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Rhetoric and Inspiration
The Other Petrarchism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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We are in Florence and Ferrara, between 1300 and 1600 A.D. At the beginning of this period the subjects of petty Italian potentates dream of a universal Empire and Church: a universal confined to the Latin world. Over the next three centuries this dream gradually fades; the idea of a universal Church is largely replaced by a discourse addressed to the individual conscience while in the political world sovereignty becomes synonymous with local power. The universal is progressively dissolved within a multiplicity of separate regimes, each rooted in its own territory; in other words, individual societies achieve spiritual legitimation by a transfer of sovereignty. Thus linked with the absolute, territorial sovereignty, rehabilitating the idea of the local, becomes the foundation of the many-sided flowering of the Renaissance. A reading of the poets is helpful in grasping the full complexity of this historical transformation. How were Dante, Petrarch and those poets who imitated the poets of Antiquity, the so-called Petrarchists, understood? This study will focus on the way in which the texts were created. By comparing them we will try to elucidate what makes for the importance and urgency of these poems.
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- Copyright © 1996 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
Notes
1. G. Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), ed. by B. Hattaway, Kent State University Press, 1970, p. 2, quoted in: W. Rebhorn, The Emperor of Men's Minds, Ithaca, 1995, p. 21.
2. See P. Ténoudji, "La République, la mathématique et la musique," in: Les Temps modernes, 586 (1996). The formulation "the encompassing of the oppo sites" (l'englobement des contraires) comes from Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchi cus, Paris, 1996; the simultaneous "yes and no" from Maria Daraki, "Sortir du structuralisme," in: Esprit, May 1994.
3. Hannah Arendt, Love and St. Augustine, Chicago, 1996.
4. The classical source is Ovid, but it first reached the West via the Andalusian Muslim mystics in the 12th century, notably Ruzbehn Baqli. H. Corbin and M. Mo'in (ed.), Le Jasmin des fidèles d'Amour, Paris/Teheran, 1958.
5. H. Arendt, (note 3 above), p. 96.
6. I have in mind here a commentary to the book of Matthew, 16:18 ("And I say this to you: you are Peter, the Rock, and on this rock I will build my church …), by Gerard Haddad (Les bibliocastes, Paris, 1991); in Hebrew the word "father" is written as aleph, "son" as beth or noun, "rock" as aleph, beth, noun. "Only then," Haddad writes on p. 25, "can we grasp the true complex ity of the ‘pun' on which the Church is based."
7. As Freud sees it (in Moses and Monotheism), Christianity is the only religion where the son, not the father, is killed.
8. I'm thinking here of an excerpt from the Chevalier à la Charette (2821-2823): "In the name of God, who is the son and the father / who gave himself as mother / one who was his daughter and servant."
9. That is, with Pietro d'Albano, Marsilio da Padua, Taddeo da Parma.
10. Le Familiari, X, IV.
11. Giovanni Boccaccio: Trattello in lauda di Dante (1361), Milan, 1995, pp. 57, 155.
12. III, 9. 4, in: Tutte le opere, Milan, 1993, p. 151.
13. II, 7,1993, p. 53.
14. 1993, XLI, p. 76.
15. Teresa D'Avila, Moradas del castillo interior, 1577, Sevilla, in: Obras Completas, Madrid, 1948, Vol. I, p. 58.
16. This school exercise, made up of antitheses, served as a model for Du Bellay (La nuit m'est courte, et le jour trop me dure, Olive, XXVI), Ronsard (J'espere et crains, je me tais et supplie, Amours de Cassandre, XII), and Louise Labé (Je vis, je meurs, je me brûle et me noye, Oeuvres, VIII).
17. F. Petrarca, Canzoniere, Milan, 1991, sonnet CCXXIII.
18. Ronsard, Sonnets pour Hèlene, I.
19. End of the sonnet quoted above (note 17).
20. Petrarca (note 18 above).
21. Ronsard, Hymne de la mort (1555), p. 175.
22. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, Paris, 1938, reed. 1974, Vol. II, p. 979.
23. 1995, pp. 57, 153.
24. Ibid., pp. 80, 220.
25. Les Généalogies, 1380, XVI, 10.
26. Discorsi della famiglia, II, 12.
27. Both the Italian madrigal and canzone alla francese combined Petrarchist poems with the Franco-Flemish song of Josquin Desprez and Ockeghem.
28. Paris, 1964, p. 16.
29. Paris, 1994.
30. This entire paragraph, up until the "but" which follows, was inspired by ideas advanced by Florence Dupont, L'Invention de la littérature, 1995, and Marcel Détienne, Les Maîtres de vérité, 1961.
31. See, for example, G. Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex, Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice, New York, 1985.
32. S. Riccio, Vita di Don Pietro di Toledo, Naples, 1846, p. 57.
33. B. Croce, "L'accademia dei Sereni," in: Aneddoti di varia letteratura, Bari, 1953, pp. 11, 302.
34. Plato, Symposium, 208c; Republic, 458d.
35. The theme of poetic fury or enthusiasm is a favorite and recurring theme of Renassiance Italians: from Phedra to Horace (Odes, III, 4, 5), Pliny (Épistle, VII, 4), Ovid (The Art of Love) and of course in chivalric and courtly literature (beginning in the 12th century and in Tristan).
36. Plato, Phaedo, XXXV, 84.
37. In the Hindu pantheon Brahma, who is the origin of all created life, is depicted riding a swan. For the Celts and Germans, swan-women were seen as divine hypostases with the gift of prophecy. Those of the Celts were linked to Dumezil's first and third functions (royal origin and fertility) while the Ger manic Valkyries were linked to the second (warrior-protectors).
38. Venice, 1539; I have made use of the text found in the second edition, pub lished by the same editor in 1541.
39. Read in Morisset and Thévenot, Les lettres latines, Paris, 1978, Vol. IV, p. 1008.
40. F. Braudel, Le Modèle italien, Paris, 1994, p.130.
41. As we will see below in regard to Petrarch, this eradication also took the form of a transformation of nature into a symbol or epiphany of the divine nature itself, separated from society and accessible only to a few "renunciators": I am thinking here of St. Francis of Assisi.
42. I realize that this study artificially isolates the young Dante of the Vita Nuova and the "old," Florentine Boccaccio, after his acquaintance with Petrarch. The writings of the "old" Dante and "young" Boccaccio are probably best classed as "Petrarchan-Humanist." Although the young Boccaccio tries to overcome desire, his most misogynist treatise, il Corbaccio (1350), nevertheless makes use of "intellectual vision."
43. The papal letters quoted in this paragraph were read by the present author in L'Histoire ecclésiastique du peuple anglais, written by Bède le Vénerable, trans. P. Delaveau, Paris, 1995, pp. 125-145.
44. See, among others: G. Muzio, 1571: Il gentilhuomo, trattato de la nobilità, Venice; G.B. Nicolucci, called Le Pigna, 1561: Il principe, Florence Sansovino; F. Patrizi di Cherso, 1553: Dialogo del honore (containing: il barignano), Venice, Guffio; P. Rocchi, 1571: Dialogo del gentilhuomo (1568), Lucca, Sardi; A. Romei, 1586; Discorso della nobilità, Venice; R. Varano, 1575; Nato nobile et in città libera, Ferrara, Baldini.
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