University of Nevada, Reno The Italian Verse of Milton A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Francisco Nahoe Dr James Mardock/Dissertation Advisor May 2018 © 2018 Order of Friars Minor Conventual Saint Joseph of Cupertino Province All Rights Reserved UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL We recommend that the dissertation prepared under our supervision by Francisco Nahoe entitled The Italian Verse of Milton be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY James Mardock PhD, Adviser Eric Rasmussen PhD, Committee Member Lynda Walsh PhD, Committee Member Donald Hardy PhD (emeritus), Committee Member Francesco Manca PhD (emeritus), Committee Member Jaime Leaños PhD, Graduate School Representative David Zeh PhD, Dean, Graduate School May 2018 i Abstract The Italian verse of Milton consists of but six poems: five sonnets and the single stanza of a canzone. Though later in life the poet will celebrate conjugal love in Book IV of Paradise Lost (1667) and in Sonnet XXIII Methought I saw my late espousèd saint (1673), in 1645 Milton proffers his lyric of erotic desire in the Italian language alone. His choice is both unusual and entirely fitting. How did Milton, born in Cheapside, acquire Italian at such an elevated level of proficiency? When did he write these poems and where? Is the woman about whom he speaks an historical person or is she merely the poetic trope demanded by the genre? Though relatively few critics have addressed the style of Milton’s Italian verse, an astonishing range of views has nonetheless emerged from their assessments. Milton’s Italian style illustrates fundamental attributes of the poet’s approach to composition in both his prose and his verse. The Secretary for Foreign Tongues must of necessity function as poet and polemicist, routinely crossing linguistic frontiers whensoever the genre requires it. In this respect, the Italian verse of Milton — in which the poet responds in a strania favella [foreign speech] to the demands of love — is an early occurrence of the effort of the Commonwealth rhetor who likewise answers the challenges of European censure by exploiting the plurilingual resources of Renaissance humanism. Most of all, his Italian verse gives us a glimpse of the systematic reformation of Petrarchist poetics that ii Milton undertakes in his later verse in English. Perhaps it is because Petrarchan values came to England directly from Italian sources that Milton decides to reform petrarchismo first in Italian. Milton’s Italian verse attempts in miniature a moral reformation of the whole genre of love poetry itself. iii This dissertation is dedicated to Fr Christopher Deitz OFMConv, Fr John Heinz OFMConv and the Friars Minor Conventual of Saint Joseph of Cupertino Province. iv Acknowedgements Though it is entirely inadequate to do so here, I nonetheless acknowledge my debt to the guidance and friendship of Dr James Mardock, my adviser, and to the generosity and scholarship of Dr Eric Rasmussen, Dr Lynda Walsh, Dr Donald Hardy, Dr Francesco Manca and Dr Jaime Leaños for their encouragement throughout this project and for their great erudition. Dominus det vobis pacem. v Contents Introduction The Italian Verse of Milton Was Milton’s Verse Known in Italy? Rhetoric and Poetics in Humanist Education Petrarchan Lyric as a Transgressive Genre Petrarchan Influences and Sources Assessing the Critical Reception Chapter 1 The Sonnet Cycle Itself Sonnets II–VI and the Canzone Milton’s Fluency in Italian The Date of the Poems The Dark Lady Chapter 2 Imitatio and Milton’s Italian Style Style and Practical Intelligence Style and Dionysian imitatio Milton Himself on Style Milton’s Attraction to Italian Vernacular Style Vernacular Eloquence and the Florentine Academies Miltonic Dispositions Regarding Style Style and Commonwealth Polemics Chapter 3 Recruiting Milton The Tinsel of Tasso Rolli contra Voltaire Defensor anglicanorum The Risorgimento 1859-1894 A Travesty of Italian Art Whig Italophile Unified Italy Chapter 4 The Reception of Milton’s Italian Verse Harsh and Stunted Verse The Bembist Manner Poetic Language Methodically Acquired Poems That Narrate Themselves Italian Critics and Petrarchismo Petrarchan Exegesis in the Florentine Academy Excursus: Contemporary Anglophone Criticism vi Conclusion Prefiguring the Poetics of Conjugal Love The Lascivious Metres of Italian Humanism Sublime and Pure Thoughts Without Transgression Appendix An Updated Variorum Bibliography Primary and Secondary Sources vii Deh! foss’il mio cuor lento e’l duro seno A chi pianta dal ciel si buon terreno. 