The Impact of Fiction on Early Modern Philosophy. Ed. by Jorge Ledo

Puliafito Bleuel; Jorge Ledo

I would like to thank the Renaissance Society of America for the opportunity of presenting the works now gathered in this volume in two panels at their 63rd Annual Convention (Chicago, March 31st, 2017). The quality of the discussions during and after the presentations has been a motivation to provide a collection of texts worthy of expectations. I would also like to express my gratitude to the authors for agreeing to participate in both panels and for traveling to Chicago, in some cases not in the most favorable circumstances. Special thanks should go to Professor Giglioni, who could not attend in person in Chicago, but who has participated in this volume with a conference paper presented at the Seminar Pico and Poliziano in Late Medieval Florence (University College London, May 15th, 2017). Finally, this volume would not have been possible without the generosity, expertise, humanity, and superhuman patience of Professors Pérez Chico and López de Lizaga, the chief editors of Análisis. To all of them, my warmest thanks.

A NÁLISIS R EVI STA DE I N VE ST I G AC I Ó N F ILOSÓFICA VOL. 4, NÚM. 2 (2017) THE IMPACT OF FICTION ON EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY Edited by JORGE LEDO A RTÍCULOS / A RTICLES JORGE LEDO Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder: Girolamo Fracastoro and His Thought World GUIDO GIGLIONI Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History ANNA LAURA PULIAFITO Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica (Venice, 1562) ERIC MACPHAIL Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology SANDRA PLASTINA Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems ANTONIO BERNAT VISTARINI AND JOHN T. CULL Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Andrés Mendo, and Francisco Garau Análisis Revista de investigación ilosóica The ImpacT of fIcTIon on early modern phIlosophy Edited by Jorge ledo PRENSAS DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE ZARAGOZA Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica ISSN: 2386-8066 https://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/analisis Vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017) Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica igura en las siguientes bases de datos: Philosopher’s Index, ERIH PLUS, Latindex, ISOC, Dialnet, Dulcinea, Rebiun conTacTo: analisis.revista@unizar.es edITa: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza Ediicio de Geológicas Universidad de Zaragoza Pedro Cerbuna, 12 50009 Zaragoza mailto:puz@unizar.es http://puz.unizar.es puz@unizar.es pedIdos: contactar con Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica ISSN: 2386-8066 https://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/analisis dIreccIón José Luis lópez de lIzaga, Universidad de Zaragoza David pérez chIco, Universidad de Zaragoza conseJo de redaccIón Juan José acero fernández, Universidad de Granada José Javier BenéITez prudencIo, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha Fernando Broncano rodríguez, Universidad Carlos III Pol capdevIla casTells, Universidad Pompeu Fabra Cristina corredor lanas, Universidad de Valladolid Jesús ezquerro marTínez, Universidad del País Vasco Ángel Manuel faerna garcía-BermeJo, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha Juan Manuel forTe monge, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Juan José garcía norro, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Susana gómez lópez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid María José guerra palmero, Universidad de La Laguna Antonio Manuel lIz guTIérrez, Universidad de La Laguna Margarita vázquez campos, Universidad de La Laguna Juan Carlos velasco arroyo, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientíicas comITé edITorIal Gordon C. Bearn, Lehigh University, EE.UU. Juan José colomIna almIñana, The University of Texas at Austin, EE.UU. Andrés crelIer, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina Mario De caro, Tufts University, EE.UU. Víctor J. KreBs, Pontiicia Universidad Católica, Perú. Ricardo malIandI, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina José medIna, Vanderbilt University, EE.UU. Ernest sosa, Rutgers Iniversity, EE.UU. Astrid Wagner, Technische Universität Berlin, Alemania. Análisis Revista de investigación ilosóica Vol. 4, Núm. 2 (2017) The ImpacT of fIcTIon on early modern phIlosophy Edited by Jorge ledo Índice / Summary edITor’s foreWord / presenTacIón del edITor 157-160 arTículos / arTIcles Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder: Girolamo Fracastoro and His Thought World/ Algunos comentarios sobre la mitoilia renacentista. la poética médica de la maravilla: Girolamo Fracastoro y su entorno intelectual Appendix. Galeotto Marzio, On Many Different Affairs [ante 1490, princeps 1548] Jorge ledo Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History/ Poliziano como ilósofo o Sobre el arte de pensar entre icción e historia Guido gIglIonI 163-214 215-241 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica (Venice, 1562)/ Entre res y verba. El uso del mito en los Dialoghi della retorica (Venecia, 1562) de Francesco Patrizi Anna Laura pulIafITo 243-263 Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology/ Jean Bodin y la novela de la demonología Eric macphaIl 265-276 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems/ Épica mitológica y icción caballeresca en los poemas de Moderata Fonte y Lucrezia Marinella Sandra plasTIna 277-295 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Andrés Mendo, and Francisco Garau/ Deslindes de la icción narrativa original en la emblemática política de Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Andrés Mendo y Francisco Garau Antonio BernaT vIsTarInI and John T. cull 299-322 críTIca BIBlIográfIca / BooK revIeWs La relatividad lingüística: en busca de un territorio lógico/ Linguistic relativity: in search of a logical territory (Blanco Salgueiro, A., La relatividad lingüística (Variaciones ilosóicas)) David durán marTínez 323-326 normas para los auTores / auThor guIdelInes 327-330 foreWord Among the tasks traditionally undertaken by researchers in early modern literary studies have been these: how questions related to ethics, political and natural philosophy, medicine, theology, and jurisprudence were adapted to, and absorbed by, early modern iction; the approach of Renaissance philosophers to literary production or to the ability of literary works to relect contemporary philosophical inquiry or classical ideas; and the study of poetics, understood as a branch of speculative philosophy during the late-ifteenth and the sixteenth century. The inverse, that is, the defense and use of iction by early modern thinkers viewed from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, or the impact of classical, medieval, and Renaissance literature on the aforementioned subdomains of philosophy, has been restricted to a handful of names and problems, and these have not been developed in line with the vast amount of material ripe for analysis. The aim of this volume is not to offer a comprehensive overview of the multifarious aspects of iction and its implications for early modern philosophy, but to be an invitation, from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, to survey some of the fundamental problems of the ield, using six case-studies written by some of the inest international scholars in their respective areas of Renaissance studies. Although perhaps not evident at a irst reading, these six studies are linked by common concerns such as the theoretical relationship between (literary) history, rhetoric, poetics, and philosophy; the tensions between res, verba, and imago; and the concept of enargeia. They have been arranged according to the chronology of the corpus each one considers. The irst study in this volume, “Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder: Girolamo Fracastoro and His Environment,” outlines how Aristotle’s Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21 proved useful to a large number of philosophers between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries for relecting on the relationship between philosophy and poetry. This approach serves not only to introduce a complex set of problems in a succinct manner, but also is key to explaining Girolamo Fracastoro’s views on the relationship between poetry and philosophy at the very threshold of the development of Renaissance systematic poetics. The study includes, as an appendix, the irst critical and annotated edition, 158 together with a translation into English, of chapter 21 of Galeotto Marzio’s De doctrina promiscua (ca. 1490). In the second essay, “Poliziano as a Philosopher, or the Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History,” Guido Giglioni offers a discussion that complements the irst study. In his analysis, professor Giglioni examines the literary production, pedagogical work, and constellation of theoretical concerns of Angelo Poliziano; these are ordered in terms of the concept of ‘moral imagination’ coined by Edmund Burke in 1790 and recently studied by David Bromwich. Giglioni traces the premises of this concept back to the end of the Florentine Quattrocento, and, beginning there, masterfully sheds light on the relationship of Poliziano to Homer’s works, to the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, and to the composition of texts as renowned as Orpheus, Ambra, or Lamia. Giglioni’s basic thesis is that “the narrative component in poetry—the mythos—is no ancillary operation, for it represents the very mechanism through which ideas are transformed into examples.” From here, he develops the tensions between iction’s rationalized function and the ictionalization of reality, or, expressed in other terms, the creative opposition between fabella and res; between “the philosophical dream of reason enhanced through the use of irony and imagination” and the thing-in-itself, as Poliziano views them. The third study, Anna Laura Puliaito’s “Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della Retorica (Venice 1562),” is concerned with some of the philosophical fables inspired by the classical tradition, which Francesco Patrizi da Cherso incorporated into his Dialoghi della retorica. As professor Puliaito introduces us to the arguments of these fables, we progressively discover the importance in Patrizi of iction for establishing a practical formulation of his own theory of the four modalities of linguistic production; that is, what is directed at reason, at pleasure, at the emotions, and at awakening either wonder (meraviglia) or stupor. The philosophical centrality of this fourth modality is precisely what provides a rhetorical environment for philosophy, we might say. From this centrality Patrizi’s Dialogues take on a new dimension: their narrative stratiication in distinct layers functions as a metaphor for the hermeneutical stratiication which involves all philosophical iction; precisely that place where wonder and stupor, as intellectual passions, are reserved for readers with suficient philosophical education to comprehend their ultimate signiicance. In “Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology,” Eric MacPhail to some extent takes the theoretical exercise of professor Puliaito’s study one step further. MacPhail compares Alonso Quijano’s position in his dispute with the Canon of Toledo—where he blurs the line between historical acts and legendary acts—with 159 Jean Bodin’s unbiased approach to fables of witchcraft and lycanthropy in De la Démonomanie des Sorciers. MacPhail, with immense skill, shows how relationships— hitherto mostly unseen—between iction, history, legend, myth, rumor, and sacred history, were intentionally muddled, with a similar confusion of the principle of authority, in order to create a space, not so much for skepticism as for speculative and philosophical freedom, in France at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. In fact, at the close of his study Macphail puts forward Montaigne as the theoretical nexus into which this whole current lows. Montaigne not only created his own literary genre in order to free himself from straightjackets and generic formulae, but also superimposed a blurring of distinctions upon those extrinsic categories that attempted to establish a dichotomy between what is true and what is false—a single reality and intrinsic plausibility, that of his own thought. Thus MacPhail leaves us just one step away from the Cartesian cogito. Early modern ideas of femininity and gender roles are the primary focus of Sandra Plastina’s essay: “Mythological Epic And Chivalric Fiction In Moderata Fonte’s And Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems.” Going beyond the common, recurring themes claiming preeminence for the female gender written by men—such as Cornelius Agrippa—, Plastina offers a fresco upon which are painted concepts of gender drawn from a remarkable number of epic poems and treatises on war written by women during the Cinquecento. Professor Plastina’s penetrating commentary on the works of Laura Terracina, Chiara Matraiani, Margherita Sarrocchi, Moderata Fonte, and Lucrezia Marinella shows that their writings can be seen not simply as an assimilation of, or a chaing against, common themes and formulae inherited from Ariosto and Tasso, in the case of the epic, but as the lifeexperience and artistic re-creation of the feminine, which contains unexpected variety and richness in continuous tension with the male audience’s expectations. Professor Plastina depicts these authors as meeting an immense literary challenge, and the implicit and explicit boundaries between imitatio and aemulatio, as they sought an original voice capable of appealing to both sexes. In the inal essay of this volume, “Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, Andrés Mendo, and Francisco Garau,” Antonio Bernat and John T. Cull analyze three volumes of emblems written during the Spanish Baroque period: Idea de un príncipe político cristiano representada en cien empresas, by Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1642), the Príncipe perfecto y ministros ajustados, by the Jesuit Andrés Mendo (1662), and the Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza, by his fellow Jesuit Francisco Garau (1700). These are presented as treatises of political philosophy, yet also contain 160 important ideas about how to articulate narrative iction. Through a description of methods of composition, the use of sources, and the concept of the emblem as enargeia, professors Bernat and Cull unpack the theoretical ideas that are present from the irst essay of our volume; namely, the function of iction and of pictorial composition as forms of attention and as a manifestation of the dichotomy between philosophy and literature. In closing, I would like to thank the Renaissance Society of America for the opportunity of presenting the works now gathered in this volume in two panels at their 63rd Annual Convention (Chicago, March 31st, 2017). The quality of the discussions during and after the presentations has been a motivation to provide a collection of texts worthy of expectations. I would also like to express my gratitude to the authors for agreeing to participate in both panels and for traveling to Chicago, in some cases not in the most favorable circumstances. Special thanks should go to Professor Giglioni, who could not attend in person in Chicago, but who has participated in this volume with a conference paper presented at the Seminar Pico and Poliziano in Late Medieval Florence (University College London, May 15th, 2017). Finally, this volume would not have been possible without the generosity, expertise, humanity, and superhuman patience of Professors Pérez Chico and López de Lizaga, the chief editors of Análisis. To all of them, my warmest thanks. Jorge ledo Independent scholar arTículos arTIcles some remarKs on renaIssance Mythophilia. The medIcal poeTIcs of Wonder: gIrolamo fracasToro and hIs ThoughT World algunos coMentarios sobre la Mitofilia renacentista. la poética Médica de la Maravilla: girolaMo fracastoro y su entorno intelectual Jorge Ledo aBsTracT The following pages make a case for the important role played by Aristotle’s Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21 in Renaissance poetics and especially in that of Girolamo Fracastoro. As this passage, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics in general, have traditionally been denied a major role in the poetics of the Renaissance, I have been obliged to develop my argument in three sections. [1.] The irst focuses on Thomas Aquinas’s groundbreaking reading of the quotation in psychological and epistemological terms, and on how he and his contemporaries were able to harmonize it both with the corpus Aristotelicum and with the development of a place for poetry in the system of the arts. [2.] The second section illustrates how the irst humanists used Aristotle’s authority to invert the meaning of the passage, transforming it into an argument in defense of the primacy of poetry over the rest of the arts. This appropriation had two undesiderable effects: either depriving the passage of its theoretical implications or, worse, assimilating Aristotle’s words into a Platonizing vision of poetry. Only with the recovery of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Poetics in the late ifteenth century did the passage escape its new status as a commonplace in humanist defense of poetry, and was briely again considered as a point of departure for the analysis of concepts such as fabula (iction) and admiratio (wonder), based on philosophical, poetic, and medical premises. [3] The last section introduces Galeotto Marzio’s and Giovanni Pontano’s pioneering works on these two concepts—fabula and admiratio—, as an introduction to the subsequent synthesis done by Girolamo Fracastoro, who, from the positions held by Marzio and Pontano as well as Aquinas’s original intuition, was able to harmonize natural philosophy and poetry by means of their psychological implications. This is what I have called here the ‘medical poetics of wonder’ or, more simply, mythotherapy. KeyWords: Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, Renaissance poetics, fabula, admiratio, wonder, history of emotions, medicine, psychology of literature, iction and philosophy, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Galeotto Marzio, Giovanni Pontano, Plotinus, Girolamo Fracastoro. Recibido: 15/12/2017. Aceptado: 18/12/2017 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 164 Jorge Ledo resumen Este trabajo deiende un argumento en realidad muy simple: el valor teórico que un famoso pasaje de la Metafísica (982b11-21) de Aristóteles tuvo para la poética renacentista y, en particular, para Girolamo Fracastoro. Dado que la Metafísica ha quedado habitualmente desatendida en los trabajos sobre poética renacentista, me he visto forzado a dividir mi argumento en tres partes. [1.] A partir de las citas y comentarios de Tomás de Aquino al pasaje, muestro cómo el dominico fue el primer comentarista latino en leerlo en clave psicológica y gnoseológica, y cómo tanto él como sus contemporáneos lo armonizaron con el corpus Aristotelicum, por un lado, y, por otro, con la clasiicación de la poesía en el sistema de artes. [2.] En la segunda parte, explico cómo los primeros humanistas se apropiaron del pasaje para transferirlo al argumentario a favor de la primacía de la poesía sobre el resto de artes, con dos efectos indeseables: bien con un empobrecimiento teórico, bien asimilándolo a una visión platonizante de la poesía. Solo con la recuperación manuscrita del texto griego de la Poética de Aristóteles a inales del siglo XV, este pasaje consigue sustraerse de la polémica sobre la clasiicación de las artes, para ser brevemente considerado como punto de partida para el análisis de fabula y admiratio desde premisas ilosóicas, poéticas y médicas. [3.] La última parte aborda dos pioneros en la recuperación teórica de ambos términos en su nuevo contexto —Galeotto Marzio y Giovanni Pontano— y la labor de síntesis que sobre las posturas encarnadas por ambos, y sobre la intuición originaria de Aquino, lleva a cabo Girolamo Fracastoro, que armonizará ilosofía natural y poesía a través de sus implicaciones en el intelecto, lo que he llamado aquí la ‘poética médica de la maravilla’ o, más sencillamente, mitoterapia. palaBras clave: Metafísica α 2 982b11-21, fabula, admiratio, maravilla, historia de las emociones, medicina, psicología de la literatura, literatura y ilosofía, Aristóteles, Tomás de Aquino, Galeotto Marzio, Giovanni Pontano, Plotino, Girolamo Fracastoro. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 165 uati, pariter succurre medenti: utraque tutelae subdita cura tuae est. Ovid, Remedia amoris, 75–78 I realized that the poet’s real work lays not in poetry; but in the invention of reasons for poetry to be admired. Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph The purpose of the following pages is twofold.1 On the one hand, I aim to explore two different yet complementary manifestations of the increasing interest in the philosophical value of iction during the Renaissance, and, on the other, to analyze how iction served as a device for introducing and contesting philosophical, scientiic, and theological issues from the 1490s to the 1550s. The reader familiar with these topics will certainly miss in my approach an extensive treatment of the tradition of the theologia poetica, and, though not exactly equivalent, a discussion of the composition of philosophical fables—and the theory behind it—by Poliziano, Antonio Urceo, and Erasmus, among others. One of the reasons for having neglected the first tradition is the vast amount of bibliography that has considered the problem properly; as for the second, the reader will ind in this volume an article by Professor Giglioni that surpasses in expertise and scope anything that I could possibly have done. But the main motive for the research in these pages is the surprising lack of scholarly attention paid to the psychological, gnoseological, and metaphysical value accorded to the concept of admiratio—understood both as the emotion experienced when, while contemplating, listening to, or reading a work of art, a truth is perceived; but also as the craft necessary for producing such an emotion—in the above-mentioned period. Thus, I propose to stress in this contribution the particular set of ramiications that admiratio had for the development of a concept of philosophical iction that did not correspond to the extensive discussion of rhetoric and poetics This article was irst delivered as two complementary talks at the 63rd Annual Convention of the Renaissance Society of America (2017, Chicago). I want to express my gratitude to all the participants who presented their papers in the two panels, “Impact of Fiction on Early Modern Philosophy,” both for their presence and for their commentaries. I would also like to thank David Quint, Luc Deitz, and Thomas Leinkauf for being in the audience of the panels and for their comments and reservations. They have made this inal version much more carefully thought-through, and now it should be read, partly at least, as a conversation with them. I would also like to thank Jon Nelson, Ignacio García Pinilla, and Darrel Rutkin for their comments and corrections on the Latin text and its translation added as an appendix to this text. 1 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 166 Jorge Ledo inherited from classical antiquity. As a matter of fact, my main thesis will be that this ‘philosophical’ approach to iction evolved, to a certain extent, independently of both disciplines in their traditional forms. To show this, I shall evaluate three separate manifestations of the philosophical notion of admiratio and how it related to literary devices. The irst is how it was incorporated in the thirteenth century as a important aspect of, so to speak, a ‘philosophy of literature,’ and how this groundbreaking approach faded in the hands of the early humanists. The second is how late-ifteenth century humanists reinterpreted the concept; and the third, departing from the major trends of ancient and medieval interpretation of Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, is how it was transformed, in the late poetics of Girolamo Fracastoro, into a justiication, not of the metaphysical value of poetry, but of poetry as an expression of the practical dimensions of philosophy. 1. arIsToTle and aquInas on Mythophilia Aristotle, the least enthusiastic lover of fables of all philosophers, was the irst to coin the term philomythos in a very well-known passage of book alpha of his Metaphysics: That [the Metaphysics] is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their wonder [διὰ γὰρ τὸ θαυμάζειν] that men both now begin and at irst began to philosophize; they wondered [θαυμάσαντες] originally at the obvious dificulties, then advanced little by little and stated dificulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant [ὁ δ᾽ ἀπορῶν καὶ θαυμάζων οἴεται ἀγνοεῖν] (whence even the lover of myth [φιλόμυθος] is in a sense a lover of wisdom [φιλόσοφος], for the myth is composed of wonders [ὁ γὰρ μῦθος σύγκεται ἐκ θαυμάσίων]); therefore, since they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.2 Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, Aristotle 1924, pp. 120. Compare the new critical edition by O. Primavesi: ὅτι δ᾽ οὐ ποιητική, δῆλον καὶ ἐκ τῶν πρώτων φιλοσοπηάντων. διὰ γὰρ τὸ θαυμάζειν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ νῦν καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἤρξαντο φιλοσοφεῖν, ἐξ ἀρχῆς μὲν τὰ πρόχειρα τῶν ἀπόρων θαυμάσαντες, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτω προϊόντες καὶ περὶ τῶν πειζόνων διαπορήσαντες, οἶοω περί τε τῶν τῆς σελἠνης παθημάτων καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ ἄστρα καὶ περὶ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς γενέσεως, ὁ δ᾽ ἀπορῶν καὶ θαυμάζων οἴεται ἀγνοεῖν (διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφος πώς ἐστιν ὁ γὰρ μῦθος σύγκεται 2 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 167 In this excerpt, Aristotle performed two important operations in coining the term. In the irst place, he established an imprecise hiatus between the philosopher and the philomythos. By so doing, as I will mention below, book α of the Metaphysics played a major role in the recovery of the ideal of the poeta theologus by early humanists. Secondly, he established this relationship by stressing that wonder (θαυμάζειν) was the point of departure for the thought of both the philosopher and the philomythos. As a consequence, somebody interested in the history of mythophilia will be forced to pay attention—as wonder, together with melancholy, are so to speak the philosophical emotions par excellence—to its links with the history of philosophical wonder, which will prove not only to be a productive way of approaching mythophilia, but also of providing a general framework within which the links between philosophy and literature, or the impact of literature on philosophy, would be expanded during the Renaissance. Despite the fact that some further commentaries on Aristotle’s philomythos could be found in classical tradition,3 to my knowledge Thomas Aquinas was the irst medieval thinker to consider the introduction of philosophical wonder in Aristotle’s Metaphysics as a psychological and gnoseological issue. In the treatise on the passions contained in the Summa Theologica [1265–1273], he tackles wonder both as a cause ἐκ θαυμάσίων). ὥστ᾽ εἴπερ διὰ τὸ φεύγειν τὴν ἄγνοιαν ἐφιλοσόφησαν, φανερὸν ὅτι διὰ τὸ εἰδέναι τὸ ἐδίωκον καὶ οὐ χρήσεως τινος ἕνεκεν,” Aristotle 2012a, p. 473. William of Moerbeke’s translation reads as follows: “Quia vero non activa, palam ex primis philosophantibus. Nam propter admirari homines nunc et primum incoeperunt philosophari: a principio quidem quae in promptu dubitabilium mirantes, deinde paulatim procedentes, et de maioribus dubitantes, ut de lunae passionibus, et de his quae circa solem et astra, etiam de universi generatione. Qui vero dubitat et admiratur ignorare videtur. Quare et philomythes philosophus aliqualiter est. Fabula namque ex miris constituitur. Quare, si ad ignorantiam effugiendam philosophati sunt, palam quia propter scire, studere persecuti sunt, et non usus alicuius causa,” in Aristotle 1982, p. 15. 3 Apart from a previous mention in passing in Plato’s Theaetetus (155c–d), there is a short allusion to these “theologians” in Cicero’s De natura deorum III. xxI. 53; an extensive commentary on Varro’s three genres of theology (fabulosa, naturalis, civilis) recalled in Augustine’s De civitate Dei (VI. v–x) (Van Nuffelen 2010, pp. 162–88)—; and a hint in Lactantius, De ira Dei 11: “All those who are cultivated as gods were men, and the same were the earliest and greatest kings. […] And both the oldest Greek writers, whom they call Theologoi, and also the Romans, following and imitating the Greeks, teach this, and chief among them, Euhemerus and our own Ennius who point out the births, marriages, progenies, commands, deeds, passings, tombs of all of them […],” 1962, p. 87. The idea entered into early medieval encyclopedism through Isidore of Seville, Etymologies VIII. VII. 2–9 (2006, pp. 180b–181a), and Rabanus Maurus, De universo libri XXII IV. V. De clericis and XV. II. De poetis both in Patrologia Latina 111, cols. 92A and 419B–C and id. Excerptio de Arte Grammatica Prisciani, ibid. cols. 666D–667A. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 168 Jorge Ledo of enjoyment and of fear.4 A commonly—and wrongly—accepted solution to this paradoxical approach has been to say that Aquinas held that a contiguous relation existed between the two passions. In truth, this ambivalence of wonder (admiratio) stems both from the sources employed by the Dominican friar and from the lexical limitations of medieval Latin when compared to classical Greek. Thus, Aquinas follows Aristotle when he refers to desire and enjoyment, but as he expounds his ideas on sorrow, fear, and wrath, he abandons the classical listings of pathemata, relying instead on John of Damascus’s De ide orthodoxa and Nemesius’s De natura hominis. In sum, admiratio refers in Aquinas to two different Greek concepts: Aristotelian θαυμάζειν (thaumazein) which is, in the domain of the passions, an eficient cause that motivates the agent—in other words, joy stems from the hope of understanding the object of wonder, as learning is a source of pleasure—; and Damascenian and Nemesian κατάπληξις (kataplêxis), which refers, on the other hand, to the process by which admiration turns into distress for the subject who experiences it, motivated by the anticipation of danger.5 This danger, according to Aquinas, must be understood in epistemological terms, that is, as the anticipation of a great dificulty, or the impossibility for the subject to acquire certainty on a given object of speculation. Aquinas’s approach to the topic permeates Renaissance thought deeply enough to arise in Descartes. During the seventeenth century, those philosophers involved in the study of the passions of the soul would establish a neat distinction between wonder and astonishment, although it is uncommon to quote Aquinas’s Summa as the basis for the development of such ideas. Thus, Descartes points out in The Passions of the Soul [Les passsions de l’âme, 1649] the dangers of excessive wonder, and establishes a distinction between functional wonder (admiration) and stupefying astonishment (estonnement).6 Whereas the former can be of use both for mnemonic purposes and for stimulating the thirst for knowledge, the latter—an “excess of wonder”—can descend into a “beclouding” of the mind of the subject who experiences it, or into a mere craving for novelty but not for real knowledge. Although Aquinas’s ideas on wonder as found in the Summa made an impact on European culture lasting well beyond the sixteenth century, they neither sufice Aquinas, Summa Theologica Iª-IIae q. 41 a. 4. Vega 1992, p. 36n19; cf. Daston and Park 1998, p. 113. John Damascene 1955, p. 122: “Admiratio vero est timor ex magna imaginatione. Stupor vero est timor ex inassueta imaginatione;” Nemesius 1975: 103, 1987: 81. Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 15, a. 8; see also Gondreau 2009, pp. 217ff. 6 Descartes 1985, pp. 354–356. Cf. Daston and Park 1998, pp. 316–17. 4 5 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 169 to offer a complete overview of his approach to wonder, nor do they completely explain my view of the problem. Therefore, another passage, this time from his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics [1270–1272], needs to be recalled: It is known that doubt [dubitatio] and wonder [admiratio] both originate in ignorance: when we observe clear effects whose cause we ignore, we admire their cause. Now, as wonder [admiratio] is the reason for philosophy, it is clear that the philosopher is to some extent a philomythos, that is, a lover of fables, what is proper to poets. That is the reason why the irst men who occupied themselves with the causes of things by means of fables are called theologian poets [poetas theologizantes]; such were Perseus and some others, which were the Seven wise men. Therefore, here is the reason why the philosopher is considered a poet: both deal with that which causes wonder. For the fable poets are concerned with what stems from certain marvellous phenomena [quibusdam mirabilibus]; philosophers are also lead to philosophy from wonder [admiratione].7 With regards to Aquinas’s take on the theologian poets in the second excerpt: it encapsulates two important issues about the conception of philosophy (theology) and poetry for medieval scholasticism. First, while Aquinas’s admiratio corresponds to the Aristotelian θαυμάζειν, his allusion to wonder as mirabilia seems to be mainly cultural. 8 In other words, even though he states that the philosopher and the poet share a common gnoseological impulse, the latter’s attention is drawn to bewilderment while the former moves to philosophical inquiry, which is far from Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio I, lesson 3, ch. 2, §55: “Constat autem, quod dubitatio et admiratio ex ignorantia provenit. Cum enim aliquos manifestos effectus videamus, quorum causa nos latet, eorum tunc causam admiramur. Et ex quod admiratio fuit causa inducens ad philosophiam, patet quod philosophus est aliqualiter philomythes, idest amator fabulae, quod proprium est poetarum. Unde primi, qui per modum quemdam fabularem de principiis rerum tractaverunt, dicti sunt poëtae theologizantes, sicut fuit Perseus et quidam alii qui fuerunt septem sapientes. Causa autem, quare philosophus comparatur poëtae, est ista, quia uterque circa miranda versatur. Nam fabulae circa quas versantur poëtae, ex quibusdam mirabilibus constituntur. Ipsi etiam philosophi ex admiratione moti sunt ad philosophandum,” Aquinas 2004, p. 96. See the important remarks by Umberto Eco 2012, pp. 198–200. 8 See, for instance, Aquinas, De memoria et reminiscentia Commentarium 450a32 (2005, pp. 199 and 249n9): “Yet it does happen that one irmly retains in his memory things that he encounters as a child. The vigor of a motion may cause things we marvel at to be more deeply impressed upon our memory. We chiely wonder about new and unusual things and newborn children tend to marvel at things still more because they are not used to them, and for this reason too they remember irmly. On the other hand, with respect to the luid condition of their body, children are naturally liable to slips of memory,” and the Expositio super Iob ad Litteram, chs. 4, 18 and 35. 7 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 170 Jorge Ledo being a slip of the pen by the Dominican theologian.9 Second, Aquinas stresses that the link between the philomythos and the philosopher could be loose insofar as their historical order of appearance is neglected. That is, mythophilia possesses barely more than an archaeological interest—as philosophy’s arcane predecessor— for (true) philosophy, since poetry’s function is simply to move a person to virtue, as he states in his well-known preface to Aristotle’s Analytica priora [1270].10 Nonetheless, Aquinas’s masters, contemporaries, and heirs could manifest more daring in this regard, as they usually construed Aristotle’s assertion in Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21 as a direct comparison, rather than a hiatus, between philosophy and poetry. As a matter of fact, a casual reader could easily see the implications involved in this equivalence simply by paying attention to direct glosses and commentaries on the Aristotelian passage. Thus, in Albert the Great’s Metaphysics [1263–1267]11 and in Ulrich of Strassburg’s Liber de sumo bono [¿1265– 1269?],12 poetry is presented as an art with a threefold nature: with respect to its See, for instance, the parallels with Bacon’s (2000, pp. 148–149) treatment of instantiae deviantes. “At other times only an estimation [existimatio] inclines to one part of the contradiction, on account of some representation, in the way that a man may conceive disgust at a certain food if it is represented to him under similitude of something disgusting; to this the Poetics pertains, for it is the poet’s function to lead us to virtue through a itting representation. All of these pertain to rational philosophy, for it is the function of reason to lead from one thing to another” (Quandoque vero sola existimatio declinat in aliquam partem contradictionis propter aliquam repraesentationem, ad modum quo it homini abominatio alicuius cibi, si repraesentetur ei sub similitudine alicuius abominabilis. Et ad hoc ordinatur poetica; nam poetae est inducere ad aliquod virtuosum per aliquam decentem repraesentationem. Omnia autem haec ad rationalem philosophiam pertinent: inducere enim ex uno in aliud rationis est) Aquinas 2009, p. 791. 11 Metaphysicorum libri XIII I, treat. I. chap. VI. In quo ostenditur, quod ista scientia non est activa, sed contemplativa: “Est enim admiratio motus ignorantis procedentis ad inquirendum, ut sciat causam eius de quod miratur, cuius signum est, quia ipse Philomythes secundum hunc modum Philosophus est, quia fabula sua construitur ab ipso ex mirandis […]. Sicut enim in ea parte logicae, quae poetica est ostendit Aristoteles, poeta ingit fabulam ut excitet ad admirandum, et quod admiratio ulterius excitet ad inquirendum, et sic constet philosophia. Sicut est de Phaetonte et sicut de Deucalione monstrat Plato, in qua fabula non intenditur nisi excitatio ad mirandum causas duorum diluviorum aquae et ignis ex orbitatione stellarum erraticarum provenientium, ut per admirationem causa quaeratur et sciatur veritas, et ideo poesis modum dat philosophandi sicut aliae scientiae logices […]. Licet ergo quoad mensuram metri poetria sit sub grammatica, tamen quoad intentionem logicae est poesis quaedam pars” (Albertus Magnus 1890b, col. 30b). 12 Liber de sumo bono. I, treat. II, chap. IX. De multis specialibus modis theologiae: “Habet secundo modo, modum poeticum, quando veritatem sub integumentis ponit, ut in parabolis Sacre Scripture, et hic modus etiam convenit huic scientie, quia, ut dicitur primo Metaphysice, 9 10 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 171 form—verse—it should be linked to the domain of grammar, but according to its intention it should be connected to rhetoric and, inally, to the extent that it pursues the manifestation of truth through premises whose role is to cause acts of imagination,13 it should be ascribed to logic.14 The ground of this stance is as follows: if poetry were exclusively considered as dependent upon grammar and rhetoric, i.e., as a discipline occupied with the knowledge of metrical norms and of the embellishment and effectiveness of language (ornatus and pathos), truth would be completely absent from its concerns, and poetics could not be considered as a science, not even an ancillary one. The position had been held, though with varying lines of reasoning, in Al-Farabius’s Catalogue of the Sciences, Avicenna’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, and Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Poetics; and soon thereafter echoed in Dominicus Gundissalinus’s On the Division of Philosophy (De divisione philosophiae, ca. 1150), in Hermannus Alemannus’s translation of Averroes’s Middle Commentary, inished in 1256, in the Anonymous Question on the Nature of Poetry (Minnis and Scott 1991, pp. 280–1), or in Vincent de Beauvais Speculum doctrinale, to mention but a few.15 philomicos [sic], id est, poeta amans ingere fabulas, philosophus est, eo quod poeta ad hoc ingit fabulam: ut excitet ad admirandum, et admiratio ulterius excitet ad inquirendum, et sic constet scientia, ut dicit Philosophus in sua Poetica [Rhet. 1371a32ff.]. Unde patet quod ipsa dat modum sciendi per modum admirandi, sicut alie partes logice dant eum quantum ad modum arguendi, propter quod etiam poesis est pars logice quantum ad intentionem, licet quandum ad mensuram metri sit sub grammatica. Eadem ergo ratione pertinet iste modus ad hanc scientiam, sed tamen propter hoc non estimandum est scripturam hanc aliquid habere fabulosum et falsum; quia, ut dicit Augustinus, ad veritatem parabolae non requiritur quod sensus literalis verus sit, sed suficit quod secundus sensus sit verus, quia oratio est vera vel falsa, per hoc quod res per ipsam signiicata est vel non est. Res autem signiicata principaliter per parabolam non est signiicatum verborum, sed signiicatum illius signiicatum quod verba mediante signiicato suo signiicat, et ideo patet propositum,” Ulrich de Strasbourg 1930, pp. 51–52. Ulrich combines the passage of the Metaphysics with Aristotle’s Rhetoric α 11 1371a32–b10; the emphases in the quotation are mine. 13 Minnis 2005, pp. 239–274. 14 It was commonly accepted that poetry was the lowest part of logic, as its main device was the imaginative syllogism (Black 1989 and 1990, pp. 209–246). On the implications of the use of imaginative syllogisms and their imbrication with the rhetorical tradition, see Mehtonen 2006, pp. 299–303. 15 On the place of poetry in the medieval systems of the arts, see Hardison Jr. 1962, pp. 3–23, Weisheipl 1965, pp. 54–90, Hugonnard-Roche 1984, pp. 41–75, and Dahan 1990, pp. 5–27. On the inluence of these systems and of the inclusion of poetry in logic in Renaissance poetics, esp. Savonarola’s Apologeticus, see Godman 1988, pp. 31–37. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 172 Jorge Ledo Albert the Great provides yet another commonplace for understanding the inluence of Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21 during the late middle ages. Through his analysis of transpositiones or traslationes, Albert claims that igurative language—i.e., the language of poetry—can be used as a means for philosophical and theological relection, relying both on the authority of the Sacred text itself and on the tradition of allegorical exegesis, and echoing some accents on hermeneutics and philosophy previously developed by the Arabic philosophical tradition, mainly Averroes. However, when it comes to the possibility of poetry expressing theological truth, Albert makes a distinction that would have an echo not only in Aquinas himself, but also in scholastic thought after him,16 and even in Dante— the igurative language of poetry could not be compared to that of the Bible for two reasons: the truth behind the ‘poetry’ of the Bible emanates from God’s intelligence, and therefore it is divine, whereas the mirabilia found in poetry are crafted by human minds and delivered for human minds’ consumption, and, according to another famous passage on poetry in Metaphysics α, ‘poets are liars.’17 These positions would be contested by fourteenth-century classicists such as Mussato, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and, later, by Salutati, among others. Their battle against scholasticism is usually considered as an intellectual ight to reclaim the place of honor for poetry among the arts and, thereafter, to open up a path to classical learning as the core concern of the study of literature, whether worldly or divine.18 Even though it is commonly accepted that their standpoints—no matter Minnis 2010, pp. 135–145. “AD PRIMUM ergo dicendum, quod sacra Scriptura poeticis utitur ex divina sapientia formatis et iguratis, in quorum iguris secundum proportionem similitudinum resultant inigurabilia et immaterialia, eo quod ab illis et ad illa formata et igurata sunt, et ideo certissima sunt: ex certissimis enim oriuntur et ad certissima dirigunt. In poesi autem Philosophorum, mira ex quibus fabula componitur, ex ictione humana oriuntur, et per repraesentationem ad humana dirigunt, et ideo deceptoria sunt et mendosa. Unde Aristoteles in primo Metaphysicorum: ‘Secundum philosophiam poetae multa mentiuntur canentes’,” Summa Theologiae part I, treat. 1, quest. 5, memb. 2 (Albertus Magnus 1895, col 24b), the emphases are mine. Aristotle’s original passage reads: “Ἀλλ᾽ οὔτε τὸ θεῖον φθονερὸν ὲνδἑχεται εἶναι, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν πολλὰ ψεύδονται ἀοιδοί, οὔτε τῆς τοιαύτης ἄλλην χρὴ νομίζειν τιμιωτέραν,” Aristotle, 2012: 474; “Sed nec divinum invidum esse convenit, sed secundum proverbium: ‘multa mentiuntur poëtae.’ Nec ea aliam honorabiliorem oportet existimare,” in the translation by William of Moerbeke (Aristotle 1982, pp. 19); my emphasis. See also Albert’s Topica VIII. 1. 3 (1890a, col. 498a). 18 A handful of classical studies on the subject in Curtius 1940, pp. 1–15, Walker 1972, pp. 1–41ff., Witt 1977, pp. 538–563, Zaccaria 1986, pp. 281–311, Kallendorf 1995, pp. 41–62, and Trinkaus 1995, II, pp. 683–720. 16 17 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 173 the differences between them—are to be seen as revolutionary in the context of fourteenth- and ifteenth-century humanism, they most certainly sounded like rudimentary outbursts to the ears of their contemporary scholastic thinkers, and there is no discussion of the fact that early humanism was united in its lack of interest in a philosophical approach to poetry or, at least, a milder interest than the one they were aiming to attack.19 This can be seen in the early debate between Mussato, who appraised the topic defending the possibility of a divinely inspired poetry, and Giovannino of Mantua, who, as a Dominican, closely adhered to Aquinas’s denial of the identiication of poetry with theology.20 Petrarch himself, in several places, made use of the passage on the philomythos, as would Boccaccio and Salutati after him.21 In contrast to Mussato, however, all of them would deploy the idea of the possibility of theological poetry, lessening the sacred overtones in their defense of poetry, with ‘sacral’ ones, in Minnis and Scott’s (1991: 390) terms. In sum, although the value of early humanists’ defense of poetry cannot be reduced to mere manifestos, their take on some philosophical issues related to poetry meant a step backwards when compared to thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury scholasticism. Aristotle’s Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, which had been critically discussed every time the philosophical and theological value of poetry was under examination, became fossilized, a-critically mentioned, and tacitly glossed in the “poetics” of early humanists. As a matter of fact, from the late-fourteenth century onward, the triumphant parading of this excerpt—after Petrarch set it in motion— demonstrates that the art of poetry could occasionally exceed philosophy and even theology in achievement and profundity, although the arguments to support the idea did not match the boldness of the statement.22 Consequently, any chance for the igure of the philomythos and the concept of mythophilia to pave the way for creating a ‘philosophy of literature’ soon began to fade in favor of Neoplatonism and the much more systematic exploration of poetry provided by Aristotle’s Poetics, conferring on the passage an almost exclusively ornamental role. My assertion here seems to go against the grain (Garin 1987, pp. 69–71, 1981, pp. 52–68), but I rely on the venerable discussion of the subject in Curtius 2013, pp. 214–227, Kristeller 1961, pp. 101ff., and Ronconi 1976. 20 Greenield 1981, pp. 80 and 87–88. 21 Trinkaus 1979, pp. 18–19 and 99–106, Greenield 1981, pp. 99, 118–119, and 137. 22 Examples of the a-critical use of the passage and its links with Neoplatonism are collected in Chevrolet 2007, pp. 73ff. However, there were early criticisms not only of the theological, but also of the philosophical value of literary fables, as for instance Poggio’s remark on a manuscript copy of his De avaritia held in the Convento di San Marco, see Garin 1961, pp. 36–37. 19 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 174 Jorge Ledo 2. ToWards a psychology and an aesTheTIcs of adMiratio. marzIo and ponTano (1490–1499) Aristotle’s Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, standing between the line of defense based upon theological poetry and the development of Neoplatonism, on the one hand, and the eclosion of Neo-Aristotelian poetics, on the other, enjoyed a theoretical revival between 1490 and 1540 whose importance, as far as I know, has never been treated with the attention it deserves.23 It would be tempting to think that its refashioning happened hand in hand with the maturation of literary criticism in humanist Italy, but it seems more likely to me that the reason behind it was the discovery of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Poetics and the problems it posed with regards to the topical comparison of poet (philomythos) and philosopher contained in the Metaphysics.24 It will sufice to point out that in such a monumental work as Weinberg’s (1961), Metaphysics is only mentioned twice. 24 The systematic translation of Aristotle’s Opera into Latin took place during the irst half of the thirteenth century, see now Hasse 2010. As for the Poetics, the work was translated twice into Latin during the middle ages. The irst translation was based on Averroes’s Talkhıˉs≥ kitaˉb alshi’r, rendered from Arabic into Latin by Hermannus Alemannus, a monk settled in Toledo, in 1256—edited by L. Minio-Paluello in 1968 as De arte poetica cum Auerrois expositione—and usually referred as Poetria Aristotelis during the middle ages. In 1278, William of Moerbeke authored a second translation directly from Greek, which was edited by E. Valmigli in 1953. Although much more accurate, the latter has survived in two manuscripts and its only known readers during the fourteenth century were precisely Mussato and Petrarch (Kelly 1979, pp. 205–6, 1993, pp. 117–8); Alemannus’s version, on the other hand, has survived in 24 manuscripts. According to Minnis (2005, p. 252) and others, the reason behind the good fortune of Alemannus as a translator is that he did a better job of harmonizing his version with scholasticism, both in its take on literary composition and in the ethical approach to poetry. Alemannus’s work was the irst translation into Latin of Aristotle’s Poetics printed during the Renaissance—Determinatio in poetria Aristotilis, Venice: Philipus Venetus (1481), reissued in 1515—, and Averroes’s epitome had another two translators into Latin in the sixteenth century: Abraham de Balmes in 1523 and Jacob Mantinus in 1550 (Cranz and Schmitt 1984). For the transmission of Aristotle’s Poetics during the middle ages, see Tigerstedt 1968, pp. 7–24, Boggess 1970, pp. 278–294, Allen 1976, pp. 67–81, and once more Kelly 1979, pp. 161–209. On the fate of the medieval versions of Aristotle’s Poetics during the Renaissance, see Weinberg 1961, I, pp. 351–6 and Cirillo 2004, pp. 287–303, and a highly-valuable overview of the critical tradition of passages of the Poetics in Schrier 1998. In the late ifteenth century, however, a number of humanists—Ermolao Barbaro and Angelo Poliziano among them—had access to the Greek version of Aristotle’s Poetics, see Branca 1983: 3–36, and the commentaries by Giglioni in this volume. 