Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond: New Perspectives on his Poetry and Influence

246 Pages·2018·1.363 MB·English

by  James K. Coleman, Andrea Moudarres

Luigi Pulci in Renaissance
Florence and Beyond
CURSOR MUNDI
Cursor Mundi is produced under the auspices of the Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.
Executive Editor
Blair Sullivan, University of California, Los Angeles
Editorial Board
Michael D. Bailey, Iowa State University
Christopher Baswell, Columbia University and Barnard College
Florin Curta, University of Florida
Elizabeth Freeman, University of Tasmania
Yitzhak Hen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Lauren Kassell, Pembroke College, Cambridge
David Lines, University of Warwick
Cary Nederman, Texas A&M University
Teofilo Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.
Volume 29
Luigi Pulci in Renaissance
Florence and Beyond
New Perspectives on his Poetry and Influence
Edited by
James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres
H
F
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
© 2017, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2017/0095/203
ISBN 978-2-503-57439-4
eISBN 978-2-503-57440-0
DOI 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.112662
Printed on acid-free paper
Contents
Introduction
JAMES K. COLEMAN AND ANDREA MOUDARRES 1
Tra autobiografia e confessione
MARCO VILLORESI 13
The Devil and the Mirror: Pulci’s Theology
PINA PALMA 31
The Tenzone between Matteo Franco and Luigi Pulci in the
Context of Renaissance Vituperium: Notes on Language
and Intertextuality
MICHELANGELO ZACCARELLO 51
Rhetoric of Insult in Luigi Pulci’s Morgante
ALESSIO DECARIA 73
‘… e tutto il prato di pecore è pieno’ (Morgante, xx. 37):
Dalla similitudine alla metafora
MARIA CRISTINA CABANI 129
La morte di Orlando nel Morgante
STEFANO CARRAI 163
Luigi Pulci and the Invention of Renaissance Irreverence
LINDA L. CARROLL 181
The Ideological Battle of Roncevaux: The Critique of Political Power
from Pulci’s Morgante to Sicilian Puppet Theatre Today
JO ANN CAVALLO 209
Index 233
Introduction1
James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres
A writer, a diplomat, a parasite (in the eyes of his many enemies), and a
loyal friend (if we take his words to Lorenzo de’ Medici at face value),
Luigi Pulci (1432–84) is one of the most influential, fascinating, and
controversial figures of fifteenth-century Italy. So controversial, in fact, that
it was long believed that at his death he was buried in unconsecrated ground
because of his purportedly heretical views. Even if for a moment we set aside the
polemics that characterized Pulci’s life, what could be more intriguing than his
hilariously irreverent mock-epic starring a converted giant and commissioned
by Lorenzo’s mother, the devout Lucrezia Tornabuoni, to extol the deeds of
the Christian knights at the service of the Emperor Charlemagne in the fight
against the rising forces of Islam? Yet, with some notable exceptions,2 modern
1 We are extremely grateful to the contributors for their participation in this project. We
also wish to thank Blair Sullivan at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
and Guy Carney at Brepols for their support throughout the publication process, and Brepols’
anonymous reader. We are also indebted to Nathanial Peterson-More for translating Alessio
Decaria’s essay, to Karen Raizen for her editorial assistance, and to Allison Collins for proof-
reading the entire volume and creating the index.
