Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies

Citation preview

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

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

© 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

2006048641

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

xxv

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,

xxxviii

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

4

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

9

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.

10

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

14

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.

17

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)

35

GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lella piangente, 1634.

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

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

Essays Teatro celeste, 1624. Lo specchio, 1625.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

49

ANIMATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

55

MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

59

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

L’AVVENTURA, 1960 Film by Michelangelo Antonioni

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

63

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

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

Theater Amate sponde! Commedia italiana, 1974.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Films Mignon e` partita, 1988.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letters Lettere Lettere Lettere Lettere Lettere Lettere

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

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

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

LA CORTIGIANA, 1534 Play by Pietro Aretino

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

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

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

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

RAGIONAMENTI, 1534–1536 Dialogues by Pietro Aretino

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

86

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

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

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

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

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

87

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

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

COMEDIES Plays by Ludovico Ariosto

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

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

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

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

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

89

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SATIRE, 1517–1525 Poems by Ludovico Ariosto

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

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

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

GIOVANNI ARPINO Editions

Further Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biography

Poetry

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

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

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

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

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

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

97

ART CRITICISM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

102

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASHES See Cenere (Work by Grazia Deledda)

105

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

109

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

113

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

115

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

Anthologies

Poetry

Radiodrama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOVELLE, 1554; 1573 Short Stories by Matteo Bandello

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

120

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BANQUET See Convivio (Work by Dante Alighieri)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANNA BANTI (LUCIA LOPRESTI) Selected Works

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

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

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

Plays Corte Savella, 1960.

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

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

126

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

ERMOLAO BARBARO (THE YOUNGER)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translation Aristotle, Rhetorica, 1544.

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

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

128

Selected Works

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

GIUSEPPE BARETTI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Play The Sentimental Mother, 1789.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DANIELLO BARTOLI

Biography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

135

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

138

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

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

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

GIORGIO BASSANI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

141

GIORGIO BASSANI

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

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

142

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

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

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

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

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

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

143

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

144

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

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

CESARE BECCARIA Selected Works

Further Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

149

FEO BELCARI Rappresentazione Rappresentazione Rappresentazione Rappresentazione

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

151

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

Fiction Emina, 1856.

Translations La Science Nouvelle par Vico, 1844.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Morte di Pasolini, 1981.

Further Reading

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

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

153

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

157

MARCO BELLOCCHIO

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

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

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

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

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

159

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

162

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

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

Translations

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

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

PIETRO BEMBO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

165

PIETRO BEMBO

GLI ASOLANI, 1505 Dialogue by Pietro Bembo

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

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

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

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

PROSE DELLA VOLGAR LINGUA, 1525 Dialogue by Pietro Bembo

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

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

167

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biography

Libretti

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

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

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

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

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

173

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Rime, 1614.

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

175

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CATERINA BENINCASA See Catherine of Siena

178

STEFANO BENNI

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

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

STEFANO BENNI

Biography

Plays

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

Teatro, 1999. Teatro 2, 2003.

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

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

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

ANGELO BEOLCO See Il Ruzzante (Angelo Beolco)

180

GIOVANNI BERCHET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

182

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

CARLO BERNARI (CARLO BERNARD)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theater Via Rasella non passa per via Fani, 1981.

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

185

FRANCESCO BERNI

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

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

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

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

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

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

187

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ATTILIO BERTOLUCCI

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

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

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

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

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

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI Poetry

Translations

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

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

Essays Aritmie, 1991. Ho rubato due versi a Baudelaire: prose e divagazioni, 2000. Amici, viaggi, incontri, 2003.

Other Una lunga amicizia. Lettere 1938–1982 (with Vittorio Sereni), 1994. Le pause operose del poeta. Attilio Bertolucci alla radio e alla tv, 1998. Il divino egoista (with Doriano Fasoli), 2002. Un’amicizia lunga una vita: carteggio, 1929–1984 (with Cesare Zavattini), edited by Guido Conti and Manuela Cacchioli, Parma: Monte Universita` Parma, 2004.

