Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry 9781317064206, 9781472427069, 9781315606040, 2015002640

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry
Part I The Sublime
1 Naming Sappho: Gaspara Stampa and the Recovery of the Sublime in Early Modern Europe
2 The Sublime Realism of Gaspara Stampa
3 Sublime Love Pains in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime
Part II Real, Virtual, and Imagined Communities
4 Desiring Subjects: Mimetic Desire and Female Invidia in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime
5 Voi e tu, Love and Law: Gaspara Stampa’s Post-Petrarchan Jealousy
6 Le amiche carte: Gaspara Stampa and Mirtilla
7 Writing as a Pro: Gaspara Stampa and the Men in Her Rime
Part III Personae
8 Playing (with) Personae: Gaspara Stampa’s Rime as an Implicit Reflection on the Fictional Status of Poetry
9 Gaspara Stampa as Salamander and Phoenix: Reshaping the Tradition of the Abandoned Woman
10 Anassilla: Stampa’s Poetic Ecology
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska, The University of Mary Washington, USA Abby Zanger The study of women and gender offers some of the most vital and innovative challenges to current scholarship on the early modern period. For more than a decade now, “Women and Gender in the Early Modern World” has served as a forum for presenting fresh ideas and original approaches to the field. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in scope, this Ashgate book series strives to reach beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. We welcome proposals for both single-author volumes and edited collections which expand and develop this continually evolving field of study. Titles in the series include: Art, Gender and Religious Devotion in Grand Ducal Tuscany Alice E. Sanger Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court Sarah D.P. Cockram Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580 Negotiating Power Katherine A. McIver Boccaccio’s Heroines Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society Margaret Franklin The Medici Women Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence Natalie R. Tomas

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

Edited by Unn Falkeid Stockholm University, Sweden and Aileen A. Feng University of Arizona, USA

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Unn Falkeid, Aileen A. Feng, and the contributors 2015 Unn Falkeid and Aileen A. Feng have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the canon of renaissance poetry / edited by Unn Falkeid and Aileen A. Feng. pages cm. — (Women and gender in the early modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-2706-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Stampa, Gaspara, approximately 1523—approximately 1554—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Sublime, The, in literature. 3. Love in literature. I. Falkeid, Unn, author, editor. II. Feng, Aileen A., author, editor. PQ4634.S65R48 2015 851’.4—dc23 2015002640 ISBN: 9781472427069 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315606040 (ebk)

Contents List of Figures   List of Abbreviations   Notes on Contributors   Acknowledgements  

vii viii ix xiii

Introduction: Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry   Unn Falkeid and Aileen A. Feng Part I

The Sublime

1 Naming Sappho: Gaspara Stampa and the Recovery of the Sublime in Early Modern Europe   Jane Tylus, New York University 2 The Sublime Realism of Gaspara Stampa Unn Falkeid, Stockholm University

15 39

  

  

3 Sublime Love Pains in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime Federico Schneider, University of Mary Washington Part II

1

55

Real, Virtual, and Imagined Communities

4 Desiring Subjects: Mimetic Desire and Female Invidia in    Gaspara Stampa’s Rime Aileen A. Feng, University of Arizona

75

5 Voi e tu, Love and Law: Gaspara Stampa’s Post-Petrarchan Jealousy   93 Ann Rosalind Jones, Smith College 6 Le amiche carte: Gaspara Stampa and Mirtilla   Angela Capodivacca, Yale University

117

7 Writing as a Pro: Gaspara Stampa and the Men in Her Rime   William J. Kennedy, Cornell University

137

Part III Personae 8 Playing (with) Personae: Gaspara Stampa’s Rime as an Implicit Reflection on the Fictional Status of Poetry   Ulrike Schneider, Freie Universität Berlin

157

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9 Gaspara Stampa as Salamander and Phoenix: Reshaping the Tradition of the Abandoned Woman   Veronica Andreani, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

171

10 Anassilla: Stampa’s Poetic Ecology   Troy Tower, Johns Hopkins University

185

Bibliography   Index  

199 215

List of Figures 1.1

Engraving of Gaspara Stampa on the frontispiece of the 1738 volume of Rime, ed. Bergalli and Collalto. Image provided courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford  University Libraries.

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1.2

Parnassus by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483–1520). Detail of left side including Petrarch and Sappho. Stanza della Segnatura, Stanze di Raffaello, Vatican Palace, Vatican State. Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

36

5.1

Gaspara Stampa, Rime (Venice: Pietrasanta, 1554). Illustrated letter P, woodcut, 3/4 by 3/4 inch, opening of dedication. Photograph by Ann Rosalind Jones, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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5.2

Engraving of Count Collaltino di Collalto on the frontispiece of the 1738 volume of Rime, ed. Bergalli and Collalto. Image provided courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.

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5.3

Paolo Veronese, portrait of Collaltino di Collalto, c. 1550, Oil on canvas, 53.4 by 45 inches, Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou, Czech Republic. From the collection of the National Heritage Institute, collection of the National Cultural Monument Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou.

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5.4

Detail of helmet with Cupid, Paolo Veronese, portrait of Collaltino di Collalto, c. 1550, Oil on canvas, 53.4 by 45 inches, Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou, Czech Republic. From the collection of the National Heritage Institute, collection of the National Cultural Monument Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou.

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5.5

Detail of brooch, Paolo Veronese, portrait of Collaltino di Collalto, c. 1550, Oil on canvas, 53.4 by 45 inches, Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou, Czech Republic. From the collection of the National Heritage Institute, collection of the National Cultural Monument Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou.

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List of Abbreviations Rime

Gaspara Stampa, Rime

RVF

Francesco Petrarca, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

Notes on Contributors Veronica Andreani is a doctoral candidate in Modern Philology and Linguistics at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. Broadly, her research interests are in the field of women’s writing in early modern Italy, with a specific focus on how female poets appropriate the inherently male Petrarchist model to express their own poetic voice. She is also interested in Venetian Petrarchism and in the interaction between lyric verse and contemporary treatises on love. She is presently at work on her dissertation, a commentary on Gaspara Stampa’s Rime, through which she aims to provide an interpretative guide to the reading of the collection. Her analysis investigates stylistic and thematic features as well as the author’s intertextual memory. She has previously published on Stampa’s onomastic choices in the Rime and has a forthcoming study on the poetess’s fortune in the nineteenth century. Angela Matilde Capodivacca is Associate Professor of Italian Language and Literature and Renaissance Studies at Yale University. She received her B.A. in Philosophy (1998) and her M.A. in Italian (2000) from Notre Dame University, and her Ph.D. in Italian Studies (2007) at the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on the relationship between curiosity and the imagination in early modern Italy. Her research interests include philosophy, critical theory, comparative literature, history of ideas, and gender studies. She has published articles on Petrarch, Ariosto and Niccolò degli Agostini, Machiavelli, Teofilo Folengo, Leopardi and Nietzsche, and Anna Banti. Her book manuscript, Curiosity on Trial, is currently under review. Her second book project, L’Arte del Tradurre: Machiavelli, Performance and Translation was developed as a Mellon Fellow at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (2013–2014). Unn Falkeid is an Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University, a position funded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Her books include Petrarca og det moderne selvet (Oslo, 2007), Dante. A Critical Reappraisal (Oslo, 2008), and the Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, co-edited with Albert R. Ascoli (Cambridge, forthcoming 2015). She is currently completing a monograph entitled The Avignon Papacy Contested. Power and Politics in Fourteenth-Century Literature, in which she explores some wide-ranging intellectual and political debates on power and politics that dominated fourteenth-century Europe. Central figures in her study are Dante, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Petrarch, Birgitta of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena. Aileen A. Feng is Assistant Professor of Italian and Faculty Affiliate in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. Her research interests

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include the Italian lyric, especially Petrarch, neo-Latin humanism, Petrarchism in Italy and France, Querelle des femmes, Renaissance exemplarity, and gender performativity. She has published on the contamination of Petrarchan courtly love rhetoric in Quattrocento neo-Latin humanist letterbooks, and Medusa, agency, and patronage in Petrarch’s lyric collection, and is the co-translator, with Fabian Alfie, of the sonnets of fifteenth-century nonsense poet Burchiello (ACMRS Press, forthcoming 2015). She is currently completing her first monograph on the politics of gender and humanist Petrarchism. Ann Rosalind Jones, Esther Cloudman Dunn Professor of Comparative Literature emerita, Smith College, has studied women writers of the Renaissance since the 1970s, focusing on poetry and polemical prose from England, France, and Italy. Her books include The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe 1540– 1620 (Indiana UP, 1990) and The Poems and Selected Letters of Veronica Franco, translated with Margaret F. Rosenthal for The Other Voice series (Chicago, 1998). With Betty Travitsky, she edited Women in the Renaissance: An Interdisciplinary Forum (MLA 1989), a special issue of Women’s Studies 19, 2 (Summer 1991). Her recent work includes “‘I’ fui presa dai be’ vostri occhi, Signor’: Women Petrarchisti,” for The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, edited by Albert R. Ascoli and Unn Falkeid (Cambridge, forthcoming 2015) and “Taking Out the Women: Louise Labé’s Folie in Robert Greene’s Translation” for Early Modern Cultures of Translation, ed. by Karen Newman and Jane Tylus (U. Pennsylvania, 2015). She combined work on women with her new interest in the representation of clothing in Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, written with Peter Stallybrass (Cambridge, 2000), The Clothing of the Renaissance World (Europe, Asia, Africa, America): Cesare Vecellio’s “Habiti Antichi et Moderni” with Margaret F. Rosenthal (Thames and Hudson, 2008) and a recent essay, “American Beauties, or What’s Wrong with This Picture? Paintings and Prints of the Women of Virginia from John White to Joan Blaeu,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 6 (October 2012). She is presently at work on Global Habits: The Renaissance Costume Book, 1560–1650, a study of European prints and texts representing clothing worn around the world. William J. Kennedy is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His research focuses on the history of European literature and literary criticism from antiquity to the early modern period, with particular interest in Italian, French, English, and German texts from Dante to Milton. His books include Rhetorical Norms in Renaissance Literature (Yale, 1978), Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (UP of New England, 1983), Authorizing Petrarch (Cornell, 1994) and The Site of Petrarchism (Johns Hopkins, 2003). He is completing a book on aesthetic transactions and economic exchange in the poetry of Stampa, Michelangelo, Ronsard, and Shakespeare.

Notes on Contributors

xi

Federico Schneider is Associate Professor of Italian at University of Mary Washington. His historiographical approach to literature focuses on what literature does, more than what it says, including its influence on other arts, especially music. His major areas of interest are Dante, and Renaissance theater, including opera. On these subjects he has published both in Italian and English, in Canada, the United States, and Italy. His book Pastoral Drama and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Ashgate, 2010), extensively deals with Petrarchism. His second monograph, Unsuspected Competitive Contexts in Early Opera, is currently under review. Ulrike Schneider is Professor of Romance Literatures at Freie Universität Berlin/Germany. Her research interests are medieval and early modern literature, Italian Renaissance poetry and poetics, Petrarchism and gender, phenomena of interference between fact and fiction, narratology, and modern and contemporary romance literatures. Her books include Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento. Transformationen des lyrischen Diskurses bei Vittoria Colonna und Gaspara Stampa (Stuttgart, 2007) and Fiktionen des Faktischen in der Renaissance, edited with Anita Traninger (Stuttgart, 2010). Her recent work includes “Disegnare con parole. Strategies of Dialogical Portraits of Ideal Female Beauty in the Italian Renaissance,” in Inventing Faces. Rhetorics of Portraiture between Renaissance and Modernism, ed. by M. Körte, R. Rebmann, J. Weiss and S. Weppelmann (Berlin, 2014) and “‘Ritraggete il mio conte—poi me da l’altra parte.’ Genrespezifische Modellierungen der Liebe bei Gaspara Stampa,” in Amor sacro e profano. Modelle und Modellierungen der Liebe in Literatur und Malerei der italienischen Renaissance, edited by Jörn Steigerwald and Valeska von Rosen (Wiesbaden, 2012). Her current research project is on theory and aesthetics of “non-knowledge” in the early modern period, in the context of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC 980): “Episteme in Motion. Transfer of Knowledge from the Ancient World to the Early Modern Period” (http://www.sfb-episteme.de/en/index.html). Troy Tower is a PhD candidate in Italian literature at Johns Hopkins, where he has taught several original classes in Italian culture. His dissertation treats the metaliterary functions of the forest in early modern narratives. Through Jane Tylus’s generosity he came to co-edit the first complete critical edition of Stampa’s poetry The Complete Poems of Gaspara Stampa: The 1554 Edition of the Rime (Chicago, 2010) and is at work on an anthology of untranslated Italian georgic poems. His recent article (Romance Studies, 2013) examines the trees in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and he has published several translations on architectural history. Jane Tylus is Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, where she is also faculty director of the Humanities Initiative. Her research interests are late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe, particularly issues related to gender and religion; history of theatre; literature of nineteenth-

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century Sicily; the history and culture of Siena. Her recent and forthcoming works include Siena, City of Secrets (Chicago, forthcoming); The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (Toronto, 2010), co-edited with Gerry Milligan; The Complete Poems of Gaspara Stampa: The 1554 Edition of the Rime (Chicago, 2010), co-edited with Troy Tower; and Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others (Chicago, 2009). She is general editor for the journal I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance.

Acknowledgements The editors wish to express their gratitude to the individuals and institutions that, in various ways, have assisted in the publication of this book. Several colleagues and friends have supported this project from its inception over three years ago: Albert R. Ascoli, Jonathan Combs-Schilling, Anders Cullhed, Carin Franzén, Susan Gaylard, Sofie Kluge, Else Marie Lingaas, Giuseppe Mazzotta, David Quint, Diana Robin, and Johanna Vernqvist. We would especially like to thank Jon Haarberg, Lodi Nauta, and Gur Zak who carefully read and made comments on our introduction. The two anonymous readers for Ashgate provided insightful comments that improved the volume. To the editorial staff at Ashgate we are indebted for their collegiality and enthusiastic support for our project. We appreciated our good fortune at being able to work with such an exemplary editor as Erika Gaffney, who in 2000 founded the Women and Gender in the Early Modern World book series and whose immediate enthusiasm for our proposal, unwavering support, patience, critical eye, and guidance to the completion of the volume made it an honor to work with her. The series editors, Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger, also provided critical feedback at various stages of the project’s development. We are grateful to Senior Editor Seth F. Hibbert for guiding us through the final stages of production. During the completion of this volume, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, and the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University have generously funded Unn Falkeid in her position as an Academy Research Fellow. Our experience with Rethinking Gaspara Stampa has been an instructive and joyful journey alongside the distinguished scholars of early modern European literature and culture whom we have assembled in this volume. We would thus like to sincerely thank our authors for their whole-hearted participation in our effort to create the first volume of criticism dedicated to the poetry of Gaspara Stampa. Finally, this collaborative work is dedicated to Fiora Bassanese, primus motor, whose early dedication to making the poetry of Gaspara Stampa an object of real, critical inquiry made this volume possible.

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Introduction:

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry Unn Falkeid and Aileen A. Feng

Gaspara Stampa (1523?–1554) has long been regarded as one of the finest and most creative poets of the Italian Renaissance. Writing in a period that witnessed a surge in women writers, her contemporaries praised her as among the most distinguished female voices in Venice, if not in all of Italy. As a virtuosa, her singing voice was so celebrated that Gerolamo Parabosco, the organist of St. Mark’s Basilica, described it as “angelic”: “who has ever heard such sweet and elegant words … and what will I say of that angelic voice that struck the air with its divine accents and made such sweet harmony that it awakened spirit and life in the coldest stone?”1 In a similar way, Perissone Cambio, a composer and celebrated singer himself, described her as a “divine siren.” Indeed, Cambio dedicated his book Primo libro di madrigal a quatro voci (1547) to Gaspara Stampa writing her that “no woman loves music as much as you do, nor possesses it of such a rare degree.”2 The numerous figures to whom Stampa wrote verses were themselves part of Venice’s rich and lively musical circles—Girolamo Molin, Elena Barozzi, Domenico Venier, and Fortunio Spira, to name but a few—something that testifies to Stampa’s deep involvement in the musical life of the city.3 Although Stampa often sang verses by contemporary poets, she was, perhaps, most famous for both her interpretations of Petrarch, and her own Petrarchan-inspired poetry, believed to have been written for real performances. It was in fact Stampa’s capacity to be taken seriously as a singer and performer that contributed to the acceptance of her public voice as a poet.4

 Quoted in Abdelkader Salza, “Madonna Gasparina Stampa secondo nuove indagini,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 62 (1913): 1–101; p. 16. Translation taken from Jane Tylus’s introduction to Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems. The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” a Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with an Introduction and Translation by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010), p. 7. 2  “niuna donna al mondo amar piu la Musica di quello che fate voi, ne altra piu raramente possederla.” The translation is that of Martha Feldman, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (Berkeley: U of California P, 1995), p. 373. 3  See especially Tylus, The Complete Poems, p. 9. 4  See Janet L. Smarr, “Gaspara Stampa’s Poetry for Performance,” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 12 (1991): 61–84; p. 75. 1

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

Despite Stampa’s impact on sixteenth-century Italian culture, during the two centuries following her death she was virtually forgotten until the 1738 republication of her poetry, and even then the strange editorial and reception history of her poetic corpus distorted her memory in such a way that her poetry never regained the prominence it once had. As is often the case with female artists, her biography, and, especially, her presumed love affairs have tended to overshadow her works. In the last few decades, however, there has been a substantial increase in critical attention paid to Stampa’s poetry among both European and North American scholars who have sought to refocus Stampa scholarship on her poetics rather than the mythic love story and its reception. The impetus came from Fiora Bassanese’s work beginning in the 1980s,5 which paved the way for the renewed critical attention brought to Stampa studies by Jane Tylus’s recent translation of Stampa’s Rime, the first complete English translation of her poetry, and, most importantly, the first modern critical edition that uses the original 1554 canzoniere as its source text.6 Since to date there is no autograph manuscript to dictate and authorize the ordering of poems, Stampa’s poetic oeuvre has often become a backdrop for a myriad of editorial projects. One aspect of the Rime that Tylus has noted is that it appears to follow the ordering of a singer’s songbook, with poems grouped according to genre and in the order in which a performer would have progressed (first sonnets, then madrigals, and finally ottava rima).7 As more critical attention is paid to this earliest songbook, more evidence is gathered to support the 1554 edition as the closest thing to a prototype of how Stampa might have conceived of her collection. The early reception history of Gaspara Stampa’s Rime has been affected by the cultural biases of both her early editors and prominent literary critics. When the renowned Italian critic Benedetto Croce wrote in 1918 that “she was a woman; and usually women, when they do not ape men, use poetry by subjecting it to their affections, loving their lover or their children more than poetry,” he revealed a common prejudice against women’s writing that viewed it as sentimental, while at the same time demonstrating his lack of critical engagement with, and sensibility

5  These earliest studies of Bassanese, which are generally credited for having begun Stampa studies in North America, are Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982); “Gaspara Stampa’s Poetics of Negativity,” Italica 61 (1984): 335–46; and “What’s in a Name? SelfNaming and Renaissance Women Poets.” Annali d’italianistica 7 (1989): 104–15. 6  As shall be discussed, the 1554 edition is the closest to Stampa’s original conception of her canzoniere. 7  See Tylus, Complete Poems, p. 14. Tylus finds in Stampa’s 1554 Rime what John Walter Hill has located in Seicento approaches to vocal training, an observation which supports Janet L. Smarr’s theory that it was Stampa’s musical achievements that first legitimized her poetic voice. See John Walker Hill, “Training a Singer for ‘musica recitativa’ in Early Seventeenth-Century Italy: The Case of Baldassare,” Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale (Florence: Olschki, 1994), pp. 345–58.

Introduction

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for, Stampa’s art.8 He reduced her poetry to nothing but a diary of her love for Collaltino di Collalto, the man eulogized in Stampa’s Rime, at best commending her for her ability to “ape” Petrarch’s poetry. His judgments, however, were not unique, as they were based on Abdelkaber Salza’s first modern, scholarly article on Stampa, published in 1913 in the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana.9 Salza’s effort to collect historical documentation about Stampa was praiseworthy, and certainly much needed as a reaction to the imprecise celebration of Stampa in the previous centuries. But his conclusions were severe: Stampa was not an innocent woman caught in the web of love, as she was depicted in the Romantic period by writers such as Luigi Carrer, whose best-selling novel Unhappy Love of Gaspara Stampa (1851) was based on the fictive letter exchange between Stampa and her friend Ippolita Mirtilla.10 Instead, according to Salza, Stampa was only a courtesan, like her contemporary Veronica Franco.11 How could Stampa be the object of so many different interpretations? Much of what we know about Stampa’s biography we owe to Fiora Bassanese who, in the first monograph about Stampa written in English, gathered the few documentary facts that existed for the poet, thereby correcting and modifying Salza’s oblique use of sources.12 Born in Padua around 1523 to a prosperous jewel merchant, Bartolomeo Stampa, and his wife Cecilia, Gaspara Stampa and her siblings Cassandra and Baldassare received the humanist education of the privileged of the time, studying poetry, music, and Latin, among other things. After Bartolomeo’s early death Cecilia and the children moved to Venice where their studies continued, especially in music which was so highly valued in Renaissance Italy. The two sisters, Gaspara and Cassandra, were possibly trained as virtuose—professional singers and musicians. The Stampa sisters became well known for their remarkable talents, their brother for his poetic aspirations, and soon the Stampa household became one of the city’s many ridotti, or salons, where artists, men of letters, students, musicians, and patricians assembled to converse, discuss literature, and listen to music. In addition to its function as a meeting place for the literati and mediator of intellectual and artistic exchange, the ridotto was the setting for Stampa’s innamoramento with Count Collaltino di Collalto, a young nobleman from near the Treviso province north of Venice, who served as one of Stampa’s sources of poetic inspiration. Although she never explicitly mentions his name, Stampa writes more  Benedetto Croce, Conversazioni Critiche, 2nd ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1924), p. 225. The translation is by Fiora Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p. 32. 9  See n. 1 above. 10  Luigi Carrer, Amore infelice di Gaspara Stampa; Lettere scritte da lei medesima e pubblicate da Luigi Carrer (Venezia: P. Naratovitch, 1851). 11  This position has been recently take up again by Stefano Bianchi, La Scrittura poetica femminile nel Cinquecento Veneto: Gaspara Stampa e Veronica Franco (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2013). 12  Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, pp. 26–34. 8

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

4

than two hundred poems about the count. As Bassanese laconically notes, given the high rank and status of the wealthy Collalto family, we know more about the count than the poet who immortalized him in her art.13 He was the author of some modest poems, a patron to Venetian poets and writers, including Giuseppe Bertussi and Ortensio Lando, as well as a soldier whose military career brought him to England and France. Collaltino’s many roles are reflected throughout Stampa’s poems, and in 1549 she gathered about one hundred poems in a small canzoniere and sent them to him accompanied by a letter. Contrary to the ideals of the courtly love tradition, as well as most poetry of the period influenced by Platonic ideas and Petrarchan conventions, Stampa wrote about physical love, both fulfilled and unrequited. And contrary to most Petrarchan-inspired lyrical collections, her poems even mention lovers other than Collaltino—a radical shift in the Petrarchan paradigm of love, especially for a female poet. This unconventional spirit is probably one of the reasons for both the romantic fascination with her biography, as well as the harsh conclusions by critics such as Croce and Salza, who wrote within the boundaries of the prude standards of the modern bourgeoisie. The intensity of the passions described in Stampa’s Rime—the excitements, jealousy, subtle irony, the pleasure derived from being united with the lover and the subsequent pain of separation— seems to be far more rooted in real experiences than what was common in the lyrical tradition of the Renaissance, something that nourished the romantic myth as well as the later moral rejection. During her lifetime, only three of Stampa’s poems were published in one of the many anthologies of poetry that became popular in Italy around the middle of the sixteenth century: Il sesto libro delle rime di diversi eccelenti autori, nuovamente raccolte et mandate in luce. Con un disorso di Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Giovan Maria Bonelli, Al Segno del Pozzo, 1553). One year later Gaspara Stampa died in Venice, barely thirty years old, the cause of which still remains unclear, but which has inspired numerous theories. One suggestion expounded in Luisa Bergalli’s 1726 biography of the poet is that she was poisoned.14 Another and, perhaps, more plausible hypothesis is based on the information found in the parochial archives of Venice: “On the twenty-third day of April, 1554, Gasparina Stampa, taken ill from fever, colic, and matrix sickness for fifteen days, died on this day in the home of Geronimo Morosini.”15 In October 1554, six months after Stampa’s death, her sister Cassandra and the editor Giorgio Benzoni published Stampa’s complete collection of Rime, dedicating it to one of the most renowned Italian poets of the  Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, p. 13.  Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo‬oche contiene le

13

14

rimatrici antiche fino all’anno 1575‬, 2 vols., ed. Luisa Bergalli (Venice: Antonio Mora, 1726); vol. 1, pp. 77–100. 15  “Adì 23 April 1554 M. Gasparina Stampa in le case de messer Hyronimus Morosini la qual è stà malà da febre et mal colico, et mal de mare zorni 15, è morta in questo zorno.” Gaspara Stampa, Rime, ed. Maria Bellonci and Gustavo Rodolfo Ceriello (Milan: Rizzoli, 1954), p. 40. Translated by Jane Tylus, The Complete Poems, p. 12.

