Catullus' Passer as Passer

1998 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Ward Jones
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Physical Exertion ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Dead

Poem 2 of the Liber Catullianus – the first of the passer poems – was probably the poet's most famous piece. The poem presents a charming and fascinating picture of a Roman matron who is said by the poet to divert her mind from her passion by playing with her pet bird. Of this seemingly innocent picture a peculiar esoteric interpretation was offered in the time of the Italian Renaissance. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Florentine scholar Angelo Poliziano suggested that Catullus had woven an obscene allegory into his poem, and he supported his argument by reference to the sixth epigram of Martial's eleventh book. This epigram is a vulgar poem that ends with the words ‘passerem Catulli’. It will figure prominently in our discussion below. Poliziano only hinted at an indecent meaning. The Dutch scholar, Isaac Voss, in his Observations on Catullus published in 1684, makes the matter explicit. The Greeks, he alleges, often used the names of birds to refer to a man's penis, and similarly passer in poem is ambiguous and at one level represents the poet's penis. By this obscene interpretation, the basic allegory of the poem would be something like this. Lesbia has great familiarity with the poet's male member. She delights in playing with it and in this way seems to satisfy her erotic impulses. The poet by means of similar play would like to take similar satisfaction for himself. He cannot because masturbation gives him no pleasure. According to Voss, this allegory continues in poem 3, the famous dirge for the dead passer. Here, he declares, we should suppose that the poet wishes to represent himself as ‘confectum et exhaustum lucta Venerea et funerata… ea parte quae virum facit’ (‘worn out and exhausted by a physical exertion erotic and deadly in regard to that part which makes a person a man’).

The Fonte Gaia from Renaissance to Modern Times

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara E. Scappini ◽  
David Boffa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of

The Fonte Gaia from Renaissance to Modern Times examines the history of Siena's famous public fountain, from its fifteenth-century origins to its eventual replacement by a copy in the nineteenth century (and the modern fate of both). The book explores how both the Risorgimento and the Symbolist movements have shaped our perceptions of the Italian Renaissance, as the Quattrocento was filtered through the lens of contemporary art and politics.

The Will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini (ob. 1438)

Traditio ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 257-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Textual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
First Time

There are many still unstudied aspects of the cultural history of early Quattrocento Rome, especially if we consider the years before 1443, the date of the more or less permanent re-entry into the civitas aeterna of Pope Eugenius IV. The nexus between the still ephemeral papacy and the emerging intellectual movement of Italian Renaissance humanism is one of these aspects. It is hoped that this study will shed some light on this problem by presenting a document that has hitherto not been completely edited: the original will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini. As we shall see, this important witness to the fifteenth century provides valuable information on many fronts, even on the structure of the old basilica of Saint Peter. The short introduction is in three parts. The first has a discussion of the cardinal's cultural milieu with a focus on the only contemporary treatise specifically about curial culture, Lapo da Castiglionchio's De curiae commodis. The second part addresses the textual history of the will as well as some misconceptions which have surrounded it. The third part contains a discussion of the will itself, along with some preliminary observations about what can be learned from the critical edition of the text here presented for the first time.

Arms and Letters: Julius Caesar, theCommentariesof Pope Pius II, and the Politicization of Papal Imagery*

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057-1097 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Julius Caesar

AbstractIn their title, theCommentariesof Pope Pius II recall the works of Julius Caesar by the same name. The connections between these ancient and humanist histories, however, run much deeper. This article explores this relationship in detail and in the broader historical and historiographical contexts of fifteenth-century Italy. It argues that in both Caesar's histories and in his career more generally, Pius found much that resonated with his own experiences, challenges, and goals. More importantly, he found in these ancientCommentariesvaluable apologetic strategies for constructing his own textual self-portrait as both pope and prince. In choosing Caesar's histories as his models, Pius was following a recent historiographical precedent. Several Italian Renaissance humanists had also turned to Caesar's works as guides for writing histories about leaders of contemporary temporal politics. This article argues that by adopting the same models when shaping his own image, Pius was effectively politicizing his self-portrait in hisCommentaries.

Visibilis et Invisibilis: The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society*

1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 770-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen S. Ettlinger
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Creation

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.

Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Celati
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Literature History ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Literary Output

The present work represents the first full-length investigation of Italian Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracy. This literary output consists of texts belonging to different genres that enjoyed widespread diffusion in the second half of the fifteenth century, when the development of these literary writings proves to be closely connected with the affirmation of a centralized political thought and princely ideology in Italian states. The centrality of the issue of conspiracies in the political and cultural context of the Italian Renaissance emerges clearly also in the sixteenth century in Machiavelli’s work, where the topic is closely interlaced with the problems of building political consensus and the management of power. This monograph focuses on the most significant Quattrocento texts examined as case studies (representative of different states, literary genres, and of both prominent authors—Alberti, Poliziano, Pontano—and minor but important literati) and on Machiavelli’s works where this political theme is particularly pivotal, marking a continuity, but also a turning point, with respect to the preceding authors. Through an interdisciplinary analysis across literature, history, philology and political philosophy, this study traces the evolution of literature on plots in early Renaissance Italy, pointing out the key function of the classical tradition in it, and the recurring narrative approaches, historiographical techniques, and ideological angles that characterize the literary transfiguration of the topic. This investigation also offers a reconsideration and re-definition of the complex facets of fifteenth-century political literature, which played a crucial role in the development of a new theory of statecraft.

scholarly journals Vulgar Latin as an emergent concept in the Italian Renaissance (1435–1601): its ancient and medieval prehistory and its emergence and development in Renaissance linguistic thought

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-230
Author(s):  
Josef Eskhult
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
Questione Della Lingua ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This article explores the formation of Vulgar Latin as a metalinguistic concept in the Italian Renaissance (1435–1601) considering its continued, although criticized, use as a concept and term in modern Romance and Latin linguistics (1826 until the present). The choice of this topic is justified in view of the divergent previous modern historiography and because of the lack of a coherent historical investigation. The present study is based on a broad selection of primary sources, in particular from classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Firstly, this article traces and clarifies the prehistory of the concept of Vulgar Latin in ancient and medieval linguistic thought. Section 2 demonstrates that the concept of Vulgar Latin as a low social variety does not exist in pre-Renaissance linguistic thought. Secondly, this article describes and analyzes how, why and when the concept of Vulgar Latin emerged and developed in the linguistic thought of the Italian Renaissance. Section 3 surveys the historical intellectual contexts of the debates in which this concept was formed, namely questione della lingua in the Latin and Vernacular Italian Renaissances. Section 4 demonstrates how the ancient concept and term of sermo vulgaris as a diaphasic variety was revived, but also modified, in the Latin Renaissance of the fifteenth century, when the leading humanists developed new ideas on the history, nature and variability of ancient Latin. Section 5 demonstrates how a diglossic concept of Vulgar Latin was formed in the vernacular Italian Renaissance of the sixteenth century, when Italian philologists more carefully approached the topic of the historical origin and emergence of Italian. Thirdly, Section 6 presents a synthesis of the historiographical results that are attained and revises modern historiography on some important points.

scholarly journals Павел Муратов и образ смерти в итальянском Возрождении

2018 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 225-232
Author(s):  
Giulia Baselica
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Piero Della Francesca

Pavel Muratov and the image of death in the Italian renaissanceThe article is an analytical path throughout some cultural phenomena — of a philosophical, literary and artistic nature — stemming from a classical and Renaissance reworking of the theme of death, as interpreted by Pavel Muratov, the author of the famous work Образы Италии Im­magini d’Italia, published in Moscow in the first decade of the twentieth century. The outstanding art historian many a time ponders over the concept and image of death, which inspired artists like Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo or Melozzo da Forlì; as far as death percep­tion is concerned. Death as an oblivion into which past glories fall in cities like Ferrara or Venice, and eventually as a distinctive feature of the fifteenth century, a complex and contradictory era in all its greatness.The deep and original Muratov’s remarks originate an eloquent and prolific dialogue between Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Italian Renaissance culture.Pavel Muratov i slika smrti u italijanskoj renesansiCilj ovog rada je da se analitički istraže neki izrazi iz domena kulture, filozofije, književno­sti i umetnosti, koje je kao humanističku i renesansnu obradu teme smrti preuzeo i interpretirao Pavel Muratov, autor poznatog dela Slike Italije objavljenog u periodu od 1911. do 1913. Ugledni istoričar umetnosti se više puta bavi pojmom i slikom smrti, koja je bila inspiracija umetnika kao što su Đovani Belini Giovanni Bellini, Pjero dela Frančeska Piero della Francesca, Mikelanđelo Michelangelo ili Meloco iz Forlija Melozzo da Forlì, percepcijom smrti kao zaboravom koji briše tragove velikana iz prošlosti, u gradovima kao što su Ferara ili Venecija, najzad, nastoji da prati motiv smrti na kraju jedne kompleksne i kontradiktorne epohe u svoj njenoj veličini, kao što je XV vek.Duboka i originalna zapažanja Muratova, u osnovi su veoma plodnog dijaloga između ruske kulture s početka XX veka i italijanske renesansne kulture.

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