Lettura dell’Arrenopia di Giraldi Cinzio

The essay examines Arrenopia by Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio as an emblematic instance of the complexity of Renaissance tragic theatre, challenging the traditional centrality of the Orbecche and proposing instead a reading that highlights the author’s experimental plurality. The work, derived from a novella in the Ecatommiti and structured around the archetypal motif of the “persecuted maiden,” involving disguise and final recognition, reworks Boccaccian sources within a dramatic framework governed by Aristotelian principles as mediated by the Discorsi, such as unity of action, division into five acts, and the notion of “double tragedy.” However, the play ultimately emerges as a “theatre of ideas,” in which catharsis is partially supplanted by reflection on politics, warfare, and duelling, shaped by contemporary treatise literature and by the author’s own biographical tensions within the Este court. The thematic centrality of “seeing the truth” and of hope for a happy ending informs a reconciliatory conclusion that mitigates tragic intensity in an almost comic direction, thereby revealing a hybridization of genres and a divergence between theory and practice. On a stylistic level, Giraldi pursues a medietas inspired by Ariosto, characterized by a prose-like simplicity that at times comes at the expense of originality. The result is a work that, by intertwining classical models, modern concerns, and autobiographical implications, stands as a laboratory of experimentation and a testimony to the ambiguities and transformations of the tragic genre in the sixteenth century.