filosofia (rustic philosophy), defend his poetry and himself as an expert and innovator, who understood issues central to the arts, their history, their methods, and their secrets. Dedicated to Cosimo De’ Medici’s sons Francesco and Ferdinando, both potential patrons, the Trattati dell’oreficeria e della scultura (Treatises on Goldsmithing and Sculpture, ca. 1565–1567) exist in two versions. The more polished and technically focused manuscript published in 1568 had been revised and edited by Gherardo Spini. The second version, based on a manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, was finally published in 1857. It is the text used in virtually all modern editions, with its closer ties in form and content to the Vita. It contains autobiographical elements, including stories of artistic competitions and Cellini’s tribulations. In the treatise Dell’oreficeria, he provided a brief historical summary of goldsmiths who preceded him. He emphasized the role of design and drawing in this craft, bringing it in line with the greater arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He discussed various methods for working in niello, filigree, and enamel; making jewelry, including setting, cutting, and tinting stones; making small pieces (seals, seals, dies, medals) and larger pieces (vases, gilding, parting, etching, engraving), and casting bronze. The Trattato della scultura examines casting bronzes as well as chiseling and sculpting marble, specifically projects on a large scale, which require great talent, skill, and experience. Like the Vita, the second version of these treatises contains examples, stories about other artists, and accounts of his own experiences. He actually praised Salvatore Guasconti, with whose family he had had a violent quarrel; and his life of Piero di Nino, reminiscent of Boccaccio, ends with a beffa or joke that leads to the old man’s death. The theoretical and practical elements reveal much about the artistic practices of Cellini’s age. Cellini’s suggestion that he may have done sculptures in Rome in the 1530s cannot be verified. Several short discourses continue these technical and philosophical discussions. The Discorso sopra l’arte del disegno (Discourse on the Art of Design, n.d.) explores materials and methods in drawing and design, in particular sketching the human figure, and the family relationship between sculpture

and painting. In Della architettura (On Architecture, n.d.), as in the discourse on design, he discussed the family relationship between sculpture and its ‘‘children,’’ painting and architecture. In these works, he showed his familiarity with other writers and famous practitioners. Sopra la differenza nata tra gli scultori e pittori circa il luogo destroy stato dato alla pittura nelle essequie del gran Michelangolo Buonarroti (On the Difference between Sculptors and Painters upon the Place of Painting in the Funeral Rites of Michelangelo Buonarroti, ca. 1564) debates the artistic arrangements for Michelangelo’s funeral, during which Cellini found himself at odds with other artists, especially with the representation of the arts. With Platonic overtones, he described two-dimensional painting as a ‘‘lie’’ and clearly less real and worthy than sculpture, which is three-dimensional. The incomplete Sopra i principii e ‘l modo d’imparare l’arte del disegno (Principles and Method of Learning the Art of Drawing, ca. 1665) provides a guide, based on Michelangelo’s works, to teaching anatomical drawing to workshop apprentices in goldsmithing and the greater arts. Learning to draw anatomical structures, especially bones and muscle that support flesh, is crucial, and he systematized the order in which bones must be learned, beginning with the legs and moving upward. He attacked artists who work too quickly and imprecisely. Cellini’s poetry, which includes madrigals, canzoni, and sonnets, touches on his personal and artistic experiences, spiritual concerns, and the polemics of art, particularly the debate over the superiority of sculpture or painting. The poems exhibit an innovative and original spirit in the use of language and literary tradition. In one group of poems, Cellini clearly took the side of sculpture, observing that God made man as the first sculpture and that even philosophers cannot understand the tools of sculpture. He found a new use for the tenzone in this artistic debate. In a significant group of sonnets, which reject the idealized love, celebration of female beauty, lofty sentiments, and refined diction of the Petrarchan tradition, he attacked his artistic rivals, caricatured his enemies, or celebrated sex over love, sex with whores or sex between males. ‘‘Porca fortuna, s’tu scoprivi prima / che ancora a me piacessi ‘l Ganimede!’’ (Filthy Fortune, had you found out before / that Ganymede, too, pleases me) curses Fortune as a woman to be discarded for a male lover in rather crude and vulgar language. His spiritual poems, which tend to conform to the conventions of love poetry, 439

BENVENUTO CELLINI including those written while he was imprisoned, contain images of crucifixion and martyrdom, prayers of thanks, poems of contemplation, and expressions of his hope that God will rescue him. Many other poems, including encomiastic sonnets, are addressed to patrons, fellow artists, men of letters, and friends on a variety of topics. Offering further insights into Cellini’s artistic philosophy, two dream poems (84 and 85), placed within the context of a prose analysis, echo Dante and the visions of the Vita. Mostly a product of his later years, Cellini’s writings served to glorify his artistic virtuosity, to enhance his reputation as a man of letters, and to depict the artist as an educated, witty, and wellrounded gentleman worthy of mingling with the best of Renaissance society and capable of teaching them the high secrets of art. He made a distinctive contribution to the task of elevating art from the status of a craft through establishing connections with classical antiquity and providing a theoretical and practical basis for artistic production.

Michelangelo in Rome (1551). A son was born in 1553. Cellini unveiled Perseo in 1554; the finishing took seven years. His stipend from the duke began in 1555, continuing irregularly until 1565. Cellini was imprisoned in 1556 for assaulting a goldsmith. He was condemned for sodomy in 1557, fined, and released to house arrest, with the duke’s intervention. Cellini completed his marble Crocifisso in 1562. He composed the Vita between 1558 and 1562. A second son, Giovanni, was born in 1561. Cellini joined the new Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in 1563; he was delegated to organize the funeral for Michelangelo in 1564, but withdrew after a quarrel. He officially married Piera de’ Parigi in 1567, the mother of three daughters, born in 1562, 1564 (Reparata), and 1566, and a son, in 1569. Cellini began the Trattati in 1567. He died on 13 February 1571, with official ceremonies by the Accademia and burial in the Chapel of St. Luke in the Church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence. JULIA CONAWAY BONDANELLA

Biography Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence on 3 November 1500. He entered the workshop of Michelangelo Grandini, a goldsmith and father of Baccio Bandinelli, in 1513 and, for about ten years, trained and worked with goldsmiths in Siena, Bologna, Pisa, Florence, and Rome. Cellini executed a silver belt buckle in 1518 and gained admission into the goldsmiths’ guild in Florence. He moved to Rome in 1519 and opened his own workshop in 1524, making vases, medals, and seals for important churchmen. He helped defend the Castel Sant’Angelo during the Sack of Rome in 1527. He moved to a shop in 1530 on the Via dei Banchi Nuovi. He visited various Italian cities and went to France, meeting other artists and patrons. Cellini killed the goldsmith Pompeo de’ Capitaneis in 1534. He was imprisoned in 1538. Cardinal Ippolito d’Este obtained his release in late 1539. Cellini lived in France between 1540 and 1545, working on large statues and various projects for King Francis I, including the Ninfa di Fontainebleau. He probably completed the ‘‘saliera di Francesco I’’ in 1543. His daughter Costanza was born in June 1544. After his return to Florence in 1545, Cellini received various commissions from Duke Cosimo I. In 1547, he completed a bronze bust of the duke, restored the Greek marble Ganimede, and sculpted a marble Narciso. He cast the Perseo (1548–1549); completed a bust of Bindo Altoviti (1550); and met 440

Selected Works Collections Opere di Benvenuto Cellini, 2 volumes, edited by Gio. Palamede Carpani, Milan: Societa` Tipografica de’ Classici Italiani, 1806. Le opere di Benvenuto Cellini arrichite di note ed illustrazioni, Florence: Societa` Editrice Fiorentina, 1843 (uses first printed edition of the Trattati, not the Marciano manuscript). Scritti di Benvenuto Cellini scelti a illustrazione della sua vita e della sua arte, edited by Giulio Urbini, Milan: Vallardi, 1923. Opere, edited by Bruno Maier, Milan: Rizzoli, 1968. Opere di Benvenuto Cellini, edited by Giuseppe Guido Ferrero, Turin: UTET, 1980. La vita, i trattati, i discorsi, edited by Pietro Scarpellini, Milan: Gherardo Casini, 1987. Benvenuto Cellini, Rime, edited by Vittorio Gatto, Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 2001.

Autobiography Vita (1558–1562), 1728. As Autobiography, translated by George Bull, 1956. As My Life, translated and edited by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Treatises Due trattati di Benvenuto Cellini uno intorno alle otto principali arti dell’oreficeria. L’altro in materia dell’arte della scultura; dove fi veggono infiniti fegreti nel lauorar le Figure di Marmo, & nel gettarle di Bronzo (ca. 1565–1567), 1568. Due trattati di Benvenuto Cellini scultore fiorentino uno dell’oreficeria, l’altro della scultura, 1731.

BENVENUTO CELLINI I trattati dell’oreficeria e della scultura di Benvenuto Cellini, edited by Carlo Milanesi, 1857; reprinted 1994. The Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Goldsmithing and Sculpture, translated by C. R. Ashbee, 1967; rpt. 1999 (based on the Biblioteca Marciana manuscript).

Scalini, Mario, Benvenuto Cellini, Antella: Scala and New York: Riverside, 1995. Woods, Gregory, A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Further Reading Altieri Biagi, Maria Luisa, ‘‘La Vita del Cellini. Temi, termini sintagmi,’’ in Benvenuto Cellini artista e scrittore, Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1972. Barzman, Karen-edis, The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern State: The Discipline of Disegno, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Biancofiore, Angela, Benvenuto Cellini artiste-ecrivain: L’homme a` l’oeuvre, Paris: Harmattan, 1998. Coates, Victoria C., ‘‘‘Ut vita scultura’: Cellini’s Perseus and the Self-Fashioning of Artistic Identity,’’ in Fashioning Identities in the Renaissance, edited by Mary Rogers, Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2000. Courbon, Paul, E´tude Psychiatrique sur Benvenuto Cellini, Paris: Maloine, 1906. Gallucci, Margaret A., Benvenuto Cellini: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Artistic Identity in Renaissance Italy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Gardner, Victoria C., ‘‘Homines non nascuntur, sed figuntur: Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita and the Self-Presentation of the Renaissance Artist,’’ The Sixteenth-Century Journal, 28(1997): 447–465. Gatto, Vittorio, La protesta di un irregolare: Benvenuto Cellini, Naples: Liguori, 1988. Guglielminetti, Marziano, Memoria e scrittura. L’autobiografia da Dante a Cellini, Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Mimis, Jean, ‘‘La Vita de Benvenuto Cellini: Espace de la me´moire, espace du re´citt,’’ Litte´ratures, 40(1999): 79–93. Morigi, Lorenzo, ‘‘Cellini’s Splendor: The Reversible Theory of Restoration,’’ Sculpture Review, 48:3 (1999), 16–19. Pope-Hennessy, John, Cellini, London: Macmillan, 1985. Price, George E., ‘‘A Sixteenth Century Paranoic: His Story and His Autobiography,’’ New York Medical Journal, 99(1914): 727–731. Querenghi, Francesco, La Psyche di Benvenuto Cellini, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1913. Roncoroni, Luigi, ‘‘Benvenuto Cellini (Contributo allo studio delle parafrenie),’’ Minerva Medicolegale, 26(1905): 271–297. Rossi, Paolo L., ‘‘The History and Reception of Cellini’s Trattati,’’ in Benvenuto Cellini: Sculptor, Goldsmith, Writer, edited by Margaret A. Gallucci and Paolo L. Rossi, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Rossi, Paolo L., ‘‘Sprezzatura, Patronage and Fate: Benvenuto Cellini and the World of Words,’’ in Vasari’s Florence: Artists and Literati at the Medicean Court, edited by Philip Jacks, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Rossi, Paolo L., ‘‘The Writer and the Man: Real Crimes and Mitigating Circumstances: Il caso Cellini,’’ in Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

VITA, 1558–1562 Autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita (My Life) glorifies personal accomplishments over personality, avoiding the pattern of Pauline conversion that rejects worldly success. Lively, anecdotal, fresh and fast-paced, like oral discourse, Cellini’s Vita, part of which he claims to have dictated, was carefully composed, scarcely the result of casual recollections. With its varied style, it draws on the rhetoric of mercantilism, comedy, art, honor codes, and legal defense. By combining the genre of the artist’s life, especially the model of Vasari’s life of Michelangelo, with traditions reflective of historical, heroic, chivalric, picaresque, and hagiographic narratives, Cellini created a tale of heroic resistance, artistic preeminence, and the sometimes hilarious struggle between an often malevolent Fortune and his unique talent (virtu`). He constructed a recognizable selfportrait around the facts of his life, but he transformed them into a self-defense and his own personal myth of the artist as hero. The Vita never, however, reaches a definitive ending in which Cellini would have had to recount his difficult last years. Centered on the climactic event of his imprisonment after being accused of stealing papal jewels during the Sack of Rome in 1527, the narrative focuses on his early artistic training and his achievements. Cellini depicted himself as an artist who far surpasses his competitors—even the ancients. Cellini also proved himself to be a uomo universale, a true Renaissance man. He was a goldsmith, sculptor, poet, musician, courtier, and warrior. His family history and the events surrounding his early years foreshadow his greatness. Rebelling against his father’s wish that he study music, Cellini insisted on learning the goldsmith’s trade. Like all artists of the time, he served as an apprentice, 441

BENVENUTO CELLINI finally settling in Rome, where he lived for almost 20 years. Following humanist tradition, he educated himself by studying the work of the ancients and great contemporary innovators, including Michelangelo and Raphael. Including jewels, medals, coins, and vases, even his early work shone in comparison with that of contemporary and ancient artists. Bound by codes of honor and masculinity, which he sometimes flouted, Cellini cultivated male friendships, sought important commissions, and engaged in aggressive and violent behavior that included murder and assault. Cellini developed powerful and wealthy social connections but provoked conflicts with competitors and patrons with the strong speech, biting wit, and defiant impatience of someone who refused to recognize any superior. He personified a new kind of hero in his ability to use modern military technology, which energized his almost single-handed defense of Castel Sant’Angelo during the 1527 Sack of Rome. His impetus to greatness was, however, challenged by revenge killings, envious competitors, and accusations of theft. When he killed a jeweler named Pompeo who had spoken ill of him to the new pope, Paul III, he made an enemy of Pompeo’s son-in-law, Pier Luigi Farnese, who also happened to be the pope’s son. No matter where he went, Cellini faced down the obstacles to achieving his goals. Although he received commissions and a pardon from Pope Paul III, who declared men of his gifts above the law, Pier Luigi succeeded in having him imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo. His incarceration tested his physical and spiritual powers, but he also amuses the reader with the stories of his daring escape and the mad castellan. Betrayed by Cardinal Cornaro, he returned to prison with a broken leg. During his Dantesque experience in an infernal dungeon, a heavenly presence saved him from suicide. God then rewarded him in the form of a medieval, otherworldly vision of Christ and the Virgin in molten gold that freed him from the darkness of his prison and the power of his captors. Finally rescued by the Cardinal of Ferrara and the King of France, Cellini left prison with the halo of a Christian martyr, the affirmation of his honor and his spiritual and artistic prowess. Cellini revealed a broad sense of humor with such stories as those about his role as a magus, capable of raising demons in the Colosseum, and his trial in a French court for sodomy, both reminiscent of novelle by Boccaccio. After his imprisonment, he became an intimate of two of the most 442

important patrons of the age, King Francis I of France and Duke Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence, whom he served, not always harmoniously, as an artist and an expert who could advise them on matters of art. In Paris, he completed the famous ‘‘saliera di Francesco I’’ and several statues, now lost, including a silver Giove that in King Francis’s opinion outshone Il Bologna’s copies of ancient statues. While in France, he received great favors from the king but also combated jealous courtiers and competitors, as well as King Francis’s mistress, Madame d’E´tampes. In a show of male dominance, he regularly assaulted one of his models, Caterina, out of concern for his art and his reputation. Back in Florence, the stingy Duke Cosimo, his servants and court artists, along with the Duchess Eleonora, another small-minded woman incapable of understanding his great male talent, made his life equally miserable. Again accused of sodomy, this time by the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, Cellini rose above his enemy, using his wit to ridicule Bandinelli’s claim and to praise homosexual love through an allusion to the figure of Ganymede. His analytic tour de force on the defects of Bandinelli’s Ercole e Caco demonstrated his superior artistic knowledge. His own brilliant creations included bronze busts of Duke Cosimo and Bindo Altoviti, a Florentine banker, the Perseo, and a marble crucifix. Michelangelo himself praised the bust of Bindo, and the Perseo won wide acclaim for Cellini and his patron. His account of the casting of the Perseus is a heroic tale of creative frenzy, masculine vigor, and technical achievement, which allowed him, arising from a vision in his sickbed, to save the statue. Still struggling for commissions and honor, Cellini rode off to Pisa at the end of his autobiography to find the Duke. JULIA CONAWAY BONDANELLA Editions First Edition Vita, published in Naples by Antonio Cocchi in 1728 with a fictitious place of publication, i.e. Colonia, the first edition contains many errors and is not based on the autograph manuscript, the Codice Mediceo-Palatino 2342 in the Biblioteca Laurenziana of Florence. The first edition based on this manuscript is Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orifice e scultore fiorentino scritta da lui medesimo restituita alla lezione originale sul manoscritto Poirot ora Laurenziano ed arricchita d’illustrazioni e documenti inediti, 3 vols., edited by Francesco Tassi, Florence: Guglielmo Piatti, 1829.

CENSORSHIP Critical Editions La vita di B. Cellini, edited by O. Bacci, Florence: Sansoni, 1901; in Opere, vol.?, edited by Bruno Maier, Milan: Rizzoli, 1968; edited by Guido Davico Bonino, Turin: Einaudi, 1973; edited by Ettore Camesasca, Milan: Rizzoli, 1985; edited by Lorenzo Bellotto, Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1996.

Translations As The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by Robert H. Hobart Cust, 2 vols., London: G. Bell, 1910; as The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Written by Himself, translated by John Addington Symonds, introduced and annotated by John Pope-Hennessy, London: Phaidon, 1951; as Autobiography, translated by George Bull, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956; revised edition, 1998; as The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (abridged edition with illustrations), edited by Charles Hope, translated by John Addington Symonds, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983; as My Life, translated and edited by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Further Reading Arnaldi, Ivan, La vita violenta di Benvenuto Cellini, RomeBari: Laterza, 1986. Barolsky, Paul, ‘‘Cellini, Vasari, and the Marvels of Malady,’’ The Sixteenth-Century Journal: Journal of Early Modern Studies, 24(1993): 41–45. Cervigni, Dino S., The Vita of Benvenuto Cellini: Literary Tradition and Genre, Ravenna: Longo, 1979. Davico Bonino, Guido, Lo scrittore, il potere, la maschera: Tre studi sul Cinquecento, Padua: Liviana, 1979. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘Dalla Farnesina a Fontainebleau: Il confronto con la donna nella Vita del Cellini,’’ in Culture et socie´te´ en Italie du Moyen Age a` la Renaissance, Paris: Universite´ de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1985.

