Society, Language, and Carnival in the Comedies of Ludovico Ariosto

Society, Language, and Carnival in the Comedies of Ludovico Ariosto by Violetta Alexandra Sutton A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Italian Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Violetta Alexandra Sutton 2013 Society, Language, and Carnival in the Comedies of Ludovico Ariosto Violetta Alexandra Sutton Doctor of Philosophy Department of Italian Studies University of Toronto 2013 Abstract Through a comprehensive analysis of Ludovico Ariosto’s comedies carried out in line with Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and with a careful eye to the socio-historical context in which Ariosto lived and worked, this dissertation brings to light several new reasons to explain why these plays were so successful that they quickly replaced the production of ancient Roman comedies in sixteenth-century Ferrara. The first chapter reconstructs all recorded sixteenth-century performances and printings of Ariosto’s plays. It then provides a summary of the plays and examines the stylistic and structural changes Ariosto wrought to earlier versions of his plays. It also focuses on a chronological survey of the critical fortunes of Ariosto’s comedies throughout the centuries. The second chapter provides with a summary of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival. It then identifies and defines the elements of carnivalesque subversion and grotesque realism in the depiction of the relationship between servants and masters and in the interaction between the marginalised and wealthy sectors of sixteenth-century Ferrarese society in Ariosto’s plays. ii The third chapter examines the language in Ariosto’s plays by applying Bakhtin’s theory of billingsgate speech as a type of carnival subversion. The extensive use of abusive, insulting, and cursing words and indecent or obscene expressions in Ariosto’s plays suggests that Ariosto purposefully filled his plays with billingsgate speech in order to align them with the carnival spirit that was part of the temporal context of their première performances. The close examination of Ariosto’s comedies through the prism of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival reveals that Ariosto purposefully enriched his plays with elements of carnivalesque subversion, grotesque realism, and billingsgate speech in an effort to free his plays from classical imitation and to mark a transition between two worlds, ancient Rome and sixteenth-century Ferrara. Most importantly, this analysis shows that Ariosto used his plays as a means not only to entertain his audience, but also to critique and reform contemporary Italian society. In so doing, this dissertation reveals the presence of a social commitment that, previously, had not been fully appreciated. iii Acknowledgments I wish to thank my thesis supervisor Professor Konrad Eisenbichler and my thesis committee members Professor Olga Zorzi-Pugliese and Professor Franco Pierno, who read and commented on earlier versions of this thesis, for their insights and encouragement and for their thoughtful criticism. I am also greatful to my examination committee members Professor Salvatore Bancheri, Professor Luca Somigli, and Professor Laura Giannetti for their generous comments and constructive appraisal of this dissertation. This dissertation is dedicated to my close family. iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 1 – Ariosto’s Five Comedies and Their Reception …………………………………6 a) The Five Comedies ……………………………………………………………….......6 b) The Reception of Ariosto’s Comedies Through the Centuries ……………………...38 CHAPTER 2 – Carnivalesque Forms and Elements of Subversion in Ariosto’s Comedies …...74 a) Bakhtin’s Theory of Carnival ……………………………………………………….74 b) Classical Roman and Italian Sources in Ariosto’s Plays …………………………....78 c) Carnivalesque Subversion and Elements of Grotesque Realism Displayed Through Servants and Masters ………………………………………………………………..80 d) Carnivalesque Subversion Displayed Through a Relationship Between the Marginalised and Wealthy Sectors of Society ………………………………………87 e) Restoration of Order in Ariosto’s Plays …………………………………………......99 f) Functions of Carnival in Ariosto’s Plays …………………………………………..100 g) Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………....117 CHAPTER 3 – Billingsgate Speech in Ariosto’s Comedies ………………………………….119 a) Bakhtin’s Categories of Billingsgate Speech and Grotesque Realism ………….....119 b) Abusive Phrases, Cursing, and Indecent Expressions in Ariosto’s Plays ……….....121 c) Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………....150 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………….152 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………….155 v 1 Introduction The meteoric rise of “learned” or “erudite” comedy in sixteenth-century Italy is firmly tied to the five plays by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)1 