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 m