Helena Sanson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197264836
- eISBN:
- 9780191754043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264836.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
This chapter examines women's linguistic education in Cinquecento Italy and the role played by the vernacular in making knowledge more accessible to the less educated, and particularly to women. ...
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This chapter examines women's linguistic education in Cinquecento Italy and the role played by the vernacular in making knowledge more accessible to the less educated, and particularly to women. Women's language, according to men of letters and theorists, was simple and devoid of refinement, but also pure and conservative. Women's role as linguistic educators of their offspring could only be a limited one, circumscribed to the first years of childhood: a girl's education usually remained confined within a domestic environment dominated by the vernacular, and removed from the universe of classical languages and more advanced studies that was a privilege of the lucky few. With the development and spread of the printing press, women came to be seen as a new, profitable sector of the publishing market. They became the target of a variety of works that brought the literary vernacular within their reach. A determining role in helping to spread the literary vernacular across different social classes was played by Petrarchism, and the prestige of the written vernacular allowed for the expression of the voices and talents of women writers. Discussions on language were not merely arid scholarly lucubrations. They had become a fashionable topic that pervaded courtly and upper-class society and concerned men and women alike, with women's presence also occasionally directly gracing the more traditional realms of male linguistic erudition.Less
This chapter examines women's linguistic education in Cinquecento Italy and the role played by the vernacular in making knowledge more accessible to the less educated, and particularly to women. Women's language, according to men of letters and theorists, was simple and devoid of refinement, but also pure and conservative. Women's role as linguistic educators of their offspring could only be a limited one, circumscribed to the first years of childhood: a girl's education usually remained confined within a domestic environment dominated by the vernacular, and removed from the universe of classical languages and more advanced studies that was a privilege of the lucky few. With the development and spread of the printing press, women came to be seen as a new, profitable sector of the publishing market. They became the target of a variety of works that brought the literary vernacular within their reach. A determining role in helping to spread the literary vernacular across different social classes was played by Petrarchism, and the prestige of the written vernacular allowed for the expression of the voices and talents of women writers. Discussions on language were not merely arid scholarly lucubrations. They had become a fashionable topic that pervaded courtly and upper-class society and concerned men and women alike, with women's presence also occasionally directly gracing the more traditional realms of male linguistic erudition.
Martin McLaughlin, Letizia Panizza, and Peter Hainsworth (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. ...
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Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.Less
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.
Gatti Hilary
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter traces the more secular spirit of Giordano Bruno's Petrarchism. It suggests that Bruno's originality can be seen in the fact that he brings his Italian experience of the Petrarchan and ...
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This chapter traces the more secular spirit of Giordano Bruno's Petrarchism. It suggests that Bruno's originality can be seen in the fact that he brings his Italian experience of the Petrarchan and anti-Petrarchan debate to Britain and that he confronted the principal English Petrarchan poet of his time, Sir Philip Sidney. It discusses Bruno's dedication of the Gli eroici furori to Sidney and his belief that the Petrarchan sonnet is a suitable vehicle for philosophical enquiry in the post-Copernican, infinite universe.Less
This chapter traces the more secular spirit of Giordano Bruno's Petrarchism. It suggests that Bruno's originality can be seen in the fact that he brings his Italian experience of the Petrarchan and anti-Petrarchan debate to Britain and that he confronted the principal English Petrarchan poet of his time, Sir Philip Sidney. It discusses Bruno's dedication of the Gli eroici furori to Sidney and his belief that the Petrarchan sonnet is a suitable vehicle for philosophical enquiry in the post-Copernican, infinite universe.
Michael Wyatt
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the traces of Petrarchism in England during the early modern period. It discusses Roger Ascham's attack on Petrarch, Elizabeth Tudor's translation of the first ninety lines of ...