Further Reading Briganti, Paolo, and Maurizio Schiaretti, Sulla paziente storia dei giorni, Parma: Silva, 1998. Castellari, Mariagiulia, Attilio Bertolucci. La trama dei giorni da ricordare, Faenza: Moby Dick, 2001. Giovanuzzi, Stefano, Invito alla lettura Attilio Bertolucci, Milan: Mursia, 1997. Iacopetta, Antonio, Attilio Bertolucci: Lo specchio e la perdita, Rome: Bonacci, 1984. Jewell, Keala, The Poiesis of History: Experimenting with Genre in Postwar Italy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Lagazzi, Paolo, Attilio Bertolucci, Florence: Nuova Italia, 1982. Lagazzi, Paolo, Reˆverie e destino, Milan: Garzanti, 1993. Lavagetto, Mario, ‘‘Pratica pirica,’’ in Nuovi Argomenti, 23–24 (1971): 221–233. Magro, Fabio, Un ritmo per l’esistenza e per il verso: metrica e stile nella poesia di Attilio Bertolucci, Padua: Esedra, 2005. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo, ‘‘Attilio Bertolucci,’’ in Poeti italiani del Novecento, Milan: Mondadori, 1978.

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI (1941–) Bernardo Bertolucci is the most international director ever to come out of the Italian film industry. Yet his first films were devoted to representing Italian national history from the early twentieth century to the present. He treated contemporary Italy in his early feature films, La commare secca (The Grim Reaper, 1962), Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution, 1964) and Partner (1968), then looked back upon the decades of Fascism in Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970) and the Resistance in La strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, 1970). He returned to contemporary times with Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris, 1972), and subsequently took a retrospective,

century-long look at modern Italy in Novecento (1900, 1975–1976). In his subsequent film, La luna (Luna, 1979), Bertolucci adopted the viewpoint of the ‘‘stranger.’’ Italy was seen from the vantage point of the film’s protagonist, Caterina, a recently widowed American opera singer who goes on a tour to Italy with her teenage son, Joe. While she is performing in various Verdi operas in Rome, Caterina is shaken by the discovery that her troubled and lonely son is a heroin addict. Her desperate attempts to free Joe from his addiction result in an incestuous relationship; it also provides the possibility of reuniting him, and herself, with his father. The film’s

197

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI apparently personal journey into an individual’s psychological and existential universe represents one of Bertolucci’s many attempts to remap the cultural and historical identity of Italy. In the early days of his career as a filmmaker, he critically deconstructs Italy, but later recreates it as a mythical place that is the source of fears, anguishes, and dilemmas but also the source of inner dreams and hopes. As Francesco Casetti shows, the journey is a common trope in Bertolucci’s films, a way of exploring the complex web of issues that define Italy’s identity as perceived both by Italians generally and by Bertolucci personally (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1978). Bertolucci’s own perspective is framed by his ideological—mostly Marxist—and psychoanalytic—mostly Freudian—paradigms. Inherently and profoundly self-reflexive and intertextual, the whole of Bertolucci’s work, despite its diversity, remains utterly coherent and cohesive in its thematic and ideological structure. Three key images are constantly evoked in Bertolucci’s cinema: the journey, suggesting a coming from and/or going to one’s place of origin; ambiguity, often connected to a generational discomfort; and finally death, constantly attributed to or associated with a painful father-son relationship. Beginning with his first feature film, La commare secca, where a murder takes place in Rome but the murderer comes from Veneto, the trope of the journey provides a distinct narrative structure and thematic strategy for all of Bertolucci’s narratives. More often than not, an arrival provokes de´paysement, while a departure is rarely shown on screen. This dynamic informs the destiny of the main character in La strategia del ragno, a free adaptation of Jorge Louis Borges’ short story ‘‘Theme of the Traitor and Hero’’ that preserves the ambiguity and labyrinthine nature of its literary source. The protagonist is a young man, Athos Magnani, who resembles his father in the most minute details. He returns to his hometown, Tara, to meet his father’s lover, but ends up investigating his father’s past and the circumstances of his death in order to make sense of his own present. The film ends as the camera slowly pans over railroad tracks clogged with weeds and frozen in a timeless dimension suggesting the impossibility of departure from Tara. The search for personal meaning is also the search for a collective and generational understanding about one of the most crucial and problematic moments in Italy’s modern history, Fascism and the Resistance. This historical quest is developed in Bertolucci’s next film, released in 198