Introduction

5

Cinquecento, Giovanni della Casa.16 The edition includes an introductory letter written by Cassandra in which she presents Stampa’s life as learned, but also tempestuously and richly lived, something that would become a great attraction to her later readers. In the dedicatory poems that open this first edition of Stampa’s Rime we get an initial glimpse of her reputation not only as a virtuosa, but also as a writer, and the impact she had on her contemporary poets. In a series of poetic homages to Stampa, the poet and central literary figure Benedetto Varchi calls her the new Sappho (“Saffo de’ nostri giorni”), while the poet Giulio Stufa writes that while Stampa is “equal to the Greek in her own Tuscan idiom, / she is more chaste, just as she is more beautiful.”17 Despite such high praise and renown, the 1554 edition was more or less ignored for two hundred years, until in 1738 when Luisa Bergalli, on the request of Collalto family heir Antonio Rambaldo, published another edition of the Rime. The book, a costly production with illustrations and even the presumed portraits of the two lovers (figures 1.1 and 5.2), included an introduction by Count Antonio Rambaldo himself, who gave a description of Stampa’s life which, according to Bassanese, marks the beginning of the romantic legend.18 Rambaldo presents Stampa as a refined young woman, passionate and beautiful, and gifted in both talents and spirit, while the count is depicted as a cold-hearted, cruel man. The myth developed and became even more fervent during the following century, above all with the publication of the epistolary novel by Carrer, until Salza’s cautious studies chilled the debate. But even Salza, as well as his followers, became caught up in the biographical drama, although in an opposite way. Stampa’s supposed love affairs distressed the new generation of scholars, and once again her poetry was regarded as something secondary to her life and the historical context. Contemporary scholars have focused on her poetry, first and foremost, by identifying and exploring her unique voice as an artist. What has been lost over the centuries is an understanding of Stampa’s intellectual biography, something that her sister Cassandra emphasized in her introductory letter to the 1554 edition where she described her sister’s Rime as “the rhymes that she wove partly to exercise her wit … partly to express some amorous conceit of hers.”19 A review of modern Stampa criticism shows an increasing challenge of the earliest depictions of the female poet and her writing. Just as Fiora Bassanese’s monograph Gaspara Stampa corrected the standard biography of Stampa, Ann Rosalind Jones’s The Currency of Eros situated Stampa’s poetry within a larger tradition of female writing that

 Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa (Venice: Plinio Pietrasanta, 1554).  “pari à la Greca nel Tosco idioma, / Ma più casta di lei, quanto più bella.” Translation

16 17

by Tylus, The Complete Poems, pp. 2–3. 18  Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, p. 23. 19  “tessute da lei, parte per essercitio dello ingegno suo … parte per esprimere alcun suo amoroso concetto” (Tylus, Complete Poems, p. 55).

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

6

contested both gender ideologies and male-authored literary conventions.20 In the Rime Jones finds a deliberate yet subtle subversion of Petrarchan tropes rather than the sentimental musings of a woman abandoned by her lover, as previous scholars and editors had presented her. In a Marxist-feminist framework, Jones elucidates how Stampa’s discursive engagement with both Petrarchism and the longer pastoral tradition challenged both the social and erotic barriers facing a woman in Stampa’s position. The persona of the “abandoned woman” who retreats to a pastoral landscape, taken on by Stampa in her poetry, was more than a mirror of her biography. Thus, Stampa’s carefully constructed persona allowed her to explore subjects traditionally considered socially taboo for women. Jones’s study created a methodology for critically analyzing the intentional biographical elements woven throughout Stampa’s Rime, refocusing the obsession with Stampa’s biography and love story to how the poet herself exploits these elements to her advantage. In a similar vein, Janet Levarie Smarr’s analysis of the figure of the male love object reveals how Stampa was able to update Petrarchan paradigms of desire to reflect contemporary issues.21 What is most interesting about Smarr’s analysis is that through a careful analysis of Collaltino’s inaccessibility, she finds the same two factors that Jones attributed to Stampa’s use of the pastoral—social and erotic barriers—but taken to a different end. The male beloved’s inaccessibility to Stampa is wavering, their love both requited and unrequited, because of his active neglect of the poet. While Laura’s chastity elevated her status and necessitated the paradigm of unrequited love that characterizes Petrarch’s poetic corpus, it is Collaltino’s rank and civic duties that place him above Stampa. As Smarr notes, his male honor often prevents their union, a union that does not, however, threaten his reputation as it would with female honor (as with the example of Petrarch’s Laura). The erotic barrier in Stampa’s case is based on the unfaithfulness of the male beloved, though this infidelity is not a threat to his reputation, and it is excusable thanks to his rank. In both cases, Stampa’s clever undermining of Petrarchan tropes and paradigms—her complaints of unrequited love, diminished by their frequent unions; her condemnation of his excusable “moral” failings in his infidelity—allows her to remove the sense of guilt that characterizes her subtext. Just as the pastoral genre provides Stampa the space to formulate social critiques, so too do literary conventions and tropes provide her with the tools to critique the role of literature in reinforcing these social norms. What recent scholars like Jones and Smarr have succeeded in doing is showing how the biographical elements in Stampa’s poetry were used as a means to not only discuss and critique the larger

 Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros. Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540– 1620 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990). See especially chapter 4, pp. 118–54, “Feminine Pastoral and Heroic Martyrdom. Gaspara Stampa and Mary Wroth.” 21  Janet L. Smarr, “Substituting for Laura: Objects of Desire for Renaissance Women Poets,” Comparative Literature Studies 38.1 (2001): 1–30. For the purposes of this argument, see especially pp. 17–18. 20

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issues facing early modern women poets, but to position them as meaningful interlocutors in these important cultural debates. In the last decade or so, great advances have been made in scholarship devoted to the intellectual history of women in Italy, a new body of work that has built upon and nuanced what we thought we knew about female educational practices thanks to the hallmark studies that appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s.22 If in the Quattrocento a humanist education for women was seen as an end in itself, rather than a means towards a humanist profession, then in the Cinquecento we see the successful implementation of the humanist curriculum in women through such figures as Gaspara Stampa who was able to translate her training into a professional career.23 Sarah Gwyneth Ross has recently challenged the notion of educated women as marginalized figures through her study of the “intellectual family” and the way in which early modern women writers capitalized on the cultural and patriarchal legitimacy that their fathers’ households afforded.24 Although Stampa is not one of the nineteen case studies examined, she does provide an interesting extension of Ross’s theory: despite her father’s early death, the Stampa household represented the kind of legitimacy described by Ross in her monograph. Not only was Stampa trained in the studia humanitatis within the confines of her familial home, but it would later become the starting point for an important social network (the ridotto) that provided her with the opportunity to translate her studies into a profession. Although Stampa has often been compared to other Italian (as well as French) female poets, the tendency has been to define her in reference to, or against, other prominent early modern female poets: her desire for Collaltino is illicit, especially when compared to Vittoria Colonna’s poetic devotion to her deceased husband, but not as scandalous as Veronica Franco’s sexually tinged verses; her love story is tragic, but not to the same degree as Isabella di Morra’s; she, like Laura Terracina and Laura Battiferra, was one of only a handful of known female poets to be

22  See especially Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987). See also Paul Grendler, Schooling in the Renaissance: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, MD: John’s Hopkins UP, 1991); and Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983). For an earlier account see Eugenio Garin, L’educazione in Europa, 1400–1600; problemi e programmi (Bari: Laterza, 1966). 23  In chapter 2 of From Humanism to the Humanities, “Women Humanists: Education for What?,” Grafton and Jardine examine the radical shift in the educational practices of women that occurred in the Quattrocento while questioning its purpose. See especially pp. 56–7. 24  Sarah G. Ross, The Birth of Feminism. Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2009).

8

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

inducted into traditionally male academies, etc.25 Thus, she is most often viewed as a female poet, rather than in relation to the male-female literary culture. In this sense, Stampa has consistently been defined as part of a virtual community of women writers. Only recently has there been scholarship devoted to what precisely a virtual community of writers signifies. It is in this field that Diana Robin’s recent work on female-led literary salons, and the virtual salons created by anthologies to mirror these salons, has had the most to offer Stampa studies. As Robin has shown, the business of “publishing women” involved a complex network of men and women. Contrary to popular belief, women were not marginal figures or outside observers; rather they were active participants in a collective publication process. In the case of Stampa, we see this mixed-gender collectivity at work not only in her lifetime, but, especially, immediately after her death. She is the exemplum of the kind of female cultural leadership that Robin traces in her book, as her salon attracted some of the most prominent intellectuals in Venice, and with her death we see, first, a collaboration between her sister Cassandra, Giorgio Benzoni, and patron Giovanni della Casa, and then Stampa’s inclusion in a virtual salon populated entirely by women: Lodovico Domenichi’s Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime, et virtuosissime donne (Lucca: Busdragho, 1559), an ambitious anthology of fifty-three female poets, published five years after her death and the publication of her Rime.26 Stampa’s posthumous presence in a virtual salon of women writers succeeds in presenting her, and women poets in general, as part of a larger collective, rather than anomalies. This is a significant cultural moment in the history of women’s writing given the previous century’s treatment of the female neo-Latin humanists (first generation of women writers in Italy) as anomalies to the female sex.27 In the case of Stampa, it is also a strong reminder of the radically different approaches taken in publishing her poetry in later centuries: in the Cinquecento she was seen as a member of a larger intellectual community, 25  Stampa was inducted into the Dubbiosi Academy of Venice; Laura Terracina was a member of the Incogniti in Naples; and Laura Battiferra joined the Intronati in Siena. See especially Diana Robin, Publishing Women. Salons, the Presses, and the CounterReformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007), pp. 46–7. 26  Domenichi included five of the poems previously published in the Pietrasanta solo edition. See Robin, Publishing Women, p. 72. 27  Margaret King has argued that the Quattrocento female humanists were viewed as belonging to a “third sex,” that the female intellectual had become a “creature of ambiguous identity, belonging to a third and unknown sex beyond the order of nature having surpassed women in intellect.” See Margaret King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991), p. 76. For the treatment of Quattrocento female intellectuals as anomalies to their sex see especially Lisa Jardine, “‘O decus Italiae virgo,’ or the Myth of the Learned Lady in the Renaissance,” Historical Journal 28.4 (1985): 799–819; Aileen A. Feng, “In Laura’s Shadow: Casting Female Humanists as Medieval Beloveds in Quattrocento Letters,” The Inner Life of Women in Medieval Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt, and Hypocrisy, ed. Jeff Rider and Jamie Friedman, New Middle Ages Series (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), pp. 223–47.

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both real and virtual, and only with her later editors was her biography prioritized over her art. The wealth of new scholarship devoted to the history of women’s writing offers new avenues of investigation for Stampa criticism, those that would position her within the larger cultural movements of not only early modern Italy, but continental Europe as well. At the forefront of the movement to revise our understanding of early modern women’s writing, and, especially, the traditional approach of studying it as a series of isolated phenomena across the centuries, is Virginia Cox, whose recent monograph Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 is the first sustained study to situate Italian women’s writing within the larger context of humanism and as an integral part of various cultural discourses, rather than as an oppositional reaction to it.28 Over the centuries, Stampa’s formal training in the studia humanitatis has almost been taken for granted in that the effects of certain aspects of her education have not been fully explored in her poetry; literature and music are taken as givens because of her artistic output, while philosophy and ethics have not been wholly considered, for example. Following Cox’s example, the authors in this volume have attempted to reclaim Stampa’s status as a poet and a major figure in the canon of Renaissance literature. Together, the chapters emphasize the many ways in which Stampa’s poetry engages with the larger cultural movements of early modern Italy and Europe, from Ficinian and Renaissance Neoplatonism, to maleauthored writings about women, Longinus, communities of writers both real and imagined, the rediscovery of Aristotle’s writings, and mankind’s relationship to nature, to name but a few. We have assembled a wide array of scholars to examine how Italy’s “new Sappho” was in dialogue with the various cultural movements that have come to define the Renaissance. By systematically presenting case studies from the fields of literature, philosophy, gender and women’s studies, philology, eco-criticism, and history, the volume aims to present a more comprehensive portrait of Gaspara Stampa, one that places her art before the love story that has come to define her. The chapters are organized according to the broader intellectual movements with which they are primarily engaged, thereby providing the reader with multiple methodologies and critical frameworks through which to understand Stampa’s poetry. The book opens with three chapters focused on Stampa’s engagement with notions of the sublime and Cinquecento Neoplatonism. In Chapter 1, Jane Tylus examines the early modern reception of Gaspara Stampa and the Greek poet Sappho, whose “rediscovery” coincided with Stampa’s appearance on the European literary stage. By analyzing the Sapphic moments in Stampa’s text and paratexts, Tylus discusses the dynamics between these two female poet-musicians, and the extent to which readings of Sappho have intervened—productively or not—in readings of Stampa. Such an assessment allows us to better understand 28  Virginia Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008).

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

not only Stampa’s attempts to place herself within a genealogy of women poets, but the gendered role of the sublime in early modern culture. Unn Falkeid then, in Chapter 2, contextualizes Stampa’s appropriation of medieval notions of the sublime within the broader context of Renaissance Neoplatonism. She examines how, through Stampa’s language of desire, bodily passions are figured as crucial for the salvation of man. By locating two sources of Stampa’s conception of the sublime—late-antiquity Neoplatonism, subsequently reinforced in the medieval Christian tradition, and fourteenth-century Franciscan spirituality—she argues that the poet’s stylistic simplicity dramatizes this infusion of sacredness into human reality. Stampa’s Rime, thus, becomes an important contribution to Renaissance aesthetics and to the contemporary revaluation of the physical life in all its aspects. In Chapter 3 Federico Schneider examines Stampa’s reformulation of love pains in sublime terms, and the transformation of the Petrarchan poet-lover into a figura Christi. By deemphasizing the role of pathos in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Schneider focuses instead on the allegorical initiation into love of the poet-lover, thereby situating Petrarchan poetry within the Aristotelian rhetorical category of ethos. Although Stampa’s love poetry is well known for its heightened pathetic quality, Schneider analyzes how the love pains are instrumental in achieving a Petrarchaninspired ethos, allowing for a pathetic component to her poetry, but one that serves as a means to a rhetorical end. Chapters 4–7 concern Stampa’s involvement in various communities—real, virtual, and imagined. In Chapter 4 Aileen A. Feng explores a triangular structure of desire that recurs throughout Gaspara Stampa’s Rime. Beginning with the intrusion of a second, female voice—that of “qualch’una”—in the tercets of the opening sonnet, Feng argues that Stampa presents both her desire for the male beloved and her poetic inspiration as mediated by the invidia of a second woman who hopes to emulate her. The explicit inclusion of a female rival in both love and fame places Stampa’s poetry within a larger tradition: by presenting female rivalry as a positive and necessary component to poeticizing, Stampa challenges the classical trope of female invidia as a destructive attribute that prohibits women from being trustworthy or friends. Examining a series of triangular paradigms within the collection elucidates not only a shifting perspective on the nature of desire, but also the role of female-homosociality—in real and imagined communities—in the emerging early modern female lyric tradition. In Chapter 5 Ann Rosalind Jones analyzes the interplay of objective social challenges, amorous longing, jealousy, and compensatory strategies in Stampa’s poems for and against her inaccessible aristocratic lover, Collaltino di Collalto. By exploring variations on the theme of jealousy in the Rime, alongside the vocabulary of social contract, Jones shows how Stampa wrote to shock, in order to break out of the thicket of Petrarchan themes and variations that shaped the love poetry of her predecessors and contemporaries. Her analysis of Stampa’s jealousy poems are framed partly on Benedetto Varchi’s commentary on a sonnet about jealousy written by Giovanni della Casa, which Varchi explicated in a lecture to the Paduan Accademia degl’Infiammati in 1540. Jones argues that Stampa dismisses unnamed rivals for Collaltino’s love

Introduction

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as merely self-interested and denounces his intended marriage—unprecedented themes in other sequences of love poems in her time, but themes which show her involvement in the larger Venetian academic environment than had been previously understood. In Chapter 6 Angela Matilde Capodivacca re-examines the famous poetic exchange between Gaspara Stampa and Hyppolita Mirtilla—one of the first known exchanges between women poets. She argues that the model of female friendship that Stampa envisions in her exchange with Mirtilla serves as one of the turning points of her canzoniere, and is reappropriated at the turn of the century by Isabella Andreini in her pastoral play Mirtilla. However, as Capodivacca argues, this exchange is fictional, insofar as the poem in honor of Stampa attributed to Mirtilla is actually part of a collection of poems written in the previous century by Giusto de’ Conti that is currently held in the Ricciardiana Library in Florence. The correspondence between Gaspara and Mirtilla is thus also a falso, engineered by Luisa Bergalli in order to further her claims to a female genealogy of women poets. Finally, in Chapter 7, William J. Kennedy situates Stampa’s poetry within sixteenth-century concepts of professionalism, arguing that only after her death and the 1554 publication of her Rime, supervised by her sister, does her canzoniere seem unpremeditated and almost accidental, belated by comparison with the publication of poetry by important men in the poet’s life—her lover Collaltino di Collalto, her brother Baldassarre, and the great Venetian supporter of the arts Domenico Venier, all of whom were recognized and anthologized more visibly than she was. In this chapter Kennedy shows how in the company of these literary men named in her Rime Stampa comes to represent a precocious professionalism all her own, disowning their amateur status and reinforcing the seriousness of her career aspirations. The authors of chapters 8–10 examine the various ways in which Stampa played with the idea of personae. In Chapter 8 Ulrike Schneider focuses on Stampa’s playful blending of fiction and reality by taking on different roles and identities in her poetry—an implicit reflection on the fictional status of poetry that, in the Primo Cinquecento, had not yet been subject to a clear-cut genre code. She argues that the structural canzoniere model that informs the first 1554 edition of the Rime is as important as the elegiac tradition and results in the appearance of different personae within the text, and that Stampa’s role-playing points to a specific constellation within sixteenth-century Italian literary societies. In Chapter 9 Veronica Andreani analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed by Stampa to create her poetic self-portrait. By focusing primarily on the sonnets that evoke well-known epitaphs of unhappy lovers (Dido, Evadne, Eco, etc.), Andreani investigates how Stampa rewrites the destiny of the figure of the abandoned woman by presenting herself as an exemplum of faithfulness not to a beloved, but to the God of Love. Since Stampa’s abandonment by the count leads not to the classical model of suicide or dissipation but to a rebirth, and the opening up of a possibility to love again, Andreani argues that the apparent paradox of the presence of a second lover (Bartolomeo Zen) that scholars have argued breaks the unity of the collection belies Stampa’s evolving understanding of the nature of love, faith,

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

and desire. In the final chapter of the volume (10), Troy Tower examines Stampa’s poetry through the lens of eco-criticism by exploring how Stampa’s adoption of the anthropomorphized river Anassilla as her persona creates a literary ecology where poetic expression is figured as water. Through the framework of material eco-criticism, Tower analyzes three key moments when Stampa’s interaction with the river reveals an awareness of the poet’s dependence on her social, literary, and geographic environments. In the name Anassilla, Stampa simultaneously evokes her status as poet, her subject matter, her beloved(s), and her admirers, ultimately turning the pseudonym into an emblem for poetry that understands and exploits its dependence on an ecology of actors, animate and inanimate, whose potential lies in affecting significance by interacting with others in its networks. Throughout the volume, all Italian citations and English translations of Stampa’s poetry are taken from Gaspara Stampa. The Complete Poems. The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” a Bilingual Edition, edited by Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with an introduction and translation by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010).

Part I The Sublime

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Chapter 1

Naming Sappho: Gaspara Stampa and the Recovery of the Sublime in Early Modern Europe Jane Tylus, New York University

The female lover who looks out to sea and yearns for the departed, at times treacherous, beloved is a convention in antiquity canonized in the Heroides— fictional letters purportedly penned by mythological figures such as Ariadne, Medusa, and Dido but really written by Ovid. With some exceptions, it was mainly through the Heroides that the greatest woman writer of antiquity, Sappho, was introduced to medieval and Renaissance Europe, as she laments her abandonment by the young ferryman Phaon, a figure largely invented by Ovid, before she throws herself off the Leucadian cliff.1 The unrequited lover thus became an indelible part of Sappho’s fascination for early modern readers, particularly when so tantalizingly few of her actual lyrics survived. Yet in 1554, Sappho burst onto the European scene in a very different way. In the fall of that year, Sappho’s “He is a god to me,” what has become known as Fragment 31, was published by the scholar Francesco Robortello in Basel. Found in the pseudo-Longinian treatise On the Sublime (Dionysi Longini rhetoris praestantissimi liber de grandi sive sublimiorationis genere), this was only the second substantial poem of Sappho’s in print; it followed the publication in 1508 of the first century BCE treatise On Literary Composition, with Sappho’s “Ode to Aphrodite.” Also in 1554, the six one- to two-line fragments by Sappho preserved in the second century CE (?) Greek writer Demetrius’s work, On Style, were published by the Aldine press in Venice. But “He is a god to me” was different. Among other things, it was instantly recognized as the background text to Catullus’s well-known poem, “Ille mi par esse deo videtur” (“He seems 1  Stephen Campbell’s chapter on Lorenzo Costa in The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella D’Este (New Haven: Yale UP, 2004) is a detailed analysis of the texts about—if not by—Sappho available to an early-sixteenthcentury reader. He analyzes Costa’s painting, Coronation of a Woman Poet, in the light of the dynamics of Isabella d’Este’s court and humanist texts available to it, including Poliziano’s commentary on Ovid, Boccaccio’s recently published twelfth eclogue “Saphos” about the power of poetry, and Pliny’s Historia naturalis with its discussion of the relationship between Sappho and the Pythagoreans. “By 1500,” Campbell argues, “the rehabilitation of Sappho”—the infamous tribade and “tragic victim” of Eros—was well on its way (p. 201). Needless to say, these same texts would have been available in mid-sixteenth-century Paris and Venice as well.

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

to me to be equal to a god”), by Marc-Antoine Muret, who in November 1554 included “the most charming lyric of the poetess Sappho” in his Catullus, et in eum commentaries M. Antonii Mureti. This was a discovery Muret claimed to have made while undertaking a translation of On the Sublime into Latin.2 Two years later, the renowned French editor Henri Estienne came out with the first “complete” edition of Sappho’s now eight extant fragments, along with the odes of Anacreon and other Greek poets.3 Finally, Remi Belleau also published in 1556 his (mediocre) French translation of Fragment 31, the first time the poem appeared in a vernacular language.4 What is perhaps most striking about this recovery of Sappho is the coincidental publications of the works of two of Europe’s greatest women poets, Louise Labé and Gaspara Stampa.5 The first elegy in Labé’s Euvres of 1555 opens with Labé’s claim that Apollo has given her the lyre that once sang of “l’amour Lesbienne”— Lesbian love, an indirect reference to Sappho. And a dedicatory ode to the volume, written in Greek, declares that Labé has restored the poems of Sappho “destroyed by the force of all-devouring time.”6 Stampa’s Rime of a year earlier is prefaced 2  Text and translation from Julia Haig Gaisser, Catullus and His Renaissance Readers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 164. 3  Estienne had published an earlier edition of Anacreon’s Odes (Anacreontis tei odae) in 1554, in which he included Sappho 1, the “Ode to Aphrodite.” The 1556 edition was the first to include Fragment 31. Estienne printed the first three stanzas of Catullus 51 to stand in as a Latin translation for Sappho, adding a fourth stanza for the final part of the poem. On the background, see Joan DeJean, Fictions of Sappho: 1546–1937 (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989), pp. 29–42; Leah Chang, Into Print: The Production of Female Authorship in Early Modern France (Newark: U of Delaware P, 2009), pp. 110–12; Mary Morrison, “Henri Estienne and Sappho,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 24 (1962): 389–93; John Logan, “Longinus and the Sublime,” Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. III, ed. Glyn Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), pp. 529–39; and especially Gaisser, Catullus and His Renaissance Readers, pp. 162–5. Of Muret’s publication of the Sappho fragment, Gaisser writes, “In the case of [Catullus] 51, however, Muret was in a position to make a more substantial contribution … Muret must be recognized as the first to identify 51 as a translation of Sappho, whose text he prints in his commentary” (pp. 163–4). The poem is, it must be added, only a partial translation of Sappho’s poem, and as we will see further along in this essay, it is more accurate to call it an adaptation. 4  See Joan DeJean’s disparaging comment on Belleau’s translation (Fictions of Sappho, p. 34). 5  Rainer Marie Rilke’s rather extraordinary connection between Labé, Stampa, and Sappho in his Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in 1910 creates a fascinating literary genealogy linking these three women poets together; whether Rilke was aware of the coincidental dating of the two early modern poets’ volumes and the simultaneous production of Sappho’s corpus is unclear. See my forthcoming “Rescuing the Renaissance: Women Writers, Courtesans, and Salza’s Stampa” in a volume edited by Lina Bolzoni and Alina Payne on “Nineteenth-century Renaissances” (Harvard UP). 6  Louise Labé, Oeuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), p. 142; in Rigolot’s French translation from the Greek, “Le Temps, dévorateur de tout, avait détruit/ les odes de Sappho à l’harmonieux bruit// Mais Louise Labé . . . nous les rend pour toujours.”

