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a storia della critica ha, in generale, inserito la celebre letteraLorazione scritta da Pico della Mirandola ad Ermolao Barbaro del 1485 tra le dispute del Quattrocento che affrontavano il rapporto tra filosofia ed eloquenza. Al giovane Pico, non ancora ventenne, si ascrive la difesa della filosofia scolastica e del suo "barbaro" linguaggio; e viceversa l'accusa mossa ad umanisti della statura di Ermolao Barbaro e di Angelo Poliziano, era quella di essersi troppo occupati, nello stile, dell'eleganza. In un primo contributo, letto a Venezia in occasione del Convegno del 1993 su Barbaro (ora pubblicato negli Atti del 1996, Una famiglia veneziana nella storia: I Barbaro), ho proposto una nuova lettura della disputa, dando un maggiore rilievo a Barbaro, che aveva dato inizio allo scambio epistolare e lo aveva anche concluso. Egli infatti aveva soprattutto sottolineato come la discussione de genere dicendi philosophorum che riguardava la scelta di uno stile idoneo per i filosofi non fosse in realta tra lui e Pico, "homo lepidissimus, humanissimus, latinissimus", bensi tra loro due ed i "barbari" Scolastici.1 Avevo, inoltre, indicato come i due

Ferrante Pallavicino (1615–1644), son of an aristocratic Parma family, rose quickly to become the favored secretary of the Venetian senator and patron, Gian Francesco Loredan, founder of the trail-blazing Accademia degli Incogniti that flourished from approximately 1630— 1660. Pallavicino wrote prolifically defending Venetian political and cultural interests. His satires were notoriously libertine and antipapal, and he opposed the censorship of the press, until his untimely death in papal Avignon on the orders of Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII. The charge was blasphemy. Several of his works were seen to deserve this accusation, including the above Retorica delle puttane (Whore’s Rhetoric), also denounced as “spurcissima” (“absolutely filthy”) by the Papal Nuncio in Venice, Monsignor Francesco Vitelli.

This chapter examines Platonic love foundered on many rocks. The author delves into the reception of this refined heterosexual Platonic love, but not before a look at a harsh judgment of both Marsilio Ficino and Pietro Bembo/Baldassare Castiglione in the name of the only moral Platonic love possible: one in which there was no sexual element except as metaphor. Even before Castiglione, Petrarch had won a privileged place at court; The Book of the Courtier added luster to the cultivation of Petrarch, intensifying the Platonic tints already suffused in his lyrics. Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo saw himself complementing The Book of the Courtier by making Petrarch and Laura the embodiments of the Neoplatonic code of love typical of courtiers and ladies at the court of Urbino, and by extension, all other courts. Keywords: Baldassare Castiglione; Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo; Marsilio Ficino; Neoplatonic code of love; Petrarch; Pietro Bembo; Platonic love; The Book of the Courtier

(1992). The Currency of Eros. Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620. Italian Studies: Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 80-84.

Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.

This chapter examines the impersonations of the character of Laura of Petrarch's Canzoniere in sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy. It analyses commentaries and the rewritings of Petrarch's Canzoniere that gave Laura celebrity status, either by hyperbole or denigration or outright impersonation. It suggests that the works on the ambivalence of Laura's identity are part a general questioning of the nature of the love lyric, its remote language, and its moral codes in an era of reform.

List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Letizia Panizza Part I. The Renaissance, Counter-Reformation and Seventeenth Century: 1. Letter writing, 1350-1650 Maria Luisa Doglio 2. The fifteenth century: i. Humanism Letizia Panizza, ii. Vernacular poetry and mystery plays Judith Bryce 3. Lyric poetry Giovanna Rabitti 4. Fiction, 1560-1650 Virginia Cox 5. Polemical prose writing 1500-1650 Letizia Panizza 6. Religious and devotional writing, 1400-1500 Gabriella Zarri Part II. The Enlightenment and Restoration: 7. Eighteenth-century literature Luisa Ricaldone 8. Travel writing Ricciarda Ricorda 9. Journalism, 1750-1850 Verina Jones 10. Literary critics and scholars, 1700-1850 Adriana Chemello Part III. The Risorgimento and Modern Italy, 1850-2000: 11. Journalists and essayists, 1850-1915 Silvana Patriarca 12. The novel, 1870-1920 Lucienne Kroha 13. The popular novel, 1850-1920 Anna Laura Lepschy 14. Futurism and fascism, 1914-45 Lucia Re 15. The novel, 1945-65 Ann Hallamore Caesar 16. The novel, 1965-2000 Adalgisa Giorgio 17. Poetry, 1870-2000 Catherine O'Brien 18 Theatre and cinema, 1945-2000 Aine O'Healy 19. Aesthetics and critical theory Sharon Wood Abbreviations Bibliography.

(1986). M. J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer; The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Italian Studies: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 116-119.