the same year, Il conformista, another free adaptation, this time from the novel by Alberto Moravia. The film centers on the troubled existence of a young man from a wealthy family, Marcello Clerici (played by Jean Louis Trintignant) who, in an extreme attempt to conceal his unconfessed abnormality, decides to collaborate with the Fascist regime and work for its secret police. He agrees to assist in the murder of his former teacher, professor Luca Quadri, an exiled anti-Fascist in Paris. The film takes the spectator through a series of flashbacks—a visual tour de force that explores a discomforting personal life and the compulsion to conform—that place Clerici’s actions within a larger metaphorical and political dimension, thus revealing the reasons for the collective fall into Fascism. A brilliant, decadent film, Il conformista fully discloses Bertolucci’s cinematic talent. As Angela Dalle Vacche perceptively remarks, Il conformista proposes an interpretation of Fascism that explicitly grounds the genesis of the regime in the vices of the bourgeois class, but also exploits Benito Mussolini’s ideology of a unified body politic translating it into a mesmerizing spectacle film (The Body in the Mirror, 1992). Bertolucci’s camera becomes an acting subject in exploring the past, together with Trintignant’s highly stylized performance. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro entices the viewer with the same representational strategies promoted by the regime in order to gain consent from the nation: He uses chiaroscuro and the colour spectrum to blend iconographic elements, philosophical allusions, and psychological nuances. Both La strategia del ragno and Il conformista develop a sense of ambiguity that characterize Bertolucci’s cinema as a whole, including his next film, Ultimo Tango a Parigi, acclaimed as a landmark in cinema history. Such ambivalence works at the level of both form and content. Formally, Bertolucci’s narratives oscillate between diverse generic solutions, resisting facile, prefabricated, and codified plot strategies. At first influenced by Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom he met when he moved to Rome with his family and whom he assisted in the direction of his first feature film Accattone (1961), and later inspired by the French New Wave directors, most importantly by Jean-Luc Godard, Bertolucci pursued a new and contemporary interpretation of cine´ma ve´rite´ that expressed his personal authorial voice. It was with Ultimo Tango a Parigi that he dispatched the past and moved forward to a thoroughly new stage in his development as a filmmaker. The film is a self-reflexive and metadiscursive statement on cinema, its past and

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI its future, as well as a disenchanted commentary on contemporary social behaviours. Marlon Brando’s performance as Paul, a middle-aged American in Paris, brings to the text Brando’s private and public persona and to the cinema to which he belongs. Brando’s character, indeed, serves as a testament to the last romantic hero. Paul meets the 20-year-old Jeanne (Maria Schneider) in an empty apartment that they both wish to sublet. They make love and come back during the following days, acting out their erotic fantasies. To visually represent their story, Storaro relied on the light of the winter sun to naturally convey a warm tonality and, inspired by Francis Bacon’s paintings, he chose orange as the colour of passion, of emotion. The tragic and romantic ending of the film invokes another trope in Bertolucci’s cinema, death. As they exit the apartment in which most of the story has unfolded, Paul and Jeanne walk to a dance hall where, during a heartbreaking tango sequence, Paul changes from a mythical and mysterious figure to become an older and unhappy man. A fairly plain and vacuous young woman, Jeanne is frightened by him and, as he follows her into her mother’s apartment wearing her father’s military hat, she shoots him. Bertolucci records Brando/Paul’s death in a splendid moment of cinematic bravura. A dying man, but also a fallen angel, he slowly retreats into the background of the image, steps onto the balcony, and raises his gaze to the sky with a smile that will forever remain in the spectator’s memory as a tender and tragic goodbye. Ultimo Tango a Parigi remains, along with Il conformista, one of Bertolucci’s most engaging and experimental films of the 1970s. The director’s remapping of modern Italy continued in his next film, Novecento, where in a long flashback he reviews 75 years of national history through the intertwined lives of Olmo Dalco (Ge´rard Depardieu), nephew of a peasant, and Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro), the son of a landowner, born on the same day in the year 1900. The screenplay, authored by Bertolucci with his brother Giuseppe (also a filmmaker and a theatrical director), is a melodramatic saga staged as a political epic (the original director’s cut was five hours and 45 minutes). The film reaches its most climactic and controversial moment in the representation of the violence, decadence, and corruption of the Fascist years. As a whole, however, the film is uneven in its cinematic effects. With La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, 1981), Bertolucci ends his investigation of Italy’s modern history but continues to