1 The Italian Verse of Milton MILTON WAS NOT THE ONLY ENGLISH POET to have written or published verse in the language of Petrarch. Princess Elizabeth allegedly exchanged sonnets in Italian with Mary, Queen of Scots.1 The polymath physician, Matthew Gwinne (1558-1627), pseudonymously Il Candido, certainly prefaced both Florio’s translation (1603) of the Essais of Montaigne and the later dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes (1611), with commendatory sonnets in Italian, though they are not well regarded. Milton’s deft poetic experimentation in the Tuscan dialect, however, represents an altogether unique instance of the Italian verse of Englishmen. In fact, the sonetti of Milton represent an exceptional case of any non-Italian composing in the language of Dante and Petrarch, though other noteworthy poets include Louise Labé, la Belle Cordière (1524-1566), Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (1866- 1949), James Joyce (1882-1941) and Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Both among English-speaking scholars and their counterparts in Italy, Milton’s brief sequence of Italian sonnets has undeniably generated more critical attention than corresponding efforts on the part of his fellow countrymen, whether in his own lifetime or afterwards. Indeed, with a nimble dexterity unmatched by any Englishman, Milton displays precisely the kind of petrarchismo that held in perennial thrall the erudite and accomplished members of the Italian academies whom he regarded so highly. And the most remarkable 2 feature of his essay into the matter and form of Sixteenth Century rime, is that Milton did this in their language, not his own. While the Elizabethan age certainly marks the apogee of Italian influence upon the development of Renaissance civilization in England, the language of Italy still enjoys some eminence, if only honorific, in the Caroline period as well. In any case, booksellers evidently accepted the inclusion of Italian works, both prose and rhyme, in publications intended primarily for an English-speaking audience, though printers cannot have expected even a rudimentary knowledge of the language from the vast majority of intended readers.2 The Italian community of London never exceeded but a few hundred souls and even the Italian Protestant Church of London was dissolved in 1598, its members having been encouraged to amalgamate to the Flemish or French parishes. Nor were significant numbers of converts to Protestantism arriving in London from Italy after 1603. What then accounts for the publication of a basically unintelligible continental language for an essentially insular market? During the Sixteenth Century, Italian acquired an enduring prestige in England principally for having inflamed the national passion to develop its own vernacular eloquence. Tudor poets and scholars eagerly embraced Italian genres and praxis, opening the door to the tremendous impact Italy would have upon English politics, literature, customs, art, music and intellectual life. On the one hand, England perceived in those happy few Italian soldiers, clerics, bureaucrats, artists and merchants who came to her shores the indelible mark of a humanistic 3 capital vastly exceeding her own native production. On the other hand, English visitors to Italy could not but experience the nobility of her architecture, the splendor of her art, the elegance and attractiveness of her vernacular writing, together with the commercial successes that her booksellers had found in marketing the written works of Italian literature. A notable exception to the general enthusiasm of Elizabethans, Roger Ascham, who travelled in the Veneto during the second session of the Council of Trent (May 1551-April 1552), gives voice to an astonishingly cynical assessment of Italian learning. In The Scholemaster (1563), for example, he famously equates Italy with the Homeric enchantress, Circe. Ironically, Ascham’s strident critique nonetheless framed a portal through which an explicitly Englished sort of Italian culture could yet begin to shape his island nation’s own energetic participation in the European Renaissance. Ascham notwithstanding, Italy’s dedicated exposition of intellectual culture through the intoxicating medium of vernacular language infused England with new life and radiance. During this period, English courtiers, scholars, poets, musicians and merchants embarked upon a coherent, if undeclared and unsystematic, conveyance of Italian art, architecture, poetry, oratory and political acumen to the shores of their island nation. Despite palpable xenophobia in English society at large, the Elizabethan élite vigorously and imaginatively exploited the Italian Renaissance in order both to resist continental hegemony and to animate England’s emerging imperial ambitions. 4 Multilingual collections of poetry served a variety