Galetta, Maria, ‘‘Tradizione ed innovazione nella Vita di Benvenuto Cellini,’’ Romance Review, 5(1995): 65–72. Gaspari, Gianmarco, ‘‘La Vita del Cellini e le origini dell’autobiografia,’’ Versants, 21(1992): 103–117. Goldberg, Jonathan, ‘‘Cellini’s Vita and the Conventions of Early Autobiography,’’ Modern Language Notes, 89 (1974): 71–83. Guglielminetti, Marziano, Dalla parte del’io: modi e forme della scrittura autobiografica nel Novecento, Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2002. Klopp, Charles, Sentences: The Memoirs and Letters of Italian Political Prisoners from Benvenuto Cellini to Aldo Moro, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Mirollo, JamesV., ‘‘The Lives of Saints Teresa of Avila and Benvenuto of Florence,’’ Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 29:1(1987): 54–73. Mirollo, James V., ‘‘The Mannerisms of Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71),’’ in Mannerisms and Renaissance Poetry: Concept, Mode, Inner Design, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Morigi, Lorenzo, ‘‘Cellini’s Splendor: The Reversible Theory of Restoration,’’ Sculpture Review, 48:3(1999), 16–19. Orsino, Margherita, ‘‘Il fuoco nella Vita di Benvenuto Cellini: Aspetti di un mito dell’artista-fabbro,’’ Italian Studies, 52(1997): 94–110. Rossi, Paolo L., ‘‘The Writer and the Man: Real Crimes and Mitigating Circumstances: Il caso Cellini,’’ in Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trevor Dean and Kate J. P. Lowe, Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Tylus, Jane, ‘‘Resisting the Marketplace: The Language of Labor in Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita,’’ Bucknell Review, 35(1992): 34–50. Woods-Marsden, Joanna, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

CENSORSHIP The critical discussion about censorship acquired considerable importance after World War II. The themes related to freedom of speech and thought, along with the rights of freedom itself, considered the pillars of the Republican Constitution (1948), emerged when the Fascist dictatorship came to an end. Since the Roman period, from Livius, Svetonius, and Tacitus’s time, to the persecution of Arius’s heresy determined by Constantine after the Nicæa Council (325), forms of censorship were imposed

on freedom of thought through repressive measures. The Commento sulla sfera (Comment on the Sphere, 1324–1327) by Cecco d’Ascoli sent the author and his works to the stake. Giordano Bruno was found guilty of heresy by the Inquisition due to his anti-Ptolemaic philosophical dialogues on cosmology and was sentenced to death and burnt alive at Campo dei Fiori, in Rome, on 17 February 1600. In 1633, Galileo Galilei went on trial for his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 443

CENSORSHIP 1632), in which he backed Copernicus’s theory. The biblioclastia (the pyre of books that is the most symbolic and effective form of censorship) was found in every historical period. In a single day, for example on 18 March 1559, in Venice (the most important European center of Hebrew printing up to the eighteenth century) 12,000 volumes of Hebrew culture were burnt. The damaging effects of censorship on Italian literary life often reflected the Catholic Church’s claim that it was its pastoral duty to review books and condemn them if necessary (this included unauthorized translations of the Bible). However, the first official indices were issued in the sixteenth century by secular governments in Milan (1538), Siena (1548), and Venice (1549). During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, governments of several Italian states limited the interventions of clerical censors. In April 1848, the Decreto Albertino introduced freedom of the press, and in 1897 Pope Leo XIII entrusted the duties for the control of literary books to diocesan bishops. The activities of the Congregation of the Index were transferred back to the Sant’Uffizio (Holy Office) in 1917. Far more incisive was the repression during the Fascist ventennium (1922–1943). After the racial laws were introduced in 1938, a committee for the bonifica libraria (Book Cleansing) was created by Alfieri, Minister of Popular Culture. It aimed at using censorship as an instrument of racial and political purges. Over time, the objectives of censorship were subject to change. During the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, it was the Church of Rome that first established defensive barriers in an effort to protect its own orthodoxy. This was especially evident after the invention of the movable-type printing press and the rise of the Lutheran Reformation. At the onset of the sixteenth century, the Renaissance cultural climate of freedom persisted; paradoxically, Niccolo` Machiavelli’s Mandragola (The Mandrake, 1518), which was once forbidden, was performed in Venice by religious companies in 1522. In the following years, there was a deep consciousness of the repressive mechanism. This meant not only a factual limitation, but also a self-limitation of the free creative ability, and literary works were subjected to self-censorship and revision. An example that supports this situation is the self-censorship of Torquato Tasso in his Gerusalemme conquistata (Jerusalem Conquered, 1593), an emended rewriting of the Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1575). 444

In 1542, the Holy Office and the Inquisition, which was established in 381 after the Edict of Theodosius made Christianity official, involved the whole Christian world. Pope Paul IV (Gian Pietro Carafa, 1476–1559) banished the vulgarization of the Bible and Erasmus’s works and created the Congregazione dell’Indice (The Congregation of the Index) in 1571. Defying the ecclesiastic censorship, princes and kings implemented their own tactics of vigilance within their political territory. Italy was the testing ground of all European censorial situations due to the political divisions that made it the theater of many historical changes: from the invasion of Charles VIII of France (1494), to the Cateau-Cambre´sis treaty (1559) that ratified the Spanish dominance, which was then followed by the Hapsburg reign, in 1748. The Republic of Venice, which used to take great care of its own independence, and where 40 percent of all books were published, opposed the ecclesiastic censorship; and, in order to safeguard its own sovereign rights, challenged Pope Paul V (Camillo Borghese, 1552–1621), who excommunicated Venice and subjected it to an interdiction. The works by Paolo Sarpi, and in particular his Istoria dell’Interdetto (The History of the Quarrels of Pope Paul V with the State of Venice, 1624) and the Istoria del Concilio tridentino (History of the Council of Trent, 1608–1612) are remarkable documents of this jurisdictional conflict, which represented one of the most infamous episodes of censorship in Italian history. The Church also interfered by means of expurgation, which was practiced in Rome by the Holy Office after the first Index librorum prohibitorum (Index of the Forbidden Books, 1559), and it was enforced by the General Inquisitor, Michele Ghisleri, in 1561. In their instructio, or guidelines, the Indexes laid down the procedures to apply to the text. In 1560, Ascanio Censorio degli Ortensi expurgated the Novelle by Matteo Bandello: He eliminated 64 tales because they were indegne (disgraceful). Girolamo Malipiero undertook a meticulous rewriting of the Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarca, which resulted in Petrarcha spirituale (1536–1587), surpassed by a Decamerone spirituale by Francesco Dionigi da Fano in 1594. In 1582, Leonardo Salviati twisted the 100 tales in such a way that he was nicknamed Boccaccio’s ‘‘public killer.’’ The same happened to Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528) by Baldessare Castiglione in 1584 and to Il Morgante (Morgante, 1483) by Luigi Pulci in 1574. The Imprimatur, which lay

CENSORSHIP down the ecclesiastic preventive censorship in accordance with a medieval custom, unfolded with Innocent VIII in 1487. In 1549, the first Index was produced in Venice by I Savi dell’Eresia (Secular magistrates) in collaboration with the local inquisitor of the Holy Office. In 1564, the Council of Trent appointed a Committee of Bishops, whose regulations concerning censorship lasted until 1897. The ecclesiastic censorship lost its incisiveness in 1789 when the Diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino (The Rights of Men and Citizens) were proclaimed according to the culture of the Enlightenment. The Index changed into an internal instrument used only within Catholic environments (the last Index was published in 1948, and it eventually was abolished in 1966). But the clerical censorious behavior did not come to an end. In 1864, Pius IX published the Sillabo with the Quanta Cura Encyclical, a document that precedes the decrees by Pius X (1907) about the condemnation of modernism. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, by promoting the publishing of periodicals that were able to deeply influence society and its opinions, decreased the censorial hold on books and, at the same time, extended it to theatrical performances and products of new technology. Since medieval times, the various ecumenical councils had criticized the art of the theater, taking a strong stance against comic actors. After the Council of Trent, bishops watched over the theaters, and women were not allowed to perform. Innocent XI (1611–1689), who was named the ‘‘Attila of the stage,’’ spared no performance. In 1697, Innocent XII had the Roman theater of Tordinona pulled down; this extreme intervention revived the old polemical custom of the pasquinade (lampoon). The most famous writer of pasquinades was the arch-censured Pietro Aretino. In addition, Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584) collaborated on censorial operations by fighting to abolish carnival and attacking the commedia dell’arte and the presence of women on stage. Many Italian theatrical companies went abroad. At the end of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment and moralism became allies to banish obscene jokes from the commedia dell’arte. During the French Revolution, Italy was also involved in the famous querelle des the´aˆtres, which aimed at faire du the´aˆtre une e´cole des mœurs (to turn theater into a school of behavior). A new, anticlerical form of censorship was born, provoking the repressive intervention of many rulers. In January

1791, the censorship on drama came to an end; however, given the political divisions of the peninsula and the local systems of control, not all governments acted upon it. For example, after the fall of the Repubblica Partenopea (1799), the reactions against the stage were intensified, and dramatists and actors exiled, condemned, and imprisoned. The Hapsburg censorship hit the historical drama, and in Venice, a number of theaters had to close down. Ferdinand II of Bourbon, who recaptured the throne of Sicily in 1849, assigned the supervision of theatrical works to the police. In the Papal States, Pius IX abolished the preventive censorship but exacerbated the repressive one. As for opera, the librettos had to be approved, as well as costumes, sets, bulletins, and programs. The most censured author of the Italian theater was Vittorio Alfieri, whose tragedies could not be performed even if they were published. Carlo Goldoni and Ugo Foscolo were also subject to censorship. The theater was feared more than books. After the Unification, local control was retained, and censorship powers were passed on to prefects. Under Fascism, censorship became an important weapon of social control. In 1923, the freedom of the press was limited by decree; it was completely abolished by 1925. The Press Law of December 1925 lay down that only registered journalists could write for newspapers (and the regime controlled the register). The preventive censorship of the theater was reinstated with the decree of 6 January 1931. Particularly rigid was radio censorship. Some of the banned plays were Uno degli onesti (One of the Honest, 1900) by Roberto Bracco and Viaggio di nozze (Honeymoon, 1917) by Giannino Antona Traversi. In the second half of the 1930s, the regime embarked on a more rigorous censorship of literature and cinema. One famous case was Vittorini’s Il garofano rosso (The Red Carnation), which was not published until 1948. When the Republican Constitution was ratified in 1948, there was only partial change, as the Fascist laws on censorship of cinema and theater remained in force until 1962. In order to voice his disillusionment as a liberal intellectual, Vitaliano Brancati wrote ‘‘Ritorno alla censura’’ (Back to Censorship), a prefatory essay to his play La governante (The Governess, 1952), censored over its lesbian content. Neo-Realist cinema, which is identified with films such as Rossellini’s Roma, citta` aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945), De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, 1948;), and Visconti’s La terra trema (The Earth Trembles, 1948), 445

CENSORSHIP suffered clerical censorship because of its complex representation of postwar life. Neo-Realist drama was also affected. When L’Arialda by Giovanni Testori was staged in 1960 by Visconti at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan (MorelliStoppa Company), the play was seized due to its obscene content and the playwright tried in court. The same happened to Anima nera (Dark Soul, 1958) by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. During the 1960s, some of the films censored include Fellini’s La dolce vita (1959), Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), Bolognini’s Una giornata balorda (A Foolish Day, 1960), and Antonioni’s L’avventura (1960). Galileo (1968) by Liliana Cavani, initially intended as a three-part series for RAI-TV, never aired due to Vatican interference. Sold to Cineriz, the film was cut down for theatrical distribution in 1969, and R-rated (the condemnation of Galileo was recognized as an error by Pope John Paul II in 1992). In an act of self-censorship, Dino De Laurentiis chose not to produce Il prete bello (Don Gastone and the Ladies), adapted from the 1954 novel by Goffredo Parise. A conflict of power and the lack of the certezza del diritto (knowledge of the law) characterized both the theatrical and cinema world. Article 21 of the Republican Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and specifically condemns censorship of the press. Article 529 of the Penal Code, however, limits its application to any work that might be offensive to the comune sentimento del pudore (a common sense of decency). From the 1970s onward, the concept of censorship changed. The control was taken over by commercial corporations that promoted conventional programs, a new form of self-censorship. Broadcasting and television networks were subjected to a state monopoly. Then, in 1976, through a Constitutional Court decree, private ‘‘independent’’ channels were approved. Media enterprises, such as Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest, began to dominate the market. These new leaders were industrial entrepreneurs. Since the late 1990s, the state has retained only minimal power of control, and the principal threat to freedom of expression has come

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from a commercial monopoly that established the direction to be taken by cinema and television. Gasparri’s Law, which passed on 3 May 2004 and was intended to rule on broadcasting organization, simply promotes monopoly. This calls for a necessary reform of antitrust legislation. PAOLA MARTINUZZI Further Reading Argentieri, Mino, La censura nel cinema italiano, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1974. Baldi, Alfredo, Schermi proibiti: La censura in Italia 1947– 1988, Venice: Marsilio, 2002. Barbierato, Federico (editor), Libro e censure, Milan: Edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard, 2002. Bonsaver, Guido, ‘‘Fascist Censorship on Literature and le Case of Elio Vittorini,’’ Modern Italy, 8:2(2003): 165–186. Bonsaver, Guido, and Robert Gordon (editors), Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th Century Italy, Oxford, U.K.: Legenda, 2005. Caroli, Menico, Proibitissimo! Censori e censurati della radiotelevisione italiana, Milan: Garzanti, 2003. Censura e spettacolo in Italia, monographic issue of Il Ponte, 17:11(1961). Cesari, Maurizio, La censura nel periodo fascista, Naples: Liguori, 1978. Cesari, Maurizio, Censura in Italia oggi (1944–1980), Naples: Liguori, 1982. Di Stefano, Carlo, La censura teatrale in Italia (1600– 1962), Bologna, Cappelli, 1964. Fabre, Giorgio, L’elenco: Censura fascista, editoria e autori ebrei, Turin: Zamorani, 1998. Giornata, Luigi Firpo, Censura ecclesiastica e cultura politica in Italia tra Cinquecento e Seicento, Florence: Olschki, 2001. Liggeri, Domenico, Mani di forbice: La censura cinematografica in Italia, Alessandria: Edizioni Falsopiano, 1997. Marrone, Gaetana, ‘‘Non placet: La censura e il cinema italiano,’’ in Incontri con il cinema italiano, edited by Antonio Vitti, Caltanissetta: Salvatore Sciascia Editore, 2003. Prima dei codici 2: Alle porte di Hays, 48th Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica, La Biennale di Venezia, Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1991. Pulitano`, Domenico, ‘‘Il buon costume,’’ in Valori socioculturali della giurispridenza, Bari: Laterza, 1970. Quadri, Franco, Teatro del regime, Milan: Mazzotta, 1976.

VINCENZO CERAMI

VINCENZO CERAMI (1940–) Vincenzo Cerami not only wrote the screenplays for some of the most popular Italian films of the last decades but has explored the darker aspects of contemporary life in his fiction. Both theater and film mark his literary style. He frequently pays tribute to his mentor, Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was his high school teacher in Ciampino: indeed, Cerami credits Pasolini for instilling in him a love for literature and for teaching him how to narrate life through language and dissimulate one’s intentions through indirection. Indeed, cinema has been particularly important in the definition of his literary technique, which is often intent on communicating images. Cerami’s ‘‘art of fiction’’ is summarized in his book Consigli ad un giovane scrittore (Advice to a Young Writer, 1996), where his advice is expressed in a simple and clear style. However, Pasolini has not been his only influence. Cerami first devoted himself to the theater and in 1975 produced an adaptation of Paolo Volponi’s novel Il sipario ducale (Last Act in Urbino, 1975), performed in Rome under the direction of Franco Enriquez, and in 1984 he wrote the comedy L’amore delle tre melarance (The Love of the Three Oranges), which was performed the same year under the direction of Angelo Savelli in Fiesole. From his first novel, Un borghese piccolo piccolo (A Very Petit Bourgeois, 1976), made into a movie by Mario Monicelli in 1977 starring Alberto Sordi in the title role, to his recent La sindrome di Tourette (Tourette’s Syndrome, 2005), Cerami attempts to adhere to the reality of his times. Un borghese piccolo piccolo, the story of a civil servant, Giovanni, who spends his life shuffling paperwork and waiting for retirement, demonstrates the writer’s taste for representing the horror of everyday life. Giovanni’s greatest desire is to have his 20-year old son, Mario, join the Ministry of the Interior in order to ensure a life of ease and quiet dreariness. He supplicates his superiors and joins a masonic lodge in order to further his scheme for his son. But then his son is accidentally killed during a bank robbery, and the despairing father is subsequently transformed into the sadistic persecutor and kidnapper of the killler. Cold and controlled, the writing confines itself to registering the facts, leaving the satire of the deeply corrupt state bureaucracy

in the background. The author returns to the headlines with Fattaci (Brutal Crimes, 1997), four tales that recall the noir thriller and that assume the tone of real-crime accounts. Little room is left, therefore, for the personal interpretations of the narrator, who rather privileges objectivity. The facts are communicated in raw reportage, a police document, or a journalistic article. Cerami illuminates all the characters equally, probing their psychologies and exploring their environments. Echoes of his work as a scriptwriter can be found in one of his latest works, Fantasmi (Ghosts, 2001), the story Morena, a woman haunted by the ghosts of her father and her lover. As she travels through Italy, anxious to experience the different realities that she encounters, she becomes two different women, Angela and Gabriella. The problem is not simply changing her outward appearance but also altering her own personality. Morena finally returns to herself when she is finds she is expecting a child. Her approaching motherhood inspires reflections on life. In 2005, Cerami published a collection of short stories, La sindrome di Tourette, and a novel, L’incontro (The Encounter). The stories range from the romantic to the grotesque to the unreal. However, even in the most absurd situations there are glimpses of truth. Cerami’s language is supple enough to articulate the many themes and situations that contribute to the sense of uneasiness in contemporary life. In L’incontro, Cerami turns again to the Italy of the 1970s. The meeting of the title, which occurs only in the book’s final pages, is between two people who have never seen one another and belong to very different generations: an old univeristy professor, Sandro Bulmisti, who disappears without leaving a trace, and 20-year-old Lud, who has a passion for puzzles. In a magazine, Lud comes across a mystery fashioned by Bulmisti in the form of a nursery rhyme. In pursuit of the solution, Lud goes from Rome to Paris and little by little comes to know the professor’s private life. Meanwhile, terrorism is emerging on the horizon. Cerami’s style moves across registers and mixes levity with ethical engagement. The writing is fast paced, thanks to the unexpected turns of the plot. While the characters come to terms with history and with their consciences, the past does not seem to have changed. 447

VINCENZO CERAMI As a scriptwriter, Cerami is primarily known for his long collaboration with actor and director Roberto Benigni. The most important result of their partnership is La vita e` bella (Life Is Beautiful, 1998), a film Benigni defined in his introduction to the published script as ‘‘una storia in bilico tra la lacrima e il riso’’ (a story suspended between tears and laughter). La vita e` bella does not mock the Shoah, the greatest tragic moment in contemporary history, but rather tries to find a germ of hope even in horror.

Biography

MARCELLA FARINA

Fiction Un borghese piccolo piccolo, 1976. Amorosa presenza, 1978. Tutti cattivi, 1981. Ragazzo di vetro, 1983.

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Poetry ‘‘Addio Lenin: 1977–1980,’’ 1981.

Plays L’amore delle tre melarance, 1985. Sua Maesta`, 1986.

Scripts

Vincenzo Cerami was born in Rome, 2 November 1940. He abandoned his intention to study physics at the University of Rome and began working as scriptwriter for Pier Paolo Pasolini in Teorema (1968). He became an assistant director in films with Toto`. Cerami traveled to the United States in 1968 where he worked for a year. He married Mimsy Farmer and had a daughter, Aisha, in 1970. He was awarded the ‘‘Bartolo Cattafi’’ poetry prize for Addio Lenin, 1982. Cerami and Mimsy Farmer divorced in 1986. He was awarded the Vittorio De Sica Prize in 2004. Since 1996, he has taught creative writing at several universities, including La Sapienza and the Pontificia Universita` Gregoriana in Rome and the Catholic University in Louvain. Since the 1980s Cerami has contributed to various newspapers: Il messaggero, Il giornale, L’unita`, La repubblica, La stampa, Il secolo XIX, Avvenire. He has been a scriptwriter for directors Roberto Benigni, Marco Bellocchio, Gianni Amelio, and Giuseppe Bertolucci. Cerami currently lives in Rome.

Selected Works

La lepre, 1988. L’ipocrita, 1991. La gente, 1993. Il mostro, with Roberto Benigni, 1994. Fattacci, 1997. Fantasmi, 2001. La sindrome di Tourette, 2005. L’incontro, 2005.

Johnny Stecchino, with Roberto Benigni, 1991. Colpire al cuore: trattamento e sceneggiature dell’omonimo film di Amelio, 1996. La vita e` bella, with Roberto Benigni, 1999.

Comic Books Olimpo S.p.A., 2000. Olimpo S.p.A. caccia grossa, 2002.

Other Consigli ad un giovane scrittore, 1996. Canti di scena: concerto di parole e musica, with Nicola Piovani, 1999, Storia di altre storie, with Francesco Guccini, 2001. Pensieri cosı`, 2002. Vincenzo Cerami racconta l’Odissea tradotta da Giovanna Bemporad, 2003.

Further Reading Asor Rosa, Alberto, Novecento primo, secondo e terzo, Milan: Sansoni, 2004. Barbalato, Beatrice (editor), Vincenzo Cerami: le re´cit et la sce`ne, Louvain: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2004. Benigni, Roberto, Introduction to La vita e` bella, Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Comes, Annalisa, ‘‘Un borghese piccolo piccolo,’’ in Letteratura italiana: Dizionario delle opere, vol. 2, Turin: Einaudi, 2000. De Candia, Mario, ‘‘Vincenzo Cerami dal cinema al teatro,’’ Ridotto, 1–3(1985): 26–32. Mannocchi, Maria Cristina, ‘‘Tabucchi, Vassalli, Cerami, Morselli, Ceronetti,’’ in Storia generale della Letteratura italiana, edited by Nino Borsellino and Walter Pedulla`, vol. 15, Part 1, Il Novecento: sperimentalismo e tradizione del nuovo, Milan: Motta, 2004. Mauri, Paolo, L’opera imminente: Diario di un critico, Turin: Einaudi, 1998.

