Letteratura e Citta: Metafore di traslazione e Parnaso urbano fra Quattro e Seicento.
Kolsky, Stephen
Luisa Avellini. Letteratura e Citta: Metafore di traslazione e
Parnaso urbano fra Quattro e Seicento.
Biblioteca delle Lettere. Bologna: CLUEB, 2005. 285 pp. index.
[euro]20. ISBN: 88-491-2492-9.
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 citta 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.
STEPHEN KOLSKY
The University of Melbourne
