Giornale storico della letteratura italiana

Dante’s Questio de aqua et terra has long been the subject of controversy. Dante’s authorship has been disputed; its “contradictory” links with the Commedia have been highlighted; questions have been raised about Dante’s reasons for composing it; and aspects of its doctrinal material have been identified in philosophical sources that were composed only after the poet’s death in 1321. These are questions worthy of scholarly attention. At the same time, they are also questions largely extrinsic to the text itself, namely, to its formal character. Despite a renewed interest in the Questio, little attention has been dedicated, as happened also in the past, to its status as a questio, and specifically as a questio disputata, the literary genre with which, suggestively, it is now beginning to be associated, and therefore to its relationship with the most important scholastic teaching and research tool of the late Middle Ages. The present study, which is published in two parts, aims to examine and define the formal and institutional character of the Questio (part one embracing subsections 1-6)-characteristics on the basis of which it is hoped to be able to propose some interpretative hypotheses about its possible functions, as well as its ideological ambitions (part two comprising subsections 7-9). In particular, the article explores the extent to which the association of the Questio with the questio disputata is useful, appropriate, and illuminating when attempting to establish its genre, the manner and structure of its argumentation, and the conditions of its oral presentation in Mantua and in Verona.

Folengo published his second edition (the Toscolanense edition) of Baldus in 1521, just a few years after Martin Luther had posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The names of Luther, Erasmus and Prierias (the first theologian to condemn Luther’s theses as heretical) appear in two enigmatic lines of Book VIII of the Toscolanense edition. According to some critics, this is a sign that early on Folengo embraced the new theology developing across the Alps. This article instead shows that when Folengo wrote the second edition, he had only a superficial understanding of the new ideas from abroad. His attention was focused more on what was happening around him, i.e. the profound crisis in the Cassinese Congregation and the scandals surrounding the Roman Curia.

This article analyses the reception of Capoelone Guelfucci’s Rosario della Madonna (1600), one of the most successful examples in the literary genre of the religious epic poem. After introducing the main features of the text, this study focuses on the extent of its popularity at the time of its publication, followed by an analysis of the numerous comments on the work voiced in the early 17th century. The opinions were for the most part positive and established Guelfucci as a champion within the renewed tradition of Christian-inspired literature. Given the poem’s popularity, it was drawn into various literary debates concerning Dante (Adriano Politi went so far as to suggest that Guelfucci was superior to Dante, causing a string of reactions) or into debates comparing Rosario to Gerusalemme liberata, the work from which the former took its inspiration. Lastly, the article examines the reasons why Guelfucci is referred to in a considerable number of treatises of the time, and above all, how he became a model for some of the leading poets of the 17th century (e.g. Marino, Imperiale and Ceva). A study on the reception of Rosario della Madonna makes it possible to capture some of the key critical and literary trends of the early 17th century, in addition to reawakening interest in a text that today only few are familiar with, but which played a prominent role in the cultural debates of Guelfucci’s lifetime.

Between the years 1957 and 1961 Umberto Saba, Virgilio Giotti and Giani Stuparich passed away in Trieste; these three figures were all closely tied to Anita Pittoni, who founded the Lo Zibaldone publishing house in 1949. To honour them, she began to set up the Giani Stuparich Centre of Trieste Studies [Centro di Studi Triestini Giani Stuparich]. It was the very first attempt to create a literary archive (this was some years before Maria Corti’s efforts), one that would collect and house autographs (e.g. the ten books of Saba’s Canzoniere and his poem “A mia Moglie [To My Wife]”), writers’ personal notebooks, print proofs of the works of Svevo, Saba and Giotti, and correspondence (including letters written by Bazlen to Saba and to Pittoni herself). It was to include a hodgepodge of documents penned by the foremost 20th-century writers from Trieste, and its ideological aim was to convey Trieste’s ‘Italianness’. This article combines an archival and bibliographical approach so as to clarify the origins and structure of the Centre, which Pittoni had planned to eventually donate to the City of Trieste in exchange for ten million lire. The City’s unexpected refusal led her to sell all the material piece by piece up until 1982, when she passed away. Thanks to this article, a clear light is finally shed on this lost memory.

Valentina Prosperi, Il fantasma di Lucrezio. La perduta traduzione del ‘De rerum natura’ di Giovan Francesco Muscettola (Paolo Cherchi), p. 304. - Roberto Norbedo, ‘Repubblica delle Lettere’ e letteratura di frontiera: identità multiple e condivise (Lorenzo Tommasini), p. 308.

A cura di, Franco Arato, Maria Luisa Doglio, Mario Pozzi

Si parla di: B. Carli Piccolomini. - R. Gandolfi. - M. Ortore. - «Atti e Memorie dell’Arcadia». - M. M. Rossi. - «Todomodo». - «L’Idomeneo».