Dal Moro a san Carlo: la poesia narrativa

The present contribution covers a time span of around 70 years of history of Italian literature in the Duchy of Milan with a specific focus on long and short narrative poetry, and, more broadly, on dramatic poetry (dramatic eclogues, comedies in verse, pastoral poetry). The starting point of this study is Ludovico Sforza's court in the 1490s, when - even though literature in Tuscan vernacular did not flourish to the same extent as visual arts and classical studies did in those times - a few works of dramatic and mimetic poetry written in terza rima and ottava rima appeared in print. Among them was "De Paulo e Daria amanti" by Gasparo Visconti (1495), a piece of encomiastic poetry dealing with adventure and love. This work shows connections with the tradition of the cantari - it is worth mentioning that between the 15th and the 16th century Milanese publishers thrived on chivalric romance as well as historical and political cantari centered on the contemporary Italian wars. These wars also marked a turning point in the literatureof the Duchy, and until the 1530s they led to discontinuation of more high-brow genres, that later came back under Alfonso d'Avalos' patronage-driven government. Such is the historical context in which the poetry of Giovanni Alberto Albicante saw the light. Although he has never been wiewed either as a canonical or a first-rate poet, Albicante was representative of a category of professional writers who played a significant role in the literary scene of that time, besides being well-known for his quarrel with Pietro Aretino and for his mythological ("Nottomia d'Amore", 1536), historical ("Historia de la guerra del Piamonte", 1538) and celebratory poems. Towards the middle of the century the history of Milanese (as well as Italian) literature became ruled by the academies like that of the Trasformati (1548) and the Fenici (1552-56) in the chief town or, within the boundaries of the Duchy, the Pastori dell'Agogna in Novara. Among them there was Giovanni Agostino Caccia, author of pastoral plays that, along with those by Luca Contile, deserve attention in the study of the development of pastoral poetry in Italy beyond the perspective of its Ferrarese origins. This contribution ends on the work of Girolamo Bossi, who between 1557 and 1560 published a poem, "La genealogia della gloriosissima casa d'Austria", the title of which is revealing of the celebratory purpose it was meant to serve. At the same time, though, this poem may be studied in connnection with "Orlando furioso" in terms of poetic experiments conducted in the mid-16th century through the cross-breeding of chivalric romance and epic poetry as well as of the combination of Aristotelian rules with narrative freedom.