23 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 175 According to the constraints of early humanism, the exhumation of the Poetics meant, on the one hand, that, as scholasticism had claimed, poetry’s function was mainly civic, and therefore its aim was somehow shared with rhetoric.25 Revealed poetry, on the other hand, remained subjected to Plato and to a number of secondary authorities that served to expand the idea of a veiled truth behind poetic fables. So, paradoxically, Aristotelian Poetics found itself constrained by a Platonic framework. To resolve this issue and open up a path to scientiic poetry and philosophical fable, a number of humanists reappraised Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, focusing on the meaning or meanings of fabula (mythos) and admiratio, attempting to develop their theoretical implications. Thus, depending on how fabula and admiratio were deined, they offered different responses to the following questions: Where does admiratio lie in poetry? What are the effects and function of poetic admiratio? Is verse necessary for the fabula to exist? Do poetic and philosophical admiratio respond to the same emotion, that is, excitement at the intellectual perception of (hidden, either philosophical or theological) truth? And, if so, which consequences can be drawn from the fact that there is truth in poetry, and how, therefore, should fabula be deined? This was the irst theoretical encounter between Aquinas’s approach to admiratio and the so-called humanistic tradition, a melding that, as I will show, would be radically transformed by Girolamo Fracastoro. In the 1490s, tentative answers were articulated in at least three different approaches to Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21. None of them, however, tried to respond to all the aforementioned questions at once, nor were they formulated in keeping with a shared conceptual framework developed in the context of the same disciplines or written with the same readership in mind. As has been said, these new views on the problem transcended late-medieval scholastic ideas on transferences or translationes, as well as the inheritance of Platonic myth-making, the institution of medieval allegory, and the common agreement that poetry should hold no more than an ancillary relation to philosophy. The decade’s irst discussion on the topic appeared in chapter 21 of De doctrina promiscua [ca. 1490] by Galeotto Marzio, whose irst edition and translation we present as an appendix to these pages. The second was the opposition to Florentine Neoplatonism expressed through the radical response to the question about the philosophical, and eventually theological, For wonder as a response to the three components of a plot—peripeteia, anagnorisis, and alogon—and for the Aristotelian theories on wonder in tragedy and epic in Renaissance poetics, see Herrick 1947, pp. 222–226 and esp. Minsaas 2003, pp. 145–171. 25 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 176 Jorge Ledo value of fables, irst discussed and enacted by Poliziano’s Lamia [1492],26 much developed and played with by Antonio Urceo in his Sermo I [1494–1495],27 and taken to its limits by Erasmus in the Praise of Folly [1509–1511].28 The third can be found in the most important treatise on poetics of the decade—with the possible exception of Bartolomeo della Fonte’s Poetica [ca. 1492]—: Giovanni Pontano’s Actius [1494–1499], whose examination of admiratio would prove highly inluential during the sixteenth century. For clarity’s sake, I will give my attention only to Marzio and Pontano in these pages, leaving for a better occasion the particularities and existing links between the approaches of Poliziano, Urceo, and Erasmus to mythophilia and the role played by Aristotle in the adoxographic tradition. Galeotto Marzio—much better remembered today for his condemnation for heresy due to some chapters of his miscellany On Matters Generally Unknown [De incognitis vulgo, ca. 1478], inished a second miscellany, On Many Different Affairs [De doctrina promiscua], in 1490, the year of his death.29 Although the product of intermittent work over several years—some of the chapters had circulated previously—, the inal version of De doctrina promiscua was addressed to Lorenzo de Medici and remained in manuscript [Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 52. 18] until it was printed in Florence in 1548, and thereafter in 1552 and 1602. As far as I know, chapter 21 of the work has not received any critical attention despite its undeniable interest. In it, Marzio provides an apparently disarranged For the concept of mythophilia in the later Poliziano and its implications and contrast with his previous fables, see esp. Mutini 1972, pp. 86ff., Batkin 1990, pp. 149–156, Candido 2010, pp. 103–107, and Giglioni in this same volume. 27 A summary of the fourteenth Sermones of Antonio Urceo in Raimondi 1987, pp. 129–147. On Sermo I, see Chines 1990, pp. 209–220, 1998, pp. 125–150, and Chines and Severi 2013, pp. 51–59. 28 On the links between Antonio Urceo’s Sermo I and another prolusio written in 1509, and ictionally declaimed by Dame Folly in front of the students and professors of Theology at the University of Paris, see Forni 2012, p. 59 and Chines 2013, pp. 42–43. The textual coincidences between the two texts exceed the number indicated in the bibliography, and the early editorial history of Urceo’s Opera omnia—the princeps was published in Bologna in 1502, where Erasmus spent part of 1507, and the second edition was printed by Aldus in Venice in 1506, where Erasmus spent 1508 at the Aldine press—leaves little doubt about Erasmus’s familiarity with the text. 29 Good introductions to Galeotto Marzio in Vasoli 1980, pp. 38–63, Pastore Stocchi 1983, pp. 15–50, and Anselmi 2008, pp. 57–103. On De doctrina promiscua, see besides Freza’s (1949, pp. xiii–xlix) introduction to his partial edition and translation (chapter 21 is not included); Miggiano 2001, pp. 207–240; and Vasoli 2001, pp. 185–205. 26 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 177 and peripheral discussion both of the relation between iction and philosophy and of the concepts of fabula and admiratio. Thus, after succinctly introducing the many acceptations of fabula in dramatic poetry, in the Scriptures, and in mythology, its relation to both truth and verisimilitude, and the distinction between fabula and oratory (§§ 1–2), Marzio discards all of them for the simple reason that they refer to different and irreconciliable instances and, therefore, do not allow for a satisfactory and univocal deinition. What is interesting about this passage, however, is that, without acknowledging it, Marzio has explored and jettisoned as unsatisfactory all the extant acceptations of mythos in the Aristotelian corpus. To solve the problem of the lack of a precise deinition, Marzio offers two differing yet complementary arguments. Following Aristotle’s passage on the philomythos, his irst argument is that fabulae should not be deined by their actuality or their plausability (§§ 1–2), but rather by their capacity to encapsulate a hidden truth (§ 3). As a matter of fact, Marzio would completely sever form from truth—hence the history of the defeat of Argos by Hermes Trismegistus (§ 11)—through the comparison of poetry with painting (§ 12). As a consequence, the form in which fabulae are delivered is only important for the less intellectually gifted, because form catches their attention and allows them to participate in the truth it hides; meanwhile, for philosophers, whose attention is drawn to that hidden truth, fabulae require full command of many disciplines, astrology among them, to fully disclose their meaning and awaken wonder. Marzio, in interpreting the truth of the fabulae, is not limiting himself to an Euhemeristic view (§ 3), but rather considers them as devices whose interpretation permits a full disclosure of the whole building—the encyclopaedia—of the liberal arts. Expanding the link established by Aquinas in the Summa Theologica between mythophilia and the passions of the soul, the second argument shifts in Marzio from the realm of the active intellect and supernatural life to the effects that fabulae produce in the passive intellect and the lower reason of their listeners and readers (§ 5-9). For Marzio, a physician himself, the argument is clear in this regard: even though the term fabula may have multiple acceptations, physicians understand it univocally (§ 4), that is, by the effect it produces on the intellect of the listener or reader. The implicit consequences could hardly be more extreme: fabula should be deined according to the effect it produces in the reader or the listener; accordingly, it should be considered as the sum of the factuality of the object (of art), the physiological disposition and intellectual capacity of the spectator, together with his proiciency in fully comprehending what the object (of art) is representing. (Not bad for a ifteenth century scholar!) Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 178 Jorge Ledo It would be dificult to think of a treatise more antithetical in its premises to Marzio’s approach to mythophilia than Pontano’s Actius [1495/1499]. As we have seen, the former is almost insulting in its apparently unstudied approach to poetry (fabula) as an object of inquiry, while the latter is obsessed precisely with the opposite, that is, in offering a coherent deinition of poetry based on an exhaustive analysis of form over content, with the aim of differentiating his object of study from any other forms and disciplines of discourse. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that both texts share a remarkable number of issues, many of them introduced by the Spanish physician Juan Pardo—psychology, the physiology of dreams, astrology, the effect of poetry on imagination and intellection—, by Altilius— such as the relation between poetry and history, the comparison of poetry with painting, and the truth and verisimilitude of poetry—and even by Paulus Prassicius and Pardus in their important discussion on the relation between poetic wonder and rhetoric pathos. It could be argued, not without reason, that these are minor concerns when the dialogue as a whole and its main topics are considered, and given that Pontano attempted with the Actius to provide an extensive answer to the following questions: Where does admiratio lie in poetry? What are the differences between poetry, history, and oratory? And which are the requisites, function, and effects of poetic admiratio? It is surprising that none of the scholars of his work have considered the part played by Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21—even as a minor factor—in the Actius;30 because, as I hope I have demonstrated already, from the thirteenth century onward this passage showed the ability to trigger at least the following theoretical questions: Are philosophy and poetry related in any way? If so, how should poetry be categorized in the system of the arts: as a subrogate As a matter of fact, Haskell (1998, pp. 507), following Deramaix (1987, p. 210), has denied any possible inluence of the Metaphysics on the Actius, and Deramaix (2008, p. 142) himself has recently stated: “L’Actius réinvente le genre de l’art poétique sans Aristote, concilie imitation de Virgile et poétique de la variété.” Even if it is true that Pontano, as far as I know, does not mention directly Aristotelian Metaphysics in any of his major works, and that the link between Pontano’s idea of admiratio has been linked to his treatment of magniicentia over and over, it is equally true that Pontano had in his personal library a printed (as Roick 2017, pp. 65 and 219n105 correctly points out), not a manuscript, copy of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (undoubtedly the one published by Aldus in June 1, 1497) and that he acquired Aldus’s Greek Aristotle as soon as the volumes came from the press; that his knowledge of Aristotle cannot be denied, and that, even if he had not had a copy of the Metaphysics, the passage was so frequently quoted and mentioned that it is almost impossible that he was unaware of its existence, not to mention the theoretical aspects involved in its discussion during the last two decades of the ifteenth century. 30 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 179 of grammar, rhetoric, and even logic, or differentiated from the rest of the arts of discourse? Is admiratio fundamental to poetry, and, in that case, which kind of admiratio, and based on what criteria? Should admiratio, as an emotion, be compared to rhetorical pathos, or, following Aristotle’s Metaphysics, would it be better compared to philosophical (intellectual, so to speak) emotions such as melancholy? And, such being the case, should poetic admiratio be restricted to the domain of ethics and politics, as Plato in the Republic and Aristotle in the Poetics seem to suggest or, on the contrary, should it give itself up to philosophical wonder, and therefore explore the hidden causes of nature? With all this in mind, should we infer that content (fabula) is more important than form in poetry and, should it therefore be considered as an artistic manifestation of other disciplines; or is poetry a discipline in itself ? For my interest here, I would like to stress only two ideas present in the Actius. The irst can be found in the section where, after referring to Platonic frenzy and Aristotelian psychology, Juan Pardo comes to the conclusion that it is verse— in other words, the distinction (excellentia) or magniicence of the craft of the poet relected in the poem—which leads to wonder. As a matter of fact, this premise would allow Pontano to establish a neat distinction between poetry and oratory, not only from the point of view of their approach to language but, more importantly, from the effect that they foster in their audience. Thus, oratory seeks persuasion, that is, an appeal to the passions, while poetry seeks the recognition of the craft of the poet, and consequently his fame and glory. This, as should be evident to us, is an intellectualized passion, wonder, although the Actius does not go further. The second idea appears, again, linked to Pontano’s treatment of poetry as a device fundamentally crafted under the premise of being excellent— through the means of poetry itself—and therefore made to excite wonder in the reader or listener. In the context of the object of imitation, fabula, this marks grosso modo a neat distinction between poetry and history. This distinction is not limited to the different aims—verse vs. prose—, or to the dispositio, brevity, or quality of the language employed, but rather is found in the object of imitation itself. Following Garin’s summary of the problem, history is related to the imitation of all that is human, but poetry is related to the imitation of nature, a view that would justify Pontano’s own scientiic poetry, mainly the Meteora and the Urania. 3. Mythophilia as myThoTherapy. gIrolamo fracasToro (1478–1553) Marzio and Pontano had an uneven impact on Fracastoro. Marzio pioneered in his chapter of the De doctrina promiscua the maturing of what could be called Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 180 Jorge Ledo a proto-psychology of literature. The fact that some of his intuitions were developed in works by Pomponazzi or Fracastoro should be attributed more to the common speculative milieu of late-ifteenth and early-sixteenth century Italy than to any direct knowledge of Marzio’s work. On the other hand, the inluence of Pontano’s Actius on Fracastoro is undeniable, since it is mentioned in the Naugerius [ca. 1540]. As I have argued, Marzio and Pontano should be seen as two radical responses to the theoretical problems posed by Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21, but Fracastoro would also proit from Aquinas’s ideas for his theoretical approach to the problem of mythophilia and philosophy, as well as those of Plotinus. The last section of these pages will discuss it under the label of mythotherapy, which I will use to refer to the set of tools employed by Renaissance philosophers to develop the epistemic power of wonder in order to surpass the limitations of (natural) philosophy. Girolamo Fracastoro, a physician, astronomer, poet, and literary critic, played a major and frequently neglected role in the history of admiratio during the Renaissance. This role—in its aim and implications—goes well beyond the therapeutical qualities of poetry, as found in the bombastic assertions made by Ficino or Pico at the end of the ifteenth century, or even in the perpetual mythographical tradition of Apollo as the god of both disciplines.31 Fracastoro’s ideas on intellection, found in his trilogy on the human mind—Naugerius, Turrius, and Fracastorius—written from the 1530s to the 1550s, hint at one of the reasons why sixteenth-century physicians produced such a vast amount and variety of poetry. However, before tackling Fracastoro’s treatises on intellection, it is necessary to recall his critique of wonder as found in his Concerning Sympathy and Antipathy. Printed in 1546 for the irst time by Bernardo Giunta in Venice, Chapter 20 of the irst book offers a succinct approach to the psychology of admiratio, which See Pico, Conclusiones nongentae 7.8 (1998, p. 469, music should be understood here in a classical fashion, that is, as music and poetry) and Ficino, Epistles I. 22 (1495, fol. 14r). Together with this tradition, a number of renowned literary commonplaces regarding the relation between medicine and poetry survive during the Renaissance, among the most successful being the image of poetry as honey to sweeten the medicine of knowledge, as found in Lucretius’s De rerum natura I, 935–950; IV, 10–25 (cf. Plato, Laws 659e–660a). For a different tradition, sustained in consolatory literature as a medicine for the soul, see Cicero’s Tusculan disputations III.1.1, III.2.4ff, etc.; Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 1.8; Puttenham 1999, p. 206; etc. For the therapeutics of poetry and music in medieval medical treatises, see, as an introduction, Olson 2005, pp. 275–287. On the Apollonian character as related to disciplines (prophecy, poetry, music, and medicine), see Ficino’s Argumentum et commentaria in Phaedrum 30.6 (2008, pp. 160–161). 31 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 181 Fracastoro divides into three kinds. The irst is clearly linked to Aristotelian thaumazein, as found in Metaphysics α: “If something new is presented as unknown and it does not produce the fantasy of an inconvenient evil, there is no fear, just wonder. Wonder is nothing other than the suspension or ixation and careful commitment of the soul.”32 Fracastoro complements this wonder that predisposes individuals to philosophical enquiry with a second sort, which he names ecstasy. He explains it as follows: When the unknown is presented in a magnitude that by far exceeds what we are accustomed to, in the guise of something that we revere and love for our own belief, there is ecstasy, that is, a certain excess of the mind and the fantasy in wonder. Through ecstasy we become distracted, indifferent, and insensitive to anything else. This happens either to those who are truly saints, or to the melancholics.33 The third and last category of wonder addressed by Fracastoro clearly recalls Aquinas’s kataplexis or, for that matter, Descartes’s estonnement, albeit he does not give it a name: When something is presented as admirable, but produces fear, as demons or spirits, then affection goes beyond ecstasy and lacks a name, but is deined by its effect, horror, as we shiver and become rigid.34 In sum, Fracastoro is interested in wonder insofar as it provides a stimulus to actual knowledge. As will be shown, this approach determines his conception both of philosophy and poetry. Ecstasy, though mentioned in other treatises of his, does not contribute to the constitution of scientiic or philosophical knowledge and, therefore, will not be included in this discussion.35 Horror—and consequently catharsis, compassion, and any plain appeal to the passions—is “Si vero novum aliquid uti ignotum offeratur, non tamen phantasiam faciens imminentis mali, tunc non timor it, sed admiratio sola. Nihil enim aliud est admiratio, quam suspensio animae seu ixio et applicatio intenta,” Fracastoro 2008, p. 138. 33 “Si vero quod offertur uti ignotum sub ratione offeratur cuiusdam magnitudinis consueta longe excedentis, sed rei tamen quam per opinionem veneramur et amamus, tunc ecstasis vocata it, hoc est mentis phantasiaeque excessus quidam in admiratione, per quam ab omni alia re distracti immotique reddimur, et insensitivi. Quod maxime iis accidit, qui aut vere sancti sunt aut sibi ex melancholiis videntur,” Fracastoro 2008, p. 138. 34 “Si vero res sub ratione magnitudinis oblata sit, sed rerum timendarum, ut daemonum et manium, tunc affectus supra ecstasim it, qui nomen non habet, sed ab effectu horror appellatur: horrescimus enim et rigidi evadimus,” Fracastoro 2008, p. 138. 35 Fracastoro 2006, pp. 200–202; 1999, p. 90. 32 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 182 Jorge Ledo entirely absent from his aesthetics, to the point that he hesitates over including lyric and dramatic poetry in the catalogue of legitimate poetic forms throughout his Naugerius [ca. 1540].36 Notwithstanding that it is also mentioned in the Naugerius, poetic frenzy is far from easily integrated into his general conception of poetry, nor can Fracastoro’s Neoplatonism be maintained when the remaining titles of his trilogy on human mind—Turrius and Fracastorius—are considered as part of a general approach to poetics. It seems to me that the disputed adscription of Fracastoro to either Neoplatonism or Neo-Aristotelianism with regard to his aesthetics37 has been motivated by the fact that scholars, as far as I know, have failed to ind the source of his ideas on the relation between poetry and philosophy. While Fracastoro is undoubtedly aware of the passage of Metaphysics α 2 982b11–2 and of the scholastic and the humanistic traditions as presented above, he complements them with another authority to give an original treatment to the problem: the book eight (1–2) of the ifth Ennead of Plotinus.38 It should be noted, nonetheless, that Fracastoro could not be merely making use of Marsilio Ficino’s rendering of Plotinus, whose editio princeps was published in 1492 and reissued in 1540;39 rather, he could be employing the pseudoepigraphic version found in the Theologia Aristotelis,40 irst printed in Rome in 1519 and whose attribution to the Stagirite remained disputed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.41 That being the case, Fracastoro would have been incorporating Platonic elements to his aesthetics while supposing that he was just further developing Aristotelian premises. Fracastoro 2005, pp. 82–85. See also Muñoz Martín 2004, pp. 341–343. Fracastoro’s anti-Platonic literary criticism has been held by Spingarn 1963, pp. 14–15, Bundy 1924, pp. 15, and Weinberg 1961, II, pp. 725–729, although their arguments are founded on different grounds. Brann (2002, pp. 300–309) argues in favor of Fracastoro’s Neoplatonism through his treatment of poetic frenzy, with such reputed antecedents as Patterson 1935, p. 935 and Moss 1999, pp. 100–101. An intermediate approach in Trabalza 1915, pp. 126 and 211, Brisca 1950, pp. 545–565, Mazzacurati 1977, esp. pp. 56–7, Peruzzi 2005, pp. 8–11 and 2006, pp. 217–228, and Chevrolet 2007, pp. 154 and 569–577. 38 Plotinus 1984: 236–249. 39 The passage in Plotinus 1492, sigs. ii10r–kk2r; 1540, fols. 92r–93v. On the editorial fate of Plotinus during the Renaissance, see O’Meara 1992, pp. 55–74. For a comprehensive approach to the links between Plotinus’s thought and the philosophy of Fracastoro, see Pennuto 2008. 40 Ps-Aristotle, Theologia sive Mistica philosophia IV. 4. Quanta sit dignitas Mundi Intellectivi et qua ratione ad illum perveniatur 1519, sigs. c3r–c4r (fols. 20r–21v). With regard to admiratio, see also VI. 2 (sigs. g3r–g4r, fols 28r–29r) and XIV. 15 (sigs. z2r–z3r, fols. 91r–92r). 41 Kraye 1986, pp. 265–286. 36 37 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 183 Therefore, in Turrius, his dialogue on epistemology, he recalls not only the Aristotelian idea that philosophers—a name he takes for himself—are to admire new and great things and to concentrate their research on them, but also that they should explore the more hidden and remote causes in order to produce an imitation of the universals.42 This necessity of moving beyond the common knowledge of things, he states, is the reason why philosophers are prone to melancholy.43 However, this paradoxical pleasure is not exclusive to them. Quite the contrary, poets are equally accustomed to being seized by greatness and beauty, in Fracastoro’s own words: They [the poets] also voluntarily apprehend the causes behind the things and they enjoy them. For this reason, many among the poets were great philosophers and many among the philosophers were great poets.44 Still, there is a difference: whereas the philosopher is primarily devoted to the study of causes, the poet remains captivated by the inner beauty of reality. The latter’s love of things is so intense that if he happens to ind any fault in the beauty and elegance of his object of contemplation, he corrects it. For Fracastoro, this procedure does not lead to considering the poet as a fabricator, as tradition dictates. Quite the contrary: the poet becomes a source of perfection as the poem outshines reality. Moreover, this course of action marks a neat distinction between the poet and the philosopher: “Poets experience satisfaction for what they conceive (as if they were giving birth), whereas philosophers prefer to keep their conceptions to themselves.”45 As a result, if we are forced to consider the These ‘universals’ should not be confused with Platonic ideas. See Fracastoro 2006, pp. 96–102. “Ergo philosophi natura sunt, qui apte possunt et universalia facere, et observare, non publica tantum, sed et abdita quoque: atque in iis maxime gaudent. Qua de causa et admirabundi maxime sunt. Admirari enim solemus valde nova, et magna. In abditis autem semper magnitudo quaedam est, maior autem in iis, quae nobilia per se sunt, unde et in iis quum potissimum gaudeant. Causas etiam eorum solent inquirere, qui philosophi sunt. Atque in hoc praecipue natura philosophi est, quod abditorum causas maxime amat perquirere. Propter quod et natura cogitabundi sunt, et taciturni, in quibus non nihil potest melancholia,” Fracastoro 2006, p. 236. 44 “Quapropter et ipsi causas rerum libenter discunt, et in iis delectantur. Unde et poetarum multi philosophi etiam magni fuere, sicuti et philosophorum multi simul poetae fuere,” Fracastoro 2006, p. 236. 45 “Unde poetae quasi parere gaudent, philosophi intra tenere foetum,” Fracastoro 2006, p. 238. And he follows: “Unde philosophi ad sciendum magis nati sunt, minus ad imitandum: poetae vero ad imitandum magis. Siqui vero aequaliter ad utrunque sint apti, hi et philosophi simul et poetae sunt.” 42 43 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 184 Jorge Ledo possibility of a poet-philosopher, his thirst for wisdom and his love for imitation should be made equal.46 Fracastoro goes one step further in his Naugerius, though it is a previous work. In the inal pages of this treatise on poetics, devoted to the utility of poetry, he recreates the arguments contained in Plato’s Ion—i.e., that there is no science in poetry, and the poet ultimately is a mere imitator of other sciences—simply in order to allow Navagero, the main character of the dialogue, to pronounce the following passage, centered on the psychological aspects of learning: If some philosopher, using unadorned language, should teach that some mind pervades the universe, I should fall in love with this idea as being a noble idea. But if this same philosopher should tell me the same thing in poetic fashion, and should say: Know irst, the heaven, the earth, the main The moon’s pale orb, the starry train Are nourished by a soul, A bright intelligence, which darts Its inluence through the several parts And animates the whole If, I say, he presents the same thing to me in this way, I shall not only love, but be struck with wonder, and I shall feel that a divine something has entered into my soul.47 Navagero introduces two important ideas. On the one hand, wonder is not simply a precondition of actual learning, but rather an instrument that can be manipulated to awaken the thirst for knowledge. The poem is not just a composition crafted with rhetorical or poetic inesse, but also the aftermath of This opposition is merely suggested at the end of the treatise, when Fracastoro poses the difference between a ‘pure’ philosopher and a ‘pure’ poet taking Vergil’s Bucolics as an example of poetic frenzy (2006, p. 240). It should be noted that poetic madness is due to nature itself, not divine intercession. 47 Fracastoro 1924, p. 71. For a modern edition of the text, Fracastoro (2005, p. 102): “Si enim philosophus quispiam, nos erudiens, simplici oratione doceat mentem quandam esse per omnia diffusam, adamabo quidem rem isthanc, utpote rem magnam edoctus. At vero, si idem ille poetico modo eandem mihi rem referat et declaret: Principio coelum ac terras camposque liquentes/ lucentemque globum Lunae titaniaque astra/ spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus/ mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet. [Vergil, Aeneid, VI, 724–727] Si, inquam, eandem rem hoc pacto referat mihi, non adamabo solum, sed admirabor et divinum nescio quid in animum mihi immissum existimabo.” 46 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 185 true learning on a given object of imitation. On the other, the poet, invested with this demiurgical role, recreates reality truer than it could possibly be perceived. Thus truth, as presented in the poem, does not stem from poetic frenzy or divine intercession. On the contrary, it is necessary for the poet to approach his subject as a philosopher and to write his composition down with the skills bestowed by rhetoric and poetry. This twofold refutation goes even further. As in nature, wonder that stems from a poem is nothing but a precondition for accessing hidden aspects behind the sensible world.48 And Navagero offers yet another argument to prove the superiority of poetry over philosophy: in its capacity to relect the process of creation and to appraise the “ideas” behind this process, poetry denounces the fallacies in the materiality of the world and (re)presents its chaotic and mutable nature in order. As a result, poetry becomes the only cure— or, at least, a relief—for the philosopher’s melancholy. Natural philosophy—medicine included—and poetics are challenged in several ways by the theoretical framework provided by Fracastoro. First, wonder is common to poetry and philosophy. Nonetheless, whereas in natural philosophy it is wonder that moves a person to research the causes of a given natural phenomenon, poetry aims to reproduce the creative processes behind that natural event and, by doing so, brings Nature’s perfection to light. This crafted perfection constitutes poetic wonder and also responds to Renaissance polemics about Book α of Aristotle’s Metaphysics insofar as Fracastoro’s conception of poetry forges a link between physics and metaphysics.49 Therefore, mimesis serves as a medium between the processes that establish the material world and the intellective soul. This means that Fracastoro distances himself both from Pontano’s treatment of 48 Fracastoro’s comments on this passage by Vergil in the Fracastorius—the last of his works on intellection—offer a neat distinction between the theologian and the philosopher, and therefore between poetic frenzy and poetry: “Theologi vero nostri de his exactius et diligentius scripserunt. Quod vero et coelestes orbes organica quoque sint corpora manifestum est, quoniam idipsa dissimilaribus constant partibus, aliis quidem densioribus, aliis rarioribus, et magnitudine et ordine et situ differentibus, verum consensu tanto, tam mira virtute ad certos ines et operationes constitutis, ut omnia, quae in universo sunt, corpora inde gubernentur. Quae vero eos orbes agitat et regit anima ipsorum est, quam philosophi intelligentiam et mentem vocant. Non est autem haec mens mundi anima, sed particularis quaedam natura, quae et esse et virtutem recipit a mundi anima, operatur autem secundum illam, quam recepit, virtutem,” Fracastoro 1999, p. 94. 49 On the origin of the problem in the Renaissance, mainly found in the 1527 translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s Commentary on the Metaphysics by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, see Kraye 1991, pp. 137–160. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 186 Jorge Ledo poetic admiratio in the Actius—although fundamental to understand his Naugerius— and from the concept of mimesis as presented by Plato.50 Second, Fracastoro reines Aristotle’s attribution of melancholy to poets and philosophers in Problem 30 of the Physics. For the philosopher, melancholy stems from the inner dificulty of discovering the hidden causes for the multiplicity of phenomena that compose the sensible world. The craft of a poem aims to provide an explanation for the meaning of the hidden causes through mimesis—a mimesis (as has been stated before) that outdoes nature and, as a result, serves as a cure for the philosopher’s melancholy. Hence, the triumph of the poet in healing the philosophers could be understood as the victory of human mind over Nature. This intellectualized aesthetic partly counters Empedocles’s expulsion from Mount Helicon in Aristotle’s Poetics,51 a condemnation also imposed on Lucretius, Pontano’s Meteora and Urania, Marullus’s Hymni naturales, and on Fracastoro’s Syphilis by sixteenth-century Neo-Aristotelian literary criticism.52 It can hardly be denied that, despite its somewhat disordered presentation, Fracastoro offers a powerful response derived from both Aristotelian poetics and metaphysics. Furthermore, it could be equally argued that Fracastoro’s concerns on this topic start as early as 1510, when he begins to compose poetry in the vein of classical scientiic masterpieces such as Lucretius’s De rerum natura: Yet I am hardly unaware of the dificulties either in describing what heaven ordained and how it played out, or in seeking with certainty the causes of all these events: for sometimes heaven achieves its results over many years, and sometimes (which can mislead you) chance and varied accidents account for each event.53 50 The English translation of Pontano’s passage from the Actius devoted to admiratio was included as an appendix to Fracastoro’s Naugerius (1924, pp. 75–86). Important discussions on Pontano’s conception of admiratio in the Actius and beyond can be found in Tateo 1972, esp. pp. 104–132; Ferraù 1983; Grassi 1984, pp. 135–155, esp. 143–149; Deramaix 1987, pp. 171–212; and Grassi 1993, pp. 71–78. 51 Aristotle, Poetics I 1447b16–20. See Fracastoro 2005, pp. 64–68 and 91–95 and cf. the fragments from Aristotle’s lost dialogues—Sophista (Diogenes Laertius VIII. 2. 53, IX. 5. 12; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. VII. 6–7) and De poetis (Diogenes Laertius VIII. 2. 57–8), Aristotle 2008, pp. 142 and 522–524—which pose a fundamental problem for the application of Pontano’s ideas on admiratio to Fracastoro’s own praxis. 52 See, for instance, Castelevetro 1978 I: 43, 45, and 254. Cf. Fracastoro’s inclusion from NeoAristotelianism in Scaliger 2003 V, pp. 204ff, or from Neoplatonism in Patrizi 1969–1971, II, pp. 160–161 and III, pp. 400–401, 413–414, 437, and 444. 53 “Quamquam animi haud fallor, quid agat quove ordine caelum/dicere et in cunctis certas perquirere causas/dificile esse: adeo interdum per tempora longa/effectus trahit, interdum Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 187 4. summary and conclusIons Let me summarize the main argument of this paper. I have attempted to trace the evolution of one of the more famous passages of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (α 982b11–21) from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century, focusing on four different moments: its reception by Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries during the (Latin) thirteenth century, its appropriation by the early humanists to defend the preeminence of poetry, the recovery of its theoretical implications for the history of poetics and the history of emotions by a number of Renaissance scholars in the decade of the 1490s, and its radical transformation in the hands of a physician and humanist like Girolamo Fracastoro. As I have shown, the apparent simplicity of the passage, where Aristotle merely mentions that the ancient philosophers were also lovers of myths (philomythi), as wonder was common among them, had an impressive potential to tackle some of the fundamental issues of poetics during at least four centuries. During the thirteenth century, it served to establish a theory of wonder (admiratio), an archaeology of poetry, to present the subaltern role of poetry to philosophy—and, therefore, to justify the place of poetry among the system of arts—, to establish a neat distinction between the revealed poetry of the Bible and the poetry of the pagans, etc. In the fourteenth century, it was used for the opposite purposes by humanists, because they understood that Aristotle was afirming that poetry was the very origin of philosophy and theology, and therefore, that there was something divine in it and, as such, that it should be considered not as an ancillary discipline but as the pinnacle of all of them. As I have explained, this lead to a theoretical impoverishment of the passage and somehow Platonized Aristotle’s conception of poetry. With a number of exceptions, between the fourteenth and ifteenth centuries this was the predominant reading of Aristotle’s passage on the philomythos. As I have argued, between the 1480s and 1490s the situation radically changed in Italy, most probably thanks to the recovery of the Greek manuscript of Aristotle’s Poetics. As is known, Aristotle’s Poetics offers a perspective on poetry very distant from Platonic assumptions and even more so from the Neoplatonic defense of poetry’s divine character; so humanists, or at least a number of them, started to relect on (quod fallere possit)/miscentur fors [sic., read “sors”] et varii per singula casus,” Syphilis I. 256–60, Fracastoro 2013, pp. 16–19. See the comments on the passage in Haskell 2007, pp. 191–192, and see also the poorly cited and studied fragment of Fracastoro’s letter on his Syphilis 1955, pp. 25–34, which provides further support to the thesis presented in these pages. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 188 Jorge Ledo the meaning of wonder (admiratio) and myth (fabula) in the passage of the Metaphysics with differing aims. Some tried to justify the power of iction as a philosophical device, some to claim that poetry should be simply a tool for instruction in other disciplines, some to approach the psychology of iction, some to argue for the production of scientiic poetry, and some to play with fundamental concepts in their ield of expertise. This was the case of physicians such as Galeotto Marzio, humanists such as Pontano, philologists such as Poliziano, rhetoricians such as Antonio Urceo, and, some time later, theologians such as Erasmus. What seems appealing to me is that all their relections and practices on iction can be analyzed and at least partially explained in the tradition of interpretations of Metaphysics 982b11–21. As their responses to the problem manifested themselves in very different formats and with very different results, I have focused on chapter 21 of Marzio’s De disciplina promiscua and Pontano’s Actius. The two texts defend almost opposite positions: Marzio uses Aristotle’s mention of the philomythos to discuss avant la lettre the physiology and psychology of literature—that is, its reception as a possibility for its deinition. Pontano’s efforts are focused on offering a deinition of poetry as a discipline based upon the excellence of its form—a standpoint greatly supported by sixteenth-century poetics—, on differentiating poetry from any other genre of discourse and on deining which kind of wonder poetry should awake. I chose both Marzio and Pontano, and spent some time explaining Aquinas’s approach, as they offer the background to Fracastoro’s treatment of the problems posed by Metaphysics 982b11–21. As I have discussed and stressed, Fracastoro presents a very original slant on the problem thanks to his use of Plotinus’s Enneads as a complementary source, as he argues for a symbiosis between the poet and the philosopher with regard to wonder. 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(1963): A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. TaTeo, f. (1972): Umanesimo etico di Giovanni Pontano, Lecce: Edizioni Milella TIgersTedT, e.n. (1968): “Observations in the Reception of the Aristotelian Poetics in the Latin West,” Studies in the Renaissance, v. XV, pp. 7–24. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 196 Jorge Ledo TraBalza, c. (1915): Storia dei generi letterari italiani. La critica letteraria nel Rinascimento (Secoli XV–XVI–XVII), Milano: Casa Editrice Dottor Francesco Vallardi. TrInKaus, c. (1979), The Poet as Philosopher. Petrarch and the Formation of Renaissance Consciousness, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. — (1995): In Our Image and Likeness. Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2 vols. ulrIch de sTrasBourg (1930): La “Summa de bono”. Livre I, ed. J. Daguillon, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin. van nuffelen, p. (2010): “Varro’s Divine Antiquities: Roman Religion as an Image of Truth,” Classical Philology CV, pp. 162–88. vasolI, c. (1980): “Note su Galeotto Marzio,” in La cultura delle corti, Firenze—Bologna: Il Portolano—Nuova casa editrice L. Cappelli, pp. 38–63. — (2001): “L’immagine dell’uomo e del mondo nel De doctrina promiscua di Galeotto Marzio,” in L’eredità classica in Italia e Ungheria fra tardo Medioevo e primo Rinascimento. Atti dell’XI Convegno Italo-Ungherese. Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 9–11 novembre 1998, eds. S. Graciotti and A. di Francesco, Roma: Editrice “il Calamo,” pp. 185–205. vega, M.J. (1992): El secreto artiicio. Qualitas sonorum, maronolatría y tradición pontaniana en la poética del Renacimiento, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientíicas— Universidad de Extremadura. WalKer, d.p. (1972): The Ancient Theology. Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. WeInBerg, B. (1961): A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2 vols. WeIsheIpl, J.a. (1965): “Classiication of the Sciences in Medieval Thought,” Mediaeval Studies, v. XXVII, pp. 54–90. WITT, R.G. (1977): “Coluccio Salutati and the Conception of the Poeta Theologus in the Fourteenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly, v. XXX: 4, pp. 538–563. zaccarIa, V. (1986): “La difesa della poesia nelle Genealogie del Boccaccio,” Lettere Italiane, v. XXXVIII: 3, pp. 281–311. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 198 Jorge Ledo appendIx Galeotto Marzio, De doctrina promiscua [ante 1490, princeps 1548]1 |[174] De philosophis, qui viventes sunt mortui. Cap. XX. […] |[183] Mortuus ergo Palemon ex viuente factus illecebras corporis abiiciens, quae sunt philosophorum secutus est. Hi enim, vitae inspectiuae addicti, vbi aliquid considerandum est speculantur, vnde in prima philosophia dicitur: “Philosophum quodammodo amatorem esse fabularum, ex miris nanque constant.” Admiratio igitur philosophum ad rerum contemplationem inuitat. Hinc est quod fabularum, vbi admiranda ponuntur, est quodammodo, vt diximus, amicus sapiens, quem mortuum esse dudum ostendimus. |[184] De multis generibus fabularum etiam verarum, et cur fabulae varia operentur in homine et quae constellatio faciat amatores fabularum. Cap. XXI. 1. Fabulam Cicero Ad Herennium2 init eam quae nec vera nec verisimilis est, ex cuius sermone comprendimus fabularum aliam non veram, ut comoediae et tragoediae, et aliam non verisimilem,3 ut homo in leonem lupumue conuersus.4 Co- |[185]moedias5 autem fabulas dici Terentius testatur, cum ait: “Populo vt placerunt,6 quas fecisset fabulas.”7 Sed in his et tragoediis non verisimilitudo, sed veritas deest, icta enim narrantur; et in conuersione hominis in bestias aliasue res veri similitudo abest, cum veritas subesse possit, Sacra enim historia vxorem Lot in statuam salis versam esse commemorat. Ita vt secundum Ciceronem, et quosdam doctrina ingenioque praestantes, fabularum nomine contineantur, quae vera aliquando fuerunt, hoc nominis fortita, quoniam abest verisimile. 2. Narratio oratoris non constituit8 verum, non verisimile, vnde dicitur narrationem esse oportere veram, aut verisimilem; ita tamen, vt quod verum est, etiam verisimile appareat, cum verisimile ei sit satis absque vero; ex verisimili nanque nascitur credulitas, id est, persuasio, et haec est vna fabulae acceptio:9 ita vt sit fabulosa res vera non verisimilis, et eodem modo appelletur res verisimilis, non vera; in altero veri similitudo, altero autem veritas deicientes fabulae nomen formant.10 Fabula etiam pro eo accipitur, quod homines aut fantur aut fabulantur. Iuuenalis: “It noua nec tristis per cunctas fabula coenas.”11 Et cum huiusmodi in omni actione paratam fa- |[186] bulam afirmet Plinius, de eo quod rumoribus disseminatur intelligit. Sic etiam Suetonius in Augusto, “Coena quoque eius secretior in fabulis fuit”,12 ita vt huiusmodi fabulae non sint veritatis penitus expertes. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 199 appendIx Galeotto Marzio, On Many Different Affairs [ante 1490, princeps 1548] |[174] On philosophers, who, while living, are dead. Chapter 20. […] |[183] Therefore, Polemon, made dead in life, despised the charms of the body and followed all that is proper for philosophers. When these men, consecrated to the speculative life, ind something worthy of consideration, they study it. Therefore, as it is said in the First Philosophy: “The philosopher is, in a certain way, a lover of fables, because they consist of wonder.” Consequently, it is wonder that invites the philosopher to contemplation. This is the reason why the wise man—whom we already proved to be dead—is in a certain way, as we said, a lover of fables, where the things worthy of admiration are deposited. |[184] On the many kinds of fables and on the true ones, and why they afect men diferently, and what constellation makes men lovers of fables. Chapter 21. 1. Cicero in the Rhetoric to C. Herennius deines a fable as that which is neither true nor plausible, and from these words we understand that some fables, such as comedies and tragedies, are not true, while others, as when a man is transformed into a lion or a wolf, are not plausible. And that comedies are called fables is attested by Terence when he says: “He made these fables in order to please the people.” In these and in tragedies there is not a lack of verisimilitude, but rather of truth, because ictitious things are told; and in the transformation of men into beasts and other similar things, although verisimilitude is lacking, they can contain an underlying truth, for Sacred history tells us that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt. So, according to Cicero and some other excellent men both in doctrine and ingenuity, things that truly happened are enclosed under the name of “fables,” and they receive this name because they lack verisimilitude. 2. The narrative [narratio] of an orator establishes neither truth nor verisimilitude; hence it is said that a narrative needs to be either true or plausible, yet in such a way that what is true is seen to be plausible, while it is enough for it to be plausible without being true. Credulity—that is, persuasion—is the daughter of verisimilitude and this is a way to understand the word “fable”: as something fabulous that happens to be true and not plausible, and likewise as something plausible which is untrue; lacking verisimilitude in the former, and truth in the latter, both can be said to be a “fable.” “Fable” refers also to what men say or chatter, [as in] Juvenal: “The untragic news [noua… fabula] passes round all the dinner parties.” And when Pliny states that there is a fable in all action, he understands that every action is divulged by rumors, as Suetonius does in his Life of Augustus: “There were also stories [fabulis] about a rather secret dinner he arranged;” consequently, fables are not completely untrue. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 200 Jorge Ledo 3. Sed ea fabula, vt supra diximus, cuius amici sunt philosophi, ex miris constat, et mira vnunquenque in sui cognitionem rapiunt, quod est sapientiae principium; horum nanque auiditate allecti, ad perscrutandas causas rerum se conuerterunt.13 Vnum tamen non est obliuioni tradendum, etiam fabulas quae videntur commentitiae in religione antiquorum vim sincerae veritatis habere. Dicente Plinio decimo sexto Naturalis historiae smilacem14 “infaustam esse in sacris omnibus et coronis, quoniam sit lugubris virgine eius nominis per amorem iuuenis Croci mutata in hunc fruticem: id vulgus ignorans plerunque festa sua polluit, heredam15 existimando.”16 Huiusmodi autem fabularum, quae comentitiae sunt, amatores maxime videntur hi, in quorum genitura Luna dominatur cum Mercurio infortunato,17 vt mathematici afferunt.18 Sed illud Ciceronis in tertio De natura deorum, cum Zenonis, Cleanthis, Chrysippique philosophorum in reddenda ratione commentitiarum fabularum curam mo- |[187] lestam ac minime necessariam narret, expostulare videtur vt haec eadem tela in eum retorqueamus, cum haec Ciceronis cura de cura philosophorum minime sit necessaria.19 Nam in rebus omnibus, et maxime sacris, si velatarum rerum explicatio negligatur, plurima quae mystica sunt ridicula putabuntur. Et ne hac in re tempus teramus, satis erit hoc adduxisse quod in libro Geneseos est: “Et audiuit Adam vocem Dei deambulans ad auram post meridiem”20 quod, si ita vt sonat intelligatur, esset profecto ridendum.21 Sed haec diuina ex sententia Thomae necesse est aliquo humanitatis radio vestiantur vt compraehendi possint,22 vnde maximam laudem Zeno, Cleanthes, et Chrysippus merentur, qui laborarunt vt in lucem venirent quae sub vestimento fabuloso latitarunt.23 4. Fabula igitur cum multifariam accipiatur, inter medicos tamen in vna tantum signiicatione versatur. Prima enim quarti Auicenna ad somni conciliationem leuationes vocum cum fabulis faciendis narrat.24 Et apud Suetonium in Vita Augusti legitur si interruptum somnum recuperare vt euenit non posset, lectoribus, aut fabulatoribus accersitis resumebat.25 Fabulas ergo pro narrationibus siue ictis siue veris ponit, ac si dice- |[188] ret locutiones, narrationesue, aut historiarum, aut aliarum rerum hoc eficiunt. Hoc autem non est leuiter pertranseundum, quandoquidem problema Aristotelicum inquirit, cur est quod ex fabulis alii resoluuntur in somnum, alii autem dormitantes excitantur.26 Plurimi enim vt somnum fugiant, legere incipiunt, et alii vigilantes cum legere incipiunt dormitant, et vt de lectione, sic de auditione contingit. Nam in homiliis27 saepe accidit, vt praedicantis oratio alios28 sopiat, excitet alios, huius autem tam diuersi affectus audientium legentiumue habitudo varia causam praestat. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 201 3. But the fable we mentioned above, that is, the one that philosophers love, consists of wonder, and wonders draw every single one of them into their knowledge, which is the principle of wisdom; for men, enticed by desire, become inclined to ind the causes of things. It should not be forgotten that even the fables that seem capriciously forged in the religion of the ancients have the force of unvarnished truth. As Pliny comments in the sixteenth book of his Natural History: “It is unlucky to use smilax in any sacred rites or for wreaths, because it has a mournful association—a maiden of the same name as the plant was turned into this shrub because of her love for a youth named Crocus; this the common people ignore and usually pollute their festivals with it, because they think it is ivy.” It seems that those who take more pleasure in fables of this kind—which are inventions—are those in whose geniture the moon is ruled with an unfortunate Mercury, as astrologers attest. But when, in the third book of On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero refers to the attention of philosophers such as Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus in explaining these forged fables, he says it is annoying and wholly unnecessary; but this seems to require that we turn the same darts back on him, as his brooding on the philosophers’ pensiveness is equally pointless. Because in all matters, and especially in those that are sacred, if the explanation of veiled things is despised, most of them, which are mysterious, would be thought laughable. And, to avoid wasting more time on this, it will sufice to recall what is written in the book of Genesis: “And Adam heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the evening.” This, understood the way it sounds, would be laughable. But these divine matters, according to Thomas Aquinas, need to be dressed in some glimmer of humanity in order to be apprehended, and therefore Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus deserve the utmost praise, as they worked to shed light on those things which were hidden under the guise of fable. 4. Although the term “fable” has multiple acceptations, among physicians it is understood univocally. In the irst of the fourth of his Canon, Ibn Sina says that making fables aloud helps one go to sleep. And in Suetonius, in the Life of Augustus, we read that when he could not go back to sleep after awakening, as happened, he sent for readers and story-tellers. Fables, therefore, are understood as narrations either ictional or true, as if he would have said that speeches or stories about either historical events or other matters, produce [the desired effect]. And this issue is far from trivial, as Aristotle in one of his Problems enquires into the reason why there are people who fall asleep when they listen to fables, and why others are roused from drowsiness by the same. For this reason, there are many who start reading to avoid sleep, and others who, as they start to read in a wakeful state, doze off; and this applies both to reading and listening. With homilies it happens frequently that the preacher’s sermon lulls some to sleep and rouses others, and the disposition of the audience or readers is the reason for such a different response. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 202 Jorge Ledo 5. Alii enim sunt qui cerebrum pituita humoribusque crudis repletum habent, vel melancholicos ac frigidos, tam euaporationi quam inlationi obnoxios, eodem in loco tenent. Et tales viri sine stimulis cogitationum facile vigilant. In vigilia autem calor humanus foris versatur, et propter hanc causam, illos tam crudos tamque frigidos vapores mouere non potest, nimis enim ab his distat. Sed cum legere aut audire fabulas incipiunt motus in spiritibus et in calore ventriculorum cerebri necessario iunt, horum autem motuum, causa est ipsa cogitatio.29 Ex illo igitur et spirituum et caloris cerebri congeminato calo- |[189] re illius tam crudae tamque frigidae massae sint quaedam euaporatio, quam ob causam spiritus illi cerebri ventriculos obsidentes crassescunt, et crassitudo motum caloremque ipsorum impedit, ita vt iam nequeant ad exteriora diuerti, quae res vigiliam faceret, sed infrigidati intus remanent, et hoc dormitionis est causa. Huiusmodi igitur naturae viri, quorum cerebella talibus grauantur, reuocato ad interiora calore, quod somnum facit, ex lectione auditioneue fabularum resoluuntur in somnum. Sed in aliis qui diuerso se habent modo, e contrario propter diuersitatem naturae accidit. Nam si auditor lectorue fabularum aut librorum in cerebro habuerit materiam biliosam acutam, euaporationi idoneam atque aptam, cito enim labitur, quam cogitatio mouet, statim pulso ad exteriora calore, vigilabit et dormitans excitabitur. Calor duplicatus in illis superioribus cruditate ac ineptitudine irretitus minime valens foras prosilire somniculosum fecit; et in his propter facilem agilemque materiam, concitatus calor exteriora petens, vigilem reddidit. Et hoc pacto pro diuersitate naturae auditio aut lectio diuersa operatur. 6. Praeterea haec varietas nascitur ex inaequalitate intellectuum. Nam qui hebeti ingenio |[190] crassaque Minerua vtuntur, cum quae leguntur aut narrantur non intelligunt, et acutissimi quoque cum etiam lecta aut audita non percipiunt cum hebetioribus concordantes in hoc duntaxat, quia et ipsi quoque non intelligunt, obdormiscunt, nisi essent aliqui tardi, et non obtusi ingenii. Nam de his alia ratio est, vt declarabimus. Causa autem huius dormitationis est, quoniam non intelligentes tristitia aficiuntur, et haec infrigidat, hic est quod calor extrinsecus, vt subueniat infrigidationi intrinsecae ad interiora decurrit, et huiusmodi dispositio somnum creat, ideo dormiendo melius concoquimus, calore ad interiora reuocato. Est etiam alia causa, nam in legentibus et audientibus it duplex motus, animae scilicet et corporis. Motus siquidem animae est cogitatio, corporis vero motus est ex vaporibus et tenuibus humiditatibus per capitis portiones diffusis, quae mouentur cursitantibus spiritibus, cursitant autem in actu cogitationis. Cum lector aut auditor ingenii obtusi30 est, non habet spiritus suos in motu, quoniam eorum mobilitas hominem solertis ingenii effecisset. Hoc autem accidit quia motae humiditates Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 203 5. There are others who have their brains full of phlegm, and thick or melancholic and cold humors, subject both to evaporation and inlammation. And such men easily keep awake without intellectual stimulus. During wakefulness human heat is lost, and precisely because of this, it cannot move vapors that are so thick and cold, because it is far from them. But, as soon as these men start reading or listening to fables, their spirits start to move, and they get the necessary heat in the ventricles of their brain; and the reason behind these movements is thinking itself. Thus, the double heat from the spirits and from the brain produces a certain evaporation of that thick and cold matter, and for this reason those spirits around the ventricles of the brain expand, and their expansion traps both their movement and their heat, in such a way that they cannot now leave—a situation that would cause wakefulness—and they remain inside within the cooled areas, and this causes somnolence. Therefore, men of such a nature, who have their cerebella burdened with such things, fall asleep because of reading or listening to fables, having regained inside their brain the heat that produces somnolence. But those with a different disposition—such is the diversity of nature—experience the contrary effect. For if one who listens to or reads fables or books has his brain illed with a keen, bilious substance, suitable and apt for evaporation, which lows quickly as it is moved by reasoning, when the heat is immediately expelled to the outer parts, he will stay awake, and the drowsy person will be roused. In the former case, the double heat trapped due to their [mental] constipation and to the impossibility of it leaving the body provokes drowsiness; and, in the latter, whose substances move rapidly and easily, as the heat is pushed to the exterior parts of the body they keep awake. And thus reading and listening act differently according to the diversity of nature. 6. Moreover, this diversity is [also] born from the inequality of intellects. Both those dull and ill-educated and those sharp-witted coincide at least in one thing: when they don’t understand what is read or told to them, they slumber, even if they are not dull or obtuse. For this there is another cause, as we shall declare: as they don’t understand, they feel sorrow, and sorrow cools them down. So extrinsic heat runs down to the inner parts of the body to relieve the intrinsic chilliness, and this disposition causes drowsiness; for this reason, when we sleep we digest better, because heat has retired to the inner parts of the body. There is yet another cause, for in those who read and listen there is a dual motion, that is, a movement of the soul and a movement of the body. The movement of the soul is thinking; that of the body stems from vapors and thin moistures spread throughout the regions of the head which are moved when spirits move, that is, in the act of thinking. When the reader or the listener is dull-witted, he has not his spirits in motion, as their mobility would have made him intelligent. This happens because the moistures become thicker as they move, as we said above, blocking and restraining the force of the spirits, hence follows inaction; but the inaction and immobility of the spirits is accompanied Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 204 Jorge Ledo redduntur crassiores, vt supra diximus, vim spirituum irretientes ac mollientes, vn|[191] de sequitur quies, quietem autem et immobilitatem spirituum aut morbus comitialis aut attonitio aut mors aut somnus comitantur. Auditores vero et lectores solertes, intelligentes, laetantur, l[a]etitia est causa vigiliae et excitationis, laetatur nanque humana natura cum habere intelligit quae sibi conueniunt, conuenit enim naturae humanae vigilatio, nam dormitio est quaedam mors, hinc illud poeticum: “dulcis et alta quies placidaeque simillima morti.”31 7. Accedit etiam ad hoc quod in homine acutioris ingenii motus cogitationis mouet spiritus, ac stimulat ita, vt acriter et saepe excitet et roborat, adeo vt a vaporibus opprimi non possint, sicuti accidit in hebetibus et obtusis, in quibus32 spiritus irretiunaur. Sed quoniam de tardo mentionem fecimus, necesse est aliquid in medium adducamus. Continget aliquando vt lector auditorue non obtusi33 aut hebetis ingenii, sed tardi sit, vt legitur de Catone: nam tarditas ingenii sapientiae adscribitur, non enim statim acquiescit his quae narrantur, et propterea non apprehendit. Is igitur qui tardo est ingenio, cum audit aut legit non percipiens contristatur, ita enim natura porrigit, omnes enim homines natura scire desiderant. Cum igitur quae natura desiderat |[192] assequi non potest, doleat ac tristetur necesse est sicuti omnibus in reb. desideratis et non habitis euenit. Tristatur ergo et non dormitati, mmo auiditas sciendi illam tristitiam in stimulos quosdam vigiliarum exacuit. Nam appetitus perfectionis—scientia enim pericit—animam magis ad vigiliam incitat, quia se bestiis non praestare, dedecus cum ignominia maximum esse ducit. Timor autem dedecoris et infamiae acuit et inlammat, ita vt omnis inertia secordiaque excludatur, vt ad ea, quae dudum percipere nequiuit, capescenda promptior paratusque34 sit. Et talia hominibus tardis grauissimas curas ac solicitudines35 iniiciunt, qua non modo excitant, sed aduersos ac penitus alienos a somno homines reddunt. 8. Tristitia enim dupliciter in nobis operatur, si de praeteritis est, soluit in somnum, si autem de futuris erit, excitat. Timor enim ille qui tristitiam creat, propter ignominiam aut infamiam futuram insomnes penitus reddens, vt solertius caueant eficit. Timere autem honoris amissionem est actus prudentiae, et hoc pacto vt diximus de tardis alia ratio fuit. Sed propter haec quae narrauimus fortassis nonnulli acclamabunt saepenumero contigisse doctissimos acutissimosque viros ex lectione aut auditione non |[193] lassitudine aliqua, nam hoc cuique contingere potest, vt defatigatus dormiat; sed eorum natura fuisse in somnum resolutos, quod verum esse fatemur. Sed hoc in sapientibus36 et acutis duobus modis potest contingere: vel quia iam ad inem talem deuentum est, vt reliqua ex se pateant, et hoc modo calor ad interiora tendens, illos in sommum resoluit aut quia docti viri ingenium eiusmodi Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 205 by either epilepsy, stupor, death, or sleep. On the other hand, bright and intelligent readers and listeners rejoice, and joy is a cause of wakefulness and arousal, because human nature takes joy when it understands that it possesses the things that are good for it, and wakefulness is good for human nature, because sleep is a sort of death, hence the verse: “Deep and delightful stillness, resembling the stillness of dead men.” 7. To this it must be added that, in a more sharp-witted man, the movement of thinking puts his spirits in motion, and stimulates the spirits in such a way that they are sharply and frequently excited and invigorated so they cannot be subjugated by the vapors, as happens in the dull and slow-witted, whose spirits remain trapped. But, because we have mentioned the slow-witted, it is necessary to make an insertion here. It will happen at some time or other that the reader or hearer will be, not obtuse or dull, but slow, as we read about Cato, because slowness of wit is ascribed to wisdom, since as wisdom does not immediately acquiesce in what it is told, and therefore does not grasp it. Thus, this man who is slow of wit, not understanding as he hears or reads, is saddened—nature is present to such an extent, that all men by nature desire to know. And when nature cannot achieve what she desires, perforce she suffers and becomes sad, as happens to all men when they desire something and don’t attain it. She becomes sad and incapable of sleep, and the desire to know sharpens that sorrow in the stimulus of wakefulness. Therefore, the appetite for perfection—as science makes men perfect—entices the soul to stay awake, because not to surpass the beasts is a great dishonor and shame for her. And the fear of dishonor and disgrace has a sharpening and inlaming effect, so that all unskillfulness and dullness are excluded, with the aim that she will be faster and ready to understand that which shortly before she was unable to learn. And such things cast on the slow-witted the most burdensome worries and anxieties, which not only rouses them, but makes men adverse and wholly alien to sleep. 8. Sorrow, therefore, operates on us in two different ways. If it stems from past things, it moves us to sleep; if its origin relies on future affairs, we will be excited into wakefulness. Because that fear that produces sorrow, by rendering them sleepless on account of future ignominy or infamy, causes them to be diligently on their guard. And to fear a loss of honor is an act of prudence, and in this regard, as we have already said, the slow-witted have a different condition. But, with regard to the things said, perhaps some will claim that the most educated and sharp-witted men have fallen asleep reading or hearing [fables], not from a certain weariness—for it is possible for anyone to sleep from exhaustion—but that their nature has put them to sleep, which we confess to be true. But this can happen to the wise and sharp-witted in two different ways. Either because they have arrived at such an end-point that the rest of the issues [under consideration] are understandable by themselves, and in this case heat moves to their inner parts and leads them to sleep, or because the temperament Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Jorge Ledo 206 est, vt etiam tota rei materia intellecta quosdam nodos secum iterum atque iterum reuoluendo, omniaque solertissime contemplando defatigatum multos ex spiritibus consumpsit. Acerrima enim mentis agitatio et rerum arduarum discursus spiritum resoluit, resolutionem cuius quies cum somno sequitur, natura enim defatigata quietem quaerit vt eos quos amisit spiritus recuperet instaurationemque faciat, dormitio enim quieta spirituum creatrix materque est. 9. In his tamen omnibus ante narratis et somnus et vigilia possunt contigere ex modis seruatis in lectione aut auditione fabularum, nam si semper eadem in fabulis, eodemque tenore repetantur, nulli dubium est, vel tedium vnde dormitatio, vel risio ex qua vigilia in medium prosiliat necesse esse. Horatius: “Male si mandata loqueris,/ aut dormitabo aut ridebo.”37 Nam |[194] in tali pronunciatione, est quaedam quies, quae somnum imitatur; nisi agitatio irrisionis excutiat, varietas enim fabularum et in ipsa pronunciatione et materiae diuersitate nec non in inlexione vocum et harmoniae aut soporandi aut excitandi, vis est quae enim ad risum aut misericordiam aut ad iram inseruntur, animum in diuersa distrahunt. Ita vt affectibus concitatis audiens aut lectitans necessario vigilet, nisi diuturnitas laboris auida quietis, nimia resolutione spirituum resoluatur in somnum, sed in audiente pro diuersitate naturae somnus aut vigilia nascitur, cum lectitans carminis labore, et vocum dificultate vigilet tantum, nisi langore vincatur.38 Ex his igitur nouimus, lectione aut auditione fabularum pro habitudinis diuersitate in hominibus diuersa contingere, de his hactenus. 10. Nunc ad illa me conuertam quae poetae narrarunt fabulae siquidem poetarum aliquando meram ac nudam historiam sine igmento referunt, vt de Ceneo39 et Iphide40 mutatis Ouidius loquitur. Plerunque naturalia inserunt, vbi veritas simplex apponitur, vt idem XV. Metamorphoseos41: Clitorio42 quicunque sitim de fonte leuauit, Vina fugit gaudetque meris abstemius vndis, et de tineis agrestibus et aliis huiusmodi, vt ipse et Vir- |[195] gilius in Georgicis factitarunt, quaedam vero sub velamento tractantur, quae historiae faciem habentia, aliud sub veste occulunt. Et inter caetera illud Martis et Veneris,43 indicio Solis in adulterio retibus Vulcani deprehensorum abstrusam mathesim continet, fuerunt nanque ab omnibus conspecti vt “haec fuit in toto notissima fabula coelo indicat.”44 Haec igitur fabula ex intimis matheseos penetralibus originem trahit. Nam adulterum, qui publica poena plectitur, facit Martis Venerisque coniunctio in Tauro,45 et haec est illa icta concatenatio, ex Tauro Venus in Leonem mittit antiscium, 46 Leo est Solis domicilium et signum igneum, et hinc Solis indicium et opera Vulcani, quae retia Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 207 of a wise man is such that even if he fully understands the issue under consideration, going over it again and again raises some knotty points, and so, considering everything with utmost skill, he becomes exhausted due to the consumption of many of his spirits. Therefore, the keenest agitation of the mind and the running to and fro over exhausting matters release the spirit, and quietness with sleep follows its release, as nature when it is exhausted seeks quietness so that the lost spirits may be recovered and renewed, for a peaceful sleep is the creator and mother of spirits. 9. Nonetheless in all these things we previously said, not only sleep but also wakefulness can have a place in the patterns [of speech] observed in reading or listening to fables. For if one always repeats the same things in fables, and with the same tone, they undoubtedly would lead either to tedium, and consequently to sleep; or to laughter, and therefore to wakefulness. Horace says: “If your speeches are out of harmony with your feelings, I shall either fall asleep or burst out laughing.” Because in such declamation there is some quietness that imitates sleep; unless the agitation of laughter casts him out, or the diversity of fables and their varied delivery and topics, along with vocal inlection and harmony move him to sleep or to excitement, it is necessary that they move him to laughter, compassion or anger, and draw the soul in different directions. And, once the listener’s or reader’s affections have been aroused, he will necessarily be awake, unless a lengthy work-day, eager for quietness, does not lead to sleep for the release of the spirits. But drowsiness or wakefulness in the listener arises from a difference in natures; but the reader, due to the fatigue in his delivery and the dificulty of the speeches, would keep awake only if he had not been defeated by fatigue. From this we know that reading or listening to a fable has different effects on men according to the differences in their dispositions—enough about this. 10. Now I will turn my attention to those things told by the poets, since indeed poetic fables do sometimes recount mere, bare history without iction, as Ovid does with the transformations of Ceneus and Iphide. Most of the time they introduce natural things not far removed from where the simple truth lies, as in Book 15 of the Metamorphoses: Whoever slakes his thirst from Clitor’s spring, shuns the wine-cup and abstemiously enjoys pure water only, and on the silkworms and on other similar things, as he himself and Virgil in the Georgics did. Some are treated in veiled fashion; having the appearance of history, they hide something different under their garment. And among [many] others is that of Mars and Venus, who were caught in adultery by Vulcan thanks to the disclosure of the Sun, trapped in a net and displayed to everybody, so that “the tale [fabula] was long most noted in the courts of Heaven.” This fable inds its origin in the innermost secrets of the astrologers [matheseos]. For adultery, which is punished publicly, is represented by the conjunction of Mars and Venus in Taurus, and this is the ictitious sequence: from Taurus, Venus sent the antiscium to the Lion, the Lion is the home Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Jorge Ledo 208 fecerunt. Vulcanus enim ignem signiicat, vnde coitus Martis et Veneris in Tauro, vbi Luna exaltatur, amantium complexum effecit, quem poetae inxerunt. Laqueus vero et retia sunt Veneris antiscia in signum igneum iacta, et huius adulterii index Sol; nam Leo calidus antiscio Veneris inlammatus, simile enim simili additum facit furere, hoc adulterium publicauit. Domus enim Solis Leo qui cum de trigono igneo47 sit Vulcanum retia machinantem sub igmento continet, et hoc pacto totius mali causa in Solem reiicitur, a domici- |[195] lio enim eius deprehensio et publicatio adulterii manauerunt.48 11. Sed de Argo qui ob singularem prudentiam centum oculos habuisse traditur, fabula manifestam habet historiam: victus enim rex Argus, et occisus est a rege Mercurio qui Trismegistus hoc est ter maximus dictus est, fuit enim summus philosophus, summusque sacerdos, et denique rex summos. Is enim Aegyptiorum ordo erat, vt ex philosophis sacerdotes, et ex sacerdotibus reges eligerent, et in his omnibus Trismegistus obtinuit49 principatum, et hinc ter maximus, vt Lactantii verbo vtamur.50 Dictus est sopitum dulcedine harmoniae fabula refert, vt Trismegisti Mercurii vaframentis delinitum prius, postea occisum Argum ostendat. 12. Sed antiquitas fabulamentis plurimum oblectata est. Sunt enim res poetice vt quaedam pictura, teste Flacco: Vt pictura poesis erit…51 et … Pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas.52 In poemate ergo ictio vt pictura potestatem habet, pictura autem teste philosopho in Politicis, inuenta est pro rudioribus.53 In poemate sunt et sensa abstrusa et facies picta; pictura rudibus excogitata est. Nam in praelio multa hominum milia vario caedis genere vir sapiens ex se coniectat, qui rudis est nisi haec |[197] picta videat, non intelligit. Vnde pictores et ruentes equos et calcatos perfossosque homines, et fugientes alios, alios vero insequentes cum pingunt, rudibus satisfaciunt, qui haec coniectare nequiuerant. Sed ex rebus ictis et pictis sensa elicere, hoc es sapientis opus, et ob hanc causam philosophos fabularum amatores testimonio Aristotelis praedicauimus, et hoc modo ars poetica et doctis et indoctis perutilis est. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 209 of the Sun and a ire sign, and hence is the indication of the Sun and the works of Vulcan which made the net. Vulcan means ire, from which the coitus of Mars and Venus in Taurus, when the Moon is in the ascendant, causes the embrace of lovers, as the poets write. The trap and the nets are Venus’s antiscia cast into the ire sign, and the Sun is the indicator of this adultery, because the warm Lion, inlamed by Venus’s antiscium—for like added to like leads to rage—, made this adultery public. For the Sun’s house [i.e., its zodiacal sign] is Leo which, being from the ire trigon, iguratively contains the nets of the skillful Vulcan; and thus the reason for such great mischief is founded in the Sun, because the discovery [of the lovers] and the publication of their adultery lowed from his house. 11. But also concerning Argos, of whom it is said that he had a hundred eyes on account of his singular prudence, the fable contains a true history, because Argos was a king defeated and killed by the king Mercury, who was called Trismegistus, i.e., ‘thrice maximus,’ because he was the highest philosopher, the highest priest, and inally the highest king. And such was the law of the Egyptians, which stated that priests were selected from among the philosophers, and kings from among the priests, and Mercury was the irst of each of these groups, and hence called ‘ter maximus,’ quoting the words of Lactantius. The fable recounts that he was stupeied by the sweetness of harmony, to show that Argos was irst tricked by Mercury Trismegistus’s stratagem, and slain thereafter. 12. But Antiquity found much entertainment in these fables, because poetic matters are in a way a picture, as Flaccus attests: A poem is like a picture… and … painters and poets have always had an equal right in hazarding anything. Therefore, in a poem iction has power, as painting does; and painting, as the Philosopher states in the Politics, was invented for the less cultivated. In a poem, not only are the ideas concealed, but also the façade is painted; painting is crafted for the uncultivated. Therefore, a wise man of his own accord infers that in a battle many thousands of men suffered different sorts of death; he who is short-sighted does not understand it unless he sees it painted. Hence painters satisfy the uncultivated—incapable as they are of inferring it by themselves—when they paint horses falling violently, and men trampled and pierced, and others leeing, and others chasing them. But to tease out the meaning of ictions and pictures is the mission of the wise man; and for this reason we mentioned before that philosophers are lovers of fables, citing the authority of Aristotle, and thus poetics is very useful to both the learned and the unlearned. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 210 Jorge Ledo The following edition is based upon the editio princeps of the Latin text: G. Marzio (1548), De doctrina promiscua liber varia multiplicique eruditione refertus ac nunc primum in lucem editus, ed. Lorenzo Torrentino, Florentiae: apud Laurentium Torrentinum. The princeps has been compared with the only extant manuscript (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 52. 18) and the relevant variations have been added in notes. 2 The attribution of the Rhetorica ad Herennium to Cicero was common during the middle ages and the Italian Quattrocento. 3 Plut. 52. 18: verisimilis. 4 Rhetorica ad Herennium I. VIII. 13. 5 Plut. 52. 18: Comediarum. 6 Plut. 52. 18: placerent. 7 Terence, Andria, Proem., 3: “Populo ut placerent, quas fecisset fabulas.” 8 Plut. 52. 18: magniicat. 9 Plut. 52. 18: accoeptio. 10 Apart from the idea of rhetoric or forensic practice as fable, the tradition of mythological fables as a means of persuasion also had a long tradition, for instance in Plato, Leges 886a–890e; Cicero, De divinatione I. LVII. 105; and nn. 21 and 22 below. Criticisms against ancient legislators for using fables of this sort became a commonplace during the Quattrocento and the Cinquecento. 11 Juvenal, Satires I, 145: “It nova nec tristis per cunctas fabula cenas.” 12 Suetonius, Augustus LXX. 1. 13 Aristotle, Metaphysics α 2 982b11–21. 14 “Similacem” both in the princeps and in Plut. 52. 18. 15 Plut. 52. 18: hederam. 16 Pliny, Nat. hist XVI. LXIII, 154–155. 17 Plut. 52. 18: in fortunato. 18 Iulius Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos libri octo IV. IX. 8: “The waxing or full Moon moving away from Saturn into aspect to Mercury makes the natives obscure, secluded, silent, students of secret and illegal writings, or involved in celestial religions, or experienced in interpretation of the stars. They will be managers of affairs, public teachers of the liberal arts, orators of outstanding eloquence, or well known physicians” (A Saturno Luna ad Mercurium. Si a Saturno deluens Luna Mercurii se stellae coniunxerit et sit crescens vel plena luminibus, facit obscuros et absconsos et tacitos, secretarum et illicitarum litterarum scios aut caelestibus religionibus occupatos aut peritis computationibus interpretantes siderum cursus. Facit etiam negotiationibus praepositos et liberalium artium publicos magistros, facit oratores eloquentiae splendore fulgentes aut medicos cunctorum testimoniis adornatos), tr. Jean Rhys, p. 124, eds. Kroll and Skutsch, t. I, p. 210–11; see also IV. VII. 1 and IV. XIX. 29, 19 Cicero, De natura Deorum III. II; III. VII. 15–19. 20 Gen. 3: 8. 21 Compare Pomponazzi, De incantationibus [1520] X. 68, ll. 331–342: “Moreover, even in the Ancient Law, many things are told that cannot really be understood as they appear—for example, when it is said that God spoke and that his face was carried on the waters. These are, in fact, mystical meanings, and said precisely for the ignorant people, who cannot understand incorporeal things. The language of the Laws, as Averroes states in his Poetics, is similar to the language of the poets, as poets imagine fables that, understood literally, are impossible; however, they contain a profound truth, as Plato and Aristotle relate. Poets make up these 1 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 211 fables precisely to guide us towards the truth and for the instruction of the uncultivated people. [To teach them] that it is necessary to be good and to avoid evil, we likewise induce children to good and keep them away from evil, that is, with the hope of a reward and the fear of punishment. And we must lead ordinary people to the knowledge of incorporeal things through these bodily images, as we lead the children from a softer food to a stronger one” (Nam in Veteri Lege multa feruntur quae re vera non possunt intelligi ut littera sonat, ut cum dicitur Deum esse allocutum et eius faciem ferri super aquas; sed sunt sensus mystici et dicti propter ignavum vulgus, quod incorporalia capere non potest. Sermo enim Legum, ut inquit Averrores in sua Poesi, est similis sermoni poetarum: nam, quamquam poetae ingunt fabulas quae, ut verba sonant, non sunt possibilis, intus tamen continent veritatem, ut multoties Plato et Aristoteles referunt. Nam illa ingunt ut in veritatem veniamus et rude vulgus instruamus, quod inducere oportet ad bonum et a malo retrahere ut pueri inducuntur et retrahuntur, scilicet spe praemii et timore poenae, et per haec corporalia ducere in cognitionem incorporalium, veluti de cibo teneriore in cibum solidiorem ducimus infantes), eds. Perrone Compagni and Regnicoli, p. 110, my translation. 22 Aquinas, Summa Theol. I, q. 84, art. 5; Id., Super I. Tim, ch. 1, lectio 2: “Fabula enim secundum philosophum est composita ex miris, et fuerunt in principio inventae ut dicit philosophus in poetria, quia intentio hominum erat ut inducerent ad acquirendum virtutes, et vitandum vitia. Simplices autem melius inducuntur repraesentationibus quam rationibus. Unde in miro bene repraesentato videtur delectatio, quia ratio delectatur in collatione. Et sicut repraesentatio in factis est delectabilis, ita repraesentatio in verbis: et hoc est fabula, scilicet dictum aliquod repraesentans, et repraesentando movens ad aliquid. Antiqui enim habebant aliquas fabulas accommodatas aliquibus veris, qui veritatem occultabant in fabulis. Duo ergo sunt in fabula, quod scilicet contineat verum sensum, et repraesentet aliquid utile. Item quod conveniat illi veritati. Si ergo proponatur fabula, quae non potest repraesentare aliquam veritatem, est inanis; sed quae non proprie repraesentat, est inepta, sicut fabulae de Thalmuth;” Id., Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Titum lectura, ch. 1, lect. 4; Id., In libros Aristotelis De caelo et mundo expositio I, lect. 22, nn. 7–8; ibid., II, lect. I, n. 8: “Et primo excludit errores; secundo concludit veritatem intentam, ibi: si itaque quemadmodum et cetera. Circa primum excludit tres opiniones. Quarum prima est fabularis. Et dicit quod, quia motus caeli non est laboriosus nec contra naturam, non est nec leviter suspicandum quod se habeat sempiternitas caeli et motus eius secundum antiquam fabulam Homeri et aliorum poetarum, qui dicebant quod caelum, ad hoc quod conservetur in suo situ, indiget quodam gigante, quem vocabant Atlantem, stantem super duas columnas et sustentantem humeris caelum. Illi enim qui istum sermonem fabularem composuerunt, videntur eandem opinionem habuisse de corporibus caelestibus, quam habuerunt quidam posteriores, scilicet ut essent gravia et terrea, ut sic indigeret sursum contra suam naturam detineri per aliquam virtutem animatam, vel alicuius rei viventis, puta Dei vel cuiuscumque substantiae separatae. Et si quidem hoc dicant caelo esse necessarium propter hoc quod caelum habeat gravitatem, fabula est omnino reprobanda: si autem intelligant quod caelum habeat naturam talis situs et motus, et tamen natura est ei ab alio causante et conservante, sic fabula aliquid divinum continet;” Id., Scriptum super Sententiis quaest. I, Prooem.; Id., Sentencia super Meteora II, ch. 1; Id., Sententia libri Metaphysicae I, lect. 4, nn. 15–16; ibid., II, lect. 5, n. 3; ibid., III, lect. 11, nn. 3–4; ibid., XII, lect. 10, n. 31: “… Reliqua vero introducta sunt fabulose ad persuasionem multitudinis, quae non potest capere intelligibilia, et secundum quod fuit optimum ad leges ferendas, et ad utilitatem conversationis humanae, ut ex huiusmodi Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 212 Jorge Ledo adinventis persuaderetur multitudini, ut intenderent virtuosis actibus et a vitiis declinarent …;” etc.; Nicolaus of Gorran, In VII epistolas canonicas expositio, pars III, ch. 1. 23 Cicero, De natura Deorum II. XXIV. 63. 24 Ibn Sinna, Liber Canonis. Expositio prima in fen quarti II. XVIII. De profunditate somni, quae accidit eis: “Oportet ut remoueatur a profunditate somni cum fabulis, et his similibus per voces. Et ligentur membra eorum inferiora ligatione dolorosa, postquam non fuerit quod prohibeat. Et supponatur collyrium subtile si natura fuerit restricta, et in hora quietis, aut in hora tempois in assidua et inseparabili et ventosetur quod est inter ambas spatulas et spondyles.” 25 Suetonius, Augustus LXXVIII. 2. 26 Aristotle, Problemata XVIII. 1. 916b1–19. See also Albertus Magnus, De somno et vigilia III; treat. 2; chap. 8, ed Borgnet, pp. 205–206. 27 Plut. 52. 18: omeliis. 28 Plut. 52. 18: alios alios. 29 Marzio’s theory of spirits is further developed in two chapters of De doctrina promiscua (XIV and XXI; Florentiae: apud Laurentium Torrentinum, 1548, pp. 109–135, esp. 120–121, and 197–211). His position on the topic is fundamentally based on Galen and Ibn Sinna’s Liber Canonis. According to Lynn Thorndike—A History of Magic and Experimental Science. III–IV. Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (New York, Morningside Heights: Columbia University Press, 1934), p. 404—, his exposition of the relation between planets and metals, diseases, and spirits stems from Peter of Abano’s Conciliator. The reader will ind useful information on Ficino’s use of the theory of the spirits in Clark and Kaske’s introduction to Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres: Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies—The Renaissance Society of America, 1998, pp. 43–44. 30 Plut. 52. 18: optusi. 31 Virgil, Aen. VI, 522. 32 The princeps reads “inquibus,” most certainly due to a printer’s error. Plut. 52. 18 reads “in quibus.” 33 Plut. 52. 18: optusi. 34 Plut. 52. 18: paratiorque. 35 Plut. 52. 18: sollicitudines. 36 Plut. 52. 18: insapientibus. 37 Horace, Ad Pisones 104–105. 38 Plut. 52. 18: iuncatur. 39 Ovid, Metamorphoses XII, 459–532. 40 Ovid, Metamorphoses IX, 666ff. 41 Ovid, Metamorphoses XV, 322–333. 42 The princeps reads “Sitonio,” as does Plut. 52. 18. 43 The allegorical interpretation of the adultery of Mars and Venus had an important and long tradition both in Greek and in the Latin West, as for instance in Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium 19. 34; Ps-Plutarch’s De vita et poesi Homeri, 101; Proclus, In Platonis Rempublicam Comentariis diss. V. XV. K141–K143—Proclus the Successor on Poetics and the Homeric Poems, eds. Kroll and Lamberton, trans. Lamberton (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), pp. 192– 199—; id., In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria III. 27–28, ed. and trans. D. Baltzly (Cambridge— New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, III. 1), pp. 73–74; Albertus Magnus, Politica Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 Some Remarks on Renaissance Mythophilia. The Medical Poetics of Wonder... 213 II. 7, ed. Borgnet, p. 163; Ficino, Epistulae III. 10. Venus subdues Mars, and Jupiter Saturn (Venus Martem, Iupiter Saturnum domat), tr. members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1978), pp. 15–16; id. Il libro dell’amore V. VIII, ed. Niccoli (Firenze: Olschki, 1987), pp. 96–97; etc. Heraclitus the Grammarian’s Allegories and his pseudo-alchemical interpretation of the myth (69) were printed for the irst time by Aldus Manutius in 1505: Habentur hoc uolumine haec, uidelicet: Vita, & Fabulae Aesophi cum interpretatione Latina… [Venetiis]: [apud Aldum], [mense Octobri 1505], sigs. h5r–i6v, wrongly attributed to Heraclides Ponticus. The work had a relatively extensive circulation in manuscript before that date, see Gombrich’s Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. II, Oxford—New York: Phaidon Press, 1978, pp. 67–69 and 82–84. However, Marzio’s astrological interpretation of the myth seems to be original. 44 Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, 189. 45 Iulius Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos libri octo VI. XXXI. 60–61: “If Venus is in those degrees of Taurus in which the Pleiades are located, and Mercury and Mars are either in conjunction with the full Moon or in square aspect to her, the native will be captured by bandits and killed, struck by a sword. If Venus is found in Taurus, on the ascendant in square aspect to the full moon on the MC, this indicates the same as above” (Si <Venus in Tauro fuerit> constituta, et eas Tauri partes teneat, in quibus sunt Pleiades positae, et sit Luna plena luminibus, et Mercurius et Mars aut cum ea sint aequata partium societate coniuncti, aut de quadrato latere superiores effecti minaci eam radiatione respiciant, qui sic eos habuerit a latronibus captus peribit, sed minacis gladii mucrone percussus. Sed <et> si Venus in Tauro cum horoscopo fuerit inventa, et Lunam in MC. constitutam plenam luminibus quadrata radiatione percutiat, hoc idem quod diximus simili ratione periciet), tr. Jean Rhys, p. 216, eds. Kroll and Skutsch, t. II, pp. 164–165. 46 Antiscium/a, also antiscion, is an astrological term that refers to the opposite degrees of the zodiac. See Iulius Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos libri octo II. XXIX. Georgius Trapezuntius wrote an opuscule on the topic—De brevis antisciis tractatus [1454–1456, princeps 1524]—accompanied by his own horoscope and a brief autobiography, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science. III–IV. Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (New York, Morningside Heights: Columbia University Press, 1934), pp. 395–396, and Collectanea Trapezuntiana. Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond, ed. John Monfasani, (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in conjunction with The Renaissance Society of America, 1984), pp. 695–697. Giovanni Pontano also devoted an extensive chapter to antisticia ([20.] De antisciis et gradibus sibi respondentibus et signis se videntibus) in his De rebus colestibus [1475/1495, thoroughly rewritten]: Ioannis Ioviani Pontani Opera omnia soluta oratione composita (Venetiis: in Aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri), 1518-1519, III (1519), sigs. ooo8v–ppp2v. 47 There are four elemental trigons or triplicities, one each for ire—i.e., Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius—, air, earth, and water respectively. They are called trigons because each sign of the triplicity is 120º away from the next sign of that triplicity, and all three together make a triangle. These are also related to the so-called planetary “aspects,” the signiicant angular relationships between the planets, as Ptolomeus discusses in the Tetrabiblos I. XVIII [XIX]. See different and complementary approaches in Manilius, Astronomicon II, 273–286, and Iulius Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos libri octo VI. III–VIII. 48 Claudius Ptolomeus, Tetrabiblos III. XV. 11: “And the rising and morning positions of both Mars and Venus have a contributory effect, to make them more virile and notorious” (Ἄρεως Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 214 Jorge Ledo καὶ τοῦ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης πρός τε τὸ ἐπανδρότερον καὶ εὐδιαβοντότερον, οἱ δὲ δυτικοὶ καὶ ἑσπέριοι πρός τε τὸ θηλυκώτερον καὶ τὸ κατασταλτικώτερον), ed. and trans. Robbins, pp. 370–371. 49 Plut. 52. 18: optinuit. 50 Together with Lactantius—Div. Inst. I. 7—, the other main classical source for the legend can be found in Cicero, De natura Deorum III. XXII. 56; Ovid—Metamorphoses I, 666ff.—lacks the identiication between Mercury and Hermes Trismegistos. Ficino collected the identiication for his argumentum before the Pimander—F.A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964, p. 116—as Pico della Mirandola did in one of the gatherings at the Academia Marciana and Petrus Crinitus recorded in De honesta disciplina (III. 2. Disputatio habita inter Hieronymus Savonarolam et Picum Mirandulanum, de philosophia veterum cum Christiana Academia. Et quid item vetustissimi de ipso Deo senserit, idest Moses, Mercurius, Zoroastres et Pythagoras). The chapter was edited by Eugenio Garin in G. Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno e scritti vari, Firenze: Vallecchi, 1942, pp. 79–81 (the passage in pp. 80–81) and commented by D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology. Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972, pp. 48ff. 51 Horace, Ad Pisones 361. 52 Horace, Ad Pisones 9–10. 53 Aristotle, Politics VIII. V, 1340a25–40. See also Nic. Ethics 1181b and Parva naturalia. De Memoria et Reminiscentia 450b20ff. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 163-214 polIzIano as a phIlosopher, or The crafT of ThInKIng BeTWeen fIcTIon and hIsTory1 poliziano coMo filósofo o sobre el arte de pensar entre ficción e historia Guido Giglioni aBsTracT By concentrating on the work of Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494), this article explores the questions about whether and to what extent ictional accounts of reality may contribute to the crafting of rational arguments. I will present Poliziano’s contribution to this debate as deeply embedded in a culture of verbal and visual mediation, as was characteristic of Renaissance philosophy. At a time and in a place (ifteenth-century Florence) where philosophy was open to forms of experimentation involving words and images, Poliziano was keen to defend the legacy of poetry, rhetoric and history within the tradition of philosophical inquiries, and more speciically, the role of iction in shaping arguments and tools of analytical scrutiny. From an interpretative point of view, one of the guiding lines in my analysis will be the category known in contemporary philosophy as moral imagination, that is, the idea that the imagination has the ability to transcend the limitations of individual desire and create the conditions for a broader engagement with reality. It is a type of moral abstraction that allows ideals and values to become suficiently general to be shared by communities (synchronically) and handed down by traditions (diachronically). It will be apparent how in Poliziano’s account iction, understood as the narrative element invigorating rational argument, expands the scope of imaginable possibilities while acknowledging the role played by the many constraints of history (res) and persuasion (ides). KeyWords: iction, history, res, moral imagination, Homer, Horace, Angelo Poliziano, Renaissance philosophy A irst version of this article was presented at the conference on “Pico and Poliziano in Late Medici Florence,” held at UCL, London (15 May 2017), to honour the memory of Simona Mercuri (1976–2015), a most promising young scholar of Poliziano studies, who sadly died in the prime of her youth. I would like to thank here the organizers of the conference, Francesco Bausi and Anna Corrias, for their kind invitation and their comments during the discussion. 1 Recibido: 15/12/2017. Aceptado: 18/12/2017 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 216 Guido Giglioni resumen A través del análisis de las obras de Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), este artículo se propone responder a dos preguntas: ¿Pueden las recreaciones iccionales de lo real contribuir a la creación de argumentos racionales? Y, de ser así, ¿hasta qué punto? A in de contestarlas, presentaré la contribución de Poliziano en este debate enmarcándola en una cultura de mediación verbal y visual que es característica dentro de la ilosofía del Renacimiento. En un lugar y en un tiempo (la Florencia del Quattrocento), donde la ilosofía se abría a formas de experimentación que implicaban palabras e imágenes, Poliziano se interesaba en defender el legado de la poesía, la retórica y la historia dentro una tradición especulativa ilosóica preocupada en la capacidad de la icción para conformar argumentos y proporcionar herramientas que favorecieran el examen analítico. Desde un punto de vista interpretativo, una de las líneas rectoras de mi análisis coincide con aquello que la ilosofía contemporánea denomina «imaginación moral», esto es, la idea de que la imaginación tiene capacidad de trascender las limitaciones del deseo individual y crear condiciones necesarias para una implicación más profunda con lo real. Se trata de una forma de abstracción moral que permite que valores e ideales devengan en suicientemente generales para ser compartidos por comunidades (sincrónicamente) y heredados a través de la tradición (diacrónicamente). Demostraré cómo, desde el punto de vista de Poliziano, la icción —entendida aquí como el elemento narrativo que refuerza un argumento racional—, expande el alcance de lo imaginado posible al tiempo que reconoce las múltiples restricciones de la historia (res) y la persuasión (ides) en el dominio de la ilosofía. palaBras clave: icción, historia, res, imaginación moral, Homero, Horacio, Angelo Poliziano, ilosofía del Renacimiento. Cur igitur pudeat philosophari? Angelo Poliziano, Lamia 1. InTroducTIon: The ImpacT of fIcTIon on phIlosophy Do philosophers tell stories? Plato, famously, did. Are they supposed to tell stories? This question—the theoretical argument—is more complex and insidious than the irst, the one dealing with the actual practice of philosophical inquiry and its history. As both Aristotle and Kant have taught us, the fact that philosophers tell stories does not mean that they have the right to do so; in fact, philosophers are the ones who are supposed to ask the question about the law or principle (quid iuris or the quidditas) behind a given practice, regardless of whether that practice Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 217 comes to fruition or not (quid facti or the quodditas).2 In arguing for a legitimate use of iction in philosophy and its limits, philosophers seem therefore to be in a quandary of their own making, in their ever recurring attempts to discipline themselves while often resorting to one of the most natural linguistic resources— the ability to tell stories—which is shared by individuals and communities at any given time in history. Philosophe, cura te ipsum, one may then jokingly say paraphrasing a well-known proverb—provided that iction can in fact be seen as a malaise that affects philosophical arguments. In addressing the question of the impact of iction on early modern philosophy, we cannot help regarding the period known as the Renaissance (ranging roughly from the second half of the fourteenth to the irst half of the seventeenth centuries) as one of the most fertile and rewarding research ields. It cannot be denied that a particular attention to ways of verbalizing and visualizing thought was fuelled by such historical circumstances at the time as the blossoming of rhetorical studies, a culture saturated with images, and remarkable advances in the technology of knowledge dissemination (one has only to think of the printing press and its impact). This impulse to formulate thought in words and images took a striking variety of forms: the more traditional treatise and the commentary, of course, but also poetry, novel, drama, pageantry, dialogues, emblem books, painting, sculpture and architecture (Giglioni 2016a). It was certainly no accident that Horace’s tag ut pictura poesis (Ars poetica, 361: “poetry is like painting”) became the motto of an age, and it quickly increased its metaphorizing potential in many directions within the ever expanding ield of human ingenuity, so much so that the motto was read quite liberally as ut poesis philosophia and ut pictura philosophia. The most vocal advocate of this liberal use was certainly Giordano Bruno in his works Cantus Circaeus (1582) and De compositione imaginum (1591).3 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I, 13, 78a; Kant 1910–1980, III, pp. 99; IV, pp. 68. On Plato, see Brisson 1998 [1982]. 3 Bruno 2004–2009 [1582], I, pp. 668: “Et ideo sicut in scriptura extrinseca atque pictura, quae serviunt oculis extrinsecis, duo requiruntur—ratio videlicet formae atque igurae characterum et imaginum, et materia atque subiectum in quo formae illae et imagines possint subsistere, manere et perdurare—, ita etiam in scriptura intrinseca atque pictura, quae serviunt oculis intrinsecis, duo sunt necessaria;” Bruno, 2004–2009 [1591], II, pp. 660: “Alibi dixi de cognatione quadam mira, quae est inter veros poetas, qui ad eandem speciem referuntur atque musici, veros pictores et veros philosophos; quandoquidem vera philosophia musica seu poesis et pictura est, vera pictura et est musica et philosophia, vera poesis seu musica est divina sophia quaedam et pictura.” On early modern interpretation of Horace’s ut pictura poesis, see Hagstrum 1958; Lee 2 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 218 Guido Giglioni I like to describe this attempt to mediate thinking with textual and visual artefacts as a distinctive trait of Renaissance philosophy. In this development the role of rhetoric was ‘gargantuan.’ Since antiquity, no doubt, the special nexus of the verbal and the visual in human thinking had been the preserve of the discipline of rhetoric. Enargeia (“vividness,” evidentia in Latin) and ekphrasis (verbal description of visual works) are traditionally the most signiicant illustrations of this mediation (Galand-Hallyn 1995, pp. 99–121; Webb 1999). We also know that— again since ancient times—the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric has been awkward and dificult, to say the least. And yet, because of the original bond linking words and images together, the return of rhetoric is a recurring episode in the history of western philosophy; we may even say that, at the moment, we are still in the middle of one of such rhetorical turns in philosophy. Having characterized Renaissance philosophy as a culture of verbal and visual mediation, I have no qualms about recruiting an author like Angelo Poliziano (1454–1594) among its most interesting and representative igures, despite his many attempts at self-effacing and ironic delection when addressing the question of what philosophy is. As readers of his works, we tend to take Poliziano’s cautious self-presentation at face value. Possibly, as a result of his persuasive words, historians of Renaissance culture and philosophy have concentrated their attention on his contributions to methodology (especially in philology and history), intellectual eclecticism, philosophical translation (especially Epictetus) and encyclopedism.4 Here I would like to argue that some extra room is left for looking at Poliziano as a philosopher. For Poliziano, poesis and poetica represented the pinnacle of human endeavours in the ield of knowledge. However, it wasn’t so much the idea of beauty that he wanted to pursue as the privileged object of poetry, but persuasion, understood as the ability to move oneself and fellow human beings to action by relying on the instruments of reason rather than coercion or deception. In arguing that the sphere of persuasion was broader than the one represented by aesthetic enjoyment, Poliziano’s view of 1967; Dolders 1983; Marsh 1989–2013 [1997]; Barkan 2013. More speciically, for Poliziano, see Verde 1973–2010, IV, II, pp. 599–600, who reports a few notes written by Poliziano for a university course on Terence’s Andria: “formas imaginesque una spectantes, quasi discere ratiocinarique videmur quicquid sit, ut puta leonem, corvum, hominem.” 