THE DISSEMINATION OF ORLANDO FURIOSO: ARIOSTO AND HIS POEM IN SOUTHERN ITALY (1532-1599) Ambra Anelotti, Royal Holloway, University of London PhD – Italian studies 1 Declaration of authorship I Ambra Anelotti hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 2 ABSTRACT This thesis focusses on the reception of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in Southern Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century. By examining the appropriation and adaptation of the Furioso in three works wherein the poem has been transposed and tested against new genres and cultural domains, this study aims to shed light on the continued and significant role played by Ariosto’s work even within cultural and geographical areas where it underwent a process of marginalisation. Part One, the Introduction, deals with recent scholarship on the reception of Orlando Furioso and elaborates on key theoretical terms such as dissemination and adaptation in relation to Ariosto’s afterlife in the sixteenth century. Part Two is dedicated to Marco Filippi’s Lettere sopra il Furioso dell’Ariosto, an Ovidian rewriting of Ariosto’s characters, and explores the latter’s transformation in the process of transposition from the romance genre to that of Ovidian epistolary elegy. Parts Three and Five focus on religious appropriations of the Furioso. After exploring practices of literary censorship, expurgation and religious rewriting, especially in relation to Ariosto’s poem, Part Three examines Cristoforo Scanello’s Primo canto dell’Ariosto translatato in spirituale, a rewriting of Ariosto’s first canto, and locates it in its Neapolitan context. Part Four reconstructs the varied and multifarious Sicilian reception and dissemination of Orlando Furioso in various genres, from lyrical poetry to music. Part Five explores the dialectical presence of Ariosto’s romance in the religious rewriting of a Sicilian priest (Vincenzo Marino’s Furioso spirituale). This is the first critical work on Ariosto’s reception which focusses specifically on Southern Italy, including both Naples and Sicily, thus shedding further light on sixteenth- century Italian literary culture. Through dissemination and adaptation Ariosto’s romance continued to be culturally productive and thus a significant presence even within cultural and geographical areas where it underwent a process of marginalisation. 3 NOTES ON TRANSCRIPTION With regard to early modern texts, quotations are generally diplomatic transcriptions, and thus may be present irregularities. However, some changes have been made to aid the reader: the use of u and v has been standardised, the ampersand has always been replaced by et, the tilde has been resolved. Changes to punctuation, accents and apostrophes have been introduced to facilitate comprehension. I refer to early modern editions of Orlando furioso by indicating the publisher and the year of publication (e.g. Giolito 1542), in order to improve readability. A full reference may be found in the bibliography. Unless otherwise stated, in reporting figures and data regarding sixteenth-century editions and publications I refer to Edit16. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Dictionaries and databases: DBI: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960 -) Edit16: Censimento nazionale delle edizioni italiane del XVI secolo (EDIT16) < http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/web_iccu/imain.htm> IAD: Italian Academies Database <http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ItalianAcademies/ > RePIM: Repertorio della Poesia Italiana in Musica, 1500-1700 <http://repim.muspe.unibo.it/> Literary woks: Bc Antonio Alfano, La battaglia celeste tra Michele e Lucifero (Palermo: Mayda, 1568) Fs Vincenzo Marino, Furioso spirituale distinto in tre libri con i cinque suoi canti al fine. Composto dal Padre Vincenzo Marino prete solitario della città di Messina (Messina: Brea, 1596) Her Ovid, Le Eroidi, ed. and trans. by Gabriella Leto (Turin: Einaudi, 1966) Inf. Inferno, in Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, Le opere di Dante Alighieri. Edizione nazionale a cura della Società dantesca italiana, 7, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994) 4 Lp Libro primu, in Antonio Veneziano, Libro delle rime siciliane, ed. by Gaetana Maria Rinaldi (Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 2012) Of Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. by Emilio Bigi and Cristina Zampese, 2nd edn (Milan: Bur, 2013) Os Giulio Cornelio Graziano, Di Orlando santo vita, et morte con ventimilla christiani uccisi in Roncisvalle; cavata dal catalogo de santi. Di Giulio Cornelio Gratiano libri otto. Novamente stampati. Con gli argomenti a ciascun libro d’incerto autore (Treviso: Deuchino, 1597) Pal Teofilo