2 The last monograph in English on Pulci is Davie, Half-serious Rhymes (1998). More
recently, in 2010, Alessandro Polcri has published in Italian Luigi Pulci e la chimera. Giuseppe
Mazzotta has examined the Morgante in relation to Cervantes’s Don Quijote in ‘Modern
and Ancient Italy in Don Quijote’. In Italy, Maria Cristina Cabani, Stefano Carrai, Stefano
James K. Coleman ([email protected]), Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Andrea Moudarres ([email protected]), Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond: New Perspectives on his Poetry and Influence,
ed. by James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres, CURSOR 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017),
pp. 1–12. FHG 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.114117
2 James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres
critics have far too often neglected Pulci’s works, erroneously labelling them in
somewhat dismissive terms as entertaining — of course — but ultimately super-
ficial. Pulci has perhaps seemed, on the one hand, not sufficiently sophisticated
vis-à-vis the intellectual elites of Quattrocento Florence that gravitated around
humanists like Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino. On the other hand, Pulci
has been regarded as stylistically and linguistically alien to the tradition of Fer-
rarese epics that includes the works of Matteo Maria Boiardo, Ludovico Ariosto,
and Torquato Tasso. (We will turn to the relationship between Pulci and the
Ferrarese romance epics shortly.) The goal of Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence
and Beyond: New Perspectives on his Poetry and Influence is to challenge these
critical narratives and restart a conversation on the merits of Pulci’s oeuvre and
legacy. As will be outlined in the second part of the Introduction, most of the
essays that make up this volume focus on the Morgante.
As noted above, Pulci’s poem takes its title from the name of the giant who con-
verts with striking speed in the first cantare thanks to the intervention of Orlando,
the greatest of Charlemagne’s paladins. That the title foregrounds the prominence
of the giant, but that in the last eight of the poem’s twenty-eight cantari Morgante
does not appear at all, prompts a few considerations, especially on what the Italian
scholar Ruggero Ruggieri once termed ‘the seriousness of the Morgante’.3 To be
sure, Morgante’s adventures with and without Orlando would mesmerize even the
most impatient reader. His memorable encounter with the blasphemous half-giant
Margutte and their subsequent feats that cover roughly two cantari can arguably
be counted among the most exuberant prototypes of what would later be called
the picaresque. But in the space of a few ottave Pulci dispatches Morgante, who in
cantare xx unexpectedly dies because of the bite of a small crab — an animal that in
the bestiary tradition of the Middle Ages symbolized treachery.4 Morgante’s death
is second in outlandishness only to that of Margutte, who bursts from laughter as
Decaria, Marco Villoresi, and Michelangelo Zaccarello, all of whom have contributed essays
to this volume, have over the last three decades enriched our knowledge of Pulci. (For a partial
list of their publications, see the bibliography at the end of this Introduction) Other stud-
ies that remain significant to our understanding of Pulci’s works even after about forty years
since their publication are Nigro, Pulci e la cultura medicea (1972), and Orvieto, Pulci mediev-
ale (1978).
3 Ruggieri, ‘La serietà del Morgante’, in L’umanesimo cavalleresco italiano, pp. 217–41. Mor-
gante is only mentioned in two passages of the second part of the poem (xxvii. 138–39, and
xxviii. 136 and xxviii. 142).
4 Carrai, Le Muse dei Pulci, p. 102.
introduction 3
he is watching a monkey put on and take off his boots in cantare xix. Orlando, too,
would die later on (cantare xxvii), in the battle of Roncevaux, victim of Charle-
magne’s gullibility and of the treasonous plot orchestrated by Gano, the Emper-
or’s trusted adviser, and Marsilio, the Muslim King of Spain. As the battle of Ron-
cevaux draws to a bloody end, the scene that Pulci describes is so grim that at the
outset of the same cantare xxvii he claims that, while he just meant to write a
comedìa, he finds himself on the verge of completing a tragedìa. The only narrative
twist that ostensibly keeps his comedy from turning into a tragedy seems to be the
equally violent vengeance exacted on the conspirators: Marsilio is hanged, Gano
quartered.