use the recurring figure of death as a reflection of a precarious and difficult father-son relationship. The film tells the story of an Italian industrialist Primo Speggiari (played by Ugo Tognazzi) who, when his son is kidnapped and killed, tries to use the ransom money for his personal gain. La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo brings to an end Bertolucci’s personal journey to a place of origin, to the ambiguous relationship one often entertains with one’s past, often due to a deeply strained relationship with one’s father. As he seemed to bid farewell to his own country, he also recapitulated a lifelong dialogue with psychoanalysis, with cinema, but perhaps most importantly with ideology. Indeed, this farewell was reiterated in a documentary released in 1984 and dedicated to the death of Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, tellingly entitled L’addio a Enrico Berlinguer. After that, Bertolucci’s journeys take the spectator to foreign places—China in L’ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, 1987), Africa in Il te` nel deserto (The Sheltering Sky, 1990), India in Piccolo Buddha (Little Buddha, 1993). These films were produced with foreign financing and originally released in English. In L’ultimo imperatore, Bertolucci used a flashback structure to relate the spectacularly ambiguous life of Pu Yi, enthroned in 1908, at the age of three, as the emperor of China. He conjures up a complex vision to balance historical reconstruction with imaginative interpretation: Pu Yi’s journey unfolds from the imperial orange glow of his early age in the Forbidden City to the cold and bleak hues (blues and greys) of his prison years. Once again he creates a film of epic grandeur. When he returned to Italy, he did so by representing a group of foreigners who look at Italy as a place of beauty, memory, and inspiration for personal and sexual awakening, as happens in Io ballo da sola (Stealing Beauty, 1996), a film that taps a reservoir of mythical and perhaps even stereotypical images of the country. The foreign experience and understanding of Italy is once again the focus of Bertolucci’s L’assedio (Besieged, 1999), where an African woman Shandurai goes into exile in Italy, after a dictator jails her husband. She studies medicine and lives in one room of a Roman palazzo owned by Mr. Kinsky, an eccentric English pianist and composer. As the story unfolds in beautifully lit, womb-like interiors, the English man besieges her with flowers, gifts, and music, and declares his passionate love for her. Unquestionably, this film, like many other works by Bernardo Bertolucci, raises relevant and pressing questions about 199

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI personal and collective identity. Italy is once again presented as the ideal place for individual, ideological, and sexual exploration. But the film also raises questions about ambiguity and death, two of the most recurrent topoi in Bertolucci’s distinctive and personal cinematic journey. Bertolucci’s way of telling a story is one of the most sophisticated in cinema. Always torn between Marxist politics and sensuous aesthetics, he works with ideological threads that become tangential, as he weaves a hauntingly beautiful visual fabric. His film, I sognatori (The Dreamers, 2003), which is set in Paris, pays the ultimate homage to Godard, to the great city of cinema. Once again Bertolucci shows that he can create images about which others can only dream.

Biography Born on March 16, 1941, in Parma. His father, Attilio, leading poet and film critic, inspired a love for the cinema by taking him frequently to the movies. Brother Giuseppe born, 1947. In his early teens, made two short films, La teleferica and Morte di un maiale. In 1952, family moved to Rome and settled in an apartment building where Pier Paolo Pasolini lived. Attended University of Rome (1958–1961), studying modern Italian literature; assistant director to Pasolini in Accattone, 1961. After that, left the university without completing his degree, and began training in film independently. In 1962, Bertolucci published his first book of poems, In cerca del mistero, and won the prestigious Viareggio prize. Directed his first feature film, La commare secca, 1962. Prima delle rivoluzione opened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1964, but did not receive theatrical distribution until 1967. In the 1960s, directed documentaries, such as La via del petrolio (1965–1966), and collaborated with Sergio Leone and Dario Argento on the screenplay for Leone’s C’era un volta il West (1968). Joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), 1969, and began Freudian analysis. Ultimo tango a Parigi opened at the New York Film Festival, 1972. Recipient of numerous awards including an Oscar nomination for Il conformista (best screenplay), 1970, and for Ultimo tango a Parigi (best director), 1973; L’ultimo imperatore won nine Academy Awards, including set design, editing, and cinematography, 1988. Married to Clare Peploe, his closest collaborator on the set; lives in London and Rome. MANUELA GIERI 200

Selected Works Poetry ‘‘In cerca del mistero: poesie,’’ 1988.

Films La commare secca (The Grim Reaper), 1962. Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution), 1964. La via del petrolio (documentary), 1965–1966. Partner (based on Dostoyevsky’s ‘‘The Double’’), 1968. Amore e rabbia (segment ‘‘Agonia’’), 1969. La strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, based on Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘‘Theme of the Traitor and the Hero’’), 1970. Il conformista (The Conformist, based on Alberto Moravia’s novel), 1970. La salute e` malata (documentary), 1971. Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris), 1972. Novecento Atto I and Atto II (1975–1976). La luna (Luna), 1979. La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man), 1981. L’addio a Enrico Berlinguer (documentary), 1984. L’ultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, based on the book From Emperor to Citizen by Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi), 1987. 12 registi per 12 citta` (segment ‘‘Bologna’’), 1989. Il te` nel deserto (The Sheltering Sky, based on the novel by Paul Bowles), 1990. Piccolo Buddha (Little Buddha), 1993. Io ballo da sola (Stealing Beauty), 1996. L’assedio (Besieged, based on a short story by James Lasdun, ‘‘The Siege’’), 1999. Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (segment ‘‘Histoire d’eaux’’), 2002. I sognatori (The Dreamers), 2003.