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This chapter examines the traces of Petrarchism in England during the early modern period. It discusses Roger Ascham's attack on Petrarch, Elizabeth Tudor's translation of the first ninety lines of Petrarch's Trionfo dell'Eternità, and Arundel Harrington's rewriting of the Vita Solitaria. It suggests that it was Petrarch's versatility and elusiveness that allowed so many different versions of him to circulate in the early modern period.Less
This chapter examines the traces of Petrarchism in England during the early modern period. It discusses Roger Ascham's attack on Petrarch, Elizabeth Tudor's translation of the first ninety lines of Petrarch's Trionfo dell'Eternità, and Arundel Harrington's rewriting of the Vita Solitaria. It suggests that it was Petrarch's versatility and elusiveness that allowed so many different versions of him to circulate in the early modern period.
Syrithe Pugh
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more ...
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This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more political, than traditional readings have implied. It explains that these two poets share Petrarch's condemnation of desire but do not display their contemptus mundi. It also discusses Spenser's recognition of the Petrarch's authority as a model for creating a sense of nationhood in thrall to a monarch and his use of this model to create a counter-national poetry whose authority is independent of political power.Less
This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more political, than traditional readings have implied. It explains that these two poets share Petrarch's condemnation of desire but do not display their contemptus mundi. It also discusses Spenser's recognition of the Petrarch's authority as a model for creating a sense of nationhood in thrall to a monarch and his use of this model to create a counter-national poetry whose authority is independent of political power.
Ronald D. S. Jack
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the Scottish Petrarchans before and after 1603 or the Union of the Crowns. It explains that Petrarch was initially resisted as a model for the connection between poetry and ...
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This chapter examines the Scottish Petrarchans before and after 1603 or the Union of the Crowns. It explains that Petrarch was initially resisted as a model for the connection between poetry and nationhood and that the Scottish sonnet became more anglicised when James VI became King of England and Scotland and Petrarchism became the more dominant lyrical influence. It considers three Scottish poets who exemplify this development of the Petrarchan sonnet, culminating in William Drummond of Hawthornden.Less
This chapter examines the Scottish Petrarchans before and after 1603 or the Union of the Crowns. It explains that Petrarch was initially resisted as a model for the connection between poetry and nationhood and that the Scottish sonnet became more anglicised when James VI became King of England and Scotland and Petrarchism became the more dominant lyrical influence. It considers three Scottish poets who exemplify this development of the Petrarchan sonnet, culminating in William Drummond of Hawthornden.
Mauro Calcagno (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267688
- eISBN:
- 9780520951525
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267688.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This pathbreaking study links two traditionally separate genres as their stars crossed to explore the emergence of multiple selves in early modern Italian culture and society. Calcagno focuses on the ...
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This pathbreaking study links two traditionally separate genres as their stars crossed to explore the emergence of multiple selves in early modern Italian culture and society. Calcagno focuses on the works of Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both genres, to investigate how they reflect changing ideas about performance and role-playing by singers. The author traces the roots of dialogic subjectivity to Petrarch's love poetry, arguing that Petrarchism exerted a powerful influence, not only on late Renaissance literature and art, but also on music. Covering more than a century of music and cultural history, the book demonstrates that the birth of opera relied on an important feature of the madrigalian tradition: the role of the composer as a narrative agent enabling performers to become characters and hold a specific point of view.Less
This pathbreaking study links two traditionally separate genres as their stars crossed to explore the emergence of multiple selves in early modern Italian culture and society. Calcagno focuses on the works of Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both genres, to investigate how they reflect changing ideas about performance and role-playing by singers. The author traces the roots of dialogic subjectivity to Petrarch's love poetry, arguing that Petrarchism exerted a powerful influence, not only on late Renaissance literature and art, but also on music. Covering more than a century of music and cultural history, the book demonstrates that the birth of opera relied on an important feature of the madrigalian tradition: the role of the composer as a narrative agent enabling performers to become characters and hold a specific point of view.
Helen Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780197266045
- eISBN:
- 9780191851452
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266045.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This article studies a group of romances, appearing first in French in the mid-12th century in the Roman d’Eneas, and later in Anglo-Norman and Middle English (including Ipomadon and William of ...