4 These aspects have been studied by Garin 1954; Maïer 1966; Verde 1973–2010, IV, III, p. 1089; Garin 1994 [1961]; Grafton 1983–1993, I, pp. 9–44; Martelli 1995, pp. 7–71; Mandosio 1996; Kraye 1997; Bausi 2003, pp. XXVII–XXXII; Celenza 2010; Candido 2010; and Robichaud 2010. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 219 poesis was heavily dependent on the tradition of rhetorical wisdom. Artistic creation did not aim at reaching a state of disinterested contemplation and playful recreation, but strove towards an active transformation of reality through the means of mimetic imagination, make-believe, empathetic recognition and the setting of examples that were worth imitating. We might call this type of rational engagement with reality ‘poetic reason,’ and Homer, in Poliziano’s view, was the perfect embodiment of this kind of reason, both historically and theoretically. As the Iliad and the Odyssey had come to represent the epitome of the Greek ideal of paideia, Homer could be taken to signify the fulilment of the very idea of humanity. In fact, for Poliziano it wasn’t too much of a strain to suggest that behind Homer (the historical record) there was Orpheus (the myth), that is to say, the idea of poetry as the force that turns inanimate beings into sentient agents of cultural progress, endowed with the rhetorical power of persuasion in its purest form (Poliziano 1996, pp. 5–6 [13–16], 191–194 [283–317]).5 This resolute statement of poetic reason as a instrument of change and civilization was closely connected—almost interchangeable—with history, the discipline that, in Poliziano’s opinion, provided the actual records—the evidence, as it were—of the transformative power of words, symbolical remains and human imagination, but which also set examples to be imitated—better, examples which were willingly imitated because they were desirable. This is one of the decisive arguments in Poliziano’s defence of poetry as the summit of human accomplishments: enduring and memorable testimonies of poetic invention were paradigms that showed the possibility for ever deiant and irrepressible desire—especially in the form of greed and ambition—to respond to the call of reason. History demonstrated that desire could be turned into a force for good every time such drives as imitation, examples, honour, glory, rewards, praise and recognition were convincingly presented as sensible, credible and above all acceptable motives. The ancients used to call this power “decorum;” today we call it decency. In this respect, poetry, history and rhetoric represented for Poliziano the distinctive features of moral imagination. On the different representations of Orpheus’s story in Poliziano, from La fabula di Orfeo to the poems Manto and Nutricia, see Bausi, who characterizes the Orpheus in the Fabula as a “fallimentare stagione all’inferno,” in evident contrast to the Orphus in the Silvae, where the mythical vates epitomizes the prodigious effects of poetry. See Bausi 2006, pp. 28–34 (30); Bausi 1996, pp. 5–6 and 191–194. See also Garin 1994 [1961], pp. 356–358; Tissoni Benvenuti 1986, pp. 71–88; and Boccuto 1993. On poesis and poetica in Poliziano, see Bettinzoli 1995 and Séris 2002. 5 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 220 Guido Giglioni Moral imagination has become a staple of contemporary philosophical and aesthetic relection. Recently, David Bromwich has characterized moral imagination as the “identiication of ourselves with something quite radically not our own” (Bromwich, 2014b).6 This kind of imagination represents an effort to overcome all those material and conceptual divisions that are interposed among the objects of our experience and that make our perception of reality defective or dogmatically unilateral. The origins of the notion of moral imagination are usually traced back to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), who in his Relections on the Revolution in France (1790) advocated the necessary preserving function of cultural illusions—“the decent drapery of life”.7 And yet the idea that standards of judgment concern taste as much as moral thinking is also part of the early modern reception of classical ideals of decorum and civility. Moral imagination addresses the question of where we are supposed to draw the line when extolling the representational powers of the imagination and how far we can go in all those situations (iction, trust, daydreaming, playing) when we are inclined to suspend (for a limited amount of time and remaining vigilant) the critical power of reason. There is yet another reason why in Poliziano’s case to connect knowledge and desire through the paradigmatic function of exemplary actions is essential, and it is a reason that has to do with the function of teaching—a key component in his intellectual development. We know that, starting in 1480, Poliziano was involved in an intensive teaching programme at the Florentine Studium.8 A few names and titles will give us an immediate sense of the breadth and diversity of the courses he provided: Quintilian, Ovid, Statius, Rhetorica ad Herennium, Aristotle’s Ethics, Physics, Prior Analytics, Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics, and many more. What also David Bromwich, interviewed by Jonathan Derbyshire, in Prospect Magazine (22 May 2014). See also Bromwich 2014a. 7 Burke 1993 [1790], pp. 77: “All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratiies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.” On various developments in the ever expanding ield of studies devoted to moral imagination, see Price 1983, Johnson 1993, Pardales 2002, and Tilmouth 2007. 8 On Poliziano as a teacher, see Verde 1973–2010, IV, I, pp. 381–384, 415–418; II, pp. 491– 493, 540–544, 595–602, 632–639, 685–694, 768–771, 835–840, 904–910, 945–953; III, pp. 1043–1048, 1087–1092, 1124–1135; Branca 1983, pp. 73–90; Cesarini Martinelli 1996; Bausi 2006, pp. 41–52; Mercuri 2007, pp. XXVII–XLII; and Mandosio 2008. 6 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 221 emerges from this list is that Poliziano taught philosophy through literature, and not just because he accompanied his lecturing with actual poetic productions (the Silvae were composed as introductions to his university courses) and because he did not hesitate to draw philosophical subjects from literary sources,9 but because for Poliziano the very act of thinking could be seen as a craft in which rhetorical and narrative elements converged as one practice of critical understanding. One might therefore say that, in the course of his short but intense career, he demonstrated through the example of his literary output—as a poet, a philologist and a teacher—the meanings of such interrelated activities as thinking, reading and creating. As already mentioned, for Poliziano the unique historical and theoretical embodiment of this vital interdependence was Homer. 2. homer as The faTher of phIlosophy The encounter with Homer was a crucial experience in Poliziano’s intellectual career. It marked his entrance into the republic of letters, and it was an entrance that was under the spell of stories, or rather, the story: Homer’s Iliad. Indeed, to use a word that has now become dangerously fashionable, his very identity was shaped by that encounter: “ego is sum,” is what he proudly announced in his preliminary (and programmatic) lecture on Homer (Oratio in expositione Homeri), given in 1485: I am the one who, still a boy, burned with such love and passion for this most eminent poet that not only did I smell of Homer after I read the whole of his work and almost wear it out by reading it so many times, but I also dared to translate him into Latin driven by some sort of juvenile and nearly reckless familiarity.10 Not surprisingly, Homer is characterized as a vates—that is, a prophet, an oracle and a teacher—the irst creator of all sciences and ingenious ideas (doctrinarum Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 229: “Plurima tamen in philosophorum maxime operibus invenias quae sint in poetarum nostrorum libros ascita.” 10 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 477: “Ego is sum qui ab ineunte adolescentia ita huius eminentissimi poetae studio ardoreque lagraverim, ut non modo eum totum legendo olfecerim peneque contriverim, sed iuvenili quodam ac prope temerario usu vertere etiam in latinum tentaverim.” In my translation I have oscillated between “Homer” and “his work” as the object of Poliziano’s studium; the original Latin, however, is more direct, for Poliziano refers to Homer the author and Homer the work as one entity deined by the characteristic of personhood (eum). 9 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 222 Guido Giglioni omnium atque ingeniorum autor et princeps).11 “I will demonstrate,” Poliziano declares in his lecture, that “never existed a greater mind (ingenium) than the Homeric one, nor a human work that should be placed before Homeric poetry.”12 In his study on Poliziano, Vittore Branca insisted on the important role played by the recently rediscovered Poetics of Aristotle as a catalyst for Poliziano’s relections on art and philosophy (Branca 1983).13 I am more inclined to think that in fact this role should belong to Homer rather than Aristotle—although Aristotle is a key author for Poliziano’s ideas on logic, the encyclopedic approach to learning and ethics, and although in a famous letter to Ficino, Poliziano presented himself as the Aristotelian between Marsilio the Platonist and Pico the biblical scholar.14 In general terms, though, Poliziano goes back to Homer, and in particular, to Plato’s discussion of Homer in the Republic, for, by completely reversing Plato’s argument, Poliziano states that in fact poetry is the best philosophy and is the true foundation of political order.15 “What shall I say about philosophy?,” asks Poliziano in the lecture. His answer makes clear that almost every “noble thought or famous opinion” that we ind Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 477: “Dicturus de Homero vate, doctrinarum omnium atque ingeniorum autore et principe, et dicturus in coetu hominum, vel graece, vel latine doctissimorum: sentio nullam eloquentiam nec optari nec concipi posse, quae vel aviditatem animi nostri expleat, vel rei magnitudini respondeat, vel acerrimo denique iudicio vestro atque eruditissimis auribus satisfaciat.” 12 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 478: “planumque (ut arbitror) faciemus, neque ullum unquam extitisse ingenium Homerico maius, neque opus aliquod extare humanum, quod sit Homericae poesi anteferendum.” 13 On the diffusion of the Poetica at the time, see Garin 1973. 14 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 135: “omnes in hoc incumbimus, ut recta studia pro virili iuvemus ac non ullo praemio, sed operis amore solicitati, semper hoc agimus tamen, ita dispensatis inter nos oficiis ut nulla ferme studiorum parte cessetur. Etenim Picus ipse Mirandula sacras omnes literas enarrat, adversus ecclesiae septem hostes directa fronte decertat, inter Aristotelem iam meum Platonemque semper tuum caduceator incedit. Tu Platonem, quanquam et alios veteres, sed Platonem tamen ipsum maxime Platonicosque omnes, et latine loqui doces, et uberrimis commentariis locupletas. Mihi vero (quam diu catechumenos in philosophia vestra sum) varietas ista certe literarum cessit, quae non minus habent iucunditatis, etiam si minus autoritatis.” On Poliziano and his relationships with Ficino and Giovanni Pico, see Garin 1994 [1961], Gentile 1998, Bettinzoli 2009, and Robichaud 2010. 15 On Poliziano reader of Homer, see Grafton 1992, Galand-Hallyn 1995: 189–210, and Megna 2009. Paola Megna aptly describes Poliziano’s praelectio as a “lettura sapienziale di Omero” (Megna 2007, p. LXV). 11 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 223 among philosophers was already in Homer.16 And to corroborate this point, he provides a long sequence of passages, from Thales to the Stoics, whose source can be traced to Homer (Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], p. 479). Of course, there is a good level of conventional pleasantries and lourishes required by the rhetorical genre against which Poliziano is measuring himself—the encomium. On the other hand, the thesis of poetry as prophecy, and therefore as a foundational element in the construction of human knowledge, was not simply a matter of embellishment, adulation or storytelling. When Poliziano awarded Homer of the title of vates, born in heaven from Calliope herself, the Muse of eloquence and epic poetry (illi et patria coelum ipsum et mater esse Calliope), it’s because he thought that his mastery of language had traced the original coordinates of human learning. And just as “the inspired seers, who in Greek are called prophets, cried out aloud their almost divine responses and oracles, as if from some innermost and holy chambers inhabited by the gods,” so Homer was possessed by a divine force, which made him unaware of his earthly condition and divested his work of all references to personal history and gain, completely devoted to the betterment of humankind.17 In combining probity, judgment and vision, Homer was the perfect embodiment of moral imagination. What is especially signiicant in Poliziano’s portrait is the way in which Homer is described as a paragon of virtue, almost of a Stoic kind. Using Silius Italicus’s words, Poliziano characterizises Homer’s virtue as the self-rewarding effect of noble intent, the sibimet pulcherrima merces.18 By doing so, Homer had tamed the two Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 479: “Quid dicam de philosophia, in qua nulla est ferme nobilior posterorum sententia aut opinio celebrata cuius non in poeta Homero originem agnoscamus.” 17 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 478: “Adeo videlicet sese supra hominis conditionem vates hic eminentissimus atque incomparabilis attollit, adeoque nihil mortale sonat, ut merito illi et patria coelum ipsum et mater esse Calliope videri possit. Atque haec ego de Homeri patria parentibus eo consilio attigi, ut intelligeretis quanta in illo viro altitudo animi rerumque humanarum despicientia qui in tot versuum millibus nullam de patria unquam parentibusque suis fecerit mentionem, imo vero, ne nomen quidem suum aut titulo addiderit aut carminibus inseruerit, sed ut fatidici vates, qui Graeco nomine prophetae appellantur, divina illa sua quasi responsa atque oracula, tanquam ex arcanis quibusdam sacrisque deorum adytis emugiverit, ut plane appareret, non eum sibimet illa, sed omni generi hominum, omnique posteritati elaborasse.” 18 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 479: “Admirandus profecto vir (quem tamen etiam supra virum crediderim) quem nulla solicitarit ambitio, nulla honoris cupido provexerit, nullum gloriae studium inlammaverit, omnia virtutis causa honestique patraverit, neque sese extra quaesiverit: Ipsa enim est virtus (ut poeta quidam inquit) sibimet pulcherrima merces.” See Silius Italicus, Punica, XIII, 663. On the theme of virtue as self-rewarding action, see also Poliziano 1996, p. 141 [417–419]: “Namque licet virtus semet contenta quiescat / sola tamen iustos virtus adsciscit honores, / solaque se merito laudum fulgore coronat.” 16 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 224 Guido Giglioni monsters that, in Poliziano’s opinion, have never stopped plaguing humankind: greed (avaritia) and ambition (ambitio).19 Homer’s training in moral integrity occurred through his insatiable desire to know more about reality, while his passion for knowledge drove him to explore innumerable countries and customs throughout his life.20 As a result, Poliziano goes on, “in Homer’s poetry we contemplate the examples of all virtues and vices, the seeds of all disciplines and the images and efigies of all human things,” and—what is more extraordinary, but in fact follows from the creative power of poetry—Homer, who “certainly had never seen these examples with his own eyes,” has managed to establish their reality (constituerit) by bringing them forth before our very eyes.21 Precisely because of this unique form of ontological constitutio, Poliziano may even say that Homer—the blind poet— invented the art of painting. Echoing a renowned topos attributed to the sixthcentury poet Simonides of Ceos, Poliziano expands on the rhetorical commonplace that poetry deals with talking images while painting is silent poetry.22 It’s ut pictura poesis all over again, but, beyond all the encomiastic irework, the dictum conirms that, at the root of all visual, poetic and relexive arguments, it is the imagination and its power to produce images that are capable of setting things in motion—and this is ultimately what artistic creation is all about. Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 479: “Idem et pecuniae possessionem divitiasque pro nihilo habuit, quarum vehementius studium praecepsque cupido divina omnia atque humana permiscuit, ita duas capitaleis humani generis pesteis, duo teterrima monstra, avaritiam atque ambitionem devicit penitus atque prostravit.” 20 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 479: “Quid dicam, quanta quamque inexplebili discendi cupiditate lagraverit, qui ab ineunte adolescentia etiam luminibus captus rerumque omnium egenus, ut qui sibi in diem victum carminibus quaeritaret, etiam peregrinationis incommoda subiit, ut mores hominum multorum multarumque civitatum consuetudines perscrutarent, eaque multiplici rerum peritia, doctior longe indies sapientiorque evaderet.” 21 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 479: “Quo effectum est, ut in Homeri poesi virtutum omnium vitiorumque exempla, omnium semina disciplinarum, omnium rerum humanarum simulacra efigiesque intueamur, ipsaque illa nobis expressa expromptaque ante oculos constituerit, quae ipsemet profecto nunquam suis oculis usurpaverat.” 22 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 489: “Quid si eundem [Homer] picturae quoque magistrum autoremque vocemus, num opinor mentiemur? Cum praesertim sapientis dictum feratur poesin esse loquentem picturam, sicut e contrario pictura ipsa muta poesis vocatur.” Poliziano is referring to the dictum by Simonides of Keos: “Poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens.” See Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium III, 347. See Poliziano 1996, p. 155 [564– 565], I: “Quin et Apellaeos digitis animare colores / monstrat.” 19 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 225 By turning Homer into a true ontological category, Poliziano can therefore refer to Homeric virtue as a model of both human and divine action. This means that his poetry is not only at the origin of humankind’s progress, but it also represents the primordial unity where everything at the beginning existed as one and harmonious, before the split into the many disciplinary and ethical divisions started to aflict the life of the human mind. This point is argued forcefully in one of Poliziano’s Silvae, Ambra, where a line says that everything derives from and is in Homer’s work.23 Like Ocean, the original father of all natural forms, so Homer’s voice—the most original and truthful—has fertilized the minds of innumerable generations.24 As already mentioned, his words preceded the irst utterances of ancient wisdom (sapiens vetustas) and they faithfully reproduce the primeval motions at the origin of the world. Homer—not Hermes, nor Zoroaster—is therefore the priscus theologus (Poliziano 1996, p. 150 [515]). As we will see in the rest of this article, the thesis of the ontological primacy of poetry through the historical record of Homer—the original undivided union of truth and being—explains why poetry, in Poliziano’s opinion, has the power to promote the union of knowledge and action: by recombining the most abstract truths (the self-relecting intellect) with the drive to moral self-realization (the selfrewarding virtue) through the creation of both inspiring and believable examples (which means by making visible what is inherently invisible), poetry exercises an inherently edifying and civilizing inluence in human history. There is a birth in nature that involves all leaving beings, but there is also a cultural birth which is irst of all due to poetry, the original nutrix, the wet nurse that, like Orpheus, has turned inanimate matter into animate forces of change and progress. 3. The anImal ThaT We call “The phIlosopher” Besides the provision of paradigmatic models and the sense of an original unity of meaning and expression, there is however another key reason why, in Poliziano’s opinion, poetry is a fundamentally civilizing force: the function of storytelling. The narrative component in poetry—the mythos—is no ancillary operation, for it represents the very mechanism through which ideas are transformed into examples. Poliziano 1996, p. 147 [481]: “Omnia ab his [Homer’s chartae] et in his sunt omnia”; ibid., 580–581: “Omnis ab hoc doctas sapientia fonte papyros / irrigat.” 24 Poliziano 1996, p. 147 [476–480]: “Utque parens rerum fontes et lumina magnae / suggerit Oceanus terrae, sic omnis ab istis / docta per ora virum decurrit gratia chartis; / hinc fusa innumeris felix opulentia saeclis / ditavit mentes tacitoque inloruit aevo.” 23 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Guido Giglioni 226 As is adroitly and yet forcefully argued in Lamia, the inaugural lecture for his 1492 course on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, iction is good—and is good for philosophy, too: We like to chat for a little while, provided that it is to the point (ex re), as Horace says. For little stories (fabellae), even of the kind recounted by grandmothers, are not only a rudiment of philosophy, but sometimes even a philosophical tool.25 A story may foreshadow philosophy, but it can also be used to convey philosophical meaning. Moreover, to the inner cogency of arguments, stories add the surprise of accidental events. To stress this point, Poliziano asks for Aristotle’s support: “For, as Aristotle says, even philosophers are naturally inclined to stories, that is, they love stories. For a story consists of wonder, and wonder engendered philosophers.”26 For both Aristotle and Poliziano, wonder is the unexpected revelation following the realization that things are not as we thought they were. In this sense, wonder is the beginning of knowledge and the “mother” of philosophers (Metaphysics I, 982b). Lamia can be read as an elegant game in which Poliziano muses on whether he is in fact a philosopher by indirectly replying to some Aristotelian colleagues of his—the “witches” of the title—who were questioning his job at the Florentine Studium. Predictably, the irst answer he provides is that the witches are right and he is not a philosopher.27 As he also remarks in Miscellanea I, he likes to think of his philosophical contribution in terms of a dessert offered at the end of a sumptuous dinner prepared by proper philosophers such as Ficino or Argyropylos.28 In the same work, to remain in the sphere of culinary and digestive Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 451; Poliziano 2010, p. 194: “Fabulari paulisper lubet, sed ex re, ut Flaccus ait. Nam fabellae, etiam quae aniles putantur, non rudimentum modo, sed et instrumentum quandoque philosophiae sunt.” 26 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 461; Poliziano, 2010, p. 250: “Siquidem, ut Aristotelis ait, etiam philosophus natura philomythos, id est, fabulae studiosus est. Fabula enim admiratione constat, admiratio philosophos peperit.” 27 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 451; Poliziano, 2010, pp. 198–200: “Videamus ergo primum quodnam hoc sit animal quod homines philosophum vocant, tum spero facile intelligetis non esse me philosophum; neque hoc dico tamen quod id vos credam credere, sed ne quis fortasse aliquando credat; non quia me nominis istius pudeat, si modo ei possim re ipsa satisfacere, sed quod alienis titulis libenter abstineo.” 28 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 217: “Et hercle veluti bellaria sint ista, secundis accepta mensis. Quoniam rectae coenae speciem vicemque graviora illa occupant, qualia tibi multa vel Marsilius Ficinus Platonis, vel Aristotelis interpres Argyropylos Byzantius e philosophiae penu congesserunt.” 25 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 227 metaphors, he describes his role in the philosophical kitchen as that of providing digestive remedies which may aid the metabolism of reading habits and favour the acquisition of acquired tastes: if sometimes I have sprinkled a few dificult and painstaking—and to be honest, rather sour—points, drawn either from philosophy, to which I have been striving as a candidate for a while now, or from that system of disciplines which attend to the study of wisdom, these bits will perhaps restore and stimulate the stomach of a reader that has become enfeebled by eating over-sweet food.29 So, prompted by Poliziano’s own game, we should ask with him: What kind of animal is the philosopher (quodnam hoc sit animal quod homines philosophum vocant)? And, more speciically: What kind of philosophical animal is Poliziano? Can philosophers—and Poliziano as a philosopher—be emancipated by the act of fabulari? (Where fabulor is not simply the act of having a conversation, but also the ability to tell stories.) To stress the relevance of the narrative side in any exercise of knowledge—and therefore reconirm the ontological import of poetry— Poliziano adds the example of Cicero’s way of writing. In the inaugural lecture on Suetonius in the fall of 1490, he characterizes the function of storytelling as the force that injects life and vivid presence into any argument, be that legal or philosophical: if in Cicero’s orations, where everything is said as it should, there are a few short stories that are recounted by going through the whole gamut of emotions and feelings so that matters don’t seem to be said, but openly done and set before our eyes, how much more fruitful and abundant everything would appear in the most free ield of history, as if this were the Olympic Games?30 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 214–215: “si paucula respersimus interim scrupulosa et anxia, quodque verius, subacida, vel ex philosophia, cuius iampridem sumus candidati, vel ex orbe illo disciplinarum, quae studio sapientiae famulantur, at ea stomachum tamen lectoris praedulcibus marcentem recreabunt fortassis et exacuent.” For the phrase “scrupulosa et anxia,” see Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, “Praefatio,” 13. On Poliziano and Gellius, see Grafton 2004. 30 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 501: “Nam si in orationibus illis suis, ubi omnia ad praescriptum dicerentur, ita sunt quaedam breves insertae narrationes per omnes ductae sensus atque affectus, ut non dici res illae, sed plane geri atque esse oculis subiectae videantur, quanto uberiora tandem amplioraque omnia in liberrimo illo historiae campo, quasi in Olympiaco curriculo apparuissent” (Praefatio in Svetonii expositionem). The simile between rhetorical performance and running races in Olympia is in Rhetorica ad Herennium IV, 3. 29 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 228 Guido Giglioni When Poliziano says that history is the domain of narrative freedom, an activity that is so free that one has the impression to be running at the Olympic Games, he is not taking historia to mean simply a reliable account of past events; he is also not conining his understanding of narratio to the faculty of having conversations about the most disparate topics (fabulari) or sheer ictional invention (condere to the point of falsa narrare simillima veris). The rhetorical question in the quotation above should rather be read as an a fortiori argument: if we tell stories even in contexts where stories are not needed or appropriate, how much more important the act of storytelling will be when the crux of the matter is to recount, that is, history and its liberrimus campus, that area of writing practices where the mind seems to enjoy a condition of almost absolute freedom. Here historia is the technical term that keeps together truth, desire and appearance, for the meaning of historia wavers between account, story and vision; more precisely: between the original act of connecting words to ideas, the ictional tension of make-believe and suspension of disbelief, and imagination as the force that conjures up vivid representations of things—ut pictura poesis. In this sense, history is the domain where things are not simply recounted but done, when ekfrasis and enargeia converge to make visible what otherwise would remains hidden and inarticulate in the depths of the thinking process. Hence history’s natural closeness to politics and rhetoric, and, above all, freedom as its distinguishing characteristic. History is the place where reading and writing are a re-enactment of virtue and acting. It is therefore neither surprising nor far-fetched to argue that for Poliziano history is the essential link between poetry and philosophy. The key argument for him is that there cannot be real philosophy without examples to imitate. Two pithy lines from the poem Ambra captures this point extremely well: “He who is not moved by the idea of a future generation, nor by the reputation that survives him, that is, by examples for other people, loathes his own life and he’s a fool.”31 The typical accoutrements of historical narrative and public speaking, such as fama, posteritas and exempla, far from being an expression of vanitas, are all vital values because, in a truly Nietzschean sense, they transform history from a taxidermic venture into a critical exercise in which examples are ways of perpetuating life to future generations.32 It is Poliziano 1996, p. 142 [423–424]: “Quem neque posteritas neque tangit fama superstes, / nempe aliis exempla, sibi vitam invidet amens.” 32 The reference is, of course, to Nietzsche’s On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (Nietzsche 1997 [1874]). On Nietzsche’s views on Homer, which have several points in common with Poliziano’s, see now Nietzsche 2017. 31 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 229 also clear that by endorsing a view of virtue as self-rewarding action, Poliziano does not intend to side with an ascetic and analytic view of philosophy, which, rather than capturing the imagination of other people, frightens it with standards of character, conduct and judgment that are way too lofty and forbidding. Instead of being a justiication of pure moral intention dissociated from any material result, Poliziano’s idea of self-fulilling rectitude is all about action—epic, heroic, sublime action (all adjectives that, signiicantly, are literary genres as much as ethical categories)—and it is an idea of virtue that cannot be dissociated from the paradigmatic effects created by feats of glorious action, such as praise, honour, repute and decorum. And yet traditionally philosophers like to pit virtue against glory. For Poliziano this is the wrong way to assess the proit (merces), the worth (precium) and the award (praemium) of virtue.33 Virtuous action needs to be seen together with its glorious consequences: indeed, this is the only way we have to sneak a look at the invisible core of virtue. Otherwise virtue, besides being an invisible experience, turns out to be unreal: “we can see that in these most calamitous times, virtue itself has perished together with its fruit.” For Poliziano, there is a certain degree of truth in saying that civilization and its records derive from a desire to be remembered for accomplishing illustrious deeds (cupiditas gloriae).34 Poliziano’s gloria means reputation, not ambition. He takes the Latin word in his objective—therefore social—meaning, signifying the particular stock of beliefs that a community holds about a person or a work. Here glory is no subjective appetite for fame, which elsewhere he calls fastosa, “arrogant” glory.35 Indeed, the social function of objective glory is to contain the otherwise untrammelled ambition of subjective glory. What is more, unlike the ephemeral and fruitless productions of individual self-conceit, civilizing and collective glory is better preserved through the many stories recounted about heroic and noble deeds: “What reward for true virtue is more honourable than glory itself, which has built for itself a perpetual abode in the books of the best historians, while it inds temporary accommodation in all kinds of historical records”.36 In this sense, the Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 499: “Negant sane philosophi quidam appetendam gloriam esse, eamque rectius a virtute velut minime necessariam negligi autumant. Virtus enim, inquiunt, ipsa sibi est precium, ipsa est per sese nullis extrinsecus illecebris expetenda.” 34 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 499: “videre est nostris his calamitosissimis temporibus etiam cum virtutis fructu, virtutem prope ipsam intercidisse.” 35 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 456. 36 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 499–500: “Praemium autem quodnam est honestius verae virtutis quam ipsa gloria, quae ut in reliquis monumentis temporarium aliquod habere diversorium potest, ita in excellentium historicorum libris perpetuum sibi domicilium fabricata est?”. 33 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Guido Giglioni 230 free ield of history, which is the public arena where individuals may exercise the spontaneity of their individual action, is also the place where communal memory is lodged in the form of material and written evidence. So Cicero was right, Poliziano goes on to say in his lecture on Suetonius, when he characterized historical inquiries as a source of intellectual enlightenment (lux veritatis) and a means of driving life into institutions and traditions (vita memoriae).37 Through Cicero’s all-encompassing meaning of history, as both a theoretical and practical pursuit, Poliziano inds a way of legitimizing the narrative import of philosophy. History provides the philosopher with a ield, which is a vast repository of subject matters engaging his mind, and a reasonably broad freedom of movement, which in the end is the changeable expanse of moral imagination—liberrimus ille historiae campus. What is then the speciic contribution of philosophy in this discussion? If rhetoric, poetry and history, with their production of desirable examples, seem to bridge the gap between individuals, communities and universals in relation to both knowledge and action, is there still room for philosophical inquiries in Poliziano’s world? We can certainly understand why, given this context, Poliziano preferred to present himself, beyond reasons of studied unpretentiousness, as a grammaticus rather than a philosophus. Not surprisingly, it is especially in Lamia that Poliziano theorizes the role of the grammaticus as an expert in all the disciplines related to the use of language. “These are the functions of grammarians,” he declares, “to examine and interpret every kind of writers, poets, historians, orators, philosophers, physicians and lawyers.”38 Unfortunately, he continues, to be a grammarian today is very different from what it used to be: Our age, barely acquainted with the ideals of antiquity, has conined the grammarian to a role that is too narrow. Among the ancients, by contrast, this profession used to enjoyed such a great authority that grammarians alone were the censors and judges of all writers, and for this reason they were also called critics.39 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 499–500. See Cicero, De oratore, II, 36. Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 461; Poliziano 2010, p. 244: “Grammaticorum enim sunt hae partes, ut omne scriptorum genus poetas, historicos, oratores, philosophos, medicos, iureconsultos excutiant atque enarrent.” 39 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 461; Poliziano 2010, p. 244: “Nostra aetas parum perita rerum veterum, nimis brevi gyro grammaticum sepsit; at apud antiquos olim tantum autoritatis hic ordo habuit, ut censores essent et iudices scriptorum omnium soli grammatici, quos ob id etiam Criticos vocabant.” 37 38 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 231 As a grammaticus, Poliziano sees himself as fully equipped with all the instruments supplied by philology, history and poetics so as to be able to embark on a critical survey of reality. Moreover, as a critic, and not as a professional philosopher, he can remain loyal to his view of poetry as the best instantiation of philosophical inquiry, without losing track of the countless historical accidents and accretions— all perfectly meaningful—that derive from the use of any language. And yet things are not so simple, for, besides being an elegant exercise in philosophical selfeffacement, Lamia remains a paean to philosophy. I would say that it has to be such a paean, for any defence of poetry as philosophy risks to advocate (even unwittingly) the right to be deluded and to act in a delusional way, that is, to inadvertently promoting escapism and analgesic fantasy. The element of critical thinking in Poliziano’s deinition of grammaticus needs therefore to be unpacked. The philosopher as a critic alerts his readers to the dangers of acquiescence and reminds them of the parlous state of things in the real world. As a result, philosophy is for Poliziano the discipline that “presses her favours on those who are awake, not asleep” (Vigilantibus enim se, non dormientibus ingerit): in order for you to understand more easily what I said—that the greatest pleasure lies in philosophy—picture in your minds someone who has all the pleasures of this world, who knows nothing and lacks all judgment: is there anyone who would like to live the life of this person? I don’t think so, just as no one would choose to always be drunk, always be a child and always be asleep, like Endymion. For, although there are indeed some joys in sleeping, those joys, however, are false, counterfeited, imaginary, not true, not solid and not clear. And why do you think we are all frightened by death? It’s because everyone inds what they don’t know dreadful, as something that is obscure and shrouded in darkness, just as, on the contrary, they love what they understand, as something that is clear and distinct.40 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 456; Poliziano 2010, pp. 224–226: “Sed quod voluptatem diximus esse in philosophia maximam quo facilius intelligere possitis, ingite aliquem vobis cunctis afluentem deliciis, qui nihil omnino sapiat, qui prudentia penitus vacet, an quisquam vivere huius vitam volet? Equidem non puto: sicuti nec semper ebrius, nec semper esse puer, nec dormire semper, ad morem Endymionis, eligat quispiam. Quanquam enim aliqua etiam in somnis gaudia sunt, falsa illa tamen, adumbrata, imaginaria, non vera, non solida, non expressa sunt gaudia. Cur autem et mortem prope omnes expavescimus? Quoniam puto cuique terribile quod ignoratur, ut quod obscurum, quod tenebricosum est: sicuti contra amabile quod intelligitur, ut quod apertum, quod illustre est.” On the interplay of dreaming and waking in Renaissance philosophy and medicine, see Giglioni 2016b. 40 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Guido Giglioni 232 Endymion, with his story of deathless and ageless sleep, represents for Poliziano a state of mental torpor, which may be good for the indeinite preservation of the vegetative functions of life, but it has no part in strengthening the ibre of moral reasoning. On the contrary, numbness is bound up with that sense of discomfort that humans associate with death. Only a condition of awareness predicated on knowledge of reality (historia) ensures that the human mind has a clear perception of the state of things in the real world: if we love what we know, why do we also love the very actions of knowing and possessing knowledge? But this is precisely what deines philosophy more than anything else. So either we shouldn’t do and wish anything in this life, or we should put all our hopes in philosophy, our haven. Let us place the life of human beings before our eyes: what is that life apart from a vain shadow, or, to use Pindar’s apter words, the dream of a shadow? Man is a bubble, says an old proverb. Consider the elephant and the little hare, how stronger the one and faster the other are compared to us. What is this haughty glory (gloria fastosa) that most of the times drives us headlong if not mere nonsense and hot air? If you look at that from afar, you may think that it’s something great; when you come closer, it izzles out.41 There are degrees in the human ability to perceive reality behind the screen of appearances, and there are also different ways of protecting that ability from sudden and disruptive clashes with reality. An excessively keen sight may jeopardize the precarious balance that exists between the mind and its surrounding reality: “if we were sharp-sighted like Lynceus, and we could see through bodies and look inside them, we would look at even the most beautiful people with revulsion, so many are the things that would appear to us hideous, loathsome and disgusting.” To prevent that an excess in clear-sightedness may turn knowledge into a purely destructive exercise, minds necessitate the buffer of beliefs and imaginations that shield them from the shock of raw, unprocessed reality: Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 456; Poliziano 2010, p. 226: “Si igitur quae nota sunt delectant, cur etiam nosse ipsum ac sapere delectet? At id maxime proprium philosophiae est; aut igitur nihil agendum in hac vita, nihil expetendum est, aut in sola philosophia, tanquam in portu requiescendum. Subiiciamus quaeso oculis hominum vitam. Quid ea est omnis praeter inanem umbram, vel, ut signiicantius ait Pindarus, umbrae somnium? Homo bulla est, antiquum inquit proverbium. Nam quantum viribus ab elephanto, quantum celeritate vincimur a lepusculo? Gloria haec autem fastosa, quae nos plerunque agit praecipites, ut nihil aliud est quam merae nugae? Ut nihil aliud quam nebula? Procul enim si spectes, magnum quiddam esse putes; ubi propinques, evanescit.” 41 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 233 In conclusion, what is solid and long lasting in all our things? The weakness of our nature and the brevity of our life lead us to think that sometimes something may stand irm or last. This may explain why the belief of some of the ancients— that our souls, by having being thrown into our bodies as in a jail, were paying the penalty of serious crimes—although not entirely true, cannot nevertheless be dismissed as completely absurd. For, since the soul is united and glued to the body, extended and unfolded throughout the limbs and the passageways of the senses, this soul seems to me to suffer a torment that is no different from the one to which the abominable Mezentius in Virgil subjected his unfortunate citizens.42 Philosophy is the discipline that mediates between Endymion and Lynceus, between illusion and disillusion, sleep and rude awakening. A philosopher cannot torture the human mind, as Mezentius—the heinous and irreligious Etruscan king—used to do with his enemies, when he would tie their bodies to festering corpses—“face to face,” as recounted by Vergil in the Aeneid (VIII, 483–488). Poliziano does not deny that philosophers are contented with “the contemplation of the loftiest things (pulcherrima).”43 They are “devoted” to the knowledge of what is “high, divine and pure,” understood in its very source (in fonte), and this knowledge is called sophia in Greek and sapientia in Latin.44 Poliziano is also aware, however, that in mediating between Endymion and Lynceus, philosophers have the responsibility to account for the value and meaning of beliefs that shape human communities and prevent them from falling apart. It is highly likely that, Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, pp. 456–457; Poliziano 2010, pp. 226–227: “Nam si lyncei essemus, ac penetrare oculis in corpora et introspicere possemus, etiam formosissimum quemque nauseabundi aspiceremus, adeo nobis multa visu tetra et foeda prorsusque deformia occurrerent. Quid obscoenas commemorem voluptates, quibus poenitentia semper comes. Age vero, quid in rebus nostris omnibus vel solidum vel diuturnum? Nam ut stare aliquid aut durare nonnunquam putemus imbecillitas nostra facit atque aevi brevitas, ita quod veteres opinati quidam sunt animas nostras in corpora tanquam in carcere coniectas magnorum scelerum poenas luere, quanquan non omnino verum, tamen etiam nec absurdum plane videri potest. Nam cum sit anima iuncta agglutinataque corpori, ac per omneis artus, omneisque sensuum quasi meatus extenta et explicata, non alio mihi videtur supplicio affecta quam quo Mezentius ille Vergilianus miseros cives suos aficiebat.” 43 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 452; Poliziano 2010, pp. 204–206: “Sed inter omneis praecellere tamen eos, et esse quam honestissimos, qui rerum pulcherrimarum speculatione contenti sunt.” 44 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 453; Poliziano 2010, p. 206: “Quotcunque igitur pulchra, divina, sinceraque primo, hoc est, in fonte ipso sunt, eundemque tenorem peragentia, horum esse scientiam quandam, quae sophia nominatur, id nomen latine sapientia est, eiusque sophiae studiosum vocatum modo esse a se philosophum.” 42 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 234 Guido Giglioni similarly to the victims of Mezentius, in many of our daily actions we live in the embrace of death, for reality is a rather nauseous affair. Luckily, though, our eyes are not as sharp as those of Lynceus, and instead of attempting to disembody our perception through intellectual abstraction or falling in a dreamless sleep, our condition of temporal agents invites us to resort to stories, provided that they have a relevant point (ex re) and are related to the life of a historical community. 4. conclusIon: To reason, To raTIonalIze-perchance To dream It is at this extremely delicate juncture—between persuasion (ides), recognition (verum) and innner transformation (exemplum)—that philosophy and poetry seem to reach a precarious and yet irm agreement. In the lecture on Suetonius, Poliziano explains that those who are regarded as the greatest poets were able to convince their audience of any thing they liked. But in order to do so, as Cicero explained and did in his career as an orator, they also needed to be ‘historians’, that is, people capable of handling reality and the impact that reality had on their imagination and that of their hearers. What is more, as the Muses once reminded Hesiod, poets, insofar as they are chroniclers of reality, know how to distinguish the truth from the falsity of things (Scimus falsa quidem narrare simillima veris: / Scimus item, quoties libitum est, et vera profari). And to end this progression with a climax, Poliziano introduces the igure of the legumlator, the mind who creates the laws of a country. Here, at the level of political inventio, is where the productive signiicance of poetry, history and philosophy is at its highest (Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], p. 501). Fides (belief and trust) and facere idem (to persuade) are the technical terms used by Poliziano in this discussion. Belief and trust are what turns the virtue as selfrewarding endeavour into a promise of history and civilization. And while gloria (honour and praise) can be a noble motive behind the accomplishment of virtuous actions, history has the advantage over both poetry and philosophy that it produces belief (facere idem) and garners consent among people. In this, history is more persuasive than any poetic or philosophical representations of reality, which in fact must rely on the examples of history if they want to be believable (Poliziano 1970– 1971 [1553], pp. 501–502). Not only that; they need history if they want to keep desire away from the opposite threats of dull habituation and unhinged appetite. As said at the beginning of this article, in Poliziano’s analysis of the motives behind human action, examples sublimate the murky underside of greed and ambition into a desire for insight and change. Signiicantly, Poliziano never demonizes cupiditas gloriae, the desire of glory, every time glory means laudable and exemplary action. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 235 Indeed, he does not demonize either cupiditas or gloria whenever they are understood as a force of vital growth and a source of civilizing effects. In this sense, it is correct to say that Poliziano learnt his philosophy at the school of Homer. If we now go back to the beginning of Lamia, the meanings of fabella and res become clearer. Philosophers like to tell stories, but their stories have to be “to the point,” ex re, “as Horace says.” Here the meaning of res is the matter under discussion rather than adaptation to external circumstances; it’s materia more than occasio. Let’s have a quick look at what Horace said in Satira, II, 6, which is the place referred to by Poliziano. This is Horace’s example of telling stories ex re: And so we start to talk, not about other people’s villas or houses, or whether Lepos dances well or not, but—and this is what really matters to us and is something that one should know—whether human beings are happy because of their money or their virtue, what brings us friends, whether interest or honesty, and what the nature of the good and the highest good are. While discussing these matters, my neighbour Cervius chatters away and recounts those bedtime stories that are commonly told by grandmothers, but he does so while sticking to the point (ex re).45 Cervius’s stories are aniles fabellae, and yet they are apposite developments of the conversation (fabulari), for they illustrate the matter (res) of the sermo, that is, the meaning of happiness, virtue, friendship; above all, they shed light on the nature of the good. In this way, these stories manage to reconcile desire (cupiditas) with reality (res). Through Cervius, Horace retells Aesop’s story of the town mouse and the country mouse, which at the end of the poem reconirms the ideals of frugality and restraint advocated by the poet at the beginning of his satira (hoc erat in votis... nihil amplius oro, 1, 4).46 One might say that, as is the case with Poliziano, Horace’s relationship to philosophy was too elusive to be taken as evidence of any real commitment. For some commentators, Horace’s interest in Stoic and Epicurean thought was a matter of poetic occasion more than a consistent intellectual pursuit, just as Poliziano’s involvement with the philosophy of the ancients was a response to professional 45 Horace, Satires, II, 6, 70–78: “ergo / sermo oritur, non de villis domibusve alienis, / nec male necne Lepos saltet; / sed, quod magis ad nos / pertinet et nescire malum est, agitamus, utrumne / divitiis homines an sint virtute beati, / quidve ad amicitias, usus rectumne, trahat nos / et quae sit natura boni summumque quid eius. / Cervius haec inter vicinus garrit aniles / ex re fabellas.” 46 As a further example of recounting stories according to the res of the situation and the time, see Cowley’s retelling of the Horatian fable of the two mice. Cf. Hopkins 1993, pp. 103–125. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 236 Guido Giglioni and didactic demands.47 This, however, is a reading that has the inconvenience of distorting the meaning of Poliziano’s philosophical concerns. Res—reality more than circumstance—is what for him connects story to history and makes the storytelling signiicant even from a philosophical point of view. Likewise, the philosopher is that particular animal that reminds all storytellers—including the philosophical storytellers— to “vigilate” and keep their eyes wide open, not to fall in Endymion’s sleep, but also to avoid any direct and unmediated engagement with reality, a violent attitude symbolized by Mezentius’s torture and by Lynceus’s immodest and unvirtuous gaze. Between the extremes of numbness and violation, Poliziano validates the philosophical dream of reason, as a kind of investigation in which the critical powers of the grammaticus are not suspended but enhanced through the use of irony and imagination. And here it may be worth pointing out, in passing, that this philosophical consideration of iction has nothing to do with the political uses of stories and myths that was being advocated at the time by some representatives of Renaissance Aristotelianism as a means of controlling the unruly behaviour of the masses. We tend to think of philologists as priests and vestals of the written word, grim and stern in their efforts to enact the laws of literary decorum. When I think of Poliziano, my mind immediately goes to the “free” ields of knowledge and playfulness. If we look at the process of thinking as a craft designed to train the imagination and memory of human beings so that they become able to express and communicate what otherwise would be left dormant in the domain of conceptual inarticulacy (with not a few risks attached), then the practice of reading takes on a crucial role. There cannot be proper thinking without proper reading. This is one of the many provisos expressed by Poliziano in his Miscellanea of 1489. The diversity of natural and human experience (varietas and disparilitas) is the catalyst (expultrix and irritatrix) that activates reading, understood as both a remedy against the dulling of desire (fastidium) and a booster to hone perceptual discernment. This diversity is also the reason why silvae and farragines, far from setting the mind adrift, are modes of inquiry that keep our mental faculties alert, ready to identify similarities and differences.48 An integral part of the craft of For a few views concerning the philosophical attitude of Horace, see Schrijvers 1993, Rudd 1993, Moles 2002, and Mayer 2005. 48 Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553], I, p. 213: “si varietas ipsa, fastidii expultrix et lectionis irritatrix, in Miscellaneis culpabitur, una opera reprehendi rerum quoque natura poterit, cuius me quidem proiteor tali disparilitate discipulum” (Miscellaneorum centuria prima, “Praefatio”). A similar strategy can be seen in the way in which Bacon characterizes the practices of reading and writing. See Giglioni 2014. 47 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 Poliziano as a Philosopher, or The Craft of Thinking between Fiction and History 237 thinking lies in taking good care of the imagination and in shaping it into a force of moral agency. As indicated by Poliziano in his analysis of exempla, gloria and the campus of history, moral imagination depends on striking the right balance between virtue and spontaneity: “Often an excess in precision is counterproductive. And just as a dress that is appropriate and elegant adds to the authority of its wearer, so one that is garish and over the top stains the good of virtue with meretricious allurement.”49 Moral vision rests on a subtle interplay of desire (cupiditas), action (virtus) and representational energy (imagines). It is therefore moral imagination that warrants the philosophical import of iction. Causes and laws, quiddities and reasons of principle may have the unique privilege of dwelling in the immutable space of an eternal present. The prose of facts and quoddities, however, is subject to the passing of time and therefore requires stories about our imagined past and our imagined future in order for us to make sense of those very causes and laws that we hold so dear. As noted above, Poliziano shares with Aristotle the view that the sense of wonder announces the unexpected and liberating promise that things are not the way we thought they were. Being linked to wonder, stories are the accidents that periodically subvert our perception of an inexorable series of causes and effects in nature. Stories themselves, owing to their pliable and yielding nature, are exposed to the possibility of being interrupted, as intimated by the proverbial wolf, which makes us unable to articulate words when we suddenly discover that it has been staring at us (lupus in fabula).50 And yet philosophers, as both Horace and Poliziano encourage us to think, are always there to ind a way to recover the lost words and resume the interrupted conversation (be that a sermo or a fabula), and they do this by welding the poetry of the law with the prose of the facts. Guido Giglioni Università di Macerata guidomaria.giglioni@unimc.it Poliziano 1970–1971 [1553]: 494: “Nocet enim profecto saepe nimia diligentia. Et ut cultus concessus atque magniicus addit autoritatem, ita accersitus ille atque fucatus bonam ipsam virtutem lenocinio contaminat” (Oratio super Fabio Quintiliano et Statii Sylvis). 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Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 215-241 BeTWeen res and verba: The use of myTh In francesco paTrIzI’s dialoghi della retorica (venIce, 1562) entre res y verBa. el uso del Mito en los dIaloghI della reTorIca (venecia, 1562) de francesco patrizi Anna Laura Puliaito aBsTracT This paper analyses the role played by myths in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica (1562). In the discussion of the tenets of classical rhetoric contained in the work, Patrizi aims to deine both the matter and the form of the discipline through the analysis of the nature of language and the limits of human knowledge. Patrizi uses some stories where iction and history are intertwined to provide a mythical explanation of the causes behind the irst decay of human social, political and intellectual life. Therefore, the present contribution will focus on Patrizi’s approach to reforming language in its rhetorical dimension, and will determine what role is reserved for iction in the Dialogues on Rhetoric. In other words, I will try to respond with Patrizi to the following question: What meaning can iction offer when language is employed as a way of accessing truth? KeyWords: Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Rhetoric, Aristotle, Myth and History resumen Este artículo estudia el papel desempeñado por los mitos en los Diálogos sobre la retórica (1562) de Francesco Patrizi. En la discusión sobre los principios de la retórica clásica contenida en la obra, Patrizi deine tanto el objeto como la forma de la disciplina a través del análisis del lenguaje y de los límites del conocimiento. Para ello, Patrizi se vale de algunas narraciones donde icción e historia aparecen entremezcladas a in de ofrecer una explicación mítica de las causas que condujeron a la primera decadencia de la humanidad en lo social, en lo político y en lo intelectual. Así, estás páginas se ocuparán de la aproximación de Patrizi a la reforma del lenguaje en su dimensión retórica y del papel que le asigna a la icción en los Diálogos de la retórica. Dicho de otra manera, intentaré responder con Patrizi a la siguiente pregunta: ¿Qué signiicado puede ofrecer la icción cuando se hace valer al lenguaje como vía de acceso a la verdad? palaBras clave: Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Retórica, Aristóteles, Mito e historia Recibido: 15/12/2017. Aceptado: 18/12/2017 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 244 Anna Laura Puliaito In recent decades, the igure of the Platonist philosopher Francesco Patrizi da Cherso has been investigated from various points of view.1 His major treatise, Nova de Universis Philosophia (Patrizi 1591),2 is a proposal for a radical reform of knowledge and teaching, and constitutes an interesting turning point in the late 16th century debate against Aristotelianism and its overwhelming presence in the European universities for more than three hundred years. However, his multifarious body of work had begun in the 1550s with a Platonic commentary on Petrarch’s sonnet La gola il sonno et l’ocïose plume, a short hermetic utopia praising the Venetian state, a dialogue on honour and an exposition of the Platonic doctrine of the frenzies (Patrizi 1553).3 His philosophical production during the second half of the century can be summarized in two major concerns of his ambitious project. On the one hand, the restoration of ancient wisdom (antiqua sapientia), dating back to the teaching of Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus as well as that of Moses; and, on the other, the reform of language in its rhetorical, poetical and gnoseological dimensions. The irst would result in a new way of considering the relationship between metaphysical truth and the investigation of the natural world; the second would reintroduce language as a tool of ‘scientiic’ knowledge, capable of linking words (verba) to things (res). The latter is one of the most important themes in his dialogues published in Venice at the beginning of the 60s, continues in his ambitious research on poetics (Patrizi 1969–71), and deeply inluences the conception and forms of the Nova Philosophia itself. The present contribution will closely follow this path of Patrizi’s philosophy, paying special attention to the Della retorica dieci dialoghi, published by Francesco Senese in 1562 (Patrizi 1562). This will allow us to determine the role reserved for iction, both in this work and in Patrizi’s project as a whole, and will offer some insights on the value he conceded to iction as a linguistic tool to access truth. 1. dIaloguIng The Dialoghi della retorica are conceived as a general relection on the nature of rhetoric, based on the analysis of the ancient doctrines dedicated to the topic. On Among the most relevant contributions on Patrizi: Bolzoni, Deitz, Leinkauf, Muccillo, Plastina, Vasoli 1989. 2 Preparatory work had been done in the Discussiones Peripateticae, whose books 1 and 2 had been published in Venice in 1571 (Patrizi 1571), the complete version in 4 books being published Basel 1581 (Patrizi 1581). 3 On Patrizi’s philosophical work see in particular Vasoli 1989 and the bibliography contained there. 1 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 245 the frontispiece, Patrizi’s position is said to be in contrast with the ancient opinions (“con ragioni repugnanti all’openione, che intorno a quella hebbero gli antichi scrittori,” see ig. 1), but the dedication to Nicolò Sfrondati, bishop of Cremona at that time, underlines at the same time the importance of the confrontation with the past in Patrizi’s perspective (“Al molto ill. Sig. Nicolo Sfrondato […] Francesco Patritio queste sue fatiche sopra la retorica degli antichi, principio della sua retorica, da, dona, et dedica,” see ig. 2).4 As a critic of ancient theories of rhetoric, Patrizi could have chosen other genres of writing rather than dialogue. His work could have assumed the form of a commentary if he had chosen to focus on other authors’ interpretation; or, had he wished to focus on the innovative character of his own doctrine, he could have produced a systematic treatise methodically expounding his new perspective. However, Patrizi’s preference for dialogue—which he only wrote in the vernacular— as a tool for philosophical inquiry during the 1560s and 1570s is not a chance one, as he had already published his ten Dialoghi della historia two years before (Patrizi 1560), and he would make use of the genre yet once more in his Amorosa ilosoia, written in 1577 and only printed posthumously, in the 20th century (Patrizi 1963). Moreover, his choice of dialogues to appraise the problems related to rhetoric is not merely a matter of taste, as it entails important implications, as we shall see. Modern scholars of the Renaissance, as well as Patrizi’s contemporaries, have discussed the nature of dialogue, considering it the result of a mixture of poetry, rhetoric and dialectic (Sigonio), prose and poetry, particularly comedy (Speroni), and poetry and dialectic (Tasso). In the last two cases, dialogue is considered an intermediate step between dialectics—seeking for the truth, i.e., philosophy—and rhetoric—aimed at persuasion.5 As a matter of fact, it could be generally asserted that Patrizi’s dialogues aim at deining both the premises and the nature of the subject under consideration. In the case of history and rhetoric, for instance, this implies a critical discussion of the current doctrines on the topic, and, as a result, both sets of dialogues are moulded after a Socratic quest for true deinitions. At an initial level, ictionality is thus introduced as the mimetic representation of a conversation that could have taken place between real interlocutors, building up a verisimilar context for the ‘true’ dialectical quest about the subject. See Muccillo, pp. 53ff; Vasoli 1989, pp. 149ff; and Vasoli 2011, pp. 245–46. Zorzi Pugliese, p. 15ff. See also Girardi, p. 40ff.; Snyder, pp. 53–4, 72–5, 80, and 101–2; and Forno, pp. 38–58ff.; among many others. On the uses of dialogue in Renaissance philosophy, see the collective volume Il dialogo ilosoico edited by Bigalli and Canziani. 4 5 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 246 Anna Laura Puliaito Fig. 1 Fig. 2 The framework of the Dialoghi della retorica in particular, is lacking any contextualizing element of space or time, and the action begins in medias res with the irst dialogue (Il Lamberto) devoted to the nature of speaking in general.6 The strongest element of verisimilitude are the eponymous characters intervening in the dialogues, in which Patrizi himself always acts as an interlocutor, surrounded by other participants. Indirectly, touching the problem of imitation in the igurative arts, he even offers per viam negationis a sort of self-portrait, which gives physicality to his literary projection in the dialogue.7 Some of the other igures are eminent scholars. Towards them Patrizi plays the role of the astonished, inexperienced philosopher in search of the truth, forced to consider all possible options by a sort of ‘spirit’ and by the consciousness of his own ignorance, in order to verify the appropriateness of the traditional teaching of rhetoric and deine the true essence of it. “Pa[tritio]. You have pronounced a nice and truthful praise of Eloquence, Sir Giulio [Strozzi]!” Patrizi 1562, fol. 1r. My translation, as well as in all following cases, if not stated otherwise. 7 Patrizi 1562, fol. 55v. 6 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 247 In fact, his character acquires a sort of psychological proiling: intemperate as a young man, harassing his friends with unusual questions, Patrizi wants to stand out for the novelty and the radicality of his research. These trends will persist over the years, shaping Patrizi’s method in the major works of his maturity, and in the Discussiones Peripateticae (Patrizi 1581) in particular, four tomes of ‘pedantic’ analysis of the Aristotelian corpus. All participants are listed under the title on the irst page of each corresponding dialogue and some of them are of particular interest. Every dialogue is named after one of the interlocutors, all real igures chosen from the Venetian and Italian cultural context for their particular authority in the speciic ield that is being appraised. Felice Figliucci, the irst translator of Aristotle’s Rhetoric into the vernacular,8 is for example the main igure in the second dialogue, devoted to considering the ields to which rhetoric is applicable;9 Francesco Sansovino—author, orator and publisher in Venice— leads the discussion on rhetorical ornamentation in the ifth dialogue;10 and Alessandro Baranzone (Catelli)—a philosopher and physician, author of poems, whom Patrizi met in Modena at the ‘court’ of Tarquinia Molza—is introduced in the sixth dialogue;11 Altinieri Avogaro, the son of Girolamo, professor of moral philosophy at Padua (Quattrucci), is presented by Patrizi as a renewed philosopher himself in the last of the dialogues.12 2. The sTaTe of The arT When facing the tradition of rhetoric as art, Patrizi is confronted in the irst instance with the doctrines of Aristotle and Cicero. His strategy was to extrapolate some of their assertions and juxtapose them in order to point out the contradictions contained in their doctrines and immediately to develop their implications as far as possible, in particular the places which could be interpreted as supporting Patrizi’s own views. Hence, there are four major points Patrizi is interested in when deining the nature of rhetoric: (1.) Which ields are speciic to rhetoric? (2.) Is there a peculiar aspect which characterizes the modes of the orator? (3.) Is human rhetoric a natural gift or an art? (4.) Is it teachable? Tradottione antica de la rettorica d’Aristotile nuovamente trovata, In Padova, con gratia et privilegio del sommo Ponteice, et dell’illustriss[imo] Senato venetiano per anni dieci, [1548]. 9 Il Figliucci, overo delle materie oratorie, dialogo secondo, Patrizi 1562, fols. 8v–22r. 10 Il Sansovino, ovvero de gli ornamenti retorici. Dialogo quinto, ibid. fols. 28r–32v. 11 Il Baranzone, overo de le parti oratorie. Dialogo sesto, ibid. fols. 33r–37v. 12 L’Avogaro, overo dell’ampiezza della retorica. Dialogo decimo, ibid. fols. 57r–61v. 8 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 248 Anna Laura Puliaito 2.1. Matter As for the irst problem, Patrizi faces the tradition that restricts classical rhetoric to three branches: deliberative oratory, judicial oratory, and epideictic oratory. Taking to its ultimate consequences Aristotle’s statement that rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic and that both are not conined to any speciic science,13 Patrizi maintains that there is no speciic matter rhetoric must be referred to. Rhetoric as such can be applied to any possible subject, and the quest for the perfect oration is in fact the quest for the perfect form of speech within the art of language. Underlining this aspect, Patrizi claims that his own view differs from the position of the “divine” Giulio Camillo Delminio, the author of the L’Idea del Theatro (1550). Camillo’s project aimed to reproduce the hierarchies of the world and thus organize the entirety of human knowledge in terms of an exhaustive repertoire of rhetorical loci meant for the perfect orator. His error, in Patrizi’s mind, is not to have gone further, as he himself does, in order to expand the realm of rhetoric beyond the limits of the three classical branches.14 2.2. Form In the same way as it is impossible to identify the matter of rhetoric, likewise it is impossible to identify its proper form. Classical rhetoric operates appealing to arguments, passions, or ornaments, but all these ways are either borrowed from civic or dialectical applications of speech, or else are unnecessary.15 Classical oratory is thus no more than a restricted application of rhetoric, with a strong accent on its civic use. One of the most interesting contributions offered by the Dialoghi della retorica consists in the effort of giving a socio-political explanation of the history of these genres, later assumed as oratory tout court. Its birth and fortune, as Patrizi claims, is tightly bound to the rise of the “popular regimes.”16 The forms of classical rhetoric could not have found appropriate space under any tyrannical regime, because despots are not interested in any other opinion than their own; and would not have found any application where written laws permitted—and still permit—the distinction between what is allowed and what is not, what is right and what is wrong; and only experts in law and government (“i dottori,” as Patrizi 13 14 15 16 Rhet. I.1,1354a1. Patrizi 1562, fol. 17. Patrizi 1562, fol. 15v. Ibid. fol. 34r ff. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 249 calls them) are appointed to decide in civic matters.17 As maintained by Aristotle himself,18 oratory was born in Sicily, under “popular regimes” after the fall of the tyrants, when ignorant citizens began to juxtapose themselves to each other, building their positions not on the irm terrain of knowledge and science, but on opinions. Oratory was thus reduced to a confrontation of opposites, and the force of language was based on irrational elements and “suggestions” obtained through a “skilful disposition” of words and igures.19 2.3. Nature and Art Although speech is originally natural to man, it must be learned. Rhetoric, exactly as any other art, requires study and practice in order for a person to have full command of it. Potentially granted to mankind, which is endowed with a rational soul where concepts can be produced, and with the requisite physical disposition (mouth, tongue, teeth) it for producing the articulated sounds which characterize human speech, language must be learned through the years, in order to proceed from the obscure stammering of babies to the elegant disquisitions of poets, philosophers, and orators.20 2.4. Teaching The real problem is to ind a proper method of teaching the true art of discourse, organising the precepts according to the scheme of the “celestial Rhetoric,” the rhetoric of the things (res) which represents the way of the divine “narrative speech,”21 God’s logos that created all the things of the world.22 This notion of “celestial rhetoric” is barely developed in the Dialoghi, although it can be expanded by looking at the systematic conception of Patrizi’s later treatises, and the quite simple style of his mature writing. Much more space is given in the Dialoghi to illustrating the causes of the decline of rhetoric as the Ibid. fol. 41v. Cicero, Brutus 46–48. This short legend on the origins of rhetoric soon became a commonplace not only in classical tradition—Cicero, De orat. II. 53; Quintilian, Inst. Or. III. 1. 8; Athanasius of Alexandria, Contra gentes 18; etc.—, but also in Renaissance letters, for instance, from Leonardo Bruni’s Prohemium in Orationes Homeri (Bruni, 64) to Sperone Speroni’s (1978b, p. 657) Dialogo della retorica. 19 Vasoli 1989, pp. 102–3. 20 Patrizi 1562, fol. 53r. 21 Ibid. fol. 29r. 22 See Plastina, p. 26. 17 18 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 250 Anna Laura Puliaito practice of language, insisting on the weakness of the latter in expressing the essence of things. 3. hIsTory and myTh One of the most interesting aspects of the Dialoghi is Patrizi’s historical and socio-political approach to the rise of the classical use of rhetoric. Patrizi stresses the gap between a discourse based on scientiic reasons and corresponding to what is true and right, and a dispute which is led by passions and opinions and made confused and ambiguous by ornaments and tropes. In his view, the weakness of the language corresponds in fact to the weakness of knowledge itself, which is only certain when touching on mathematical questions, considered in their purely theoretical aspect.23 When looking for the most intimate causes of the objects that he is examining, Patrizi’s historical presentation encounters the fascination of mythical storytelling, and, at a second level, ictional creativity emerges as the best way to describe and explain the true nature of things. Hence, the Dialoghi present four major myths, all striving to explain the importance of language as an instrument of knowledge and, paradoxically, its role in the decay of human knowledge in general. It is worth noting that ‘myth’ refers in this context to a ictional story that refashions mythical materials, some of its main characters being Graeco-Roman gods. The stories serve to explain the causes and origins of all that pertains to human intellectual experience. The irst and maybe the most well-known myth in the Dialoghi concerns the history of the fall of the world. The story, introduced in the irst dialogue, is narrated by Giulio Strozzi, who claims that it was originally told by an Ethiopian to Baldassarre Castiglione, the famous Italian scholar and the brother of Strozzi’s grandmother. The plausibility of the story is supported by the authority of the intermediary and the antiquity of the original source: Castiglione is said to have heard it while he was in Spain at the service of the Holy See, adding that the Ethiopian claimed that it derived from the most ancient annals of his country (scritta ne gli antichissimi loro annali), i.e., the most direct record of any historiographical report. Although presented within the dialogue as storytelling, the myth assumes in this way the weight of a likely, non-ictitious description of facts which took Patrizi 1562, fol. 51v. The argument is used, adapting the authority of Aristotle (Rhet. 1417a16), by Sigonio (pp. 252–3) and Tasso (p. 48). See also the comments by Bolzoni, pp. 120ff. 23 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 251 place in the remotest past. This effect is reinforced as the legend was told to the “Count” (Castiglione himself) by the Ethiopian, and now is related by Strozzi to his interlocutors.24 Another important aspect to bear in mind is that, at the beginning of his speech, Strozzi warns his audience that there will be people who will consider the whole as a tale; only “well advised” people (le persone di consiglio), will be “held in marvelment” and will be able to catch its real sense (la porteranno in molta maraviglia).25 Patrizi is thus claiming that Strozzi will make use of a language capable of causing enchantment, as the most noble language of antiquity did, but he is also underlining the fact that the message would only be understood by those who belong to the tight circle of people who possess a certain grade of knowledge and are disposed to listen and learn. The myth, in fact, explains and veils at the same time, following the hermeneutics of the whole PlatonicHermetic tradition.26 The Ethiopian legend occurs in a remote time—“after the last renovation” of the world marked by long cosmic cycles—when there was no distance between Earth and Heaven: the Earth was so large that it occupied all the space under the ether of “purest ire.” The natural place of the elements was not hierarchically organized; rather, air, water and ire were “spread all around” (erano sparsi quà, et là) and occupied the vast caves that spread over the surface of the Earth as well as underneath it. Fire illuminated and warmed the deepest spaces, too remote to receive the light and warmth of Heaven. The Earth was a sort of “sponge” and its cosmic as well as orographic connotations showed its proximity to Heaven. Men lived there in the same way as “worms” do nowadays. Although comparable to small, weak animals, mankind could nevertheless proit from the surrounding world, and could live in peace “without war, nor sedition, nor hate” in perfect communion among humans and beasts, “in dialogue and brotherhood.”27 There were no cities, because there was no enemy from which to be protected; men and beasts lived together and the ields spontaneously offered them what they needed. This familiar conversation with beasts, plants and spirits made all men understand, “but in particular those who dwelled nearest to the Heaven,”28 that 24 “Now listen carefully, Count, said the Ethiopian […]” (Ora ascolta, o Conte disse l’Ethiopo intentamente […]), Patrizi 1562, fol. 6r. 25 I use here the term chosen by Deitz, p. 149. 26 See Puliaito 2011b, pp. 380-81. 27 Patrizi 1562, fol. 5v. 28 Among them the Ethiopians, the Egyptians, the Persians and the Thracians, who occupy an important place in the transmission of the antiqua sapientia (Patrizi 1562, fol. 6r). Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 252 Anna Laura Puliaito there is nothing bad in the world. The senses of these ancient predecessors were of the purest kind. Thanks to the inluence of the stars, they had knowledge of everything belonging to Earth and Heaven, and were aware of the “virtues” (virtù) and the “power” (potenze) of things, so they were able to work wonders.29 But the awareness of their knowledge and power made some of them feel too proud, and the Abyssians, in particular, “deviating from the path of reason” were overcome by pride, considering themselves to be gods, and thus began competing with Saturn. At irst, the old and wise god showed no concern, but afterward he decided to stop illuminating their minds as he had done for so long.30 “Pride,” “ignorance,” and “arrogance” grew so great that men tried to climb to the sky and conquer Saturn’s realm. Well aware of all this, Saturn decided to leave the governance to his son Jupiter. This latter, “born to action” as he was, struck the Earth with his lightning, while his brother Pluto shook it from the roots. This caused the Earth to collapse and shrink: it fell away from Heaven, and the elements took their ‘natural’ place according to their density.31 The tragic passage from the realm of Chronos to that of Zeus, mentioned in Plato’s Politicus (268e–274e), substantiated here with biblical echoes, takes the form of the physical transformation of the Earth, which also becomes the representation of the ruin of the human race and the collapse of its knowledge. The story tells about the formation of mountains, the birth of rivers and seas, the appearing of islands and the disappearing of the golden and silver trees, whose seeds are now kept in the womb of the Earth, together with the rest of the gems that once covered it. They remind us now of that remote past, and hence our present valuation and admiration for them.32 The ruin of the Earth entails the ruin of man. The story tells us that most men perished, among them the Abyssians. They were killed not only by Jupiter’s thunderbolt and by the earthquakes caused by his brother, but also by the Ibid. fol. 6r. “Ma andando inanzi, la color soperbia, et l’orgoglio, adiratosi egli ieramente, privògli de gli inlussi della sua mente, co quali, egli li tenia satolli, di purissimo intelletto. Da questa privatione, crebbe in loro l’ignoranza et da lei l’orgoglio, et l’insolenza,” ibid. fol. 6r. 31 Ibid. fol. 6v. 32 “Et sono elle, per la memoria di quella prima età, hoggidi havute in tanto pregio; et come antichissime cose, ammirate, et riverite,” ibid. fol. 6v. It is interesting that there is a mention of the existence of fossils, explained as animals and human beings imprisoned in the most supericial parts of the Earth after the fall, and transformed by weight and coolness into “marble,” “porphyry,” “alabaster,” and “serpentine” (ibid. fol. 6v). 29 30 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 253 subsequent terror of those events.33 Fear entered thus into human life, determining the future of mankind. After having made use of mythical materials for telling a story which also provides, as it happens, a verisimilar explanation of the actual physical aspect of the Earth, Patrizi resorts to it again in order to explain the most profound roots of the human attitude towards nature and knowledge. The story continues, as a matter of fact, telling us about the impact on private, political and social life of the terror generated by the horrendous catastrophe. After days of unconsciousness the survivors return to their lives, but soon realize they are now subjected to illness, and more quickly confronted with death; they begin to wander over the world, and gather together according to their different species. Herds and villages thus share the same origins, and the separation of different human groups is shown to have the same roots as that which separates men and beasts. For man in particular, the joy of living with his fellow man, remembering a peaceful past is counterbalanced by an increasing hate against the ‘others.’34 Even reproduction is interpreted as a tool of defense, as a way to reinforce the support against the others.35 And the same feelings are transmitted to all the following generations. In his truly dark description of the origins of civilisation, Patrizi recognizes fear, hate, and the desire for revenge as very primordial affections informing human relations to the ‘others,’ whether men or beasts.36 Moreover, as an effect of their long unconsciousness, men lose their knowledge of the things: what remains is a shadowy sight “through a thick veil,” just “shaded with the colour of truth.”37 The few who still preserve the knowledge of something are frightened of making use of it, recalling the causes of the fall, and worried about the possible reaction of the others to this use. “Et di quelli, che habitarono nelle parti di fuori, per lo horrendo scotimento di sotto, et pel terribile fragor di sopra, et per lo crolar, che fecero all’ingiu, per gran numero di miglia, ininite migliaia, ne morirono di spavento,” ibid. fol. 6v. 34 “Ma dopo la gran disaventura, secondo, ch’essi s’incontravano per lo mondo, così s’abbracciavano, et si metteano insieme, sì per dolcezza della memoria della passata loro felicità, et sì per lo timore preso, parendo loro, che più sicuri stessero, tra’l proprio lignaggio, che se si fossero, con altra spetie mescolati. Nelle quali tutte era parimente lo spavento entrato. Et tali facea congregare insieme. Et questi furono gli animali di greggie. Et tali spinse in disperatione: et perciò arrabbiarono, in offesa de stranieri,” ibid. fol. 7r. 35 “Et allhora nacque, in tutti, desiderio di prole; procurandosi ogniuno, aiuto di se medesimo, et delle proprie membra,” ibid. 36 “Il quale, è la vera radice, di tutti i mali, et di tutti gli infortuni a tutti gli animali. Ma più, ch’in altri, rimase ne gli huomini lo spavento doppio, et da gli animali, et da se stessi,” ibid. 37 “Et se pure par loro, di vedere alcuna cosa, la veggono essi per oltre a un denso velo. Et di vere, che i primi padri, le conosceano, le conoscono essi, adombrate di color di vero,” ibid. 33 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 254 Anna Laura Puliaito At this point, the story itself provides the justiication of its own literary form: frightened by the consequences of the arrogant pride of the irst men, the few who still retained knowledge decided to keep and teach the little portions of science remaining through “enigmas, tales, numbers, kept from the sight of the multitude.” On the other side, the “princes” and those “who wanted to exercise their power in the world” decided to follow “the opinions of the vulgar folk, knowing how far they are from the truth, and [for the very same reason] from any danger.”38 The birth of the modern state followed on: men circumscribed with hedges and copses the space where they lived in groups “like steer herds;” they chose the eldest among them to rule the community and their will became law for them; the division among families grew, all properties (le robbe), communal before, were divided and “love disappeared” (si partì l’amore). In their desire to increase their wealth, the “sordidness” of men grew and money was invented with the hope that it would help in “prolonging” life. “Machination” and “deceit” caused disorder in the world, and “wit” produced “new arts” to defeat the others. As the most clever became more audacious, the others became more frightened. The latter decided at the end to gather their forces and to “invent the names of peace and justice,”39 erecting temples in their honour and adoring them as gods. The power of the new empty words, “assembled in long chains,” was used to bind peace and justice, and “the frightened” called the chains “laws” and put them in the hands of judges and magistrates, whose task was “to detain those Goddesses made of wind.”40 The town where civic questioning gave birth to rhetoric is in Patrizi’s eyes the town of disputing factions: the “frightened” disputing among themselves and against the “audacious,” and the “most audacious” disputing against everyone, in the immutable circle that rules governments. “So lived the societies— Patrizi claims—in those times, and continue to live today, and will live in the future, “Et quindi è parimente che i Principi, et gli altri, ch’hanno voluto poter molto al mondo; hanno seguito le credenze de gli huomini volgari, sappiendo, elle essere lontanissime dal vero, et dal periglio,” Patrizi 1562, fol. 7r. 39 “Inventarono il nome della pace, et della giustitia,” ibid. fol. 7v. 40 “Tesserono appresso, molte, et lunghe catene di parole, con le quali, legando la giustitia, et la pace, per gli piedi, per le braccia, et pel traverso, et per lo collo, in mille guise annodandole andarono, accioché elle, delle loro città non dipartissero, raccomandando i capi delle catene, che essi addimandarono leggi, in mano ad huomini del loro animo, et paurosi. I quali nominarono giudici, et magistrati. Si perché essi sentissero, se quelle Dee, si come di vento fatte, et leggiere, volessero fuggirsi, et le ritenessero,” ibid. fol. 7v. 38 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 255 in continuous transmission, passing from hand to hand.”41 The celebrated birth of deliberative rhetoric was nothing more than the attempt of “the frightened” to defend their interests against “the audacious;” as for judicial rhetoric, it was the attempt to defend themselves before a judge.42 The story ends with this disillusioned relection on human society, where speech aims to defeat and chain up adversaries and “Goddesses made of wind” concealing the truth. Concluding his speech, Strozzi stresses that this story causes “stupor” in any man of intellect.43 The fascination aroused is not the joyful enchantment caused by “marvelment” (maraviglia), but a conscious sense of fear.44 It is worth noting that Patrizi did not return to a systematic treatment of the concept of maraviglia until 25 years later, in his Deca Ammirabile, a section of his Poetica, written in 1587 but published in the 20th century (Patrizi 1969–71). Nevertheless, in the Dialoghi we can already read that there are four “modalities” (maniere) of speaking: one directed to reason, one directed to pleasure, one directed to passions, and one intended to evince maraviglia. The latter thus does not respond to reason nor to the senses. Its middle position between the two would be discussed thoroughly in the just-mentioned Deca Ammirabile.45 Speciically, Patrizi would come back to the ‘history’ of language two more times. In the irst case, its decay is explained as a consequence of the development of eloquence. Presenting his position as the testimony of an ancient magus— and connecting here once more fable and history, iction and experience—Patrizi claims that the formal cause of the decay of language was eloquence itself. In the Nova de Universis Philosophia, Patrizi will maintain that language is, at one and the same time, the strength of human beings and their weakness.46 It is their strength because no other animal has such a powerful tool at its disposal: among all natural “Et così andarono, ino a que’ tempi, le compagnie de gli huomini, et vanno di presente, et anderanno per l’avvenire, valicando sempre, et mutandosi, et passando d’una in altra mano,” ibid. fol. 8r. 42 “Et allhora, che i paurosi si ristrinsero insieme, per ritrovar riparo contra i più potenti, nacque il favellatore di consiglio. Et quando li chiamarono in giudicio, nacque il favellatore di giudicio,” ibid. fol. 8r. 43 “Questa vi è adunque o Patritio pien di stupore, la grande historia, che al Conte mio raccontò il savio Abissino, degna di altissimo stupore, d’ogni alta mente,” ibid. 44 On the different use in Patrizi of maraviglia and stupor, see Puliaito 2017. 45 On the nature of the “maraviglia” as the effect of real poetry, based in Patrizi’s view not on mimesis—as maintained by the Aristotelians—but on the “wonderful” (mirabile), see Leinkauf and Deitz. 46 Patrizi 1591, fol. 58v. 41 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 256 Anna Laura Puliaito forms of communication—from the implicit language of Nature through the gestures and the unarticulated sounds of animals—human language is capable of a depth, a complexity, and an elegance that no other (natural) language will ever approach; but on the other side, man is condemned to study language and thoroughly exercise it before mastering this powerful tool, while any other animal is able to make full use of its faculty from birth to death.47 In the ifth of the dialogues the magus warns his pupil that it is the learned use of language, whose elegant traps had their origin in societies after the fall caused by the arrogance of some, that has deprived words of their marvelous power.48 The roughness of the original language (haveano il più dello aspro et dello strepitoso) has been polished and reined, but smoothness and elegance (l’eleganza, et la dolcezza del favellare) have caused distinctions between the uses of the different groups; the original, common tongue has split into a thousand different tongues, to the point that not one of the original words can be now traced and recognized.49 The interest in “smoothness of pronounciation”—which Patrizi possibly considers the only real peculiarity of the ars oratoria—, cultivated in tribunals and courts, has produced the same effect as did the Tower of Babel, and knowledge has disappeared, together with the power of speech. Sansovino, Patrizi’s interlocutor in this dialogue, is not convinced by the story of the magus, and explicitly requires the “reasons” behind Patrizi’s tenets: “These are not more than ‘novelle’ […] invented by your magus in order to cheat you; what you really need is to ind the reasons which can force us to believe what you believe.”50 In the second reference to the ‘history’ of language, Patrizi once more depicts its origin and advancement following the uses of speech. The narrator is still the igure of the young Patrizi, who reports an old story, “which for its antiquity will be seen as a fable composed by poets, but which I [Patrizi] consider to be a true story.”51 It is the story of “the Wind, son of the Air” (il Vento igliuol dell’Aria) who Puliaito 2011a, pp. 133ff. On animals’ communication see also Prins, pp. 342ff. “Che beato il mondo, s’egli non vi si fossero introdotti, tanti ornamenti de parlari, […] i quali ci hanno oscurato la scienza delle cose,” Patrizi 1562, fol. 31v. 49 “Intanto, che noi ci siamo hoggimai, della naturale lingua dimenticati affatto, et non riconosciamo più, sol’una delle primiere voci,” ibid. fol. 31r. 50 “San[sovino]: Coteste sono novelle, o Patrizio, che il vostro mago si diede a ingere per gabbo: ma e’ bisogna, che voi troviate ragioni, le quali ci possano tirare quasi a forza nella vostra credenza,” ibid. fol. 31v. 51 “Et io adunque vi dirò cosa, che per la sua antichità, vi parrà favola da poeti. ma io l’ho per cosa vera,” ibid. fol. 43r. 47 48 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 257 “fell in love with human words and carnally joined them on the bed of human language” (innamoratosi ieramente delle parole humane, hebbe prattica con loro, in sul letto del’humana lingua). They gave birth to Fame, “who had wings like her mothers” (nacque di tal padre, et madri invisibili, una invisibile igliuola, chiamata Fama. La quale, si come di madri alate nata, hebbe l’ali). During the irst youth of the world, the girl did not receive much attention, but then, having reported to Jupiter a conspiracy organized by the “strongest sons of Earth”—the Giants indeed helped by Juno, offended by her husband’s continuous betrayals—Fame obtained from the god the gift of “dispensing immortality to writings,” of “lying to the sky,” of “mixing” the true and false that she was able to collect, “like a bee,” from human mouths.52 She was moreover appointed to represent the God of Gods by all the Princes of the Earth, and to serve them according to their interests. As a loving child attending to a request, she took care of her grandfathers and uncles, the orators, and offered them the celebrity and immortality orators would have never deserved.53 The ‘historical’ explanation of the origins of rhetoric continues with a particular reference to the inception of sophistry. In this case Patrizi puts on stage Prodicus of Ceos, revisiting his oration concerning the choice of Hercules between virtue and vice.54 This time the young Patrizi claims to report what he has seen “in a sort of dream” (in guisa di sogno), but can nevertheless be testiied in the “old histories” (nelle storie antiche). In his ‘report,’ Patrizi personiies Prodicus’s oration, presenting it as the “legitimate daughter” of “one of those ancient fathers of Rhetoric” and his Art.55 In the story, the “virtue” as well as the “sensual pleasure” offered by Prodicus’s oration take the form of two beautiful girls, contending with words for the love of the young Hercules—who, as is known, will prefer the hard way proposed by virtue to the easy way of pleasure and vice. Prodicus began travelling from one city to another with his beautiful daughter, showing the girl “Et alla fama rivelatrice del fatto, diede per dono, che tutte le cose, che ella segnasse col suo sigillo in lettere, fossero immortali […]. Che volasse per le bocche degli huomini, in guisa d’ape. Et cogliesse il ior del falso, et del vero parimente; et mesco-latigli in suo modo insieme […],” ibid. fol. 43v. 53 “Et perché ella igliuola fu delle parole, delle quali per poco, sono gli oratori padri, o fratelli; ella si come amorevole nipote, gli ha consecrati alla immortalità; improntando il suo sigillo, a molti loro libri. Et quindi è, che essi sono di cotanto grido, al mondo, et non d’altronde,” ibid. 54 See, among others, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, II.1, 21–34. 55 “Prodico Chio, uno di que’ gran padri antichi, della Retorica, ingravidando legittimamente la igliuola, ne fece nascere, una oratione,” ibid. fol. 16v. 52 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 258 Anna Laura Puliaito “naked” everywhere, which gained him huge proits, particularly in Thebes, for the presence in the city of Hercules himself, and in Sparta, where “victory was still in the hands of virtue, whom the citizens of the town loved more than any other women, following her laws that Lycurgus had entrusted to them.”56 Hearing about his success and his proits, Gorgias the sophist became envious of Prodicus, and so entered the theatre in Athens, inviting everybody to ask him about anything they wished. Gorgias became rich and famous, in his turn, and the example of the two was followed by many others all over the world. Oratory was thus exercised in three forms: “extemporaneous, prepared, or written” (all’improviso, o pensatamente, o in iscrittura). And because of their particular success in this special ield, orations became in the end mostly restricted to the three classical branches. Patrizi presents the story as a sort of dream which suddenly came to his mind, but which is reported by the ancient histories, and the psychological balance in his description of the spread of oratory is underlined by the use of small phrases of direct speech, in particular from Gorgias to his audience as well as to himself.57 The historical development of oratory is in sharp contrast to its universality of extent—the thing Patrizi is pleading for.58 The narration of the rise and fall of language ends with a consideration of the state of human knowledge, so deeply dependent on the use of language and words. In this instance, too the story is told in dialogue by the author, who admits to giving “the form of a tale” to what was “maybe true.”59 We are then taken back to the beginning of the reign of Jupiter, when the god wanted to be adored by all creatures. He elicited the respect of all other gods, but desired to be worshipped also by the creatures of the Earth. However, he decided not to leave Olympus, and sent to the Earth his best sculptor, Prometheus, asking him to give form to a simulacrum of himself, following his own proportions. Prometheus did what he was asked, and made it alive, but “fell in love” with his own creation and desired “A Sparta, perché la vittoria era restata in mano alla virtù, la quale gli Spartani allhora amavano sopra ogni altra donna. et si essercitavano, nelle leggi di lei, commesse loro da Licurgo,” ibid. 57 See in particular Patrizi 1562, fol. 16v (“[…] disse tra sé, che sarà adunque d’huomo, che di tutte le cose parli? ardì, in presenza del pieno Teatro d’Atene, di gridare con franca voce. Proponete”). 58 In this sense Patrizi recalls more than once the positions of Giulio Camillo, who nevertheless could not suficiently distance himself from the traditional views on oratory and so tried no more than to “squeeze into a little cup the waters of the whole Ocean” (“l’acque di tutto l’Oceano, stringere in una picciol coppa,” ibid. fol. 17v). 59 “Io’ l vi dirò in maniera di favola, ma e’ fu peraventura vero,” ibid. fol. 51v. 56 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 259 “supercelestial perfection” (sopraceleste perfettione) for it. So he went back to Heaven and “stole a spark of the ire that the divinity enshrines in himself ” and secretly came back to the Earth to “hang it on the simulacrum.”60 Proud of himself, Prometheus then returned to Heaven. Jupiter saw the light sparkling on the Earth, but realized that he would not be able to remove it without destroying the image itself. Therefore, he asked Vulcan to use a portion of his “thickest smog” (densissima caligine) to cover that light. That is why the “intimate and intrinsic” science of things has been lost, and any “extrinsic knowledge is in any case uncertain” (fu tolto all’huomo in tutto di sapere l’intrinseco delle cose: et l’estrinseco gli rimase incerto). In its pure nature only mathematics maintains the original certainty.61 About Prometheus’s destiny and his damnation nothing is said. 4. conclusIon Considering the fables in the Dialogues on Rhetoric, a couple of conclusions can be drawn. Having created the Dialoghi, on its surface level, as a literary and ictional construction, which can also give place to argumentative writing, Patrizi resorts to ictional storytelling, presenting a short series of “fables” based on material of Graeco-Roman mythology, in terms of igures and situations. The sequence of the reigns of Saturn and Jupiter, the ight against the Giants, the birth of Fame, as well as Prometheus’ feats are the raw materials on which Patrizi builds his stories. These can be seen as a system: on the one side, the irst broad representation of the most ancient world, and the fall of the Earth and of mankind caused by the arrogance of some, has its consequences made explicit by the last story concerning Jupiter’s revenge against his own images in the world. On the other side, the damnation of mankind to (partial) ignorance is articulated in its various components, from the loss of the denotative power of words to the description of the historical manipulation of the art of discourse. In fact, Patrizi’s quest for the essence of rhetoric is rooted in a contrastive description of its socio-historical use. The proile of the “celestial Rhetoric” and its precepts takes its form from the polemic against the actual use of deliberative and judicial oratory in particular.62 “Risalito in cielo, hebbe furato una scintilla del fuoco, della divinità, il quale ella in sé medesima, et non in altro vaso serba […] Et di nascosto, tornato in terra, l’apprese nella vita del simolacro,” ibid. fol. 51v. 61 Ibid. fol. 51v. 62 On the political implications of Patrizi’s position, see Vasoli 1989, p. 91ff. 60 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 260 Anna Laura Puliaito When not strictly argumentative, the language adopted in the Dialoghi makes an extensive use of examples and ‘visual’ expressions—, in this sense consolidating the writing with a continual recourse to experience. Moreover, experience is the ground upon which Patrizi’s intellectual polemic is built. But the ultimate discovery of the causes can hardly be said to take the form of a purely rational argumentation; rather, Patrizi appeals to the suggestions of a ictional original world, the story of which can awake maraviglia (“marvelment”) and stupor as the two forms of enchantment, positive and negative. The authority of the stories resides in their remote antiquity, the same ancient world that the stories themselves postulate as the golden age of science and knowledge. In order to guarantee their truthfulness, the stories are always introduced by creating at least two more levels of narration, which tend to exclude any element of subjectivity: they are told by the old Ethiopian whome Castiglione meets, and are taken by from the most ancient Annals; or narrated to Patrizi in the dialogue by a magus; or represented to him in a dream or a vision, but recorded in the “oldest stories.” In any case, ictionality tends in the Dialoghi to be strictly linked to history, interpreted as an indirect experience of the past. The narration is not merely a novella, as Patrizi’s interlocutors more than once suspect.63 Somehow, in this work, the plausibility of the tales resides partly in the truthfulness of the report and the authority of the reporters, and partly in the intellectual superiority of the audience, which permits the appropriate transmission of the meaning: what the common folk take as simple entertainment can be rightly interpreted in its entirety by those who are pure and wise enough as to understand the real meaning underlying the covering of the tale. After the fall, the few who preserved a spark of knowledge had to hide it from the rest of the people, because they were aware of the dangers of the illuse of knowledge itself. The ancient poets were in fact the irst to transmit their science to others, choosing a way of veiling and revealing at the same time. It was a wise form of giving expression to mostly invisible and inconceivable thoughts, not a manipulation intended to cheat the audience; on the contrary, it was in fact the only way to safeguard the precious content of their knowing. See esp. the third dialogue (Il primo Tolomei, overo delle stesse materie oratorie, Patrizi 1562, fols.16r–21v: “An[tonio Tolomei]: Voi havete, o Patritio, dette queste cose, quasi in astratto; et havete dato vista, di voler andare, a nascondervi nelle nuvole delle novelle [...]