LAURA CERETA

LAURA CERETA (1469–1499) In 1488, on the threshold of European forays into Africa and the New World, Laura Cereta sent her patron, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, a manuscript of her collected letters, announcing that she was offering him not the monkeys of Mauritania or the rhinoceroses and cinnamon of Ethiopia but instead ‘‘mercedula...ex secretis ingenii—maius inventum’’ (little gifts from the secret places of my mind—a greater discovery). Cereta’s epistolario, containing 82 letters and a dialogue in Latin, circulated widely in manuscript during her lifetime, as did the substantial Latin letter collections of two other women humanists, Isotta Nogarola (1410–1466) and Cassandra Fedele (1465–1558). Discoursing on stock humanist themes, Cereta addresses female friends as often as males. She stages the humanist debate on the virtues of city versus country in a pair of letters to women. Imitating Petrarch’s letter on his ascent of Mt. Ventoux in her letter to Deodata di Leno, Cereta describes her scaling of Mt. Iseo, while she echoes Lorenzo Valla’s Epicurean interlocutor’s praise of the pleasures of the mind in his De voluptate (1431). Perhaps modeling her advice to a woman she calls Europa solitaria on Coluccio Salutati’s famous epistle to his friend Zambeccari urging him not to retire from city politics to enter a monastery (1398), she seems to take issue with Petrarch’s eulogy of rural life in his De vita solitaria (1346). Cereta’s self-consolatory letters after her husband’s death comprise at least one third of her letterbook. But epistles venting her sorrow, addressed to the nun Olympica Nazaria and the widow Martha Marcella, also include detailed narratives of her early life, her intellectual formation, and the terrifying, recurrent dreams that plague her. Cereta’s letter to another woman friend, Elena di Cesare, on the threat from Islam, differs from other humanist responses to the Turkish invasion of Constantinople: She calls for the waging of peace, not war, with the Turks, since an Italian campaign will only end in further death and destruction on Italian soil. Two epistolary essays—the De de subeundo maritalis iugo iudicium (On entering the bonds of matrimony, 1486) addressed to Pietro Zecchi and the De liberali mulierum institutione defensio (In defense of a liberal education for women, 1488) to

Bibolo Semproni—represent her most feminist and polemical works. Both works follow the period of her father’s banishment from Brescia in 1485, when, according to Cereta’s own testimony, she wholly assumed on the role of paterfamilias herself, supervising her father’s business and legal dealings as well as her brothers’ education. Relying largely on Boccaccio’s history of famous women (De claris mulierbus), to argue the worth of women as a class, her letter to Zecchi constitutes an antiepithalamium in which Cereta characterizes marriage as slavery for women and motherhood as a trap. Revealing a struggle for power and erotic frustration in her marriage, her five extant letters to her husband do not undercut her essay on matrimony so much as they supplement it. Continuing to draw exempla from Boccaccio’s lives, Cereta’s letter to Bibolo on women and education views the rich history of learned women as a continuity and a fact: She calls her historically constituted community the respublica muliebris (republic of women). As in Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies (1404–1405), Cereta’s catalog of distinguished women from antiquity to the present— from the Greek poet Sappho to the Ethiopian prophet Sabba and the Roman orator Hortensia down to such contemporary scholars as Isotta Nogarola and Cassandra Fedele—stands as irrefutable proof of women’s worth. Extending the quattrocento idea that the greatness of a man’s mind is not tied to class or birth to cover gender, Cereta argues that women too are born with the right to education. Concerned with the commitment and hard work an education demands, she worries only that not all women will push for advancement. Writing at the precise moment when debates about women’s nature and women’s roles in the family and society were beginning to awaken interest in the Italian cities and courts in the ‘‘female point of view,’’ Cereta met frequently with other scholars and writers at the Santa Chiara convent, the Ursine monastery, and several literary coteries in Brescia. Some of her epistolary essays were tailor-made for such scholarly circles: Among these are her essays Execratio contra fortunam (An invective against fortune, undated), De Theutonico 449

LAURA CERETA conflictu (On the German War, 1487), In avaritiam admonitio (A Warning Against Greed, 1487), and Consolatio de morte filiolae (On the Death of a Child, 1486). The participants in these circles included the learned friar Lodovico de la Turre, the professors of rhetoric Clemenzo Longolio and Bonifacio Bembo, and the physicians Michele Beto and Felice Tadino, among others. Only two fifteenth-century humanist dialogues by women are known: Cereta’s comic In asinarium funus oratio (On an Asses’s Funeral, 1485–1486); and Isotta Nogarola’s De pari aut impari Evae atque Adae peccato (On the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve, 1451). Placing In asinarium funus oratio at the head of her letterbook, right after the dedication letter, Cereta showcases the dialogue as her most original and impressive work. A mockserious inquest into the murder of a donkey, with three speakers in dialogue, Cereta herself acts as the lead interlocutor (‘‘Laura’’), while the miller who owns the ass (‘‘Soldus’’) and the miller’s rogue slave (‘‘Philonacus’’) play supporting roles. While the In asinarium funus oratio borrows heavily from Apuleius’s second-century novel The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) for its plotline and rustic Latin vocabulary, ‘‘Laura’’ delivers a bizarre oration on drugs and ointments made from the body parts and bodily fluids of asses, lifting her medical data from Pliny’s Natural History. Cereta’s dialogue and humanist themes live on in the call for social, legal, and economic advances for women in the early seventeenth-century Venetian writers Lucrezia Marinella, Modesto da Pozzo, and Arcangela Tarabotti. Her letters further anticipate themes commonly associated with the French and British feminists of the eighteenth century: among these, the contextualization of the debate on women within a historical ‘‘republic of women’’; the attempt to redefine and reconstruct the concept of gender; the privileging of the emotions in humanist discourse—a genre long assumed to be the preserve solely of the rational faculties; the construction of housework as a barrier to women’s literary and artistic aspirations; and the use of the salon or convent salon as a passage for women into the public sphere.

Biography Laura Cereta was born the first of six siblings, three brothers and two sisters, in Brescia in 1469, to Silvestro Cereto, an attorney and magistrate in Brescia, and Veronica di Leno, whose family 450

claimed descent from a noble lineage. She was convent educated, 1476–1480, and taught Latin and classics by a learned nun; her father played no role in her schooling. She moved to Lake Iseo with her father during the war of Ferrara, 1482–1484 and served as her father’s secretary, 1484–1485. Cereta married to Pietro Serina, a Venetian merchant, in 1484/85; she was widowed in 1485. There were no children. She met regularly with humanist circles at Brescia and the monastery at Chiari and gave readings from her epistolary essays in both venues; she sustained a number of intellectual friendships with women, the nuns at Chiari among them. Her attempt at forging a literary friendship with the famous Venetian humanist Cassandra Fedele failed. Cereta died at age 30 of unknown causes in 1499; her burial mass was said at San Domenico in Brescia. She left behind an unpublished manuscript dedicated to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza of Milan containing 82 Latin letters and a comic dialogue also in Latin; her complete works first appeared in print in 1640 in Padua. DIANA ROBIN Selected Works Laurae Ceretae Brixiensis Feminae Clarissimae Epistolae iam primum e MS in lucem productae, edited by Jacopo Filippo Tomasini. Padua: Sebastiano Sardi, 1640. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Vat. Lat. 3176. Cart. 3. XVI in 73 fols. Contains 83 items; the only manuscript source containing all Cereta’s extant works. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Marc. Cod. Lat., XI.28 [4186] mbr. XV, 154 fols. Includes 74 items containing many lacunae. The manuscript begins on fol. 11. Divae Laurae in Asinarium Funus Oratio and selected letters, in Laura Cereta: Quattrocento Humanist, edited by Albert Rabil, Jr., Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts, 1981. Contains the Latin texts of the dialogue and 11 letters not included in the 1640 edition. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, transcribed, translated, and edited by Diana Robin, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Further Reading Fedele, Cassandra, Letters and Orations, edited and translated by Diana Robin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. King, Margaret L., and Albert Rabil, Jr., Her Immaculate Hand: Selected Works by and about the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts, 1983. Nogarola, Isotta, Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations, edited and translated by

GUIDO CERONETTI Margaret L. King and Diana Robin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pasero, Carlo, ‘‘Il dominio veneto fino all’incendio della loggia,’’ in Storia di Brescia, Vol. 2, La dominazione Veneta (1426–1575), edited by Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri, Brescia: Marcelliana, 1961. Rabil, Albert, Jr., ‘‘Laura Cereta,’’ in Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Rinaldina Russell, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Rabil, Albert, Jr., Laura Cereta: Quattrocento Humanist, Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1981. Robin, Diana, ‘‘Culture, Imperialism, and Humanist Criticism in the Italian City-States,’’ in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume 3: The Renaissance. 1500–1700, edited by Glyn P. Norton, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Robin, Diana, ‘‘Humanism and Feminism in Laura Cereta’s Public Letters,’’ in Women in Italian Renaissance

Culture and Society, edited by Letizia Panizza. Oxford: Legenda European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford, 2000. Robin, Diana. ‘‘Laura Cereta,’’ in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, edited by Paul F. Grendler, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999. Robin, Diana, ‘‘Laura Cereta: Biography, Latin Texts, Translations,’’ in Women Writing Latin, Vol. 3: Early Modern Women Writing Latin, edited by Laurie Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey, New York: Routledge, 2002. Robin, Diana, ‘‘Space, Woman, and Renaissance Discourse,’’ in Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition, edited by Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Russell, Rinaldina (editor), Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

GUIDO CERONETTI (1927–) An acclaimed and renowned translator of biblical as well as classical and modern texts, Guido Ceronetti is also an influential critic and poet. His exemplary and courageous translation of a passage from the Book of Job (19, 26), made difficult by its corrupted textual tradition, does in itself full justice to his intense and multiform literary activity, in which narrative and theater, journalistic writing and translation converge. Ceronetti—for whom writing is a moral mission and translating an act of faith in the liberating power of the word—seems to be especially concerned with recovering the sacredness of creation and the relation between the divine and human flesh. He professes a gnostic faith in the possible redemption of the obviously evil nature of humankind. His art is thus opposed to the spectacle and appearances of everyday life that, in contemporary society, are illusions diametrically opposed to true life. In this context, writing is a form of plague (‘‘pestigrafia’’ as Ceronetti calls it) because, as Giovanni Mariangeli explained, ‘‘it expresses the impossibility of disembodying form from its content, of freeing words from the turbid journeys and the secret rooms where thought is constrained’’ (Guido Ceronetti il veggente di Cetona, 1997). An example is the ‘‘favola sommersa’’ (hidden fable) Aquilegia (1973), the name of a rare Alpine

flower and symbol of a prophetic initiation in which Ceronetti, a radical vegetarian, described and denounced the slaughter of creation in the practice of vivisection. Olam and Enarchı`, the male and female protagonists of the fable, escape from an impending catastrophe that can only be resisted through inner freedom, exemplified by conjugal love, the mystical union recalled symbolically by the flower. The collection of short stories, D. D. Deliri disarmati (D. D. Disarmed Deliria, 1993), notable for its surrealistic and fantastic atmosphere, also uses the moral apologue to develop an allegory of the mystery of evil that is also aimed at the repressive mechanisms created by human society. In Ceronetti’s literary universe, even a journey through the Italian landscape turns into the quest for understanding and a conceivable truth. This is the case of Un viaggio in Italia 1981–1983 (An Italian Journey, 1983). At the urging of the publisher Giulio Einaudi, Ceronetti traveled through Italian cities and towns between 1981 and 1983, describing in detail the vulgar and declining way of life in which the moral discomforts of modernity are revealed. In 1970 Ceronetti established, with Erica Tedeschi, a marionette theater, Teatro dei sensibili, for which he wrote La iena di San Giorgio (St. George’s Hyena), written in 1984 and published 451

GUIDO CERONETTI in 1994. This work was followed in 1988 by the so-called ‘‘Mystic Luna Park,’’ a variety theater that marked the debut of the marionette ‘‘ideofore’’ (from the Greek etymological root meaning ‘‘carrying’’ or ‘‘producing’’ ideas). In recent years, Ceronetti has tried to revive the folk tradition of street performers and has toured Italian cities with his marionette theater. Ceronetti is an indefatigable explorer of contemporary reality and a vocal opponent of mass consumer culture in his essays as well. Driven by a moral imperative to bear witness and to denounce the evils of society, his political writings attempt to unite disenchantment and participation, anger and contemplation, as is the case with the articles that appeared in La stampa and were later collected in La carta e` stanca (The Paper Is Tired, 1976), or with the diary La pazienza dell’arrostito: Giornale e ricordi 1983–1987 (The Patience of the Roasted Man: Journal and Memories, 1983–1987, 1990). His notion of writing as a totality made up of fragments is most clearly evident in his poetry, however, of which the most important collection is Compassioni e disperazioni: Tutte le poesie 1946–1986 (Compassions and Despairs: Complete Poems 1946–1986, 1987). Starting with Poesie per vivere e non vivere (Poems for Living and Not Living, 1979), Ceronetti experiments with an increasingly warped and almost strident vocabulary. In his prose writings in particular, Ceronetti’s style echoes that of Maurice Blanchot (whom he translated), while his poetry continues the dark and apocalyptic lineage of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud, and Emil Cioran.

Fiction Aquilegia, 1973. D. D. Deliri Disarmati, 1993. La vera storia di Rosa Vercesi e della sua amica Vittoria, 2000. N.U.E.D.D.: nuovi ultimi esasperati deliri disarmati, 2004.

Poetry ‘‘Poesie per vivere e non vivere,’’ 1979. ‘‘Il silenzio del corpo: materiali per studio di medicina,’’ 1979; as The Silence of the Body: Materials for the Study of Medicine, translated by Michael Moore, 1993. ‘‘I pensieri del te`,’’ 1987. ‘‘Compassioni e disperazioni: Tutte le poesie 1946–1986,’’ 1987. ‘‘Scavi e segnali: 1986–1992,’’ 1992. ‘‘La Distanza: poesie 1946–1996,’’ 1996.

Plays Viaggia viaggia, Rimbaud!, 1992. La iena di San Giorgio, 1994.

Journalistic and Critical Writing Difesa della luna, 1971. La carta e` stanca, 1976. La musa ulcerosa, 1978. La vita apparente, 1982. Un viaggio in Italia 1981–1983, 1983. Albergo Italia, 1985. Briciole di colonna 1975–1987, 1987. L’occhiale malinconico, 1988. La pazienza dell’arrostito: Giornale e ricordi 1983–1987, 1990. Tra pensieri, 1994. Cara incertezza, 1997. Messia, 2002. Piccolo inferno torinese: fogli dispersi restaurati, 2003. Oltre Chiasso: collaborazioni ai giornali della Svizzera italiana, 1988–2001, edited by Paolo Tesi, 2004.

Translations

Biography Guido Ceronetti was born on August 24, 1927, in Turin. He earned a degree in humanities at the University of Turin (where he studied with Luigi Pareyson), with a thesis entitled Considerazioni sul valore della poesia, 1954. In Albano (Rome), with Erica Tedeschi, he founded the puppet theater Teatro dei sensibili, 1970. He began his long-standing collaboration with the newspaper La stampa, 1972. In the autumn of 1996, the ‘‘Fondo Guido Ceronetti’’ opened at Archivi di Cultura Contemporanea della Biblioteca Cantonale di Lugano, to which the author gave his archive, catalogued by Diana Ru¨esch and Prisca Orler. He lives in Cetona (Siena), where he has resided since the 1980s. STEFANO TOMASSINI 452

Selected Works

Nuovi Salmi, 1955. Martial, Epigrammi, 1964. Catullus, Le poesie, 1969. Maurice Blanchot, Il libro a venire, 1969 (with Guido Neri). Qohe´let o l’Ecclesiaste, 1970; revised edition, 1980. Juvenal, Le satire, 1971. Il Libro di Giobbe, 1972. Il Cantico dei cantici, 1975. Il libro di Giobbe, 1982.

Further Reading Bezzi, Valentina, ‘‘Il viaggio di Guido Ceronetti: Un nuovo pellegrinaggio nell’Italia della fine del XX secolo,’’ Studi Novecenteschi, 22:49(1995), 219–246. Fioroni, Giosetta, Marionettista: Guido Ceronetti e il Teatro dei sensibili, Mantua: Maurizio Corraini, 1993. Fortini, Franco, Nuovi saggi italiani, Milan: Garzanti, 1987. Giuliani, Alfredo, ‘‘Sacro e dissacro di Guido Ceronetti,’’ in Letteratura Italiana. I Contemporanei, vol. 11, Milan: Marzorati, 1988.

MELCHIORRE CESAROTTI Mariangeli, Giovanni, Guido Ceronetti il veggente di Cetona, Isola del Piano (Pesaro-Urbino): Fondazione Alce Nero, 1997. Pagnamenta, Roberto Bruno, ‘‘I segni della fine: Un viaggio in Italia con Guido Ceronetti,’’ in Erwartung des Endes: Apokalypsen in der Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts,

edited by Christiane Uhlig and Rupert Kalkofen, Bern: Peter Lang, 2000. Roncaccia, Alberto, Guido Ceronetti. Critica e poetica, Rome: Bulzoni, 1993. Zolla, Ele´mire, Uscire dal mondo, Milan: Adelphi, 1992.

MELCHIORRE CESAROTTI (1730–1808) An attentive interpreter of the Italian literary scene of the second half of the eighteenth century and a teacher of style for entire generations of writers, from Vittorio Alfieri to Ugo Foscolo, the abbot Melchiorre Cesarotti lived and worked almost exclusively in the Veneto region, which did not prevent him from carrying on epistolary relations with all of Europe and from achieving undisputed international fame through his works. His first cultural formation was as a classicist in the seminary of Padua, onto which he soon grafted a lively attention to the Enlightenment, facilitated by the long period he spent in Venice as a tutor, beginning in 1760. It was in Venice, in fact, which was certainly more open to European influences, that Cesarotti conceived his first works of translation, thus beginning a reflection that, perpetually balanced between theory and practice, would form the mainstay of his literary activity and that was expressed with Discorso sull’origine e i progressi dell’arte poetica (Discourse on the Origin and Progress of Poetic Art, 1762) and Ragionamento intorno al diletto della tragedia (An Argument on the Pleasure of Tragedy, 1762), introduced by Italian versions of two tragedies by Voltaire. The same principles expressed here—of a poetry that imitated the infinite variety of nature and that therefore could not be contained within rigid limits—soon animated his clamorous and innovative poetic version of the Poesie di Ossian, antico poeta celtico (The Poems of Ossian, Ancient Celtic Poet, 1763), a series of popular epic songs in prose and verse, a good deal of which the Scot James Macpherson had composed and popularized with great success with the title A Fragment of Ancient Poetry (1760), passing them off as the work of the mythical bard and Scottish prince Ossian (third century AD), and which Charles Sackville, a friend of Cesarotti, had

quickly translated literally into Italian. It was a fabrication that the Padovan abbot, and a large part of Europe along with him, believed to be authentic, and with which he intended to propose an epic model distinct from and even superior to Homer. This model was of a modern ‘‘primitive,’’ distinguished by tumultuous and extreme passions that are stirred up in characters with strong wills and, just as frequently, melancholic doubts, up until the tragic catastrophes set in misty and disquieting Nordic landscapes where the great powers of nature, along with those of men, are encountered. Although he was not a poet himself, Cesarotti, with his rather free reelaboration of the Ossianic text, thus proved to be a metrical innovator of great importance for his work in the prose sections of the short poems in hendecasyllabic free verse, which, from the Enlightenment on, was the principal meter of Italian poetry between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Alfieri, Foscolo, Monti, and later, with a more sparing use, Manzoni and Leopardi). The construction of a new poetic style derived from this innovation, a style distinct from the Petrarchan one on which the Arcadia had remodeled itself in the first half of the century and opposed to the purist temptations of strictly observing the Tuscan fourteenth century that became popular at the century’s end. At the same time, the lesson of the classics was put to good use and revised in the guise of a new syntactic structure, rendered more ruptured and dramatic by suspensions, pauses, and inversions that were shaped by the characters’ sentiments. It was precisely these elements that attracted Alfieri in the course of his stylistic quest, in which Cesarotti participated directly as an adviser and reviser of the Astian poet’s verses through a thoughtful epistolary correspondence 453

MELCHIORRE CESAROTTI and direct meetings, which were broken off, however, in 1783, because of Cesarotti’s growing wariness of the antityrannical sentiments carried to their extreme consequences that typified Alfieri’s tragedies. Published for the first time in 1763—the same year as the first part of Giuseppe Parini’s Il giorno—and then continually revised and expanded up through 1772, Cesarotti’s translation of Poesie di Ossian, with its many apostrophes and invocations, with the repetitions, questions, and unanswered exclamations of his broken and fragmented style, also exercised a strong influence on nineteenthcentury libretto writing. The translation was strongly marked, furthermore, by the use of a certain metrical variety that Cesarotti adopted to render the parts in verse by Macpherson, taking up cadences and motifs of popular poetry that surpassed the example of Pietro Metastasio’s musicality and constituted a reference point for the romantic opera’s quest for new languages. This same grafting of a modern sensibility onto the classical tradition was also at the heart of Cesarotti’s complex work of translating the Iliad, which began in 1768 when he came to occupy the chair of Greek and Hebrew at the University of Padua and devoted a renewed attention to classical texts, ranging from the Greek orators to the Homeric poems. At this time, he also published Elegia sopra un cimitero di campagna (1772), a new important version of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which was also destined for great success in the field of sepulchral poetry. In actual fact, for the Iliade di Omero, we are dealing with three successive ‘‘translations,’’ which kept him occupied until 1794; the first, literal and in prose, with a vast apparatus of notes and essays; the second, free, in hendecasyllabic free verse; and a third in free verse, which was a true, liberal reworking entitled La morte di Ettore (The Death of Hector, 1795). This was a full confirmation, in this latter text and beyond its modest success, of Cesarotti’s idea of translation as recreazione poetica (poetic re-creation), which was meant to re-evoke in the reader the spirit rather than the letter of the original. Along with practical examples of translation, Cesarotti also developed, as with his versions of Voltaire, a prolonged theoretical reflection, the most original moments of which came in 1785 with the Saggio sulla filosofia del gusto (Essay on the Philosophy of Taste) and especially with the famous Saggio sulla filosofia delle lingue (Essay on the Philosophy of Languages). Here, in a brilliant synthesis of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and 454

the study of tradition, and distinguishing grammatical aspects, which remained stable from rhetorical and stylistic ones, which were subject to continual changes insofar as the style only followed reason and taste, Cesarotti maintained the legitimacy of every language. He broadly reevaluated the historical dynamics against the normative claims of the purists, on the basis of the principle that linguistic changes corresponded to the changing in time of the spirito nazionale (national spirit) and the genio retorico (rhetorical genius) of every country. The last years of his life saw Cesarotti aligned during the three-year Jacobin rule alongside the Padovan municipality in launching projects of educational reform, and, afterwards, with the oscillation peculiar to many writers of the neo-Classical age, he participated in the Napoleonic myth with a short encomiastic poem, Pronea (1807), which attracted severe criticism from his old disciples, most notably Ugo Foscolo.

