Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples. Matteo Soranzo

178 Pages·2014·0.999 MB·English

by  Matteo Soranzo

Poetry and IdentIty
In Quattrocento naPles
Frontispiece: Fiorentino, adriano (ca. 1450/60–1499). Portrait medal of Giovanni Pontano
(1426–1503), Italian poet, historian and statesman. obverse: urania. Museo nazionale del
Bargello, Florence, Italy. Photo credit: scala / art resource, ny.
Poetry and Identity
in Quattrocento naples
Matteo soranzo
McGill University, Canada
© Matteo soranzo 2014
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Matteo soranzo has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988,
to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company
Wey court east 110 cherry street
union road suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, Vt 05401-3818
surrey, Gu9 7Pt usa
england
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
soranzo, Matteo.
Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento naples / by Matteo soranzo.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-1355-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4724-1356-7 (ebook)—
IsBn 978-1-4724-1357-4 (epub)
1. Italian poetry—15th century—History and criticism. 2. Italian literature—Italy—
Naples—History and criticism. 3. Naples (Italy)—Intellectual life—15th century. I. Title.
PQ4101.s67 2014
851’.209—dc23
2013035910
ISBN 9781472413550 (hbk)
ISBN 9781472413567 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781472413574 (ebk – ePUB)
V
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Latin at the Castle 13
2 Poetry and Patria 29
3 Elegies for a Bride 47
4 Pastoral Affiliations 71
5 Written in the Stars 89
6 The Cloud-Shrouded Tower 117
Conclusion 143
Works Cited 147
Index 167
This page has been left blank intentionally
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of an intellectual itinerary started in 2003 at the University
of Wisconsin–Madison. What was initially conceived as a survey of neo-Latin
poems from fifteenth-century Italy brought me on the one hand to reconsider my
way of looking at literature from a theoretically informed perspective, and on the
other hand to narrow down my focus on a specific area (Naples) and time period
(the Aragonese domination). In doing so, I am very much indebted to the rare
combination of flexibility and rigor that characterized the research and teaching
philosophy of my professors and colleagues at UW–Madison and, especially, to
the courses and seminars offered by the Departments of French and Italian and
History of Science.
Identity and its interplay with poetry emerged as the theme of this book and
became the top priority in my research agenda only after 2008, while teaching
at Bowdoin College and McGill University. The imaginative scholarship and
multiple backgrounds of my colleagues at the Departments of Romance Languages
at Bowdoin and Languages, Literatures and Cultures at McGill, combined with the
challenge of presenting and explaining my research in front of a multidisciplinary
audience of literary critics, art historians, anthropologists, religious historians and
sociologists, brought me to engage in a dialogue with the social sciences that – at
least in my intentions – still continues to inspire my work.
Part of the material and ideas that made their way into this book have already
been published in other journals and edited volumes. Chapters 1 and 2 expand on
“Umbria Pieridum Cultrix (Parthenopeus I: 18): Poetry and Identity in Giovanni
Gioviano Pontano (1429–1503),” Italian Studies 67.1 (2012): 27–40; Chapter 3
is based upon “Poetry and Society in Quattrocento Naples: Giovanni Pontano’s
Elegies of Married Love,” in Marriage in Premodern Europe, ed. Jacqueline
Murray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Chapter 4 builds on ideas
sketched in “Audience and Quattrocento Pastoral: the Case of Jacopo Sannazaro’s
Arcadia,” Skepsi 2.1 (2009): 49–65; Chapter 5 revisits part of “Giovanni Pontano
(1429–1503) on Astrology and Poetic Authority,” Aries 11.1 (2011): 23–52;
while Chapter 6 re-examines ideas outlined in “Words of Conversion: Poetry
and Identity in Early Modern Italy,” Journal of Religion in Europe 6.2 (2013):
229–62. I thank the Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in Toronto
and the other publishers for granting me permission to use this material for the
present book.
Throughout the years numerous individuals and institutions have encouraged
and challenged my work with their input and criticism. Prof. Armando Balduino
from the University of Padua, however, deserves a special mention for having
viii Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples
first directed my interest to Quattrocento Italian literature, and in particular to the
largely unexplored poetry in Latin. Since the long-gone days of my early studies
in Italy, his exhortation to “look at history through texts, and not at texts through
history” has haunted me like an enigma, to which this book has the ambition to
offer a first, albeit incomplete, solution.
Montreal, December 1, 2013
Introduction
[…] ciò che conta non è infatti l’essere anagrafico, che accomuna nella sua
indifferenza date di nascita e registrazione di morti, ma l’essere che è cercato e
riconosciuto.1
—Ernesto De Martino, Premessa a A. Pierro. Appuntamento. Poesie (1946–1967)
A Quest for Helicon
On the first folio of a manuscript that used to belong to Angelo Colocci, a book
collector living in sixteenth-century Rome, an erudite named Girolamo Borgia
described the public performance of a poem entitled Urania on February 1,
1501, in Naples. As Borgia’s annotation informs us, the author and performer
of this five-book poem in Latin hexameters, which sets out to explain poetically
the astrological causes of earthly events, was the Umbrian humanist Giovanni
Gioviano Pontano (1429–1503), once the leading political and intellectual figure
of Quattrocento Naples, an old man retired from public life at the time of the event:
February 1, 1501. Pontano began to read his Urania in his academy. Fifteen
noble and most erudite men attended the reading almost every day. But I,
Girolamo, did not spend one single day without attending, and made sure to
write on the margins whatever I could. Indeed, these annotations are extracted
from the oracle of their very author.2
Great expectations must have surrounded this official presentation of Pontano’s
Urania, a poem that many authoritative critics – among them Angelo Poliziano
(1454–1494) – had already praised but only few had the opportunity to read in
its entirety.3 More than 30 years had passed since Pontano, in a programmatic
text of his youthful collection Parthenopeus (1450–1471; first printed 1498), had
solemnly promised a poem on the nature of things to his older friend, and fellow
1 [[…] what counts is not the being that is registered in inventories, which
indifferently records dates of birth and death registrations, but the being that is sought after
and acknowledged.]
2 Ms. Vat. Lat. 5175 fol. 1r: “Cal. Februarii 1501. Pontanus legere coepit suam
Uraniam in sua achademia, cui lectioni fere semper quindecim generosi et eruditissimi
viri affuere; nec vero ipse ego Hieronymus ullum unquam praeterii diem, quin adessem, et
quae potui in margine anotanda curaverim, quae quidem sunt ab eiusdem auctoris oraculo
exprompta.”
3 For an excellent contextualization of Poliziano’s letters to Pontano, see Martelli, “Il
‘Libro delle epistole,’” 204–18.