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Medievalisms in Latin Love Poetry of the Early Italian Quattrocento*

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Medievalisms in Latin Love Poetry of the Early Italian Quattrocento* MEDIEVALISMS IN LATIN LOVE POETRY OF THE EARLY ITALIAN QUATTROCENTO* Christoph Pieper The following reflections on three authors, Giovanni Marrasio, Cris- toforo Landino and Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, are examples illustrating a tradizione negata. Humanistic poets did not talk explicitly about medi- eval influence on the poetry of their time. Instead, they wanted their poetry to be inserted into a lexical, syntactic and semantic repertoire of ancient poetry that, according to the dominant poetics of imita- tion, formed the background for any literary critique of their works.1 Nevertheless, I suggest that medieval tradition played a certain role at least in some of the early collections of the Quattrocento – if not throughout the century. Early poets especially employed medievalisms to negotiate their own poetic position and to present themselves as conscious of the tradition in which they were writing and from which they might want to deviate. Furthermore, I hope to show that nearly every medievalism is fil- tered through the two main discourses which form the framework of humanistic love-poetry: the Roman elegists and Petrarch’s Canzoniere. Medieval poetics are dependent on ancient auctoritates and especially the commentary tradition of late antiquity from which they extract general rules for describing and prescribing. Petrarch’s poems them- selves are also not imaginable without their medieval predecessors. The complex situation in which different levels of traditions are inter- woven into one another requires a cautious approach: How can we distinguish medievalisms from their classical fundaments? And are * I warmly thank Bettina Reitz (Leiden) for her patient help with this paper. 1 Two central studies for the concept of imitatio in the Renaissance are Greene T.M., The Light in Troy. Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry, The Elizabethan Club Series 7 (New Haven: 1982) and McLaughlin M.L., Literary Imitation in the Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo, Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs (Oxford: 1995). Still worth reading is the old study by Gmelin H., “Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der Renaissance”, Romanische Forschungen 46 (1932) 83–360. 46 christoph pieper they, on the other hand, more than just (often less than subtle) a form of Petrarchism? It will be helpful to summarize the main development of the liter- ary concept of love as it was developed in the Middle Ages and in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, before turning to the poetry of the Quattrocento itself. Italian Love-poetry Petrarch’s Provençal predecessors, the trobadors writing about fin’amors, adapted the ancient elegiac concept of servitium amoris to the context of a literary culture situated at the feudal courts of local liege lords.2 In the political system of the high Middle Ages, the singer usually courts a noble lady, by presenting himself as lower-class. This is demonstrated by the fact that she can give him orders which he then has to fulfil.3 Within the Italian tradition, which begins around 1220 at the Sicil- ian court of Frederic II of Hohenstaufen, the coordinates of love are shifted again. Here, the beloved lady is raised to the status of a woman stripped of a specific personality, a process that has convincingly been connected with the absolute and even religious emperorship claimed by Frederic for himself.4 According to Joachim Schulze, this process was supported by a concentration on the effects which love has on 2 In Roman elegy, the poetic speaker takes on the role of a servant of his beloved although he is actually of higher social status than her. For a useful overview of elegiac characteristics see Stroh W., “Die Ursprünge der römischen Liebeselegie: Ein altes Problem im Licht eines neuen Fundes”, Poetica 15 (1983) 205–246. Stroh suggests convincingly that the girl is presented as (noble) prostitute in most of the texts, whereas the lover is a member of the (cultural) upper class. 3 I am not entirely in agreement with the (old) views of Erich Köhler and his school, who argue that Provençal poetry narrowly represents the actual social status of the singer; cf. e.g. Rieger D., “Einleitung: Das trobadoreske Gattungssystem und sein Sitz im Leben”, in Köhler E. – Mölk U. – Rieger D. (eds.), Les genres lyriques, vol. I, 3, Grundriß der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters (Heidelberg: 1987) 15–28. Among the critics of their position, one can cite Peters U., “Niederes Rittertum oder hoher Adel? Zu Erich Köhlers historisch-soziologischer Deutung der altprovenzalis- chen und mittelhochdeutschen Minnelyrik”, Euphorion 67 (1973) 244–260. That the hierarchically structured feudal system, based on the reciprocity of loyal service and recompense, contributed to the success of the similarly structured fin’amors, still seems convincing to me. 4 Cf. Krauss H., “Gattungssystem und Sitz im Leben: Zur Rezeption der altproven- zalischen Lyrik in der sizilianischen Dichterschule”, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 3 (1973) 37–70..
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