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This article studies a group of romances, appearing first in French in the mid-12th century in the Roman d’Eneas, and later in Anglo-Norman and Middle English (including Ipomadon and William of Palerne), in which the heroine is given priority over the male protagonist in falling in love and acting to bring that love to fruition. These relationships are aimed at marriage and, very often, procreation, in a way that opens the potential for the founding of a dynasty; they thus go against received ideas of both courtly love and antifeminism. The texts are characterised by long soliloquies given to the heroines that anticipate the Petrarchan discourse of desire, though here it is distinctively feminine and carries the hope of fulfilment; and fulfilment and mutuality are in turn given their own distinctive, mimetic form of poetry.Less
This article studies a group of romances, appearing first in French in the mid-12th century in the Roman d’Eneas, and later in Anglo-Norman and Middle English (including Ipomadon and William of Palerne), in which the heroine is given priority over the male protagonist in falling in love and acting to bring that love to fruition. These relationships are aimed at marriage and, very often, procreation, in a way that opens the potential for the founding of a dynasty; they thus go against received ideas of both courtly love and antifeminism. The texts are characterised by long soliloquies given to the heroines that anticipate the Petrarchan discourse of desire, though here it is distinctively feminine and carries the hope of fulfilment; and fulfilment and mutuality are in turn given their own distinctive, mimetic form of poetry.
Mauro Calcagno
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267688
- eISBN:
- 9780520951525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267688.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
From Madrigal to Opera investigates music's own contribution to Petrarchism as a window on the issue of early modern subjectivity.
From Madrigal to Opera investigates music's own contribution to Petrarchism as a window on the issue of early modern subjectivity.
Mauro Calcagno
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267688
- eISBN:
- 9780520951525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267688.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
A powerful discourse on a flexible self emerges in the opening sonnet of Petrarch's Canzoniere, discussed also in musical settings by Monteverdi and Wert. Petrarch's view of the self was ...
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A powerful discourse on a flexible self emerges in the opening sonnet of Petrarch's Canzoniere, discussed also in musical settings by Monteverdi and Wert. Petrarch's view of the self was appropriated, inflected, and socialized in late Renaissance literary Petrarchism, of which the madrigal was an epiphenomenon. Representative figures of the literary side of Petrarchism practiced and theorized about a “rhetoric of voice and address,” a way in which poets communicated to readers/listeners, which was then appropriated by musicians.Less
A powerful discourse on a flexible self emerges in the opening sonnet of Petrarch's Canzoniere, discussed also in musical settings by Monteverdi and Wert. Petrarch's view of the self was appropriated, inflected, and socialized in late Renaissance literary Petrarchism, of which the madrigal was an epiphenomenon. Representative figures of the literary side of Petrarchism practiced and theorized about a “rhetoric of voice and address,” a way in which poets communicated to readers/listeners, which was then appropriated by musicians.
Mauro Calcagno
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267688
- eISBN:
- 9780520951525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267688.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Chapter 5 investigates the musical side of Petrarchism in the madrigal before Monteverdi, from the microlevel of verbal resonances and emphasis on specific words to the macrotextual level of modeling ...
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Chapter 5 investigates the musical side of Petrarchism in the madrigal before Monteverdi, from the microlevel of verbal resonances and emphasis on specific words to the macrotextual level of modeling print collections of poems and madrigals on the Canzoniere. This range of possibilities is explored from the point of view of creators, performers, and listeners, in works by Verdelot, Arcadelt, Willaert, Rore, Wert, and Marenzio, focusing on these composers' appropriation of the voice of poets, as well as on the listeners' perception of it. Through madrigal books, musicians created stories that effectively met the expectations of listeners, who stored in their memories narrative patterns absorbed by reading poetry collections. These composers calibrated the relationships between narrator and characters in a variety of ways, assembling texts from disparate literary sources and modifying them to suit their own purposes.Less
Chapter 5 investigates the musical side of Petrarchism in the madrigal before Monteverdi, from the microlevel of verbal resonances and emphasis on specific words to the macrotextual level of modeling print collections of poems and madrigals on the Canzoniere. This range of possibilities is explored from the point of view of creators, performers, and listeners, in works by Verdelot, Arcadelt, Willaert, Rore, Wert, and Marenzio, focusing on these composers' appropriation of the voice of poets, as well as on the listeners' perception of it. Through madrigal books, musicians created stories that effectively met the expectations of listeners, who stored in their memories narrative patterns absorbed by reading poetry collections. These composers calibrated the relationships between narrator and characters in a variety of ways, assembling texts from disparate literary sources and modifying them to suit their own purposes.
