Petrarca: Canoni, esemplarità (review)

Number 125 in the series Europa delle Corti, Biblioteca del Cinquencento, Valeria Finucci's edited volume on the occasion of Petrarch's 700^th birthday (2004) brings together twelve essays on the poet and on Petrarchism by scholars from Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States. Ranging broadly across disciplines and time, the collection represents Italian studies, history, anthropology, art history, musicology, English, cultural studies, and medicine.

Following Finucci's introduction that explains the genesis of the volume, the essays, all written in Italian —although several (by Brownlee, Simpson, Carlino, Gerbino, Cox, King, Campbell, and Celenza) have appeared previously in English in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35, no. 3 (2005) —are arranged into four sections. Section 1, L'ombra dei padri: tra tradizione e ambizione ("The Shadow of Fathers: Between Tradition and Ambition"), includes essays by Amedeo Quondam on the Nicolò Franco 1539 edition of Petrarchista, James Simpson on the Trionfi, and Kevin Brownlee on Petrarch's choices for the genealogy of vernacular Italian lyric poetry in the shadow of Dante.

Section 2, Petrarchismo senza confini ("Petrarchism without Borders"), provides three fascinating essays on Petrarch's reception in the sixteenth century. Virginia Cox's "Attraverso lo specchio," examining the female reception of the Trecento poet, concludes that women poets did not adopt the male voice because in the second half of the century they had a "linea matriarcale" (matriarchal line) that descended from Gambara and Colonna. Stephen Campbell's essay with the provocative title, "'E la bellezza si fece carne': Petrarchismo, mitologia, e raffigurazione della bellezza maschile, 1500–1540" ("And Beauty Became Flesh: Petrarchism, Mythology, and the Depiction of Masculine Beauty, 1500–1540"), argues persuasively that the mythological paintings (e.g., Bronzino's Cosimo de' Medici come Orfeo, Perugino' s Lotta tra Amore e Castità, and Parmigiano' s Cupido intaglia il suo arco), are products of the encounter between Petrarchism and the Greek and Latin lyric, show the similarity between sculpture and painting in the period, and declare the power of art to evoke sensual (even homoerotic) responses. Giuseppe Gerbino's "Petrarchismo e madrigale musicale" ("Petrarchism and the Musical Madrigal") treats the nexus between polyphony and Petrarchism.

Section 3, Opinion leader: fra tempo e storia ("Opinion Leader: Between Time and History"), collects the essays of Ron Witt, "La concezione della storia in Petrarca" ("The Conception of History in Petrarch"), Christopher Celenza, "Petrarca, il latino e la latinità nel Rinascimento italiano" ("Petrarch, Latin, and Latinity in the Italian Renaissance"), Giuseppe Mazzotta, "Petrarca e il Discorso di Roma" ("Petrarch and the Discourse of Rome"), and Margaret King, "Petrarca, le prime scrittrici umaniste e la coscienza dell' io" ("Petrarch, the First Humanist Female Writers, and the Consciousness of I"). Among the most stimulating essays in the collection, Witt's argues (as he does in his 2000 book In the Footsteps of the Ancients) that from the middle of the thirteenth century, Italian intellectuals began to look to Rome as a model for the emergent urban secular communes. Petrarch recreates antiquity, however, Witt claims, according to his personal historical imagination. Celenza proposes Petrarch's discovery of dialogic ambiguity as essential to a free society, useful especially today. Mazzotta's essay evaluates Petrarch's Collatio Laureationis, his 1341 speech when he received the laurel crown in Rome. Exploring Petrarch's theory of culture as based on Cicero's Pro Archia, Mazzotta argues that Petrarch gives birth to a modern literary culture that replaces political imperialism, thus putting language, literature, and humanistic activity at the center of human achievement. Turning to female Petrarchists, King's essay spans over 100 years to discuss the female humanists Nogarola, Fedele, Cereta, and Morata, who like Petrarch discovered the self in the exile of their studies.

The final section, Le stagioni del corpo: scienza e etica ("The Seasons of the Body: Science and Ethics"), comprises Andrea Carlino's "Scritture del disprezzo: Petrarca e la critica...