. Pa[tritio]: Et voi fate certo, che io l’habbia detto ad uso dei Profeti, nol sapendo,” ibid. fol. 17v. 63 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Between Res and Verba: The Use of Myth in Francesco Patrizi’s Dialoghi della retorica... 261 Weaving argumentation and iction, but presenting them on the level of an imitative representation of what is verisimilar and plausible, the whole construction of the Dialoghi testiies, both in form and content, to the actual state of human knowledge. Deprived of the power of the original language which united words and things, offering the possibility of transmitting, and giving sensible form to the most intimate secrets of nature and the soul, man cannot directly access the essences. But, as Patrizi claims when he concludes the fable of Prometheus in the ninth dialogue, “if we are aware that we cannot see with a deer’s or an eagle’s eye,” nevertheless we cannot pause to take care of our eyes, “even if they are bleary or damaged.” Nor because we are not given the “power of a lion” can we “surrender to illness.”64 As if to say that, beyond the enchanted “believing” elicited by the stories in the Dialogues, man’s task will be to discover and follow the path of ‘right’ rational argumentation, the path of a new, “celestial” rhetoric. Anna Laura Puliaito University of Warwick a.puliaito@warwick.ac.uk BIBlIography BolzonI, l. (1980), L’universo dei poemi possibili. Studi su Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Roma: Bulzoni. BrunI, l. (1993): Die Orationes Homeri des Leonardo Bruni Aretino, ed. P. Thiermann, Leiden—New York—Köln: E.J. Brill. camIllo delmInIo, G. (1550): L’Idea del theatro dell’eccellentissimo M. 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Sperone Speroni degli Alvarotti, facsimile with an introduction by Mario Pozzi, Venezia: Occhi, I, pp. 266–425. — (1978a): “Dalla Apologia dei dialogi,” in Trattatisti del Cinquecento, ed. M. Pozzi, Milano– Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi, I, pp. 683–724. — (1978b): “Dialogo della retorica,” in Trattatisti del Cinquecento, ed. M. Pozzi, Milano– Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi, I, pp. 637–82. Tasso, T. (1998), Dell’arte del dialogo, intr. N. Ordine, ed. G. Baldassarri, Napoli: Liguori. vasolI, C. (1989): Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Roma: Bulzoni. — (2011): “La crise de la rhétorique,” in E. Kushner (ed.), L’époque de la Renaissance (1400– 1600). Tome III. Maturations et mutations (1520–1560), Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 235–46. VV. AA. (1990): Il dialogo ilosoico nel ’500 europeo. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi. Milano, 28-30 maggio 1987, eds. D. Bigalli and G. Canziani, Milano: Franco Angeli. zorzI puglIese, O. (1995): Il discorso labirintico del dialogo rinascimentale, Roma: Bulzoni. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 243-263 Jean BodIn and The romance of demonology Jean bodin y la novela de la deMonología Eric MacPhail aBsTracT This article proposes a comparison between the French Renaissance demonologist Jean Bodin and the ictional character Don Quijote. Like the hero of Cervantes’ novel, Bodin believes everything he reads. Consequently, Bodin makes his own discipline of demonology a species of romance that eagerly blurs the boundary of fact and iction. This type of credulity can be usefully juxtaposed to Michel de Montaigne’s understanding of the imagination and to his more philosophical exploration of the realm of possibility. KeyWords: Demonology, iction, imagination, Jean Bodin, Cervantes, Montaigne resumen Estas páginas proponen una comparación entre Jean Bodin, demonólogo francés del siglo XVI, y don Quijote como personaje de icción. Al igual que el héroe de la novela de Cervantes, Bodin da credibilidad a todo aquello que lee y, en consecuencia, convierte su propia disciplina, la demonología, en una forma de novela que desdibuja de manera consciente las fronteras entre hecho y icción. Ambas formas de credulidad pueden compararse de manera productiva a las ideas de Michel de Montaigne acerca de la imaginación y a su incursión ilosóica en el dominio de lo posible. palaBras clave: Demonología, icción, imaginación, Jean Bodin, Michel de Montaigne, Miguel de Cervantes This paper explores an unsuspected connection between the novelist Miguel de Cervantes and the late sixteenth-century French prose writer Jean Bodin. Bodin is a perplexing igure, equally renowned as a pioneering advocate of religious tolerance and as a fanatical persecutor of witches. He occupies a prominent place in the history of political thought for his Six books of the Republic, and he attempted his own synthesis of natural philosophy in the Theatrum universae naturae. Rarely is Recibido: 15/12/2017. Aceptado: 18/12/2017 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 266 Eric MacPhail he associated with questions of literary genre and even more rarely is he compared to the protagonist of Cervantes’ novel Don Quijote. What interests me here is the quijotismo or attitude to narrative that informs the French author’s treatise on witchcraft, De la Démonomanie des sorciers, which was irst published in 1580, 25 years before part one of Cervantes’ novel. More speciically, I am interested in how Bodin appeals to the same arguments in order to defend his belief in witches as Don Quijote does to defend his belief in chivalric romance. Both men make their profession of faith in deiance of all those annoying critics who draw a irm distinction between fact and iction. This afinity between the demonologist and the hero of the novel emerges most conspicuously if we compare the discussion between Don Quijote and the Canon of Toledo in chapter 49 of the irst part of the novel with the chapter on lycanthropy in book two of the Démonomanie. We will begin with the Spanish text, in despite of chronology, which is one of the conventions that convince Don Quijote of the truth of iction. At the end of Part I of Cervantes’ novel, the hero is escorted home in a cage by the priest and the barber of his village, who enact an elaborate charade in order to convince the knight that he has fallen victim to an evil enchanter. Thus the episode presupposes from the outset the proximity of belief in sorcery and belief in romance. En route, the travelers encounter a Canon of Toledo whose curiosity is excited by the spectacle of the encaged knight, whose conidence he gains by assuring him that he knows more about books of chivalry than he does about theological treatises (Cervantes 563). After warming up with a preliminary verbal skirmish with the priest, the Canon engages, out of compassion, to dissuade Don Quijote from reading chivalric romances. Such reading, he fears, has convinced the gullible knight to put his faith in things that are as far from being true as falsehood itself is removed from the truth: “Es possible, señor hidalgo, que haya podido tanto con vuestra merced la amarga y ociosa letura de los libros de caballerías, que le hayan vuelto el juicio de modo que venga a creer que va encantado, con otras cosas deste jaez tan lejos de ser verdaderas como lo está la mesma mentira de la verdad?” (Id. 580). Here the categories of verdad and mentira stand for the literary genres of history and iction. Rather than books of chivalry, which ought in his opinion to be burned like heretics (Id. 581), the Canon recommends another type of reading: he urges Don Quijote to read the valiant deeds recorded “en la Sacra Escritura” (Ibid.) and “en la historia” (Id. 582). These books are true while romances lie. No sooner is he out of his cage than our hero makes short work of all these caviling distinctions between different kinds of narrative. Offended by the Canon’s “blasphemies” (Id. 583), the knight appeals insidiously to verisimilitude: Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology 267 how can you deny what is so widely believed and held to be true? If Amadis is a iction, he declares indignantly, then so are Hector, Achilles and the Trojan War; so is King Arthur, so are Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere (Id. 583-84). So far so good for the Canon, since we are inclined to classify all these names as ictional characters, although we may recall that in the terms of Aristotle’s Poetics, which is supposed to inform the Canon’s critical position (Forcione), the names from the tragic and epic tradition are historical names, not ictional ones. In chapter nine of the Poetics, Aristotle allows that, whereas comic poets generally assign their characters arbitrary or ictional names (tuchonta onomata 1451b13), tragic poets still prefer real names or genomena onomata (1451b15), a phrase which the Renaissance commentator Francesco Robortello glosses as “vera personarum nomina” (Robortello 93). Aristotle has earlier identiied ta genomena or the facts as the province of the historian (1451b4). Frank Walbank offers a pungent comment on Aristotle’s distinction between comic and tragic names: “By real names he means of course the names of real people like Agamemnon and Orestes; and what they did has been deined as history” (Walbank 231). In this respect, Don Quijote is merely revising Aristotelian logic in keeping with the romance tradition when he appeals to the reality of Achilles and King Arthur. As he continues his catalogue of chivalric heroes, Don Quijote veers from iction to history, citing a litany of characters whom the diligent editor assures us were historical personages or caballeros historicos (Cervantes 584, n. 22). This category includes the hero’s own ancestor Gutierre Quijada, whose historicity is contaminated by his genealogy. Don Quijote rounds off his eclectic list with a deiant challenge to the Canon to deny these Spanish heroes if he dares, suggesting that their debate is itself a kind of chivalric contest. This conlation of genres leaves the Canon stunned: “Admirado quedó el canónigo de oír la mezcla que don Quijote hacía de verdades y mentiras” (Id. 585). Such an amazing confusion of fact and iction, based on an implicit faith in the homogeneity of narrative or the idea that all stories are true, may strike a chord of recognition in readers of Bodin’s treatise on witchcraft De la Démonomanie des sorciers, which reduces its audience to a similar state of confusion with the stunning range of testimony convoked in favor of its preposterous claims. In fact the Canon, in a momentary concession to his interlocutor, may be said to summarize Bodin’s relation to the facts when he acknowledges “todo puede ser” (Id. 586) or anything’s possible. In the debate on sorcery that developed in sixteenth-century Europe, Jean Bodin occupies an eccentric, extremist position. For him, the literal reality of sorcery is conirmed by an indiscriminate mass of narrative precedents, that is of stories about Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 268 Eric MacPhail witches, treated as testimony admissible in court. This tendency to treat all stories as proof becomes most infuriating in the chapter of the Démonomanie devoted to lycanthropy or the transformation of human beings into wolves through demonic agency. The devil does some strange things, but the most dificult thing to believe is the metamorphosis of a human being into an animal. And yet, you can’t argue with the proof: “Toutesfois les procés faicts aux Sorciers et les histoires Divines et humaines, et de tous les peuples font la preuve tres-certaine” (Bodin 247). To prove the existence of werewolves, Bodin starts with the witch trials, then moves on to the demonologists, the retailers of miracles, and other compilers, before taking a quick turn through the historians. All this lycanthropy may be strange, Bodin is willing to admit, but what is even stranger is incredulity in the face of such universal testimony: “Or c’est chose bien estrange, mais je trouve encores plus estrange, que plusieurs ne le peuvent croire, veu que tous les peuples de la terre, et toute l’antiquité demeure d’accord” (Id. 251). To drive home his point, he inserts a quixotic litany of authorities: Herodotus, Homer, Pomponius Mela, Solinus, Strabo, Marcus Varro, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny, Olaus Magnus, Saxo Grammaticus, Job Fincel, and Guillaume de Brabant (Id. 251–252). This is Bodin’s most compact version of “la mezcla de verdades y mentiras” with which Don Quijote stuns the Canon. However, Bodin seems to draw the line, a line he has already crossed, at Ovid: “Je laisse la metamorphose d’Ovide par ce qu’il a entremellé la verité de plusieurs fables” (Id. 252–253). You have to take Ovid with a grain of salt because he mixed truth and fable (a little like Bodin himself and his epigone Don Quijote). Nevertheless, though the Metamorphoses may contaminate truth with fable, the myth of Lycaon, surely, is not incredible: “mais il n’est pas incroyable ce qu’il escript de Lycaon Roy d’Arcadie” (Id. 253). Similarly, what Homer says about Circe is not a fable because St. Augustine tells the same story in his City of God. All of this is in cruelly bad faith, but the use he makes of St. Augustine is the most devious. Augustine begins book 18 of his City of God by announcing that he will now review the history of the city of man from Abraham to the Incarnation, through a sort of concordance of Biblical history and pagan history. For instance, the reign of the Hebrew judges coincided roughly with the Trojan War, during which, incidentally, Diomedes’ men were turned into birds (Augustine 276). This leads to an interesting novelistic digression on metamorphosis, drawing on examples compiled by Marcus Varro, including the episode of Circe in Homer,1 and various For Peter Bietenholz (154-157), the episode of Circe is a key test case for the emerging distinction between history and fable in the modern era. 1 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology 269 incidents of lycanthropy among the Arcadians. In the following chapter, chapter 18 of book 18, the self-conscious narrator remarks that his readers may wonder what he thinks about all this transformation from human to animal form: “Sed de ista tanta ludiicatione daemonum nos quid dicamus, qui haec legent, fortassis expectent” (Id. 277). Does he believe in any of it? The short answer is no: “Haec vel falsa sunt vel tam inusitata, ut merito non credantur” (Id. 278). These stories, he asserts, are all false or at least so strange, inusitata, that they should not be believed. And yet, the Christian must believe that nothing is impossible for God: “Firmissime tamen credendum est omnipotentem Deum posse omnia facere quae voluerit,” a confession that once more blurs the boundary between fact and iction. Augustine will never believe that demons literally change the human body or soul, but rather that they deceive the human imagination, which he calls “phantasticum hominis” (Ibid.). In this sense, the stories of metamorphosis, when recounted by credible authorities, which seems to include Homer but exclude Apuleius,2 are at least possible if not factual. So, all the stories told in book 18, chapters 17 and 18 of the City of God testify to the power of the imagination, which tends to merge with divine omnipotence as the dual guarantors of lycanthropy and other metamorphoses. So this is Bodin’s authority for asserting as a fact the reality of lycanthropy, which he doggedly defends by analogy to other notorious cases of metamorphosis. Bodin is cheered by the stories he has read of witches who transform their victims into animals, generally asses, and he generously invents an anecdote of a trained ass and former human that he attributes to Pierre Belon (Bodin 253). He is most captivated by the Golden Ass or Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which he takes to be some sort of autobiography rather than a work of iction. He eagerly cites, from book one, Aristomenes’ dubious protestation of veracity, that bears a strong resemblance to and may indeed be a model of Maître Alcofrybas’ strident claim to veracity in the prologue to Rabelais’ Pantagruel. Whereas Aristomenes swears by the all-seeing sun to tell nothing but the truth: “sed tibi prius deierabo solem istum <omni>videntem deum me vera comperta memorare” (Metamorphoses I, 5 cited in Bodin 254), Alcofrybas swears an even more aggressive oath of veracity: “je me donne à mille panerés de beaulx diables, corps et âmes, trippes et boyaulx, en cas que j’en mente en toute l’hystoire d’un seul mot” (Rabelais 216). It’s a wonder Bodin doesn’t cite Alcofrybas as an authority on the demonic, but he may have “Sicut Apuleius in libris, quos Asini aurei titulo inscripsit, sibi ipsi accidisse aut indicavit aut inxit” (Augustine 278). 2 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 270 Eric MacPhail resented Rabelais’ obvious parody of verisimilitude.3 Bodin has a moment of lucidity when he admits that Apuleius may have embellished his history with some tall tales, but surely the story is no stranger than all the other lies he’s swallowed whole: “Il se peult faire qu’il a enrichy son histoire de quelques contes plaisans, mais l’histoire en soy n’est pas plus estrange, que celles que nous avons remarquées” (Bodin 254). Estrange in this context seems to mean inverisimilar/invraisemblable, and Apuleius deines the outer limit of verisimilitude, beyond which literature dare not go. Apuleius is in effect Bodin’s Amadis de Gaula, the work of iction that he alone takes as fact. Whereas Don Quijote had the good sense for a madman to mix only secular facts and iction, Bodin insists on enlisting the authority of Biblical narrative to support his argument. King Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel sets the precedent for metamorphosis and thus for lycanthropy. If you believe one, you have to believe the other. “Et si nous confessons la verité de l’histoire sacree en Daniel, qui ne peut estre revoquee en doute, il est certain que le changement d’homme en Boeuf est possible, il est possible en tous autres animaux” (Bodin 259). Conversely, if you don’t believe in werewolves, or if you think it’s all an illusion, you better not believe in the Bible: “Car qui voudroit pour une illusion conclure que tout n’est qu’illusion des oeuvres de Sathan, il faudroit confesser que tout ce qu’il ist à Job ne seroient que illusions. Et la saincte Escriture, et toutes les Histoires de telles chose ne seroient que mocqueries” (Id. 258, n. 61). This is the type of pious reasoning that has strengthened Bodin’s reputation for atheism.4 Bodin stakes out such an extreme position in the contemporary debate on sorcery in response to the work of the Flemish physician Johan Wier, who debunks the wild imaginings of the witch hunters in his De praestigiis daemonum, irst published in ive books in 1563 and expanded to six books in 1568. Apparently the confusion of fact and iction that we ind in Bodin was already quite current in 1563, for Wier devotes a chapter to the poetic authorities conventionally invoked by demonologists as evidence in their case against witches. Book two, chapter 17 in the irst edition purports to deine “quid sit Lamia” but is in fact an anthology of verse depictions of witches from Ovid, Virgil, Homer, Horace, Tibullus, Lucan, Manilius, and even the modern Macaronic poets. If you think those are lies, Wier remarks, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve read Apuleius, whose book is For which, see Rigolot and also MacPhail. François Berriot offers a handy survey of Bodin’s reputation for heterodoxy in his introduction to Bodin’s Colloque entre sept scavans. 3 4 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology 271 stuffed with ininite histories, more fabulous than fables: “At apud haec poetarum commenta locum merentur ininitae historiae, fabulis fabulosiores, XI libris Metamorphoseos sive lusus asini conscriptae a L. Apuleio philosopho platonico” (Wier 178). In the phrase fabulis fabulosiores, we have a nice hyperbolic formula that seems to respond to Erasmus’ adage vero verior. In fact the formula comes from Apuleius himself in book one of the Metamorphoses where the narrator encounters two travelers who are disputing an account of witchcraft. The traveler named Aristomenes gives a breathless account of his own harrowing encounter with a witch while his anonymous interlocutor and fellow traveler tells him to lay off the enormous lies: “parce in verba ista haec tam absurda tamque immania mentiendo” (Metamorphoses I, 2). The credulous narrator naturally sides with Aristomenes and asks him to retell his story, which elicits from his comes or companion the categorical verdict, “nihil hac fabula fabulosius, nihil isto mendacio absurdius” (I, 20). To bolster their respective positions, Bodin cites the credulous traveler and his oath to the sun and Wier alleges the scornful words of the incredulous traveler: “Nae istud mendacium tam verum est, quam si quis velit dicere, magico susurramine amnes agiles reverti… noctem teneri” (Met I, 3 cited in Wier 179). In effect Apuleius has already staged the Renaissance debate over witchcraft at the outset of his novel. The publication of the Démonomanie in 1580 provoked mixed reactions including ridicule and indignation as well as some astonishment.5 Reginald Scot’s The Discovery of Witchcraft from 1584 sides openly with Wier against Bodin. Chapter seven of book twelve, entitled “Poetical Authorities commonly alleged by Witchmongers,” basically replicates the lorilegium of verse from the De praestigiis daemonum (II, 17). In the following chapter, XII, 8, Scot makes clear where his sympathies lie: You see in these verses, the Poets (whether in earnest or in jest, I know not) ascribe unto Witches and to their charms, more than is to be found in Humane or Diabolical power. I doubt not but the most part of the Readers hereof will admit them to be fabulous; although the most learned of mine adversaries (for lack of Scripture) are fain to produce these Poetries for proofs, and for lack of judgment, I am sure, do think that Actaeon’s transformation was true. And why not as well as the Metamorphosis or Transubstantiation of Ulysses his companions into Swine, which S. Augustine and so many great Clerks credit and report? (Scot 129) The contemporary reception of Bodin’s work has been ably summarized by Françoise Lavocat, who conirms Bodin’s isolated position even in his own credulous era. 5 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 272 Eric MacPhail In fact Scot is too hard on Augustine, who, despite Bodin’s willful misreading, reports without crediting the episode of Circe in Homer’s Odyssey under the chapter heading “De incredibilibus commutationibus hominum quid Varro tradiderit” (Augustine 276). However, he’s not too hard on Bodin, who doesn’t hesitate to credit the strangest ictions of antiquity. Some years later Jean de Nynauld published a work on lycanthropy whose title page clariies the author’s poor esteem for Jean Bodin. De la Lycanthropie, transformation et extase des sorciers, où les astuces du diable sont mises tellement en évidence, qu’il est presque impossible, voire aux plus ignorants, de se laisser dorénavant séduire. Avec la réfutation des arguments contraires, que Bodin allègue au 6. chap. du second livre de sa Démonomanie, pour soutenir la réalité de cette prétendue transformation d’hommes en bêtes. Bodin, nearly alone among his peers, espouses the “realist” position in regard to lycanthropy (Lavocat 68), relying on literary precedents and the omnipotence of God to prove the reality of werewolves. Nynauld draws out the implications of this logic. If we say that anything is possible because God is omnipotent, then we’ll have to accept lies for truth: “s’il falloit croire toutes choses pource que toutes choses sont possibles à Dieu, Certes toute science nous seroit ostée, d’autant que nous serions comme contraincts à croire les choses, voire les plus estranges, et le plus souvent prendre le mensonge pour la verité” (Nynauld 77-78). For Nynauld, writing in the immediate aftermath of the irst French translation of Cervantes’ novel Don Quijote by César Oudin in 1614, it is crucial to distinguish between fact and iction. Thus he stands in relation to Bodin, as the Canon of Toledo does to Don Quijote. Finally, Gabriel Naudé made a decisive intervention in this debate in 1624 when he published his Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnez de magie. In chapter 11 he unmasks the treachery of “nos Demonographes” who discount historical testimony but use the Metamorphoses of Apuleius as if it were a history to prove lycanthropy, even though Apuleius takes every precaution to tell us that he’s writing a iction or rather “une pure fable et Romant” (Naudé 246). With this phrase, Naudé adapts Apuleius’ own generic designation of sermo Milesius to the modern genre of the novel, which is not bound by the same generic conventions as history. Later, at the end of his book, Naudé returns to the willful confusion of narrative genres in the work of the demonologists. He inds it strange that Bodin and his colleagues refuse to distinguish fact from iction: Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology 273 Et à la verité c’est une chose estrange que Delrio, le Loyer, Bodin, de Lancre, Godelman qui ont esté ou sont encores personnes de credit et de merite, ayent escrit si passionnément sur le sujet des Demons, Sorciers et Magiciens, que de n’avoir iamais rebutté aucune histoire, quoy que fabuleuse et ridicule de tout ce grand nombre de fausses et absurdes qu’ils ont peslemeslé sans discretion parmy les vrayes et legitimes. (Naudé 608[642]) Here, with the help of the neologism peslemesler, Naudé renders exactly the Canon of Toledo’s reaction to Don Quijote’s fantastic “mezcla de verdades y mentiras.” But Naudé doesn’t seem to worry about the triumph of credulity and the ruin of science, like Nynauld. Rather, it is demonology that will lose all credibility due to its indiscriminate use of sources. Naudé invokes the authority of St. Augustine to buttress his argument that lies will discredit the truth: “solent res gestae aspersione mendaciorum in fabulas verti” (De civitate dei VII, 35 cited in Naudé 609[643]). He even appeals to Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf, which is an underhanded reference to Bodin’s obsession with lycanthropy. Eventually, he insinuates, we will learn to read the Démonomanie as a work of iction. As epilogue, I would like to briely consider Michel de Montaigne’s essay on the force of the imagination, which engages with many of the issues raised in the preceding pages and which, moreover, is exactly contemporary with Bodin’s Démonomanie. While revising his essay, which irst appeared in 1580, Montaigne could have taken into account both editions of Bodin’s treatise, from 1580 and 1587, as he deepened his relections on credulity and possibility. In its primitive form, essay I, 21 “De la force de l’imagination” consists of a series of examples of psychosomatic ailments where the imagination induces in the patient either the sensation of malady or of remedy. The last section turns to the sort of phenomena that St. Augustine classiies under the heading of inusitata, including an anecdote about the falconer who made a bird fall from the sky merely by staring at it, “à ce qu’on dit” (Montaigne 105), and which Montaigne reports without conirming or denying its veracity. He is not answerable for the truth of his anecdotes: “Car les Histoires que j’emprunte, je les renvoye sur la conscience de ceux de qui je les prens” (Ibid.). When he revised his essay for the 1588 edition, Montaigne pursued this point a little further. The essayist is not concerned with the facts but rather with their interpretation or meaning: “Les discours sont à moy, et se tienent par la preuve de la raison, non de l’expérience: chacun y peut joindre ses exemples” (Ibid.). The essayist acknowledges responsibility for the discours but not the exemples. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 274 Eric MacPhail It is the inal revision of the essay, completed sometime before the author’s death in 1592, that takes the most provocative approach to all these questions. Here the author insists that he does not care if his examples of the power of the imagination are true or false: “Aussi en l’estude que je traitte de noz moeurs et mouvemens, les tesmoignages fabuleux, pourveu qu’ils soient possibles, y servent comme les vrais. Advenu ou non advenu, à Paris ou à Rome, à Jean ou à Pierre, c’est tousjours un tour de l’humaine capacité, duquel je suis utilement advisé par ce recit” (Montaigne 105). The key distinction is not between real and fabulous but rather between possible and impossible. Therefore, he dismisses the objective question: are these stories really true, did they really happen, “advenu ou non advenu”? In effect, he dismisses literary criticism as enacted in the debate between Don Quijote and the Canon of Toledo. He is not a literary critic adjudicating the boundaries of romance and history. He creates his own genre, the essay, that situates itself in relation to existing genres and genre theories. For instance, he recognizes two categories of authors, of which he identiies with the second category: “Il y a des autheurs, desquels la in c’est dire les evenements. La mienne, si j’y sçavoye advenir, seroit dire sur ce qui peut advenir” (Ibid.). As Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani (86) pointed out long ago, this distinction matches rather closely the distinction that Aristotle draws between history and poetry in chapter nine of his Poetics. Montaigne’s “evenements” corresponds to Aristotle’s τὰ γενόμενα (1451a36) or the facts while his own specialty, “ce qui peut advenir,” translates the realm of poetry, οἷα ἂν γένοιτο (1451a37). This afinity for poetry leads not to a confusion of genres but rather to a seeming indifference to the effort to segregate fact from iction. In the same essay, the narrator conides that some people have encouraged him to write an impartial history of his times (times tainted with indelible partisanship); but we already know that Montaigne is not suited for this task which prefers facts to possibilities. Moreover, history writing would compromise his independence and inhibit his free speech: “Aucuns me convient d’escrire les affaires de mon temps, estimant que je les voy d’une veue moins blessée de passion qu’un autre Mais ils ne disent pas que, pour la gloire de Salluste, je n’en prendroys pas la peine: ennemy juré d’obligation que ma liberté, estant si libre, j’eusse publié des jugemens, à mon gré mesme et selon raison, illegitimes et punissables” (Montaigne 106). Apparently, no one has urged him to take up poetry, and there are no surviving poems by Montaigne. Instead, the essay form indulges his freedom. Like iction, the essay opens up the wide realm of possibility, but Montaigne never confuses possibility with proof. He may agree with the Canon’s concession to Don Quijote that Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 Jean Bodin and the Romance of Demonology 275 anything is possible, but he cannot agree with Bodin that everyone is guilty. The essay draws us away from the “tribunal of history” (Frisch 120) and the archaism of chivalry to a neutral terrain that is not far from philosophy. Eric MacPhail Indiana University macphai@indiana.edu BIBlIography apuleIus (1968): Metamorphoseon Libri XI, ed. R. Helm, Leipzig: Teubner. arIsToTle (1965): De arte poetica liber, ed. R. Kassel, Oxford: Clarendon Press. augusTIne, St. (1993): De civitate Dei, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, vol. 2, Stuttgart: Teubner. BerrIoT, F. (1984): “La fortune du Colloquium heptaplomeres,” in J. Bodin, Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des secrets cachez des choses relevees, Geneva: Droz, pp. xv-l. BIeTenholz, P. (1994): Historia and Fabula. Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age, Leiden: Brill. BodIn, J. (2016): De la Démonomanie des sorciers, eds. V. Krause, C. Martin, and E. MacPhail, Geneva: Droz. cervanTes, M. de (1979): Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. J. 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Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 265-276 myThologIcal epIc and chIvalrIc fIcTIon In moderaTa fonTe’s and lucrezIa marInella’s poems épica Mitológica y ficción caballeresca en los poeMas de Moderata fonte y lucrezia Marinella Sandra Plastina aBsTracT This article focuses on Lucrezia Marinella’s L’Enrico, ovvero Bisanzio acquistato (1635) and Moderata Fonte’s Tredici canti del Floridoro (1581). Marinella’s epic, or ‘heroic,’ poem belongs to a genre not well represented in women’s writings, while Fonte’s work is the irst original chivalric poem written by a woman, an Italian woman who grappled with epic and chivalric romance. These genres were so elite and laborious that they discouraged all but the most enterprising writers of either sex. The female warriors of epic, the women’s aptitude for martial arts, and the increasing openness to female involvement in battle correspond to a shifting emphasis in warfare from physical force to mental agility and astuteness. No attempt will be made here at a comprehensive treatment; rather the focus of the article will be on the question of how women in this period responded to what might be broadly termed the gender politics of chivalric works. KeyWords: Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Gender roles, Gender attitudes, Fiction, Epic, force (physical and mental) resumen En este artículo se estudian L’Enrico, ovvero Bisanzio acquistato (1635) de Lucrezia Marinella y los Tredici canti del Floridoro (1581) de Moderata Fonte. Tanto L’Enrico, un poema épico o ‘eroico’, como el Floridoro, el primer poema caballeresco compuesto por una mujer en el Renacimiento italiano, se adscriben a géneros literarios que por su carácter elitista y por su laboriosidad solo atraían a los autores más capaces de la época, independientemente de cuál fuera su sexo. En ellos, la épica de las mujeresguerrero, su aptitud para el arte de la guerra y la creciente apertura hacia su inclusión en confrontaciones bélicas corresponde con una deriva del énfasis en la fuerza física a la agilidad mental y a la astucia como cualidades primordiales para el arte de la guerra. Recibido: 15/12/2017. Aceptado: 18/12/2017 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 278 Sandra Plastina Estas páginas no nacen con vocación de ofrecer un tratamiento comprehensivo de estos problemas, sino que más bien se ocupan de cómo las mujeres del Renacimiento abordaban lo que podríamos denominar «políticas de género» en la icción caballeresca. palaBras clave: Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, roles y actitudes de género, icción, épica, fuerza (física y mental) During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some women writers who were representative of Italian literature of that period, questioned Boccaccio’s assumption that women’s physical weakness was accompanied by intellectual inferiority. Through later treatises, they demonstrated that women’s physical weakness could inversely become the gauge of their intellectual superiority. The canon of the strong warrior women was developed in Western Europe during the fourteenth and ifteenth centuries. The female version of the Nine Worthies in literature and arts was called the Nine Worthy Women (Les Neuf Preuses). It was a less standard, occasionally varying list of names irst primarily containing ancient heroines from the Theban Cycle or Amazon queens (Sinope, Lampeto, Penthesilea) and a Scythian empress called Tomyris who defeated Cyrus the Great. The trope of valiant warrior women was a source for Renaissance visual artists. For instance, in the woodcut series by Hans Burgkmair the Elder, a sixteenth-century German painter, we ind the depiction of three Pagan, three Biblical (Esther, Judith, Jahel), and three Christian “heroines,” one of whom was St. Elisabeth of Hungary (Papp 2016). The igures of Amazon and Virago Amazons, together with the biblical female igures who fulilled God’s will, were important participants in the medieval trope of strong women, and thus an unequivocally positive attitude was maintained towards them. However, opinion about the Amazons was ambivalent partly because their actions and habits contradicted the accepted patterns of female behavior, and thus opposed the order of the world created by God. This disdain was based on the notion of the cruel and immoral, promiscuous Amazons, though a parallel trend also existed, which has been passed down to us in the Troy and Alexander Romances (Alexanderroman), that portrayed the characters of the brave Penthesilea with her virgin sisters in arms who gave help to Troy, the Amazon queen Thalestris, or the valiant and virtuous Camilla of the Volsci in the Aeneid—the Latin equivalent of the Greek Penthesilea—, whom Aeneas Sylvius Piccolimini (1405–1464, later Pope Pius II) compared to Jeanne d’Arc (Reinle, 2000). In his De ortu et historia Bohemorum, written around the middle of ifteenth century, Piccolomini tells the story of the Bohemian Amazons, Crocaus, Libussa, Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 279 and Primislaus to relate the actions of a group of Bohemian warrior maidens whose way of life and behaviour appealed to him. These Amazons are led by the rebellious Valasca, a monstrous sorceress, sexually promiscuous and blood-thirsty. Though women in the Renaissance played a more signiicant role in intellectual and political life than they had previously, many authors were of the opinion that only in exceptional circumstances could they become exemplary heroines, “viragoes” comparable to men. Most of these cases dealt with crossing gender lines, which could manifest in wearing men’s clothing, accomplishing brave deeds, and assuming traits typically attributed to men; they also portrayed virtues like extraordinary physical or mental strength and skill in exercising power (Stoppino 2013, p. 207). The igure of the warrior woman as represented in the Italian chivalric epic can be used as a privileged site from where many of the conlicts surrounding gender constructions in the early modern period are revealed. The Amazon, as a igure of conlict and, as we shall see, of conlict resolution, is a valuable object of study in this context. The presence of the Amazon in early modern literature, from the references by women writers to the central characters of the epic chivalric poems, is pervasive and contradictory. For these writers, the Amazon is often a mirror image, a term of comparison posited both by the women themselves and by their male counterparts. In this instance, the comparison with an Amazon is at the same time empowering and diminishing. If likening a woman writer to a warrior woman depicts her as the strong counterpart to the male author in a predominantly male world, the usual connotation is that the Amazon is “man-like” beyond her sex. On the other hand, the Amazon as a female warrior in the chivalric epic fulills different representational needs, setting up a number of dichotomies. As an unbridled foreign warrior, she can represent the savage alternativity of the past; as a beautiful opponent, she can be the medium for the appropriation of femininity by men. Her embodiment of the conlict between war and love epitomizes the generic distinction between epic and romance. She seemingly challenges gender roles, yet her main function is to relieve the homosocial tension of war and combat. These contradictions go the heart of the conlicted construction of gender in these texts and in their sociohistorical context. As Stoppino argues: “the representation of conlict is powerful site for the exploration of contradictions and distinctions in the representations of early modern gender construction” (Id., p. 235). To elucidate this point about gender-based contraditions, it is important to analyse three representations of conlict in Renaissance chivalric epic: the battle scene, the unmasking of gender, and the containment of the woman warrior. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 280 Sandra Plastina Clorinda in the Gerusalemme Conquistata (Jerusalem Delivered XII, 64), the last heroine of this genre, embodies a series of qualities that were crucial to the female warrior from the very beginning of the Renaissance tradition. She couples the classical Amazon igure with the irreducible alterity of the giantess of the preceding tradition, following representational patterns that link these igures to the savage women of the New World, which were very popular at the time (Ernst 2014, pp. 159–163). Even the most perfunctory consideration of women’s literature of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries reveals a surprising number of women writing about warfare. As other researchers have already suggested, these women authors do not form any sort of uniied “feminine voice” about war, but they often inscribe themselves within one or more of the competing feminine discourses of war, nicely categorized by Jean Bethke Elshtain, in Women and War (1995)1 as the discourses of the paciist, the civic mother, or the mythic Penelope awaiting her soldier-husband’s return. Recent studies have demonstrated how the intersection of war poetry and love lyric was treated by more than ifty women poets in the sixteenth century who wrote on war, not to mention the numerous women who wrote letters, diaries, chronicles, and treatises and felt compelled to write about their own experiences of living in war-torn lands. When Italian women writers started to write romances of chivalry in the sixteenth century, they had a ready-made topos to explore. Given their particular interests they soon started to examine the dynamics that the relationship between female twins could produce in a woman-friendly ictional world (Miller, Yavneh, 2016). Moderata Fonte (Venice, 1555–1592), for example, although apparently concerned with the adventures of the knight Floridoro in her Tredici canti del Floridoro, gives more space and depth of characterization to the woman warrior Risamante, whose quest to recover the inheritance sue is due and the daughter of the king of the Armenia leads her to ight her identical twin, Bioandura, the ruler’s sole heir (Finucci 2006, p. 209). Evident in the early modern example of Bradamante Jean Bethke Elshtain has identiied the inluence of competing traditions of the feminine in warfare, including among others, Plutarch’s Spartan mothers, where mothers encourage heroic acts of militarism, as well as the non-combatant “Beautiful Soul” who is in need of protection from a warrior man. These myths serve to recreate and secure women’s social position as noncombatants and men’s identity as warriors. Elshtain demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacriicial male love, as well as the moral imperatives of just wars. 1 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 281 and Ricciardetto from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, the relationship between twins is not only a frequent means for exploring a broad variety of themes in Renaissance literature, but it is also one of the clearest and most common expressions of the complex world of sibling ties in early modern culture. The story of the donna guerriera and her male twin is a seeming digression: Ricciardetto is to be killed because he has disguised himself as his sister in order to win the love of a princess who had believed Bradamante to be male; he is then rescued by Bradamante’s beloved, Ruggiero, who mistakes the brother for the sister. Orlando furioso rehearses the main paradigms of sibling relations—reciprocity, affection, competition, and alliance-building—reminding us, moreover, that sibling relationships are gendered. Such expression, however, may be determined not only by the gender of characters depicted, but also by the author who creates them. In “When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro,” Valeria Finucci interrogates some of the stock features of Renaissance romance and comedy, including opposite-sex twins, examining the implications of gendered authorship in the example of Moderata Fonte Tredici canti del Floridoro,2 which ostensibly casts two female twins as emblematic igures of law and order. The two sisters serve as the two faces of womanhood described in the poetry and culture of the time: one is the castrating female, and the other is the pliant, although often unavailable, object of male desire. In her essay, Finucci asks what aspects of sisterhood a woman author might summon in her writing and under what representational conditions does crossdressing enable a trasformation of the topos. The women considered in the present essay are neither paciists nor civic mothers. On the contrary, they conlate the civic and the personal, praising men for ighting or chiding them into battle by withholding their praise. For example, through their writings, Laura Terracina (Naples, 1519–1577) and Chiara Matraini (Lucca, 1515–1604) empower themselves as judges in the system of masculine military honour glorifying or vituperating as best its their needs. What emerges from these and other writings by women about war is that praise and shame provide an effective tool through which women may guide men’s military performance. Such power is enabled by the very gendering of war, whereby men are the undisputed protectors of women and are forced to take up arms on women’s behalf. The participation of women in the most popular genre during the Cinquecento—the chivalric romance—can no longer be ignored, thanks to Valeria Finucci, who both edits Moderata Fonte’s Floridoro, irst published in 1581, and provides an engaging introduction to the author and the romanzo cavallaresco “al femminile.” 2 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 282 Sandra Plastina The complexity of this universal truism—men ight to protect women—is most evident in the writings of Moderata Fonte who, in her dialogue on Il merito delle donne (The Worth of Women, 1592), deconstructs gender roles in war, by exposing art and literature as perpetuating social norms of sexual inequality. Fonte’s response to the gendering of war is ultimately ambivalent, for she asserts that women should remain the peaceful sex by threatening to become its opposite, the literary legend of ighting women, the Amazon. According to Fonte, men ight because they are inspired by a discourse of honour that is (re)produced through art. She tells us that famous men, including warriors, are celebrated in “statues, columns, and other similar constructions erected to their honour” (Fonte 1997 p. 227),3 just as they are the objects of memorial poems, lauding their virtue. One of Fonte’s speakers recites a sonnet that praises a knight after his death in battle; warfare and speciically the knight’s pursuit of honour are shown to provide nothing less than the security of the world: “But running too keenly, alas! At the heels of honor, he met his death. And dying, as he did, for him who had made him immortal, he relieved the world from fear, at the same time thrusting it into mourning” (Id., p. 229).4 Such poems and statues praising dead heroes do more than immortalize men; they also recruit new soldiers: “[poems] encourage others to give up their lives for their country, inspired by a noble hope to be so honored themselves” (Ibid.). Moreover, heroes inscribed in statuary and literary representations recall yet another literary ideal, the chivalric knight. The model male hero is, in fact, one of a textual past, “those knights one reads about, who carried off their victories through the courage of their heart and the might of their arm” (Fonte 1997, p. 230). What is at stake for masculinity is that literary knights, marble statues, and historic heroes are nearly interchangeable discursive forces of honour that stand in contrast to the short-comings of contemporary men. In particular in Fonte’s summation, Venetians were losing wars due to their enemies’ use of artillery. Fonte’s female interlocutor states that, in order to correct what is no less than men’s gender failure, women must go to war themselves: “I’d like to see us women “Si soleano drizzar statue, colonne e simili ediici a perpetua memoria della loro fama” (Fonte 1600, p. 139). 4 “Ma troppo ahimé, d’onor seguendo l’orme / More, e morto per lui, che’ l fé immortale / Trasse il mondo di dubbio, e ‘l pose in pianto / come quelli che spendono la loro vita per la patria” (Ibid.). 3 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 283 arming ourselves like Amazons of old and going into battle against these men” (Ibid.).5 The chivalric knight represents men who will be emasculated by warring viragos, a uniquely aggressive response to men’s unmanly neglect of wartime duties as deined by a mediated literary exemplum. Furthermore, her apparently radical stance closely connects gender and warfare, perpetuating a war ideology that gloriies masculine military honour and identiies women as the vulnerable sex. With this paradigm in mind, we might use Fonte’s writings as a springboard for our investigation of two writers who preceded her. As will now be discussed, Terracina and Matraini, in divergent and innovative ways, raise their voices in the war machine while still calling on men to prove their masculinity in arms. For example, Terracina’s oeuvre includes eight volumes of poetry, published between 1548 and 1567, as well as a ninth book of poems still in manuscript form at her death. The third and eighth books are two discrete discorsi on the Orlando furioso. Terracina’s Discorsi like Ariosto’s epic, is composed of 46 canti, each containing one preliminary ottava, usually dedicated to a patron or important igure, followed by seven additional ottave. The inal lines of each of the seven ottave correspond to the lines in the irst ottava in each of Ariosto’s canti—that is, the irst six ottave in Terracina’s commentary always end with a single line from Ariosto. In the preface to her third book, Il Discorso della S. Laura Terracina sopra il principio di tutti i canti di Orlando Furioso, she includes a poem to Ludovico Dolce, the sixteenth-century editor, art critic, and sometimes literary agent, in which she demonstrates her exceptional position with regard to the gendering of war. Terracina highlights her uniqueness as a woman by writing about war, a matter that is complicated by the fact that we speciically know that she is not the only woman to do so. In her poem to Dolce, Terracina asks for “pardon” for her “virile” language, “E se la lingua mia fu si virile / Perdon vi chieggio.” In canto XIV of the Discorso—which praises Pope Julius III as a warlike prince—, she again addresses the matter of war as a masculine subject not suitable for women. She asks if her amorous poetic style can speak of anger and hate, if her feminine wisdom can follow the path of Mars, and if her pen can be virile enough to continue without a guide: “Vorrei che fusse quel tempo—disse Leonora—che vorrei che noi donne tutte si armassimo come quelle antiche Amazzoni ed andassimo a combattere contra questi uomini” (Ibid.). 