Naming Sappho

17

by two dedicatory verses likening her to a new Sappho. Or, in the phrase of the poligrafo Giulio Stufa, she is “de’ nostri dí Saffo novella” (“the new Sappho of our day”).7 Along with Labé’s and Stampa’s allusions to Sappho within their respective volumes, these dedications demonstrate a more intense engagement with the female Greek poet than comparisons made regarding Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Anne Bradstreet in the seventeenth century, when the “old continent” looked to these American wonders as la decima musa, or the tenth muse.8 Sappho indeed was the recovered female voice of the mid-sixteenth century, in the same way that, on a more massive scale, the many women writers featured in The Other Voice series represent voices recovered over the last two decades.9 As Joan DeJean and more recently Leah Chang have reminded us, hers was a voice that was recovered textually and philologically, through Robortello’s and Muret’s editions. It was a voice even more tantalizing for its fragmentary presence. Chang argues that Labé’s Euvres embodies what she calls a new “desire for Sappho” that emerged in the wake of these editions: a nostalgia for a pure Greek female presence that was orchestrated nonetheless by a largely, and perhaps exclusively, male cultural elite.10 On the other hand, Stampa’s Rime appeared in November  Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa (Venice: Plinio Pietrasanta, 1554), fol. 5r.  Labé and Stampa have oddly parallel lives. They were exact contemporaries, with

7 8

the single editions of their texts coming out within a year of one another—1554/1555. They both died young—Labé was probably 45, Stampa 31—and they both lived in cities where the new and heady business of book publishing was at its strongest, Lyon and Venice. Both were from middle-class families, and both clearly had humanistic educations. The French woman loved a man who abandoned her at least part of the time for Italy, traveling near the “Po,” as she says in Elegy 2, while the Italian loved a man who abandoned her to fight in France. Both address poems explicitly to women readers—the Dames Lionnoises of Labé’s third elegy, the more general “donne” of Stampa’s first capitolo. More intriguingly, Labé dedicates her works to an unnamed “Mademoiselle,” while Stampa’s first sonnet imagines an unknown woman—“qualch’una”—reading her verses. While Stampa’s poetic collection is far more prolific than Labé’s, they nonetheless share certain interests—in music, in the prospect of multiple lovers, in relaying their own passion for a man who takes on the status of the Petrarchan, female, beloved. It is not impossible that Stampa’s posthumous poems came into Labé’s hands as she was writing her own poetry in nearby Lyon. If nothing else, it would be worth thinking harder about why Labé’s first sonnet is in Italian—an introduction that perhaps intentionally sets out to establish parity between this untranslated Italian text and the twenty-three French poems that follow. For an excellent recent translation into English, see Richard Sieburth’s Love Sonnets and Elegies: Louise Labé (New York: New York Review of Books, 2014). 9  The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe is a series edited by Margaret King and Albert Rabil that began life at the University of Chicago Press and is now published by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto. Over a hundred texts, primarily by early modern women writers, are now either in print or in press. 10  Recent skepticism about the existence of a Louise Labé has contributed to seeing the 1555 Oeuvres as the clever production of a “woman’s voice” by a group of skillful male poets in Paris and Lyon; see Mireille Huchon, Louise Labé: Une creature de papier

18

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

1554, the same month as Muret’s Catullus, a month or two after Robortello’s Longinus, and six months after Stampa’s sudden death in April. Its dedicatory verses championing Stampa as the modern Sappho, and Stampa’s occasional allusions to Sappho’s poems, could be construed as one final salvo to the old Sappho, composed before editors in Basel, Paris, and Venice brought “Sappho back to poetic life,” in the words of Chang. And, of course, the Ovidian plaint of Sappho mourning the departure of her young lover was very much a part of Stampa’s repertoire, as Patricia Phillippy has convincingly demonstrated.11 Nor should the association between Stampa and Sappho particularly surprise. Both were women, both were poets, both were musicians. Sappho, who calls upon her “tortoise shell” to sing with her, is often referred to in antiquity as simply the player of the plectra or lyre while Stampa was best known during her brief lifetime as a virtuosa, a lute player and singer. Hence when Giulio Stufa claims that Stampa is not only “the new Sappho of our day,” “equal to the Greek poet in her Tuscan idiom, but chaster than she was, just as she was more beautiful” (“Pari a la Greca nel Tosco idioma,/ Ma più casta di lei, quanto piu bella”12), he is undeniably thinking of the musical talents for which others praised her more explicitly. Girolamo Parabosco asked in his Lettere amorose of 1545, “who has ever heard such sweet and elegant words? . . . and what will I say of that angelic voice that struck the air with its divine accents and made such sweet harmony that it awakened spirit and life in the coldest stones?”13 Stufa also puts his finger on another comparison that could be made between Stampa and Sappho: their presumed promiscuity, the function no doubt of Ovid’s fictional letter from the Heroides on the one hand, and of Stampa’s unconventional lifestyle on the other. Alessandro Zilioli, writing in 1599, claims that only Stampa’s Rime saved her from an unsavory reputation: “Having given herself to consort freely with well-educated men, she brought such scandal to herself that had not her great talents and the honor of her poetry concealed and almost cancelled her failings, it would be necessary to cover her with blame rather than include her here within this temple of honor among such valorous women.”14 So does Zilioli capture, as (Geneva: Droz, 2006) and ensuing debates. While refusing to take sides, Chang explores the role of masculine presumptions about Sappho as a way of determining the value of the volume. 11  Patricia Phillippy, “‘Altera Dido’: The Model of Ovid’s Heroides in the Poems of Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco,” Italica 69 (1992): 1–18. 12  Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa (Venice, 1554), f. 5r. 13  Cited in Abdelkader Salza, “Madonna Gasparina Stampa secondo nuove indagini,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 62 (1913): 1–101; p. 16. 14  Cited in Abdelkader Salza, “Madonna Gasparina Stampa e la società veneziana del suo tempo: Nuove discussioni,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 69 (1917): 217–306; p. 230. “Poichè datasi a conversar liberamente con gli uomini dotti, indusse tanto scandalo di sé, che se la molta virtù sua e la onorevolezza della poesia in particolare non avesse ricoperti e quasi cancellati i mancamenti suoi, sarebbe da stimarsi degna di biasmo, che di lode alcuna,” from Alessandro Zilioli’s Historia delle vite de’ poeti italiani, a manuscript copy of which was in possession of Apostolo Zeno when he and Luisa Bergalli began compiling the edition of Stampa’s verse.

Naming Sappho

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Marina Zancan comments, the “transgressive nature” of Stampa’s figure as it was apparently received in the late Cinquecento—a woman who “consorted” with men in the privacy of her own and others’ homes, in a city known for its courtesans.15 Yet this essay will argue that Stampa shows a sophisticated understanding of Sappho that goes beyond these biographical (or pseudobiographical) platitudes. Giorgio Forni has already observed that Stampa was a close reader of Demetrius’s widely circulated treatise On Style, where Sappho is praised for her charming use of repetition and hyperbole. Forni finds one of the six short fragments included for illustration, about the trampled hyacinth (105), echoed in Stampa’s Rime 188, “Quasi vago, e purpureo Giacinto” (“Like some lovely purple hyacinth”).16 Robortello’s edition of Longinus or Muret’s edition of Catullus would thus seem less removed from Stampa than they might appear, although the dates of these editions would seem to militate against Stampa’s having known Longinus and hence, Sappho’s “He is a god to me.” And yet Robortello, a scholar of Greek and Latin, taught throughout Italy in the 1530s and 1540s, settling in Padova in the late 1540s. There he taught Francesco Patrizi, whose Discorso sulla diversità dei furori poetici, published in 1553, is strikingly prescient of Longinus’s treatise, cited by Patrizi in his later works. Patrizi, moreover, seems to have been a friend of Francesco Sansevino—the same Sansevino who dedicated three works to Stampa in the mid-1540s after her brother Baldassare’s sudden death, among them an edition of Boccaccio’s Ameto and a lecture by Benedetto Varchi on a poem by Giovanni della Casa. And it was Varchi who wrote the second dedicatory poem for Stampa that links her to Sappho, calling her “the Sappho of our day” (“Saffo de’ nostri giorni, alta Gaspara”). In another verse written for the volume, Varchi claims to be consoled by the thought that Stampa “will live forever, so that Athens and Rome will see Sappho and Lucrezia descend from their thrones” (“e tal ch’Atene e Roma / Saffo e Lucrezia uscir vedran di sella”).17 As for Marc-Antoine Muret, even though he did not arrive in Venice until May of 1554, a month after Stampa’s death, he had access to a manuscript of Longinus long before that, thanks to the Cretan scholar Francesco Porto. Marc Fumaroli and Gustavo Costa have moreover discovered evidence of other copies of Longinus circulating in Rome prior to its publication by

 Marina Zancan, Il doppio itinerario della scrittura (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), p. 160.  Giorgio Forni, “‘L’orecchie mi tirò ne l’ore prime’: Nota su Giovanni della Casa

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e Gaspara Stampa,” Giovanni della Casa: Un seminario per il centenario, ed. Amadeo Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), pp. 289–300. In an astute analysis, Forni goes on to detail the examples of repetition and hyperbole in Stampa and Sappho alike, focusing particularly on the use of what he calls retraction after an “impossible hyperbole: “l’attitudine discorsiva in cui la Stampa predilige raffigurare sé stessa è proprio quella garbata e pungente, ‘proprie Sapphica,’ del correggersi e del ritrattare”—such as “poi torno a me, e del mio dir me pento” (25.9), p. 298. This essay is much indebted to his pioneering work. 17  Gaspara Stampa, Rime, ed. Abdelkader Salza (Bari: Laterza e figli, 1913), “Di Benedetto Varchi. Risposta a Giulio Stufa,” p. 193.

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

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Robortello.18 All to suggest that in intellectual circles in Italy, there was not simply talk about, but access to Longinus and hence to Sappho before Stampa died in late April of 1554. That Stampa was part of those circles, thanks both to her brother’s acquaintances at the University of Padova and to her own connections with the elite aristocracy and Venice’s lively publishing world, is undeniable—enabling, among other things, what Diana Robin has called the “Latinity of her work” and her extensive use of Roman elegiac poets, especially Catullus.19 As a substantive new Sapphic fragment began circulating, first in manuscript, and then in print, in the years leading up to Stampa’s premature death, it is not inconceivable that Stampa or the poligrafi who assembled the volume of her Rime knew of its existence—much like the editors of Labé’s poems and possibly Labé herself.20 In the following pages, I will entertain the hypothesis that Stampa and her editors were aware of Longinus’s text with its breathtaking Sapphic text. This in turn could lead to thinking in new ways about Stampa’s elusive role as a female poet in the very masculine world of the Venetian republic, and the even more elusive relationship between orality and textuality in the production of authorship and particularly female authorship. The secular female singer, lyre or lute in hand, had a tradition of inspiration behind her that may have challenged her ability to be seen as a poet in her own right, and that had to be carefully negotiated if not silenced. To what extent does the invoked muse take away from the singer’s autonomy and independence? At the same time, the muse was often understood to be a female figure defined by possession and a lack of control over her own  Gustavo Costa has written several articles on the reception of the sublime in Italy, both prior to and during the years of the actual publication of Longinus’s text in the mid1550s. See especially “The Latin Translations of Longinus’s Peri Ypsous in Renaissance Italy,”Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis, ed. R.J. Schoeck (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1985), pp. 224–38. Fumaroli speculates on Paolo Manuzio’s interest in Longinus prior to the 1555 publication of the text in L’age de l’éloquence (Geneva: Droz, 1980) pp. 165–7. For a recent account of Longinus in sixteenth-century Italy see Eugenio Refini, “Longinus and Poetic Imagination in Late Renaissance Literary Theory,” Translations of the Sublime, ed. Carolyn Van Eck et al. (London: Brill, 2012), pp. 33–53. 19  Diana Robin, “Courtesans, Celebrity, and Print Culture in Renaissance Venice: Tullia d’Aragona, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Franco,” Italian Women and the City, ed. Janet Smarr (Cranbury, NJ: Associated Universities Press, 2003), pp. 38–59; see also Ann Rosalind Jones’s apt comments in The Currency of Eros. Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990) on the extent to which Stampa’s verses convey not the isolation and “solo melancholy of pastoral” but the signs of being a member of an urban cultural elite (pp. 139–40). 20  Indeed, they seem to have capitalized on its discovery in an odd if strategic way. At precisely the very moment that Sappho had re-emerged in an important new poem, the ode in Greek declared at the beginning of Labé’s volume, “Time had destroyed the odes of Sappho, / But Louise Labé renders them to us forever.” Why was it to Louise Labé that one must look to find a permanent Sappho, just as Sappho was being recovered through the efforts of Robortello, Muret, and Manuzio? 18

Naming Sappho

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words.21 If Sappho were to be seen as Stampa’s “muse,” the poet who even in fragmentary fashion lay behind Stampa’s efforts, how might Stampa’s attempts at authorship have been undermined as she sought to establish her credentials not as musician and performer but as poet? By focusing on several of Stampa’s most “Sapphic” poems, we will consider how the presence of Sappho on the European scene in the mid-sixteenth century may have generated not simply excitement about this long-silent voice, but also anxieties: how could a woman poet measure up to the real Sappho, whoever she might have been? What kind of shadow did she cast, and how did Longinus’s revolutionary text with Sappho’s suggestive fragment formulate an answer to the anxieties of her influence? What follows are admittedly conjectures, but conjectures that will hopefully help to broaden the imaginative ways we think about that most imaginative of human productions, lyric poetry. And even as Stampa undertook to control her relationship with Sappho in a volume that would be published only posthumously, this control would be ironically overturned in the next major edition of her poems, the 1738 volume edited by Luisa Bergalli, with which this essay will close. Let me return to Giulio Stufa, the poligrafo who, along with Benedetto Varchi in the 1554 Rime, refers to Stampa as the “new Sappho.” On the one hand, one can imagine his concerns about trying to protect what he may have suspected, or may have known, to be Stampa’s “scandalous” reputation. Hence, his insistence that his new Sappho was more “chaste” than the old. On the other hand, as the phrase “Pari à la Greca nel Tosco idioma” (“equal to the Greek poet in her Tuscan idiom”) demonstrates, he may in fact have been a careful reader of Stampa’s verse— particularly her initial sonnet, and one that offers the first clue as to Stampa’s relationship to Sappho.22 The poet imagines like Petrarch at the opening of his rhymes a future reader, or more appropriately, a future listener, as she opens with an address to a general reader or readers (Rime 1): Voi ch’ascoltate in queste meste rime, In questi mesti, in questi oscuri accenti Il suon de gli amorosi miei lamenti, E de le pene mie tra l’altre prime (1–4) 21  Several works relevant to the English context, if not to the Italian, are Elizabeth D. Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts (London: Routledge, 1992), and Jennifer Keith, Poetry and the Feminine from Behn to Cowper (Newark: U of Delaware P, 2005). Harvey’s fourth chapter considers the use of Sappho’s voice as a kind of muse by Ovid, Donne, and others, while Keith registers English women writers’ ambivalence about using the figure of the muse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 22  Equally, Stufa may have picked up on a phrase in Cassandra Stampa’s dedicatory letter to Giovanni della Casa where Cassandra paraphrases her sister in describing della Casa’s “parity” with ancient as well as modern writers: “volta se ne ragionava, che era assai spesso, et portando à cielo i suoi dottissimi, leggiadrissimi, et gravissimi componimenti al pari di tutti gli antichi et moderni, che si leggono.”

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

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(You who hear in these troubled rhymes, / in these troubled and these dark accents, / the sound of my amorous laments / and sufferings that vanquish all others)23

After claiming that unlike the Petrarchan narrator she seeks “Gloria” for her efforts, she goes on in the tercets to differentiate a very singular reader, a woman: E spero ancor, che debba dir qualch’una, Felicissima lei, da che sostenne Per sì chiara cagion danno sì chiaro. Deh, perche tant’Amor, tanta Fortuna Per sì nobil Signor’ à me non venne, Ch’anch’io n’andrei con tanta Donna à paro?” (9–14) (And I hope some woman will be moved to say: / “Most happy she, who suffered famously / for such a famous cause! // Oh, why can’t the fortune that comes/ from loving a lord like him be mine, / so such a lady and I might walk side by side?”)

This last line is of special interest: the desire of the poet for “qualch’una,” (v. 9) a future female reader, to walk beside Stampa, or more literally, to be her equal: “a paro.” It could be said that onto this envious woman (“qualch’una”) Stampa has displaced her own desires to be an equal and that Rime 1, so clearly evocative of Petrarch’s first sonnet, suggests that the great initiator of the lyric tradition in Italy is the principal influence with whom Stampa must contend. Yet even at the moment where she seems to turn away most dramatically from Petrarch, embedded in Stampa’s opening sonnet is another Petrarchan citation and within it, as Giorgio Forni has noted, an allusion to another poet with whom Stampa will vie in her collection. The fourth book of Petrarch’s Triumphus Cupidinis contains a line that is surely behind the wistful female reader’s remark on Stampa’s great fortune. In the flock of poets who escort the triumphal carriage of Amore in Petrarca’s Trionfi, we read: “A young Greek girl went singing side by side with the noblest of poets, and her style was mellifluous, and rare” (TC IV, 25–26: “Una giovene greca a paro a paro / coi nobili poeti iva cantando / et avea un suo stil soave e raro”).24 This unnamed woman completes a list of ancient poets that began with the only other unnamed figure in the sequence, “He who loves only Eurydice” (v. 13: “colui che sola Euridice ama”)—Orpheus—and then continues with Anacreon, Pindar, Virgil, and others, to culminate in this oblique but obvious reference to Sappho.  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, eds. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). 24  Petrarch, Trionfi, ed. Marco Ariani (Milan: Mursia, 1988), Triumphus Cupidinis IV, 25–6. My translation. 23

Naming Sappho

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“Raro” (“rare”), as we will see, is a word associated with Stampa’s other Sapphic poems, but as Stampa embeds the phrase “a paro” into her text, she relegates Sappho to a more distant past as she replaces the “giovene greco” with herself. Her efforts will be to inspire envy in a future woman reader—a woman who will be moved not simply to equal her, but eventually to overtake her, in the same way that Stampa has overtaken Sappho by not mentioning her at all.25 Only once, in fact, does Stampa explicitly mention Sappho’s name, in Rime 224. Addressed to an “alma fenice”—a noble phoenix, an unknown woman of “eternal beauty and bearing like an angel” (v. 5: “bellezza eterna, angelico costume”)—Stampa ends the second quatrain asking “perche non poss’io, come vi colo, / Versar scrivendo d’eloquentia un fiume?” (vv. 7–8: “why can’t I pour forth a stream of eloquence as I honor you in writing?”) She then goes on in the two tercets: Che spererei de la più sacra fronde Così Donna qual sono, ornarmi il crine, E star con Saffo, e con Corinna à lato. Poi che lo stil’ al desir non risponde Fate voi co’ be’ rai luci divine, Chiare voi stesse, e questo mar beato. (9–14) (What I would give for that most sacred wreath / to adorn my tresses, woman that I am, / and stand alongside Sappho and Corinna. // But my style doesn’t answer to my desire, / so use your lovely eyes and lights divine / to make yourself renowned and this sea blessed.)

As much as she would “sperare” or hope to be adorned with that “most sacred wreath,” the laurel, Stampa must yield to the power of the beautiful phoenix’s abilities to praise herself and thus to bless Venice. “Star con Saffo” (v. 11: “stand alongside Sappho”) in this context is an impossibility for Stampa: only the anonymous beauty can make herself famous, simply with her looks. It is striking that Stampa fails here, where the great poet from antiquity is named for the first and only time in the collection. The line might recall that of another Italian poet, Ariosto: in the opening stanza of Canto 20 of the Orlando furioso, he praises “Le donne antique [che] hanno mirabile cose / fatto ne l’arme e ne le sacre muse”: “Safo e Corinna, perché furon dotte, / splendono illustri, e mai non veggon notte” (20, 1: “Women of old have done wonderful things in both battle and inspired by the holy muses … . Sappho and Corinna, because they were learned, dazzle still, and night will never set on their works”).26 From here, Ariosto will famously go on to argue that even though it may seem that equally accomplished women have not been born 25  See Aileen A. Feng’s chapter in this volume for an analysis of how invidia and triangulations of desire function within Stampa’s Rime. 26  Ariosto, Orlando furioso, vol. I, ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), p. 567. My translation.

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

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since, it is possible that the envy or ignorance of contemporary writers (“l’invidia o il non saper degli scrittori”) has concealed the existence of such women. In what may be an obvious reference to Vittoria Colonna, he writes, “It certainly seems to me that in our day, there’s so much talent emerging among our lovely women that it should be set down on ink and paper” (20, 3: “Ben mi par di veder ch’al secol nostro / tanta virtú fra belle donne emerge / che può dare opra a carte et ad inchiostro”). Yet this is work which at least at this point the narrator does not take up, choosing instead to extol the merits of the fictional Marfisa. Sappho and Corinna, that is, are allowed to remain the only exemplars of learned female poets, in the same way that they remain untouched by Stampa in Rime 224. Yet, by leaving Sappho unnamed 223 poems earlier, Stampa herself attains the role of the “giovene greca” who goes “a paro a paro” singing with noble poets who included Catullus, Tibullus, Anacreon, Pindar, and Virgil. Perhaps the real paradox of Rime 224 is that the “alma fenice” (“noble phoenix”) herself is unnamed—and hence her identity lost to future readers even as she is granted parity with Sappho and Corinna. The equality that eludes Stampa in Rime 224 is a frequent concern in her corpus. In part this is a function of her own inferiority in terms of gender as well as social class with respect to most of the figures who surrounded her. This is particularly noted with Collaltino di Collalto, aristocrat and feudal lord of a number of territories in the Veneto who figures in over two hundred of her lyrics, but also the many to whom she addressed her so-called rime varie: King Henri II of France and his wife Catherine de Médicis, the noble Elena Barozzi Zentani, Sperone Speroni, Luigi Alamanni, Giovanni della Casa. She frequently expresses her own “lowliness” and insufficiencies as when she asks Collaltino’s brother Vinciguerra: “What breast conceals within such eloquence / that can stand beside the praise you give to others?” (Rime 237, 13–4: “Qual vena d’eloquentia petto serra, / Che possa gir’ à le tue lodi à paro?”)—a line that echoes Rime 224 with its allusion to the “d’eloquentia un fiume” (v. 8: “a stream of eloquence”). Or when Love tells her that she and Collaltino are not equal: “Non son, mi dice Amor, le ragion pari” (Rime 150, 9: “But Love tells me this: ‘You two are not the same’”). We might see this jeweler’s daughter working out her social inferiorities in such moments, as well as adapting the familiar rhetoric of modesty with respect to those to whom she writes, be they lovers or potential patrons. At the same time, if the final line of sonnet 1 is any indication, Stampa may also be attempting to construe a new way of thinking about parity, in which the only kind of equality available to her replaces and effectively silences the very subject with whom she seeks to be equal. In this analysis, Rime 28 is key: a sonnet in which Maria Bellonci was first to hear “the echo of a celebrated fragment of Sappho”:27

 “L’eco di un celebre frammento di Saffo”; Gaspara Stampa, Rime, ed. Maria Bellonci and Gustavo Rodolfo Ceriello (Milan: Rizzoli, 2002), p. 98. Also see Forni’s remark: “il sonetto Quando innanti ai begli occhi almi e lucenti riscrive la più celebre ode di Saffo” (“L’orecchie mi tirò,” 295). 27

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Quando innanti à i begli occhi almi, e lucenti Per mia rara ventura al mondo, i vegno, Lo stil, la lingua, l’ ardire, e l’ingegno, I pensieri, i concetti, e i sentimenti, O` restan tutti oppressi, ò tutti spenti, E quasi muta, e stupida divegno; O` sia la riverenza, in che li tegno, O` sia, che sono in quel bel lume intenti. Basta, ch’io non sò mai formar parola Sì quel fatale, e mio divino aspetto La forza insieme, e l’anima m’invola. O` mirabil d’ Amore, e raro effetto, Ch’una sol cosa, una bellezza sola Mi dia la vita, e tolga l’intelletto. (When thanks to good fortune—all too rare in this world— / I come before those bright and shining eyes, / my style, my tongue, my daring, and my talents, / my thoughts, conceits, all sentiments // are weighted down or completely spent, / and I’m overwhelmed and almost mute: / it may be out of reverence for those bright eyes / or because upon the light they’re so intent. // It’s enough that I don’t know what to say / so fatal the divine self that steals / my force together with my soul. // Rare wonder, one of love’s miracles / that a single thing, this beauty alone, / both gives me life and takes all thought away!)