Folengo, La palermitana, ed. by Patrizia Sonia de Corso (Florence: Olschki, 2006) Pc Cristoforo Scanello, Primo canto dell’Ariosto. Tradotto in rime spirituali. Poste in luce per Christoforo Scannello detto il Cieco da Forlì (Naples: Carlino and Pace, 1593) Rc Giulio Cesare Croce, Rime compassionevoli et devote sopra la Passione, Morte et resurretione del N. Sig. Gesù Christo (Bologna: Sebastiano Bonomi, 1620) TC Triumphus Cupidinis, in Francesco Petrarch, Trionfi, ed. by Guido Bezzola (Milan: BUR, 2006) UfD Teofilo Folengo, L’Umanità del figliuolo di Dio, ed. by Simona Gatti (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000) VSC Marco Filippi, Vita di Santa Catherina vergine, e martire; nuovamente composta, per Marco Filippi, detto il Funesto. Et appresso, una operetta di sonetti, e canzoni spirituali, con alcune stanze della Magdalena a Christo; del medesmo autore (Palermo: Mayda, 1562) - abbreviations referring to individual letters in Marco Filippi’s Lettere sopra il Furioso dell’Ariosto (Lettere sopra il Furioso dell’Ariosto, in ottava rima di m. Marco Filippi soprannominato il funesto, da lui chiamate Epistole heroide, con alcun’altre rime dell’istesso Autore, et di don Ottavio Filippi suo figliuolo. Giontovi alcune rime del signor Giacomo Bosio all’illustre signor Gaspare Fardella baron di San Lorenzo (Venice: Varisco: 1584): BR Bradamante to Ruggiero A1r-A5r GA Ginevra to Ariodante A5v-B1r OB Olimpia to Bireno B1v- B5v AR Alcina to Ruggiero B6r-C1v 5 IZ Isabella to Zerbino C2r-C6v FR Fiordispina to Ricciardetto C7r-D4r RA Rinaldo to Angelica D4v-E2r SA Sacripante to Angelica E2v-E5v RD: Rodomonte to Doralice E6r-F2r FB Fiordiligi to Brandimarte F2v-F6r 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE: Introduction 1. The reception of Orlando furioso in the sixteenth century and Southern Italy……...10 PART TWO: Between Ariosto and Ovid: an Ovidian adaptation of Ariosto’s chivalric characters 2. Ariosto, Ovid, and heroical epistles. The literary tradition and reception of Ovid’s Heroides. 2.1 From Ariosto to Ovid………………............................................................29 2.2 The diffusion of Ovid’s Heroides and their exegetical tradition…………...33 2.3 The vernacular translations of the Heroides in the sixteenth century……...34 2.4 The Heroides in the Italian literary tradition …………………….…….......38 2.5 Orlando furioso and the Heroides ……………………………………........42 3. The Lettere sopra il Furioso dell’Ariosto by Marco Filippi (1584) 3.1 Marco Filippi’s project……………………………………………………..47 3.2 Reiterating the heroine’s tragic predicament……….…………………....…50 3.3 From jealous woman-warrior to woman in love: Bradamante……………..54 3.4 From powerful sorceress to abandoned woman: Alcina…………………...58 3.5 Exemplars of virtue: Ginevra, Fiordiligi, Isabella………………………….62 3.6 Condemning shameful desire: Fiordispina…………………………………68 3.7 Counterbalancing the female voice: the male perspective………………....72 3.8 Chasing after Angelica: the suitors’ perspective…………………………...77 3.9 Love, death, and the metamorphosis of Ariosto’s characters……………. ..83 PART THREE: Spiritualising Orlando furioso 4. The Counter-Reformation and literary classics: prohibition, expurgation, spiritualisation and the criticism of chivalric romances. 4.1 After the Council of Trent…………………………..…………………...…87 4.2 Spiritualising literary classics…………………………………....................91 7 4.3 The Counter-Reformation attitude towards chivalric literature and Orlando furioso in particular………………………………………………………….....96 5. The spiritualisation of Orlando furioso and Cristoforo Scanello’s Primo canto dell’Ariosto tradotto in rime spirituali (1593) 5.1 The religious rewritings of Ariosto’s romance……………………………106 5.2 Cristoforo Scanello as a disseminator of literary works…………………..109 5.3 Cristoforo Scanello and Naples …………………………………………..113 5.4 Goro, Scanello, and the other religious rewritings of Orlando furioso .….117 5.5 Echoing Ariosto’s rhymes and the revision of Orlando furioso………….119 5.6 Redirecting Ariosto’s narrative from chivalric to religious poetry……….122 5.7 Madness, vices, and heresy……………………………………………….125 5.8 A new crusade as atonement for the madness of original sin…………….129 5.9 The ambiguous dynamics of Angelica’s role……………………………..132 PART FOUR: The dissemination of Orlando furioso across genres and contexts: the case of Sicily 6. The case of Sicily 6.1 Orlando furioso in Sicily ……………..………………………….........….137 6.2 A critical overview of Sicilian culture in the sixteenth century………......139 7. Orlando furioso and courtly culture in Sicily 7.1 Orlando furioso and encomiastic poetry: Sigismondo Paolucci’s Notte d’Aphrica (1535)………………………………………………………....145 7.2 The Orlando furioso set to music in Sicilian aristocratic courts: the madrigals of Giandomenico Martoretta, Pietro