William J. Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781501700019
- eISBN:
- 9781501703812
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501700019.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter explores the acts of redaction and revision in Petrarch’s works. In general, Petrarch’s manuscripts during the 1350s and 1360s abound in tropes associated with time, change, and shifting ...
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This chapter explores the acts of redaction and revision in Petrarch’s works. In general, Petrarch’s manuscripts during the 1350s and 1360s abound in tropes associated with time, change, and shifting identity, and his revisions in these manuscripts often concern the relationship of change to physical matter. The chapter argues that the revisionary nature of his poems shapes Petrarch’s vernacular poetics, and its influence dominates sixteenth-century Petrarchism. Petrarch himself seems to have thought of his writing as a species of intellectual property that entitled him to a professional status, hence his poems reveal not the presentation of a completed and unchanging self, but the palimpsest of a past self under revision as he evolves a new and still changing self.Less
This chapter explores the acts of redaction and revision in Petrarch’s works. In general, Petrarch’s manuscripts during the 1350s and 1360s abound in tropes associated with time, change, and shifting identity, and his revisions in these manuscripts often concern the relationship of change to physical matter. The chapter argues that the revisionary nature of his poems shapes Petrarch’s vernacular poetics, and its influence dominates sixteenth-century Petrarchism. Petrarch himself seems to have thought of his writing as a species of intellectual property that entitled him to a professional status, hence his poems reveal not the presentation of a completed and unchanging self, but the palimpsest of a past self under revision as he evolves a new and still changing self.
William J. Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781501700019
- eISBN:
- 9781501703812
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501700019.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the fifth and newly revised edition of Ronsard’s Oeuvres (1578), which includes a new sonnet sequence written for one of the queen mother’s maids of honor, Hélène de Surgères. ...
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This chapter examines the fifth and newly revised edition of Ronsard’s Oeuvres (1578), which includes a new sonnet sequence written for one of the queen mother’s maids of honor, Hélène de Surgères. It consists of two parts with no overt distinguishing features between them, offering sixty poems in Le premiere livre des sonnets pour Hélène and fifty-five poems in Le second livre des sonnets pour Hélène. To this two-part collection the poet attached fifty-one Amours diverses, thirty-nine of which he integrated into his Sonnets pour Hélène in the sixth edition of his Oeuvres (1584). These years mark Ronsard’s return to Petrarchism, building upon observations about himself and others, spun from experience and fused with a smart, sophisticated use of Petrarchan topoi.Less
This chapter examines the fifth and newly revised edition of Ronsard’s Oeuvres (1578), which includes a new sonnet sequence written for one of the queen mother’s maids of honor, Hélène de Surgères. It consists of two parts with no overt distinguishing features between them, offering sixty poems in Le premiere livre des sonnets pour Hélène and fifty-five poems in Le second livre des sonnets pour Hélène. To this two-part collection the poet attached fifty-one Amours diverses, thirty-nine of which he integrated into his Sonnets pour Hélène in the sixth edition of his Oeuvres (1584). These years mark Ronsard’s return to Petrarchism, building upon observations about himself and others, spun from experience and fused with a smart, sophisticated use of Petrarchan topoi.
David Holton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474403795
- eISBN:
- 9781474435130
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403795.003.0021
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine ...