Biography Melchiorre Cesarotti was born in Padua to a noble family on 15 May 1730. He studied at the Seminary of Padua, where he took vows and became a teacher; he lived in Venice as a tutor for the Grimani family from 1760 to 1768. Cesarotti returned to Padua to occupy the university chair of Greek and Hebrew in 1768 and spent the rest of his life in his villa of Selvazzano, near the city. In the final years of his life, he occupied himself with revising all of his writings and with a monumental edition of them in 40 volumes (1800–1813). Cesarotti died at Selvazzano on 4 November 1808. The edition of his works, including his letters, was completed by his pupil Gaetano Barbieri in 1813. GILBERTO PIZZAMIGLIO See also: History of Italian Language Selected Works Collections Opere scelte, edited by Giuseppe Ortolani, 2 vols., Florence: Le Monnier, 1945–1946.

Translations Poesie di Ossian, antico poeta celtico, 1763; enlarged ed., 1773; final ed., 1802. Thomas Gray, Elegia sopra un cimitero campestre, 1772. Iliade di Omero, 1786–1794. La morte di Ettore, 1795.

GABRIELLO CHIABRERA Other Discorso sull’origine e i progressi dell’arte poetica, 1762. Ragionamento intorno al diletto della tragedia, 1762. Saggio sulla filosofia del gusto, 1785. Saggio sulla filosofia delle lingue, 1785. Pronea, 1807.

Further Reading Barbarisi, Gennaro, and Giulio Carnazzi (editors), Aspetti dell’opera e della fortuna di Melchiorre Cesarotti, 2 vols., Milan: Cisalpino, 2002. Bigi, Emilio, ‘‘Le idee estetiche di Cesarotti,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 136(1959): 341–366. Bigi, Emilio (editor), Critici e storici della poesia e delle arti nel secondo Settecento, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960. Binni, Walter, ‘‘Melchiorre Cesarotti e la mediazione dell’Ossian,’’ in Preromanticismo italiano (2nd ed., 1948), Bari: Laterza, 1974.

Folena, Gianfranco, L’italiano in Europa: Esperienze linguistiche del Settecento, Turin: Einaudi, 1983. Gilardino, Sergio Maria, La scuola romantica: La tradizione ossianica nella poesia dell’Alfieri, del Foscolo e del Leopardi, Ravenna: Longo, 1982. Mari, Michele, Momenti della traduzione fra Settecento e Ottocento, Milan: IPL, 1994. Marzot, Giulio, Il gran Cesarotti: Saggio sul preromanticismo settecentesco, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1949. Pizzamiglio, Gilberto, ‘‘Melchiorre Cesarotti: Teoria e ‘pratica’ della tragedia tra Voltaire e Alfieri,’’ in Le The´aˆtre italien et l’Europe (XVIIe-XVIIIe sie`cles): Actes du II Congre`s International, edited by Christian Bec and Ire`ne Mamczarz, Florence: Olschki, 1985. Ranzini, Paola, Verso la poetica del sublime: L’estetica ‘‘tragica’’ di Melchiorre Cesarotti, Pisa: Pacini, 1998. Romagnoli, Sergio, ‘‘Melchiorre Cesarotti politico’’ (1948), in La buona compagnia, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1983.

THE CHEERFULNESS OF SURVIVORS See Allegria di naufragi (Work by Giuseppe Ungaretti)

GABRIELLO CHIABRERA (1552–1638) Gabriello Chiabrera’s literary muse did not limit itself to one specific itinerary, nor did it follow one path. This wide variety of literary interests goes far in explaining his pervasive and long-lasting fame, which waned only during the twentieth century. Respected by many of his contemporary writers, Chiabrera was a friend of such prominent writers and intellectuals as Ansaldo Ceba` of the Accademia degli Addormentati, the Florentine librettist Ottavio Rinuccini, and scientist-poet Francesco Redi. Chiabrera’s influence on his contemporaries and the succeeding generation of writers was such that he is considered a precursor of the eighteenthcentury literary movement, Arcadia. Chiabrera began his prolific writing career in the Ligurian city of Savona, where he wrote the heroic

poem Della guerra de’ Goti (The War of the Goths, 1582), as well as Pindaric odes, canzonette amorose, poemetti sacri, canzoni against the Protestant reformers, and celebratory verses dedicated to various princely dynasties of the Italian peninsula. From 1586 to 1588 he published three books of canzoni in Genoa, and in 1590 he began writing the Amedeide (1620), an epic poem dedicated to Amedeo of Savoy. Chiabrera’s poetry, much like that of Giovanbattista Marino, is innovative and evokes a sense of meraviglia (wonder) in the reader. Unlike Marino and his followers, who created this effect through an abundance of extravagant metaphors and witty conceits, Chiabrera’s sense of wonderment was based on his use of classical forms. Although he read widely and was well versed in the 455

GABRIELLO CHIABRERA classical canon, his models were Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Catullus. His understanding of the Greek and Latin tradition was filtered through his reading of Pierre de Ronsard, the preeminent poet of the Ple´iade, who aimed at breaking away with the earlier French poetry and enriching his native language with a literature equal to that of the classical world and the Italian Renaissance. Chiabrera produced a vast quantity of verse (epic, tragic, pastoral, lyrical, and satirical), but his reputation as Italy’s most celebrated poet of the seventeenth century after Marino is associated with lyrical compositions, in particular the Canzonette (1591) and the verses written in celebration of epic deeds. Chiabrera was drawn to the composition of canzonette by his love for metrical and strophic experimentation, his quest to connect his lyrics with the world of music, and his search for a greater reading public. He was well aware that a variety of short verses are more easily adaptable to music and that such verses are sung with greater ease. The beauty and value of these compositions reside in their high level of musicality, in their proclivity to being sung, and in their aural quality, whereby the sounds emanating from the succession of words become more important than the images themselves. It was also Chiabrera’s contention that a new reading public, made up of less sophisticated young men and women, needed a poetry radically different from the gravity of a Dante or of a Petrarch. In his Dialoghi dell’arte poetica con altre prose e lettere (Dialogues on the Art of Poetry, 1830), Chiabrera discussed the art of writing heroic verse (‘‘Il Vecchietti’’), canzoni (‘‘L’Orzalesi’’ and ‘‘Il Geri’’), verse composition (‘‘Il Bamberisi’’), and a Petrarchan sonnet (‘‘Il Forzano’’). In Il Geri, dedicated to the Florentine Francesco Geri, he also suggested that not all readers are able to understand or enjoy lyric poetry and that it is up to the poet to compose light verses that are pleasing to them and can also be sung or recited. Thus, he popularized the canzonetta metrical form, and through the use of iterations, he gave us charming melodies and magical images, gracious poems where the logical sense of the words and the use of diminutives created a blend of images and sounds that heighten the senses. Chiabrera’s Canzonette and anacreontic poems appealed later to the taste of the Arcadians and were critically praised during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chiabrera wanted to be remembered by posterity as the celebratory poet of epic deeds. To this end, he composed numerous canzoni and odes that praised the exploits of heroes and famous 456

individuals. His verses celebrated the election of popes, sang the praises of the victors of athletic events, and extolled the victories of Christian knights over the infidels. Some of his odes were written in honor of Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy; Christopher Columbus; Maria de’ Medici; and Pope Urban VIII on the day of his inauguration. Here Chiabrera emulated Pindar and attempted to construct a new noble, learned, heroic poetry previously unknown in Italy. His canzoni were also in a broad sense ‘‘Pindaric’’ due to Chiabrera’s frequent use of classical topics and mythology. Chiabrera’s characters were immersed in a world populated by heroes and heroines, gods and demigods, legends and myth, Achilles and Jason, the Odyssey and the Iliad, elements that create the fantastic scenery for Chiabrera’s paradigm of the meraviglioso. Gabriello Chiabrera was also a writer of librettos and tragedies. He played a central role in the development of musical and dramatic theater at the courts of Florence, with Il rapimento di Cefalo (The Abduction of Cephalus, 1600) set to music by Giulio Caccini, and of Mantova, where he composed intermezzi for Guarini’s comedy Idropica (1584), set to music by Claudio Monteverdi in 1608, and ‘‘favolette’’ (little fables) to be recited while singing. His technical inventions for the intermezzi in honor of Giovanni de’ Medici, as well as the sumptuous balls and veglie at the Florentine court, were highly celebrated. Chiabrera’s theatrical activity brought him fame and recognition and solidified his reputation as a preeminent man of letters. Much less known is his involvement with the theater in his hometown of Savona and in Genoa, where he wrote numerous pieces that parody the idleness and rivalries among the ruling aristocracy and that bring to light certain aspects of contemporary Genoese society. In his pastoral fables Gelopea (1604) and Alcippo (1614), he introduced relevant innovations to the favola boschereccia by eliminating the chorus, simplifying the story with the omission of the subplot and the resolution through recognition. He stressed also the rapport between the audience and the performance. In his Gelopea, inspired by Guarini’s Il pastor fido, Chiabrera interwove games of trickery and jealousy with the theme of ‘‘rightful marriage.’’ The rivalry between Filebo, a poor shepherd boy, and Berillo, a farm laborer, for the hand of Gelopea, the daughter of a rich and powerful shepherd, alluded to the conflicts afflicting the Genoese nobility (the new and old, the rich and the impoverished). In the end, the marriage of Filebo with Gelopea pointed to a

GABRIELLO CHIABRERA solution based on tolerance, love, and reconciliation. Women’s destiny was the theme of Alcippo: whether they are free to pursue their wishes or rather entrapped by the existing patriarchal structure. The play concludes with the matrimony of Alcippo and Clori, the protagonists, but the traditional ending is marred by the bride, who is resigned to her fate and accepts the inevitable marriage with an unconventional remark: ‘‘che piu´ dirvi degg’io? / Sia nelle vostre mani, e voi reggete il freno / di ciascun mio desio’’ (What more can I say to you?/I am in your hands / and you apply the brakes / to all of my desires). In his autobiography, Vita scritta da lui medesimo, published posthumously in 1718, Chiabrera wrote that he endeavored to discover a new world as Columbus did. Indeed, his discovery was to create a new world of poetry, as a reaction against the constraints of a lackluster Petrarchism that saturated the poetry of his time. Chiabrera’s verse and poetic reforms were influential in the development of the eighteenth-century Arcadian ideals, informing the literary and cultural patterns of the Roman Academy.

Biography Gabriello Chiabera was born in Savona, 18 June 1552. His father passed away before he was born. After his mother remarried, he was brought to Rome by his paternal uncle, Giovanni, 1561; his uncle entrusted him to the Jesuits at the Collegio Romano, where he studied Latin and philosophy, 1561–1572; he entered the court of the Venetian Cardinal Luigi Cornaro in Rome, where he met a number of leading cultural figures, like MarcAntoine Muret, friend and translator of Pierre Ronsard, the critic, dramatist, philosopher Sperone Speroni, and Torquato Tasso, 1572–1576. Chiabrera had a violent altercation with a Roman gentleman and was forced to leave the city and return to Savona, 1576; he then became involved in violent altercations and was forced to flee the city, 1581. Chiabrera returned to Savona in 1585 a changed man, and there he lived, almost uninterruptedly, for the rest of his life. He was invited to Florence to attend the wedding of Maria de’ Medici to Henry IV, King of France, and received the title of Gentiluomo del Granduca (Courtier of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), with a monthly allowance for the rest of his life and no residency requirement, in 1600. He married his cousin Lelia Pavese, 29 July

1602. Chiabrera presented the first edition of the Amedeide to Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Savoy, 1607. He received a brief from Pope Urban VIII that praises the moral, classical, and heroic values of his poetry, 1623. Chiabrera died in Savona, 14 October 1638. PAOLO A. GIORDANO Selected Works Collections Opere, 5 vols., 1757. Liriche, edited by Francesco Luigi Mannucci, 1926. Canzonette, rime varie, dialoghi, edited by Luigi Negri, 1952; reprinted, 1968; selected poems in From Marino to Marinetti, translated by Joseph Tusiani, 1974. Opere di Gabriello Chiabrera e lirici del classicismo barocco, edited by Marcello Turchi, 1974; reprinted, 1984; includes the five dialogues on the art of poetry and the Vita scritta da lui medesimo Maniere, scherzi e canzonette morali, edited by Giulia Raboni, 1998.

Poetry ‘‘Della guerra dei Goti,’’ 1582. ‘‘Canzoni,’’ 1586–1588. ‘‘Canzonette,’’ 1591. ‘‘Scherzi e canzonette morali,’’ 1599. ‘‘Le maniere dei versi toscani,’’ 1599. ‘‘Herodiate,’’ 1602. ‘‘Alcuni scherzi,’’ 1603. ‘‘Rime sacre,’’ 1604. ‘‘Rime,’’ 1605; with Le vendemmie di Parnaso and the poemetto Egloghe, 1608. ‘‘Il Firenze,’’ 1615 (9 cantos); 1628 (15 cantos). ‘‘Vegghia delle Grazie,’’ 1616. ‘‘Poesie,’’ 3 vols., 1618. ‘‘Il presagio dei giorni,’’ 1618. ‘‘Per lo gioco del pallone celebrato in Firenze,’’ 1618. ‘‘Il vivaio dei Boboli,’’ 1620. ‘‘Per San Carlo Borromeo,’’ 1620. ‘‘Amedeide,’’ 1620. ‘‘Galatea o le grotte di Fassolo,’’ 1623. ‘‘Poesie,’’ 4 vols., 1628. ‘‘Ruggiero,’’ 1653. ‘‘Foresto,’’ 1653.

Plays and Melodramas Il rapimento di Cefalo, 1600. Gelopea: Favola boschereccia, 1604; edited by Franco Vazzoler, 1988. Alcippo, 1614. La vegghia delle grazie, 1615. Il pianto di Orfeo, 1615. Angelica in Ebuda, 1615.

Other Sermoni, 1718. Vita scritta da lui medesimo, edited by G. Paolucci, 1718. Dialoghi dell’arte poetica con altre prose e lettere, 1830. Autobiografia, dialoghi, lettere scelte, 1912. Lettere: 1585–1638, edited by Simona Morando, 2003.

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GABRIELLO CHIABRERA Further Reading Bertone, Giorgio, Per una ricerca metricologica su Chiabrera, Genoa: Marietti, 1991. Bertone, Giorgio, Per una ricerca su Chiabrera, Genoa: Marietti, 1988. Bianchi, Fulvio, ‘‘Per una definizione critica del Chiabrera: Riflessioni su una questione ancora aperta,’’ in Studi di filologia e letteratura offerti a Franco Croce, Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1997. Bianchi, Fulvio, and P. Rossi (editors), La scelta della misura: Gabriello Chiabrera. L’altro fuoco del barocco italiano, Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1993. Calcaterra, Carlo, Il Parnaso in rivolta: Barocco e antibarocco nella poesia italiana, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1961. Calcaterra, Carlo, Poesia e canto: Studi sulla poesia melica italiana e sulla favola per musica, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1951. Cerisola, Pier Luigi, L’arte dello stile: Poesia e letterarieta` in Gabriello Chiabrera, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990. Corradini, Silvia, Teatro e spettacolo nel Seicento, Bari: Laterza, 1990. Croce, Benedetto, Storia dell’eta` barocca, Bari: Laterza, 1921.

Fasoli, Paolo, ‘‘‘Non Prima ebbe favella che vena’: Preliminari per un discorso su Marino e Chiabrera,’’ in The Sense of Marino, edited by Francesco Guardiani, New York-Ottawa-Toronto: Legas, 1994. Getto, Giovanni, ‘‘Gabriello Chiabrera poeta barocco,’’ in Barocco in prosa e poesia, Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. Girardi, Enzo Noe´, Esperienza e poesia di Gabriello Chiabrera, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1950. Mamone, Sara, Il teatro nella Firenze medicea, Milan: Mursia, 1981; rev. ed., 1991. Merola, Nicola, ‘‘Gabriello Chiabrera,’’ in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 24, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1980. Neri, Ferdinando, Chiabrera e la Ple´iade francese, Turin: Bocca, 1920. Pieri, Marzia, ‘‘Vanita` e onesti diletti: Il teatro di Gabriello Chiabrera,’’ Rassegna della letteratura, 95(1991): 5–11. Vazzoler, Franco, Introduzione to G. Chiabrera, Gelopea: Favola boschereccia, Genoa: Marietti, 1988. Vazzoler, Franco, ‘‘Lettere inedite di Gabriello Chiabrera,’’ Rassegna della letteratura italiana (1969): 29–36.

LUIGI CHIARELLI (1880–1947) The same type of irony that led Pirandello to embrace the concepts of the grotesque in some of his earlier plays is found in an essay by Luigi Chiarelli entitled ‘‘Anticipo alle mie memorie’’ (In Anticipation of My Memoirs), written in 1921 at the height of his popularity for the international success of La maschera e il volto (The Mask and the Face, 1916): E` giunta una grande notizia da Londra. Un illustre cercatore ha scoperto in quella meravigliosa testa di Omero che e` al ‘British Museum’ il manoscritto di una commedia sconosciuta di Willy Shakespeare. La commedia s’intitola La maschera e il volto. L’azione si svolge sul lago di Como. Si tratta di un marito che.... Ahime`! Adesso tutto si spiega! Great news from London! An illustrious scholar has discovered the manuscript of an unknown comedy by Willy Shakespeare in that wonderful head of Homer that is at the British Museum. The comedy is called La maschera e il volto. The action is set on Lake Como. It deals with a husband who... Alas! Now all becomes clear!