A single and perhaps a double heritage lies beneath these lines showing a narrator overcome by the beloved on whom she gazes: Catullus 51 and Sappho’s Fragment 31. First, to Sappho: I think him God’s peer that sits near you face to face, and listens to your sweet speech and lovely laughter. It’s this that makes my heart flutter in my breast. If I see you but for a little, my voice comes no more and my tongue is broken. At once a delicate flame runs through my limbs: I see nothing with my eyes, and my ears thunder. The sweat pours down: shivers grip me all over. I am grown paler than grass, and seem to myself to be very near to death. But all must be endured, since . . . .28

As already noted, Marc-Antoine Muret was among the first to identify this poem as the source for Catullus’s “Ille me par esse deo videtur.” Or more precisely, he  Citations from Sappho taken from the Greek Lyric. Vol. 1: Sappho and Alcaeus, ed. and trans. David A. Campbell, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1990), pp. 79–81. While this last line has been recovered for most modern editions of Sappho, it was omitted in the 1554 texts of the poem. 28

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

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identified the Catullus as a “partial” translation of Sappho’s most charming poem: “When I began to translate Dionysius Longinus’s work On the Sublime into Latin . . . I noted many other things in it indeed . . . but also the most charming lyric of the poetess Sappho, which Catullus has largely translated in the preceding verses” (“tum oden suavissimam poetriae Sapphus, quam iis, qui proxime antecesserunt, versibus maxima ex parte Catullus expressit”).29 In this text, which for Joan DeJean marks “a founding gesture in [Catullus’s] establishment of the Latin personal erotic elegy as a continuation of the Greek tradition,” Catullus emerges “as Sappho’s poetic double.”30 The first three stanzas of Catullus’s poem, which “translate” the first three stanzas of the Sapphic text, are the following: Ille me par esse deo videtur, Ille, si fas est, superare divos, Qui sedens adversus identidem te Spectat et audit Dulce ridentum, misero quod omnis Eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te, Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi [vocis in ore] Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus Flamma demanat, sonitu suopte Tintinant aures, gemina teguntur Lumina nocte … 31 (He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if it may be, seems to surpass the very gods, who sitting opposite you again and again gazes at you and hears you sweetly laughing. Such a thing takes away all my senses, alas! For whenever I see you, Lesbia, at once no sound of voice remains within my mouth, but my tongue falters, a subtle flame steals down through my limbs my ears ring with inward humming, my eyes are shrouded in twofold night … )32

For a poet like Stampa, sensitive to issues of equality, the Latin and Greek poems offer a veritable guide in calibrating hierarchies: between the lover and beloved, between the lover and the figure who has the good fortune to be seated next to the beloved, and whose proximity gives him the status of a god—or in Catullus’s self-emendation, allows him to surpass (“superare”) the gods. That said, the very presence of a third party is what differentiates Catullus and Sappho most  Text and translation from Gaisser, Catullus and His Renaissance Readers, p. 164.  Joan DeJean, Fictions of Sappho, p. 35. 31  Catullus notably does not translate the final complete stanza of the Sapphic 29 30

fragment; there is thus no death or trembling for him. He instead finishes his lyric with a stanza on otium—a swerve from Sappho that has been the focus of much scholarly speculation. 32  Text and translation from the Loeb edition, Catullus. Tibullus. Pervigilium Veneris, ed. G.P. Goold, trans. F.W. Cornish (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995).

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clearly from Stampa, as well, of course, as the fact that in both cases the beloved is a woman. The existence of a threesome in Catullus and Sappho (or if the gods are brought into the poem, a foursome) helps to bring the speaker’s emotions into sharp relief. Sappho’s beloved is not the male who is invoked in the first line, but the woman on whom the man gazes. He may be a god—theosin, god’s peer, the word that closes the first line of the fragment—but the beloved is “you,” since sheer proximity to the beloved is precisely how deity is defined. Catullus retains these dynamics while he retriangulates the experience as one shared between two men and a single woman, rather than two women and a man. In Stampa, there is no third party through whom she might refract her own experience. The beloved himself—Collaltino—is turned into a divinity; note his “fatale, e mio divino aspetto” (v. 10: “fatal the divine self”), with the “mio” (“my”) claiming ownership over the beloved’s “aspetto.” It is, indeed, Stampa who boasts proximity to the beloved—“innanti à i begli occhi almi, e lucenti” (“before those bright and shining eyes”)—as she subsumes the place of a potential rival, as Marina Zancan suggests, appropriating the language of the stil novo with its praise of the beloved’s luminous eyes.33 Later sonnets in the Rime will catalogue various threats to Stampa’s hold over Collaltino —women in France, the “Altre [donne]” of the bitter 178, the supposed wife Collaltino is about to take.34 But in sonnet 28, the rival is more subtly delineated. And who she is becomes clarified when we realize that Catullus, in line 7, indirectly names her in a punning line that suggests that his poem cannot be a direct translation: “nam simul te, / Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi/ [vocis in ore]” (“For whenever I see you, Lesbia, at once no sound of voice remains”). Sappho says “when I look at you”; but Catullus gives the “you” a name, and it is “Lesbia”—both the object of his own affections elsewhere in his verses, and an indirect allusion to the “Lesbian” poet who stands behind his poem.35 Indeed, this unmistakable adaptation of Sappho’s Fragment 31 is the first time that Catullus uses the Sapphic stanza for Roman elegy, and Lawrence Lipking suggests that “Lesbia” is a name “presumably coined for this poem.”36 For Stampa, of course, there is no other woman in her poem. No longer a triangulation, her sonnet is about only a couple, Stampa having effectively shut out its source— or, perhaps, its sources, Catullus and “Lesbia” alike. A second substantial difference between Stampa and the two ancient texts is that Sappho and Catullus develop a fairly passive relationship to the spectacle of  Zancan, Il doppio itinerario, p. 177.  See Ann Rosalind Jones’s chapter in this volume on female jealousy. 35  See Ellen Greene, who mentions that Catullus mentions Lesbia directly in thirteen 33 34

poems and refers to an unnamed mistress “whom most readers assume to be Lesbia” another twelve times. An “important reason for the use of this particular pseudonym is that Lesbia is the Latin adjective denoting a woman from Lesbos, and in the context of erotic poetry this appellation would most certainly refer to Sappho” (“Catullus and Sappho,” A Companion to Catullus, ed. Marilyn Skinner [Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007], pp. 131–51; pp. 132–3). 36  Lawrence Lipking, Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988), p. 64.

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

a man gazing at a woman. The verb that defines their intrusion into this intimate moment is principally one of sight: “aspexi” in Catullus, “IDO” for Sappho. Stampa, however, says “vengo”: she enters physically onto the scene, alone, using a verb that proclaims her agency. And it is an agency that is retained throughout the intimate experience with the beloved. Sappho’s tongue literally “snaps,” Catullus’s voice remains within his mouth. Stampa’s narrator is not “muta,” but only “quasi muta” (“almost mute”), while the figure who is completely “muta” is not only the absent rival—the absent Sappho—but the beloved. The nameless male rival in Catullus’s poem “spectat et audit” (“gazes at you and hears you”)—he sees and hears the voice of Lesbia, while the man who is “like a God” in Sappho’s poem hears the woman talk and laugh. Stampa’s beloved is a feast for the eyes, but not the ears. It is the “begli occhi almi, e lucenti” (“bright and shining eyes”) with which Stampa is so taken, but the only voice in the poem is hers. Thus does she enhance Collaltino’s objectification—an objectification37 highlighted by the fact that unlike her counterparts, Stampa does not write the poem as a direct address to the beloved but leaves him purposefully outside its frame: there is no “voi” (“you”) that brings him into our presence. Even if Stampa knew only Catullus’s version of Sappho 31,38 her revision is still important with respect to the Latin text, particularly if she recognized that “Lesbia” may have been used throughout Catullus’s corpus to refer to his own Sapphic muse. And yet it is also here where the conjecture that Stampa may have known something about Longinus’s treatise and Sappho’s role in it finds some support. Sappho’s fragment in that text is part of a longer discussion in which Longinus praises poets who use the strategy of combination to put single items together into an organic whole. So does Sappho reveal her excellence—her “arete,” a word that Homeric scholars will know as the word used once for warriors—“in the skill with which she selects and combines the most striking and intense of those symptoms.” This argument in chapter 10 of On the Sublime precedes the citation of Fragment 31. After Longinus quotes it, he goes on: Is it not wonderful [literally: are you not amazed by] how she summons at the same time, soul, body, hearing, tongue, sight, skin, all as though had wandered off apart from herself? She feels contradictory sensations, freezes, burns, raves, reasons, so that she displays not a single emotion, but a whole congeries of emotions. Lovers show all such symptoms, but what gives supreme merit to her

37  Gordon Braden suggests that “Collaltino’s image is feminized” at various points throughout the Rime, a feminization which corresponds to the way in which Stampa makes Collaltino a silenced and distanced object in Rime 28. See his “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender of Petrarchism,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.2. “Revising Renaissance Eroticism” (Summer 1996): 115–39; p. 125. 38  Stampa cites Catullus elsewhere in her poetry. Catullus 5, “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus” (“My Lesbia, let us live and love”) is echoed in Rime 158, “Deh lasciate Signor le maggior cure,” when she writes in line 7, “Viviamo insieme vita alma e gradita.”

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art is, as I said, the skill with which she takes up the most striking and combines them into a single whole.39

Sappho’s poem is today virtually inconceivable apart from Longinus’s commentary—one that reminds us above all that Sappho was a skilled stylist. But it also works to show how Sappho herself exemplifies the sublime. The loss of voice—the result of a broken tongue—and the scattering of bodily parts are compensated for and overcome by the “selective gathering of symptoms incident to the passion of love”: the act of bringing or drawing together into a single whole (ταὐτὸ συναίρεσις). Sublimity becomes the act of “summoning” these disparate parts, “as though they had wandered off” away from Sappho. We watch—or since Longinus so frequently stresses the auditory quality of the sublime, we hear—not the dissolution of the subject, but the creation of the subject in a move that may echo that other “summons” surprisingly mentioned early on in Longinus’s treatise, the fiat lux of Genesis as the Hebrew God summons up light to scatter the darkness. The act of summoning characterizes a number of Sappho’s fragments, whether it be the call to Aphrodite in the poem found in Dionysius’s On Literary Composition, or the cry of the beloved Anactoria, stranded in far-off Sardis, whom Sappho imagines calling out to her former companions on Lesbos. These are summons that suggest Sappho’s sophisticated use of authorial voice to call distant entities together, even though they never meet in fact: Anactoria remains in Sardis, Aphrodite on Cyprus. Yopie Prins has suggested that Longinus does a disservice to Sappho by “silencing” the spoken voice to call attention only to the text, now become a “whole” and integral thing.40 To be sure, Longinus shifts our attention from the scattering of self to its recomposition. Yet Sappho’s poem is itself a move of silences and displacements, as the “god” who sits next to the young woman is replaced by Sappho, and her speech about her lack of speech calls attention to neither the god nor the young woman, but herself. The second word of the lyric, as in Catullus’s adaptation, is μοι or “to me”: the poet, through whose act of perception—“he seems to me to be a god”—the poem emerges. Stampa too calls attention ultimately to herself even as she experiences the same scattering. Yet she produces not calculated descriptions of what happens to her ears, eyes, and tongue, but a list—“lo stil, la lingua, l’ardire, e l’ingegno, / i pensieri, i concetti, e i sentimenti” (Rime 28, 3–4: “my style, my tongue, my daring, and my talents / my thoughts, conceits, all sentiments”)—that is similar to the list produced categorically by Longinus (“soul, body, hearing, tongue, sight, skin”). Plausibly more interesting with respect to Longinus’s commentary is the final tercet: her ode to the “mirabil d’Amore” (“love’s miracles”) and “una sol cosa,” (“a single thing”), “una bellezza sola” (“this beauty alone”), that both destroys 39  Longinus, On the Sublime, trans. W.H. Fyfe and revised by Donald Russell, Aristotle, Longinus, and Demetrius (Cambridge; MA: Harvard UP, 1995), pp. 99–201. 40  See Yopie Prins, Victorian Sappho (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999), pp. 37–8 for an astute analysis of the dynamics of Longinus’s text vis-à-vis Sappho and her “broken” tongue.

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

her and deprives her of thought. Longinus insists at the end of his commentary that even if what Sappho describes is true to all of those who love, her “drawing together” important details “at one and the same moment” into a single whole is what marks her excellence, creating a host of disparate entities and emotions. Is not Stampa’s sonnet the “single whole” that likewise is generated to produce “amazement” in its reader, as it takes away one’s intellect to produce the “raro effetto” (“rare wonder”) that is the sublime?41 Through such commentary, Longinus tellingly revealed to his readers the way the sublime works—generating by his act of literary criticism the same effect that the poems of Sappho, Homer, and others produce through poetry.42 Three chapters before his discussion of Sappho, he called attention to this very aspect of the “true sublime”: it “naturally elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud exaltation, we are filled with joy and pride, as if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard.” Longinus uses the simile to describe the experience through which the reader takes ownership of a text, but his theory is arguably suggestive of the process of writing by which Stampa turns herself into the actual “producer”: making herself “paro” to Sappho by leaving her behind. If Catullus translates and hence reproduces Sappho’s fragment, he does so in a way that embeds Sappho within his poem as “Lesbia.” But Stampa’s “translation” leads her to omit the “second woman”—ergo, Sappho—as well as Collaltino himself.43 This is a Collaltino who, we learn later in the sequence, was also a writer, whom Stampa attempts to dissuade from praising her in verse since she is unworthy. Yet the real reason for Stampa’s silencing of the beloved is not the disparity between the two—his elite rank or her “baseness”—but something else. In Rime 118, she asks him to write no more, in effect silencing him so that her poems might survive: she will “chatter on,” she says—“favelli”—while requesting that he say nothing, ostensibly so she will not be further tormented by desire (vv. 7–8: “Senza cercar con pure rime ornate / D’aggiunger nove al cor piaghe e flagelli”; “no reason for you / to add new torments to my heart with elegant verse”).44 She seeks, that is, to silence what she hyperbolically claims is his poetry of the sublime, even as she declares in Rime 114 that the poems she will go on to write can ultimately be only about herself: 41  For different interpretations of the sublime in Stampa’s poetry, see the chapters by Federico Schneider and Unn Falkeid in this volume. 42  These observations owe a great deal to Yopie Prins’s analysis in Victorian Sappho although I am hesitant to insist as does Prins on the negative implications of Longinus’s appropriation of Sappho. 43  For a classic statement of Renaissance emulation and imitation, much influenced by the rhetorical writings of Quintilian and Cicero, see G.W. Pigman III, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 1–32. 44  Aileen A. Feng has suggested to me that the “favelli” of Stampa’s Rime 118 returns to the silenced dynamics of Petrarch’s first sonnet, in which he bemoans the fact that he has become “favola” or gossip for others (RVF 1, 10: “favola fu gran tempo”); here, Stampa suggests that she wishes to be in control of her own “favola.” Such an observation would certainly be in keeping with the dynamics on which I am elaborating in this essay.

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Però mi volgo à scriver solamente L’historie de le mie gioiose pene, Che mi fan singolar fra l’ altra gente. E come Amor ne’ be’ vostr’ occhi tiene Il seggio suo; e come indi sovente Sì dolce l’alma à tormentar mi viene. (9–14) (Thus do I turn to write of this alone, / the stories of my joyous griefs / that make me unique among all others: // and how Love keeps his dominion in your / lovely eyes, and how frequent the sweet / afflictions that he visits on my soul.)

What has happened to notions of parity and equivalence, to her own fears that she is unequal to the “alma fenice” (“noble phoenix”) or Collaltino, or to Petrarch or Sappho? The answer becomes apparent when turning to the penultimate poem in the original, Rime 309. Obscured by Salza’s and Bellonci’s twentieth-century editions of Stampa, which place all the madrigals in the middle of the volume rather than at the very end, this is the last poem Stampa’s original readers would have encountered before the sparkling little dialogue between Amore and the poet that ends the collection. In its entirety, Rime 309 goes like this: Dal mio vivace foco Nasce un’ effetto raro, Che non ha forse in altra Donna paro. Che quando allenta un poco, Egli par, che m’incresca, Sì chiaro è chi l’accende, e dolce l’esca. E, dove per costume, Par, chel foco consume, Me nutre il foco, e consuma il pensare, Che’l foco habbia à mancare. (From my living flame, / something wonderful is born / that may have no equal in another woman: // for when it dies down / I feel that it grows, / so great is he who lights it and so sweet the bait. / And whereas it’s the custom / that fire consumes, // I’m fed by my flame: what consumes is the thought / that one day the fire will be naught.)

The flame that bears something new evokes the salamander as well as the phoenix from Rime 206 and 207 where Stampa writes about creating herself anew in love. We have already seen her other allusion to the phoenix in Rime 224, “Alma fenice” (“Noble phoenix”)—the one poem where Stampa named Sappho. And it is to Sappho that Rime 309 returns. After the opening image of a powerful, life-giving flame, we have two lines with end-rhymes of “raro/paro” that return us to where the Rime began: Stampa’s deliberate allusion to Petrarch’s Trionfi and the “giovane Greco” who went “a paro a paro / coi nobili poeti iva cantando / et avea

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

un suo stil soave e raro.” The only other “Donna” with whom Stampa might have compared herself is, of course, Sappho.45 As Stampa asks whether any other woman has ever achieved such an “effetto raro,” she echoes the “raro effetto” of Rime 28, the most intensely “sapphic” poem of the collection. By poem 309, this “effetto raro” arguably refers to the poetry book itself: a collection far more robust than the singular fragments of Sappho, even were Fragment 31 included in that corpus. This is a writing that gives Stampa life, while it seeks to “tolga l’intelletto” (Rime 28, 14: “take all thought away”) of her reader. Yet while absence of thought is productive of sublimity, the rhetoric of emulatio and parity introduces something else instead. As Stampa invites others to walk with her “a paro” and so eventually take her place, she writes into her poetry a means of our sublimely making ourselves the author of her poems.46 If the figure of Sappho as poet and musician loomed behind any ambitious woman poet’s endeavors, what happened when Sappho appeared not merely as an allusion but as the author of a substantial if still breathtakingly short text—and in a treatise that is itself about the sublime ambitions of poets? If we entertain the possibility that Stampa might have known of Longinus’s treatise and hence the existence of a new Sapphic text, then we can ask what she might have done when faced with the voice of the poet herself in Fragment 31. Unlike the “Ode to Aphrodite” from Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s On Literary Composition, or the brief fragments in Demetrius’s work on style, it is arrestingly, disturbingly, “modern.” At the same time Catullus 51 becomes recognized as having furnished a way back to Sappho: a way to wrestle with Sappho in her absence. Stampa invites us to think about that absence even as she takes Sappho’s place. It is an historical irony that the first image of Stampa to appear in print would reverse this “absent-ing” which Stampa makes the key to her sublime poems. Or is it really an image of Stampa? The history and attribution of “portraits” of Stampa pose vexing problems,47 and the engraving that served as the frontispiece to Luisa 45  Perhaps the other woman writer with whom Stampa might have seen herself contending was Vittoria Colonna. This penultimate madrigal and Rime 208 both allude to the salamander—a reference that directly counters Colonna’s own resistance to being “burned again” and hence taking up a second love after her husband’s death. 46  Such a rhetoric of overtaking had been part of Sappho’s legacy from almost the beginning. See the opening lines of Antipater’s “Epitaph of Sappho,” part of the Greek Anthology from the second century BCE and published throughout the sixteenth century: “My name is Sappho, and I surpassed women in poetry as greatly as Homer surpassed men”—and no other names are uttered to ensure the complete oblivion of those who have been surpassed (trans. Campbell, Greek Lyric. Vol 1: Sappho and Alcaeus, p. 47). Stephen Campbell refers to the epitaph in Cabinet of Eros, p. 200. 47  It is made considerably more vexed by the imaginative prose of Luigi Carrer’s chapter devoted to Stampa in his Annello di Sette Gemme, o Venezia e la sua Storia from 1838, and in which he argues for several contemporary paintings of the poet as the basis for the engraving in the 1738 edition of the Rime; as well as by Irma Jaffe and Gernando Columbardo, who posit a Natalino da Murano, pupil of Titian, as a possibility in Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets (New York: Fordham, 2002), pp. 248–63.

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Bergalli’s edition of the poems of 1738 is no exception (Figure 1.1).48 It gives us a lone woman, a trifle undone, pensive with eyes turned toward the sky, hair capped by the laurel wreath, hand resting on a stack of books; there is another image on a facing page of Count Collaltino di Collalto who is the object of more than 200 of the 310 poems from the original volume. Bergalli’s co-editor Rambaldo di Collalto, descendent of the count and financier for the project, informs us that this engraving of his ancestor’s mistress was based on a work produced from life; a painting of Guercino da Cento that had been in the collection of Charles VI. Or as he says: “I’m pleased to have had the chance to bring Gaspara’s portrait back to life, copied by a talented hand from the original by Guercino da Cento and given to me by His Majesty the King, the Catholic Charles VI . . . a portrait, engraved in copper on the design of the most famous Signor Daniel Antonio Bertoli.” The problem has been identifying the original portrait—and suspending disbelief that it could in any way be an “original,” given that Guercino was born in 1590, some forty years after Gaspara’s death.49 Still, historians have not suffered for want of trying. In recent years, two identifications have been proffered. The one was by Irma Jaffe, who suggests that she found the “original” not in a Guercino but in a work by Natalino da Murano, pupil of Titian, published as part of the frontispiece to the original 1554 Rime. There is indeed a definite likeness between the frontispiece and the engraving in Bergalli’s edition, but there is a problem: the only exemplar Jaffe apparently consulted is in the Biblioteca Civica in Padova, Gaspara Stampa’s hometown, and no other copy contains it; and the Padovan copy, moreover, clearly has the disegno glued into the text after its publication. A catalogue of all the works by women writers in the collection from the 1840s fails to mention the frontispiece’s existence—hence, it is highly likely that this lovely drawing was done after, not before, the 1738 engraving. A much more promising lead was furnished by Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, who suggests that the Guercino, while clearly not a portrait of Stampa, may have been a painting called “La poesia” of 1640. This Guercino— or, as revealed in the discussion of a will, possibly by a nephew of Guercino— is unfortunately lost and now known only through a presumed copy in Bologna entitled La musica: a work featuring a contemplative woman crowned with a laurel wreath who gazes to her right in the direction of a suspended viola as she leans on a pile of books and fingers a parchment.50 Still, as close as the Guercino may seem  The next three paragraphs are taken largely from my Introduction to Stampa, The Complete Poems, pp. 37–40. 49  For a reading of the dynamics of the Bergalli frontispiece, see Ann Rosalind Jones’s chapter in this volume. 50  See the entry on “Gaspara Stampa,” in Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Vittoria Collonna. Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos’ Vienna (Vienna: Kunsthistoriches Museum, 1997), p. 216. A recent article by Maria Concetta Calabrese, “Sociabilità nobiliare e trasmissione dei beni: i Ruffo di Francavilla” (Quaderni del Dipartimento di Studi Politici, ed. Salvatore Aleo and Giuseppe Barone [Milan: Giuffré, 2007]) cites the will of one Giacomo Ruffo (d. 1674) in which “due dipinti di uno dei nipoti del Guercino stesso, aventi come soggetto la 48

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Fig. 1.1

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

Engraving of Gaspara Stampa on the frontispiece of the 1738 volume of Rime, ed. Bergalli and Collalto. Image provided courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.

