Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy, 2023
As per William Shakespeare, ‘all the world’s a stage’. But what if the human soul was a stage too... more As per William Shakespeare, ‘all the world’s a stage’. But what if the human soul was a stage too? What if the stage of the world and the stage of the soul coincided? And what if the soul was also the main character of the play? These questions are at the core of this study, which explores pedagogical uses of allegorical drama in Italy in the decades around 1600, with a focus on the place of theatre in the education of female orphans in the hospitals of Venice. The consumption of morality plays is looked at as a form of spiritual practice modeled on long-lasting theatrical metaphors. In this context, tropes such as the theatrum mundi not only regained their literal meaning by being actually staged, but also turned into rhetorical devices able to promote the inner staging of the ‘world’ on the ‘spiritual’ stage of the soul.
This book explores the ways in which Aristotle's legacy was appropriated and reshaped by vernacul... more This book explores the ways in which Aristotle's legacy was appropriated and reshaped by vernacular readers in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. It considers translation in a broad sense, looking at commentaries, compendia, rewritings, and abridgments alongside vernacular versions of Aristotle's works. Translation is thus taken as quintessential to the very notion of reception, with a focus on the dynamics - cultural, social, material - that informed the appropriation and reshaping of the 'master of those who know' on the part of vernacular readers between 1250 and 1500. By looking at the proactive and transformative nature of reception, this book challenges traditional narratives about the period and identifies the theory and practice of translation as a liminal space that facilitated the interaction between lay readers and the academic context while fostering the legitimation of the vernacular as a language suitable for philosophical discourse.
The volume includes, among other texts, the annotated edition of Jacques Bienvenu (attr.), Comédi... more The volume includes, among other texts, the annotated edition of Jacques Bienvenu (attr.), Comédie facétieuse et très plaisante du voyage de frere Fecisti en Provence (1589), with critical introduction to the text.
Il volume prende in esame le inedite Annotationes quaedam super Artem Poeticam Horatii di Alessan... more Il volume prende in esame le inedite Annotationes quaedam super Artem Poeticam Horatii di Alessandro Piccolomini, testimoniate da un manoscritto autografo conservato presso la Biblioteca Comunale di Siena. L'edizione del commento è preceduta da un saggio introduttivo che mira ad una collocazione critica del testo nel percorso intellettuale del filosofo e letterato senese. Ad una contestualizzazione dell'esercizio esegetico oraziano che muove dalla riflessione piccolominiana sulla methodus evocata nella glossa proemiale delle Annotationes, seguono alcune considerazioni sul modus operandi del commentatore e sulla sua scelta di commentare Orazio «per via d'annotationi». Tra i numerosi spunti offerti dalle glosse oraziane, la ricerca tenta di mettere a fuoco quelli che meglio permettono di valutare la poetica di Piccolomini nel ricco contesto della riflessione critica del pieno Cinquecento: la portata sapienziale della poesia ed i suoi rapporti con la filosofia; la complessa dialettica tra diletto e giovamento poetico, significativamente oscillante nel confronto tra le Annotationes ed il commento alla Poetica aristotelica, pubblicato dallo stesso Piccolomini nel 1575; la riflessione, infine, sulla specificità della materia poetica: plasmata da una teoria dell'imitazione ancora fiduciosa nella possibilità di conciliare res e verba, essa si basa su di una concezione della parola poetica che, fortemente legata alla tradizione umanistica, deve fare i conti con le nuove istanze della sistemazione cinquecentesca del sapere e delle sue forme.
Il saggio esplora la ricezione musicale della lirica di Boiardo, concentrandosi sui primi decenni... more Il saggio esplora la ricezione musicale della lirica di Boiardo, concentrandosi sui primi decenni del Novecento. Speciale spazio è riservato al modernismo, con la rivisitazione di questa poesia quattrocentesca da parte di musicisti come Zoltán Kodály, Giorgio Federico Ghedini e Bruno Bettinelli. L'autore studia l'eredità musicale di Boiardo nel quadro più ampio di un rinnovamento ‘lirico' della tradizione medioevale e rinascimentale, in un periodo di vivaci sperimentazioni fra musica e poesia.
This essay explores the musical reception of Matteo Maria Boiardo's lyric poetry with a focus on the early decades of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the modernist frame within which Boiardo's poetry was set to music by composers as diverse as Zoltán Kodály, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Bruno Bettinelli. The essay aims to reconsider the musical afterlife of Boiardo as relevant to the ways in which the Italian lyric tradition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was given a new 'lyric' voice, capable of challenging stylistic expectations in a period of vibrant experimentation across music and poetry.