Screenplays La commare secca, Milan: Zibetti, 1962; rpt. 1988. Ultimo tango a Parigi (with Franco Arcalli), Turin: Einaudi, 1973; as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, with essays by Pauline Kael, New York: Delacorte Press, 1973. Novecento, atto primo (with Franco Arcalli and Giuseppe Bertolucci), Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Novecento, atto secondo (with Franco Arcalli and Giuseppe Bertolucci), Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Piccolo Buddha (with Rudy Wurlitzer and Mark Peploe), Milan: Bompiani, 1993. Il te` nel deserto (with Mark Peploe), Milan: Bompiani, 1994. L’ultimo imperatore (with Mark Peploe and Enzo Ungari), Milan: Bompiani, 1995. Stealing Beauty, edited by Susan Minot, New York: Grove Press, 1996.

Further Reading Amengual, Barthe´lemy et al. (editors), Bernardo Bertolucci, Paris: Lettres modernes, 1979. Bertetto, Paolo (editor), Vittorio Storaro: Un percorso di luce, Turin: Umberto Allemandi & Co., 1989. Bertolucci Bertolucci: Interviews, edited by Fabien S. Gerard, T. Jefferson Kline and Bruce Sklarew, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.

BESTIARIES Campani, Ermelinda M., L’anticonformista: Bernardo Bertolucci e il suo cinema, Florence: Cadmo, 1998. Campari, Roberto, In viaggio con Bernardo: il cinema di Bernardo Bertolucci, Venice: Marsilio, 1994. Carabba, Claudio, Gabriele Rizza, and Giovanni Maria Rossi, La regola delle illusioni: il cinema di Bernardo Bertolucci, Florence: Aida, 2003. Casetti, Francesco, Bernardo Bertolucci, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Dalle Vacche, Angela, The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Garofalo, Marcello, L’ultimo imperatore. Storia di un viaggio verso Occidente: dal film di Bernardo Bertolucci, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1991. Garofalo, Marcello, Bertolucci: Images, Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 2000. Gerard, Fabien S., Ombres jaunes: journal de tournage du film Le dernier empereur de Bernardo Bertolucci, Paris: Cahiers du Cine´ma, 1987.

Kline, T. Jefferson, Bertolucci’s Dream Loom: A Psychoanalytic Study of Cinema, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Kolker, Robert Phillip, Bernardo Bertolucci, London: British Film Institute, 1985. Pillitteri, Paolo, Il conformista indifferente e il delitto Rosselli, Milan: Bietti, 2003. Pitiot, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Mirabella, Sur Bertolucci, Castelnau-le-Lez: Climats, 1991. Prono, Franco, Bernardo Bertolucci: Il conformista, Turin: Lindau, 1998. Socci, Stefano, Bernardo Bertolucci, Milan: Il Castoro, 1996. Tonetti, Claretta, Bernardo Bertolucci: The Cinema of Ambiguity, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. Ungari, Enzo (with Bernardo Bertolucci), Scene madri, Milan: Ubulibri, 1987.

BESTIARIES The literary works whose protagonists are animals have Semitic and Arian origins, which have been passed down through the Assiro-Babylonian tradition and the Indian Panchatantra to Giovanni da Capua, who popularized the animal tale in the West in the twelfth century. This heritage was further elaborated in ancient Greece with Aesop’s literary personification of animals in the fourth century BC. Aesop was followed by Phaedrus, who lived during the first empire. Then, in the second-century AD, Apuleius wrote the Metamorphoses, influenced by the Fabulae Milesiae by Aristide of Mileto (second century BC). The first Italian fables with animal protagonists stem from earlier Latin and French fables found in three different medieval collections: (a) the fables in elegiac couplets, well known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as Aesopus communis; (b) the Ysopets by Marie de France (late twelfth century), translated into standard Tuscan in the thirteenth century; (c) the medieval bestiaries, allegorical treatises with a morally didactic purpose in strict agreement with medieval aesthetics. Bestiario moralizzato, published in 1889 and reprinted in 1983, presents a manuscript from the fourteenth century written by an anonymous author from Umbria. It

