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II. The Lyric Innovations of Giovanni Della Casa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Walter L. Bullock
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Extract

Of Della Casa's life (1503-1556), little need here be said. Brought up in Florence and educated at Bologna, at first he showed, though a keen student, more interest in the amusements than in the serious things of life. In his middle twenties he went to Rome, where he continued his study of the classics and developed still further his aptitude for gaiety. A taste for high life and for classic study led inevitably to the church: at the age of thirty-one he definitely embarked on an ecclesiastical career, held various offices and commissions under different popes, and divided his time between Venice, Florence, and Rome. Towards the end of his life he became secretary of state to Paul IV, but was never made a cardinal. He was always interested in letters, was a member of various academies both gay and learned, and wrote much both in Latin and Italian, prose and verse.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 41 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1925 , March 1926 , pp. 82 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926

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References

1 For biographical material, see the Letter a of Gio: Batista Casotti in Opere di Monsignor Giovanni Della Casa, Venezia, 1728, V, 95-159. Also Girolamo Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Milano, 1833, IV, 141); A. D'Ancona ed. O. Bacci, Manuale delta Lett. Ital., Firenze, 1910, II, 633-634; etc.

1a Completed by 1540, this work was first printed, apparently, in 1542.

2 Op. cit., 2nd. ed., Venetiis, apod Hieronymum Scolum MDXLIII, f. 45.

3 Ibid., f. 45v.

4 De Sonetti di M. Benedetto Varchi, Parte prima, Fiorenza, MDLV: p. 112, “Bembo novello ….”; p. 113, “Bembo Toscano ….”; etc.

5 Lettura di Messer Benedetto Varchi …. etc., afterwards printed (Mantua, 1545) with a dedication by Francesco Sansovino to that poetess of disputed character, Gaspara Stampa.

6 Torquato Tasso, La Cavaletta, ovvero delta poesia toscana (e. g. in Dialoghi di Torquato Tasso, Pisa, 1822, I, 262 ff.), passim.

7 E. g. Alessandro Guarini, who in 1599 gave a lecture to the Accademia degl'Invaghiti at Mantua on Della Casa's sonnet Doglia che vaga Donna …. ; Francesco India, “Dottor Medico e Filosofo Veronese,” who read to the Accademici Ricovrati di Padova a Discorso Sopra il Sonetto “Questa vita mortal ….”, subsequently printed in Verona, 1602; Orazio Marta, who in 1616 wrote a Paralello tra Mes. Francesco Petrarca e Mons. Gio. Della Casa ….. deducing the superiority of the latter; etc., etc.

8 Cf. John S. Smart, The sonnets of John Milton, Glasgow, 1921, p. 33, footnote. Milton's copy of the Rime is said to be now in the New York Public Library. See the N. Y. Literary Review, June 25, 1921, p. 2.

9 Manuale della Letteralura Italiana, Firenze, 1910, II, 634.

10 F. Flamini, Il Cinquecento, Milano, [1902], p. 190.

11 G. Mazzoni, Glorie e Memorie dell'Arte e della. Civilta d'Italia, Firenze, 1905, pp. 163-164. The chapter La Lirica nel Cinquecento has, however, appeared in other volumes both before and after 1905: it is included in the volume of lectures by various scholars La Vita Italiana nel Cinquecento, published by Treves, Milano, “Nono miglaio” [1919], pp. 268-301; the lines quoted above occurring on pp. 287-288.

12 Op. cit., pp. 30 ff. In the course of this passage Professor Smart also quotes in translation) the lines already cited from Mazzoni.

13 G. M. Crescimbeni, Istoria della Volgar Poesia, Venezia, 1703-1731, II, i, 410.

14 He would probably have been still more timid could he have foreseen that his Rime (possibly on account of his youthful licentious Capitolo del Forno, though it was not included in this eminently harmless volume) were destined to be put on the Index by the difficult Pius IV in 1558, the year they were first printed, two years after Della Casa died. Bernardo Tasso complained (Lettere, Padova, 1733, II, 419) that the Pope's prohibition made it irritatingly difficult to get hold of a copy; it appears, however, that in the sixteenth century a thing prohibited could be purchased by payment of an artificially exorbitant price.

15 Della Casa, Opere, ed. cit., III, 178.

16 Ibid., 228.

17 Ibid., 234.

18 Ibid., 280.

19 Ibid., 231.

20 Ibid., 230.

21 Ibid., 234.

22 Loc. cit.

23 A piè de' colli …. vv. 5-6.

24 Son animali …. vv. 1-2.

25 Cesare, poi che …. vv. 9-10.

26 La donna che 'l mio cor …. vv. 12-13.

27 Amor, Natura …. vv. 13-14.

28 Se Virgilio ed Omero …. vv. 10-11.

29 Repensando a quel …. vv. 3-4.

30 L'aura soave …. vv. 7-8.

31 Se quell'aura soave …. vv. 1-3.

32 Cingi …. etc. vv. 1-4.

33 Perchè sia forse …. vv. 5-6.

34 Così mi renda il cor …. vv. 6-7.

35 Trifon, che 'n vece …. vv. 7-10.

36 Se vuoi ch'io torni …. vv. 12-13.

37 Such lines as “Quel giorno ch' i' lasciai grave e pensosa / Madonna, e 'l mio cor seco ….” (from Petrarch's sonnet Qual paura ho…..) I have not included as showing indisputable enjambment, since the adjectives grave e pensosa are here in appositive or predicative construction. For indisputable cases, compare the examples given above.

38 It is true that the metrical theorists of the Cinquecento, if they mentioned enjambment, generally condemned its use: see, for example, Giovambattista Giraldi Cintio, Discorso intorno al compone dei Romanzi (first printed in 1554), edition of G. Daelli, Milano, 1864, pp. 122 ff. Such theorists, however, were clearly going contrary to the practice of the two standard lyric authorities.

39 Gamba, Serie dei Testi di Lingua, Venezia, 1828, no. 241.

40 Della Casa, Opere, ed. cit., III, Aggiunta (in fine) pp. 13, 14.

41 Of his better-known sonnets, for example, both that to Jealousy and that to Sleep were imitated from Sannazaro.

42 Loc. cit.