that were performed in Ferrara in 1508-1532. His first play La Cassaria, set in contemporary Italian but structured in line with classical Latin models, was staged at court in the palace of Duke Alfonso I d’Este (r. 1505-1534) during the carnival season of 1508. It immediately caught its audience’s attention because, though it resembled the ancient Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence, it also brought to the stage current social issues in Ferrarese society. Encouraged by the successful reception of his first play, Ariosto composed other plays along the same lines, namely I Suppositi, I Studenti (which he left incomplete), Il Negromante, and La Lena, all of which, except for the incomplete play which was never performed, were staged during carnival and very favourably received by their audiences. The immediate success of Ariosto’s comedies confirmed his talents and reaffirmed his passion for the theatre. From his youth until his final years, Ariosto was firmly drawn to the stage and devoted both his time and his energies to the composition and production of dramatic works. His passion for drama might have derived from his early experiences with the theatre. Already as an eleven-year-old child he attended a performance of Plautus’s Menaechmi (1486) that was part of the revival of ancient Roman comedies underway in Ferrara at the time of Duke Ercole I d’Este (r. 1471-1505). This performance so delighted the young Ariosto that he began writing and staging his own short dramatic spectacles on the ground floor of his father’s house on the Via Giuoco del Pallone, directing his own brothers and sisters in the roles he had scripted for them. The young Ariosto soon composed his first full-length dramatic work, the Tragedia di Tisbe, a play in five acts in verse drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (the manuscript of this work is now lost). In his youth, Ariosto also became directly involved in Ferrarese theatrical life, 1 Throughout his life Ariosto produced a significant number of literary works. Apart from his masterpiece, the epic poem Orlando furioso, Ariosto also composed Latin and Italian poetry that consists of odes, elegies, epithalamiums, sonnets, canzoni, epigrams, capitoli, and satires. Moreover, Ariosto also had a very active career in the service of the Este family serving them as a courtier, diplomat on embassies to popes, princes, and emperor, personal secretary to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (1472-1520), and governor of the Garfagnana region. 2 actively participating in the production of ancient Roman comedies sponsored by Duke Ercole I d’Este. In August of 1493, as a nineteen-year-old youth, Ariosto was one of the twenty Ferrarese players who performed Plautus’s Menaechmi on tour in the duchy of Milan. Studying under the Augustinian prior and teacher Gregorio da Spoleto (1460-1502), who was a tutor to the young Este princes, Ariosto acquired a solid knowledge of the Latin poets. This, plus his early direct and indirect experience with the production of theatrical works, prepared him for his later composition of erudite comedies, a new genre of plays that met with such immediate success in early sixteenth-century Italy that it quickly replaced the production of ancient Roman comedies. This dissertation seeks to understand what, in Ariosto’s comedies, made them so successful. While various critical theories could be used to approach this question, we rely on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnivalesque subversion, so fruitfully applied by the Russian scholar to the works of another successful sixteenth-century author, François Rabelais (1494- 1553). Though the genres used by the two authors are clearly quite different—drama for the first, narrative for the second—their intentions were very similar: to entertain and to critique. This thesis consists of three chapters. The first prepares the basis for the comprehensive social-historical analysis of Ariosto’s five plays presented in the following two chapters. Ariosto composed five plays, but he also made significant and extensive revisions to four and left I Studenti incomplete. The first part of the chapter, therefore, reconstructs all recorded sixteenth- century performances and printings of each of Ariosto’s plays relying on the extant correspondence of Ariosto, courtiers, and ambassadors collected by Michele Catalano in his Vita di Ludovico Ariosto. It also provides a summary of the plays in order to facilitate comprehension of the analyses carried out in the following chapters; and it examines the stylistic and structural alterations each play underwent so as to highlight Ariosto’s intentions to free his works from the imitation of classical models and increase the elements of realism and carnivalesque subversion present in them. The second part of the

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