is composed of 64 sonnets, each of which is about a different animal. While the text often refers to the classical tradition—Aesopus communis in particular—it was written in the spirit of medieval mysticism. Thus, it is based on the understanding of the function of literature in terms of a specific manGod relationship, a common feature among the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the Esopi volgari from the fourteenth century offer political rules of civil prudence to the reader, and, therefore, surpass the exclusively didactic and moralizing medieval tradition. Bestiario politico by the Anonymous Goriziano and the Bestiario moralizzato di Gubbio reveal the same sort of innovative thinking, and so does the mystical bestiary of the Fioretti of Franciscan literature, a simplified Tuscan version (1370–1390) of a doctrinal Latin work. The Italian Humanists also turned back to Aesop and Phaedrus, and their critical approach to the animal tale was later passed down to the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Among those who popularized Aesop in Italy are Chiaro Davanzati in the thirteenth century, Antonio Pucci (1310–1388), Luigi Pulci (1432–1484), Bernardino da Siena (1380–1440), Anton Francesco Doni (1513–1574), and Giaovan Battista Gelli (1498–1563), who 201

BESTIARIES translated the Metamorphoses by Apuleius, discovered by Boccaccio. Moreover, famous Humanists from Poggio Bracciolini (Facetiae, 1452), to Giovanni Pontano (Asinus, 1491) and Leon Battista Alberti (Intercoenales, 1438) also adopted themes from Aesop in their works. Additionally, Leonardo Da Vinci’s writings in praise of Aesop (1483–1499) make up a part of the Codice Atlantico in the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. Written in a style in harmony with the philosophy of the Renaissance, Leonardo’s Aesopian apologies form a Bestiario moralizzato. In them, the author seeks to reveal certain truths about mankind through various images of animal nature. Then, Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) creates an adaptation of the Second Book of Panchatantra focusing on contemporary customs and morality. The work is entitled Prima veste dei discorsi degli animali (The First Version of the Animals’ Discourses) and was published in 1548. On the other hand, Niccolo` Machiavelli’s L’asino d’oro (The Golden Ass, 1515) refers back to the Cricket by Plutarch. It is a work written in a philosophically critical way. Likewise, in Cabala del cavallo pegaseo (The Intrigue of the Winged Horse, 1585), Giordano Bruno makes use of the images of animals in a broader antiperipatetic discourse. The zooepic is another mainstream genre in which the protagonists are animals. Its literary antecedent is the Batrachomyomachy, attributed to Homer. In the twelfth century this work became the basis of the French Roman de Renart, popularized in Italy in Franco-Veneto dialect in the work Rainaldo e Lesengrino. The Batrachomyomachy was then translated anew by Lorenzo Valla in the fifteenth century. Moreover, the zooepic is also present in Teofilo Folengo’s Moschea (The Battle of the Flies, 1521), a parody in macaronic language, well known in Europe at the time. Thus, the zooepic gradually acquired ironic, social, anticlerical, and antifeudal overtones. In the tradition of the fable after Aesop, the animal characters are often the mouthpieces of mankind. The posthumous work of the Abbot Francesco Fulvio Frugoni (ca. 1620–1686), Il cane di Diogene (The Dog of Diogenes, 1689), is even divided into ‘‘barks,’’ thus referring to the Novelas Esemplares (1613) by Miguel De Cervantes composed in accordance with the Baroque taste for laughter. In the eighteenth century, the antisatirical vein of the Arcadia places the animals in a pastoral melicidyllic context. Giovanni Meli (1740–1815) is one of the greatest masters of this style. His Favule murali (Moral Fables, 1814), told in Sicilian dialect, attest to a basic Enlightenment faith in human progress, 202

