Cinquecento (1500–1599) Clara Stella, University of Leeds

1. General Italianist, 34.3, is a collection of essays examining the roles of oral culture in early modern Italy within a range of contexts, centring on the relationship of oral culture with manuscript and printed texts, how written sources may be used as evidence to reconstruct oral culture of all social classes, and how this evidence points to communicative strategies offered by performance as opposed to writing. In particular, the first four essays discuss performances of sung poetry meant as entertainment in both elite and popular contexts, focusing on compositional techniques of semi-improvised poetry (Luca degl’Innocenti, 318–35), performance and cheap prints of religious texts (Rosa Salzberg, 336–48), state control of the circulation of information in Venice (Massimo Rospocher, 349–61), and performances of poetry in front of both social elite and popular audiences (Brian Richardson, 362–78). Two essays examine the languages used and prescribed within oral culture, concentrating on comedies (Chiara Sbordoni, 379–99) and the represantion of women’s speech in literary works (Helena Sanson, 400–17). The last group of five essays are devoted to orality in the context of religion, discussing private devotion and prayers (Ottavia Niccoli, 418–36), sung devotional, liturgical texts (Noel O’Regan, 437–48), and sermons (Emily Michelson, 449–62; Stefano Dall’Aglio, 463–77; and Giorgio Caravale, 478–92). ITS, 17.1–2, includes studies of gender in early modern Italy: Elizabeth Cohen, ‘Open City: An Introduction to Gender in Early Modern Rome’ (I, 35–54), Jessica Goethals, ‘Vanquished Bodies, Weaponized Words: Pietro Aretino’s Conflicting Portraits of the Sexes and the Sack of Rome’ (I, 55–78), Kenneth Gouwens, ‘Meanings of Masculinity in Paolo Giovio’s “Ischian” Dialogues’ (I, 79–101). Vol. 2 includes Stefano Carrai, ‘Italian Poetry of the Renaissance: Recent Studies and New Perspectives’ (207–15), which summarizes the state of the field, and Roberto Nicosia, ‘Alla scuola di Omero: Costantino Lascaris e la traduzione latina dell’Odissea nel De Aetna di Pietro Bembo’ (303–24). Lingue testi culture: l’eredità di Folena vent’anni dopo, Convegno interuniversitario, 12–15 luglio, 2012, ed. Ivano Paccagnella and Elisa Gregori, Padua, Esedra, xi + 671 pp., is a collection of 36 essays on Folena’s literary and critical legacy of thought. The range of themes illustrates the broad variety of Folena’s heritage in literary studies, from the practice of translation and vernacularization to the analysis of the writing styles of modern authors such as Fogazzaro and Meneghello. Among the various contributions, Ivano Paccagnella, ‘La commedia “cittadina” da Ruzante alla Veniexiana’ (413–34), is concerned with plurilingualism in Ruzante’s comedies, with a particular focus on the use of Venetian dialect, in comparison with that made by the (almost) anonymous author of the Veniexiana. Translators, Interpreters, and Cultural Negotiators: Mediating and Communicating Power from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, ed. Federico Federici and Dario Tessicini, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 240 pp., analyses the roles, identities, and backgrounds of translators and interpreters negotiating with institutional powers, and provides for the first time historical samples ranging from the Middle Ages to the 20th c., with consideration also of non-European experiences. In particular, Dario Brancato, ‘Becoming a Classic: Benedetto Varchi’s Boezio (1551) Cinquecento 277 and ‘The Language of Florence’’ (48–61), deals with Varchi’s vernacularization of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, commissioned in 1549 by Cosimo I from Domenichi, Bartoli, and Varchi, and examines Cosimo’s preference of Varchi’s translation for political reasons. Elena Abramov-Van Rijk, Singing Dante: The Literature Origins of Cinquecento Monody, Farnham, Ashgate, 148 pp., investigates the reception