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Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine (the biblical drama Abraham’s Sacrifice) and a pastoral idyll with a tragic outcome (The Shepherdess), while Kornaros’ verse romance Erotokritos plays with the possibility of a tragic ending before settling for the outcome proper to romance. This intermingling of the tragic and the comic – of tears and laughter – is common in Cretan Renaissance literature, and most fully realised in the new hybrid genre of tragicommedia pastorale, which seems to have been popular in Crete around 1600. Taking Panoria by Georgios Chortatsis as its main textual focus, this chapter explores the interaction of tears and laughter both at a textual level and in plot structure. While the theoretical bases of tragicomedy, as propounded by Guarini, clearly underpin works like Panoria, in the case of works belonging to other genres other factors are involved: Petrarchising tropes, which are common in Cretan literature, and the antithetical structures characteristic of the folk tradition. Panoria, set on Mount Ida, is thoroughly Cretan and at the same time thoroughly imbued with late-Renaissance poetics.Less
Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine (the biblical drama Abraham’s Sacrifice) and a pastoral idyll with a tragic outcome (The Shepherdess), while Kornaros’ verse romance Erotokritos plays with the possibility of a tragic ending before settling for the outcome proper to romance. This intermingling of the tragic and the comic – of tears and laughter – is common in Cretan Renaissance literature, and most fully realised in the new hybrid genre of tragicommedia pastorale, which seems to have been popular in Crete around 1600. Taking Panoria by Georgios Chortatsis as its main textual focus, this chapter explores the interaction of tears and laughter both at a textual level and in plot structure. While the theoretical bases of tragicomedy, as propounded by Guarini, clearly underpin works like Panoria, in the case of works belonging to other genres other factors are involved: Petrarchising tropes, which are common in Cretan literature, and the antithetical structures characteristic of the folk tradition. Panoria, set on Mount Ida, is thoroughly Cretan and at the same time thoroughly imbued with late-Renaissance poetics.
Cynthia N. Nazarian
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501705229
- eISBN:
- 9781501708268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705229.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses the use of Petrarchan themes to explore modes of legitimate political resistance by considering the constant collaborative dialogue between Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence ...
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This chapter discusses the use of Petrarchan themes to explore modes of legitimate political resistance by considering the constant collaborative dialogue between Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence Amoretti and his epic-romance poem The Faerie Queene. It argues that Amoretti's Petrarchism is political, whereas The Faerie Queene's politics are Petrarchan: the two works collaboratively stage contests between lyric and epic that test each genre's strategies of resistance to tyranny. It shows that the sonnets articulate contestation and critique through lyric countersovereignty, while the epic-romance overthrows various Petrarchan Beloveds through its narrative teleology. By delegitimizing their Beloveds' sovereignty, both texts open up the possibility of lyric resistance to tyranny. They also share highly specific imagery in their portrayals of subjection and vulnerability.Less
This chapter discusses the use of Petrarchan themes to explore modes of legitimate political resistance by considering the constant collaborative dialogue between Edmund Spenser's sonnet sequence Amoretti and his epic-romance poem The Faerie Queene. It argues that Amoretti's Petrarchism is political, whereas The Faerie Queene's politics are Petrarchan: the two works collaboratively stage contests between lyric and epic that test each genre's strategies of resistance to tyranny. It shows that the sonnets articulate contestation and critique through lyric countersovereignty, while the epic-romance overthrows various Petrarchan Beloveds through its narrative teleology. By delegitimizing their Beloveds' sovereignty, both texts open up the possibility of lyric resistance to tyranny. They also share highly specific imagery in their portrayals of subjection and vulnerability.
Cynthia N. Nazarian
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501705229
- eISBN:
- 9781501708268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705229.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book has examined the metaphors of wounding, torture, vulnerability, and war that were abound in sixteenth-century love poetry, identifying them as a pan-European phenomenon through which early ...