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to be, we must wonder about its source—and it is highly unlikely that it was a sitting with Stampa herself. It bears a striking resemblance to Guercino’s paintings of the Sibyls—the Cuman Sibyl and the Persian Sibyl—although they too lack an origin, as we nonetheless get farther and farther away from Stampa herself. This is where the Australian scholar Clare O’Donoghue has recently come to our rescue, as she suggests that this allegorical figure for poetry may be based on yet a prior source that provides what she calls the “ultimate sixteenth-century example” of the Muses, with “their attributes of musical instruments, books, scrolls, quills, and gesturing finger.”51 And perhaps not surprisingly, she finds this in Sappho, and in one Sappho in particular, from Raphael’s Mount Parnassus in the Stanza of the Signatura in the Vatican (Figure 1.2). Her laurel wreath, her bared shoulder, her half-unfurled scroll revealing her name—the only such identification in the entire painting, as though to counter Petrarch’s suppression of her name in the Trionfi—the lute that she brandishes as she looks toward the cluster of fellow poets (Alcaeus, Corinna, Petrarch, and Anacreon): might this not be the genesis of whatever painting led to the 1738 engraving, this famous fresco, which places Sappho in conversation with three poets of ancient Greece and an observant Petrarch? Guercino or his nephews were probably unaware of the Padovan poet who had been dead for almost a century when “La Poesia” was painted for one “Signore Filippo Ballattini di Bologna,” and how closely the Bologna painting of “Musica” resembles that of “Poesia” is unknown. Likely to remain unknown as well is the reason why Count Rambaldo, Collaltino’s aristocratic heir, assumed that the work was a portrait of his ancestor’s lover. As with Stampa’s original manuscript, or manuscripts, of her Rime, this image too may be destined to remain forever lost. Nonetheless, as Daniel Antonio Bertoli made the design for the 1738 Poesia e la Musica,” were given to Conte di Prades (p. 152). Thus it is possible that one of Guercino’s nephews, either Benedetto or Cesare Gennari, may have been the artists of the two panels. 51  See Clare O’Donoghue’s thesis entitled “Finding the Face Behind the Poem. A Study of the Images of Sixteenth-Century Female Italian Poets” at the University of Melbourne. Her paper, “‘Beautiful and Good, the Sappho of our Time’: Images of Gaspara Stampa, Courtesan Poet,” was presented to the University of Melbourne’s research group in European Visual Culture in 2004, and is the source of many of the following remarks. My warmest thanks to Ms. O’Donoghue for sharing with me the fascinating details of her research. As for the illustration in the 1554 Padua edition (Sistema bibliotecario Urbano, CF.0021), Jaffe (Shining Eyes, p. 246) assumes incorrectly that it is present in all exemplars. That the engraving did not appear in the Padova volume until some time after 1840 is clear from the meticulous volume by Count Pietro Leopoldo Ferri, Biblioteca femminile italiana raccolta posseduta e descritta (Padova: Crescini, 1842), in which the count gives detailed information on the 1554 volume and makes no reference to a “ritratto”; the dedicatory pages instead are described as follows: “otto carte non numerate contengono il Frontespizio, la Dedicatoria, Rime di varj in lode dell’Autrice, ed una Lettera della medesima a Collaltino” (547). My thanks to the librarians at the Biblioteca Civica di Padova for their assistance, particularly to Dottoressa Gilda P. Mantovani and Chiara Maroso.

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Fig. 1.2

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

Parnassus by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483–1520). Detail of left side including Petrarch and Sappho. Stanza della Segnatura, Stanze di Raffaello, Vatican Palace, Vatican State. Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

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engraving and presumably exchanged the viola for a lyre, the sitter’s austere black garb for a lighter one that revealed an alluring décolletage, and a hand neatly resting on a piece of paper for a finger pointing to a verse, he was arguably returning more explicitly to Raphael’s Sappho, if not working directly from Guercino’s lost image. Both works suspend these musicians—figures of orality—between song and text, although we might speculate that the fingers pointing to texts and the bodies turned slightly away from instruments suggest a definitive movement toward writing. With respect to the sought-after ritratto originale of Stampa, however, there is something ironic in light of Stampa’s efforts to surpass and silence her ancient model, as well as the possessed sibyls and muses who are modeled on her and who suggest—contrary to Guercino’s composed women—utterance often out of control, or coming from a source that is not themselves. It is not incidental that Stampa banishes her invocation to the muse to her final sonnet, 285 in the original Rime, placed immediately before the capitoli and the madrigals. This last sonnet is a reverse invocation that boldly tells her muse to sing no more of the physical beauties of her count: “Canta tu Musa mia non più quel volto” (“Sing, My Muse, no more that face”). For this woman who sought consummate control over her writing, explicitly letting the muse in at the beginning of her collection would have opened her Rime up to a figure outside herself—a woman possessed, whose language was not her own. And when the muse is finally invoked, she is silenced, told to sing of other things: no longer a man’s physical beauties but his unseen virtues, “chiuse in nobil vaso” (v. 11: “closed within a noble vessel”), a sign that the Parnassus of the muses was not mere “fumo, et ombra” (v. 10: “smoke and shade”), but real, constituted by the “leggiadra schiera / Di virtù vere” (vv. 10–11: “this delightful band / of virtues”) within Collaltino’s breast. Yet before Parnassus can be attained—perhaps that same Parnassus where Raphael painted Sappho with the scroll bearing her name—the sonnets end and the poet herself moves on, without the muse, to a capitolo addressed to “Donne” eager to learn of love.52 Far from giving us the portrait of a real author, the engraving of Stampa in the 1738 edition and used continuously in editions since is based not only on an allegorical image of the “muse” of Music, but on Raphael’s Sappho. That this is the only figure in Raphael’s painting whose name is actually inscribed is ironic in light of Stampa’s efforts to erase Sappho by silencing that name, as she attempts to take over and produce for herself and her readers the experience of the sublime. It is even possible that she sought to translate herself into the space simultaneously being claimed by a revived Sappho, while inviting future female readers to experience the same invidia that she felt for Sappho—and to thus engage in a similar attempt to “equal” and surpass her. “The first to invent something”: this is the phrase that Michael Call has recently used to define early modern

52  That said, Stampa’s fifth capitolo opens with an address to “Musa mia” (Rime 290)—the muse who she claims is “so kind, always so ready / to weep with me” (pp. 328–9).

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notions of authorship.53 To return to Stampa’s first sonnet, bookended between two Petrarchan lines, Stampa strategically places the word “prime” (“first”) at the end of the first quatrain—her laments, among all others, are first—where it will rhyme with the closing word of the second quatrain: sublime.54 Stampa’s editors, beginning with her sister, would deny her those claims to “firstness” in the realm of the sublime. She is the new Sappho, not first, but second. To what extent Stampa’s own attempts at authorship are cheated or enhanced by an association with Sappho is for us to judge.55

53  From a talk at the University of Miami’s annual Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Symposium, February 2009. 54  Rime 1, 6–8: “Gloria, non che perdon, de’ miei lamenti / Spero trovar fra le ben nate genti, / Poi che la lor cagione è sì sublime” (“I hope to find glory among the well-born: / glory, and not only pardon, for what / gives rise to my laments is so sublime”). Translation by Robert Durling, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976), p. 36. 55  My thanks to wonderful audiences at the University of Miami; University of California, Santa Cruz; Princeton; the University of Rochester; and University of California, Berkeley, for their insightful comments following versions of this paper; and special thanks to Maria Galli Stampino, Deanna Shemek, Alana Shilling, Paola Ugolini, and Victoria Kahn for their generous hospitality during my visits. Additional thanks to Unn Falkeid and Aileen A. Feng for their meticulous editing and thoughtful suggestions.

Chapter 2

The Sublime Realism of Gaspara Stampa* Unn Falkeid, Stockholm University

A central theme in the modern criticism of Gaspara Stampa is how the poet, through her imitative strategies of Petrarch and of sixteenth-century Petrarchism, both integrates and dismisses Neoplatonic elements in her Rime. Petrarch is omnipresent from the very first poem, and a Neoplatonic frame characterizes the collection’s imagery of light and darkness as well as the various meditations on the nature of love. Still, as some critics have noted, Stampa’s poetry is dominated by sensuality and a rough realism that distinguishes her from her contemporary Neoplatonic poets. In the following chapter I will argue that Stampa’s language of desire may be read within a broader context of Neoplatonism rooted in Christian medieval traditions, rather than in the conventions of Marsilio Ficino and the abstract speculations on love popular in the Cinquecento. By retrieving classical, as well as medieval notions of sublimity, Stampa’s stylistic simplicity dramatizes the infusion of sacredness into human reality. In this way Stampa’s Rime becomes an important contribution to Renaissance aesthetics and a forerunner to the Mannerist tendencies of the Counter-Reformation, which reevaluated the physical life in all its aspects. The chapter aims to explore the two facets, or what we might call the double-edged style, of Stampa’s poetry—sublime realism—and possible sources for this style: Neoplatonism from late Antiquity, reinforced by the medieval Christian tradition, and Franciscan spirituality of the fourteenth century. As is well known, Pietro Bembo’s program of literary renewal, in which Petrarch was given a role as a linguistic as well as a moral example, advocated a vast production of poems and collections of poetry in the Italian vernacular. Petrarchism became the dominant lyric idiom of the Cinquecento, and the recently established book presses, which drastically facilitated the circulations of texts, supported the increased literary activities.1 However, in contrast to the widespread  I am most grateful to my friend Aileen A. Feng for our close and joyful collaboration on this volume, for her thoughtful reading of my chapter, and for her careful revision of my English prose. I also owe a warm thank you to Giuseppe Mazzotta for inviting me to present this work at Yale University. The enthusiasm and insightful comments I received at my talk were an invaluable inspiration. 1  Within a few decades after the invention of the printing technology in the midfifteenth century, printing presses were established all around Western Europe. By 1480 fifty of them were operating in Italian towns alone. In Venice the Aldo Manuzio press dominated the trade market, although there were several other presses in Stampa’s time, such as the Giuntas, the Nicolini da Sabbio, the Marcolini, and the Pagnanini. See for *

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assumptions that this wave of Petrarchism silenced women’s voices, Virginia Cox has radically argued that the new model of vernacular literature which appeared under Bembo’s aegis was far more open to female poets and writers than the Latin humanistic tradition and the earlier courtly poetry had ever been.2 A reason for this was a turn towards Neoplatonism. As Cox explains, an important feature of Bembo’s cultural reform was “its displacement of the worldly and sensual version of love that had often characterized the tradition of poesia cortigiana by a more ethereal and spiritualized passion, based on Petrarch but philosophically bolstered by a fashionable Neoplatonism deriving from Ficino.”3 Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta was, in other words, read through the lens of the strict Greek-oriented Florentine Neoplatonism. Regardless of the ambiguities that were hovering over the songbook—for example, that Laura is a most elusive sign that reflects the uncertain status of the poet’s self rather than converts it—Bembo interpreted Petrarch’s narrative as a spiritual journey from the shadowy material world to the true immaterial universe of ideal Platonic forms.4 This new approach to Neoplatonism was most useful for women for various reasons, according to Cox. Besides the democratic aspects that a guide based on one single model for writing in the vernacular could offer, Bembo’s chaste and spiritualized reading of Petrarch had ethical dimensions which easily opened up the literary world to women.5 Within this new paradigm of noble, sublimated love, both men and women admired female exemplary virtues. In addition, the Neoplatonic move towards abstraction and idealism was a successful strategy that preserved the social decorum and spiritual aspirations of female poets even though they wrote about love in the less elevated language of the mother tongue. So when an aristocrat like Veronica Gambara composed love poems to her husband, or a noble widow like Vittoria Colonna transformed her late husband into a celestial intermediary in her Rime spirituali, they demonstrated nothing but moral excellence in marital devotion which was highly appreciated within the literary conventions of Cinquecento. instance the classical studies by Lucien Febvre and Henry-Jean Martin, The Impact of Printing 1450–1800. The Coming of the Book, trans. David Gerard, ed. Geoffrey NowellSmith and David Wootton (London: Verso, 1984), pp. 180–98. 2  Virginia Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2008), p. 59. The notion of Petrarchism as inimical to women writers was suggested by Nancy J. Vickers in her article “Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme,” Critical Inquiry 8.2 (1981): 265–79. 3  Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, p. 56. 4  Laura as an elusive sign has been fully explored and emphasized by Thomas Greene and Giuseppe Mazzotta. See Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy. Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982); and Giuseppe Mazzotta, The Worlds of Petrarch (Durham: Duke UP, 1993). For the different interpretations of Laura, see also Unn Falkeid, “Petrarch’s Laura and the Critics,” MLN, Italian Issue Supplement, 127.1 (2012): 64–71. 5  In his chapter “Sublime Love Pains in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime” in this volume, Federico Schneider labels Bembo’s Petrarchism as an “initiation” into divine love.

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When we come to Stampa’s Rime, the picture is far more complex. Her readers have always been struck by her realism as well as the intensity of the passions represented in her poems, even though scholars like Abdelkaber Salza have done their best to adjust her poetry to Neoplatonic patterns. Salza’s edition of Stampa’s Rime in 1913 reorganized the princeps edition of 1554 in order to make it appear as an iter spiritualis (spiritual journey) from penitence to conversion.6 Nevertheless, one might surmise that one of the reasons for Stampa’s massive appeal is that her Rime does not ascribe to the Neoplatonic tendency towards a rejection of physical love by spiritualizing it. Indeed, as her contemporaries did, she depicts her lover as god-like, and dwells on his beauty in a manner that recalls the metaphors, poetic arrangements, and worship of love in the tradition of Neoplatonic Petrarchism. But, as V. Stanley Benfell has argued, her poems lack the conversionary desire of that tradition so that she never condemns or turns away from her signore in order to grasp the divine love.7 In her crucial study Fiora Bassanese has stressed the earthbound motivation in Stampa’s poetry which opposed Petrarch as well as the Neoplatonic Petrarchism of the sixteenth century: “Whereas Petrarch regrets the loss of time in transient pleasures, Stampa regrets the loss of pleasure in the transient of time.”8 The moments of physical possession are accompanied by suffering, which, rather than being transformed into a spiritual repentance, is presented as a masochistic art of loving, that is, a love fed on death, pain, and jealousy (Rime 103):9 Io benedico, Amor, tutti gli affanni, Tutte l’ ingiurie, e tutte le fatiche Tutte le noie novelle, & antiche Che m’hai fatto provar tante e tanti anni. (1–4) (I bless, Love, all the anxieties / all the trials, all the injuries, / the troubles old and new you’ve made me / suffer during all these many years).10

These sadomasochistic tendencies in Stampa’s songbook are a recurring theme in Bassanese’s insightful reading. As she makes clear, the poet presents herself as weak and denigrated, a prisoner with no redeeming qualities, a woman who finds 6  The edition was the standard version for almost a century until 2010 when Jane Tylus and Troy Tower published their bilingual translation and edition based on the first published edition from 1554. 7  V. Stanley Benfell, “Translating Petrarchan Desire in Vittoria Colonna and Gaspara Stampa,” Translating Desire in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Craig A. Berry and Heather R. Hayton (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 109–31; p. 126. 8  Fiora Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p. 60. 9  Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, p. 96. 10  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010).

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pleasure in offering herself to her idol. The lover, on the other hand, possesses all the classically masculine attributes, as perfect as any god in deeds, behavior, virility, and strength. However, Stampa’s self-denigration, coupled with the figure of the poet as a martyr of love, may be regarded, as Justin Vitiello has suggested, as a rhetorical maneuver from which Stampa emerges as more human and more heroic than her pitiless signore. As Vitiello argues, by a certain rebellion which is not as violent as Michelangelo’s, but still incited with diabolical grace, Stampa “breaks the Petrarchan stylistic mold, transforms traditional patterns of thought, and challenges social conventions.”11 In contrast to the abstract configuration of love that was celebrated by the Neoplatonic poets, Stampa writes about physical, consummated love, not in a burlesque or pornographic way as her contemporary colleague Pietro Aretino did, but in a most joyous and delicate manner, as in the famous sonnet 104 in which she praises the nights of happiness spent with her lover: O’ notte, à me più chiara, e più beata, Che i più beati giorni, & i più chiari, Notte degna da’ primi, e da’ più rari Ingegni, esser non pur da me lodata. Tu de le gioie mie sola sei stata Fida ministra, tu tutti gli amari De la mia vita hai fatto dolci e cari, Resomi in braccio lui, che m’ha legata. Sol mi mancò, che non divenni allora La fortunata Alcmena; à cui stè tanto Più de l’usato à ritornar l’Aurora. Pur cosi bene io non potró mai tanto Dir di te notte candida, ch’ancora Da la materia non sia vinto il canto. (O night, to me more luminous and blessed / than the most blessed and luminous of days, / night, worthy of being praised / by the rarest geniuses, not just by me, // you alone have been the faithful minister / of all my joys; all that was bitter / in my life you’ve rendered sweet and dear / and placed me in the arms of the man who bound me. // Had I only then become the fortunate Alcmene, on whose behalf / the dawn delayed her usual return! // Yet even so, I’ll never know to say / enough of you that my song, snow-white night, / is not finally defeated by its subject.)

It is a courageous poem written by a young, unmarried female poet who risked being judged “a fallen woman,” as the famous literary critic Benedetto Croce 11  Justin Vitiello, “Gaspara Stampa: The Ambiguities of Martyrdom,” MLN 90.1, The Italian Issue (Jan. 1975): 58–71; p. 69.

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centuries later called her.12 However, the sonnet is also bold in the way in which Stampa re-establishes the original bonds between poetry and love. Nostalgic, but still full of satisfaction, and with the hope of encounters to come, as stressed by the future tense in the last tercet—“non potrò mai” (v. 12: “I’ll never know to say”)—the song may be read as slightly reminiscent of a troubadour’s aubade or alba (morning song) that describes the separation of lovers after a night spent together in sweetness. Already in the first quatrain—“Notte degna da’ primi, e da’ più rari / ingegni, esser non pur da me lodata” (vv. 2–4: “night, worthy of being praised / by the rarest geniuses, not just by me”)—she returns to the cradle of vernacular poetry: the troubadour love song in Provence. In this way she recalls a tradition that was more or less overshadowed by the contemporary Ficinian notion of unsatisfied love in the Cinquecento. Stampa, however, alters the genre by adapting it to her own circumstances; in her alba there is no dialogue between the lovers, nor an intervention of a third person to warn them of daybreak. Still, the praise of the secret encounters in the shelter of the night and the grief of inevitable farewells uncover a deep familiarity with the origins of the vernacular love song. What is of equal importance is how the poem, by evoking the classical myth of Alcmene and Jupiter, treats the body both as malleable matter and as a metonymy of erotic identification. According to the myth, Jupiter was captivated by the beauty of Alcmene, the daughter of Electryon, king of Tiryns and Mycenae. Disguised as her husband Amphitryon, Jupiter came to her in the night, which he mightily prolonged for three days’ time by delaying the dawn. Wishing that she could become the fortunate Alcmene (v. 10: “la fortunata Alcmena”), Stampa does not merely stress the physical aspects of her nightly pleasures. She also describes the extraordinary in her experience: like Alcmene, she is a mortal woman who has been lifted up to enjoy divine love. By the end of the sonnet the transgressive nature of her pleasure is stressed by her inability to describe what she has experienced. Her language is defeated. However, if we extend the comparison to Alcmene even further, we discover how the poet underscores this modesty. As Ovid renders the story (Metamorphoses IX, 275–323), after seven nights and seven days in agony and torments, Alcmene gave birth to Hercules. The outcome of Stampa’s secret encounters, as well as all her love pains, is not a demigod, but as we may assume, god-like poetry. One central question is whether Stampa’s eroticism, or her “worldliness,” indicates a more secular approach to reality than what we see in Petrarch or in contemporary Neoplatonic Petrarchism, as Bassanese has suggested.13 Or, should we perceive Stampa’s few explicitly religious poems as being influenced by Lutheran or Calvinist fatalistic thoughts, as Eugenio Donadoni has argued?14 By presenting faith and God’s undeserved and unpredictable grace as the only way to salvation the Protestants underlined the immense distance between the  Benedetto Croce, Conversazioni critiche (Bari: Laterza, 1932–1942) 2: p. 230.  Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, p. 61. 14  Eugenio Donadoni, Gaspara Stampa: Vita e opere (Messina: Principato, 1919). 12 13

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human and the divine. Yet, if we return to the already quoted sonnet about the nightly encounters, Stampa seems to carefully propose another view of physical love than either a secular perspective or an austere Protestant one could offer. Despite its obvious pagan eroticism, as well as its many echoes of the vernacular love song, Rime 104 also touches upon a fundamental understanding of love that we find in the Christian Neoplatonism of the Middle Ages, a tradition adopted and elaborated upon by the Italian successors of the Provençal poets, but largely ignored, I would argue, by the dualistic and Greek-oriented Neoplatonism of the Cinquecento. Like Dante in his Commedia, Stampa presents a notion of love that has to start in reality. Instead of stressing the gap between the physical and the spiritual world, Stampa instead demonstrates how the two realms may converge. Even though they are not identical, a subtle threshold holds them together. The key word in this regard is the sublime. Although not explicitly mentioned in this particular sonnet, the poem concludes with one of the central notions in classical and medieval theories of the sublime: how can the poet’s pen elevate the matter? How is her song overpowered by the celestial experience of physical love? Or, as in Stampa’s own words, “Pur cosi bene io non potró mai tanto / Dir di te notte candida, ch’ancora / Da la materia non sia vinto il canto” (Rime 104, 12–14, “Yet even so, I’ll never know to say / enough of you that my song, snow-white night, / is not finally defeated by its subject”). The idea of the sublime is prominent in Stampa’s Rime, from as early as the second poem, which sets the tone for the entire collection. The poem provides the date of the innamoramento, and like Petrarch’s anniversary poems which celebrate the poet’s first encounter with Laura on Good Friday, Stampa inserts the date of her meeting within the liturgical calendar.15 The starting point for her love story is Christmas, the birthday of the Lord. As Stampa explains, the same day the Creator left the womb of Mary, love took its place in the poet’s heart (Rime 2): Era vicino il dì, che ‘l Creatore Che ne l’altezza sua potea restarsi, In forma humana venne à dimostrarsi, Dal ventre Virginal’ uscendo fore; Quando degnò l’Illustre mio Signore, Per cui ho tanti poi lamenti sparsi, Potendo in luogo più alto annidarsi; Farsi nido, e ricetto del mio core. Ond’io sì rara, e sì alta ventura Accolsi lieta; e duolmi sol, che tardi Mi fè degna di lei l’eterna cura. Da indi in quà pensieri, e speme, e sguardi Volsi à lui tutti fuor d’ogni misura Chiaro, e gentil quanto’l Sol giri e guardi.

 The same date is mentioned in Rime 211.

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(It was near the day that the Creator / came in human form to reveal himself / when he could have stayed in his lofty domain, / issuing forth from the virginal womb, // that my illustrious lord, for whom / I have scattered so many laments, / and who might have lodged in a place more sublime, / made himself a nest and refuge in my heart. // Such rare good fortune I greeted with gladness; / and regret only that Eternal Care / made me worthy of it all so late. // Since then my thoughts, my hope, my gaze— / all are turned to him, who exceeds all others / under the sun in courtesy and fame.)

What is remarkable about this poem is its movements, the descent from above, and how this descent connects the divine to the actual life of human beings, in both time and space. The emphasis on Mary’s womb as a vessel or channel—a locus of transition—from the invisible to the visible world reinforces the physicality of the poet’s heart. Just as Mary contained the center of the universe, the poet is an ordinary woman, whose heart—a noun metrically placed at the heart of the poem, in verse 8, just before the volta—becomes a nest for Eternal Love. The events, simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, elevate the status of both women since we see their active participation in the providential drama of the creation. The events also bring us back to the episode of Alcmene, who was infused by divine love in her encounter with Jupiter. Indeed, there is a long tradition of allegorizing Hercules as Christ in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, an allegorization that was carefully adopted and modified in Stampa’s poetic universe. Throughout the Rime Stampa repeatedly underlines that love has made her unique, that it has lifted her up, as she writes in the subsequent poem (Rime 3), like the uncouth shepherd of goats, inspired by the Muses, to sing of the origin of the gods. She, who was base and lowly (v. 6: “bassa e vile”), is raised to a high and verdant hill (v. 8: “il mio verde, pregiato, & alto Colle”), something that of course, not only recalls the name of her lover, Collaltino di Collalto, but also Parnassus, the summits of poetry. This love has renewed her style (v. 13: “mi rinova lo stil”), rendered gentle her song, and awakened talents in her soul. A recurrent expression that Stampa uses in these contexts is sublime, a word that etymologically recalls not only a high subject, but also a drama that is unfolding at the borders or the threshold—sub-limen. The opening sonnet (Rime 1) already suggests the sublime subject of her poetry, with which she hopes to move her readers: “Gloria, non che perdon, de’ miei lamenti / Spero trovar fra le ben nate genti; / Poi che la lor cagione è sì sublime” (vv. 6–8: “I hope to find glory among well-born: / glory and not only pardon; for what / gives rise to my laments is so sublime”). In later sonnets, her style, the flame in her heart, as well as the object of her love, are presented as uplifting (Rime 8), she tries to find a balance, or a rhythm, between her style and her lofty theme (Rime 13), and she climbs the hills by way of words (Rime 15): Voi, che cercando ornar d’alloro il crine Per via di stile al bel monte poggiate Con quante si fe mai salde pedate, Anime sagge, dotte, e pellegrine;

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In questo mar, che non ha fondo, ò fine, Le larghe vele innanzi à me spiegate; E gli honori & le gratie ad un cantate Del mio Signor sì rare e sì divine. Perche soggetto si sublime e solo, Senz’altra aita di felice ingegno Può per se stesso al Cielo alzarci à volo. Io per me sola à dimostrar ne vegno, Quanto l’amo ad ogn’un, quanto lo colo; ma de le lode sue non giungo al segno. (You wise and learned and eloquent souls / who seeks to deck your brows with laurel / and ascend by way of words the lovely hill / with steps that never have been firmer, // in this endless sea that can’t be sounded, / unfurl before me your broad sails and sing / together of the honors and graces / of my lord, who’s so rare and divine, // for a subject this singular and sublime / can easily fly to heaven on his own / without the help of some wit. // I for myself come to show this alone, / how much I love and worship him each hour. / As for praising him, the mark I’ll never hit.)