In his 1961 song "Nuvole barocche" (Baroque Clouds), Italian songwriter Fabrizio De Andr e commen... more In his 1961 song "Nuvole barocche" (Baroque Clouds), Italian songwriter Fabrizio De Andr e commented on the fascination exerted by colorful clouds at sunset and their artistic representation as canonized by the visual culture of the baroque, fittingly emblematized by the transience of clouds themselves. The domain of the visual is turned into that of the acoustic, triggering the synesthetic interaction of forms of sense perception, which are usually conceived as separate from one another. The song thus reminds us that the polysemous nature of clouds makes them particularly suitable for forms of artistic representation that, moving across mediums, blur the boundaries of sense perception. This essay looks at how such interplay of sensory layers actually works and to what extent it fits the rhetoric and poetics of the Baroque. In order to do so, I chase the sound of baroque clouds through arias and songs that play with the ambiguous semantics of meteorology and make the singing voice convey anxieties about topics as diverse as the course of time, the volatility of love, devotional and spiritual concerns. After framing the discussion in rhetorical terms, with a focus on metaphors and similes, the essay examines works by John Dowland, Francesca Caccini, Sigimsondo D'India, and George Frideric Handel in order to assess some of the ways in which the unstable nature of clouds lends itself to a kind of metaphoric code that is best described in synesthetic terms.
A paradoxical feature of the lament as a poetical and musical genre is the imbalance between the ... more A paradoxical feature of the lament as a poetical and musical genre is the imbalance between the supposedly spontaneous expression of emotional turmoil and the artificial dimension of its artistic representation. Embedded in the lament since antiquity, such tension becomes particularly prominent in the early modern period, when the development of the 'lamenting mode' in poetry and vocal music facilitated experimentation in both domains. After reconsidering the rhetorical status of the lament, this essay explores the ways in which one specific lament-Olimpia's from Ariosto's Orlando furiosomoves across mediums and genres. More precisely, by focusing on the transition from ottava rima to the free-verse recitative style of seventeenth-century lamenti and cantatas, the article argues that the formal instability intrinsic to the lament exposes the limitations of any attempt to represent the utterance of a lamenting character as well as the expressive potential conveyed by its quintessentially performative nature.
Francesco Sansovino Scrittore del Mondo, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Pisa, 5-6-7 dicembre 2018 a cura di Luca D'Onghia e Daniele Musto, 2019
The essay is part of the volume Machiavelli’s Prince Traditions, Text and Translations, edited by... more The essay is part of the volume Machiavelli’s Prince Traditions, Text and Translations, edited by Nicola Gardini and Martin McLaughlin (Rome: Viella, 2017).
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 40.1, Winter / hiver 2017
This article exp... more Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 40.1, Winter / hiver 2017
This article explores the intersections of physiognomic knowledge and drama in the works of Neapolitan naturalist and playwright Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535–1616). It first looks at references to theatre—classical drama in particular—in Della Porta’s writings on physiognomy, thus showing that Latin comic plays provided the naturalist with a gallery of stock characters able to summarize the alleged interdependence of physical and moral traits. The article then analyzes the various ways in which Della Porta—who was a prolific author of comedies—brought his physiognomic expertise into his own experience as a playwright. The study of these two different perspectives on the relation between physiognomy and drama reveals that, far from being a direct translation of physiognomic theories, Della Porta’s dramatic production deploys an ironic and almost paradoxical take on physiognomy that aims to challenge (if not actually subvert) the very principles of the discipline.
This is a chapter in William Caferro, ed., The Routledge History of the Renaissance, London: Rout... more This is a chapter in William Caferro, ed., The Routledge History of the Renaissance, London: Routledge, 2017.
The relevance of the rediscovery of Longinus to early modern music theory and practice remains la... more The relevance of the rediscovery of Longinus to early modern music theory and practice remains largely unexplored. In order to contribute to the study of this aspect of the reception of Longinus, this essay aims to analyse the ways in which references to music in Longinus' On the sublime were understood by early modern readers of the treatise. More precisely, my analysis shows that Longinus' use of musical terms in his discussion of periphrasis and compositio verborum was interpreted by early modern scholars in the light of contemporary music theory and practice. Although far from seizing the original meaning of Longinus' similes, these interpretations shed light on the interplay of rhetoric , poetics, and musical culture that informed the early modern reception of the sublime. By comparing this body of works to contemporary debates on vocal music, I propose that categories belonging to the Longinian sublime may be used to better understand the development of musical genres between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries.
Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy, 2023
As per William Shakespeare, ‘all the world’s a stage’. But what if the human soul was a stage too... more As per William Shakespeare, ‘all the world’s a stage’. But what if the human soul was a stage too? What if the stage of the world and the stage of the soul coincided? And what if the soul was also the main character of the play? These questions are at the core of this study, which explores pedagogical uses of allegorical drama in Italy in the decades around 1600, with a focus on the place of theatre in the education of female orphans in the hospitals of Venice. The consumption of morality plays is looked at as a form of spiritual practice modeled on long-lasting theatrical metaphors. In this context, tropes such as the theatrum mundi not only regained their literal meaning by being actually staged, but also turned into rhetorical devices able to promote the inner staging of the ‘world’ on the ‘spiritual’ stage of the soul.
This book explores the ways in which Aristotle's legacy was appropriated and reshaped by vernacul... more This book explores the ways in which Aristotle's legacy was appropriated and reshaped by vernacular readers in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. It considers translation in a broad sense, looking at commentaries, compendia, rewritings, and abridgments alongside vernacular versions of Aristotle's works. Translation is thus taken as quintessential to the very notion of reception, with a focus on the dynamics - cultural, social, material - that informed the appropriation and reshaping of the 'master of those who know' on the part of vernacular readers between 1250 and 1500. By looking at the proactive and transformative nature of reception, this book challenges traditional narratives about the period and identifies the theory and practice of translation as a liminal space that facilitated the interaction between lay readers and the academic context while fostering the legitimation of the vernacular as a language suitable for philosophical discourse.
The volume includes, among other texts, the annotated edition of Jacques Bienvenu (attr.), Comédi... more The volume includes, among other texts, the annotated edition of Jacques Bienvenu (attr.), Comédie facétieuse et très plaisante du voyage de frere Fecisti en Provence (1589), with critical introduction to the text.
Il volume prende in esame le inedite Annotationes quaedam super Artem Poeticam Horatii di Alessan... more Il volume prende in esame le inedite Annotationes quaedam super Artem Poeticam Horatii di Alessandro Piccolomini, testimoniate da un manoscritto autografo conservato presso la Biblioteca Comunale di Siena. L'edizione del commento è preceduta da un saggio introduttivo che mira ad una collocazione critica del testo nel percorso intellettuale del filosofo e letterato senese. Ad una contestualizzazione dell'esercizio esegetico oraziano che muove dalla riflessione piccolominiana sulla methodus evocata nella glossa proemiale delle Annotationes, seguono alcune considerazioni sul modus operandi del commentatore e sulla sua scelta di commentare Orazio «per via d'annotationi». Tra i numerosi spunti offerti dalle glosse oraziane, la ricerca tenta di mettere a fuoco quelli che meglio permettono di valutare la poetica di Piccolomini nel ricco contesto della riflessione critica del pieno Cinquecento: la portata sapienziale della poesia ed i suoi rapporti con la filosofia; la complessa dialettica tra diletto e giovamento poetico, significativamente oscillante nel confronto tra le Annotationes ed il commento alla Poetica aristotelica, pubblicato dallo stesso Piccolomini nel 1575; la riflessione, infine, sulla specificità della materia poetica: plasmata da una teoria dell'imitazione ancora fiduciosa nella possibilità di conciliare res e verba, essa si basa su di una concezione della parola poetica che, fortemente legata alla tradizione umanistica, deve fare i conti con le nuove istanze della sistemazione cinquecentesca del sapere e delle sue forme.
Il saggio esplora la ricezione musicale della lirica di Boiardo, concentrandosi sui primi decenni... more Il saggio esplora la ricezione musicale della lirica di Boiardo, concentrandosi sui primi decenni del Novecento. Speciale spazio è riservato al modernismo, con la rivisitazione di questa poesia quattrocentesca da parte di musicisti come Zoltán Kodály, Giorgio Federico Ghedini e Bruno Bettinelli. L'autore studia l'eredità musicale di Boiardo nel quadro più ampio di un rinnovamento ‘lirico' della tradizione medioevale e rinascimentale, in un periodo di vivaci sperimentazioni fra musica e poesia.