5 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 284 Sandra Plastina A che condutto il mio amoroso stile A parlar d’ira, e ragionar di morte, Come potrà l’ingegno feminile Seguir di Marte il ier camin si forte? Sara la penna mia tanto virile, che voglia a cio resister senza scorte Veggio c’havranno ugual pena e dispitti Ne i molti assalti, e’n si crudel conlitti (Terracina 1553, fols. 24v–25r). Terracina recalls the dominant gender ideologies that restrict women’s participation in war, speciically, the issue of whether women are notable enough to write about it. Despite the fact that some early modern women wrote about arms, war was—and arguably still is—gendered as a man’s subject. Women poets, she suggests, are relegated to appropriate themes of love, and Terracina slyly inscribes herself in this discourse, discussing her “amoroso stile” and “ingegno feminile.” Yet Terracina’s Discorso is certainly not written with “amoroso stile”: It makes social critiques of various contemporary groups, including courtiers, captains, and unfaithful men and women. Furthermore, this feminine posture of vulnerability contrasts the masculine role of protector, as emphasized by the rhyming words of “forte” and “scorte;” an effective reminder that women need strong men who guide them; however, our poetess is without a guide as she ventures into the masculine world of war, both real and poetic. The following canto (XV) is dedicated to cardinals and bloody captains, “Ali Cardinali et Sanguinosi Capitani,” and is a commentary on the wars contemporary to Terracina’s lifetime. The canto argues that men, not women, have called for war and that therefore women should be spared. The soldier who has killed women leaves other men as daughterless fathers and in effect collects unholy “trophies of dresses and skirts.” Even though women are faultless with regard to the origin of war, men kill them futilely in their pursuit of fame. Terracina’s protest then raises the stakes by calling for change, seeking to redeine the terms of praiseworthy warfare. Gazing back to her previous canto, in which she had insisted on women’s vulnerability, Canto XV describes the current wars as heinous battles where men do not protect but rather kill women, and her invective against military captains is precisely at odds with what the epic poet is supposed to do for ighting men. She immortalizes the captains not for their honour but for their cruelty and impiety: “Qual sia soldato pur ch’osservi legge / Che non sia contro donna un Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 285 Leopardo?” (Ibid., fol. 26r). In regard to the terms that she has established regarding masculinity and war, men have failed in their gender role as women’s protectors, and she takes recourse in her ability to praise or vituperate them accordingly. One of the most original and interesting aspects of Terracina’s Discorso is its form of literary proto-feminism: as a woman writer, she not only appeals to but positively commands her women readers to break out of the conines of traditional female roles—such as a keeper of the household, enshrined in domesticity—and to embrace the virtues of study and scholarship, so that they may then be judged on the same footing as men in the pursuit of intellectual excellence. These concerns surface in several parts of the Discorso and collectively constitute a kind of ‘apologia for the woman writing.’ Terracina is particularly innovative in her exhortation to women readers of the Discorso to follow her own example and take up the pen as means of expression and retaliation against the male-dominated literary sphere. We see this especially in her canto XXXVII, dedicated to the poet Veronica Gambara, in a change to Ariosto’s canto, in which he singles out Vittoria Colonna as the greatest woman writer of the time: Alla eccell. Signora Veronica da Gambara Deh fosser molte al mondo come voi, Donne che a scrittor metter freno, C’ha tutta briglia vergan contro noi Scritti crudeli, e colmi di veleno; Che forsi andrebbe in sino ai liti Eoi Il nome nostro, e ‘l grido d’onor pieno; Ma perchè contra a lor nulla si mostra, Però tengono vil la fama nostra (Ibid., fol. 59r) In the Furioso, Colonna is praised as a writer of universally acknowledged excellence, but primarily as a loyal wife. “Terracina’s emphasis are markedly different […] Veronica Gambara, who take the place of Vittoria Colonna, is lauded not for her idelity to the memory of her husband, but purely for the literary virtù that has the power to confound the ‘cruel and murderous slanders’ men direct against women” (Cox 1997, p. 137). Six years after Laura Terracina’s Discorso was published, the irst book of Chiara Matraini—Rime e prose (Poems and Prose)—was printed in 1555 in her home city of Lucca. It consists of her irst Canzoniere amoroso and two prose pieces: an epistolary treatise on the defence of love, addressed to an unidentiied man Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Sandra Plastina 286 (indicated only as M.L.), and the Orazione dell’arte della guerra (Discourse on the Art of War), an exercise in defence of the strategic capacity of “a condottiero,” regardless of the battle, written in praise of man’s cognitive qualities. The lack of attention given to this discourse on war by both by her sixteenth-century contemporaries and present-day scholars suggests how uncomfortable readers are with a woman’s text praising war. It is, to my knowledge, the only oration or treatise praising war written by a woman in the Italian Renaissance. It bears the markings of a vernacular humanist treatise: Latinizing syntax, frequent classical citations, and complex rhetorical strategies. Yet her Discourse differs from the humanist prose on war written by other female authors such as Laura Cereta, who complains about the brutal effects of war, inding only futile devastation and death. Matraini’s work is instead an unapologetic treatise on the glories of war, and it is a persuasive text, addressed to “signori Academici,” students of poetry and philosophy whom she wishes to incite to take up arms and ight. Matraini, like Terracina, immediately acknowledges the uniqueness of a woman addressing war. But unlike Terracina, Matraini states that there is a moral imperative for her to communicate her thoughts on the virtues of war. Her ambition to venture, like a male writer, into the terrain of humanistic culture and philosophy is also relected in this Orazione, in which she elaborates on man’s greatness through his intellect, one of the main themes of the Renaissance. Matraini’s text is animated by the desire and ambition to attempt the traditionally masculine genre of humanistic and philosophical culture (Matraini 1989, pp. 101–102): Mentre che del troppo audace Fetonte i funesti e lacrimevoli avvenimenti, causati da soverchio giovanile ardire meco stessa considero, salutevole essempio a chiunque osa altra le proprie forze tentare, e della notabilissima sentenza di Chilone, famosissimo saggio di tutta la Grecia reputato, mi ricordo, quasi vile e noiosa cicala con l’asprezza delle mie roche voci uscir non oso, nobilissimi studiosi nostri signori Accademici, i cui divini spiriti ed elevati ingegni con la dolce armonia de’ lor soavi concetti degni sono da gli antichi e sapienti ilosoi d’esser udito. Ma poscia ricordandomi quanto laudevole sia in giovanile età a gli onesti comandamenti de’ maggiori suoi obediente e presta concedersi, posposta ogni altra scusa quantunque lecita, per esser donna, e accettabili fosse, non ho voluto, quasi da vilissima pigrizia oppressa, biasmevolmente star pertinace […] Mentre che scarca d’ogni altra sollecita cura, con la idata scorta del mio lodato e sapientissimo Atlante, per gli cui degni essempi spero dovere ancora, ove le crude inesorabili Parche il vital ilo in erba invidiosamente non mietino, da queste oscure e basse nebbie chiaramente allontanandomi, fare a l’empia e cruda morte disusati inganni, le dotte carte de gli antichi e famosi scrittori intentamente considerò niuna altra cosa doppo il supremo Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 287 studio della bella e universal Filosoia, più salutifera né più eccellente fra tutti gli uomini mortali esser ritrovo, che l’arte convenevole e santa della giustissima e potente virtù militare. Although Matraini’s humanist prose may seem distant from the verse of Terracina, both women share the common strategy of turning to their gender as the origin of their rhetorical strength, calling on their right as women to demand that men perform a “correct” masculinity. Such a strategy allows these writers to transcend the boundaries of “proper” feminine literary genres as they ironically conine women to the role of the vulnerable sex. Thus, the Discorso occupies a unique place in mid-Cinquecento writing, opening the possibilities for later writers such as Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella to enter the arena of the epic genre. Moderata Fonte was not the irst Renaissance woman writer to occupy herself with a literary genre codiied by men. As has been frequently asserted, there was a ‘numero sorprendente’ of women who published chivalric romances prior to and after her. However, more important than their amount, is the fact that the census includes such highly-regarded authors as Laura Terracina and Tullia d’Aragona, who published a rewriting of Guerin Meschino in 1560. As a matter of fact, their audacity to participate in this literary genre was already recognized in the seventeenth century, albeit not without a note of denigration. One reason why chivalric romance in its Ariostan formula appealed so strongly to women was without doubt the innovative quality of its representation of women, especially its creation of the igure of the female knight, one of the most fascinating and distinctive new literary types of the age. We can list many reasons why women might have been attracted by the chivalric romance. Apart from the more obvious one—the popularity of the genre itself—, it should be noted that, unlike lyrical poetry, chivalric romance allowed women to deal with love without being themselves closely bound to or identiied with the amorous values of their characters, thus preserving their reputation. And if male authors could avail themselves of other books in their research—not all had been soldiers, for example—, why then could women not do the same? Building on the precedent of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (1483– 1495), Ariosto includes two female knights in the Orlando furioso: the Christian Bradamante, the protagonist of the poem’s principal love story, destined with her husband, Ruggiero, to found the dynasty of Ariosto’s patrons, the Este; and the slighter but striking igure of Marisa, Ruggero’s sister, who, like him, starts the poem a pagan but converts by the end. Especially in his last version of the poem (1532), Ariosto draws out the proto-feminist implications of guerriera igure Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Sandra Plastina 288 overtly, arguing in two canto proems for women’s capacity to equal men in their achievements if given the opportunity and citing as a modern archetype of female virility Vittoria Colonna, who was emerging in these years as a poet of note. In the poem, the depiction of both women—particularly Risamante, the female hero—and men, namely the other knights, who are all “cavalieri antieroici e maschi falliti” (Finucci, 2006, p. xxvii) is very interesting. As an author, Fonte seems to have had little interest in the masculine concept of honour, which was becoming an increasingly popular motif in the epic, as can be seen in Tasso’s heroes, who are moved by a sense of Christian honour and suffer from consequent guilt when they stray from what should be their primary motivation). Even the action of the poem’s hero, Floridoro, can be characterized—at least once he falls prey to love— as infantile. Finucci sees this as Fonte’s reaction to the sexual ideology that relegated the knight to an active, heroic role, while the maiden was traditionally placed in a passive position, in need of defense. Fonte’s female characters, on the contrary are not only depicted in a variety of roles but are of varied, often contradictory, typology, as in the case of the twin sisters Risamante and Biondaura. The analysis of the conlict between the twin sisters is also intriguing. For example, Fonte neither follows the Ariostean tradition—where twins are usually of the opposite sex—, nor the pattern where the other sister is wicked—e.g., Alcina as opposed to Logistilla. She is unwilling to discard women characters with nonchalance—thus the lack of abandoned women in the text. Fonte’s female characters—and, once more, especially Risamante and Biondaura—are not only described in a variety of roles, but they embody different and often contrasting types. Finally, Fonte, as a woman, makes alternative (i.e., non-traditional) choices in the development of her poem as she was hindered, often at the same point, from reaching a successful conclusion due to the weight of cultural constructs, which had become routine in the models available to her: To enter among the diverse paths and among the immense roads I desire and dare— onto which of them must I now send forth my verses?6 Fonte elaborates female models made available by Ariosto’s poem, developing them in unexpected ways. Circetta is one such igure in the Floridoro, a mixture of Ariosto’s Alcina—without her overt sexual nature, yet with her magically “Io, che d’entrar fra li sentier diversi / e fra l’immense vie bramo e ardisco, / Per qual hor deggio incaminar miei versi,” Tredici canti del Floridoro, prefazione (Fonte 2006, pp. 49–50). 6 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 289 prolonged youth—, Logistilla, and Melissa. Circetta painfully embodies the dificulties of a woman writer working in the romance genre. Tied down by the history of the epic, Circetta, like Alcina, transforms failed knights into trees, is subject to the vagaries of love and, if that were not enough, she fulills a similar function to that of Ariosto’s Melissa, revealing the future shape of a dynasty not yet come into being. However, Fonte manipulates such a well-known igure so that Circetta carries greater signiicance than as a mere bearer of dynastic messages for the courtly audience. At irst sight, she might be viewed as a prototype for the model that will be developed in Il merito delle donne, the igure of Corinna who eschews men to the point of refusing marriage and vaunting the possibility of a fulilling single life. However, she soon falls in love, which may remove her from her previously enforced single status, though the episode is far from complete. Fonte makes a determined effort to rewrite myth, to valorize female achievement in the context of a universal story, to tell the other side—here the relationship between Circe and Ulysses. By overturning the various male versions of the story, Fonte emphasizes the ictionality of such myths and their openness to interpretation so that they can be challenged and perhaps eventually replaced by a female version. The Circe episode is partially subjected to a feminist reading, both regarding the point of view from which Fonte recounts her story and its connection to the proem of the canto on the “bestiality” of contemporary men. As Virginia Cox argues: “it does not seem unfounded to detect a proto-feminist impulse at work in Fonte’s transformation of the maga from seductress to guileless virgin; certainly, this transformation very effectively short-circuits the implicitly misogynistic allegorical logic of more conventional versions of the episode, which ‘naturally’ turn to the literal and deceptive allure of the sense” (Cox 1997, p. 143). It is signiicant that women’s interest in the epic gained momentum in the period after the publication of Floridoro, and a number of women writers composed epic poems in the seventeenth century, although there was a tendency to imitate Tasso rather than Ariosto. For example, Lucrezia Marinella, author of L’Enrico overo Bizanzio conquistato (published in 1635), knew the Floridoro, but, in order to be taken seriously, did not consider it the most elevated and digniied model of the genre. Marinella took up this subsequent trend as a point of departure for her own foray into the genre, preferring to imitate the Gerusalemme liberata, in the increasingly dogmatic climate of Counter-Reformation. Marinella, whose major feminist work Le nobiltà et eccellenze delle donne (On the Nobility and Preeminence of Women) was published in the same year as Il merito delle donne, had read Floridoro. Her attention was drawn to the proem of canto IV, the Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Sandra Plastina 290 most outspoken in favour of women. Marinella quotes from it the entire second stanza. Fonte had optimistically stated that women—if only a few—had managed to succeed in becoming soldiers, and in letters, women had proved themselves to be at least the equal of men. Marinella is not so convinced by this argument: But in our times there are few women who apply themselves to study or the military arts, since men, fearing to lose their authority and become women’s servants, often forbid them even to learn to read or write. (Marinella 1999, p. 79)7 Marinella recognizes, however, that Fonte’s idealistic picture is tempered by the poet’s realization that access to education was essential if more women were to take on more active social and cultural roles: “Non saria nelle imprese alte e leggiadre / Al frate inferior né disuguale” (4.4, 3–4). Marinella extends this line of reasoning, quoting stanza 4 in its entirety: I would like these men to try the experiment of training a good- natured boy and girl of about the same age and intelligence in letters and arms. They would see how much sooner the girl would become expert than the boy and how she would surpass him completely. Moderata Fonte, though content with proving them equal, writes this in Floridoro (Marinella, 1999, p. 80).8 Marinella’s critique of the overt ideology of the Floridoro comes from a different perspective: the superiority of women over men, which challenges the very basis of civil society. Fonte, nevertheless, operates in a subtler manner, more suggestive than prescriptive. She puts on display a number of behaviors with some commentary and demonstrates that male oriented genres can be subverted to feminist uses. L’Enrico belongs to a poorly represented genre in women’s writings: only two more epic poems were published by women in the seventeenth century, namely Scanderbeide by Margherita Sarrocchi (Rome 1606 and, in complete version, 1623), and Ascanio errante by Barbara degli Albizzi Tigliamochi (Florence, 1640). “Ma poche sono quelle che dieno opera a gli studij overo all’arte militare in questi nostri tempi. Percioché gli uomini a guisa d’insolenti tiranni proibiscono loro questo, temendo di non perdere le signorie e di divenir servi delle donne. E però vietano a quelle ben spesso ancho il saper leggere e scrivere” (Marinella 1601, fol. 11v). 8 “Io vorrei che questi tali facessero una esperienza tale che essercitassero un putto e una fanciulla d’una medesima età e ambiduoi di buona natura e ingegno nelle lettere e nelle armi che vederebbono in quanto minor tempo più peritamente sarebbe instrutta la fanciulla del fanciullo e anzi lo vincerebbe di gran lunga. La qualcosa lasciò scritto Moderata Fonte nel suo Floridoro, ma ben è ver che ella si contentò che devenissero eguali” (Marinella 1601, fol. 12r). 7 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 291 Although the epic was a tried and trusted genre, it continued to attract the attention and efforts of primarily male writers: Rinaldina Russell reminds us that Antonio Belloni counted “at least ninety-eight poems in imitation of Tasso’s Jerusalem” (Russell 1994, p. 234) printed during the seventeenth century. Marinella’s epic differs from the other two women-authored ones in its physical appearance, printed as it is in duodecimo (as opposed to the much more imposing quarto of the others) and devoid of any prefatory poems praising the writer, her choice of topic, or her ability in dispatching the work. Furthermore, Marinella dedicates Enrico to the reigning doge of Venice, Francesco Erizzo (1631–1646) and the Serenissima Venetian Republic. By marking her allegiance to Venice, Marinella advances her implicit argument that she represents the point of view of her city on these events. Her voice emerges as choral, expressing the position of a community, as evidenced by the usage of irst person plural pronouns, verbs, and adjectives, and the important gender continuity of a woman narrator and a woman-identiied city. As Niccolò Zorzi has recently highlighted, following the victory at Lepanto (1571), Venetian presses produced two historical prose narratives of the Fourth Crusade, namely Paolo Ramusio’s De bello Constantinopolitano (published in Italian in 1604, in Latin in 1609 and again in 1634) and Andrea Morosini’s L’acquisto che la Repubblica di Venetia confederata con Prencipi Francesi, fece dell’Imperio di Costantinopoli (1627). Although Marinella utilized at least one additional—and non-Venetian— source, poetically she establishes her authority on matters of content from the very beginning of her text, proposing that her poem puts forth a version of the events that coincides with the preferred—and, as we will see, oficial—Venetian one. Furthermore, in order to corroborate her position as a narrator within the poem, she employs some standard rhetorical commonplaces. Therefore, both the rhetorical questions and the direct references to her presence and role as a narrator throughout the text allow her to become invested with authority. By doing so, she follows an approach common in early modern Italian texts, namely, a simultaneous assertion of authorship and of her diminished importance and subordination to her subject matter. When we consider early modern epic poems and even romances, Marinella’s canonical predecessors offer numerous examples of women who carry out important structural and ideological roles: her women warriors—the Venetian Claudia and the Byzantine Meandra and Emilia—are reminiscent of Clorinda and Gildippe in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and Rosmonda in Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide; the wise, magician-like revealer of things to come, Erina, reminds us of Alcina, Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Sandra Plastina 292 Melissa, and Logistilla in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Armida in Gerusalemme liberata, as well as Risamante in Fonte’s Floridoro and Calidora in Scanderbeide. It is on Erina that Marinella bestows the most authority. Not only does she utter more lines in reported speech than any other character in the poem, surpassing even the doge Enrico Dandolo himself, but Erina also serves as a reinforcement for the narrator and her role in the poem, referring to her on four separate occasions. These references set in motion a circle of mutual corroboration: as Erina underscores Marinella the narrator’s role and pre-eminence, the character herself emerges as a stronger and more authoritative presence for the implied reader. Yet Erina is singular on many levels. Erina in effect emerges as the co-author of the text before our eyes, and Marinella as one of many writers who represent Venetian history. She is crucial as the revealer of past, present, and future events as well as the learned person who explains hidden historical and geographical features. As a igure of authority within the plot, Marinella voices opinions through her that underscore the fact that the poem was written by a Venetian woman. Later on, while lying over Venice and illustrating the city’s geographical features and glorious history, Erina again refers to the narrator: Look at a beautiful mermaid come out of the waves, she’s pretty and still young, and she emitts beautiful and joyful notes from her learned cithara that gild the seaweeds and shores all around. See some green laurel entwined in her blonde hair… (Marinella 2009, 22.28, p. 328).9 Marinella’s choice to refer to her heroine as a blonde sirena is a quietly revolutionary move: it is in keeping with the epic tradition, but it redeines a deeply negative (because fundamentally feminine) mythical presence as the narrator. Furthermore, Marinella/the narrator as mermaid is presented as being ‘wooed’ by the ‘sacred muses.’ Suddenly, the ‘programmatically ascetic’ Marinella objectiies herself in a highly sexualized manner, the subject of homoerotic attention that is revealed by the female character endowed with the most relevance in the poem. In an ambiguous manner that is also typical of her writing, Marinella makes a radical statement that is at once a pronouncement of the power of poetry over the narrator and an avowal that her poem can speak with a plural, city-wide, and male-and-female (hence neutral) voice. “Mira vaga sirena uscir dell’onde, / Bella, leggiadra e pargoletta ancora, / Temprar con dotta cetra alte e gioconde / Note, onde l’alghe intorno e i liti indora…” (Marinella 1635, p. 518). 9 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 293 Erina is part of this tradition, and, because Venier is related to her, he is also a link in this chain of knowledge and deserves to know his city’s future as well as his own, painful though that proves to be. Venier is instrumental to the crusaders’ victory and, by extension, to Venice’s future glory. The image employed by Marinella to describe Erina’s action is aggressive and masculine; the contrast between her decisive act and Venier’s reaction could not be starker: he is chilled by what he sees. What Erina and Venier observe in the canto that follows is a series of images that narrate the past history of Venice, starting with the city’s founding (7.2–16). This offers a strong support for the authority of Erina’s narrative of past doges and naval battles: it extends beyond her personal and familial history, reaching to the most glorious and important events of Venice’s own past, which seems to follow closely those painted on three walls of the Hall of the Great Council after the 1577 ire by the likes of Veronese, Tintoretto, Francesco Bassano, and Palma il Giovane. As Giorgio Tagliaferro has remarked, it is through these events that “si realizza il senso profondo della predestinazione di Venezia” (Tagliaferro 2006, p. 341). Daria Martelli further notes that oficial depictions of Lepanto promoted its myth “ma nello stesso tempo, rappresentando l’evento, davano forma alle emozioni di tutto un popolo e operavano una catarsi collettiva” (Martelli, 2011, p. 51). In her explanation to Venier, Erina singles out two military events that would have been extremely familiar to Marinella’s implied readers, due to their importance and chronological proximity: the battle of Lepanto (1571). As Dante in the Commedia, Ariosto—in the Orlando furioso and Tasso in the Gerusalemme liberata, Marinella’s chronological standpoint allows her character to prophesy the victorious conclusion of the expedition and, more importantly to Venier, his death in battle (7.62). Any reference, however covert, to the history of Venice shows Marinella’s intention to write an epic true to its genre, despite her gender and republican afiliation. The parallels to the Hall of the Great Council painting cycle bestow authority on Erina (and thus on Marinella) by grounding her knowledge of the events on a state-sponsored and prominently located pictorial cycle, thus bolstering her right to narrate her city’s past and future. What Erina explains compounds the number of lines she speaks; form and content contribute to her transformation into the author’s own most powerful spokesperson. Marinella’s voice is authoritative yet, appropriately for her historical moment, attracted and distanced through a character in her narrative. Marinella would not have been able to write her poem without the military prowess that Venetian ighters offer her and the rhetorical exempla upon which she Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 294 Sandra Plastina models her narrative. While elaborating on the former and building on the latter, Marinella the narrator strikes a balance between assertiveness and homage to past forms, between the needs of the genre and the desire to express her opinions as a narrator and a woman, and between a neutral, plural ‘noi’ and the men and women that compose her ensemble. The attention to the epic paradigms in which the female warrior is the friend/ beloved/ wife on equal terms with her male counterpart support the view that in Italian Renaissance literature the militarization of the woman necessarily does not bring about the emasculation of the man, nor is it the woman warrior who “feminizes” the knight by depriving him of his martial valour and identity. Sandra Plastina Università della Calabria sandraplastina@hotmail.com BIBlIography aragona, T. d’ (1560): Il Meschino, altramente detto il Guerrino, Venetia: Gio. Battista et Melchiorre Sessa. BeThKe elshTaIn, J. (1995): Women and War, with a new epilogue, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. cox, V. (1997): “Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Poetry in Early Modern Italy,” in Z. Baranski et alii (eds.), Sguardi sull’Italia: miscellanea dedicata a F. Villari, Leeds: Society for Italian Studies, 3, pp. 134–145. — (2011): The prodigious Muse. Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. ernsT, G. (2014): “Non solo la conocchia e il fuso. Figure di donne guerriere nel Rinascimento,” B@belonline, 16/17, pp. 159–167. fInuccI, V. (2006): “When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro,” in N.J. Miller, N. Yavneh, (eds.), Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World, New York—Aldershot: Ashgate, p. 116–128. fonTe, M. (1600): Il merito delle donne, scritto da Moderata Fonte in due giornate, ove chiaramente si scuopre quanto siano elle degne e più perfette de gli huomini, In Venetia: presso Domenico Imberti. — (1988): Il merito delle donne: ove chiaramente si scuopre quanto siano elle degne e più perfette de gli uomini, ed. A. Chemello, Mirano (Venezia): Eidos. — (1997): The Worth of Women: Wherein is clearly revealed their Nobility and their Superiority to Men [l merito delle done (1592)], ed. and trans. V. Cox, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. — (2006): Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance, ed. V. Finucci, trans. J. Kisacky, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 Mythological Epic and Chivalric Fiction in Moderata Fonte’s and Lucrezia Marinella’s Poems 295 marInella L. (1601): La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne co’ diffetti et mancamenti degli huomini, Venetia: Gio. Battista Ciotti. — (1635): L’Enrico, overo Bisantio acquistato, poema heroico, Venetia: Ghirardo Imberti. — (1999): The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men, trans. A. Dunhill, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. — (2009): Enrico, or Byzantium Conquered. A Heroic Poem, trans. M.G. Stampino, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. marTellI, D. (2011): Polifonie. Le donne a Venezia nell’età di Moderata Fonte (seconda metà del secolo XVI), Padova: Cooperativa Libraria Editrice della Università di Padova. maTraInI, C. (1555): Rime e prose, Lucca: Busdraghi. — (1989): Rime e lettere, crit. ed. G. Rabitti, Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua. papp, J. (2016): “Female body-male body: The valiant Hungarian women of Eger and Szigetvár from the 16th century in historiography, literature, and art,” Cogent Arts & Humanities, 3, pp. 1–17. pIccolomInI, E.S. (1532): Historia Bohemica, Cologne: Gotthard Hittorp. reInle, C. (2000): “Exempla weiblicher Stärke? Zu den Ausprägungen des mittelalterlichen Amazonenbildes,” Historische Zeitschrift, 270, pp. 1–38. russell, R. (1994): Italian Women Writers. A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook, Westport, Connecticut—London: Greenwood Press. sarrocchI, M. (1606): La Scanderbeide poema heroico, Roma: Lepido Facij. sToppIno, E. (2013): “Early Modern Amazons: Teaching Conlict in Representation,” in K. Nelson (ed.), Attending to early Modern Women. Conlict and Concord, Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp. 207–218. TaglIaferro, G. (2006): “Martiri, eroi, principi e beati: i patrizi veneziani e la pittura celebrativa nell’età di Lepanto,” in M. Chiabò and F. Dogli (eds.), Guerre di religione sulle scene del Cinque-Seicento, Roma: Torre d’Orfeo, pp. 337–375. Tasso, T. (2000): Jerusalem Delivered—Gerusalemme liberata, trans. A.M. Esolen, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press TerracIna, L. (1553): Discorso sopra il principio di tutti i canti d’Orlando Furioso, Venetia: Giolito. WarIng, C. (2007): “Laura Terracina’s Feminist Discourse (1549). Answering the Furioso,” in M. Boria and L. Russo (eds.) The Investigating Gender, Translation and Culture in Italian Studies, Leicester: Troubador Publishing, pp. 151–168. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 277-295 InsIghTs on orIgInal narraTIve fIcTIon In The polITIcal emBlemaTIcs of dIego de saavedra faJardo, andrés mendo, and francIsco garau deslindes de la ficción narrativa original en la eMbleMática política de diego de saavedra faJardo, andrés Mendo y francisco garau Antonio Bernat Vistarini John T. Cull aBsTracT This study explores the function of several types of narrative iction utilized by three of the most distinguished political emblematists of the Hispanic Baroque: Diego Saavedra Fajardo, Andrés Mendo (who borrows liberally from the work of Solórzano Pereira) and the expressly anti-Machiavellian works of Francisco Garau. We consider the rationale behind choosing the emblem as a vehicle to express Counter-reformation political thought and we trace an evolution that leads to one of the books of Garau, which reveals itself to be a highly original work that propagates traditional rhetorical procedures and at the same time it conceals a radical skepticism affecting both the form and content of the work. KeyWords: Emblems, Spanish Political Literature, Golden Age Literature, Narrative Fiction resumen Este estudio explora la utilización de la icción narrativa en tres de los emblematistas políticos más destacados del Barroco hispano: Diego Saavedra Fajardo, Andrés Mendo (que utiliza ampliamente la obra de Solórzano Pereira) y la obra expresamente antimaquiavélica de Francisco Garau. Nos preguntamos acerca del porqué de la elección del emblema para verter el pensamiento político contrarreformista y encontramos una evolución que conduce hasta el libro de Garau, donde se hace patente un trabajo original que a la vez que alarga los procedimientos retóricos tradicionales del género esconde un escepticismo radical que alcanza por igual a la forma y al contenido del libro. palaBras clave: Emblemas, política, literatura española, literatura del Siglo de Oro. Recibido: 15/12/2017. Aceptado: 18/12/2017 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 298 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull To what extent can a single emblem of the hundreds of thousands of those contained in the more than 6,500 emblem books counted by Peter Daly (2014, pp. 1–11) created throughout the Renaissance and Baroque, be deemed as truly “original”? But we can also posit the opposite question: Is there any emblem that is not totally original? The disjunctive is not as insigniicant as it may appear at irst glance, since it hints at our basic understanding of what constitutes an emblem. And we can pose the question in yet another way: is the emblem a product or a process? What portion of its spectacular publication success can be attributed to the pen of its creator (that is to say, the totality of the creators who intervened in the manufacture of this multimedia artifact) and what portion should be ascribed to a very particular process of reception? These questions, which have received various responses in the theorization of the emblem inaugurated in the studies of Albrecht Schöne, and continued by Daniel Russell, Peter Daly himself, David Graham, Sabine Mödersheim and many others up to the present time, such as Rüdiger Campe for example, place the emblem within a unique register as an artistic object.1 We are not exactly referring here to emblematic dichotomy or polarity, an extreme case of which might be Geoffrey Whitney’s book, A Choice of Emblems (Leyden, 1586), which Rosemary Freeman, the foremost expert on Elizabethan and Jacobean emblems, characterized as a work with practically nothing original; while at the other end of the spectrum, and more dificult to offer examples of, we might ind one of those alchemical books of emblems such as the Atalanta fugiens of Michael Maier (Frankfurt, 1617–18),2 or the Philosophia reformata of Johann Daniel Mylius (Frankfurt, 1622), which elicit a radical reaction of surprise due to their images and texts that at times strike us as totally unexpected. We seek instead to inquire in some depth as to the mode of composition, selection, articulation and reading of these incredibly special objects that comprise a considerable part of Renaissance and Baroque literature. We are all aware that the concept of authorship as applied to emblem books is something problematic as far back as 1531 when the Emblematum liber, signed by the jurist Andrea Alciato, appeared in Augsburg, with the decisive intervention of its printer Steyner. Alciato, to a great extent, was nothing more than the translator of some Greek epigrams.3 But that apparently simple invention that fuses at minimum For current bibliography on this topic see Daly 2014, pp. 39–55. See Joscelyn Godwin’s prologue to the 2007 Spanish translation of Maier (pp. 11–62), and more speciically on the topic at hand, see Pursˇ 2006, pp. 31–46. 3 See Mino Gabriele’s introduction to his edition of Alciato (1999, pp. xxi–xxxiv) and for a more detailed annotation of the 1531 edition, see De Angelis (1984). 1 2 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 299 the three well-known elements of pictura, inscriptio and subscriptio soon revealed such a degree of complexity that it had to be integrated into the system of artistic creation and communication—and within the theoretical framework of literary genres— taking into account with very careful consideration its unarticulated characteristics in terms of form, ontology, semantics, functionality and intentionality. Space limitations necessitate that we restrict ourselves here to a rather narrow focus that cannot take into account the full extent of the process of emblematic invention and elaboration. We have chosen to concentrate on how certain Spanish emblem books that present themselves explicitly as works of political relection articulated ideas on narrative iction. At the same time we will analyze the evolution of a mode of exposition of political thought within the emblematic genre, a genre lexible enough to accomodate every conceivable literary ploy and stylistic device. Claudio Clemente, in his Maquiavelismo degollado4 (preliminary materials, paragraph 3), seems to distrust the use of exempla, and of historical anecdotes, even when its origin is sacred, for he was acutely aware that they could serve as a very powerful source of deceit when wisely manipulated by those ideologues against whom he waged combat over matters of state. Thus, he afirmed that: “Statists [that is to say, the adherents of Machiavellian reason of State] deceive the common people with a coating of religion, and they make use of it as best suits their interests.”5 Nonetheless, they can of course be convinced by a convenient counter-attack of “authorities from Holy Scripture and with sacred examples, with the misfortunes of the persecutors of the Church. [ ] Reigning and conquering depend on the will of God: this is proven by the tribulations of some and the fortunate blessings of others, with some facts and sayings worthy of being written with gilded letters” (ibid., §4).6 In this way, from the very beginning of his treatise he availed himself of iction, and the entire work is thus subject, from this entrance-way, to a narrative First published in Latin in 1636, the critical consensus no longer appears to believe that the author’s name is a pseudonym for J. Eusebio Nieremberg, as Palau y Dulcet speculated (Hendrickson, p. 203). A recent edition of the Jesuit Clemente has been published by Luis Felipe Jiménez and Antonio Núñez Martínez. 5 “Los estadistas engañan al vulgo con capa de religión, y se valen della como les viene mejor a sus intereses.” 6 “…autoridades de la Sagrada Escritura y con ejemplos sagrados, con las desdichas de los perseguidores de la Iglesia. […] De la voluntad de Dios depende el reinar y vencer: pruébase con los malos sucesos de algunos y felices augmentos de otros, con algunos hechos y dichos dignos de ser escritos con letras de oro…” 4 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 300 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull illusion in the irst person. What is more, he proves to be a narrator who presents himself as being able to hide and dissimulate using the best weapons wielded by those same Machivellians against whom he must wage combat: With the same determination I endeavored to learn the mysteries of Politicians, so that having uncovered all of their secrets, everyone might come to despise this mortal pestilence of the commerce and dealings of some men with others. This, then, is the reason that excited my curiosity, and this is my plan. In order to execute it, I cannot deny that I disguised myself and I dissembled a little bit, (ibid., p. 17).7 Thus a political treatise begins as though it was a short story (the irst person narrator does not attempt to hide the ictitious nature of the plot): “Aquí, señor, no es fácil decir lo que vi y las palabras que oí; vi cosas más admirables y oí lo que aún me causó más crecida admiración…” (ibid., pp. 18ff.).8 He invents an “experiential” story of a supposed “political” ceremony (using the adjective contemptuously, as with “statist” previously, in order to refer to those defenders of Machiavellian reason of State) that hints at a parody of the Christian liturgy: “Here, sir, it is not easy say what I saw and the words that I heard; I saw even more admirable things and I heard things that increased my admiration even more…” (ibid., pp. 11–12).9 Thus, even though this is followed by the standard sort of argumentation found in a treatise of this nature, the framework is a iction narrated in the irst person where the protagonist attends a meeting of “politicians” (also called “pseudo-politicians”) belonging to the sect of worshippers of reason of State. With this Clemente inaugurates, on the chronological threshold of the books we are analyzing, and at the apogee of the inluence of the Conde-Duque de Olivares (ibid., pp. 122), the articulation of an original ictional narrative as a persuasive model, distinct from the accumulation of exempla and the appeal to authorities (techniques which manifest themselves in very modest quantities in his discourse). “Con la misma determinación procuré yo conocer los misterios de los Políticos, para que habiendo descubierto sus secretos vengan todos en aborrecimiento deste contagio mortal del comercio y trato de unos hombres con otros. Esta es pues la razón que excitó mi curiosidad, y aquesta mi pretensión, y para ponerla en execución, no puedo negar que me disfracé y disimulé algún tanto.” 8 “Colegí por algunos indicios que estaba cerca el día en que la orden de los Políticos celebraba su principal iesta: fuime a uno que sospeché era el sacristán y guarda de la capilla de aquel templo, que en más veneración se tenía….” 9 “Aquí, señor, no es fácil decir lo que vi y las palabras que oí; vi cosas más admirables y oí lo que aún me causó más crecida admiración….” 7 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 301 Clemente constructs an imaginary amphitheater in which, hidden, he observes through cracks in the closed door participants in a conclave who ritualistically espouse execrable “Machiavellian” arguments. The exempla and authorities, not even those of Holy Scripture (and perhaps these less than any other), are given no more credit by the “politicians” of such a sect “than the fabulous books of chivalry” (Ibid., 39).10 Both explicitly and formally, the book contains the negation of the possibility of convincing the sect by means of anecdotes and examples. However, by means of the use of a form of litotes, in which the narrator relates what he will not tell us, it abounds in biblical stories, etc. (“I will not say..., nor will I say...” et passim [“No diré , ni diré”]). Clemente constantly stresses the insuficiency of the anecdote to convince Machiavelli (a historian, lest us not forget): Once again I ask you, oh Machiavelli: “When you hear and read these things, tell me, upon your faith (if you have any), tell me, do you have suficient courage and shame, or, better expressed, do you have suficient madness and impiety to persuade your sectarians that in civil government they should prefer pagan religion to Christian religion?” (ibid., p. 52).11 The answer, of course, is yes. This book also passes in review the efforts by the successive heirs of the House of Austria to persevere in a Spanish Catholic monarchy, and the rewards that ensue, and which will continue beneitting the entire orb, as long as they remain steadfast and persevere (see the emphasis on ibid., pp. 141–142). We have used this text as our point of departure because it reveals, although in an incipient and supericial manner, the presence of an element of iction in the irst person that is suspicious of the eficacy of authorities and the argumentation of treatises to sway political behavior in an anti-Machiavellian direction. In addition, due to its chronological and thematic proximity, it serves as a threshold leading to three Spanish emblematic works with explicit political content that we will comment upon briely from this particular analytical angle. We will focus then on three works published during the second half of the seventeenth century, in the period between 1642 and 1700, which share common concerns—and responses that are not markedly different—pertaining to the state, the exercise of power by “…que los fabulosos libros de caballería.” “Aquí otra vez te vuelvo a preguntar, oh Maquiavelo: ¿Cuándo oyes y lees estas cosas, dime, por tu fe (si es que tienes alguna), dime, tienes bastante ánimo y vergüenza, o, por mejor decir, tienes bastante locura e impiedad para persuadir a tus sectarios que en el gobierno civil antepongan la religión gentílica a la cristiana?” 10 11 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 302 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull the ruler, and the moral and religious limits of his action. The three books are: Idea de un príncipe político cristiano representada en cien empresas, of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1642), the Príncipe perfecto y ministros ajustados, by the Jesuit Andrés Mendo (1662) and the Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza, by the fellow Jesuit Francisco Garau (1700). Indeed, during the period when Clemente was publishing his Maquiavelismo degollado, Saavedra Fajardo was giving shape to the early outlines and drafts that would eventually lead to the Idea de un príncipe político cristiano.12 The insertion of this work in the genre known as “mirrors of princes” reminds us that the Spanish version of the very inluential De regimine principum of Aegidius Romanus, helped to increase the genre’s popularity, since its translator, Juan García de Castrojeriz (Glosa castellana al Regimiento de príncipes, 1494) added some ictional tales to his source material. From that point on, the genre permitted any number of different manifestations of literary iction,13 climaxing in the Relox de príncipes by fray Antonio de Guevara, a work whose semi-novelistic framing device was inherited from the Libro áureo de Marco Aurelio. Its predilection for novelties—“because things that are old cause disgust, and those that are new whet the appetite”14—represents a milestone for this type of work typical of secular humanism. The anecdotes taken from more or less certiiable sources, usually ancient historians, give rise to the inclusion of original stories (a fact that does not preclude their incessant censures of the literature of iction that was gaining in popularity during those years, as was the case with moralists who followed in the footsteps of Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives). In so doing, the Franciscan Guevara—as Emilio Blanco explains— was only making use of similitudo, classiied by Cicero in the Topica among the “intrinsic” oratorical arguments, where adducing invented tales is tolerated.15 Treatises on the education of princes garnered renewed and vigorous popularity after the publication in 1531 of Machiavelli’s The Prince (curiously, the same year as of the irst edition of Alciato’s Emblematum liber). We will refrain An initial version was published in 1640 (Múnich, Nicolao Enrico), with a more deinitive edition in 1642 (Milan) that included an additional impresa and a reorganization of the content to provide better continuity in the educational discourse of a prince. We cite from the recent edition of S. López Poza. 13 On this topic see Galino Carrillo. 14 “…porque las cosas viejas ponen hastío y las que son nuevas despiertan el apetito.” The quote derives from the Epístolas familiares (I, 10, 72), and is repeated by Blanco in his edition of the Relox de príncipes (Introducción, p. XXXIII). 15 Cicero, Topica (X, 41–44). See Blanco (ibid., p. LI). 12 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 303 from summarizing the characteristics of works of this type that appeared between 1531 up until the publication of the Idea by Saavedra.16 Titles such as Francisco de Monzón’s Espejo del príncipe cristiano (1544); Felipe de la Torre’s Institución de un rey cristiano (1556); Furió Ceriol’s El concejo y consejeros del príncipe (1559), as well as others such as P. Barbosa Homen’s Discursos de la jurídica y verdadera razón de estado [...] contra Maquiavelo y Bodino y los demás políticos de nuestro tiempo sus secuaces (1626); and, above all, the diffusion of works such as that of Justus Lipsius, Politicorum sive civilis doctrina… (1589, translated into Spanish by Bernardino de Mendoza in 1604), of the Ragion di stato by Giovanni Botero (1589, with an expanded version in 1598), and of the Tratado de la religión y virtudes que ha de tener el príncipe cristiano by Pedro de Rivadeneira (1595), constitute an impassioned roll-call of widespread works in the Hispanic realm that from very early on debated the ideas of the Florentine historian. However, as we indicated at the beginning of this essay, casting this incandescent political material (and the others that make up this book) into emblems implies a much more complicated operation than the mere inclusion of some engravings with the addition of a motto at the beginning of each discourse, since the author has abandoned any classical structure of a typical treatise. Starting with the very heading, he privileges instead invention, the association of ideas, sources and concepts, more or less enigmatic allusion and visuality over and above the conveyance of extraneous materials in order to legitimize and put his own stamp on his voice: “I have attempted novelty in the invention, but I do not know if I have attained it…,” Saavedra says, and he confesses also to writing “so that the experiences acquired over the course of thirty-four years do not perish with me…” (Saavedra 1992, p. 174).17 Likewise, we must bear in mind a relevant fact: Saavedra Fajardo’s book is, properly speaking, the irst “thematic” Spanish For an overview of the fortune of the genre in Spanish context during the sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, see Truman 1999: 12–31. 