even though human beings are less wise than the animals, which lead a life according to nature. In opposition to the mild moralism of the Favole esopiane (Fables After Aesop, 1748) by Gasparo Gozzi, a great number of gnomic and satirical works inspired by the poignant moralism of Il giorno (The Day, 1801–1804) by Giuseppe Parini appear in the second half of the century. The most important of these gnomic poets is Giancarlo Passeroni (1713–1803), who parodies all aspects of eighteenthcentury Italian life in the seven volumes of his Favole esopiane (Fables After Aesop, 1779–1786). A characteristic of Italian romantic poetry is the fusion of a sentimental subject matter with classical and realistic elements. Giosue` Carducci (1835– 1907) gives rise to this style with his rendition of the bucolic myth about Versilia in poems such as ‘‘Il bove’’ (The Ox), ‘‘A un asino’’ (To a Donkey), and ‘‘Canti di marzo’’ (March Songs). The works of Giacomo Zanella (1820–1888), in particular his most famous poem ‘‘Sopra una conchiglia fossile’’ (On a Fossil Shell in My Study) and the satiric short poems of Filippo Pananti (1766–1837) are also written in this poetic vein. The latter, moreover, became a model and inspiration for the satirical poetry of Giuseppe Giusti (1808–1850), such as in ‘‘Il re Travicello’’ (King Log) and ‘‘La chiocciola’’ (The Snail), and Gioachino Belli (1791– 1863). Other examples of works composed in this style are Ommini e bestie (Humans and Animals, 1914), Lupi e agnelli (Wolves and Lambs, 1919), Giove e le bestie (Jupiter and the Animals, 1932), three bestiaries by Trilussa (1871–1950) written in modern Roman dialect. Undoubtedly, Giacomo Leopardi’s work surpasses the compositions discussed above with the depth of its insight. In 1815, Leopardi himself translated the Batrachomyomachy, and, therefore, drew the heroic component of his Romanticism from the very source of the zooepic. His heroic and comic poem, Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia (The War of the Mice and the Frogs), for instance, is a biting satire of the Restoration. Aesopian themes are also present in Leopardi’s Operette morali (Little Moral Exercises) and his Grandi idilli (Great Songs). In fact, the anthropocentric aspect of the Aesopian literature of the Renaissance is brought to an end by Leopardi, whose writing gives rise to the twentieth-century Italian bestiaries. Today, animals no longer serve as moral exemplum in literature and have lost the sacred, fantastic, and symbolic qualities prescribed to them by the allegorical tradition. Giovanni Pascoli, for example, combines his decadent style with images

BESTIARIES from the animal world. Aesopism is also a part of the pantheistic metamorphosis in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s work. Finally, Luigi Pirandello’s bestiaries in Favole della volpe (Fox Tales, 1905) and Novelle per un anno (Short Stories, 1937) are written in the context of the crisis of positivism. Moreover, in the twentieth century, animal protagonists become the embodiments of psychological themes such as the metamorphic imaginary of the unconscious. Arturo Loria’s 70 Aesopian fables, published in 1957, and his Bestiario poetico (A Poetic Bestiary, 1959) are also modeled on Leopardi’s ideas. Likewise, Italo Svevo represents familiar everyday life in his ornithological bestiary Una burla riuscita (The Hoax, 1925), based on Leopardi’s operetta morale ‘‘Elogio degli uccelli’’ (In Praise of Birds). Svevo also uses Darwin’s vision of biological existence as a perpetual struggle and competition. In the sarcastic Primo libro delle favole (The First Book of Fables, 1952) by Carlo Emilio Gadda, the principal characters in a world of chaos are sparrows that represent the author’s anticonformist views, and the pteromorphic moralism of Le favole della dittatura (Fables of the Dictatorship, 1950) by Leonardo Sciascia also goes back to Phaedrus. The protagonist of Il corvo (The Raven) by Sciascia, inspired by Poe’s tale, embodies human illusions, while the work as a whole represents certain existential dramatic tensions. Moreover, in La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia (The Famous Invasion of the Bears in Sicily, 1945), Dino Buzzati rejects the Aristotelian understanding that animals do not have a rational soul. Similarly, Aldo Palazzeschi’s Bestie del 900 (Twentieth-Century Animals, 1951) is a critique of anthropocentrism. This is a parody of medieval bestiaries that satirizes the institutions. In his unfinished Favole e apologhi (Fables and Apologues), Umberto Saba takes up Leopardi’s approach to the personification of animals. The sparrows in his ‘‘Quasi una moralita`’’ represent archetypal domestic sentiments. The she-goat, for instance, becomes a zooerotical image of the womananimal in his well-known poem ‘‘A mia moglie.’’ The same symbol also appears in Italo Svevo’s writing. Likewise, the okapi, the vixen-lover, and