of Dante’s poetry in the Cinquecento as part of a wider enquiry into 16th-c. musical and literary theories of poetics, along with a key study of Vincenzo Galilei’s performance of an excerpt from Dante’s Comedy in the ‘stile recitativo’, one of the first examples of monophonic singing. Marco Sgarbi, The Italian Mind: Vernacular Logic in Renaissance Italy (1540 — 1551), Leiden, Brill, vi + 246 pp., offers a comprehensive view of the fundamental contribution of Italian vernacular Aristotelianism to Western thought, with particular emphasis on the history of Italian vernacular logic. Ch. 2, ‘Language, Vernacular and Philosophy’ (23–41), emphasises and explores the use of the vernacular at the Accademia degli Infiammati in Padua, while the chapters ‘Sperone Speroni between Language and Logic’ (45–70), and ‘Benedetto Varchi and the Idea of the Vernacular Logic (1540)’ (71–126), consider key figures related to the cenacolo of Padua. Cities. Rotraud von Kulessa, Daria Perocco, and Sabine Meine, Conflitti culturali a Venezia dalla prima età moderna a oggi, Florence, Cesati, 314 pp., examine Venice as site of cultural conflict through history, focusing on the Renaissance and the broad cultural debate which took special place in Venice, from the ‘questione della lingua’ to Fonte and Marinella’s claims on gender equality. Sandra Toffolo, ‘Constructing a Mainland State in Literature: Perceptions of Venice and Its Terraferma in Marin Sanudo’s Geographical Descriptions’, Renaissance and Reformation, 37.1:5–30, points out how, in a time of important political changes, narratives concerning Venice, such as Sanudo’s works, could be constructed and transformed. T. convincingly argues that Sanudo’s representation of the Venetian state is partly a reaction to the political circumstances, but not a direct reflection of them. Roma pagana e Roma cristiana nel Rinascimento, Convegno internazionale di studi, 19–21 luglio, 2012, ed. Luisa Secchi Tarugi, Florence, Cesati, 604 pp., is a crucial reference work that focuses on Rome during the Renaissance from a literary, philosophical, and political perspective. Giovanni de’ Bardi, Ristretto delle bellezze della città di Firenze, ed. Eliana Carrara, Pisa, ETS, 120 pp., published in 1591 and dedicated to the consort of Ferdinand I, is the work of a courtier modelled on earlier literary models, all identified by the editor. Lombardia ed Europa. Incroci di storia e cultura, ed. Danilo Zardin, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, xxi + 415 pp., collects 19 essays on the international and socio-cultural relationship between Milan and Europe, from the Middle Ages to contemporaneity. Articles of particular interest for our period include: Chiara Maria Carpentieri, ‘Appunti su manoscritti ed edizioni a stampa dei secoli xv-xvii in biblioteche lombarde’ (45–68), and Benedetta Crivelli, ‘Commerci e affari tra Milano e la penisola iberica. L’integrazione dei mercanti-banchieri milanesi nel sistema imperiale spagnolo nella seconda metà del xvi secolo’ (145–68). Valentina Marchesi, ‘Robert Samuel Turner (1819–1887). Peregrinazioni di manoscritti: Bembo tra Italia e Inghilterra’ (337–52), traces the journey of Bembo’s dialogue, De Guido Ubando, to Turner’s library; Giacomo Vagni, ‘Lettere di Baldassarre Castiglione dalla Spagna (1525–1529)’ (109–28), focuses on the relationship between Castiglione and the court of Charles V. Raymond Carlson,‘“Eccellentissimo poeta et amatore divinissimo”: Benedetto Varchi and Michelangelo’s Poetry at the Accademia Fiorentina’, ISt, 69.2:169–88, examines the first of two public lectures on Michelangelo delivered by Varchi at the Accademia in 1547, which played an unprecedented role in disseminating Michelangelo’s poetry to a broad audience, both orally and in print. Classical Reception. *The Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, ed. John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands, Chichester, Wiley Blackwell, xv + 498 + 5 pls, presents 31 essays dealing