Of recent interest in Stampa criticism is the poet’s possible connection to Francesco Robortello, the humanist who published Longinus’s newly discovered treatise Peri hypsous (On the Sublime) in 1554, the same year as Stampa’s Rime came out. We cannot be certain about whether Stampa knew Robortello or his editorial work with Longinus’s text, though Jane Tylus claims that it is not impossible that she did.16 Several factors connect Robortello and Stampa, such as the cities of Venice and Padua, and a common circle of acquaintances and friends. In addition we have the clear presence of Sappho in Stampa’s Rime—the female Greek poet who also plays a pivotal role in Longinus’s book. Stampa explicitly refers to Sappho in Rime 224 when she writes, “Che spererei de la più sacra fronde / Così Donna qual sono, ornarmi il crine, / E star con Saffo e con Corinna à lato” (vv. 9–11: “What would I give for that most sacred wreath / to adorn my tresses, woman that I am, / and stand alongside Sappho and Corinna!”). In another sonnet (Rime 28) she imitates Sappho’s fragment 31—“Peer of gods he seemeth to me, the blissful / Man who sits and gazes at thee before him”—also quoted in chapter 10 of Longinus’s treatise.17 Sappho’s ode was translated by Catullus (51), but it also appeared in Longinus’s text, and as we see, Stampa clearly emulated Sappho’s  Jane Tylus has explored the links between Stampa and Sappho. See Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, pp. 34–41. See also Tylus’s thorough and thought-provoking discussion of the subject, as well as her analyses of Sappho and Stampa in her chapter in this volume. 17  Longinus, On Great Writing (On the Sublime), trans. with an introduction by G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1991), p. 17. 16

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style in that fragment:18 “Quando innanti à i begli occhi almi, e lucenti / Per mia rara ventura al mondo i vegno” (vv. 1–2: “When thanks to good fortune—all too rare in this world— / I come before those bright and shining eyes”). As Tylus notes in her chapter in this volume, a long reception history links the two female poets intricately together, from the time that Stampa was called “the new Sappho” of her contemporary poets to Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous poem Duino Elegies, no. 1. If we examine the Longinian Sappho, however, what is striking is the presence of the body, something that connects the two female poets even further, and elucidates Longinus’s notion of the sublime and how it was received and understood in the Middle Ages. Of the five most productive sources for the sublime listed by Longinus, what concerns its object and its effect are of greatest importance: the power to conceive great thoughts, and strong and enthusiastic passions. Only after that follows what belongs to the realm of rhetoric, such as certain kinds of figures, noble diction, and dignified and elevated word arrangements. In this way Longinus connects the Platonic notion of the ontology of beauty—the ecstatic rapture of the soul in the encounter with beauty—to the Aristotelian techné, that is, poetry and language, a nexus that in modern times, particularly in the wake of Burke and Kant, was dissolved by transforming the sublime into pure psychological or philosophical categories.19 The sublime orator, Longinus writes, grips the passions of his audience and carries them along in such a way that the audience is lifted out of themselves. Thus, what is essential in the experience of the sublime is the elevation or the transition from the lower, or what Longinus calls the “real” or “actual” life, to the higher level of pathos, along the route of poetry or art. Longinus uses Sappho as an example of the sublime poet, and his presentation of her may easily be transferred to Stampa’s work. “Sappho,” he writes, “selects on each occasion the emotions which accompany the frenzy of love. She takes these from among the constituent elements of the situation in actual life.”20 As with Stampa, we see this concern with realism, or actual life, as the foundation of her sublime style. Longinus then quotes Sappho’s famous Fragment 31, “Peer of gods he seemeth to me,” where the lover is celebrated as a god, not unlike Stampa’s signore. Finally, in his comments to Sappho’s poem, Longinus underlines the poet’s extraordinary meditation on the body: Do you not marvel how she seeks to make her mind, body, ears, tongue, eyes, and complexion, as if they were scattered elements strange to her, join together 18  For the calling of Stampa as “the new Sappho,” see the Editors’ Introduction to this volume. 19  The turn in the most influential debates by the end of the eighteenth century from a specific interest in literature to a more general aesthetics is discussed with great sharpness by Mats Malm, “On the Technique of the Sublime,” Comparative Literature 52.1 (Winter 2000): 1–10. A short historical survey of the classical notion of the sublime is found in Osvaldo Rossi, “The Sublime and the Thought of Art,” The Poetry of Life in Literature, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 209–29. 20  Longinus, On Great Writing (On the Sublime), chapter X, p 17.

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in the same moment of experience? In contrary phrases she describes herself as hot and cold at once, rational and irrational, at the same time terrified and almost dead, in order to appear afflicted not by one passion but by a swarm of passions. Lovers do have all those feelings, but it is, as I said, her [Sappho’s] selection of the most vital details and her working them into one whole which produce the outstanding quality of the poem.21

Of course, this use of antithesis has a long tradition in European love poetry, perfected above all by Petrarch and the Neoplatonic Petrarchists of the Cinquecento. But as with Sappho, the body is more present in Stampa’s Rime than in the poetry of most of her contemporaries, as well as in her Trecento model. In fact, as Gordon Braden has noted, the sublime, the term of exhilaration, never appears in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.22 In Stampa the contrasts are sharper, the shifts more frequent, the desires darker and at times entirely feverish in their intensity. A good illustration of this is sonnet 74, where the poet pictures how she is enslaved by her lover’s eyes, and a most uncanny atmosphere hovers over the poem: La gran sete amorosa, che m’affligge, La memoria del ben,’ onde son priva, Che mi sta dentro al cor tenace e viva, Sì, che null’altra più forte s’affige. Sovra ogni forza mia move & addige La vena mia per se muta e restiva, E fa, che’n queste carte adombri e scriva Quanto aspramente Amor m’arde e trafige. Chi fà qual noi parlar la muta Pica? Chi’l nero Corvo, e gli altri muti uccelli? La brama sol di quel, che li nutrica. Però, s’avien, ch’io scriva, e ch’io favelli, Narrando l’amorosa mia fatica Non sono io nò; son gli occhi vaghi e belli. (This great amorous thirst that afflicts me, / the memory of the good of which I’m deprived, / it’s fixed in my heart, so tenacious and alive / that nothing can overcome it to take root there; // it dominates my every force and incites / my talent, normally restive and still, / to darken these pages and write about / how bitterly love burns and transfixes. // What drives the black crow, the silent magpie, / and all other mute birds to speech? / Desire alone for what nurtures them. // Thus it so happens if I tell of my / amorous trials, it’s not I who write or speak— / no, it’s those lovely, handsome eyes.)

 Longinus, On Great Writing (On the Sublime), chapter X, p. 18.  Gordon Braden, “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender of Petrarchism,” Texas Studies

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in Literature and Language 38.2 (1996): 115–39; p. 122.

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The centrality of actual life, the focus on the body, the use of antithesis, and, above all, pathos, and the elevation along the route of poetry, all reveal a profound thematic relationship between Longinus and Stampa. Longinus, however, may not have been the only source for Stampa’s conception of the sublime. In his famous essay on the Christian ideal of humble style, Erich Auerbach, partly following Ernst Robert Curtius’s rather harsh judgment of medieval literature, claimed there was a decline of the sublime style during the general waning intellectual energy of the period from Antiquity to the era of Humanism.23 The idea of the Incarnation, he argued, broke the classical gradation of styles and subject matter: In the Christian context humble everyday things, money matters or a cup of cold water, lose their baseness and become compatible with the lofty style; and conversely, … the highest mysteries of the faith may be set forth in the simple words of lowly style which everyone can understand.24

According to Auerbach, the Augustinian “humble speech” (sermo humilis) replaced the sublime style. This does not mean, however, that the sublime completely disappeared until Robortello rediscovered Longinus’s treatise. What is provocative about Auerbach’s argument is his biased assumption. For Auerbach, Christian humility is not true realism, nor true sublime, but “secretly sublime.”25 Hence, sermo humilis is a deception that conceals a missionary message under the mask of apparent lowliness.26 This is the typical Christian style, according to Auerbach, which was employed in Christian literature throughout the Middle Ages and even afterward.27 The problem with Auerbach’s argument is that it is based on a surprisingly limited definition of realism. First, he ignores the many sublime passages of the Bible, as for instance the Book of Job, the Song of Songs, Paul’s letters, and the Book of Revelations. Even Longinus refers to the Bible as an extraordinary example of sublimity by quoting the beginning of Genesis, “Fiat lux et facta est lux” (“Let there be light, and there was light”), a quotation that clearly reveals Longinus’ Neoplatonic affinities.28 Furthermore, Auerbach does not limit his theory to his discussion of sermo humilis, since his prejudice is also evident in his classic study Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.29 In  Erich Auerbach, “Sermo Humilis,” Literary Language and its Public in the Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. by Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993 [1965]), pp. 25–67 (German ed. 1958). See also Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990) (German ed. 1948). 24  Auerbach, Literary Language, p. 37. 25  Auerbach, Literary Language, p. 65. 26  Auerbach, Literary Language, p. 50. 27  Auerbach, Literary Language, p. 65. 28  Longinus, On Great Writing (On the Sublime), chapter IX, p. 14. 29  Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, transl. by Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991) (German ed. 1946). 23

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the epilogue he wrote that only when we have had an “emancipation” from any sublime and grotesque elements would we find a true realism, which Auerbach located in the French bourgeois novel of the early nineteenth century. He describes the medieval Christian style, or sermo humilis, as a form of realism, but then claims that what distinguishes that kind of realism from modern realism is that in the Middle Ages the “direct earthly connection is of secondary importance.”30 What Auerbach did not consider was the long Christian Neoplatonic tradition where we find complex reflections on the sublime. Indeed, the most important factor in medieval Neoplatonism is that the sublime, the transition from low to high, is impossible without any realism, without existence, or the physical life in its entire contingency. Already with Johannes Scotus Eriugena, the Irish theologian, philosopher, and poet of the ninth century, we encounter an awareness of the crude fact of existence. In his Latin translation of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s treatise The Celestial Hierarchy, the conceptions of “being” and the Platonic “demiurge” are consequently translated as “existence” and the “Creator.” As G.H. Allard has explained, Eriugena’s choice of words marks the fundamental shift of focus from the abstract, eternal order of beings and essences to the radical appearance of things and existences in time and space.31 The body, the existence in flesh of the visible, which means having been projected outside of its divine causes, constitutes a completeness or a fullness that it did not possess as a pure essence withdrawn from human perceptions. God, on the other hand, who is pure and infinite essence, is described by Eriugena, in accordance with Pseudo-Dionysius, as tenebrositas (darkness), or positive pure nothingness. Thus, we see that already in the earliest examples of medieval Neoplatonism there is an indissoluble bond between reality and the sublime. The same Dionysian image was later appropriated by Bonaventure in his Itinerarium mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Soul into God) in which the elevation of the soul from the visible world to the hidden, but radiant and most sublime height (“sublimissimum verticem”), ends with a vision of a dazzling darkness from which all things shine forth: O Trinity, essence beyond essence and God beyond all deities, and most excellent Protector of the wisdom of Christians, guide us to that totally hidden but radiant and most sublime height of mystical knowledge. There new mysteries—the new, absolute, and unchangeable mysteries of theology—lie hidden in the dazzling darkness of silence that teaches secretly in a total obscurity that is super-manifest and in a super-resplendent darkness in which all things shine forth.32

 Auerbach, Mimesis, p. 555.  G. H. Allard, “The Primacy of Existence in the Thought of Eriugena,” Neoplatonism

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and Christian Thought, ed. Dominic J. O’Meara. International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (Albany: State U of New York P, 1981), pp. 89–97. 32  Bonaventure, Itineraraium mentis in Deum, in the series The Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. II, ed. Philotheus Boehner and Zachary Hayes (New York: Franciscan Inst Pubs, 2002), VII, 5, p. 137: “Trinitas superessentialis et superdeus et superoptime

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In an important anthology edited by C. Stephen Jaeger, several scholars explore the sublime in medieval aesthetics, demonstrating its massive presence in art, architecture, literature, and music.33 Jaeger’s own essay focuses mainly on Richard of St. Victor and what he calls his “anatomy of sublime.”34 As with Longinus, Eriugena, and later Bonaventure, the experience of the sublime as described in Richard of St. Victor’s Benjamin Major presupposes the body and human perceptions. The contemplation has to start in the middle of the physical world, according to Richard of St. Victor. Only speculation or a deep wondering about the beauty of the created nature may lift man to the highest level of contemplation: “The more greatly we marvel at the novelty of a thing, the more carefully we pay attention to it. The more attentively we look, the more fully we come to know. The mind rises up like the dawn.”35 As Jaeger notes, it is striking how close Richard’s vocabulary and concepts are to Longinus’s treatise on the sublime. What is important in Richard’s description is not the journey in itself or its goal, but the catalyzing experience of the presence of God, and the mental and emotional reaction to this—the wonder (admiratio) and amazement (stupor)— which results in a loss of the self. This recalls Longinus’s priority of the emotional quality—the strong and enthusiastic passions—as the main productive source of the sublime in addition to the power to conceive great thoughts. I would argue that in the fourteenth century we witness an explosive divulgation of the Neoplatonic heritage of the sublime, above all transmitted by Franciscan spirituality and its intense engagement with the physical and historic realities of man. Art historians such as Hans Belting and Anne Derbes have discussed how the new focus on Christus Patiens in Franciscan art—the contemplation on the descent, the body, and the human suffering of Christ—changed the entire narrative program not only around the cross, but also around Christ’s mother and all that belonged to the earthly life of Jesus.36 The same happened, of course, in Franciscan literature and poetry. We have, for instance, the Meditationes Vitae Christi, a work long Christianorum inspector theosophiae, dirige nos in mysticorum eloquiorum superincognitum et superlucentem et sublissimum verticem; ubi nova et absoluta et inconversibilia theologiae mysteria secundum superlucentem absconduntur occulte docentis silentii caliginem in obscurissimo, quod est supermanifestissimum, supersplendentem, et in qua omne relucet.” 33  C. Stephen Jaeger (ed.), Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics. Art, Architecture, Literature, Music (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 34  Jaeger, “Richard of St. Victor and the Medieval Sublime,” Magnificence and the Sublime, pp. 157–79; p. 160. 35  Patrologia Latina 196, 178 Aff. Quoted from Jaeger, Magnificence and the Sublime, p. 162: “Sed rei novitatem quanto magis miramur, tanto diligentius attendimus; et quanto attentius perspicimus, tanto plenius cognoscimus. Crescit itaque ex admiratione attentio, et ex attentione cognitio.” 36  Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion (New Rochelle, NY: A.D. Caratzas, 1990) (German ed., 1981); Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in the Late Medieval Italy. Narrative Paintings, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge.: Cambridge UP, 1996).

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attributed to Bonaventure, which presents a living picture of the Man of Sorrow in a thoroughly realistic manner. Despite the poor descriptions in the Gospels and canonical materials, the meditations invent new scenes and invest them with the liveliest of colors. Stage by stage we follow the double passion of Christ and his mother, and contrary to the rather restrained emotions that characterized previous portrayals, the grief is now personal, poignant, and full of anguish. Another such text is the deeply moving poem Philomena by John Peckham, the Franciscan provincial minister of England and later Archbishop of Canterbury, in which the hours of Christ’s Passion are followed by the nightingale who “in her saddest, sweetest plight” sings the cry of the human soul for the heavenly home.37 And, of course, we have the truly sublime Stabat mater dolorosa, the lament of the brokenhearted Mother, attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi. All of these poems express a realism that entails a sense of physicality, of time, plot, events, of human passions, and daily experiences, in its broadest sense, transfigured, but, contrary to Auerbach’s realism, never abandoned by the sublime. Poets of the fourteenth century, like Dante and Petrarch, have successfully been interpreted within these parameters of Franciscan spirituality.38 But I would argue that later poets, like Gaspara Stampa, may also be read within the same intellectual and aesthetic convention, especially in light of Rime 2 which I previously examined. As discussed earlier, the second sonnet draws subtle threads between the lyrical self and the Virgin. On the same day that Christ left the womb of Mary (Christmas Eve), Love entered the poet’s heart. In certain distinct ways Stampa moves within a literary tradition of mystical pregnancy that stretches from Origenes and Ambrose to Bonaventure and the Franciscans of the thirteenth century. In his meditations On the Five Feasts of the Child Bonaventure explains, for instance, how the soul becomes a spiritual Mary by conceiving and giving birth to Jesus through zealous devotion. However, it would not be until the fourteenth century that Birgitta of Sweden, and a multitude of women with her, literally embodied this maternal relationship to Christ. In one of her revelations Birgitta writes that on Christmas Eve “such a great and wonderful feeling of exultation” came to her heart (mirabilis et magna … exultatio cordis) that she could scarcely contain herself. This  A beautiful reading of John Peckham’s Philomena is to be found in F.J.E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), pp. 426–9. 38  See for instance Giuseppe Mazzotta’s sharp reading of Dante’s Paradiso X, “The Heaven of the Sun: Dante between Aquinas and Bonaventure,” Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barlolini and Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham UP, 2003), pp. 152–68. I have also explored the links between Petrarch and the Franciscans. See Unn Falkeid, “‘Thorn in the Flesh.’ Pain and Poetry in Petrarch’s Secretum,” Pangs of Love and Longing. Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature, ed. Anders Cullhed, Carin Franzén, Anders Hallengren, and Mats Malm (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), pp. 74–92. See also Piero Boitani’s thought-provoking readings of Dante as a sublime poet in The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). 37

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tremendous joy was accompanied by “a wonderful sensible movement in her heart like that of a living child turning and turning around” (Rev. 6.88).39 As Claire L. Sahlin has suggested, the noun exultatio also recalls the Gospel of Luke’s account of Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth in which John the Baptist leaped (exultavit) in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice (Luke 1:41, 44).40 Mary, I would argue, is the optimal figure for Stampa’s sublime realism. On the one hand Mary represents the descent, or the immersion, of sacredness into the physical world. On the other hand, according to the Catholic tradition, she was the only human being to ascend to Heaven in the flesh at the end of her life (though this would not be established as dogma until much later). In other words, Mary embodies the perfect Neoplatonic circle of emanatio (emanation) and reductio (reduction), a circle which, according to medieval thinkers like Bonaventure, Dante, and Birgitta, was set into motion by an act of love, and which had to return in a state love. The mystical pregnancy, the entering of Logos in Birgitta’s heart, filled her words with divine wisdom and authorized her prophecies, not unlike Mary, or the sudden movement in Elizabeth’s body which was followed by her pneumatic, prophetic speech. The same may be said of Gaspara Stampa’s lyrical self: it was the conception of Love in her heart, or if we prefer to use Longinus’s vocabulary, her power to conceive great thoughts, and the subsequent swarm of passions—her longings and jealousy, her joy (Rime 2, 9–10: “Ond’io sì rara, e sì alta ventura / Accolsi lieta,” “Such rare good fortune I greeted with gladness”) and her suffering (Rime 2, 6: “Per cui ho tanti poi lamenti sparsi,” “for whom / I have scattered so many laments”)—that has transformed her into a poet. However, what is striking with Stampa’s mannerism, and her playful adaption of different aesthetic and lyrical traditions, is how it transgresses the margins of literary imitations and turns towards a new naturalism. According to James V. Mirollo, this is also mannerism at its best: [I]t may be said that the mannerist work as just briefly defined and perhaps at its best, may seem to move wholly within an aesthetic world … however, when totally absorbed in art, one discovers that he is not roaming freely in an attractively autonomous realm but traveling along a path that opens onto nature again.41

Within the context of Stampa’s poetry this mannerism appears at the junction between an everyday experience and the sublime: while Mary is humanized, an ordinary woman is extolled, and the point of intersection between the descent  Birgitta of Sweden, The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden: Liber Caelestis, vol. 3, books VI–VII, ed. with introduction and notes by Bridget Morris, trans. Denis Searby (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), p. 155. 40  Claire L Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001), p. 95. 41  James V. Mirollo, Mannerism and Renaissance Poetry. Concept, Mode, Inner Design (New Haven: Yale UP, 1984), p. 70. 39

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and the sublimation is the body, the locus whence the poet’s language of passions springs forth, and from where her thoughts, hopes, and gazes—“pensieri, e speme, e sguardi” (Rime 2, 12: “my thoughts, my hopes, my gaze”)—are exulted. Stampa’s poetry does not end in the kind of simple idealism that often characterized Ficinian Neoplatonism or the poetry of other Petrarchists of her time. Compared to Pietro Bembo and Vittoria Colonna, for example, Stampa’s Neoplatonic perspective is more ambiguous, and murkier, and thus embedded more deeply within the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition of the Middle Ages. As depicted in Stampa’s poetry, actual life—the body and the experiences of an ordinary woman, and her love for an even more ordinary man42—is not reducible to a ladder or an easy springboard from the beauty of creation to the truth of God. Rather, the body is the nest for the sublime and the place where the sublime, the Eternal Care (Rime 2, 11: “l’eterna cura”), is completed or made visible (Rime 2, 3: “venne à dimostrarsi,” “to reveal himself”). In this way, the borders between the sacred and the profane seem to disappear in Stampa’s poetry, much as in the naturalist style of an artist like Caravaggio. The only thing that distinguishes Caravaggio’s famous painting of Mary, the so-called Madonna di Loreto in the church of San Agostino in Rome, from any common, though beautiful, Italian woman of the sixteenth century, is a thin, almost invisible halo. Not despite, but because of the physicality, the sublime transfigures every brush stroke of the artist—the dirty soles of the feet of the old, kneeling couple; the heavy child on the mother’s hip; and the virginal neck that shines against the darkness, the Dionysian tenebrositas, from the room behind the door step, all of which visually recall the etymology of the sublime as “threshold.” A similar style, a realism that renders the sublime visible, a completeness in the body and in the passions of man, makes Gaspara Stampa’s Rime unique. Notwithstanding the fluctuating quality written by a poet who hardly reached thirty years old, the poems place her among the stars of Italian Renaissance poetry.

42  Collaltino di Collalto also wrote and published poems, but he was far from as gifted as Stampa.

Chapter 3

Sublime Love Pains in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime* Federico Schneider, University of Mary Washington

With the poignant expression “ocean of my passions, tears, and torments” (“pelago delle passioni, delle lagrime, et de’ tormenti”)—a “bottomless ocean” (“mar senza fondo”)—Stampa unabashedly admits, in the dedicatory address of her Rime (“To My Illustrious Lord”), that love pains are a major constitutive element of her canzoniere.1 This is promptly corroborated by the proemial sonnet, which emphasizes the emotional charge of the Petrarchan archetype she closely follows.2 It suffices just to skim through Stampa’s Rime in order to see that her initial claim for a poetry laden with exceptional love pains is, in fact, substantiated by her poetry. What exactly can be made of this distinctive rhetorical mood or pathos in her poetry, besides noting its existence, is a much more complicated issue, which I will address in this chapter. A first significant textual sign can be found in the second quatrain of the proemial sonnet where the speaker attributes her love pains—“my amorous laments”—to a “sublime cause” (“cagione sublime”). Most importantly, her claim to glory is based exactly on that sublime cause: “I hope to find glory … / …, for what / gives rise to my laments is so sublime” (Rime 1, 5–8). The direct link Stampa *  This article was completed during a sabbatical leave for which I thank the University of Mary Washington. I am also grateful to Claudio Scarpati for his support and advice. 1  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). 2  Andreas Kablitz rightly notes that Stampa purposefully overemphasizes Petrarch’s own stance through amplificatio (“Die Selbstbestimmung des petrarkistischen Diskurses im Proömialsonett [Giovanni della Casa—Gaspara Stampa] im Spiegel der neueren Diskussion um den Petrarkismus,” Germanistik-Romanische Monatsschrift 42 [1992]: 381–414; see especially pp. 396–7). However, Kablitz overlooks the fact that Stampa also refers to Bembo’s own paradigmatic amplificatio of Petrarch’s pathos, in the incipit of his proemial sonnet: “Piansi e cantai lo strazio e l’aspra guerra, / ch’i’ ebbi a sostener molti e molti anni / e la cagion di così lunghi affanni” (Rime 1, 1–3: “I cried, and grief and bitter war I sang / for many and many years endured / and the cause of so much distress”). Citations of Bembo’s poetry are from Pietro Bembo, Rime, ed. Andrea Donnini (Rome: Salerno, 2008). Translation is mine. More on Stampa’s endorsment of Bembo’s paradigm will follow.