the birds of Eugenio Montale all have a Jungian psychological function. Dialoghi con Leuco` (1947) by Cesare Pavese discusses mythological monsters such as Lycaon (woolf-man), Chimera, Centaurs, while Antonio Tabucchi in his Angelo nero (1991) and Requiem (1992) calls forth a bestiary deprived of any kind of heraldic allure. Tommaso Landolfi has a predilection for insects, from the spider to the cockroach, and, thus, composes a bestiary based on the very first stages of evolution. The creatures in his writing are never presented in an allegorical context. Finally, Giorgio Manganelli transforms his bestiary into a representation of the crisis of literature. His moths, butterflies, worms, and earthworms are all images of the lowest forms of life whose destiny can only be to fade away. PAOLA MARTINUZZI See also: Literature of Anthropology Further Reading Auerbach, Erich, ‘‘Figura,’’ in Archivium Romanicum, Nuova rivista di Filologia Romanza, 22 (1938): 436–489. Biagini, Enza, and Anna Nozzoli (editors), Bestiari del Novecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 2001. Cassirer, Ernest, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963. Durand, Gilbert, Les structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire, Paris: Bordas, 1969. Eco, Umberto, and Chiara Frugoni, ‘‘A Bestiary in Stone,’’ in FMR: the magazine of Franco Maria Ricci, 92 (1998): 17–36. Lecomte, Mia, Animali Parlanti, Florence: Firenze Atheneum, 1995. Lewinsohn, Richard, alias Morus, Gli animali nella storia della civilta`, Milan: Mondadori, 1956. Mezzalira, Francesco, Beasts and Bestiaries: The Representation of animals from Prehistory to the Renaissance, Turin: Allemandi, 2001. Morini, Luigina, Bestiari medievali, Turin: Einaudi, 1996. Seppilli, Anita, Poesia e magia, Turin: Einaudi, 1962. Theobaldus Epicopus, Physiologus, London: J & E Bumps, 1928. Zambon, Francesco, Il bestiario di Cambridge, Milan: FMR, 1974. Zambon, Francesco, L’alfabetico simbolico degli animali: I bestiaridel medioevo, Milan: Lumi, 2001.

203

CARLO BETOCCHI

CARLO BETOCCHI (1899–1986) In 1932, Carlo Betocchi’s first book, Realta` vince il sogno (Reality Defeats Dreams), a thin volume of 32 lyrics, was published in the poetry series of Frontespizio, the literary Catholic review for which Betocchi was an active contributor. This volume declared a new poetics. In the 1930s, Hermeticism was the dominant poetic movement in Florence. Although Betocchi struck up a friendship with many of its major representatives, such as Mario Luzi, Carlo Bo, and Alfonso Gatto, his poetry is not considered a part of the movement. Realta` vince il sogno does not share any of the Hermetic commonplaces or poetic principles. Betocchi’s main intellectual point of reference was a circle of young Florentine intellectuals rather removed from the Hermetics that included the Catholic novelist Nicola Lisi (1893–1975) and the critic and essayist Piero Bargellini (1897–1980). Sharing Lisi’s and Bargellini’s profound religiosity, he collaborated with them in launching the periodical Calendario dei pensieri e delle pratiche solari in 1923. Betocchi’s non-Hermetic poetics are exemplified by the following verse, from the poem ‘‘Della solitudine’’ (On Solitude): ‘‘E godo la terra / bruna e l’indistruttibile / certezza delle sue cose’’ (I enjoy the brown / earth and the indestructible / certainty of earthly things). The poem is typical of Betocchi’s abiding desire to converse with reality, especially with the landscape with which he enjoys intimate contact. The poet seems immune to the exalted mysticism typical of Hermeticism. Saba’s poetics of direct feeling is a more appropriate reference point for understanding his poetry. In their very titles, Betocchi’s poetic collections describe humble events and common facts and creatures in spiritual communion with a divine presence that permeates reality. As he stated in ‘‘Diario della poesia e della rima’’ (Journal of Poetry and Rhyme), a short essay collected in Tutte le poesie (Complete Poems, 1984), rhyme itself is a rhetorical device to achieve objectivity. Betocchi’s verses could be called a poetry of images in which he represents the lyric scene as if drawing it by hand. His poem ‘‘Piazza dei fanciulli la sera’’ (Square with Children at Night), also in Realta` vince il sogno, is an example. The whole 204

poem develops out of a descriptive catalogue of fixed and moving images; the setting and the people are poetically framed as in an idyll. Yet, the poem is a static representation of nature and humanity. Only with his subsequent collections did Betocchi develop this poetic stasis into a more dynamic form of representation. However, the core of his poetry remained essentially the same: Altre poesie (Other Poems, 1939) as well as Notizie di prosa e di poesia (News on Prose and Poetry, 1947) confirm Betocchi’s poetic craft, and display a deeper cultural consciousness and a better use of his metrical skills. The volume Poesie (Poems, 1955) represents a collection of all his poetic production up to that year. Betocchi continued to update his collected works in Prime e ultimissime (First and Latest Poems, 1974), which included L’estate di San Martino (Indian Summer, 1961) and Un passo, un altro passo (A Step, Another Step, 1967). Un passo, un altro passo opens a new phase in Betocchi’s poetic career: As his poetry matured, he began to understand real