The poetic mode most often associated with the marvellous is epic: an inherently hybrid form of poetry that combines narration with enactment. In his Discorsi del poema eroico (1587; pub. 1594), Torquato Tasso (1544–95) conveyed his own understanding of meraviglia, which in epic poetry is essential as long as it is tempered, in his view, by verisimile (verisimilitude). This chapter explores the transformation of epic from poem to madrigal to reveal how musical setting recalibrated the representational balance achieved in epic poetry. Following the lead of Giaches de Wert (1535–96) and Luca Marenzio (1553–99), Monteverdi would bring epic poetry in ottava rima – particularly musical settings of Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme liberata (1581) – into the lyric-dominated world of the madrigal book.

Monteverdi’s place in the history of music has long had its roots in text music relations; he has been seen as a faithful interpreter of Italian poetry and a master of matching musical technique to poetic gesture. Scholars have perhaps been too quick to explain perceived tensions or inconsistencies between text and music in Monteverdi’s madrigals as youthful emulations of his forebears, begrudging concessions to new poetic trends, or simply as mistakes. What is more is that these very same tensions, or lack thereof, have occasionally been taken as proof of Monteverdi’s own literary allegiances: Petrarchan, Marinist, or otherwise. Nevertheless, Monteverdi seems to have been less concerned with matching poet to poetics as he was with exploring the representational potential of musical technique and poetic voice. This introduction reconsiders the poetics of the marvellous in scholarly perceptions of Monteverdi’s approach to the interpretation of poetry.

Is it possible to hear marvels? Despite its deep roots in Aristotelian thought, the marvellous, or meraviglia in Italian, was a highly contested subject in early modern literary circles. It is most often associated with Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), the poet who infamously declared that the aim of poetry was, above all else, to arouse wonder. The primacy of wonderment as an artistic aim did not, however, begin with Marino. Not only does the idea permeate criticism throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, particularly in the writings of Francesco Patrizi (1529–97), but it was by no means restricted to the art of poetry alone. This chapter focuses on the origins of meraviglia in the work of classical writers, its centrality to literary debates in the sixteenth century, and its reimagining in the poetry, painting, and sculpture of the early seventeenth century.

Magical realism, primitivism and ethnography are historically and theoretically interrelated discourses. Mavellous folk and fairy tales, legends and myths are remote origins that received renewed attention with the rise of the avant-grade and American archaeology in the early twentieth century. In the Hispanic tradition, antecedents date back to medieval lore, which inspired chivalric and pastoral romances as well as the picaresque novel, finding a seminal synthesis in Don Quixote. In the New World, the Chronicles of the Indies, with their outlandish tales of discovery, drew not only from medieval and early Renaissance worldviews, but also from marvellous sources as varied as John Mandeville, Marco Polo, Ptolemy, Pliny and the Bible. Latin American authors have consistently cited these sources of magical realism, yet they looked at them through the prism of the avant-garde. Alejo Carpentier conceived of his seminal concept of lo real maravilloso americano as an answer to the Surrealists’ artificial merveilleux. Carpentier and Miguel Ángel Asturias, with his Surrealist view of the ancient Maya, coincided in late 1920s Paris with avant-garde primitivism and another magic realist, Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri, a close associate of Massimo Bontempelli, whose version of magical realism became their true spark, whereas Franz Roh’s influence in Latin America was negligible. Later authors like Juan Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez significantly developed magical realist narratology, consolidating the Latin American trend and making it indispensable for understanding its international expansion based on the allegorical reinterpretation, and subversion, of dominant history – a crucial postcolonial endeavour for cultures around the world.