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establishes between the enhanced pathos of her poetry and its sublime cause is so meaningful to the poet that it has a bearing on glory, and therefore needs to be adequately framed, within the context of the Rime as well as within the broader context of the Petrarchan tradition. With respect to the Petrarchan movement, it is important to point out that Stampa’s Rime should be placed within the specific context of Petrarchist poetics, as opposed to a more general Petrarchan tradition informed by the poetics of dolce stil novo. Scholars have already elucidated the influence of stilnovistic, amatory poetics on the Petrarchan tradition, the presence of a Petrarchan poetological discourse in his imitators, as well as the metaliterary function of a proemial sonnet in a typical Petrarchan canzoniere.3 Thus, in this chapter I propose a new critical frame of inquiry that is more consistent with that which Renaissance commentators and imitators regularly adopted, one that was likely to have influenced Stampa’s Rime. That is, a frame informed by the well-known issues concerning the functionality and morality of poetry during that period, such as the issue of docere (to teach) vs. delectare (to delight), and, most importantly, the function of movere (to move). In this respect, my approach contributes to other critical efforts that are focused on rhetorical strategies at play in the Renaissance canzoniere4 and also inquire into the effect of said strategies.5 Within my new framework, I also subscribe to the often vindicated sense of continuity within the Petrarchan code during the Cinquecento,6 although I do differentiate the type (the individual imitation of the canzoniere form) with respect to its archetype (Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta—RVF), in an attempt to provide a valid frame of reference for the production and fruition of the canzoniere form in the Renaissance.7 As early as the 1520s, Petrarch’s love-romance, as described in the RVF, was read consistently as a psychomachìa—a battle of the soul against vice—of epic proportions. This approach to Petrarch’s love poetry affected both interpretive essays,8 as well as imitations of the RVF, beginning with  Kablitz, “Die Selbstbestimmung,” 396–401. For a more recent structuralist approach to Petrarchan poetics in Stampa’s Rime, see also Ulrike Schneider, Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento: Transformationen des lyrischen Diskurses bei Vittoria Colonna und Gaspara Stampa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007). 4  On this see Giovanni Ferroni, “A margine di Piansi e cantai del Bembo,” Italique 12 (2009): 73–91. 5  On the relevance of movere in Petrarchist poetics, see Federico Schneider, Pastoral Drama and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 22–5. 6  See Amedeo Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974); La parola nel labirinto. Società e scrittura del Manierismo a Napoli (Bari: Laterza, 1975); Il naso di Laura. Lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del Classicismo (Modena: Panini, 1991). 7  Francesco Erspamer, “II canzoniere rinascimentale come testo o come macrotesto: il sonetto proemiale,” Schifanoia. Notizie dell’Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali di Ferrara 4 (1987): 109–14. 8  A characterizing feature of Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo’s Spositione (completed in 1529–30; princeps 1533) is the underlying equivalence between Petrarch’s Canzoniere, the Iliad, and the Aeneid. See Francesca D’Alessandro, “‘Mentre l’un con l’altro vero accoppio’: 3

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Pietro Bembo’s Rime of 1530.9 As to what exactly these epic aspirations are, it is important to note that Bembo’s paradigmatic imitation of Petrarch’s RVF presents itself not just as an experience of earthly love, nor strictly as a spiritual journey, but rather as an initiation10 into love with a didactic function. This is made most explicit in the closing of the proemial sonnet where Bembo writes: Ché poteranno talor gli amanti accorti Queste rime leggendo, al van desio ritoglier l’alme col mio duro exempio E quella strada, ch’a buon fine porti scorger da l’altre, e quanto adorar Dio solo si dee nel mondo ch’è suo tempio. (9–14) (Because careful lovers at times might /, in reading these rhymes, from vain desire / divert their hearts with my harsh example/ and see the road which ends well / and how one should adore God only / in this world that is his temple.)

As we see in the last two tercets of this sonnet, the Rime are “the example” through which careful lovers might “divert their hearts” from vain desire (“van desio”) and find, among other roads, the one (“quella strada”) that leads to a positive end and the realization that one ought to worship only God. Indeed, the syntactic relationship between “duro exempio” and both verbs “ritoglier” and “scorger,” as well as the tactical use of the preposition “col,” underscore the instrumental function of “duro exempio” with respect to both verbs. This suggests a momentous transformation of the Petrarchan love-romance: from the pitiable “trial” (“prova”)11 of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (1, 7) to the admirable initiation (“exempio”) of Bembo’s Rime. There is, then, an ambitious—one might even say, apologetic—stance in Bembo’s proemial sonnet that needs to be considered very carefully. His paradigmatic Petrarchist canzoniere not only features a new approach to inventio (as already mentioned, it sensibly transforms the Petrarchan “prova”), but it also subscribes to the Aristotelian category of movere (to move) rather than docere (to il Petrarca di Minturno e la tradizione crisitana,” Poesia e retorica del Sacro tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Erminia Ardissino and Elisabetta Selmi (Alessandria: Dell’Orso, 2009), pp. 205–34; see especially pp. 211–15. For a description of the particular allegorical reading Gesualdo elaborates on the basis of the abovementioned equivalence, see pp. 223–31. 9  See Alfred Noyer-Wiedner, “Lyrische Grundform und episch-didaktischer Überbietungsanspruch in Bembos Einleitungsgedicht,” Romanische Forschungen 86 (1974): 314–58. 10  Given the crucial distinction suggested in the use of this particular word, I am purposefully italicizing it throughout the essay. 11  Although “prova” is often translated as “experience,” for the purposes of my argument, “trial” is more adept since it more clearly evokes the ethically charged connotation of the original Italian.

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teach), since it evidently aspires not just to teach a lesson on love, but to move the reader by means of an admirable example of love. It is upon this kind of rhetorical ethos (compelling or affect-rousing virtuous character) that the unprecedented claims to glory of the Petrarchist poet are legitimately predicated. This suggests a ground-breaking shift from the archetype (RVF), where, as is well-known, pathos mainly consists in rue or regret for the experience of earthly love. Bembo too deploys rue as a pathetic (affect-rousing) element in the first line of his proemial sonnet (“I cried … ”)12 and occasionally features it throughout his Rime as a way of signaling his subscription to Petrarchan poetics. Rue, however, is not the fundamental affect of Bembo’s canzoniere, which is meant to be an admirable initiation, not a pitiable trial or a “deterring example,” as some critics contend.13 In this light, merely teaching an exemplary story of a negatively connoted earthly love, through the penitential mode, can hardly be considered the defining feature of the epic aspirations pertaining to the Petrarchist canzoniere. The exemplary, pitiable story thus becomes a fixture, one which immediately relates to the archetype (RVF) and thereby elevates it to the status of an early modern classic. At the same time, the exemplary story—newly reconfigured as admirable initiation—also measures the innovation of the archetype achieved through a competitive imitation. This stakes a claim to a higher moral ground for the Petrarchist canzoniere since love poetry has now become a unique form of poetic mimesis able to not only teach (docere) but to move (movere) through its compelling new ethos—that which pertains to a new, affect-rousing character, who undergoes an admirable initiation. As Bembo suggests by adding the adjective “duro” in front of “exempio,” his is a harsh ethos, further confirmed by other pathetic tones in the incipit of Bembo’s proemial sonnet, namely those pertaining to love pains: the “grief and bitter war” of love. The well-known emphasis on love pains in the Petrarchan poetic experience of the Renaissance needs to be examined within a rhetorical, not just a systematic, framework.14 In other words, love pains are an undeniable part of the typical Petrarchist poetic experience, not per se but, in fact, as a crucial means to a specific end—shaping the Petrarchan ethos.15 What conveys meaning and warrants the epic aspirations of the typical Petrarchist canzoniere, including  The relevant text has already been cited at n. 1.  “abscreckendes Exempel.” Cf. Kablitz, “Die Selbstbestimmung,” p. 398. 14  Note that for Regn “Schmerzenliebe” (“love pains”) is a “Systemkonstitutive 12 13

Konzept” (system-constitutive concept”)—cf. Gerhardt Regn, “Petrarkismus.” Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, vol. 6, ed. Gerd Ueding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003), p. 916. 15  Note that, while this kind of pathetically shaped ethos, by means of love pains, is indeed relevant to Petrarchist poetics and especially, as will be shown, to Stampa’s poetry, it is certainly not the only kind. I am also aware of the Neoplatonic approach, focused on the mimetic expression of joyous languishing or affetti lieti, for example, as in Benedetto Varchi, and in part also Bernardino Rota—on this see Bernhard Huss,“‘Cantai colmo di gioia, e senza inganni’ Benedettos Varchis Sonetti (prima parte) im Kontext des italienishen Cinquecento-Petrarkismus,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 52 (2001): 133–57. I must therefore remark that this discussion does in no way pretend to be exhaustive with respect to

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Stampa’s Rime, is thus no longer the pathetic element of rue, but that of love pains and, most importantly, the ethical handling of love pains. In other words, in the Petrarchist canzoniere, love pains become the indispensable component of the affect-rousing character (ethos) performing the initiation into love, which moves the reader to admiration.16 It is from this Bembian-informed perspective on Petrarchism that Stampa’s emphasis on love pains must be read. As I shall argue, the love pains permeating her Rime are instrumental in not just fulfilling the new epic aspirations of the typical Petrarchist canzoniere, but, most importantly, in upgrading the Petrarchan ethos ushered in by Bembo’s Rime to what I will term the “human-passionate sublime”: a development of ethos whereby the existence and emphasis on human love pains in the initiation conveys a particular Christian meaning, which I will flesh out in the ensuing discussion.17 That love pains are, indeed, key to Stampa’s mastery as a Petrarchist poet (thus crucial to convey the just-discussed epic aspirations) is suggested by the fact that, as previously mentioned, in the proemial sonnet the speaker directly links love pains to a “sublime cause,” and justifies her claim to glory precisely upon that cause. According to a lectura facilior, the “sublime cause” of the speaker’s love pains is Count Collaltino di Collalto, the official addressee of the rhymes.18 However, that he, or even other occasional lovers,19 may not have been the only causes of the speaker’s love pains would have hardly escaped anyone well acquainted with the polysemic nature and metaphysical extensions of Laura through paranomasia (lauro, l’oro, l’aura, etc.) in the Petrarchan tradition, especially not one the likes of Monsignor Giovanni Della Casa, the dedicatee of the princeps. Significant in this respect are, for example, the Christological overtones that resonate quite early in the collection, as in Rime 12: Petrarchist poetics; it just wants to provide a better understanding of those quite popular ethos-shaping processes, which heavily rely on love pains. 16  In this light, the presence of love pains in a Petrarchist canzoniere does not negatively characterize the experience of love, but rather signals the continuing ethosshaping function of a new form of pathos reconceived within a new heroic perspective, as exemplified in Bembo’s incipit. 17  With the exception of Eugenio Donadoni’s Gaspara Stampa: Vita e opere (Messina: Principato, 1919), the religious aspects of Stampa’s poetry have not attracted much scholarly interest. 18  This is documented in Rambaldo di Collalto’s premise to the eighteenth-century edition of Stampa’s Rime: “Ma per tutte le lodi a lui [Conte Collaltino di Collalto] date vagliono quelle della divina Gaspara Stampa.” (“But exceeding all the praises given to him [Count Collaltino di Collalto] are those by the divine Gaspara Stampa”). See Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa, con alcune altre di Collaltino, e di Vinciguerra, conti di Collalto, e di Baldassare Stampa. Giuntovi diversi componimenti di varj autori in lode della medesima, ed. Luisa Bergalli and Antonio Rambaldo di Collalto (Venice: Francesco Piacentini, 1738) quoted in Gaspara Stampa, Rime, ed. Maria Bellonci and Gustavo Rodolfo Ceriello (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976). 19  Bartolomeo Zen and Giovanni Andrea Viscardo, for example.

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry Deh, perché così tardo gli occhi apersi Nel divin, non umano amato volto, Ond’io scorgo, mirando impresso, e scolto Un mar d’alti miracoli, e diversi? Non avrei, lassa, gli occhi indarno aspersi D’inutil pianto in questo viver stolto, Né l’alma havria, com’ha, poco né molto Di Fortuna ò d’Amore onde dolersi. E sarei forse di sì chiaro grido, Che, mercé dello stil, ch’indi m’è dato, Risoneria fors’Adria oggi, e’l suo lido. Ond’io sol piango il mio tempo passato, Mirando altrove; e forse anche mi fido Di far’ in parte il foco mio lodato. (Ah, why so late did my eyes open / to the divine in that beloved face / that is beyond human—and where I see a sea / of varied wonders imprinted and incised? / Alas, I would not have bathed my eyes / in useless plaint for this foolish life, / nor would my heart have lamented, much, / what I had received from love or fortune. / Perhaps all of the Adriatic and its shores / would resound today with my name—so great / thanks to the style he’s given me. / I weep alone for this, days past when I gazed / elsewhere. Yet even if late, I trust—perhaps—/ to make my fire worthy of some praise)

What is most important about this sonnet, and crucial for orienting the reader toward a less obvious interpretation of Stampa’s love pains, is the second line of the poem—“divine, not human beloved face”20—which hints at a beloved who is not human but divine. It is a hint that should not be taken lightly given the emphatic, regretful tone of the incipit (“Ah, why so late did my eyes open”) and its unmistakable Augustinian reminiscences: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you” (Confessions 10, 27).21 This is, then, a Petrarchan rueful moment, which resonates with Augustinian overtones, and echoes Stampa’s regret in sonnet 2 that “Eternal Care / made me worthy of it all so late.”22 Here in sonnet 12, the subtle juxtaposition of the human and the divine beloved is not only 20  My translation, as opposed to Tylus’s translation (“to the divine in that beloved face”). The original Italian stresses the divine by requalifying the first qualifier “divin” with a second one—“non umano.” Through repetition Stampa invites the reader to detect a double register (profane / spiritual-divine) in her discourse. 21  Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford UP, 1992). 22  The verses imply that the speaker’s regret does not lie in the tardiness of Eternal Care, but in the speaker’s own Augustinian resistance to becoming worthy of the rare and good fortune.

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significant but also strategically coupled with a solemn celebration of the Collalto family (11) where the resultant upgrading of the human dimension to the divine dimension is expected. The discerning reader is thus invited, right from the outset, and considerably earlier than the rime sacre interlude addressed to Christ in Rime 275–82, to consider the love-romance in the Rime as a process characterized by the immanent analogy of Collaltino with Christ—the “divine, not human beloved face.” Such an analogy is also subtly suggested in the already mentioned sonnet 2, where Stampa revisits the famous third sonnet of the RVF and substitutes the Petrarchan Good Friday with Christmas (Christmas being the day when the loveromance officially begins in Stampa’s Rime). Whether historically accurate or not, the substitution is strategic since it allows Stampa to not only characterize love as a sort of mystical pregnancy, but also to set up another tangential analogy between Christ, who is leaving the womb of his mother, and Collaltino, who is nestling within the heart of the speaker. 23 The Collaltino/Christ immanent analogy is, then, an undeniable feature in Stampa’s canzoniere, if also one still largely left to be discovered.24 In this respect, it is important to also note that the well-known COLLALTINO/ALTO COLLE pun and anagram is not just meant as a metaliterary reference to Mount Parnassus and Mount Helicon, and, thus, poetry.25 As a matter of fact, the pun also contains a Christological dimension that is warranted not so much by the wellknown diachronic developments eventually leading to the “Parnaso sacro,”26 but also by an authoritative exegetic tradition,27 and a widespread cultural sensibility.28 It is thus safe to say that, at least to a reader steeped in this kind of sensibility,  See Unn Falkeid’s chapter in this volume.  Tylus claims that in the Rime the term “Signore” (in reference to Collaltino), is

23 24

“played against the other ‘Signore’ who is Christ.” (The Complete Poems, pp. 366–7 n. 39). I hope this essay will serve as an encouragement to revisit this position in the future. 25  This has been the traditional interpretation for verses such as: “Alto Colle, gradito e gratioso / Novo Parnaso mio, novo Elicona” (Rime 10, 1–2: “High hill, agreeable and gracious / my new Helicon, my new Parnassus”). 26  See Salvatore Ussia, Il Sacro Parnaso il Lauro e la Croce (Catanzaro: Pullano, 1993). 27  I am referring to the tradition of Christological readings offered for the COLLE that Dante tries to climb in the proemial Canto of the Commedia: “Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto” (Inf. I, 13). See Filippo Villani’s commentary (1405)—cf. Expositio seu comentum super “Comedia” Dantis Allegherii, ed. Saverio Bellomo (Florence: Le Lettere, 1989). For the exegetical reading of colle as the Calvary Mountain see Magistero della Divina Commedia osservato ed esposto da Francesco Maria Torricelli (Fossombrone: Tipografia Farinia, 1842) Sec. 18:7. 28  On the popular fifteenth-century tradition of the “Sacri Monti” as a reference to Calvary see Amédée Teetaert, Saggio storico sulla devozione alla Via Crucis, ed. Almicare Barbero and Pasquale Magro, trans. Paolo Pellizzari (Ponzano and Casale Monferrato: Centro di Documentazione dei Sacri Monti Calvari e Complessi Devozionali Europei, 2004).

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the Christological overtones in sonnets 2 and 12 could have suggested a lectura difficilior of the term “cagione sublime,” in the proemial sonnet, and an even earlier disclosure of the Collaltino/Christ analogy. This in turn would have allowed to appreciate a crucial aspect of Stampa’s poetic agenda: although she indeed subscribes to the heroic Petrarchan ethos ushered in by Bembo, her approach to configuring the Christian space within Petrarchan poetics already looks ahead and thus competes with other approaches, like the spiritualizing attempts à la Vittoria Colonna.29 Of course, the reference here is to the so-called spiritual Petrarch,30 which represents an important development within Petrarchist poetics. One could consider it a sharp turn toward an ethics that is exclusively Christian, in response to Bembo’s humanistic, Neoplatonic and Christian syncretic paradigm. This particular approach, ushered in by the spiritual rhymes of the Franciscan friar Girolamo Malipiero (1536), dramatically changes the Petrarchan initiation by electing as its substance a form of love that is definitely no longer human or even Platonic, but strictly divine—caritas—as established in Dante’s Commedia. It is a change, which theologizes the Petrarchan love-romance, since the human love for Laura transforms into the love for God. The result is either a theologically motivated parody of the Petrarchan love-romance (Malipiero) or its transformation into an intimate religious meditation, as is the case with Vittoria Colonna’s Rime spirituali (1546).31 In later examples like Gabriele Fiamma’s Rime spirituali (1570), the Petrarchan love-romance is even more radically transformed into what has been described as an essay in the anthropology of the Christian soul, expressed by means of a Petrarchan vocabulary32 and informed by Thomistic philosophy.33 In this respect, one may also speak of a Christian meditation that entails a “Tridentine correction of Petrarch,”34 not just because of the radical change to the allegorical implications of the spiritualized Petrarchan love-romance, but also because of the

29  I am not trying to characterize the Rime as the work of a spiritual Petrarchist but rather as that of a Petrarchist sui generis, competing within a spiritualized context. The ensuing discussion is meant to generally define the context wherein this competition takes place. 30  I am translating the term “Petrarca spirituale” first adopted as a critical category by Amadeo Quondam in “Riscrittura-Citazione-Parodia del codice Il Petrarca spirituale di Girolamo Malipiero,” Studi e probelmi di critica testuale 17 (1978). See also Mark Föcking, Rime sacre und die Genese des Barocken Stils. Untersuchungen zur Stilsgeschichte Geistlicher Lyrik in Italien (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994). 31  In this respect, I agree with Föcking’s distinction between Malipiero’s approach as “ré-écriture” of Petrarch’s RVF and Colonna’s poetry as a “continuation” of a Petrachistic canzoniere. Cf. Föcking, Rime sacre, 65. For a discussion of Malipiero’s Petrarca Spirituale and Colonna’s Rime spirituali, see Föcking, Rime sacre, 61–9. 32  Cf. Föcking, Rime sacre, p. 72 . On Fiamma’s Rime spirituali, see pp. 69–76. 33  Föcking, Rime sacre, pp. 73–4. 34  See Föcking, Rime sacre, p. 69.

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“ethical cleansing” performed on a Petrarchan language that needs to be able to decorously express new “affetti purgati” (“purged affects”).35 It is possible to characterize this drastic change as a “corrosion”—of a secular Petrarchism by a spiritual-sacred Petrarchism—which eventually leads to a new subgenre of Petrarchan poetry.36 It is, however, preferable, in order to accurately convey the continuity of the Petrarchist code, to represent this change in different terms: that is, as one instance in the ongoing competition for a viable Christian space within Petrachism. For the sake of clarification, one might say that this is the moment in the competition when a reformist agenda overtakes a humanist agenda, a proposition increasingly coming under attack because it is considered devious with respect to orthodox Catholic views,37 and thus no longer in the position to efficaciously configure a Christian space within Petrarchism.38 Also along the lines of the “continuity within difference” paradigm within Petrarchist poetics, one should note the surprising general stability of the new Petrarchan ethos ushered in by Bembo, at least in essence, if not in substance. 39 In fact, even in Vittoria Colonna’s spiritualizing effort, the poetic emphasis is still on an inventio that features the admirable love pains of an initiation into love (i.e. caritas), this time adequately informed by evangelic or biblical texts, in addition 35  Note Gabriele Fiamma’s claim in the proemial sonnet: “con affetto e con stil purgato e mondo” (Rime spirituali 1, 11). Gabriele Fiamma, Rime spirituali (Venice: Francesco de’ Franceschi Senese, 1575)—from now on RS—quoted in Paolo Zaja,“‘Perch’arda meco del tuo amore il mondo.’ Lettura delle Rime spirituali di Gabriele Fiamma,” Poesia e retorica del Sacro tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Erminia Ardissino and Elisabetta Selmi (Alessandria: Dell’Orso, 2009), pp. 235–92; p. 265. For an analysis of the rhetorical and metrical means through which this “ethical-cleansing” takes place in Tasso’s sacred rhymes and its relative ideological implications, see Francesco Ferretti, “Fuggendo Saturno. Note sulla canzone Alma inferma e dolente di Torquato Tasso,” Rime sacre dal Petrarca al Tasso, ed. Maria Luisa Doglio and Carlo Delcorno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), pp. 164–75. 36  Cf. Föcking, Rime sacre, pp. 53–61. 37  Cf. Zaja, “Perch’arda meco,” p. 237. 38  In other words, it is not a battle between two different literary cultures (secular Petrarchism vs. spiritual Petrarchism); rather, I would argue for the existence of one culture (Petrarchism), wherein competing humanist agendas—from Bembo to Della Casa, from Vittoria Colonna to Bernardo Tasso, from Celio Magno to Annibale Caro, all the way to Gabriele Fiamma and Tasso—are all trying to find an adequate expression for a Christian sensibility that is dramatically changing. The aggressive move toward what Zaja calls “an appropriation” of the Petrarchan code within a religious mode (“Perch’arda meco,” p. 237) is but another stage in the competition, suggesting a less tolerant relationship between the classical and the modern cultures or, as Baldacci concludes, a particularly strong sense of Christian spirituality (Il petrarchismo italiano del Cinquecento [Padova: Liviana, 1974], p. 36). 39  In this respect, I agree with Quondam’s reading of the rime spirituali “book” as a macrotext, which is “genetically integrated” to forms and functions ushered in by Bembo’s Petrachistic model (“Note sulla tradizione della poesia spirituale e religiosa [parte prima],” Paradigmi e tradizioni [Rome: Bulzoni, 2005], p. 151). My translation.