This post scriptum by Chiarelli to his humorous ‘‘memoirs’’ describes the artistic vision of Italy’s 458

most prominent grottesco dramatist, whose La maschera e il volto promoted a kind of theater that breaks down middle-class barriers by destroying rigid ways of responding to life. At the same time, Chiarelli’s statement acknowledges the relevance of tradition exemplified by the age of Shakespeare and the commedia dell’arte. In Italy, the term ‘‘grottesco’’ (borrowed from a line in Chiarelli’s play) applies to a group of playwrights whose works were written and produced during the World War I era. First used by Renaissance art critics, the adjective ‘‘grotesque’’ is retained in its original connotation of fantasy and playfulness, with ironic overtones. The best plays of the teatro grottesco, which comprise Pier Maria Rosso di San Secondo’s Marionette, che passione! (Puppets of Passion, 1918), Luigi Antonelli’s L’uomo che incontro` se stesso (The Man Who Met Himself, 1918), and Enrico Cavacchioli’s L’uccello del paradiso (The Bird of Paradise, 1919), attest to the destruction of the classical notion of personality at the core of modern humanity’s alienation. Such esteemed critics as Adriano Tilgher and Silvio D’Amico

LUIGI CHIARELLI claimed it to be an innovative movement with a shared philosophical experience. From his early works, Chiarelli experimented with contemporary literary models, particularly the popular verist and psychological dramas. The same holds true for the plays that he wrote before La maschera il volto and succeeded in having staged in Milan: Er gendarme (The Policeman, 1912), Extra Dry (1913), Una notte d’amore (Night of Love, 1913), and La portantina (The Sedan Chair, 1913). Between 1904 and 1910, Chiarelli strengthened his theatrical training while working for several newspapers. During this time he submitted a new play, Dissolvimento (Dissolution), to Luigi Pietriboni, the artistic director of the Compagnia Virginia Reiter. It depicted the decline of an aristocratic family. Though it was well received, Dissolvimento lacked a strong role for the leading actress and therefore was rejected. He also wrote a social drama, Sorgente amara (Bitter Spring), a historical play about a Roman patriot set in 1849 (Don Prospero Spada), and a light comedy, Il terzo gode (The Third One Lucky). He became a regular at the Caffe` Aragno, the gathering place for many Roman artists and literary figures, and with a group of friends, he founded the Societa` dei Giovani Autori. In 1911, after spending six months in Paris, he decided to move to Milan, where he joined the newspaper Il secolo as a reporter. Milan was considered to be an ideal city for aspiring young playwrights. Historically, it had been the first Italian city to officially support a theatrical company (the Compagnia Reale Italiana). Here some of the best actors had settled. Chiarini collaborated with the Compagnia Gastone Monaldi and in 1912 he wrote in six days Er gendarme, a patriotic drama in Roman dialect that was successfully represented at the Teatro Fossati on September 21. In the play, which is set in 1867 Rome, a Vatican policeman is forced to arrest his daughter’s revolutionary fiance´ in order to do his duty. During the next year, Chiarelli wrote a satirical comedy for the actor Ferruccio Benini, La portantina, which was not produced until 1917, and two one-act plays, Extra Dry and Una notte d’amore, for Alfredo Sainati, the capocomico of the Grand Guignol Company. They both premiered on 24 January 1914 at the Teatro Olimpia. Of these three plays, only Extra Dry has been published in La scena (1926). Chiarelli’s masterpiece, La maschera e il volto, was written in 20 days during the summer of 1913, at the Pensione Piemontese in Milan. Gabriellino D’Annunzio, as well as Paolino Giordani and Cesare Ludovici, among others, attended the

evening readings of the play, which always concluded with singing Chopin’s Funeral March. At this time, D’Annunzio was working with the Compania Virgilio Talli, and he submitted the play to the famous actor, who rejected it. So did the companies of Marco Praga, Armando Falconi, and Dario Niccodemi. In 1916 Chiarelli’s playwriting career entered a new era. On 31 May, upon the recommendation of Annibale Gabrielli, the Compagnia Drammatica di Roma, housed at the prestigious Teatro Argentina, premiered La maschera e il volto. It was directed by Ernesto Ferrero, and the principal roles of Paolo Grazia, his wife Savina, and Cirillo Zanotti were played by Giannina Chiantoni, Ettore Paladini, and Ferrero himself. It was an instant success. As Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti wrote (‘‘L’opera di Luigi Chiarelli nella storia del teatro moderno,’’ 1948), by the end of the first act the audience became aware that they were witnessing something new and provocative. La maschera e il volto, which began like a traditional realist play (the stock bourgeois ‘‘triangle’’), was unfolding on a subversive premise: the protagonist’s defiance of preestablished social norms. At the core of Chiarelli’s grottesco lies a satirical attack on psychological drama, with its empty social conventions. The critical reception of La maschera e il volto’s first performance was hailed as a new form of playwriting. Luigi Chiarelli considered himself to be an innovator. At the end of the nineteenth century the Italian theater was still geared toward the bourgeoisie, a class that knew exactly how to represent its values. Chiarelli’s polemical reform aimed at subverting all aspects of bourgeois comedy, yet using the traditional triangle of husband-wifelover, which was the basic plot for much of the teatro borghese. In his essay ‘‘L’ironia’’ (Irony), which first appeared in L’idea nazionale in 1920, Pirandello defined La maschera e il volto as ‘‘a transcendental farce.’’ La maschera e il volto deals with the discrepancy between the attitudes imposed on people by societal codes and their true feelings. Count Paolo Grazia and his wife Savina are typical members of the high bourgeoisie. Paolo pretends to kill his wife to avoid the appearance of looking ridiculous, and he is acquitted for it, only to be tried again when she is found to be alive. The play opens by establishing its programmatic thesis: One evening, during a gathering of friends at his villa on Lake Como, Paolo declares that a husband is required to kill an unfaithful wife in order to retain his selfrespect or otherwise commit suicide. However, 459

LUIGI CHIARELLI once he is faced with his own wife’s infidelity, he plans a stratagem, fearing ridicule should he forgive her. He will make everyone believe that he has killed Savina in order to avenge his honor and dispose of her body in the lake. Savina is sent abroad under a false name. Ten months later complications arise when a decomposing body is recovered from the lake. Once Savina’s death is discovered to be a setup, Paolo is facing a prison sentence. Having recaptured their old love bond, the couple decides to escape the cynical norms of their society, running away to start a new life incognito. In the closing scene, Paolo and Savina embrace passionately at the sound of Chopin’s Funeral March. In Chiarelli’s grottesco, fantastic, bizarre situations create a bitter ironic comment on societal values. The author injected himself into the play by means of an alter ego character, Cirillo, who embodies his aesthetic philosophy. During the following years, Chiarelli’s theatrical work relied primarily on the celebrated grottesco plot and dramatic setups that made him famous overnight. However, he never enjoyed the same critical reception. With the end of World War I and the rise of Fascism, the appeal of the grotesque movement on the public faded away. Such influential critics as Adriano Tilgher would label it as a reflector of the intellectual crisis of the times. Few looked beneath the mask to see the intimate human drama that existed there. Chiarelli wrote his second grottesco, La scala di seta (The Silken Stairs, 1917), and a propaganda war drama, Le lacrime e le stelle (The Tears and the Stars, 1918), both staged by the Compagnia Drammatica di Roma. Tilgher’s and D’Amico’s somewhat mixed reviews of Chiarelli’s political satire La scala di seta, as a work in which the playwright failed to achieve a balance between drama and farce—which both critics considered to be the authentic novelty of La maschera e il volto— are telling examples. The play is based on the conflict between two men: the honest Roberto Felci, doomed to failure, and Desire´, a ruthless ballet dancer, who enjoys a life of success represented by the silken staircase that leads him up to fame. Around them lies a world of corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen, and complaisant women, who embody degrading human appetites. La scala di seta, which premiered at the Teatro Argentina on 28 June 1917, becomes a mirror of a generational attitude toward society. These same themes return in Chimere (Chimeras, 1920) and La morte degli amanti (Death 460

of the Lovers, 1921), a parody of melodramatic bourgeois comedy. What concerned Chiarelli was the inability of people to speak the language of truth and to express genuine love for each other, particularly in their emotional responsiveness. In his 1918 essay concerning the state of the theater, Teatro di prosa (Prose Theater), he lamented the lack of undefined and poetic elements that are the quintessential components of a work of art. At that point, Chiarelli was recognized as one of Italy’s foremost playwrights, and his ambition was to have his own company. And so in 1918 he formed the Ars Italica (1918–1919), under Virgilio Talli’s artistic direction. The company successfully produced a repertoire of comedies, which included Carlo Goldoni and Guido Morselli. By the early 1920s the grotesque movement had virtually disappeared. Chiarelli would write one last grottesco, Fuochi d’artificio (Fireworks, 1922). It portrays the plight of Gerardo, a poor man whom everybody believes to be wealthy. He is helped in this game of appearances by his own secretary, Scaramanzia. Fuochi d’artificio enjoys the distinction in Chiarelli’s career of being the only other play as widely acclaimed and translated as La maschera e il volto. Luigi Chiarelli was also instrumental in promoting the establishment of the Teatri di Stato (State Theaters). Traditionally a few managers controlled the national theaters, often selecting troupes and their repertoires to please the public. His commitment to the theater continued until the last years of his life, combining artistic endeavors with administrative appointments. During this period, he officially joined the Fascist Party, as did Pirandello and other contemporary artists. Chiarelli also wrote about 100 short stories, which originally appeared in La stampa and then were published in the collections La mano di Venere (The Hand of Venus, 1935), La figlia dell’aria (The Daughter of the Air, 1939), and Karake` e altri racconti (Karake` and Other Stories, 1944). The importance of Luigi Chiarelli in the history of dramatic literature has to be viewed in relation to the Italian repertoires at that time, which were embedded in old formulas and foreign models and lacked originality (with the exception of D’Annunzio). La maschera e il volto marks a date in the Italian theater, not just because it was very successful, but mostly because it was a turning point in Italian dramatic literature, while remaining within the limits of the national tradition.

LUIGI CHIARELLI

Biography Luigi Chiarelli was born in Trani (Bari), on 7 July 1880, the eldest of five sons of Carlo Chiarelli and Maria Teresa Fortunato. His father belonged to a wealthy Sicilian family and had enlisted as a volunteer with the Italian army in 1866. After finishing his studies in Palermo, he moved to Rome, where he met and married Maria Teresa in 1879. Luigi was born in his mother’s hometown and was named after his paternal grandfather, a patriot with Giuseppe Garibaldi’s 1860 expedition. Brought up in Rome, Luigi received his secondary education at the Liceo ‘‘Ennio Quirino Visconti,’’ where he disclosed an early inclination for writing love poems and dramas. At the age of 15, he composed his first play, Lena, a realist portrait of a peasant girl that transcends the mere regionalism of Italian verismo. However, Luigi had little interest in school. He loved to read dramatic literature and attend theatrical productions. In 1900, the sudden death of his father interrupted Luigi’s studies, and so he had to forego his university career. Carlo Chiarelli had lost his substantial fortune in risky investments and died heartbroken, leaving his family in financial distress. The 20-year-old Luigi was entrusted with supporting his mother as well as his younger brothers. He eventually found a position as a government employee at the Corte dei Conti, where his father had also worked. This post only lasted for a few months. Luigi’s uncommitted performance and recurring absences from work led to his resignation. Soon after he became a journalist and gained a reputation in literary circles, contributing regularly to the daily papers L’Alfiere and La patria. In 1914 the playwright moved to Turin to direct the review Armi e politica, whose publication was discontinued with the outbreak of World War I. Though drafted and assigned to spend his military service in Terni, he was able to continue his literary activities. In 1923, he joined the Il corriere italiano as a regular drama critic. In December 1916 Luigi married Anna (Ne`nette), to whom he dedicated La maschera e il volto with an inscription that read: ‘‘Alla mia Ne`nette, di cui conosco tutte le maschere e i volti’’ (To my Ne`nette, of whom I know all masks and faces). In his later years, Chiarelli became the regular film critic for the Roman daily Il tempo and was commissioned by the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico to translate Plautus’s L’Aulularia (1938) and I Menecmi (1938), which were staged in the Roman theaters of Ostia, Gubbio,

and Fiesole. Some of his plays were also adapted for the screen. Among them are La maschera e il volto, directed by Augusto Genina (1919) and by Camillo Mastrocinque (1942); La scala di seta, directed by Arnaldo Frateili (1920); and Fuochi d’artificio (Fireworks, 1938) with Amedeo Nazzari, directed by Gennaro Righelli. In 1942 Chiarelli collaborated on the screenplay entitled Luisa Sanfelice by Leo Menardi. During the early 1940s Chiarelli directed the Compagnia Ninchi-Lanczy and began experimenting with new theatrical approaches, including a mythical representation, Ninon (1940), and an allegorical drama, Essere, staged posthumously in 1953, which discloses the playwright’s search for a supreme being. In 1946 he suffered a stroke and died in Rome on 20 December 1947. GAETANA MARRONE Selected Works Plays Er gendarme, 1912. Extra Dry, 1914. Una notte d’amore, 1914. La maschera e il volto, 1916; as The Mask and the Face, translated by Chester Bailey Fernald, 1927; translated by Noel de Vic Beamish, in International Modern Plays, 1950; translated with an Introduction by M. Vena, in Italian Grotesque Theater, 2001. La scala di seta, Rome, Teatro Argentina, 28 June 1917. La portantina, 1917. Le lacrime e le stelle, 1918. Chimere, 1920. La morte degli amanti, 1921. Fuochi d’artificio, 1923. Les Tripes a` la mode de Caen, 1925. Jolly, 1928. K. 41, 1929. La reginetta, 1931. Leggere e scrivere, 1931. Lettere d’amore, 1931. Un uomo da rifare, 1932. Una piu` due, 1935. Il cerchio magico, 1937. Il teatro in fiamme, 1945. Essere, 1953.

Further Reading Angelini, Franca, Il teatro del novecento, Bari-Rome: Laterza, 1976. Antonucci, Giovanni, Storia del teatro italiano del novecento, Rome: Studium, 1986. Apollonio, Carla, ‘‘Luigi Chiarelli,’’ in Novecento, vol. 2, part 1, Settimo Milanese: Marzorati, 1989.

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LUIGI CHIARELLI Bassnett, Susan, ‘‘The Mask and the Face,’’ in International Dictionary of Theatre: Plays, Chicago-London: St. James Press, 1992. Calendoli, Giovanni, ‘‘Chiarelli,’’ in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 3, Rome: Editrice Le Maschere, 1956. Cardarelli, Vincenzo, ‘‘‘Le lacrime e le stelle’ di L. Chiarelli all’Argentina,’’ in La poltrona vuota, edited by G. A. Cibotto and B. Blasi, Milan: Rizzoli, 1969. D’Amico, Silvio, ‘‘Il teatro grottesco,’’ in Il teatro dei fantocci, Florence: Vallecchi, 1920. Ferrante, Luigi, Teatro italiano grottesco, Rocca di San Casciano: Cappelli, 1964. Fiocco, Achille, Teatro italiano di ieri e di oggi, Bologna: Cappelli, 1958. Gobetti, Piero, ‘‘‘La Scala di seta’ di L. Chiarelli,’’ L’ordine nuovo (7 May 1921); reprinted in Scritti di critica teatrale, Turin: Einaudi, 1974. Gori, Gino, Il grottesco nell’arte e nella letteratura: Comico, tragico, lirico, Rome: Stock, 1926. Gramsci, Antonio, ‘‘‘La maschera e il volto’ di Chiarelli al Carignano,’’ Avanti! (Turin ed., 11 April 1917) and

‘‘‘Chimere’ di Chiarelli al Carignano,’’ Avanti! (Turin ed., 7 February 1920), reprinted in Letteratura e vita nazionale, Turin: Einaudi, 1950. Livio, Gigi, Teatro grottesco del novecento: Antologia, Milan: Mursia, 1965. Lo Vecchio Musti, Manlio, L’opera di Luigi Chiarelli, Rome: Cenacolo, 1942. Lo Vecchio Musti, Manlio, ‘‘L’opera di Luigi Chiarelli nella storia del teatro moderno,’’ Il dramma, 53(15 January 1948), 28–34. Pirandello, Luigi, ‘‘Immagine del ‘grottesco’’’ and ‘‘Ironia,’’ in Saggi, poesie, scritti vari, edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti, Milan: Mondadori, 1973. Tilgher, Adriano, ‘‘Il teatro del grottesco,’’ in Studi sul teatro contemporaneo, Rome: Libreria di Scienze e Lettere, 1923. Vena, Michael, ‘‘Luigi Chiarelli (1880–1947): Profile of a Playwright,’’ Connecticut Review, 7(1974), 59–63. Vena, Michael, ‘‘The ‘Grotteschi’ Revisited,’’ Forum Italicum, 31:1(1997), 153–162. Verdone, Mario, ‘‘Teatro grottesco,’’ in Teatro contemporaneo, vol. 1, Rome: Lucarini, 1981.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Although children’s literature as a recognized genre emerged in Italy during the nineteenth century, its origins go back to Greek, Latin, and Asian models. Its artistic significance and its pedagogical and psychological effectiveness are the subject of never-ending debate. In his La letteratura della nuova Italia (1914–1940), the leading philosopher Benedetto Croce examined the question of whether children’s literature can truly express artistic values. On the other hand, Ernesto Codignola, Lamberto Borghi, and Francesco De Bartolomeis, who were influenced by John Dewey, all took a more modern stance on this subject. Indeed John Dewey and his pedagogical activism had a strong impact in Italy, particularly on writers like Gianni Rodari. In recent years, however, the focus of school reforms and pedagogical trends has shifted to more complex technologies, granting children’s literature a minor part in education. The traditional novella (a specifically Italian form of the tale) and the fable have been the two predominant forms of prose fiction in the Italian vernacular since the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Handed down orally, the fable retains its ancient origins in the emblematic character of the Fata (Fairy), which is 462

etymologically related to the Latin fatum (destiny) and Parca (the goddess of childbirth and destiny), as well as the Greek Moira (the goddess of destiny). In the folk and popular traditions, the character of the fairy has great ethical significance, as is the case of the Fata Turchina in Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s story Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1883). The century of humanism mainly championed education based on classical texts. Venice, Milan, and Florence were the pivotal centers of the cultural translatio, or transformation, of this age. Scholarly work was no longer done solely in convents and monasteries. Instead, humanists promoted a secular curriculum whose purpose was to reform and improve the way humankind thought and lived. In the process the pagan fable was revived. The Medicis’ commitment to philology assured the collection and proper contextualization of classical primary texts. Thus, subsequently adapted to the vernacular, these works provided a model and inspiration for spiritual growth among aristocrats. It was precisely in this way that the pedagogical school of the most famous of the humanist educators, Vittorino da Feltre (ca. 1378–1446), promoted

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE a progressive cultural opening toward a secular education. Vittorino became the tutor of the young Gonzaga noblemen in Mantua and founded the Ca’ Giocosa (as he named his school) where the curriculum focused on the studia humanitas, Latin and Greek classics were taught in addition to the natural sciences, mathematics, and music. The Ca’ Giocosa emphasized strict moral discipline resting on Stoic ethics, with physical training as well. Vittorino’s pedagogical approach became the epitome of the humanistic ideals of learning and virtue. Such reformist views on education are also expressed in Della vita civile (On Civic Life, 1529) by Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475) and in Della famiglia (The Family in Renaissance Florence, 1433– 1441) by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), whose first book (‘‘De officio senum erga juvenes...et de educandis liberis’’) is devoted to educational practices. Both treatises define the qualities of the ideal citizen of all ages and are among the most telling expressions of Florentine humanism. It was, however, Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) who introduced the first innovations to the literary genre of the fairy tale. He had a good knowledge of Aesop and Phaedrus and was well acquainted with the narrative techniques used by Ovid. Furthermore, Firenzuola had translated The Golden Ass by Apuleius and, thus, was proven to have a talent for working with language as well as erudition. He wrote a popular collection of novelle in the vernacular, La prima veste dei discorsi degli animali (The First Version of the Animals’ Discourses, 1548), through which he introduced, with strong moral overtones, a series of Asian tales—the Indian Panchatantra, which had first appeared in a Latin translation during the thirteenth century. Firenzuola went beyond the original pedagogical drive of the humanists of the Italian Renaissance. This, however, can also be said about the fables that Ludovico Ariosto chose to include in his Satire (The Satires, 1517–1525). Two other early texts of great importance for children’s literature in Italy are Le piacevoli notti (The Entertaining Nights, 1550–1553) by the Venetian Giovan Francesco Straparola (ca. 1480–before 1557) and Pentamerone (The Pentameron, 1634–1636) by the Neapolitan Giambattista Basile (ca. 1566/1575–1632). Straparola’s collection is comprised of 75 fables narrated by a group of storytellers invited to the island of Murano on the 13 nights of carnival. Each fable ends with a riddle with multiple interpretations, some of which are of obscene nature. In fact, the relevance of Le piacevoli notti to children’s

literature lies in Straparola’s storytelling techniques, which were common at the time. The Venetian author chose to retell magical Asian folk stories and to include animal fables in a larger narrative of a different genre. He is also famous for having presented the oldest known version of the classic ‘‘Puss in Boots.’’ Like Le piacevoli notti, Basile’s tales are set within a frame story modelled after Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1373). Basile’s work reveals the growing interest of humanist writers in the literary and popular folk narrative traditions and in Asian legends in particular. Basile wrote in the old Neapolitan dialect, and his Pentamerone’s first important Italian translation was done by Benedetto Croce. It later became an inspirational text for the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Ludwig Tieck. In fact, the subtitle of the original text is Lo cunto de li cunti, o vero lo trattenemiento de li peccerille (The Tale of Tales, or the Entertainment of the Little Ones). Thus, the Pentamerone was adequately abridged for children and published in Florence in 1889 in an edition illustrated by Enrico Mazzanti. Moreover, the first theatrical fantasy by Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806), L’amore delle tre melarance (The Love of Three Oranges, 1761), was also an adaptation of a story by Basile, ‘‘I tre cedri’’ (The Tree Cedars). Finally, Basile’s ‘‘La gatta cenerentola’’ (The Cinderella Cat) was presented by Roberto De Simone in 1976, during the Spoleto Festival, while many of the Renaissance author’s tales continue to be staged today. During the eighteenth century, Italian literature was predominantly influenced by the fables of La Fontaine. Aurelio Bertola De’ Giorgi, Giambattista Casti, Lorenzo Pignotti, Luigi Fiacchi, and Giovanni Meli are some of the writers who celebrated the spirit of learning particular to the Enlightenment. De’ Giorgi wrote a Saggio sopra la favola (An Essay on the Fable, 1788), while Casti composed the Animali parlanti (Talking Animals, 1802), a poem in 26 canti in six-line stanzas that was praised by Giacomo Leopardi as a model of political satire. Pignotti also achieved some literary success with his verse fables, Favole e novelle (Fairy Tales and Novellas, 1782), inspired by La Fontaine and by the sensualist philosophy of Condillac, a pedagogue at the court of Ferdinand of Bourbon in Parma. Another key figure in children’s literature of the time is the educationalist Father Francesco Soave (1743–1806), whose pupils included Manzoni. His Novelle morali (Moral Fables, 1786) were written in the spirit of an eclectic philosophical empiricism, 463