This essay explores the musical reception of Matteo Maria Boiardo's lyric poetry with a focus on the early decades of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the modernist frame within which Boiardo's poetry was set to music by composers as diverse as Zoltán Kodály, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Bruno Bettinelli. The essay aims to reconsider the musical afterlife of Boiardo as relevant to the ways in which the Italian lyric tradition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was given a new 'lyric' voice, capable of challenging stylistic expectations in a period of vibrant experimentation across music and poetry.
In his 1961 song "Nuvole barocche" (Baroque Clouds), Italian songwriter Fabrizio De Andr e commen... more In his 1961 song "Nuvole barocche" (Baroque Clouds), Italian songwriter Fabrizio De Andr e commented on the fascination exerted by colorful clouds at sunset and their artistic representation as canonized by the visual culture of the baroque, fittingly emblematized by the transience of clouds themselves. The domain of the visual is turned into that of the acoustic, triggering the synesthetic interaction of forms of sense perception, which are usually conceived as separate from one another. The song thus reminds us that the polysemous nature of clouds makes them particularly suitable for forms of artistic representation that, moving across mediums, blur the boundaries of sense perception. This essay looks at how such interplay of sensory layers actually works and to what extent it fits the rhetoric and poetics of the Baroque. In order to do so, I chase the sound of baroque clouds through arias and songs that play with the ambiguous semantics of meteorology and make the singing voice convey anxieties about topics as diverse as the course of time, the volatility of love, devotional and spiritual concerns. After framing the discussion in rhetorical terms, with a focus on metaphors and similes, the essay examines works by John Dowland, Francesca Caccini, Sigimsondo D'India, and George Frideric Handel in order to assess some of the ways in which the unstable nature of clouds lends itself to a kind of metaphoric code that is best described in synesthetic terms.
A paradoxical feature of the lament as a poetical and musical genre is the imbalance between the ... more A paradoxical feature of the lament as a poetical and musical genre is the imbalance between the supposedly spontaneous expression of emotional turmoil and the artificial dimension of its artistic representation. Embedded in the lament since antiquity, such tension becomes particularly prominent in the early modern period, when the development of the 'lamenting mode' in poetry and vocal music facilitated experimentation in both domains. After reconsidering the rhetorical status of the lament, this essay explores the ways in which one specific lament-Olimpia's from Ariosto's Orlando furiosomoves across mediums and genres. More precisely, by focusing on the transition from ottava rima to the free-verse recitative style of seventeenth-century lamenti and cantatas, the article argues that the formal instability intrinsic to the lament exposes the limitations of any attempt to represent the utterance of a lamenting character as well as the expressive potential conveyed by its quintessentially performative nature.
Francesco Sansovino Scrittore del Mondo, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Pisa, 5-6-7 dicembre 2018 a cura di Luca D'Onghia e Daniele Musto, 2019
The essay is part of the volume Machiavelli’s Prince Traditions, Text and Translations, edited by... more The essay is part of the volume Machiavelli’s Prince Traditions, Text and Translations, edited by Nicola Gardini and Martin McLaughlin (Rome: Viella, 2017).
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 40.1, Winter / hiver 2017
This article exp... more Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 40.1, Winter / hiver 2017
This article explores the intersections of physiognomic knowledge and drama in the works of Neapolitan naturalist and playwright Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535–1616). It first looks at references to theatre—classical drama in particular—in Della Porta’s writings on physiognomy, thus showing that Latin comic plays provided the naturalist with a gallery of stock characters able to summarize the alleged interdependence of physical and moral traits. The article then analyzes the various ways in which Della Porta—who was a prolific author of comedies—brought his physiognomic expertise into his own experience as a playwright. The study of these two different perspectives on the relation between physiognomy and drama reveals that, far from being a direct translation of physiognomic theories, Della Porta’s dramatic production deploys an ironic and almost paradoxical take on physiognomy that aims to challenge (if not actually subvert) the very principles of the discipline.
This is a chapter in William Caferro, ed., The Routledge History of the Renaissance, London: Rout... more This is a chapter in William Caferro, ed., The Routledge History of the Renaissance, London: Routledge, 2017.