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This book has examined the metaphors of wounding, torture, vulnerability, and war that were abound in sixteenth-century love poetry, identifying them as a pan-European phenomenon through which early modern poets recoded Petrarchan conventions of inequality and oppression into a new idiom for political critique. It has argued that sixteenth-century European lyric imagination actively explored the foundations of a countersovereign voice that had begun with Petrarchan parrhēsia. This conclusion considers William Shakespeare's anti-Petrarchan turn by focusing on the parodic questioning of Petrarchan postures of abjection in Venus and Adonis and the nightmarish vision of Petrarchan vengeance that is The Rape of Lucrece. Both texts raise problems that the study of Petrarchism cannot resolve: paradoxes of pain, authenticity, and eloquence that color the poet's claims of truth and suffering. Whereas Venus and Adonis gradually deconstructed the elements of Petrarchan countersovereignty to lampoon the genre's contradictions, The Rape of Lucrece redeploys it, using countersovereignty to reveal the same agency and political potential that Petrarchism locates at the heart of vulnerability.Less
This book has examined the metaphors of wounding, torture, vulnerability, and war that were abound in sixteenth-century love poetry, identifying them as a pan-European phenomenon through which early modern poets recoded Petrarchan conventions of inequality and oppression into a new idiom for political critique. It has argued that sixteenth-century European lyric imagination actively explored the foundations of a countersovereign voice that had begun with Petrarchan parrhēsia. This conclusion considers William Shakespeare's anti-Petrarchan turn by focusing on the parodic questioning of Petrarchan postures of abjection in Venus and Adonis and the nightmarish vision of Petrarchan vengeance that is The Rape of Lucrece. Both texts raise problems that the study of Petrarchism cannot resolve: paradoxes of pain, authenticity, and eloquence that color the poet's claims of truth and suffering. Whereas Venus and Adonis gradually deconstructed the elements of Petrarchan countersovereignty to lampoon the genre's contradictions, The Rape of Lucrece redeploys it, using countersovereignty to reveal the same agency and political potential that Petrarchism locates at the heart of vulnerability.
Andrew Hui
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823273355
- eISBN:
- 9780823273393
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823273355.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Any study of Renaissance ruins must begin with Petrarch, for he was one of the first thinkers to recognize that the signs of antiquity were scattered, dispersed, mutilated, which necessitated their ...
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Any study of Renaissance ruins must begin with Petrarch, for he was one of the first thinkers to recognize that the signs of antiquity were scattered, dispersed, mutilated, which necessitated their reconstruction and renovation. This chapter argues that Petrarch’s existential encounter with the past can be conceived of as an investigation, a search for vestigia. The poetics of ruins for Petrarch is one in which his reflection on the ruins of Rome broadens into a meditation of lost time; this discourse then prompts him to compose fragmentary works that attempt to recollect his scattered self. I give a brief semantic history of vestigium; it explores Petrarch’s search for Laura’s footprints in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta as guided by a dissembling imitation of Dante’s work; in his epic, the Africa, Rome as a city is textualized and made whole through a careful reworking of its predecessors, Aeneid and Pharsalia; there is a kinship between contemplating ruins and writing letters in Petrarch’s epistles, which are modeled after Cicero’s. The chapter finally offers some thoughts on the relationship between gathering the fragments of Petrarch’s self in the Secretum and collecting the fragments of ancient manuscripts in his epistolary collection.Less
Any study of Renaissance ruins must begin with Petrarch, for he was one of the first thinkers to recognize that the signs of antiquity were scattered, dispersed, mutilated, which necessitated their reconstruction and renovation. This chapter argues that Petrarch’s existential encounter with the past can be conceived of as an investigation, a search for vestigia. The poetics of ruins for Petrarch is one in which his reflection on the ruins of Rome broadens into a meditation of lost time; this discourse then prompts him to compose fragmentary works that attempt to recollect his scattered self. I give a brief semantic history of vestigium; it explores Petrarch’s search for Laura’s footprints in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta as guided by a dissembling imitation of Dante’s work; in his epic, the Africa, Rome as a city is textualized and made whole through a careful reworking of its predecessors, Aeneid and Pharsalia; there is a kinship between contemplating ruins and writing letters in Petrarch’s epistles, which are modeled after Cicero’s. The chapter finally offers some thoughts on the relationship between gathering the fragments of Petrarch’s self in the Secretum and collecting the fragments of ancient manuscripts in his epistolary collection.