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE derived from John Locke, Bonnet, and Condillac, underlying the author’s Christian humanitarian style. A landmark in Italian children’s literature, the Novelle morali went through numerous editions and were translated into French and German. Furthermore, Father Soave’s pedagogical commitment led him to establish the first state elementary school in Lombardy (1786–1789). With the birth of the Italian nation-state, the production of books and magazines for children became associated with national schooling policies. Language problems emerged due to the diversity of Italian dialects. The Italian language of the sixteenth century, a heritage of those of letters only, could not be understood by children. Thus, in 1860, under the secretariat of Terenzio Mamiani, a project of linguistic and cultural unification was put forward. Manzoni proposed to adopt the Florentine dialect as the official language, an idea eventually implemented despite the criticism of Isaia Ascoli, Raffaello Lambruschini, Giosue` Carducci, and Luigi Settembrini (among others), who hoped to preserve the century-old oral traditions of fables, legends, and nursery rhymes. The reintegration of the local linguistic and cultural features of children’s literature was only initiated a century later. Thus, for example, the reforms affecting the Scuola Media (middle school) of 1979 and the Scuola Elementare (elementary school) of 1985 were based on theories of comparison and bilingualism in education. The books for early childhood had to meet pedagogical standards after a decree was issued on September 15, 1860. The tales by Francesco Soave and Il Giannetto (1837) by Luigi Alessandro Parravicini (1800–1880) became a part of the national syllabus and circulate among the schools of many Italian regions to this day. The plot of Parravicini’s short stories, set in the industrial factories of Lombardia, is based on the exemplary deeds of the main character, a sort of Italian self-made man. Historian Cesare Cantu` also published a collection of poems for children, Fior di memoria pei bambini (The Best of Memory for Children, 1846). Other exemplary writers for children include Edmondo De Amicis (1846–1908), whose Cuore (Heart, 1886) reflects his patriotic educational zeal and a deeply felt mission to engender a sense of nationhood in the youth of different regions; Ida Baccini (1850–1911), with Le memorie di un pulcino (Memories of Hatchling, 1875), who was also the editor of Cordelia, a magazine for young ladies founded in 1895 by the ethnologist Angelo De Gubernatis; and Antonio Stoppani (1824–1891), whose Il Bel 464

Paese (The Beautiful Country, 1875), addressed to young readers, praises the beauty of Italy’s diverse regions and variety of customs. In 1870, when Rome became the capital of the new kingdom, interest in children’s literature grew, particularly in central and northern Italy. Both educational and publishing enterprises doubled in number, which led to a boom in pedagogical texts as in the translation of a number of important foreign authors. Post-Risorgimento Italy was greatly influenced by Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe was available in many abridged versions for children), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and the works of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. James Fenimore Cooper also exercised a decisive influence on adventure novelists for the young, from Emilio Salgari (1862–1911) to Mino Milani (1928–), with his Leatherstocking tales. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, interest in fables and adventurous tales waned while legends became a more popular genre for young readers: for example, Luigi Capuana’s reworking of Sicilian folk stories in C’era una volta (Once upon a Time, 1882) and the collections of fables and folk songs by Giuseppe Pitre`, Vittorio Imbriani, Gherardo Nerucci, Alessandro D’Ancona, and Costantino Nigra. The poetics of Giovanni Pascoli’s Il fanciullino (The Eternal Child, 1897), endorsing a theory of poetry as a purely intuitive act, also had a strong impact on children’s literature. For Pascoli, the poet is endowed with a childlike vision; his lexical innovations were based on Hermann Hebbingham’s theory of perception founded on simple sensory elements linked according to coordination, proximity, and contrast. Pascoli’s poetics affected the crepuscular writers for children (Guido Gozzano, Marino Moretti, Corrado Govoni), as well as authors such as Angelo Silvio Novaro, Giuseppe Fanciulli, Ada Negri, Luciano Folgore, Diego Valeri, and Alfonso Gatto. At the beginning of the twentieth century, journalism for children achieved high standards with Il giornalino della domenica (1906–1927) and Il corriere dei piccoli (1908–). Years later the Fascist regime also tried to indoctrinate schoolboys by means of children’s newspapers such as the popular Il balilla, first published in 1923. Other significant publishing initiatives include the series Biblioteca dei miei ragazzi (1931–1955), sponsored by Salani in Florence, ‘‘La Scala d’oro’’ (1932–) by UTET, and Libri per ragazzi (1956–) by Einaudi in Turin, Junior Mondadori (1988–) in Milan, and Il battello a vapore (1992–)

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE by Piemme. More recently, Antonio Faeti, the founder of the first Italian department of children’s literature at the University of Bologna in 1994, proposed the reedition of the Libri d’acciaio of the 1930s, a project carried out by Bompiani in their series I Delfini. In general, during the twentieth century, children’s literature underwent considerable development, partly due to the growth in the number of Italian publishers. An increasingly larger group of writers chose to specialize in literature for young readers. Yet, as this industry grew, the market became a greater factor in the production of books for children. Hence, almost every established author at the time (including Dino Buzzati, Alberto Moravia, Tommaso Landolfi, Luigi Malerba, Mario Tobino, Alberto Arbasino, Andrea Zanzotto, Mario Rigoni Stern, and Elsa Morante) wrote at least one children’s book. In addition, the two world wars were reflected in children’s literature in the works of Salvator Gotta, Giovanni Arpino, Pinin Carpi, and Beppe Fenoglio, among others. The postwar reconstruction, industrial boom, and the ever-increasing development of the mass media have had a strong impact not only on writing for children, but on the role of the young reader as well. A high order of imaginative writing resurfaces with Italo Calvino in his Fiabe italiane (Italian Folktales, 1956), a collection of Italian fairy tales that he translated from different regional dialects, and Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest of Spiders, 1947), the story of a band of Resistance fighters recounted from the perspective of a young boy, Pin. More recently, Roberto Piumini and Susanna Tamaro, among others, have published significant children’s fiction; while a particular sort of avant-garde theater, born in Turin in 1969 and centered on the role of the animatore, captures the actor-director on stage, side by side with the young, as he guides them in a collective writing/acting of a spectacle. Memorable animatori include Giuliano Scabia, Remo Rostagno, Franco Passatore, Silvio De Stefanis, and Loredana Perissinotto. On the other hand, the best-known twentiethcentury Italian children’s writer was Gianni Rodari (1920–1980), who began working for Il corriere dei piccoli in the early 1960s. From Il libro delle filastrocche (Nursery Rhyme Book, 1950) and Filastrocche in cielo e in terra (Nursery Rhymes in the Sky and on the Ground, 1960) to the impressive Favole al telefono (Fairy Tales on the Telephone, 1962) and C’era due volte (Twice upon a Time,

1978), Rodari proposed a fancy that becomes real through a verbal game. In his stories, he combined elements from popular European children’s literature (the Grimm brothers, Brentano, Arnim, Lewis Carroll, and Saint-Exupe´ry) as well as ancient aphorisms and sayings, with a touch of utopian Marxism. In his 1973 Grammatica della fantasia (The Grammar of Imagination), Rodari introduced his educational approach and advanced experimental techniques that foster creativity. Among his most successful illustrators were Bruno Munari, whose work, along with that of Carlo Chiostri, Enrico Mazzanti, Giove Toppi, and Piero Bernardini is grounded in the tradition of the figurinai of the nineteenth century. Children’s literature also made a breakthrough in academia. In 1965, in Genoa, the ‘‘Centro Studi di Letteratura Giovanile’’ was founded along with the ‘‘Biblioteca Internazionale per Ragazzi De Amicis,’’ following the model of the Jugendbibliothek in Munich. Two years later the University of Padua also developed a research department for children’s literature, under the guidance of Giuseppe Flores d’Arcais. In Florence, the ‘‘Biblioteca di Documentazione Pedagogica,’’ founded in 1974, has become the most important pedagogical archive in Italy and holds some 33,000 texts of children’s literature, collected since the nineteenth century. Similarly, the library ‘‘Gianni Rodari’’ in Florence, established in 1987, currently publishes an important review entitled ‘‘Li.B.e.R,’’ which includes bibliographic information in the field of children’s literature. At last, in 1996, the ‘‘Associazione Culturale Hamelin’’ was founded by some of Antonio Faeti’s students, aiming at promoting continuity in Italian publishing for young readers. PAOLA MARTINUZZI

Further Reading Argilli, Marcello, Ci sara` una volta: Immaginario infantile e fiaba moderna, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1995. Asor Rosa, Alberto, ‘‘Le voci di un’Italia bambina,’’ in Storia d’Italia, vol. 4, Turin: Einaudi, 1975. Boero, Pino, Una storia, tante storie: Guida all’opera di Gianni Rodari, Turin: Einaudi, 1992. Boero, Pino, and Carmine De Luca, La letteratura per l’infanzia, Rome: Laterza, 1995. Contini, Gianfranco, Letteratura dell’Italia unita 1861– 1968, Florence: Sansoni, 1968. Faeti, Antonio, Guardare le figure: Gli illustratori italiani dei libri per l’infanzia, Turin: Einaudi, 1972. Faeti, Antonio, Letteratura per l’infanzia, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1977.

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CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Liberovici, Sergio, Un paese: Esperienze di drammaturgia infantile, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1973. Lugli, Antonio, Libri e figure: Storia della letteratura per l’infanzia e la gioventu`, Bologna: Cappelli, 1982. Perissinotto, Loredana, In ludo: Idee per il teatro a scuola e nella comunita`, Rome: Armando, 1998.

Rostagno, Remo, Un teatro-scuola di quartiere, Venice: Marsilio, 1975. Solinas Donghi, Beatrice, La fiaba come racconto, Venice: Marsilio, 1976. Zanzotto, Andrea, Fantasie di avvicinamento, Milan: Mondadori, 1991.

CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI See Cristo si e` fermato a Eboli (Work by Carlo Levi)

FAUSTA CIALENTE (1898–1994) The question of inhabiting, whether a geography or an historical period, is central to the work of Fausta Cialente, who, in a 1984 interview with Sandra Petrignani (Le signore della scrittura, 1984), described herself as a ‘‘straniera dappertutto’’ (foreigner everywhere). Her first novel, Natalia, was completed in 1927 but published only in 1930. Natalia’s story unfolds in a remote Italian province with her nomadic family constantly uprooted by the father’s military career—a situation reflecting Cialente’s own childhood. The novel is a daring representation of the coming of age of a young girl during the historically traumatic rite of passage of World War I. As is often the case in Cialente’s narrative, the story is filtered through the disingenuous yet ironic and pitiless eyes of children who judge the adult universe: a crumbling bourgeois world, self-satisfied, blinded by its lies and rituals. In contrast to the claustrophobic universe of Alberto Moravia’s Gli indifferenti (The Time of Indifference, 1929)—a text that resembles Natalia in other regards—the geographical displacement here has shaken the structures of the traditional family, freeing Natalia’s experience. Natalia’s transgressive love for her childhood friend Silvia gives her an unconventional access to 466

the world. A victim at first of this process of selfdiscovery is Malaspina, the young soldier who falls in love with Natalia and eventually discovers with her that life must be reinvented together in order to be lived. Awarded a prestigious literary prize, Natalia was soon suppressed by Fascist censorship because of its antiwar stance and frank depiction of female sexuality. In a world shaken to the roots, the images of the old overgrown courtyard where Natalia and Silvia played as children and Malaspina’s old farmhouse emerge with great poetic force, emblematic of a tension dominating all of Cialente’s stories, that between a homeless humanity and an affective spaciality. In Cortile a Cleopatra (Courtyard in Cleopatra, 1936), written after the writer’s move to Egypt, it is a courtyard at the outskirts of Cleopatra (a suburb of Alexandria) that structures a story whose formal beauty, elegance, and inventive freshness make it a little-known masterpiece of twentieth-century Italian literature. The multi-ethnic exile community of Greeks, Italians, Armenians, and Jews in Egypt is the central setting; their lives revolve around the indolent vagabond Marco, just arrived from Italy in search of his Greek mother Crissanti. Cialente represents through Marco the

FAUSTA CIALENTE condition of outsider/insider of all her subjects as they confront the otherness of Egypt, a familiar yet distant Europe, and the both loved and hated space of the colony. This world, rich, lively, yet dominated by pettiness, envy, and distrust, comes to life with the unforgettable characters of Dinah, daughter of the Jewish merchant Abramino and the beautiful Eva; Haiganush, an Armenian girl; and Kiki, a resilient girl of mixed race. The wanderings and careless behavior of the sensual and indifferent Marco—a character without a home, a future, or a country—constitute an ironic counterpoint both to the colonial subject, with its ethos of work and respectability, and the Fascist subject just prior to the Ethiopian adventure. In Cialente, the Orient, the ‘‘other’’ on which Europe relies for its identity, offers instead a stage for its dissolution—a theme that links Cialente’s work to that of Joseph Conrad; Andre´ Gide, who she greatly admired; and another writer of the Levant, Lawrence Durrell. After a 20-year silence, during which Cialente actively participated in the anti-Fascist resistance in Alexandria, and returned to postliberation Italy to work as a journalist and occasional screenwriter, Ballata levantina appeared (The Levantines, 1961). Here the memorialistic impulse that would dominate Cialente’s subsequent production was central to the epic representation of three generations of an outcast Levantine family: the grandmother, a dancer who became the lover of a rich merchant; the mother, marked by the stigma of illegitimacy; and Daniela, the protagonist and first-person narrator of the story. An upper-middle-class society of merchants, aristocrats, and artists became the object of a pitiless scrutiny that unveiled their racism and their guilty enthusiasm for Mussolini, the irresistible father figure for an orphaned exile community. The story of Daniela—like Natalia, a young woman defiantly in search of her own path—can be read as a first ‘‘gynealogy,’’ the construction of a sense of belonging, identity, and personal and collective history by retracing the almost invisible, yet arduous path of individual women (Graziella Parati, Public History, Private Stories, 1996). In her subsequent work, Cialente gradually approached the memories of her Triestine family. There was a first rehearsal of these autobiographical motifs with Il vento sulla sabbia (Wind on the Sand, 1972), in which a middle-aged narrator revisits her Italian youth. Before this novel, Cialente returned to an Italian setting with Un inverno freddissimo (An Icy Winter, 1966), a story of hope, solidarity, and disillusionment set in the winter of

1946 in an overcrowded attic in Milan. Since Ballata levantina, Cialente had been experimenting with a double register, one oscillating between an intimate setting and the wider social and historical canvas. This movement is central to Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger (The Four Wieselberger Sisters, 1976). The unhappy destiny of the Wieselberger sisters is played contrapuntally with the representation of a society on the brink of self-annihilation. The condemnation of the blind and exasperated nationalism of the Triestine bourgeoisie, which brought about its irreparable economic decline by severing all ties with Austria and Europe and ‘‘marrying’’ the Italian cause, finds an allegorical parallel in the story of the last sister, Fausta’s mother, who starts a brilliant career as an opera singer, only to abandon it for an unhappy marriage to an Italian officer. Both the collective and personal histories reflect blindness and self-denial. Out of this void, however, the narrator’s voice emerges, firm and full of pathos. Told in a first person that grows more and more present as the narration progresses, this last novel is enriched by an insistent dialogism; the family sayings in Triestine dialect are woven into the text like a faraway musical motif. Such a linguistic attention to the local language was already present in the use of dialect and Arabic in the Levantine novels. Lastly, Cialente collected her short stories in the volume Interno con figure (Interior with Figures, 1976). As Emilio Cecchi wrote in his 1952 introduction to Cortile a Cleopatra, it is surprising that Cialente’s name does not appear more often in a discussion of twentieth-century Italian literature. The honest and irreverent glance of Cialente’s women— displaced subjects, nomads within the crumbling architecture of various societies—still compels a readership, enticed by her protagonists’ stubborn faith in life and the possibility of inhabiting the world.

Biography Fausta Cialente was born in Cagliari (Sardinia), 29 November 1898. She had a nomadic childhood with her father, an army officer. In 1921, she married the composer Enrico Terni and moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where she took part in the intellectual life of the colony. In 1940, Cialente joined the anti-Fascist resistance, writing pamphlets and making broadcasts from Radio Cairo. She returned to Italy in 1947, where she lived until 1984, when she moved to England. She was winner of numerous literary awards, including the Dieci 467

FAUSTA CIALENTE Savi Prize, for Natalia, 1929; Premio Galante Bompiani for ‘‘Marianna,’’ 1931; Enna Prize, for Il vento sulla sabbia, 1973; Strega Prize for Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger, 1976. Cialente died 13 March 1994 in Pangbourne, England. She was survived by her daughter, Lionella Muir Terni. GIULIANA MINGHELLI Selected Works Fiction ‘‘Marianna,’’ in L’Italia letteraria, 1929. Natalia, 1930. ‘‘Pamela o la bella estate,’’ in Occidente, 1935. Cortile a Cleopatra, 1936. Ballata Levantina, 1961; as The Levantines, translated by Isabelle Quigly, 1962. Un inverno freddissimo, 1966. Il vento sulla sabbia, 1972. Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger, 1976. Interno con figure, 1976. I bambini, 1995.

Translations Lawrence Durrell, Clea, 1962; new edition 1973. Louisa May Alcott, Piccole donne, 1976. Louisa May Alcott, Le piccole donne crescono, 1977. Louisa May Alcott, Piccoli uomini, 1981. Henry James, Giro di vite, 1985.

Further Reading Asquer, Renata, Fausta Cialente, la triplice anima, Novara: Interlinea, 1998. Cecchi, Emilio, Introduction to F. Cialente, Cortile a Cleopatra, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962. Ferroni, Giulio, ‘‘La libera passione di Fausta Cialente,’’ L’unita`, 13 March 1994, p. 4. Malpezzi Price, Paola, ‘‘Autobiography, Art, and History in Fausta Cialente’s Fiction,’’ in Contemporary Women Writers in Italy, edited by Santo Arico`, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Merry, Bruce, ‘‘Fausta Cialente,’’ in Italian Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Rinaldina Russel, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994. Minghelli, Giuliana, ‘‘L’Africa in cortile: La colonia nelle storie levantine di Fausta Cialente,’’ in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 15:1–2(1994): 227–235. Nozzoli, Anna, ‘‘Fausta Cialente: testimonianza storica e tipologia femminile,’’ in Tabu` e coscienza: la condizione femminile nella letteratura italiana del Novecento, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1976. Papotti, Davide, ‘‘Urban Winter Landscape with Female Figures: Representations of Space in Fausta Cialente’s Un inverno freddissimo,’’ in Italian Women and the City, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2003. Parati, Graziella, ‘‘From Genealogy to Gynealogy and Beyond: Fausta Cialente’s Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger,’’ in Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women’s Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Petrignani, Sandra, ‘‘Fausta Cialente. Straniera dappertutto’’ in Le signore della scrittura, Milan: La Tartaruga, 1984.

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS The relationship between literary writers and cinema constitutes one of the key dynamics of twentieth-century Italian culture. From the arrival of the Edison kinetoscope and the Lumie`re cine´matographe in the 1890s to the emergence of digital forms of cinema and new media technologies in the 1990s, Italian writers have reacted to the moving image and taken part in shaping its development. Literary writers have collaborated directly in the development of film art by contributing intertitles and dialogues, scenarios and screenplays, as well as by participating in publicity campaigns, discussions, and debates. Influential arbiters in the cultural reception of cinema, writers were called upon in the early decades of the twentieth century 468

to lend cultural prestige and to articulate an identity for the new cinematic medium. In the years between the wars, literary writers played a role in the rebirth of the Italian film industry after its collapse in the early 1920s. They also helped to establish an intellectually serious and methodologically rigorous film criticism and to lay the foundation for Italian film historiography. In the postwar period and through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Italian writers contributed to neo-Realism, helped shape popular film genres, and collaborated with internationally successful directors. Furthermore, in addition to their direct contributions to film art, and in the process of mediating between print and visual cultures, Italian writers

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS have also produced a rich body of ‘‘cinema literature’’: interviews and articles, criticism, theoretical interventions, and manifestos, as well as poems, literary fiction, and plays that demonstrate the impact of cinema on literature. Given the richness of this tradition, and the multiplicity of forms involved, the relationship between cinema and literary writers in Italy sheds light on film and literary history, on the history of intellectuals and media, and on cultural history more broadly. The early period of film history constitutes one of the most important periods in the relationship between cinema and Italian literary writers. After moving picture technology arrived in the 1890s, a decade of transitory exhibition venues ensued, with films being shown in fairground tents, in public squares, and in cafes and theaters. In 1905, with the establishment of permanent cinemas and with the beginning of Italian film production, literary writers began to play a key role in forming an identity for the nascent cinema. The first Italian essay to examine film from a theoretical perspective, La filosofia del cinematografo (The Philosophy of the Cinema), was penned by Giovanni Papini (1881–1956) and published in La stampa in May of 1907. Reacting to the proliferation of permanent cinemas in the major cities, Papini observed that the cinema constituted a new social space, marked a change in the urban landscape, and resembled other emerging modern phenomena. According to Papini, the cinema was already more popular than theater due to its lower cost, the brevity of its performance, and the effort of attention required of the film spectator. Due to film’s technological means of reproduction, the cinematic apparatus makes possible the representation of ‘‘avvenimenti vasti e complicati, che non potrebbero esser riprodotti sopra un palcoscenico neppure dai piu` abili macchinisti’’ (vast and complicated events that could not be reproduced on a stage even by the most able technicians) (‘‘La filosofia del cinematografo,’’ 1907). Most importantly, recognizing that cinema was worthy of serious reflection, Papini called on Italian intellectuals to pay greater heed to this burgeoning form of popular entertainment. Responding to the booming appetite for film, the international film industry around 1908 began to turn from documentaries or actualities to fictional stories. Film language developed through an increasing emphasis on narrative. Seeking to counter the moral criticism directed against the cinema and in an attempt to expand its audience to the middle and upper classes, film producers

sought to gain respectability by moving toward established forms of culture. Following the lead of the film d’art movement in France, the Italian film industry developed films based on literary works or featuring scenarios written (sometimes purportedly) by literary authors. Shortly after their initial discovery of the cinema, literary writers were invited to permit their works to be adapted into films or to write film subjects and scenarios. Writers drawn to the film industry during this period, although with varying degrees of enthusiasm, included Guido Gozzano, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Nino Martoglio, Giovanni Verga, Salvatore Di Giacomo, Matilde Serao, Luigi Pirandello, Lucio D’Ambra, Ferdinando Martini, Luciano Zuccoli, Grazia Deledda, Nino Oxilia, and many others. During the ‘‘Golden Age of Italian Silent Film’’ in the years around World War I, when the Italian film industry was among the most prominent internationally, a number of masterworks exemplified the literary writer’s ‘‘authorial’’ presence in the cinema. The Milano Film Company’s version of Dante’s Inferno in 1911, directed by Adolfo Padovan and Francesco Bertolini, marked a high point in the early cinema’s turn toward canonical literature. It was the longest Italian film yet produced at 1,300 meters, boasted marvelous special effects, and was innovative in its distribution methods. Its success contributed in the transition from the onereel to the multireel film as the new international standard, a process that occurred between 1911 and 1914. Cabiria (1914), directed by Giovanni Pastrone (1883–1959) with the collaboration of D’Annunzio, capitalized on the success of earlier Italian historical spectacles. The legendary Sperduti nel buio (Lost in the Dark, 1914), directed by Nino Martoglio (1870–1921) and based on a successful verismo play by Roberto Bracco, gave further impetus to the impression that the Italian cinema had a literary foundation. Assunta Spina (1915), another verismo play written by Salvatore Di Giacomo and directed by Francesca Bertini (1888–1985) and Gustavo Serena (1882–1970), also reflected this tendency. In addition to his key role in ‘‘authorizing’’ Cabiria, another form of D’Annunzio’s influence on the cinema can be found in divismo, an Italian version of stardom. Diva films, one of the richest veins of Italian silent cinema, featured femmes fatales and new modern women in melodramas centered around high society. The successful Ma l’amor mio non muore (Love Everlasting, 1913), starring Lyda Borelli and directed by Mario Caserini (1874–1920), provided a prototype for 469