The relevance of the rediscovery of Longinus to early modern music theory and practice remains la... more The relevance of the rediscovery of Longinus to early modern music theory and practice remains largely unexplored. In order to contribute to the study of this aspect of the reception of Longinus, this essay aims to analyse the ways in which references to music in Longinus' On the sublime were understood by early modern readers of the treatise. More precisely, my analysis shows that Longinus' use of musical terms in his discussion of periphrasis and compositio verborum was interpreted by early modern scholars in the light of contemporary music theory and practice. Although far from seizing the original meaning of Longinus' similes, these interpretations shed light on the interplay of rhetoric , poetics, and musical culture that informed the early modern reception of the sublime. By comparing this body of works to contemporary debates on vocal music, I propose that categories belonging to the Longinian sublime may be used to better understand the development of musical genres between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries.
Among the 'professional' charlatans of the sixteenth century, the figure of Jacopo Coppa stands o... more Among the 'professional' charlatans of the sixteenth century, the figure of Jacopo Coppa stands out. Doctor, poet, performer and publisher of both his and other authors' works, Coppa spent his life travelling throughout the peninsula, advertising his medical skills and selling his products in the piazzas. Despite the existence of several documents that bear witness to Coppa's life and professional career, it is difficult to capture the real nature of his activity. By reconsidering the relevant documentation — including Coppa's edition of Ludovico Ariosto's Erbolato and his own poetical works — the article focuses on the rhetorical strategies that characterized the performances of the charlatan as well as his self-promotion. In particular, the analysis of Coppa's Lamento della Virtù will confirm the charlatan's familiarity with techniques typical of contemporary mountebanks and street singers. Finally, the study of a previously unknown broadside ascribed to Jacopo Coppa and concerned with the advertisement of a miraculous nostrum, will illuminate the way in which charlatans promoted both themselves and their products during their public performances.
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Books by Eugenio Refini
https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Staging-Soul
http://www.ibs.it/code/9788872469569/refini-eugenio/per-via-d-annotationi-le.html
Papers by Eugenio Refini
This essay explores the musical reception of Matteo Maria Boiardo's lyric poetry with a focus on the early decades of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the modernist frame within which Boiardo's poetry was set to music by composers as diverse as Zoltán Kodály, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Bruno Bettinelli. The essay aims to reconsider the musical afterlife of Boiardo as relevant to the ways in which the Italian lyric tradition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was given a new 'lyric' voice, capable of challenging stylistic expectations in a period of vibrant experimentation across music and poetry.
This article explores the intersections of physiognomic knowledge and drama in the works of Neapolitan naturalist and playwright Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535–1616). It first looks at references to theatre—classical drama in particular—in Della Porta’s writings on physiognomy, thus showing that Latin comic plays provided the naturalist with a gallery of stock characters able to summarize the alleged interdependence of physical and moral traits. The article then analyzes the various ways in which Della Porta—who was a prolific author of comedies—brought his physiognomic expertise into his own experience as a playwright. The study of these two different perspectives on the relation between physiognomy and drama reveals that, far from being a direct translation of physiognomic theories, Della Porta’s dramatic production deploys an ironic and almost paradoxical take on physiognomy that aims to challenge (if not actually subvert) the very
principles of the discipline.
https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Staging-Soul
http://www.ibs.it/code/9788872469569/refini-eugenio/per-via-d-annotationi-le.html
This essay explores the musical reception of Matteo Maria Boiardo's lyric poetry with a focus on the early decades of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the modernist frame within which Boiardo's poetry was set to music by composers as diverse as Zoltán Kodály, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Bruno Bettinelli. The essay aims to reconsider the musical afterlife of Boiardo as relevant to the ways in which the Italian lyric tradition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was given a new 'lyric' voice, capable of challenging stylistic expectations in a period of vibrant experimentation across music and poetry.
This article explores the intersections of physiognomic knowledge and drama in the works of Neapolitan naturalist and playwright Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535–1616). It first looks at references to theatre—classical drama in particular—in Della Porta’s writings on physiognomy, thus showing that Latin comic plays provided the naturalist with a gallery of stock characters able to summarize the alleged interdependence of physical and moral traits. The article then analyzes the various ways in which Della Porta—who was a prolific author of comedies—brought his physiognomic expertise into his own experience as a playwright. The study of these two different perspectives on the relation between physiognomy and drama reveals that, far from being a direct translation of physiognomic theories, Della Porta’s dramatic production deploys an ironic and almost paradoxical take on physiognomy that aims to challenge (if not actually subvert) the very
principles of the discipline.