One of the many ways in which the Morgante defies its readers’ expectations lies
precisely in its mixture of exhilarating comic verve and the ability to raise unset-
tling ethical questions. In this regard, it is not a surprise that Pulci treats Dante as
an indispensable point of reference — echoes of the Divine Comedy are indeed per-
vasive in the Morgante. But perhaps even more telling than Pulci’s reliance on the
model of Dante — albeit entirely consistent with it, given the moral structure of
the Inferno — is the insistence with which the Morgante stages the shifting loyalties
among its protagonists and the constant threat of treachery.5 It is hard not to see in
this emphasis the repercussions of the so-called Pazzi conspiracy (1478), the plot
that aimed to kill Lorenzo de’ Medici (unsuccessfully) and his brother Giuliano
(successfully). It is true that Lorenzo remained in power after these dramatic events
and in fact tightened his grip on Florence. The city, however, was deeply scarred
both by the assassination itself and by the Medici’s ruthless retribution against the
conspirators in the aftermath of Giuliano’s death. The political instability that the
Pazzi conspiracy revealed and epitomized hovers over the Morgante — especially
over the last five cantari, which were added in the third and last edition of the poem
in 1483.
In the Morgante, the behind-the-scenes scheming that plagues Charlemagne’s
court mirrors the violence and treachery that permeated the political life of
Quattrocento Italy.6 The Pazzi conspiracy is not the only such episode from
recent history that haunts Pulci’s poem. In cantare xxviii, Pulci explains Gano’s
betrayal by referring to a famous plot that took place in Milan in 1476: Andrea
Lampognano’s assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza. As Pulci warns the
reader against enemies driven to desperation, he draws a parallel between Gano
and Lampognano:
5 Treachery — it bears stressing — is the most grievous sin in Dante’s Hell.
6 Cf. Perrotta, ‘Lo spazio della corte’.
4 James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres
Quando Ulivier percosse il viso a Gano,
io dissi allor come e’ si pose in core
di vendicarsi, ché gli parve strano
(sendo pur per natura traditore).
Ricòrdati, lettor, del Lampognano,
e non cercar d’altro antico aüttore;
e sempre tien’ la paura in corazza,
ché il disperato alfin mena la mazza.
(Morgante, xxviii. 22)7
In the first lines of this stanza, Pulci refers to an earlier episode in which Ulivieri,
one of Charlemagne’s paladins, slapped Gano at a public meeting (Morgante, xxiv.
47). Later in the poem Gano would go on to explain that in conspiring against the
paladins, especially Ulivieri and Orlando, he would not be committing an act of
treason, but simply trying to regain his honour (xxv. 65–68).8 To explain how
powerful a motive revenge can be, Pulci asserts that he need not recall the example
of any ancient authors; all his readers need to do is to consider the recent case of
Andrea Lampognano. According to Renaissance sources, Lampognano and his co-
conspirators Carlo Visconti and Gerolamo Olgiati were dissatisfied courtiers, exas-
perated by the Duke’s tyrannical proclivities.9 More importantly, however, in light
of Pulci’s reference in the Morgante, the conspirators held personal grudges against
the duke: the notoriously lascivious Galeazzo had allegedly violated Visconti’s sis-
ter, while Lampognano felt that the duke had denied him justice in a property dis-
pute. Pulci’s reference thus serves as a warning against the threat — omnipresent
both in the world of the poem and in Pulci’s own world — of personal antagonism
spilling over into political insurrection.
7 The Italian text is from Luigi Pulci, Morgante, edited by Franca Ageno (Milan: Monda-
dori, 1994 [1st edition 1955]). The English translation is from Luigi Pulci, Morgante: The Epic
Adventures of Orlando and His Giant Friend Morgante, translated by Joseph Tusiani (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1998): ‘When Oliver struck Gano on the face, / I quickly
said that Ganelon had sworn / revenge at once (a traitor though he was, / he thought that slap
most inappropriate). / Of Lampognano I remind you, reader, / and pay attention to no ancient
author: / use your fear always as your own defense, / for desperate men think only of offense’.
8 Gano’s argument stems from a tenet of medieval law according to which an individual was
justified to avenge an offense received in public. On this complex legal issue and its historical
background, see Ruggieri, Il processo di Gano nella ‘Chanson de Roland’, and Mickel, Ganelon,
Treason and the ‘Chanson de Roland’.
9 Cf. Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Book vii, Chapters 33–34. See also Ilardi, ‘The
Assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza’, p. 73.