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS this genre. Through flamboyant characters, exotic locales, and opulent settings, diva films reflected the world of dangerous women and decadent aesthetes portrayed in D’Annunzio’s novels and short stories. D’Annunzio also wrote a number of scenarios, including the avant-garde L’uomo che rubo` la Gioconda (The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa) and a scenario resembling a religious mystery drama, La crociata degli innocenti (The Crusade of the Innocents), which was made into a film in 1920. The poet Guido Gozzano also composed a lengthy scenario on the life of St. Francis of Assisi (for a film that was never produced). Giovanni Verga, while remaining highly conflicted in his relationship with the emerging cinema, participated in scenario writing as well. Literary narratives about early cinema frequently involved going to the movies or took the reader ‘‘behind the scenes’’ into the world of filmmaking. These fictional works constituted another important dimension in the cinema’s relationship with writers. Luigi Pirandello published a film novel in serial format, Si gira! (Shoot!) in 1915. He later republished this work under the title Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator, 1925). Pirandello’s novel has long been considered one of the high points in the development of film discourse in the early decades. Other writers to publish fictional narratives about the world of filmmaking, or who register the influence of film on modes of perception during this period, included Edmondo De Amicis, Gualtiero Fabbri, Yarro (Giulio Piccini), Guido Gozzano, Ettore Veo, Annie Vivanti, Federico Tozzi, Enrico Roma, Bruno Corra, and Paolo Buzzi. The Futurists, together with avant-garde intellectuals such as Ricciotto Canudo and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, made significant contributions to Italian film culture, particularly in the areas of aesthetics and theory. Seeking to valorize film as an autonomous art form, F. T. Marinetti, Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli, and other Futurist writers published ‘‘La cinematografia futurista’’ (Manifesto of Futurist Cinema) in 1916. Celebrating film as a prototypical form of modern art, the Futurists sought to free cinema from its moorings in the theater, while emphasizing film’s potential to develop as a visual form of expression. A scenario written by Marinetti, Velocita` (Speed), illustrated the aesthetic principles articulated in the ‘‘Manifesto.’’ A self-proclaimed cine-letterato, an Italian coinage that combines the identity of the literary intellectual with that of the film enthusiast, Lucio 470

D’Ambra (1880–1939), the pen name of Renato Manganella, was an important journalist, novelist, dramatist, and literary and film critic who became one of the leading figures in the Italian film industry. From 1916 when he wrote his first ‘‘official’’ film script (he had worked anonymously in the cinema since 1911) until the crisis of the Italian film industry in the early 1920s, D’Ambra was a key figure in the cinema’s relationship with writers. Active as a director, scriptwriter, and producer, D’Ambra was involved in the production of some 24 films, most of which are now lost. Known for an offbeat sense of humor, whimsical flights of fancy, and modernist sets and decor, his films have been compared to those of Ernst Lubitsch ante litteram. Two of d’Ambra’s many films, Le mogli e le arance (Wives and Oranges, 1917), and L’illustre attrice Cicala Formica (The Illustrious Actress Cicala Formica, 1920), were restored in the 1990s. Following the absorption of his production company, Lucio D’Ambra Film, into the ill-fated Unione Cinematografica Italiana, a consortium of film producers that became bankrupt in 1922, he returned definitively to journalism and literature. His memoirs concerning the film industry in Rome during this pivotal period of grandeur and crisis, Sette anni di cinema (Seven Years of Cinema, 1937–1938), provide rich material for the study of Italian film history during its formative stages. The years following World War I brought on a decade-long decline in the Italian film industry. During the 1920s, therefore, given the predominance of American, French, and German films on Italian screens, the role of literary writers lay primarily in the realm of cultural reception. Among the notable contributions in this area, Umberto Saba published a poem ‘‘Un poeta ha incontrato Charlot’’ on Charlie Chaplin. Short stories by Ada Negri, Carlo Emilio Gadda, and Giacomo Debenedetti describe fictional visits to movie theaters. The avant-garde author Alberto Savinio wrote perspicacious articles of film criticism. Beginning around 1926, literary journals such as Il Baretti, Solaria, and La fiera letteraria took up the ‘‘question of the cinema.’’ Under the rubric ‘‘letterati al cinema,’’ an intellectually serious film criticism began to emerge. From within the ranks of these ‘‘writers at the cinema,’’ Emilio Cecchi (1884–1966), who had visited Hollywood, made the transition from writing about cinema to producing films. He played a crucial role in the rebirth of the Italian film industry as head of the Cines Company in the early 1930s, opening the door to such writers as Mario Soldati, Luigi Pirandello,

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS Umberto Barbaro, and Corrado Alvaro. He served as a bridge between the literary community in Rome and the film industry, which was now centered in the Italian capital. The transition to sound in the early 1930s and the rebirth of the Italian film industry under Cecchi’s leadership at Cines intensified the relations between literary intellectuals and cinema. While during the silent period writers had been recruited to bring a patina of high culture to film production, literary intellectuals and theater personnel were now being asked to contribute in a more concrete fashion. As film production became more robust, writers were needed to create film subjects, to write dialogue, to create screenplays, and to participate in dubbing practices, while remaining practically nameless in the process. Reflecting the anonymity surrounding their work in the cinema, Emilio Cecchi characterized these literary writers associated with film as la Legione Straniera dell’intellettualita` italiana (the Foreign Legion of the Italian intelligentsia) (Margherita Ghilardi, editor, Cecchi al cinema, 1984). This phrase indicated that the cinema had yet to obtain the full acceptance of Italian high culture. At the same time, however, Cecchi’s characterization illustrated that artists and writers active in the film community may have chosen or at least accepted this marginality as a form of evasion from and perhaps even resistance to the official culture of Fascism. And in fact, toward the end of the decade and in the early 1940s, through journals such as Cinema and Bianco e nero and within institutions such as the national film school, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, a segment of Italian film culture began to develop a critical stance regarding Mussolini’s politics and cultural policies. Indeed, in 1939, the president of Cinema, Vittorio Mussolini, invited prominent Italian writers to submit a scenario for a national competition. The jury presided by Camerini, De Feo, Meccoli, Pasinetti, Riganti, Visentini, Leone, and Cecchi awarded the prize to Ugo Betti’s I tre del Pra’ di Sopra, which was never made into a film, but began Betti’s intense collaboration with the film industry and directors such as Gherardo Gherardi and Augusto Genina. Between 1930 and 1943, therefore, three interrelated phenomena could be detected with regard to cinema and literary writers: a quantitative increase in the presence of literary intellectuals in the film industry; a qualitative shift in the nature of their contribution; and a dramatic increase in popular writing about cinema as well as the establishment

of film criticism as an institution. This period also witnessed the emergence of Italian film historiography through the writings of Leo Longanesi, Francesco Soro, Eugenio Ferdinando Palmieri, Umberto Barbaro, Luigi Chiarini, and Francesco Pasinetti. Given this explosion of writing about film, the definitive recognition of film as an art form, and the significant presence of literary writers in the film industry, the title of Giacomo Debenedetti’ essay, La conversione degli intellettuali al cinema (The Conversion of Intellectuals to the Cinema, 1931), stands as a defining description of this ‘‘conversion’’ phase in the relationship between cinema and writers. Delio Tessa (1886–1939) was a particularly significant case in point. A Milanese lawyer and journalist and one of the major Italian poets of the last century, Tessa wrote over 100 articles of film criticism, two screenplays, and numerous poems registering the influence of cinema. A number of literary figures who began their careers in the cinema as scriptwriters and critics during the 1930s and 1940s continued to be active in film through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Cesare Zavattini (1902–1989), for example, debuted as a popular writer with the highly successful Parliamo tanto di me (Let’s Talk a Lot About Me, 1931) and became in turn a film critic, screenwriter, novelist, dramatist, dialect poet, and film director. His accounts of Hollywood stars, Cronache da Hollywood (Hollywood Chronicles), which appeared in Italian movie fan magazines such as Cinema illustrazione in the early 1930s, were written without ever leaving Italian soil. His contributions to neoRealism in the 1940s and 1950s as a screenwriter, theorist, and advocate were second to none. In a similar fashion, Mario Soldati (1906–1999) transitioned from journalist, to screenwriter, to critic, to novelist, to film director. His literary narrative, 24 ore in uno studio cinematografico (24 Hours in a Film Studio, 1935), published under the pseudonym Franco Pallavera, added to the list of Italian film novels, as did his Le due citta` (The Malacca Cane, 1964). In addition to his ‘‘calligraphic’’ films of the late Fascist period such as Piccolo mondo antico (Little World of the Past, 1941) and Malombra (1942), adapted from Antonio Fogazzaro’s novels, Soldati directed some 26 films, including La donna del fiume (The Woman of the River, 1955) starring Sophia Loren. Emilio Cecchi’s daughter, Suso Cecchi d’Amico (1914–), who grew up in a household frequented by writers and film artists and who began her career as a journalist and translator after World War II, 471

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS would become one of cinema’s leading screenwriters, working with directors such as Luchino Visconti and Francesco Rosi. ‘‘Il dato concreto del rapporto tra cinema e letteratura e` la sceneggiatura’’ (The concrete datum in the relationship between cinema and literature is the screenplay), Pier Paolo Pasolini declared (Empirismo eretico, 1972). In his essay La sceneggiatura come struttura che vuole essere altra struttura (The Screenplay as a Structure That Wants to Become Another Structure), Pasolini reflects on the necessity of developing new critical codes for analyzing the screenplay. In addition to its value as a theoretical statement, Pasolini’s essay, and more importantly Pasolini’s career itself, shed light on the relationship of cinema and literary writers during the extraordinary flowering of Italian film culture in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Pasolini began his career in the film industry by collaborating on screenplays with such directors and scriptwriters as Federico Fellini, Mario Soldati, and Giorgio Bassani. His first films as a director, Accattone (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962), share linguistic and thematic affinities with his Roman novels of the period, Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi, 1955) and Una vita violenta (A Violent Life, 1959). Pasolini’s encounter with the cinema found expression in his novels, poetry, and prose narratives, while his work as a filmmaker, as a film critic, and as a film theorist was profoundly marked by his vocation as a poet. Moreover, while Pasolini’s poetry in the 1960s began to register the effects of his turn to directing, his films provided him with a new outlet in which to experiment with the cinematic adaptation and rewriting of classical literary texts: from the Bible and Greek tragedies to the Il Decamerone (1971), I racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury Tales, 1972), and Le storie delle mille e una notte (The Arabian Nights, 1973). The effects of cinema on literature, the impact of the mass media on society, and film’s influence on modes of human perception were dealt with by a number of writers during this period. Andrea Zanzotto’s long poem in Veneto dialect, Filo`: per il Casanova di Fellini (Peasants Wake for Fellini’s ‘‘Casanova,’’ 1976), for example, which grew out of his collaboration with Fellini on his film with Donald Sutherland, Casanova (1976), stages a dialogue between poetry and film, between the spoken idiom of a small agricultural community and the powerful visual language of an increasingly global medium. In a similar fashion, Italo Calvino’s novel Palomar (Mr. Palomar, 1983) was an exemplary 472

literary text that explored the effects of visual media. Calvino’s essay L’autobiografia d’uno spettatore (The Autobiography of a Spectator, 1974) published as a preface to a volume of Fellini’s screenplays, described the role of the cinema in the lives of Italians growing up under Fascism. The literary generation following that of Pasolini, Zanzotto, and Calvino continued to express an interest in cinema through references to film in novels, criticism, short stories, and poetry. These writers and poets included Gianni Celati, Andrea De Carlo, Valerio Magrelli, and Gianni d’Elia, among many others. From neo-Realism and the popular cinema of the 1950s, to the great season of famous directors and comedy hits of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the careers of a number of notable Italian writers, poets, and dramatists intersected with the cinema. Alberto Moravia (1907–1990), for example, developed a relationship with film that found creative expression in a variety of ways. Novels such as Il conformista (The Conformist, 1951) and La ciociara (Two Women, 1957) were adapted into important films by Bernardo Bertolucci and Vittorio De Sica, respectively. His brief stint as a screenwriter provided the background for his novel, Il disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon, 1955), whose storyline revolved around tensions between a director and scriptwriter in their ill-fated attempt to collaborate on a film based on Homer’s Odyssey. This novel was also adapted into a film by Jean Luc Godard, Le me´pris (Contempt, 1964). Moravia’s most notable contribution to film culture, however, remained in the realm of criticism. Having begun to write about the cinema in 1945 for the short-lived Roman weekly, La nuova Europa, he went on to write weekly film reviews for such magazines as L’europeo (1950–1954) and then for L’espresso from its founding in 1955 until his death in 1990. A collection of some 148 of his reviews—he penned around 1,800—are gathered in a volume, Al cinema (At the Cinema, 1975). Ennio Flaiano (1910–1972) was an equally distinguished contributor to Italian film culture. As a literary writer, he is perhaps best known for his novel, Tempo di uccidere (The Short Cut, 1947), considered one of the most acute descriptions of the Italian experience of Fascism. As a writer for the cinema, Flaiano was a major force in the years between 1950 and 1965, credited with the creation of some 80 film subjects, scenarios, and screenplays. Attracted to modern spectacle in its many forms, he was also a prolific film and theater critic who authored plays and theatrical sketches.

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS A volume of his selected writings on film, Lettere d’amore al cinema (Love Letters to the Cinema, 1978), reveals his talent as a satirist. For Flaiano a reflection on a particular film offered an occasion for criticizing commonly held attitudes and social customs. Another literary writer with a distinguished career in the cinema, Tonino Guerra (1920–), discovered his vocation as a poet during World War II. Deported to a concentration camp in Germany, he composed poetry in his native Romagnol dialect for the diversion of his fellow prisoners. These poems form the backbone of his first volume of poetry, I scarabo´cc (The Scribbles, 1946). In 1952, Guerra made his debut as a writer of tales and short stories with La storia di Fortunato (Fortunato’s Story). In 1953, he began his career in the cinema working as a screenwriter. In the ensuing decades, his film treatments and screenplays would bring him into collaboration with some of Italy’s most prestigious directors, including Giuseppe De Santis, Elio Petri, Francesco Damiani, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Francesco Rosi, and the Taviani brothers. Guerra’s collaboration with Antonioni on the film Zabriskie Point led to a trip to the United States in 1969 and an ensuing nervous breakdown. Guerra described these experiences in his prose fiction work, L’uomo parallelo (Parallel Man, 1969), which dealt with alienation, anxiety, and the loss of personal identity in contemporary culture. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Guerra collaborated with the writer Luigi Malerba to coauthor a series of popular stories centered around Millemosche, a hapless medieval knight. Published collectively as Storie dell’anno Mille (Stories from the Year One Thousand, 1977) these ‘‘comic-surreal fables’’ became the basis of a television series and a film. A novelist, poet, playwright, short story writer, essayist, and filmmaker, as well as a leading voice of Italian feminism, Dacia Maraini (1936–) began her career with the novel, La vacanza (The Holiday, 1962). Over the ensuing decades, she published numerous narrative and theatrical works focusing on the social conditions facing women, among them a book of short stories, Mio marito (My Husband, 1968); a film, Mio padre amore mio (My Father My Love, 1978); as well as three novels that have been made into films. Memorie di una ladra (Memories of a Female Thief, 1972) inspired a film, Teresa la ladra (Theresa the Thief, 1973), starring Monica Vitti. In Storia di Piera (Piera’s Story, 1980) the actress Piera Degli Esposti recounts her life to Dacia Maraini in an interview. This

experimental literary work is the basis of an eponymous film (1983) starring Hannah Schygulla and Marcello Mastroianni. Maraini’s acclaimed historical novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrı`a (The Silent Duchess, 1990) was brought to the screen in 1997 by Roberto Faenza. In the 1990s and in the early years of the third millennium, Italian cinema continued its longstanding fertile relationship with literary writers. Faenza collaborated with the novelist Antonio Tabucchi (1943–) on an adaptation of the writer’s award-winning historical novel, Sostiene Pereira (Pereira Maintains, 1994) set in Portugal in 1938. Tabucchi himself contributed to the screenplay and assisted in shaping the film’s dialogues. Moreover, Tabucchi, like other writers of his and the following generation, including Vincenzo Cerami (1940–), Susanna Tamaro (1957–), Alessandro Baricco (1958–), and Niccolo` Ammaniti (1966–), exemplify the current situation of the ‘‘new Italian cinema,’’ in which literary and cinematic storytelling have become closely interrelated. Cerami, for example, at the young age of 20, began working in the cinema as an assistant to Pasolini, who had been his teacher in a junior high school at Ciampino in the early 1950s. Pasolini’s vital experimentalism in various media inspired in Cerami a similar desire to tell stories through diverse means of expression. A prolific screenwriter, Cerami has collaborated with such directors as Sergio Citti, Gianni Amelio, Marco Bellocchio, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Ettore Scola, and Roberto Benigni. His most notable literary works include his first novel, Un borghese piccolo piccolo (A Tiny Bourgeois, 1976) made into a film by Mario Monicelli in 1977; Fantasmi (Ghosts, 2001), and Consigli a un giovane scrittore (Advice to a Young Writer, 2002). Susanna Tamaro, a graduate of Rome’s film school, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, earned a degree in film directing before publishing in 1994 her internationally acclaimed bestseller, Va dove ti porta il cuore (Follow Your Heart), made into a film by Cristina Comencini in 1996. Alessandro Baricco worked as a music critic, an advertising copywriter, and a journalist before publishing his first novel, Castelli di rabbia (Castles of Rage, 1991). His third novel, Novecento: un monologo (The Twentieth Century: A Monologue, 1994) was adapted into a film, La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano (The Legend of 1900, 1998) by Giuseppe Tornatore. In 1999, Baricco’s prose work, City, became the first Italian novel to be published exclusively online. Niccolo` Ammaniti debuted as a writer in 1994 with the novel Branchie. His short 473

CINEMA AND LITERARY WRITERS stories in the genre of horror fiction were featured in the best-selling anthologies, Gioventu` cannibale (Cannibal Youth, 1996) and Tutti i denti del mostro sono perfetti (All of the Monster’s Teeth Are Perfect, 1997). His novel, Io non ho paura (I Am Not Afraid, 2001) was made into a widely acclaimed film in the thriller genre by Gabriele Salvatores in 2003. JOHN P. WELLE See also: Screenwriters Further Reading Bernardini, Aldo, Cinema muto italiano, 3 vols., Bari, Laterza, 1980. Brunetta, Gian Piero, Gli intellettuali italiani e il cinema, Milan, Mondadori, 2004. Brunetta, Gian Piero, Intellettuali, cinema e propaganda tra le due guerre, Bologna, Patron, 1972. Ca`llari, Francesco, Pirandello e il cinema, Venice, Marsilio, 1991. Calvino, Italo, ‘‘L’Autobiografia di uno spettatore,’’ in Federico Fellini, Quattro film, Turin, Einaudi, 1974. Canosa, Michele (editor), A nuova luce: Cinema muto italiano. I / Italian Silent Cinema, I, Bologna, CLUEB, 2000. Cerami, Vincenzo, Consigli a un giovane scrittore, Turin, Einaudi, 1995. Colombo, Fausto, La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’ottocento agli anni novanta, Milan, Bompiani, 1998. Costa, Antonio, Immagine di un’immagine: Cinema e letteratura, Turin, UTET, 1993. Debenedetti, Giacomo, Al cinema, edited by Lino Micciche`, Venice, Marsilio, 1983. Falaschi, Francesco (editor), Scrittori e cinema tra gli anni ’50 e ’60, Florence: Giunti Gruppo Editoriale, 1997. Flaiano, Ennio, Lettere d’amore al cinema, edited by Cristina Bragaglia, Milan: Rizzoli, 1978. Gambacorti, Irene, Storie di cinema e letteratura, Verga, Gozzano, D’Annunzio, Florence: Societa` Editrice Fiorentina, 2003.

