< Back to previous page

Project

Authority and auctoritas. Italian poems on contemporary wars as an interface of powers (1530-1630)

This thesis investigates the interaction between different kinds of authority in Italian, narrative heroic poems, written between 1530 and 1630, on contemporary Habsburg wars in Europe.

The analysed corpus consists of approximately forty poems, that concern the siege of Tunis (1535), the Guelders wars, (1542-3), the Smalcaldic conflict (1546-7), the war of Cyprus (1570-71), and the military campaign in the Low Countries commanded by Alexander Farnese, which culminated in the siege of Antwerp (1584-5). In these poems, the imaging of a foreign “Other” went hand in hand with the “making of” Italian heroes in the military, catholic Habsburgs conflicts. The poems manifest their contact with prestigious literary models, but also their own dynamics. Some of these poems (especially A.F. Olivieri’s Alamanna) have received surprisingly little attention, and their possible intertextual relations have also been neglected.

The central question is how “literary authority” was applied to the singing of military conflicts, fought under Emperor Charles V and his descendants. On the one hand, this term involves literary traditions, genres and models, like Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Trissino’s Italia liberata and Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. On the other hand, it implies literary doctrine, especially Aristotle’s Poetics. Besides that, authors had to take into account other sorts of authority. An important role was played by the political power of the prominent people to whom the poems were often dedicated. Although they often also had a consanguinity or other bonds with the poems’ protagonist(s), their interests did not necessarily coincide with those of the Habsburg crown. The religious doctrinal power and doctrines of the Church, which received a prominent place in literature partly due to the Catholic Reformation, also had an effect on the textual dynamics. Thirdly, some poems manifest the penetration of specific forms of political-philosophical discourse, indicating Erasmian and Machiavellian influences. Fourthly, poets had to decide to what extent they would respect the historical, ‘factual’ authority of contemporary history. The influent poet Torquato Tasso even discouraged his colleagues from using contemporary history as the main subject of modern epic. Finally, the poems functioned as a place where authors profiled their own authority and prestige, where they tried to warrant their own social and literary position in their “negotiation” with a privileged reader of Maecenas.

In order to adopt a systematic approach to these interactions the analysis is structured chronologically, while the methodological framework is based on the analyse du discours littéraire, developed by Dominique Maingueneau. In traditional approaches, the poems were usually considered as artistically passive encomia that would serve exclusively for the praise of contemporary heroes and the narration of deeds. This thesis presents a more complex approach by attaching particular importance to the specific spatial and temporal context of each poem. Where and when exactly, for and by whom have they been written and published, and in which political circumstances? Which (institutional) networks played a role? Moreover, it adheres to a view on literature according to which epically inspired encomia were not only intended to glorify, but also to hold a critical mirror up to the face of the communities and rulers addressed in the poems, or to play a very specific role in international peace diplomacy.

The development of sixteenth-century epic in Italian started at the same time as the maturation process of a Habsburg imperial ideology based on military victories. From this perspective, the first chapter (L’esordio di Carlo V, crociato e ‘triumphator’: Tunisi 1535) yields insight into the ways in which poets in this phase used Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso for giving shape to the first important Habsburg ‘crusade’ against infidels. The tradition of romanzi cavallereschi functioned both as a model and as a repoussoir: although the Furioso offered a broad repertoire of topoi and linguistic elements, imitations were at the same time deprived of their frivolous connotations, while “love” received a civil, servile of religious interpretation. These dynamics are most visible in Sigismondo Paolucci’s Notte d’Aphrica, in which Dante’s Commedia, Petrarca’s Triumphi and Bembo’s Asolani contribute to a ‘pure’ ethos. By elaborating a feudal sociology, based on fidelity and the corresponding duty of a ruler to show his gratitude, several poems call into question the position of prominent Italian officers in relation to the Habsburg crown.

The second chapter (Un complicarsi di prospettive: le guerre nell’Europa settentrionale, 1551-1567) discusses three poems on conflicts in Northern Europe in the 1540’s: the Guelders wars and the Danubian campagin. This chapter emphasises the problematic nature of singing wars against subjects within the framework of an ideology based on clement pietas austriaca and on Erasmian values. The reasons of their publication (which happened at least eight years after the events) have to be found in other factors rather than in the praise or narration of the res gestae themselves. Poems could receive a potentially anti-Machiavellian or even tragic charge through allusions to evangelic principles and to Maffeo Vegio’s Supplementum, Plutarchus’ De sera numinis vindicta, Trissino’s Italia liberata da’ Goti and Statius’ Thebaid. Even though their final interpretation is not univocal, the dynamics of these poems clearly has an eye for the ethical downside of violence and epic anger, while clemency is represented as an essential though multiple virtue. It is therefore significant that an ethical conflict of this type is at the basis of the only real epic poem of the corpus, Olivieri’s Alamanna (1567).

In the third chapter (Le eredità di un imperialismo asburgico: Lepanto e le Fiandre) is examined how tendencies further develop in the “heirs” of the poems exposed in chapters 1 and 2. This chapter underscores the importance to differentiate between poems on wars against Turks and others on conflicts with rebellious Christians. The first part (III.1 L’inflazione del sistema. Cipro e Lepanto), which deals with the war of Cyprus, shows a continuity with the cycle of Tunis and poems on the siege of Malta: poems were published short after the events. Now, however, they show a relatively limited literary complexity and were remarkably concise. This indicates in many cases a shift towards the lyric genre or a return to primitive forms of the cantare bellico, as well as a general consolidation of short forms for singing contemporary exploits. As in the case of the first chapter, the image of the enemy was little nuanced. When ethical or political issues are brought up in these poems, they concern the internal communities of the Christian world. This chapter shows how a lack of unity within Italy is visible through its division in different politically and culturally determined discursive communities (Venice, the Papal State, the Habsburg South), each with their own editorial centers.

The second part (III.2 Un’orbita pluritopica. Farnese e le Fiandre) reconstructs again a case on civil war, i.e. Alexander Farnese’s campaign in the Low Countries. From this case emerge, on the one hand, intertextual and iconographical aspects that derive from quite a coherent “Farnese-culture” in Parma and Rome. References to Habsburg clemency can receive both a political-diplomatic and a religious interpretation, leading to meaningful exponents of a “poetics of conversion”. On the other hand, poems elaborate specific functions and aspects of a context-bound ethos, such as a paratopie nobiliaire in Sanvitale’s Anversa conquistata (1609).

Both from a quantitative and a qualitative point of view, the corpus emerges in this study as a heterogeneous continuum. The nature of the texts varies from short and simple descendants of an oral news diffusion tradition to extensive literary works with an original approach, in Italian or Latin. This thesis eventually shows that they were not necessarily passive imitations of texts that were already part of the literary canon: on the contrary, they could anticipate the development of important aspects of the poema eroico.

Date:1 Oct 2011 →  1 Dec 2017
Keywords:Torquato Tasso
Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Theory and methodology of literary studies, Other languages and literary studies
Project type:PhD project