17 “He procurado que sea nueva la invención, y no sé si lo habré conseguido…”; “para que no se perdiesen conmigo las experiencias adquiridas en treinta y cuatro años….” Ericio Puteano, in the epistle appended to the end of the book, concurs with Saavedra, placing on a second level, beneath invention, erudition and other elements appropriate to the traditional panegyric: “Other paintings lower down, because for us this is an Apeles who with his wit […]. Other books lower down: for us, this is a writer…” (ibid., p. 190) [“Abajo las otras pinturas, para nosotros este es un Apeles que con su ingenio […]. Abajo los otros libros: para nosotros este es un escritor…”]. 16 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 304 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull emblem book.18 Gómez Martínez19 has pointed out the “essayistic” nature of the Empresas; but that would be an obvious, and to a certain extent, limited deinition, if we do not stress that we are dealing with a harmoniously intricate discourse. In Saavedra it is essential to pay attention to the tension between the fragment (the “imprese”) and the whole (the “idea” of the title), a tension, as we have noted, not previously found in the Spanish emblematic tradition, at least not to to this extent. The pedagogical presentation of the text is the fundamental element that provides cohesion, but it is enhanced by the personal experiences of the author pertaining to the themes that he develops. In a sense, Saavedra’s book is written in the irst person. The author hints at this in his dedication to the ill-fated prince Baltasar Carlos: “And because in political materials the discourse can be deceptive if they are not assured by experience of the cases…” (Saavedra Fajardo 1992, p. 169).20 The irst person voice cannot fail to be present in a book that adduces a need for the implication of personal experience, and which, above all, is the result of a codex excerptorius that the author has been nourishing and polishing throughout his life. Thus the “I” (in a dialogical connection with the “you” of the prince as the explicit recipient) is sprinkled here and there throughout the paragraphs. We also note a frequent doubling back to the author’s present in the anecdotes related. This tends to happen, signiicantly, at the end of the impresa. In a good number of them the inal paragraph features the irst person voice, upon which rests as a closure upon which the discourse rests and takes its ultimate meaning. We ind this strategy utilized, with diverse formulas, in the conclusion of the following 28 imprese; that is to say, in almost a third of the total number: 1, 5, 9 (with an abundant use of the irst person on the theme of envy amplio), 12 (a direct observation on the atrocities of war), 22, 24 and 29 (all three of which apply Obviously there are other books that might be characterized as thematic, but whose emblematic content is greatly reduced, such as those by Francisco de Guzmán (1565), C. Pérez de Herrera (1598 and 1618), or books dedicated to the chronicling of public festivals or the description of funeral exequies such as that of M.A. Ortí (1640) or the anonymous Libro de las honras de María de Austria (1603). Perhaps a portion of J.F. de Villava’s book (1613), in spite of its disorder, might be argued to have predated Saavedra’s contribution as the irst Spanish emblem book to be organized along certain thematic lines of continuity. 19 Gómez Martínez unpaginated web edition. See also the clariications of Neumeister on this topic (1998, pp. 321–32). 20 “Y porque en las materias políticas se suele engañar el discurso si la experiencia de los casos no las asegura….” 18 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 305 the discourse to current history), 32 (discourse in irst person on the book’s intentions, pp. 446 and 449), 33 (manifestation of personal experience, p. 454), 39, 43, 45, 47, 50, 54, 57 (a more “literary” ending of this last one, and of personal reinforcement by means of quoting some lines from Tasso: “I close the discourse of this impresa,” pp. 703–4) [“Cierro el discurso de esta empresa”], 60 (“I close this material with two warnings,” p. 716) [“Cierro esta materia con dos advertencias”], 66 (presence of the irst person in the relection on science and the convenience of study for the ruler, p. 755), 69 a very personal impresa on the development of economic ideas, and also in the irst person, on the value of money, etc.), 87 (“Over the course of a few years we have seen,” pp. 933 and 935) [“En pocos años hemos visto”], 89, 90 (“From everything that has been said, one infers...,” p. 951), [“De todo lo dicho se iniere”]—an impersonal expression that should of course be interpreted as personal: “I infer”—: 91 (“I do not pretend that with this doctrine...,” p. 958) [“No pretendo con esta dotrina”], 94 (“I well believe...,” p. 981) [“Yo bien creo”], 95 (irst person discourse on the Italian conlicts with which Saavedra was intimately acquainted, concluding once again with recourse to personal experience: “From everything stated one infers...,” p. 989) [“De todo lo dicho se iniere”], and 97 (direct advice once again on Italian politics: “Therefore it seems convenient that the maxims of Spain be implemented in Italy,” (p. 1006) [“Por esto parece conveniente que en Italia se muden las máximas de España”]. While it is true that Saavedra does not include ictional tales in the strictest sense of the term, his choice of the emblematic genre—which is fragmentary, replete with conceits, cognitively demanding for the reader and marked by a strong desire for rhetorical inventio (given its articulation of pictura and inscriptio plus the extended development of a sententious prose element)—results in a lively theoretical discourse on a literary level that is far superior to any traditional exposition of ideas on the political state and the behavior of the ruler. The word “Idea” in the title thus acquires a much more complex meaning. The next author of an emblematic political treatise in Spanish is the Jesuit Andrés Mendo. We cannot state that his Príncipe perfecto y ministros ajustados (1662)21 manifests the same desire for originality as the work of Saavedra Fajardo, nor that it shares the same quality. This is because, in the irst place, as Beatriz Antón has A irst and unillustrated edition, later repudiated by its author, appeared in Salamanca (Diego Cossío, 1657); and a printing almost identical to that of 1662 issued a year earlier from the same lyonnaise press. Critics as well as the author himself consider the 1662 edition to be the editio optima. 21 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 306 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull demonstrated, it is almost in its entirety a Spanish version of the Latin emblems composed by Juan de Solórzano Pereira,22 but also because on the whole, its author presents much more limited literary ambitions. The differences between Mendo (Solórzano) and Saavedra are substantial. The former’s elimination of “I” is almost total, as a result of which we ind a parallel revalorization of history over experience: “History teaches more in a short time than experience in much time” (Mendo, p. 99),23 he asserts, recommending its reading to the ruler. He reinforces this notion, in fact, with a historical anecdote on king Alfonso V taken from the Dichos y hechos de Alfonso, rey de Aragón by Antonio Beccadelli, il Panormita: “having fallen ill in Capua, he read the history of Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus, and he attributed the curing of his illness to this diversion, and said that neither Avicenna, nor Hippocrates, but rather Curtius, had restored his health.”24 Nevertheless, by restricting his anecdote to the discourse proper, Saavedra Fajardo is much more strict than Mendo. Between the irst and second editions of his book, Saavedra eliminated the majority of the mythological references, while in Mendo the recourse to mythology is widespread, at times mixed in indiscriminately among other anecdotal sources. Thus il “Documento 27” (“Let him not allow excessive delicacies, which are the ruin of kingdom” [“No consienta delicias demasiadas, que son la ruyna de los reynos”]), he includes Hercules in the same enumerative paragraph of historical examples, without concern for continuity and as though they belonged in the same category, between an anecdote on the emperor Heliogabalus and the recollection of recuerdo de “the loss of our Spain when it was occupied by the Saracens” (“la pérdida de nuestra España quando la ocuparon los sarracenos”): “Hercules besmirched his glorious labors by effeminizing himself lasciviously with his obsession with Omphale in Lydia” (Mendo 139) [“Escureció Hércules sus gloriosos trabajos afeminándose For information on the rather improbable edition of 1651 and other details on the life and works of the author, his direct relationship with Mendo’s book and a detailed bibliography, see Antón 2008, pp. 249–67. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that such relationships, when we are dealing with emblematics, do not invalidate a given book’s originality since, to a certain extent, any stray element is new and original once it is inserted into the emblematic artifact. A very interesting case to help illustrate this one is George Wither’s appropriation of the emblems of Gabriel Rollenhagen. 23 “Más enseña la historia en poco tiempo que la experiencia en mucho.” 24 “[…] que aviendo enfermado en Capua, leyó la historia de Alejandro Magno en Curcio, y atribuyó a este alivio haber sanado de la dolencia, y dixo que ni Avicena, ni Hypócrates, sino Curcio, le avia restituydo la salud.” 22 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 307 deliciosamente con la aición de Omphales en Lydia”]. It should not surprise us therefore to ind that Mendo reveals himself to be an attentive reader and admirer of fray Antonio de Guevara (Mendo, Documento 32, p. 158). If in Saavedra there is practically no mythological invention, in Mendo it is the primary theme of emblems 3, 4, 10, 11, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 34, 38, 49, 51, 58, 65, 72, 76, 77 and 79. The animalistic story of a fantastic nature can be found in emblems 22 and 24. The issue planted by the utilization of such devices in these treatises in an emblematic context is somewhat complex. We can best formulate it in the words of Peter M. Daly when he calls into question the concepts of veracity and falsehood, of reality or iction, in emblematic materials: Do we believe as true what we see in emblematic pictorial motifs, which may inform either or both picture and text(s)? Do we believe in the truth of the snake swallowing its tail, the bear licking its unshaped cub into form, the pelican sprinkling its own blood on its chicks, the salamander lourishing in ire, the phoenix being reborn from its own ashes? Readers can extend the list almost indeinitely. Truth is not necessarily only validated by science, logic, mathematics, observation, experimentation or so-called objectivity” (Daly, pp 46–7).25 25 It is worthwhile to heed the considerations raised throughout this chapter, entitled “Truth in emblems.” López Poza is justiiably perplexed by a line of commentary from Saavedra’s impresa 9, when she states that “this image is not easily understood” (“no se entiende bien esta imagen”): “Exposing its eyes to the rays of the sun, the owl provokes emulation and envy in other birds. They would not persecute it if it enclosed itself in the oblivion and shadows of the night” (Saavedra Fajardo, p. 262) [“El sacar a los rayos del sol sus ojos el búho causa emulación y envidia a las demás aves. No le persiguieran si se encerrara en el olvido y sombras de la noche”]. The fact is that we should not always expect in emblematics the primary and traditional meaning of a given symbol, but rather its manipulation. Daly comments thus on a similar case found in Georgette de Montenay: “Georgette de Montenay has an emblem in which eagles peck at a carcass. De Montenay doubtless knew her Bible better than most of us do. She would have known the biblical passages that relate eagle to carrion, carcass, body, and prey (e.gr., Job 9:26, Matthew 24:28 and Luke 17:37). How that relationship is illustrated raises different questions. The Henkel and Schone Handbuch wrongly identiies the birds in de Montenay’s emblem as vultures (Geier) although the emblem writer herself names them eagles (aigle) in her subscriptio. Whether eagles actually feed on carcasses, as do vultures, may not be relevant. One should not necessarily expect accurate nature information from all emblems. Does ‘accurate’ only mean according to the most modern knowledge available at the time? The information underlying many a nature motif in an emblem may not have been based on the then most modern scientiic information available. In fact often some other tradition such as the Bible may have been the emblem writer’s source or authority, if unstated rather than scientiic observation. This would also apply to the eagle emblem by de Montenay” (Daly, p. 51). Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 308 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull The truth or falsehood, the reality or iction of an example adduced is not as important to the emblematist as the lesson (moral, political, religious, etc.) that can be extracted from this piece, from this “tessera” (“emblem”) of human understanding exposed before our senses and which, along with the others, makes up a great argumentative mosaic. Once again, the choice of the emblematic structure and invention enriches and makes more complex the mere political lesson as it would have been developed in a treatise, imbricating it with forms of the imagination where a certain suspension of certainties and univocal interpretations is produced. However, the author who without doubt carried to an extreme the possibilities of the emblematic genre with iction and political discourse was the Jesuit Francisco Garau and, most particularly, in the fourth of his series of emblem books: the one whose very title reveals the most explicitly political content. In itself it constitutes a complex declaration of intentions: Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza, con esfuerzos de la verdad en el tribunal de la razón, alegados en cuarenta y dos máximas políticas y morales, ilustradas con todo género de erudición, sacra y humana, contra las vanas ideas de la política de Maquiavelo (Barcelona: Cormellas, 1700).26 Francisco Garau was born in the Catalonian city of Gerona in 1640, a year of turbulence, wars and uprisings on the Iberian peninsula, with the revolt of Catalonia and the proclamation of of the Portuguese Restoration. At the age of 15, on November 8th of 1655, he entered into the Jesuit novitiate. His studies and dedication to the Society of Jesus resulted in his teaching of humanities and theology, initially, and later to his appointment as censor for the Inquisition, and then Rector of Jesuit colleges in Barcelona, Urgell, Mallorca and Zaragoza. His principal creative production, enormously popular and widely disseminated, consisted of the four titles on moral-political themes developed from the point of departure of a very Baroque integration of sources deriving from emblematics, There is no incongruence in the numbering. It is the third book of the series “El sabio instruido de la naturaleza” but the fourth of his emblem books. In this case, and different from the previous ones, it includes illustrations from its very irst edition of Barcelona, 1700, a scheme maintained in the subsequent editions of Zaragoza, 1704; Madrid, 1710 and Barcelona, 1712. His third emblem book was El sabio instruido de la Gracia. This was published in two volumes based on earlier unillustrated editions (Barcelona, 1688 and 1690) to which engravings would later be added: Olite, 1693; Barcelona, 1698, 1703 and 1711 y Madrid, 1709. This work was translated into Latin in two unillustrated editions: Sapiens a divina gratia instructus... in ideis evangelicis ac moralibus, Ingolstadt, 1731 and 1732. In other studies we have detailed the editorial history of the production of this Catalan Jesuit. 26 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 309 the literature of fables, exemplary literature and homiletics. He died in Barcelona on July 10th of 1701. Garau’s body of emblematic works, the series of El sabio instruido, respects for all practical purposes the formal scheme of Spanish emblematic literature of the seventeenth century, with its tendency to include a lengthy and discursive prose ampliication. It is worth noting that the picturae, which tend to be more narrative vignettes than synthesizing symbolic representations, are directly related to the prose content in the subscriptio which Garau in fact terms “Ficción.” This “Fiction” is, as a general rule, a stylistically Baroque reworking of fabulist literature,27 most notably the apologues of Aesop, and typographically distinguished by the use of italics in the icción proper. The illustrations are not included in all editions, perhaps because in its origins the book may have been conceived of primarily as more a collection of maxims, dicta et facta, or commonplaces designed as an aid to sacred preaching, rather than as pure emblem books. But subsequently he clearly abandoned his initial plan. Immediately following the “Ficción,” which appears beneath the pictura, we ind in cursive a sententious enunciation termed “Máxima,” that summarizes the general moral or political content, which is then elaborated upon in an always lengthy and sometimes sinuous prose commentary. [Figure 1] In addition to extensive scholia in Latin in the margins and at the bottom of the page, Garau often includes pithy remarks or glosses in Castilian in the margins, perhaps as a didactic tool or as a mnemonic device. The sources of the scholia include fabulistic and moral literature, the Bible, Patristic and Senecan literature, collections of aphorisms, modern and classical historians, etc. However, Garau reveals his adherence to emblem literature in the very introduction to El Sabio instruido de la naturaleza, accentuating the distance between his work and that of some other emblematists that preceded him. It is for this reason that our point of departure was a questioning of the originality of these works, since the evolution of the emblem books of Francisco Garau offer some interesting points of relection. Let us begin with the process of introduction and the subsequent evolution of the meaning of the picturae. The irst edition of the Sabio instruido de la naturaleza appeared without illustrations, but the structure of the book and the manner of presenting its content point towards On the relationship between emblem and fable, with considerations on Garau, see Bernat Vistarini 2001 and Bernat Vistarini and T. Sajó 2007, pp. 83–91. This relationship has been the object of a number of studies, including that of Paul J. Smith, with the most current bibliography (2005, pp. 161–85). 27 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 310 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull Figure 1. Francisco Garau,Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza, con esfuerzos de la verdad en el tribunal de la razón, alegados en cuarenta y dos máximas políticas y morales, ilustradas con todo género de erudición, sacra y humana, contra las vanas ideas de la política de Maquiavelo. Barcelona: Cormellas, 1700, 78-79. an emblematic reading. And, in fact, we can perceive this clearly beginning with the edition of 1690, which includes the picturae in order to perfectly complete the composite. The emblem does not require originality in any of its constituent parts in order to give rise to an original artefact in its entirety. In fact, we have not mentioned up to this point an observation readily apparent to anyone familiar with the emblematic tradition and the most popular of the Renaissance and Baroque emblem books: a good number of the illustrations of the editio optima of the Sabio instruido de la naturaleza (Barcelona, 1691) are copied from Joachim Camerarius’s Fabulae Aesopicae (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1571). This beautiful 1691 Barcelona second printing offers a series of new woodcut prints, more highly ornamented, better carved and each with its corresponding inscriptio, which were previously lacking. In addition, the author adds occasional Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 311 phrases or paragraphs not included in previous editions and which expound especially upon the religious references. All of the emblem books by Garau have in fact unillustrated irst editions, with the exception of El sabio instruido, which, curiously, is the book whose content is most explicitly tied to political persuasion and with a pragmatic intent. As a consequence, this is the only one of the four books in the series that was born as a fully inished emblem book. This is no doubt intentional. In this book, the last one in the series, Garau has taken his technique to an extreme, and he has clearly mastered his expressive devices with much greater creative freedom. After the interlude afforded by The Wise Man Educated by Grace (“El sabio instruido de la Gracia”), Garau returns here to Nature as teacher. At least that is what the title declares. But if we examine the content carefully we ind that eight of the emblems (1, 4, 8, 13, 22, 30, 35 and 39) have a mythological content and four others can be characterized by a direct presentation of human behaviors (7, 11, 15 and 26). What is true, however, is that in every case the narrative tale is invented by the author on the foundation of a more or less familiar source: a symbol, and animal trait, a mythological element or character, which provide a point of departure in order to exercise his inventive imagination. Let us consider just one example of Francico Garau’s witty technique, taken from the Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza. In emblem 5 he creates a fable following the basic scheme of the personiication of some natural elements. In this particular case they are not animals but rather burning wood and the ire it produces, which enter into dialogue: Some trunks and branches were insistently consumed in lames in order to make the ire greater and more resplendent, and the lames, as the progeny of the ire’s vigor, wanted their blazon to receive due credit. But upon seeing that the more that they raged in order to aggrandize the conlagration, the more it either disdained them or led from them, they elevated themselves even higher, and extended their activity to nearby palaces, in the hopes that by improving the material consumed to include the most exquisite and gaudy to be found on earth, they would better sustain it. But the ire, which rendered everything it encountered into equal cinders, ravaged without differentiation the gilded vaulting and silks of the palace as well as the withered leaves and coarse trunks. Thus seeing the ire to be leeting and scornful of their burning, the lames accused it of being ungrateful and forgetful of those responsible for its brilliance and being. But the ire, without deviating from its destiny, in tongues of light said to them: You have no right to complain, for I do not deny you as parents, nor do I deny the earth as my homeland. I know that I owe you my existence and I am grateful to you for it; but you will surely not Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 312 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull refute that it is owing more to Heaven and God than to you or I. Thus allow me to render unto God and Heaven and be happy with ruling all that is below, for I am yours, and I will always be GOD’s BEFORE ANYONE ELSE’s (Garau 1700, § 80, p. 78).28 As in all other cases in this book, Garau composes an absolutely personal tale, but of a fabulistic nature. It is important to emphasize that this fable, the “Ficción,” in the manner of an apologue or exemplum, precedes the explanatory discourse. And there is certainly no explicit allusion to Machiavelli in this emblem. The pieces of the puzzle are jumbled and it is the reader who must put them together and inish its articulation. Garau was very clear on this point in the prologue or “Razón de la obra” of his previous book (El sabio instruido de la Gracia): it is the reader who must recompose the discourse with the varied materials offered by the author, and the reader must work assiduously and wittily to weave the fragments together. Only then can the reader apply the knowledge extracted, as was the process with Gracián as well, adjusting it in a lexible matter according to the circumstances. In this book the sensation of it being a puzzle is accentuated by the fact that each paragraph of the lengthy explanations in a prose imbued with citations and erudition is numbered consecutively from the beginning to the end of the book (502 paragraphs), as though he wanted us to know that there was a connecting thread underlying the forty-two chapters. That tension detected between the fragment and the whole in the book by Saavedra is even more intense here. The emblematic syntax is of course manifest: “I reveal only the concepts/ conceits that might be useful to you on a given occasion. I do not chew them up “Deshacíanse en llamas a porfía unos troncos, y ramas para hacer mayo, y más lucido al fuego, en quien, como en hijo de sus ardores, querían acreditar su blasón. Y viendo que cuanto más ellos se abrasaban para engrandecerle, tanto más él o los despreciaba o los huía, levantándose siempre más extendieron su actividad a los Palacios vecinos, esperando que mejorándole la materia en lo más rico y vistoso de la tierra, le entretendrían mejor. Pero el fuego, como lo hacía todo igualmente pavesas, así se despejaba de los artesones dorados y de las sedas como de la hojarasca y los troncos. Viéndole, pues, siempre fugitivo y esquivo a sus ardores le motejaron de ingrato y desconocido a quienes debía su lucimiento y su ser. Mas él sin torcer de su destino en lenguas de luz, les dijo: No tenéis razón en vuestras quejas, porque yo no os desconozco por padres, ni por mi patria a la tierra. Sé que os debo el ser y os lo agradezco; pero no me negaréis que es más del Cielo y de Dios que vuestro y mío. Dejadme pues cumplir con Dios y con el Cielo, y de ahí abajo mandad, que vuestro soy, y seré… ANTES DE DIOS QUE DE NADIE.” 28 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 313 in Sermons, so that you will have the pleasure of making them your own with your wit” (Garau 1709, “Razón de la obra,” unpaginated).29 In addition, from his very irst book Garau adheres to the irreplaceable value of the exemplum, of the moral tale as superior to any kind of argumentative discourse, since only in this manner can the excessive subtleties, potentially pernicious, be unpacked before the reader’s eyes and ears. He is thus able to demonstrate with evidence that which can only be attained laboriously by means of the syllogism or the precept. He says that “philosophers, with the rigid severity of their laws and the imperiousness of their precepts, stirred up antagonism between what was endearing and pleasant among the virtues,” while on the other hand the authors of fables managed to “sugarcoat theirs so sweetly with the smoothness of their ictions that the wit is left no less tasty than the will is left enamored of knowledge” (Garau 1691, “Introducción,” unpaginated).30 From a rhetorical point of view Garau is an adherent of a concrete variation of the exemplum. As is known, according to his material sources, we can distinguish among the historical exemplum—which of course corresponds to history—, the poetic type—which originated in the fable—and the verisimilar exemplum—which deals with materials from drama. The irst of these is the most prestigious because it is based on truth. The quarry from which it is mined is novelistic historiography, which provides abundant material of this type31 and which we ind in great volume in many other emblem books of this type, and even in para-emblematic genres such as engraved medallions or numismatics. But Garau, even when he is addressing themes presumably so political, and attempting to prove Machiavelli wrong, tends to make use of the invented exemplum, the poetic variation, which appeals in the irst place and in a suggestive manner to sensory perception and to the poeticized experience of the world. From the moment in which the rhetorical system, that “Descubro no más los conceptos, de que pueden servirte en la ocasión. No te los masco en Sermones, porque tengas el gusto de hacerles tuyos con tu ingenio.” For some examples of the kind of ideal “proicient” reader envisioned by Garau, see Ledo 2015, pp. 103–112. 30 “Azucarar tan dulcemente los suyos con la suavidad de sus icciones que no deja menos saboreado el ingenio que enamorada de la sabiduría la voluntad.” 31 Lausberg 1990, §§411–412. We are in basic agreement with Blanco’s explanation of the discrediting of the classical utilization of the exemplum in the works of Gracián, a notion that could also be applied to the Jesuit Garau in spite of the abundance of exempla in his prose argumentation. In our opinion, it is precisely this discrediting that leads to the unique articulation of the books that make up the entire series of the Sabio instruido de la naturaleza. See Blanco 2006, pp. 47–60. 29 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 314 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull places the exemplum within the argumentation, seeks proof from the outside, at the periphery of the data that the argumentation in question is deducing, a path of freedom is opened, the limits of which are dificult to locate. In full control of his artistic resources, Garau does not need in this book anything more than a marginal dependence on images that are almost primordial (we have just seen an example with the protagonist’s ire, but we ind others in the sea and rivers), on almost trite mythological characters (Apollo, Daedalus, Fortune…), in animals deriving from a basic Aesopic or naturalistic tradition (the fox, but also the scorpion, the salamander in the midst of lames, the stellion with its skin covered in stars, the serpent with the sought-after carbuncle on its forehead…) in order to liberate his imagination and set loose a chain of ictions of his own invention.32 [Figure 2] Figure 2. Francisco Garau, Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza, con esfuerzos de la verdad en el tribunal de la razón, alegados en cuarenta y dos máximas políticas y morales, ilustradas con todo género de erudición, sacra y humana, contra las vanas ideas de la política de Maquiavelo. Barcelona: Cormellas, 1700, «Ficción 33», 415. 32 One of the great paradoxes of the entire series of the Sabio instruido de la naturaleza is its limited contribution to knowledge derived from nature, since Garau deals with poeticized nature, with the fable, or with the moral lesson. And it could not have been any other away at that particular moment of Spanish culture, since animalistic treatises such as that of Ferrer de Valdecebro (as well as his subsequent treatise dealing with birds) functioned in the same manner. A similar limitation, perhaps even more rigid, can be appreciated in the same author’s El porqué de todas las cosas (1668=2007, pp. 17–43). Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 315 Of course, the emblematic construction of Garau does not stop here. The iction is followed by a veritable waterfall of exempla of a historical nature that are linked together in the subsequent gloss. His associative process of anecdotes is so far-reaching at times that it bears resemblance to the interior monologue of a historian in a trance. It should not surprise us therefore to ind in this book an entire chapter dedicated to the superiority of the exemplum over any other kind of lesson. It is Emblem 33, where we ind a radical distrust of words: What is certain is that a mute man not infrequently explains himself better with his actions than the greatest orator with his words. Everyone understands the language of an exemplum and it convinces all. Reasons articulated with the voice suffer objections or are not understood at times (Garau 1700, § 400, p. 423).33 And by contrast, Garau expresses pedagogical, mnemotechnic and deinitive faith in the exemplum: The habits of good or evil are not transfused so much with blood as they are by way of example. What is the tiny eaglet to do when he sees his mother ix her gaze on any other light than that of the Sun? What is he to do but stare at its circle as well? It is dificult to forget and unlearn that which is taught domestically when one is wrapped in swathing-bands Therefore a wise man said that parents only give to their children through blood, a state of being hardly advantageous to that of brute beasts, but in a good example, which is the most powerful education, they can and should give as do angels, and it would be more beneicial to deny them that life, than to take away from them the use of understanding and reason. Let Princes be vessels of gold and ine porcelain due to their august preciosities; but have them always remember that in their formation they are but clay made from common mud, and that they will always reek of the odor and taste of that irst juice of which they drank, whether it ne regal nectar or poisonous hemlock (Garau 1700, § 386, pp. 407–08).34 “Lo cierto es que no pocas veces se explica mejor un mudo con sus acciones que el mayor hablador con las palabras. La lengua de un ejemplo todos la entienden y convence a todos. las razones de la voz o padecen sus objeciones o no se alcanzan a veces.” 34 “Las costumbres del bien, o el mal, no tanto se transfunden con la sangre como por el ejemplo. ¿Qué ha de hacer una pequeña Águila que ve su madre se digna de ijar los ojos en otra luz que en la del Sol? ¿Qué ha de hacer sino mirar su rueda también? Es difícil olvidar y desaprender lo que en las fajas domésticamente se aprende. Por eso decía un cuerdo que los Padres solo dan al hijo en la sangre, un ser poco ventajoso a los brutos; mas que en el buen ejemplo, que es la más poderosa educación, se lo pueden y deben dar casi igual al de los ángeles: y sería favorecerles más no darles aquella vida, que quitarles del uso del entendimiento, y razón. Sean 33 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 316 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull Garau’s book was not so much written to give a concrete anti-Machiavellian explications (which is lost, and drowned beneath the book’s rhetorical machinery and whose exposition of the problems of the contrary doctrine of reason of State, at this late point in the century smacks of a worn-out and trite discourse, with no possibility whatsoever of being even remotely original) as it was to exhibit a way to use knowledge, to warn the reader and open his eyes to the dificulty (so characteristic of the Baroque) of articulating a discourse about the world (the very discourse that the Sabio instruido de la naturaleza attempts to forge). It is a book that shows us how to convert the world into a lesson. And, obviously, within the concept of “world,” “iction” is also included, that is to say, the dramatization of the doctrine of Nature; the meeting point where far beyond the ideas of Machiavelli or of any other human being, will and the designs of God are made manifest. A Deus pictor, a God who is also poet and author of that great book that we inhabit and which enters us through the senses if we train them properly. This is the point at which the anti-Machiavellianism of Garau’s book begins and ends. With this baggage, how could “nature” possibly oppose Machiavelli? The rest is stufing. As we have indicated on another occasion, and which still seems applicable when reading his most political work, Garau attempts, from the very irst lines of the Sabio instruido, to establish the coincidence between the real world and the rhetorical model of the book. The point of departure is a topos that he repeats in the irst prologue: Dear reader, he who said that this world was a vast book in whose spacious pages in characters of various colors divine wisdom has been given to us to study, said it well. The nature of every creature is a hieroglyph, and each hieroglyph codiies a document for good living. There is no doubt that he who understands the language of Nature and knows how to listen to its voices will emerge from this course of study prudent, just, strong, temperate, and to summarize it all in one word, wise (Garau 1691, “Introducción,” unpaginated).35 los Príncipes vasos de oro, y porcelanas inas por sus preciosidades augustas; pero acuérdense que siempre en la formación son de barro, se amasan de lodo común y les dura siempre el olor y el sabor del primer jugo que bebieron, o sea néctar real o ponzoñosa cicuta.” 35 “Dijo bien, lector mío, el que dijo que era este mundo un libro grande en cuyas páginas espaciosas con caracteres de varios colores ha querido dársenos a estudiar la sabiduría divina. Es cada naturaleza de las criaturas un jeroglíico y en cada jeroglíico se cifra un documento de bien vivir… No hay duda que quien le entendiere la lengua a la Naturaleza y supiere escucharle las voces saldrá de este estudio prudente, justo, fuerte, templado y por decirlo de una vez, sabio.” Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 Insights on Original Narrative Fiction in the Political Emblematics of Diego de Saavedra... 317 Beginning with the ancient idea of the world as a book,36 Garau makes use of emblematics in order to structure his book as the world, and follows, in the presentation of his text, the same cognitive steps by which the world allows itself to be understood by us: the prerequisite intervention of the senses to allow knowledge to enter is depicted in the visuality of the pictura. The emblematic pictura both hides and reveals a “Fiction,” that is to say, a moral tale that introduces elements that are in appearance purely natural or mythological and independent of man, in human history37 and, therefore, in the history of salvation, an aspect that will subsequently be developed in the gloss: the intellectualization and erudite development that is at the same time useful in his desire to establish precepts and reinforce the chain of transmission of this knowledge In this expositive procedure Garau intersperses the anti-Machiavellian criticism of the entire work, the triumph of Providence in the face of Fortune (the theme in fact of the very irst emblem of the book) and of Christian virtue in the face of the excesses of Machiavellian tacticism. We believe that the discrediting of the exemplum along with a disillusionment as regards the validity of the historical anecdote, in combination with a lack of originality in form and style and an inability to explore in a deeper way the “instruction from nature” that the title proposed (privileging a “Fiction” that prepares us for the deceit and trickery hidden in the very root of the world), make Garau’s book quite noteworthy during the late Hispanic Baroque. In it he intuits, with great clarity, that in the inal analysis, a “melancholic prince” (Orobitg 1998) is the only option to stand in opposition to Machiavelli’s prince, in a kingdom that is not of this world. Let us not forget, inally, that in 1700, the year of the The bibliography on the notion of the world as a book from the Middle Ages to the Baroque is extremely abundant. This allegorical mode of reading attains special relevance and nuances in emblematics, culminating, as we have seen in the practice of Garau. From the pioneering study of Curtius (1955), up until that of Blumenberg (2000), there are so many others that are worthy of mention. We will limit ourselves here to recommending that of Rodríguez de la Flor (2002) and its bibliography. 37 On this point it is crucial to bear in mind the negative sense of “iction.” Its foundation of deceit is clearly present in Garau’s mind when he utilizes the term and it is key to understanding how he opposes it to Machiavelli. Examples are extremely abundant. Martínez de la Vega, in the section “Al lector” of his account of the public festivals in Valencia honor of the beatiication of Saint Thomas of Villanova, explains how one should read his text: “If you approach it with iction, I pardon you; if you do so with peace, read and pardon” (fol. 4v) [“Si llegares con icción, yo te perdono; si de paz, lee i perdona”]. 36 Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 318 Antonio Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull publication of this Tercera parte del sabio instruido de la naturaleza, Charles II was dying, and along with him, an entire era of Spanish politics. Antonio Bernat Vistarini Universitat de les Illes Balears antonio@emblematica.com John T. Cull College of the Holy Cross jcull@holycross.edu BIBlIography alcIaTo, A. (1531): Emblematum liber, Augsburg: Augustae Vindelicorum Steyner. anTón, B. (2008): “Los Emblemata centum regio politica (Madrid, 1653) de Juan de Solórzano,” in R. García Mahíques and V. Zuriaga Senent (eds.), Imagen y cultura, Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, I, pp. 249–267. BernaT vIsTarInI, A. (2001): “Emblema in fabula. El sabio instruido de la naturaleza de Francisco Garau,” in A. Bernat Vistarini and J.T. Cull (eds.), Los días del Alción. Emblemas, Literatura y Arte del Siglo de Oro, Palma: Olañeta—UIB, pp. 83–91. BernaT vIsTarInI, A. and T. saJó (2007): “Imago veritatis. 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(1999): Spanish Treatises on Government, Society and Religion in the Time of Philip II. The ‘de regimine principum’ and Associated Traditions, Leiden—Boston—Köln: Brill. vIllava, J.F. de (1613): Empresas espirituales y morales, Baeza: Fernando Díaz de Montoya. WhITney, G. (1586): A Choice of Emblems, Leyden: Christopher Plantin. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 297-320 críTIca BIBlIográfIca BooK revIeWs la relaTIvIdad lIngüísTIca: en Busca de un TerrITorIo lógIco linguistic relativity: in search of a logical territory David Durán Martínez Blanco Salgueiro, A. (2017): La relatividad lingüística (Variaciones ilosóicas). Madrid, 2017, 304 páginas. aBsTracT The thesis of the cognitive impact of language holds that human languages nontrivially affect human thought. In turn, there is linguistic diversity, to the extent that there are several thousand human languages currently in the world. Then, there is linguistic relativity, that is, cognitive diversity among speakers of different languages. In this context, the book explores the many intermediate positions that move away from the classic divergences between linguistic determinism and the total autonomy of thought. KeyWords: Linguistic relativity, linguistic diversity, cognitive impact of language, cognitive diversity, logical space. resumen La tesis del impacto cognitivo del lenguaje sostiene que las lenguas humanas afectan de forma no trivial al pensamiento. A su vez, existe diversidad lingüística, en la medida que hay varios millares de lenguas humanas que se hablan actualmente en el mundo. Luego, existe relatividad lingüística, esto es, diversidad cognitiva entre los hablantes de las diferentes lenguas. En este contexto, el libro explora la multitud de posturas intermedias que se alejan de las divergencias clásicas entre el determinismo lingüístico y la total autonomía del pensmiento. palaBras clave: Relatividad lingüística, diversidad lingüística, impacto cognitivo del lenguaje, diversidad cognitiva, espacio lógico. Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 323-326 324 David Durán Martínez La relación entre el lenguaje y el pensamiento humanos es una cuestión ya clásica dentro de la ilosofía del lenguaje y de la mente. Por norma general, se han venido sosteniendo posturas polarizadas completamente divergentes entre sí, a saber: o el pensamiento está absolutamente supeditado al lenguaje, cerrando la posibilidad a una autonomía de los procesos mentales; o, por el contrario, existe una completa independencia entre ambos. Dentro de este contexto, la hipótesis de la relatividad lingüística, que da título a la obra reseñada, sostiene que la diversidad lingüística, esto es, la pluralidad de lenguas humanas, conlleva una diversidad cognitiva. De ahí, suelen extraerse múltiples consecuencias controvertidas; por ejemplo, utilizando las palabras de Steiner, que cuando muere una lengua, con ella muere un mundo. El propósito general de la obra, dentro del contexto señalado y apoyándose en la hipótesis de la relatividad lingüística, es tratar de vislumbrar zonas de plausibilidad dentro de unos espacios lógicos o de posibilidades que convergen hacia posturas intermedias que, a mi juicio, ponen de maniiesto todo el jugo ilosóico de la cuestión. De esta forma, el libro se hace cargo de tres elementos teóricos fundamentales que son puestos en conexión realizando un recorrido panorámico a través de las diferentes posturas ilosóicas y de las surgidas dentro de las ciencias de la mente y del lenguaje. Estas son confrontadas, comparadas y discutidas para tratar de delimitar la plausibilidad que arrojan las diversas posiciones, con los matices propios (y extensísimos) que el estudio pormenorizado arroja. El primer elemento nuclear es la denominada tesis del Impacto Cognitivo del Lenguaje (ICL), la cual sostiene que el lenguaje estaría involucrado de forma no trivial en el pensamiento humano. Así, se subrayan las funciones supracomunicativas de las lenguas asumiendo una concepción cognitiva del lenguaje. En otras palabras, que el lenguaje no posee solo una función meramente comunicativa, es decir, siguiendo con la terminología, que las lenguas no se agotan en una concepción comunicativa que encajaría con la noción tradicional no solo del lenguaje, sino también del pensamiento, según la cual “el pensamiento es algo interno e inaccesible excepto para su portador, mientras que el lenguaje es externo y observable públicamente” (Blanco Salgueiro, 2017, 22). El segundo elemento sería la Diversidad Lingüística (DL), que se basa en el factum de que existe una pluralidad de lenguas humanas que diieren entre sí. El argumento es un poco más sutil, en el sentido de que establece unas diferencias no supericiales entre ellas, por lo que su formulación es que las lenguas (y variantes) diieren real o potencialmente en aspectos no triviales (Id. 124). El tercer elemento es aquel que da título al libro, la Relatividad Lingüística (RL). Su formulación discurre entre los dos pilares teóricos anteriores silogísticamente Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 323-326 La relatividad lingüística: en busca de un territorio lógico 325 relacionados. Al comienzo del capítulo 4, el autor formula el argumento a favor de la relatividad lingüística de modo que queden incluidos en las premisas muchos matices examinados anteriormente en su tratamiento de las cuestiones del impacto cognitivo del lenguaje y de la diversidad lingüística: Premisa 1 (ICL): El lenguaje [esto es, tales o cuales mecanismos, rasgos, aspectos o niveles de una lengua cualquiera] tiene efectos [más o menos fuertes, cuantitativos o cualitativos] sobre el pensamiento [en tales o cuales dominios cognitivos; en la versión más clásica, sobre la visión, interpretación o construcción de la realidad] y sobre la conducta. Premisa 2 (DL): Pero las distintas lenguas [y/o variantes lingüísticas] diieren entre ellas [mucho o poco] en [todos o algunos] los aspectos que generan esos efectos cognitivos y conductuales. Conclusión (RL): Luego existen diferencias cognitivas y conductuales entre los hablantes de lenguas [y/o variantes lingüísticas] diferentes (Id. 155). La conclusión (RL) no puede resultar más contraintuitiva, pues apuntar que un hablante de español y otro de euskara tienen aptitudes cognitivas que diieren, aunque sea ínimamente, en virtud de la lengua, resulta, cuanto menos, sorprendente. En cambio, RL arroja luz a estudios interdisciplinares que muestran, por un lado, el constreñimiento al que se ven sometidos los hablantes de una lengua; y, por otro lado, las ventajas cognitivas propias que le otorga dicha lengua en virtud de su estructura semántica y sintáctica. Asimismo, ICL parece mostrar cierta dialéctica entre el lenguaje y el pensamiento que permite explicar, entre otras muchas cuestiones, la falta de proposicionalidad lógica en el pensamiento (esto es, la incapacidad de tener pensamientos estructurados) de los individuos con discapacidad auditiva prelingüística, como señala Oliver Sacks, en su libro Seeing Voices (1989). Por otro lado, también se despliega la hipótesis del impacto cognitivo basado en las metáforas lingüísticas desde el enfoque general de la Teoría Conceptual de la Metáfora, a pesar de que Lakoff & Johnson sostienen que la metáfora es un fenómeno primariamente cognitivo y solo derivadamente lingüístico. Así, desde la perspectiva particular del neowhorismo y su acento en la diversidad lingüística, se destaca la diversidad en el dominio de las metáforas lingüísticas, esto es, el pluralismo metafórico, que pone de maniiesto, en el plano intralingüístico, «la lexibilidad cognitiva de los hablantes monolingües» (Id. 216) y la diversiicación que sufre el lenguaje metafórico en el plano interlingüístico, esto es, metáforas diversas acerca del mismo dominio (por ejemplo, el tiempo). Sea como fuere, se ponen de maniiesto ciertas inluencias del lenguaje metafórico con respecto del pensamiento Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 323-326 David Durán Martínez 326 metafórico, apelando a un argumento ontogenético que reconstruye el argumento general a favor de la relatividad lingüística, en este caso, también metafórica, además de un argumento orwelliano basado en el hábito. Así, se concluye que la Teoría Conceptual de la Metáfora es perfectamente compatible con una relatividad lingüística moderada despojando del ropaje determinista al whorismo clásico. Finalmente, el libro pone en conexión el externismo y la relatividad lingüística en base a dos posturas. La primera de ellas es el argumento-tipo de Burge, a favor del externismo social sobre los contenidos mentales del que se extrae una versión externista de la hipótesis de la relatividad lingüística pues, aunque Burge trata de mostrar que los factores sociales contribuyen a la individualización de los contenidos mentales, dichos factores atañen al signiicado público, esto es, la diversidad semántica, por lo que podemos construir entonces una «versión externista del argumento a favor de la relatividad lingüística del contenido (amplio), inspirada en las ideas de Burge (1979)» (Blanco Salgueiro, 253). La segunda postura es la Teoría de la Mente Extendida de Clark & Chalmers (1998), donde «la idea básica es que la mente no está encerrada en los límites del cráneo, o incluso en los del cuerpo, sino que se extiende más allá de ellos gracias a su acoplamiento (coupling) con distintos tipos de cosas que residen más allá de sus fronteras» (Id. 260). Así, el lenguaje es la principal (pero no la única) causa de la extensión de la mente humana, por lo que se concluye en una «versión extendida del argumento a favor de la RL de los estados y procesos mentales» (Id. 264). En síntesis, RL, DL e ICL son tres nociones teóricas que, una vez que se despliegan con todos sus matices, permiten delimitar una zona de plausibilidad consistente dentro del espacio lógico entendido en términos wittgensteinianos, es decir, como el espacio de posibilidades de los estados de cosas. Además, también consigue dar cuenta de multitud de casos límite, especialmente problemáticos, como son aquellos en los que el pensamiento, por determinadas circunstancias, no se encuentra impregnado de lenguaje, apuntando a un impacto cognitivo no trivial del lenguaje y de la diversidad lingüística sobre distintos aspectos del pensamiento humano. David Durán Martínez Universidad Complutense de Madrid daduran@ucm.es Análisis. Revista de investigación ilosóica, vol. 4, n.º 2 (2017): 323-326

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