Genovese, Nino, and Sebastiano Gesu` (editors), Verga e il cinema, Catania: Maimone, 1996. Ghilardi, Margherita (editor), Cecchi al cinema: Immagini e documenti 1930–1963, Florence: Gabinetto Vieusseux, 1984. Marcus, Millicent, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Meneghelli, Andrea, ‘‘Il cinema italiano e le nuove leve letterarie,’’ Annali d’Italianstica, 17(1999), edited by Gaetana Marrone. Moravia, Alberto, Al cinema: Centoquarantotto film d’autore, Milan, Bompiani, 1975. Papini, Giovanni, ‘‘La filosofia del cinematografo,’’ La stampa , 18 May 1907, 1–2. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Empirismo eretico, Milan: Garzanti, 1972. Pellizzari, Lorenzo, L’avventura di uno spettatore: Italo Calvino e il cinema, Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina, 1990. Tinazzi, Giorgio, and Marina Zancan (editors), Cinema e letteratura del neorealismo, Venice: Marsilio, 1983. Verdone, Mario, Cinema e letteratura del futurismo, Rovereto: Manfredi, 1990. Welle, John P., ‘‘The Cinema of History: Film in Italian Poetry of the 1960s and 1970s,’’ in From Eugenio Montale to Amelia Rosselli: Italian Poetry in the Sixties and Seventies, edited by John Butcher and Mario Moroni, Leicester, U.K.: Troubador Publishing, 2004. Welle, John P. (editor), ‘‘Film and Literature,’’ Annali d’Italianistica, 6(1988). Welle, John P., ‘‘Film on Paper: Early Italian Cinema Literature, 1907–1920,’’ Film History: An International Journal, 12(2000): 288–299. West, Rebecca (editor), Pagina pellicola pratica, Ravenna: Longo, 2000. Zanzotto, Andrea, Peasants Wake for Fellini’s Casanova and Other Poems, edited and translated by John P. Welle and Ruth Feldman, Champaign and London: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Zappulla Muscara`, Sarah, and Enzo Zappulla, Martoglio cineasta, Rome: Editalia, 1995. Zavattini, Cesare, Cronache da Hollywood, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996.

CINO DA PISTOIA (CA. 1270–CA. 1336/1337) In many respects, Cino was the major poetic link between the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian lyric traditions, for he was an acquaintance not only of Dante and the poets of the dolce stil 474

novo, but also of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Because of his extreme poetic versatility and longevity, Cino mediated among various ‘‘schools’’ and individual poets, composed lyrics in a number of modes and

CINO DA PISTOIA styles, and ultimately benefited from and contributed directly to the several major literary currents of his age. Cino’s literary consciousness developed during his period of study in Bologna: He became aware of poets such as Guido Guinizzelli, Guittone d’Arezzo, and Onesto degli Onesti and more than likely met Dante, who was present in Bologna in 1287, although the first textual evidence of their friendship dates from 1290, the date of Beatrice’s death, for which Cino composed the consolatory canzone ‘‘Avegna ched el m’aggia piu` per tempo’’ (Although more than once). As evidence of his long and productive friendship with Dante, we have the testimony of several tenzoni on amorous topics, the citation in De vulgari eloquentia of no fewer than three of Cino’s canzoni for their excellence—‘‘Degno son io ch’io mora’’ (I am worthy to die), ‘‘I’ no spero che mai per mia salute’’ (‘‘I hope that never for my salvation’’), and ‘‘Avegna ched el m’aggia piu` per tempo’’—and the letter (Epistola III) addressed to the ‘‘exulanti Pistoriensi’’ (Pistoians in exile). Cino and Dante were also joined in their enthusiastic support of Henry VII of Luxemburg, who was elected Holy Roman Emperor on 27 November 1308, as the one leader capable of bringing peace to the warring factions of Italy. Unfortunately Henry’s death in 1313 dealt a severe blow to this hope. In his solemn canzone marking Henry’s death, ‘‘Da poi che la natura ha fine posto’’ (Since nature has brought to an end) Cino conveys the desolate state that many felt in Italy at the time, and in another moving canzone, ‘‘Su per la costa, Amor, de l’alto monte’’ (Up the slope of the tall mountain, Love), he commemorates the death of Dante. Cino’s poetic corpus is the largest of the dolce stil novo (Marti’s edition includes 20 canzoni, 11 ballate, and 134 sonnets, including fragments; another 21 poems are of dubious authenticity) and reflects virtually all of their major themes, images, and ideas. Cino’s poetry contains an exceptionally high degree of emotional fervor, as well as an unusual sense of spatial orientation. Both of these characteristics give his poems their distinctive nature. Cino fashioned his lyrics in such a way as to reflect the psychological contours and recesses of the persona of the poet-lover who is, at once, the same as and different from himself, presenting the broad range of a person’s affective life in an objective and conventionalized manner, yet ostensibly being the subjective account of these experiences. The tension produced in the individual poems provides the dynamic force for the corpus as a whole.

In addition to his lyrics on amorous topics, Cino’s canzoniere is especially rich in tenzoni (some 22 in all) and in poems inspired by local partisan strife and political exile. The object of Cino’s affection is known as ‘‘Selvaggia,’’ and she has been identified as the wife of Giovanni de’Cancellieri (nicknamed ‘‘Focaccia’’), whom she had married in 1289. While Selvaggia’s identity, either as an historical figure or as a literary fiction, remains an open question, this is relatively unimportant for a critical appraisal of Cino’s lyrics, many of which were written to praise a woman (whom he addresses with this particular senhal or poetic code-name), to complain of her harshness and lack of mercy, to describe the ambivalent nature of the amorous relationship, and to mourn her death. If Selvaggia was a member of the Vergiolesi family, then she belonged to the White faction, was exiled in 1306, and died sometime between 1307 and 1309. The historical data, however, are less important than the literary persona described in Cino’s lyrics, through which Selvaggia has a place in the literary tradition alongside the other two famous ladies of Dante (Beatrice) and Petrarch (Laura). After Selvaggia’s death, Cino was attracted to a number of other women, for and about whom he wrote lyrics. Dante, for one, takes him to task for his inconstancy in matters of love in the sonnet ‘‘Io mi credea del tutto esser partito’’ (I thought that I had utterly departed), and other poets shared this view as well. The greatest contemporary Italian poets recognized Cino’s brilliance: Dante praised him in De vulgari eloquentia as the most excellent Italian love poet (2.2.9), Boccaccio honored him by incorporating almost all of his canzone, ‘‘La dolce vista e ’l bel guardo soave’’ (‘‘The sweet sight and the lovely soft look’’) in the Filostrato (5:62–5:65), and Petrarch lamented his death in the sonnet, ‘‘Piangete, donne, et con voi pianga Amore’’ (‘‘Weep, ladies, and let Love weep with you’’). Just as Dante defined Cino as the most excellent Italian poet of love, so Petrarch in this commemorative sonnet centers on precisely these qualities—Cino is called amoroso (v. 10: ‘‘’l nostro amoroso messer Cino’’) and dolce (v. 13: ‘‘sı´ dolce vicino’’), he is the one who knew how to bestow honor on women and lovers in general in his verses: ‘‘colui che tutto intese / in farvi ... honore’’ (vv. 3-4: the one who was wholly intent on honoring you). In the second quatrain, Petrarch reveals his very strong sense of personal loss, and this may suggest the extent of his literary indebtedness. He also refers to Cino’s participation in Pistoian politics, for which the 475

CINO DA PISTOIA ‘‘cittadin perversi’’ (v. 12) exiled him—their loss and, we are given to understand, heaven’s gain: ‘‘Pianga Pistoia, e i cittadin perversi / che perduto a`nno sı´ dolce vicino; / et rallegresi il cielo, ov’ello e` gito’’ (vv. 12–14: May Pistoia together with her perverse citizens weep, who have lost such a sweet companion, and may heaven rejoice, where he has gone). Cino’s lyrics present most of the various themes and motifs of the earlier schools of poets, from the troubadours to the Scuola Siciliana and the ‘‘guittoniani’’ to the dolce stil novo. These include the image of the beloved ‘‘painted’’ within the lover’s heart or mind, the constant combination of love and fear, the use of personified figures (Amore, Pieta`, Merce´), the reference to those idle gossipers who seek to destroy love—the losengeors or ‘‘malparlieri,’’ the play on phonically similar terms (e.g., amore-amaro and amore-morte), and the incorporation of the senhal to hide the identity of the lady (Selvaggia). In terms of poetic language, we see evidence of Occitan (dolzore, coraggio, leanza, dottanza), Old French (cera, beltate, doneare, aitare), and Sicilian (finare for finire), as well as certain metrical characteristics, such as the so-called rima siciliana (vui / fui, grido / credo, allora / criatura). Of course, the greatest influence on Cino’s poetry came from his fellow stilnovisti, and we may see how he assimilated their themes in sonnets such as ‘‘Una gentil piacevol giovanella’’ (A noble and pleasing young woman) and ‘‘Tutto mi salva il dolce salutare’’ (I am completely saved by the sweet greeting) where he praises his lady’s angelic qualities and speaks of her marvelous effect on those whom she meets and greets (the ‘‘saluto salutifero,’’ the greeting that confers a state of blessedness). Similarities between these poems and those by Guinizzelli (‘‘Io vogl’ del ver la mia donna laudare’’: I truly wish to praise my lady), Cavalcanti (‘‘Chi e` questa che ve`n ch’ogn’om la mira’’), and Dante (‘‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare’’) abound, although in Cino’s poetry, in general, we do not sense the mental and physical anguish present in Cavalcanti or the idea of spiritual salvation contained in Dante. While Cino’s lady is certainly beautiful and ‘‘angelic,’’ she is not a transcendental being, remaining quintessentially earthbound both in her being and in her effects. A defining characteristic of Cino’s lyrics is their phonic quality; for example, he was able to convey the sorrow induced by love through use of mournful notes, as in the two sonnets—‘‘Omo smarruto che pensoso vai’’ and ‘‘Signori, i’ son colui che vidi 476

Amore’’—that represent aurally the lover’s lament through repeated use of the vowel o, especially in rhyme position (for example, ‘‘Signori, i’ son colui che vidi Amore / che mi ferı` sı` ch’io non campero`e / e sol pero` cosı` pensoso voe....’’; My lords, I am the one who saw Love, who wounded me such that I cannot survive, and for this alone I go about so mournfully). This same pathetic quality is also present in the canzone on the death of his lady Selvaggia, ‘‘Oime`, lasso, quelle trezze bionde’’ (Alas, those blonde tresses), and may have influenced Petrarch in the composition of his sonnet, ‘‘Oime` il bel viso, oime` il soave sguardo’’ (Canzoniere 267, Alas the lovely face, alas the soft look). Political themes are also present in Cino’s poetry. His distaste for the city of Naples and her citizens occasioned his bitingly satiric canzone, ‘‘Deh, quando rivedro` il dolce paese’’ (Ah, when will I see the sweet country), in which he complained about the vile, untutored citizenry; the envy of his legal colleagues; and the generally disreputable nature of the city. The political vicissitudes of Pistoia played an important role in Cino’s lyrics, as, for example, in the sonnet ‘‘Deh, non mi domandar perche´ sospiri’’ (Ah, do not ask me why I sigh) that may refer to the poet’s return from exile in 1306 and his discovery that his lady (Selvaggia) and her family have left the city, an absence that caused him ‘‘pene e martiri’’ (v. 8: torment and pain). What is new in this poem is the idea that the poet’s weeping eyes may be at least partially consoled by the sight of the now empty dwelling where they had fallen in love: ‘‘li usci e’ muri / de la contrata u’ sono ’nnamorati’’ (vv. 13–14: the doors and the walls of the place where they fell in love). It is precisely this keen sense of spatial orientation that is without precedent in thirteenth-century poetry. Memories were occasioned by sight, by the observation of a particular physical place, and this anticipated the ‘‘memorializing’’ tendency to which Petrarch subscribed in many of his lyrics, for example in ‘‘Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro (It was the day the sun’s discolored) and ‘‘Chiare, fresche et dolci acque’’ (Clear, fresh and sweet waters). In addition to his synthesis of various elements of the earlier poetic traditions, Cino’s most important contributions were his extensive use of the phonic/musical qualities of poetry, his recognition of the commemorative power of the sonnet (and of the lyric in general), and his objective psychological realism, which manifested itself in the intensely personal, almost confessional tone of his poems.

CINO DA PISTOIA Cino da Pistoia is the major link between the dolce stil novo and Petrarch.

Biography Cino (or Guittoncino) was born ca. 1270 in Pistoia, a prosperous city some 20 miles northwest of Florence. His father, Francesco dei Sinibuldi (or Sighibuldi, or Sigisbuldi), was a notary and a member of one of the older and powerful families (and adherents to the Black faction). His mother, Diamante, was the daughter of the well-known physician Bonaventura di Tonello. Cino’s first introduction to the law probably began in Pistoia under the tutelage of Dino dei Rossoni of Mugello (1279–1284), after which he continued his legal studies in Bologna, where he remained in all probability from 1284 to 1292, attending the lectures of Francesco d’Accursio and Lambertino Ramponi. In 1292–1294, Cino’s work as a jurist may have taken him to France (Orleans and Paris), for in his major juridical work, the Lectura in codicem, he made specific references to the legal writings of Pierre de Belleperche and Jacob da Revigni, both teachers in Orle´ans. Cino referred to Belleperche as doctor meus (my teacher), the same phrase he used for Dino dei Rossoni. Having returned to Italy, Cino lectured at the Studium in Bologna (1297–1301/2). In 1302, he was in Pistoia, where he married Margherita di Lanfranco degli Ughi, whose family belonged to the White faction. We may imagine that, since Cino’s family belonged to the Black party, the marriage was probably contracted in an attempt to establish peace between the two factions, at least at the level of individual families. The marriage produced five children: one son—Mino—and four daughters— Diamante, Giovanna, Lombarduccia, and Beatrice. In the early years of the fourteenth century Pistoia was beset by civil strife, and in 1303 Cino was exiled. Shortly after his return from exile, on 11 April 1306, he was elected as a judge to preside over civil suits (assessore di cause civili), and some of his legal decisions found their way into his legal writings. Cino was deeply involved with the political aspirations of Henry VII in Italy. As part of the preparations for his coronation, Henry sent Ludwig of Savoy as his personal ambassador (June 1310) to Rome, and Ludwig in turn invited Cino to accompany him first to Florence (in what was a futile attempt to secure Florentine support for Henry) and then to Rome, where Cino served as advisor to the Imperial tribunal. However, this great plan was never completed, for on 24 August 1313,

Henry VII died, probably of malaria, at Buonconvento, near Siena, and with his death all hopes (Cino’s and Dante’s in particular) for peace and political unity under the Imperial aegis dissipated. After Henry’s death Cino withdrew from active involvement in partisan politics but not from his dedication to Ghibelline ideals, as may be observed in his legal writings. Cino’s most famous work, the Lectura in codicem (an extensive commentary on the first nine books of the Justinian code of laws), was finally completed on 11 June 1314. Cino was awarded the doctoral degree in legal studies in Bologna on 9 December 1314. As both lawyer and teacher, Cino practiced in several cities (Florence, Macerata, Siena, Bologna, and Perugia), and it was during these peregrinations that he may have met Petrarch, who was a student in the Studium at Bologna in 1324. Because of Cino’s great reputation, gained through his legal writings and lectures, many Italian cities sought his services to enhance the luster of their respective Studia. On 15 August 1330, Robert of Anjou invited him to teach civil law at the University of Naples, where he remained for only one year. If Cino’s brief residence in Naples and his political inclinations displeased King Robert, we should note that the king did value the Lectura in codicem, for he acquired a personal copy in 1332. Cino spent the last four years of his life in Florence, Perugia, and Pistoia. He was elected ‘‘gonfaloniere’’ in Pistoia for August and September of 1334, a post that he resigned perhaps because of failing health. Nevertheless, on 31 March 1336, the citizens elected him to a six-month term on the Consiglio del Popolo (Council of the People). On 23 December 1336, Cino made his will and died shortly thereafter in Pistoia, either in late December, 1336, or early January, 1337. See also: Dolce stil novo

CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ

Selected Works Collections Le rime di Cino da Pistoia, edited by Guido Zaccagnini, Gene`ve: Olschki, 1925. Rimatori del Dolce Stil Novo, edited by Luigi di Benedetto, Bari: Laterza, 1939. La poesia lirica del Duecento, edited by Carlo Salinari, Turin: UTET, 1951. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols., edited by Gianfranco Contini, Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1960. Poeti del dolce stil nuovo, edited by Mario Marti, Florence: Le Monnier, 1969.

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CINO DA PISTOIA Selected Translations German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History, edited and translated by Frederick Goldin, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973. The Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry, translated by Joseph Tusiani, New York: Baroque Press, 1974. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, The Early Italian Poets (1861), edited by Sally Purcell, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Further Reading Chiappelli, Luigi, Nuove ricerche su Cino da Pistoia, Pistoia: Officina Tipografica Cooperativa, 1911. Chiappelli, Luigi, Vita e opere giuridiche di Cino da Pistoia con molti documenti inediti, Pistoia: Tip. Cino dei Fratelli Bracali, 1881. Colloquio Cino da Pistoia (Roma, 25 October 1975), Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1976. Corti, Maria, ‘‘Il linguaggio poetico di Cino da Pistoia,’’ Cultura neolatina, 12(1952): 185–223. De Robertis, Domenico, ‘‘Cino e le ’imitazioni’ dalle rime di Dante,’’ Studi danteschi, 29(1950): 103–177.

De Robertis, Domenico, ‘‘Cino da Pistoia’’ in I Minori, Milan: Marzorati, 1961. De Robertis, Domenico, ‘‘Cino da Pistoia e la crisi del linguaggio poetico,’’ Convivium, 1(1952): 1–35. De Robertis, Domenico, ‘‘Cino e i poeti bolognesi,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 128(1951): 273– 312. Hollander, Robert, ‘‘Dante and Cino da Pistoia,’’ Dante Studies, 110 (1992): 201–231. Kleinhenz, Christopher, ‘‘Cino da Pistoia and the Italian Lyric Tradition,’’ in L’imaginaire courtois et son double, edited by Giovanna Angeli and Luciano Formisano, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1992. Kleinhenz, Christopher, The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220–1321), Lecce: Milella, 1986. Monti, Gennaro Maria, Cino da Pistoia giurista, Citta` di Castello: ‘‘Il Solco,’’ 1924. Ragni, Eugenio, ‘‘Cino da Pistoia,’’ in Dizionario Critico della Letteratura Italiana, 2nd ed., dir. Vittore Branca, Turin: UTET, 1986. Treves, E., ‘‘La satira di Cino da Pistoia contro Napoli,’’ Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 58(1911): 122–139. Zaccagnini, Guido, Cino da Pistoia: Studio biografico, Pistoia: Pagnini, 1918.

CITY OF THE SUN See La Citta` del sole (Work by Tommaso Campanella)

CLASSICISM The term ‘‘classicism’’ comes from the Latin classicus, which in ancient Rome indicated those citizens belonging to the highest social class, hence implying a difference based on social, moral, and cultural superiority. In literature, the term ‘‘classic’’ was used for the first time in the first century AD by Quintillian, and later by the erudite Aulus Gellius, to indicate an excellent and exemplary author. Thus, classicus would denote an author of ‘‘first class,’’ or ‘‘excellent quality.’’ Subsequently, the adjective was adopted to identify the authors of the 478

Augustan era who were to be taken as literary models for their noble contents and formal perfection. In the broadest sense, the word ‘‘classic’’ refers to the ancient Greek and Latin cultures, whereas ‘‘classicism’’ refers to the numerous cultural movements repeatedly occurring in the history of Italian literature, which looked at the ancient world for models and canons of expression. This would take place any time an ancient work was considered ‘‘classic,’’ hence worthy of being imitated for its superior contents and its stylistic and linguistic excellence.

CLASSICISM A first form of classicism may already be found in the Middle Ages, when the fracture following the advent of Christianity generated a form of nostalgia for the ancient world and produced, in authors such as Fulgentius and Boetius in the fifth and sixth centuries, a first timid attempt for reinstating the ancient culture. As a matter of fact, even before this reemergence of classicism, ethical principles and rhetorical figures of the ancient world had been readopted by Saint Augustine (354–430). However, the presence in medieval culture of classical philosophers such as Aristotle and the use of examples from ancient poetry ought to be ascribed to two separate sources. Whereas in matter of philosophy the classical age was considered imperfect and limited, needing therefore to be included in Christianity and reread in the light of Christian teaching, classical poetry, on the contrary, was constantly considered as a sort of absolute model, thus explaining the great and perpetual fortune of poets such as Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius, whose works and examples were imitated throughout history. Occasionally, however, even these forms of literary classicism were condemned as an allusion to pagan culture, hence opposed to Christianity and therefore deserving to be banned.