Letteratura e Città: Metafore di traslazione e Parnaso urbano fra Quattro e Seicento

This collection of essays aims to catalogue the ways in which humanism adapted to the new political and religious conditions of later sixteenth-century Italy. Avellini has put together five essays which are intended to find their unity and cohesion from the themes outlined in the introduction. Her principal interest lies in the ways in which writers modified humanism to the changing demands of the city, court, and university and the consequences that had for their intellectual output.

The first chapter on literature and the city offers a broad panorama of humanism up to the end of the fifteenth century. The author deals with a tantalizing range of issues, some of which will be taken up in the other essays: the relationship of humanism to power in the changing urban context of Renaissance Italy, humanists and their ambiguous attitudes to the universities, and, in particular, the role of Greek humanism in renewing university culture. Avellini employs the methodology to which she will remain faithful throughout the book. She bases her studies on abbreviated biographies of humanists and intellectuals, linking later developments to earlier humanist endeavors. Avellini attempts to provide a framework to her kaleidoscopic array of names by having recourse to Leo Strauss on several occasions, especially for her confirmation that Renaissance humanism can be seen as an attempt at an accord between Athens and Jerusalem: that is, between classical learning and religious belief. In her view, none of the Italian Renaissance cities was successful in this amalgamation.

In the first of her individual studies, taking Strauss's concept of reticence in literature as her starting-point, Avellini proposes an analysis of Sperone Speroni's Dialogo della retorica and Dialogo delle lingue. Her study is underpinned by an examination of the role of Antonio Brocardo, who appears in both dialogues. She makes the claim that he is the subversive mouthpiece of Speroni himself both in his anti-Bemban views and in his religious beliefs. Avellini is able to support this claim by a careful reconstruction of Bolognese intellectual life in the early sixteenth century. A persuasive link is made between Brocardo and the controversy over the immortality of the soul involving Pomponazzi and Peretto. By bringing together the intellectual context and a reading of the literary space occupied by Brocardo, Avellini makes a suggestive move in the interpretation of Renaissance texts in general.

Avellini carries out a similar bipartite analysis of Andrea Alciato. This chapter precisely indicates the strengths and weaknesses of her approach. The first part is in the form of an overview of Milanese culture in sixteenth-century Sforza Milan. The author does not make it easy for the reader: she does not provide a map to mark clearly the contiguities with the Alciato material. Instead, there are numerous references to printers and scholars who had Bolognese connections, such as Francesco Puteolano and Battista Pio whose relevance is not altogether defined. The second part on Alciato is much more accessible. Avellini notes his debt to Poliziano and his interest in Tacitus. She carries out some thoughtful analysis within the framework of her ideas about the reuse of Greek culture in the Renaissance.

The fourth chapter concerns attitudes toward the courts in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It considers the experiences of a number of courtiers in the Counter-Reformation including Battista Guarini. The last chapter finishes in Bologna and deals with the question of duels in a city controlled by the papacy where the aristocracy is struggling to maintain its identity. Through a study of the literary works of two duelists Ercole Bottrigari and Virgilio Malvezzi, Avellini paints a convincing picture of dissidence both in the form of the duel itself and in literary production where anti-Catholic views are espoused by Bottrigari.

Letteratura e città would have been a much better work if Avellini had managed to maintain the clarity of the last essay throughout the book. Unfortunately the book is all too often prolix, unclear, and hard to follow. Although the basic arguments are in place, there are no general conclusions drawn from the individual chapters and the book would have benefited enormously from a more focused introduction. This is a book which is to be consulted on particular issues rather than read from beginning to end.