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to Dante’s Commedia and Petrarch’s RVF.40 And even beneath Fiamma’s intention to “inflame the entire world”41 one may detect but a dramatically charged version of the same kind of movere (to move), which Bembo’s heroic initiation into love with a didactic function wanted to achieve. If, however, Bembo’s compelling initiation into love seems to have an unexpected longevity within Petrarchist poetics, then the abovementioned spiritualizing development drastically changes the affective dynamics through which the ethos is engendered, and thus movere (to move) is achieved. The change lies specifically in the function of love pains within the initiation. Love pains are, in fact, no longer the defining feature of the Petrarchan ethos; rather, their absence is. In other words, love pains are still the means through which the Petrarchist poet mimetically engenders an affect-rousing virtuous character or ethos. However, they function within the new economy of caritas as the impediment stemming from amor terreno (earthly love) that obfuscates the mystical or ascetic Petrarchan ethos,42 which shines more brightly as the obfuscating element is purged through the tears of penance—a distinguishing feature of this form of initiation into love.43 40  See Claudio Scarpati, “Le rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna nel codice vaticano donato a Michelangelo,” Invenzione e scrittura. Saggi di letteratura italiana (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2005), pp. 129–62. Particularly noteworthy is Scarpati’s remark about Colonna’s Petrarchan ethos: “In this cognitive and transforming forward movement, the human condition does not allow for definitive and secure achievements, so that detours, stops, and setbacks are all part of the convert’s progress.” (135; my translation). 41  “Perch’arda meco del tuo amore il mondo” (“So that with me may the whole world burn with your love”), my translation. Cf. Fiamma, RS 1.12, quoted in Zaja, “Perch’arda meco,” 265. 42  This is the subject in Vittoria Colonna’s Rime spirituali 10: “Spiego vêr voi, mia luce, indarno l’ale, / Prima che ‘l caldo vostro interno vento / M’apra l’aere d’intorno, ora ch’io sento / Vincer da nuovo ardir l’antico male. / Che giunga all’infinito opra mortale / Opra vostra è, signor, che in un momento / La può far degna; ch’io da me pavento / Di cader col pensier, quand’ei più sale. / Bramo quell’invisibil chiaro lume / Che fuga densa nebbia; e quell’accesa / Secreta fiamma ch’ogni gel consuma. / Onde poi, sgombra dal terren costume, / Tutta al divin amor l’anima intesa / Si mova al volo altero in altra piuma” (“In vain I spread my wings to fly to you, my light, / Before your warm wind which blows inside / has cleared the air around, now that I feel / the ancient evil being overcome by new grit. / That mortal work may reach the infinite / is your accomplishment, sir, who in a moment / can make it worthy; cause I fear / falling with my thought as it soars higher. / I ardently yearn the invisible bright light / which dissipates dense fog; and the secret burning flame, which consumes any chill / so that, then, free from its earthly ways / the soul entirely striving for divine love / may begin the fierce flight with another kind of feather”), quoted from Vittoria Colonna, Rime, ed. Alan Bullock (Rome: Laterza, 1982). Translation and emphasis mine. 43  The dynamics where human love pains are substituted by purging tears is nicely exemplified in Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio’s Fiamme (1548), whose spiritual character has been effectively highlighted in Valentina Gallo, “Platonismo e cristianesimo: esemplarietà di un autobiografia lirica. Le Fiamme di Giraldi Cinzio,” Poesia e retorica

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The spiritualizing trend in Petrarchist poetics, then, is not simply one that chooses a different substance for its initiation (caritas over human love); rather, it also chooses a different affective strategy in the engendering of the ethos. In this light, the popularity of the spiritual rhymes is not just a significant sign of a growing pious sensibility; it also reveals how unpopular and problematic other ways of engendering a Petrarchan ethos had become in times of high religious sensitivity, particularly those based on a heightened pathetic charge in the loveromance. These modes, with their emphasis on pathos, could lead to a dangerous teetering on the verge of pagan erotic poetry, or could also risk turning Petrarchism into a rather spicy courtly divertissement. In both cases, the results could debunk the abovementioned high moral aspirations that informed Petrarchism. Even in the best case scenario, where emphasizing the pathetic charge of the love-romance simply meant ushering in a Petrarchan ethos more faithful to the all-too-human archetype, the potential pitfall could be that of upholding an ambiguous and morally questionable exemplar.44 It is not difficult to see, then, how traveling like Stampa along the “human ways” toward an enhanced pathetic approach to the Petrarchan ethos, while at the same time trying to confer some Christian meaning to it, may not have been an easy thing to achieve, let alone excel in, given the competition with the aforementioned mystical or ascetic trends. It is probably not a coincidence that a widely influential work, such as Giovanni Della Casa’s Rime (1558), takes a sharp turn away from pathos, which is nowhere to be found in the proemial sonnet. In this light, one might better understand the speaker’s slightly boastful hopes to make her human passion for Collaltino worthy of praise, and even envy, in the Proem. Stampa is indeed competitive in her ability to achieve a remarkable emphasis on human love pains—her love pains for Collaltino—at the same time opening a very effective double perspective through which love pains become meaningful in a Christian way and endow new meaning to her Petrarchan epic. The fact that she capitalizes on Niccolò da Correggio’s imitation of Ovid’s heroic epistle (Heroides)—most notably the stylistic feature of the “querela” or lament— is important.45 In the context of this discussion it shows her deep awareness of the ethical implications of lyric poetry. Moreover, it suggests her keen sense of agency as both a female and a humanist lyric poet, specifically in working towards engendering a heroic Petrarchan ethos shaped by love pains with a recognizable del Sacro tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Erminia Ardissino and Elisabetta Selmi (Alessandria: Dell’Orso, 2009), pp. 5–53. On the aspect of donum lacrymarum, see p. 23. 44  See Federico Schneider, Pastoral Drama, pp. 73–4. 45  For Stampa’s use of the Heroides in the series of capitoli she features in her Rime, see Patricia Phillippy, “‘Altera Dido’: The Model of Ovid’s Heroides in the Poems of Gaspara Stamapa and Veronica Franco,” Italica 69 (1992): 1–18; and Ulrike Schneider, “Volksprachliche Transformationen der Heroides in der italienischen Renaissance. Zu Formen und Funktionen des Ovid-Rekurses am Beispiel zweier Episteln von Niccolò da Correggio and Vittoria Colonna,” Abgrenzung und Synthese. Lateinische Dichtung und volkssprachliche Traditionen in Renaissance und Barock, ed. Marc Föcking and Gernot Michael Müller (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2007), pp. 89–107.

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Christian connotation. Emblematic in this respect is the extraordinary46 internal rhyme “unge e punge” (“anoints and pricks”)47 in the closing line of the very first capitolo (Rime 286), which introduces a subtle Christological dimension into the poetry,48 and thus strengthens the Christian significance of the human love pains it laments. Stampa’s mastery of the Heroides, thus, caters to a grand poetic enterprise announced in the Proem and systematically carried out throughout the Rime. The abovementioned Collaltino/Christ analogy is certainly important in this respect. However, this fact alone is not the whole story about Stampa’s poetry that this essay hopes to tell, which consists in a three-dimensional strategic use of love pains. Firstly, the already discussed stress on love pains (as opposed to rue) as a major constituent of the Petrarchan ethos. Secondly, the already mentioned Christological overtones these love pains occasionally resonate with, throughout the Rime, thanks to the immanent Collaltino/Christ analogy. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the crucial effect these love pains have in transforming the speaker into a fullfledged Christian virtuous character—the martyr. It is the combination of these three different components that confers Christian meaning to Stampa’s love pains, and thus allows the Rime to effectively engender a Petrarchan ethos that is sublime (or better, “human-passionate sublime”). In other words, Stampa does not simply allow for her poetry to suggest that the speaker’s beloved may also be Christ; she also implies (and therein lies Stampa’s real groundbreaking proposition) that the love pains the speaker endures make the speaker herself Christ-like. This three-dimensional strategic use of love pains in Stampa’s Rime is already suggested in the proemial sonnet, through a lectura even more difficilior of the abovementioned “cagione sublime”: namely, one based on the well-known inherent ambiguity of the word “cagione,” which often means “cause,” but may also mean “effect.” As a matter of fact, in the already-cited premise to the Rime  Note that this is a difficult, internal rhyme, with an oxymoronic function, which Petrarch only uses once in the entire RVF: “Amor con tal dolcezza m’unge et punge” (RVF 221, 12). This is the only instance in which the word “unge” is used in the RVF. Also significant is the fact that this first capitolo is the only instance in the entire series (286–91, in the princeps) where the closing line features an oxymoronic internal rhyme (288 closes with just a simple anaphora); it is thus an exception within the series. 47  My translation. 48  Within the Christological implications of the pun, the word “Christ” derives from the Greek Khristós, meaning “anointed.” For Jesus Christ’s definition of himself as “anointed,” see Luke 4:18. In the Bible, both Isaiah and David are “anointed” (Isaiah 61:1; 1 Samuel 16:1–13). For the theological tradition of Christ as “l’Unto” (“the anointed one”), see Raniero Cantalamessa, “Ministri della nuova alleanza dello Spirito. Seconda predica di Avvento 11/12/2009.” The Christological implications of “unge e punge” may even directly derive from Dante’s Paradiso: “La piaga che Maria richiuse ed unse” (Par. XXXII, 4)—I thank Claudio Scarpati for pointing this out to me. Finally, Stampa seemingly corrects or rather recontextualizes the original Petrarchan pun by preceding it with a martyrological definition of “Amor”: “Un gioir l’alma quando si sospira.” (“It’s a soul that fills with joy when it sighs”). On the martyrological aspect of Stampa’s poetry see Justin Vitiello, “Gaspara Stampa: The Ambiguities of Martyrdom,” MLN 90.1, The Italian Issue (Jan. 1975): 58–71. The subject will be further explored in the next pages. 46

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(“Allo illustre mio Signore”), Stampa uses the word “cagione” as precisely “effect”: “benedicendo però sempre nel mezzo de’ miei maggiori tormenti i cieli et la mia buona sorte della cagion d’essi” (“blessing in the midst of my greatest trials heaven and my lucky stars for what they [trials] have wrought”).49 Considering this strategic ambiguity from Stampa’s proemial sonnet (along with the alreadydiscussed other interpretive clues provided therein), we are able to infer: (1) that she intends to stress love pains in her Rime and build upon Bembo’s heroic Petrarchan ethos; (2) that the double object of desire in her canzoniere is Collaltino/Christ; and, finally, (3) that the overall effect of love pains on the loving subject—that is, the speaker—is sublime, which, of course, implies the conflation of the speaker with the martyr-figure or figura Christi, thereby upgrading Petrachan love pains to Christian martyrdom. The poet-martyr analogy is subtly introduced in the proemial sonnet, and then periodically underscored throughout the Rime. We see this, for example, in sonnet 32 when the speaker describes her love pains: Perché nasce virtu da questa pena, che ’l senso del dolor vince ed abbaglia, sì che o non duole o si sente appena. (9–11) (because from this suffering, virtue is born / that dazzles and conquers the wrenching pain / so that I don’t notice it—or just barely).

The interrelatedness of “virtu” (virtue) and “pena” (suffering) and the idea of a delightful pain experienced with a beloved who is likened to Christ, neither recall Dante’s mystical language of divine love in Paradiso XI nor the sacred delightful suffering of the contrite speaker in Fiamma’s canzoniere.50 Rather, it is the sublime language of Pauline martyrdom (Col. 1, 24–25) that may have immediately resonated with a reader already fascinated, at least aesthetically, with martyrdom.51  Stampa, “Allo illustre mio signore,” in Tylus, The Complete Poems, p. 58 and 59.  On the pleasure of the contritio cordis (contrition of the heart) in Fiamma’s lyric,

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see Föcking, “Perch’arda meco,” 85–6. 51  Gabriele Paleotti (1522–1597) has remarked on the aesthetics of martyrdom that, “Il sentire narrare il martirio d’un santo, il zelo et costanza di una vergine, la passione dello stesso Christo sono cose che toccano dentro il vero; ma l’esserci con vivi colori qua posto sotto gli occhi il santo martirizzato … egli è pur vero che tanto accresce la divozione e compunge le viscere, che chi non lo conosce è di legno o di marmo.” (“Hearing of the martyrdom of a saint, the zeal and constancy of a virgin, the passion of Christ himself may touch one with the truth; but a martyred saint painted in vivid colors and placed before our very eyes …, to be sure, so much increases devotion and causes deep remorse that he who does not recognize it is either made of wood or stone”). Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane. Diviso in cinque libri, dove si scuoprono varii abusi loro e si dichiara il vero modo che cristianamente si doverìa osservare nel porle nelle chiese, case et in ogni altro luogo. Raccolto e posto insieme ad utile delle anime per commissione di Monsignore Illustriss. e Reverendiss. Card. Paleotti Vescovo di Bologna. Al popolo della città e diocesi sua (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1581), Chpt. 25, C 76v; my translation.

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Another significant example of martyrologic language appears in a sonnet presumably referring to a second lover (Rime 219), whom Amor, ever ready to ensure the speaker’s grief, has “offered her eyes” (vv. 4–6). In this poem, she burns with a desire that is possibly even stronger than that which she had felt before— “Un fuoco … / Che d’altro non sia maggior pavento (vv. 9–11: “A fire … / I fear it will be greater than the other”). Nevertheless, she feels that the respectively stronger love-pains are not even remotely a nuisance for her: “E par che manco il travagliar m’affani” (vv. 7–8: “and I seem / to be less troubled by my trials”). The metaphorical displacement—lover-sun-Orient—informing the poem is a typical Petrarchan distancing strategy from the object of desire and implies that this second lover may possibly be just as human-divine as the first one. Moreover, the delightful love pains the speaker describes closely echo those felt for the first beloved described in Rime 32. Perhaps even more importantly, they are the same delightful love pains that the speaker refers to in the abovementioned first capitolo (Rime 286)—those which “anoint and prick.” Thus, instead of sublimating human love pains into a Neoplatonic transcendental or neo-Stoic ascetic process, and gradually purging herself of them like a typical spiritual Petrarchist, Stampa capitalizes on them and achieves a mimesis of love as an earthly, human experience of Christian meaningfulness: martyrdom. Instead of presenting the Petrarchan ethos as a soul burning with caritas, she presents it as a heart burning with human love. This is the Christian heart already suggested through the Christological language in Rime 2 (vv. 1–2: “It was near the day that the Creator / came in human form to reveal himself”), but it is not just any Christian heart; it is the heart of the Christian martyr. Stampa’s Petrarchism, then, is perfectly in line with Bembo’s heroic ethos, and at the same time steeped in originality. Also highly suggestive of an original elaboration of the Petarchan tradition is Rime 17, which reveals an interesting, and so far unnoticed,52 reversal with respect to the dolce stil novo tradition; a reversal whereby the emphasis is placed on the angel-like lover (or rather Christlike lover), as opposed to the stilnovistic angel-like beloved (Dante’s Beatrice): Io non v’invidio punto, Angeli santi, Le vostre tante glorie, e tanti beni, E que’ disir di ciò che barman, pieni; Stando voi sempre à l’alto Sire avanti. Perché i diletti miei son tali, e tanti, Che non posson capire in cor terreni; Mentr’ho davanti i lumi almi, e sereni, Di cui convien, che sempre scriva, e canti.

 Marina Zancan stresses that although Stampa’s treatement of the beloved follows the stilnovistic and courtly traditional treatment of the beloved, her relegation of the beloved to a secondary role allows for the figure of the virtuous poet-lover to take center stage (“Rime di Gaspara Stampa,” Letteratura Italiana, Le Opere II, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa [Turin: Einaudi], pp. 407–52). 52

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E come in ciel gran refrigerio, e vita, Dal volto suo solete voi fruire, Tal’ io qua giù da la beltà infinita. In questo sol vincete il mio gioire, Che la vostra è eterna e stabilita, E la mia gloria può tosto finire. (Holy angels, I don’t envy you one bit / your many glories and your many gifts, / and those desires that are granted in full / as you stand, forever, before the great Lord: / because my delights are such that by human / hearts they can barely be conceived, / as long as those calm lights are before me / of which it suits me always to write, and sing. / And just as you take solace and life itself / from his gaze in heaven, so do I, / down here below, from that infinite beauty. / Only in this does your joy outpace mine: / your glory is eternal, unchanging, while mine—too soon will it die.)

Through an unexpected inversion that places a seemingly arrogant speaker in a position of supremacy over the “Angeli santi,” this sonnet rehearses the rather unique idea of a human lover (the speaker) who may, indeed, become temporarily angel-like through human love. This is a far cry from Dante’s celebration of a higher love for a donna angelicata (beloved-angel), representative of the stilnovistic sublime. In fact, Stampa here turns that very concept on its head, in a move that would seem iconoclastic, were it not for the recurrent theme of martyrdom Stampa instead describes, suggesting something equally sublime, if also rather different: the celebration of a human lover, who elevates herself to the status of a martyr by means of the love pains she endures. Sonnet 15 further corroborates the sublimity of Stampa’s poetry as well as its characteristic “human-passionate sublime” approach to the Petrarchan ethos. Here the speaker, in addition to deploying the key word “sublime,” also introduces an important distinction between a sublime or sacred subject “soggetto sublime,” which is what poets usually pursue, and “how much she loves and cherishes her beloved” (v. 13: “quanto l’amo … quanto lo colo”). This distinction hints at another kind of sublime; namely, the love pains the speaker endures for her beloved. Once again, love pains take center stage in the lyrical experience and are recognizable as Christian, though not in the typical, spiritualized way. This sonnet provides an important gloss to the proemial sonnet, allowing us to understand what Stampa considers sublime about her poetry: the very human martyr-like love pains for Collaltino/Christ that recur throughout her canzoniere. It is, in fact, this kind of love—made sublime by its very painful exercise, as opposed to just its lofty subject—that, as the speaker suggests in the final tercet, makes this one canzoniere unique (v. 12: “Io per me sola”) and competitive within the Petrarchist tradition (Rime 15): Voi, che cercando ornar d’alloro il crine Per via di stile, al bel monte poggiate

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Con quante si fe’mai salde pedate, Anime sagge, dotte, e pellegrine; In questo mar, che non ha fondo, ò fine, Le larghe vele innanzi à me spiegate; E gli honori e le gratie ad un cantate Del mio signor sì rare e sì divine: Perché soggetto sì sublime e solo, Senz’altra aita di felice ingegno, Può per se stesso al Cielo alzarci à volo. Io per me sola à dimostrar ne vegno, Quanto l’amo ad ogn’un, quanto lo còlo; Ma de le lode sue non giungo al segno. (You wise and learned and eloquent souls / who seek to deck your brows with laurel / and ascend by way of words the lovely hill with steps that never have been firmer, / in this endless sea that can’t be sounded, / unfurl before me your broad sails and sing / together of the honors and graces / of my lord, who’s so rare and divine, for a subject this singular and sublime / can easily fly to heaven on his own / without the help of some happy wit. / I for myself come to show this alone, how much I love and worship him each hour. / As for praising him, the mark I’ll never hit.)

Later, in Rime 262, we encounter an even more powerful and, perhaps, dramaturgic reiteration of Stampa’s humble poetic quest for a “human-passionate sublime.” This notion of sublime sharply departs from the stilnovist sublime and yet also occasionally gestures towards it in a sort of internal agon. Here, a stilnovista Anassilla is pitted against the speaker (v. 2: “l’altra Stampa”) in a competition of metaliterary and, as has been recently pointed out, metafictional implications (Rime 262):53 Mentre al cielo il Pastor d’alma beltade Coridon’ alza l’una, e l’altra Stampa. E mentre l’una, e l’altra arde et avampa Di far lui chiaro à questa nostra etate, In note di vivace Amor formate D’Amor, che solo in gentil cor s’accampa, Dice Anassillla al Sol volta, che scampa Le forze havendo à più poter legate. Deh, perché stil, vaghezza, & armonia, D’alzar lui non ho io rime e concento À segno, ove Pastor mai non è stato?

 See Ulrike Schneider’s chapter in this volume.

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Perché à voglia sì santa, e così pia Non risponde il poter, che in un momento Faria lo stato mio chiaro e beato? (While Coridon, a shepherd of divine beauty, / raises one and the other Stampa to heaven, / and while one and the other burn with desire / to make him illustrious to this our age, / Anassilla, in notes nourished by lively love, / a love that takes root only in gentle hearts and that escapes (“scampa”), / turns to the Sun and speaks in words, / whose strength is constrained: / “Why don’t I have the style, the art, / the harmony, the balance and the rhyme / to raise him to where no shepherd has been before? / Why can’t the powers above fulfill this pure and holy wish, and in an instant / make my own state blessed and acclaimed?)54

“Anassilla” openly admits to not being able to find the adequate, pious poetic expressions to praise her lover because a rival (v. 2: “l’altra Stampa”) is weighing her down.55 Stampa gives a powerful and pitiful persona and voice to a poetic stilnovistic agenda that she features throughout her Rime; yet that, as is quite obvious from this sonnet (and from this discussion), must concede defeat. Once again, by graciously giving the overpowered rival a moving “honors of the arms,” Stampa subtly vindicates the other poetic voice (“l’altra Stampa”) she features and supports in the Rime: namely, the one that is centered on the systematic Christian upgrade of the heightened pathetic quality of her poetry, through the aforementioned three-dimensional strategic use of love pains that leads to a conflation of the speaker with the martyr-figure. Thus, Stampa’s imitation of the canzoniere suggests a clear option for a Petrarchan ethos that is sublime and human, and not mystical or ascetic as would be expected by a typical spiritual Petrarchist. It is a deft and daring option that allows for a powerful imitation and innovation of Bembo’s initiation into love. The key to such an innovation lies in the fact that love pains in Stampa’s poetry are not only crucial, but also Christological from a human perspective (martyrological) and thus remain competitive (unlike Bembo’s love pains) in a cultural environment that is highly sensitive with respect to Catholic orthodoxy. One may, then, go back to Stampa’s poetry and appreciate the love pains that saturate it for what they really are: Petrarchist love pains (i.e. directly linked to the new epic aspiration ushered in by Bembo’s Rime), more specifically love pains through which the poetry is made sublime, and the poet-martyr divine. It is within this framework that my term “human-passionate sublime” needs to be clarified, with respect to other chapters in this volume also addressing the issue of the sublime in Stampa’s poetry, but not in the context of Petrarchism, as well as with respect to the use of the term “sublime” indicating a sacred upgrade within  Translation amended in italics.  In this respect, Aileen A. Feng’s analysis of female invidia in this volume could

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possibly acquire further meaning.

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Petrarchist poetics that leads to the later developments of spiritual Petrarchism known as rime sacre. Also relevant is the fact that the term “sublime” is often used in order to describe Torquato Tasso’s ongoing reflection on the epic genre: specifically, in reference to the sharp religious turn illustrated in Il Cattaneo overo de gli idoli (1585)—from the deeds of great heroes to the deeds of sublime or sacred heroes and even God—that motivates the progression form the Conquistata to the Liberata, and all the way to the theological epic, the Mondo Creato.56 A clarification of the term “sublime” is therefore particularly important. In fact, while the term is usually tied to the presence of an heroic virtue within a strictly sacred context, my use of the term here refers instead to the presence of an heroic virtue that, although not immediately recognizable as distinctly sacred, still resonates with a markedly Christological, and therefore sublime, meaningfulness. A more discerning use of the term “sublime” is therefore necessary in light of what has led to the recent use of the expression “sublime ascetic conception of sacred poetry” in order to characterize Tasso’s sacred poetry.57 Following along the same lines of a more discerning use of the term “sublime” is also the term “human-passionate sublime,” which has been used here to qualify Stampa’s Rime. This additional terminology allows us to convey an adequately nuanced idea of the approaches to the early modern “sublime” and in turn may better reflect the heterogeneous historical reality of Italian lyric poetry, specifically the ongoing competition—with increasingly higher aims with regard to Catholic orthodoxy— in configuring the Christian space within Petrarchism.

 See Ferretti, “Fuggendo Saturno,” pp. 157–60.  My translation for “una concezione sublime ed ascetica di poesia sacra.” Cf.

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Ferretti, “Fuggendo Saturno,” p. 158.

Part II Real, Virtual, and Imagined Communities

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Chapter 4

Desiring Subjects: Mimetic Desire and Female Invidia in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime* Aileen A. Feng, University of Arizona

French chaplain Andreas Capellanus’s twelfth-century treatise De Amore (ca. 1186–1196) provided generations of European writers a cornucopia of misogynist tropes while codifying the conventions of courtly love.1 Capellanus’s treatise, written in Latin and widely influential, defines female invidia within one of the earliest essentializing definitions of gendered identity in the European Middle Ages. Commissioned by Marie de Champagne, and set in the French court of her mother Aliénor (Eleanor) d’Aquitaine, the work is a dialogue between Capellanus and his young pupil Walter, whom he instructs in matters of love. Throughout the first two books, Capellanus often authorizes his advice to Walter by claiming his lessons to be based on the adjudications of Marie and Eleanor, whose debates he recounts in thorough detail.2 In the third book (De reprobatione amoris), however, Capellanus reverses all of his instruction to the young Walter by advising him to avoid women, and love, at all costs. The earlier, liberal portrayal of courtly women as benchmarks for behavior and social mores gives way to a vitriolic diatribe

*  I would like to thank Unn Falkeid, Paul Hurh, Ann Rosalind Jones, and Jane Tylus for generously commenting on the earliest version of this chapter. Special thanks to William J. Kennedy for inviting me to speak at Cornell University’s Renaissance Colloquium in September 2013 where I was able to workshop my near-final draft. Of those present that evening, I would especially like to thank Stuart A. Davis, Kathleen Long, Marilyn Migiel, John M. Najemy, and, of course, William J. Kennedy for their critical feedback and lively engagement with my project. 1  For an analysis of Capellanus’s participation in the discourse of medieval misogyny see R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991). For a feminist critique of the courtly love tradition, as well as an overview of current critical approaches, see E. Jane Burns, “Courtly Love; Who Needs It? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition,” Signs 27.1 (Autumn 2001): 23–57. 2  For the figure of the female magistra in Capellanus’s De Amore see John F. Benton, “The Court of Champagne as a Literary Center,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 36.4 (1961): 551–9; and Helen Solterer, The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (Berkeley: U of California P, 1995).

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against the female sex.3 Underlying the myriad negative portrayals of women in the final book of the treatise is Capellanus’s maxim that every woman is “invida et aliarum maledica” (envious and a slanderer of other women; 201), a universal characteristic he explains matter-of-factly: That every woman is envious [invida] is also found to be a general rule, because a woman is always consumed with jealousy [zelo] over another woman’s beauty, and she loses all pleasure in what she has … It is not easy to find a woman whose tongue can ever spare anybody or who can keep from words of detraction. Every woman thinks that by running down others she adds to her own praise and increases her own reputation—a fact which shows clearly to everybody that women have very little sense.4

On its most basic level, invidia (envy) designates the feeling of ill-will that arises from the contemplation of superior advantages possessed by another. When applied specifically to women, as in this passage, it has often been used by male authors to explain the “natural” inclination towards a form of female rivalry that prevents women from being either trustworthy or rational. The trope of female invidia is one of the most recurrent and recognizable themes in early modern 3  Capellanus’s sudden reversal of opinion in the third book has long puzzled scholars, most of whom tend to fall into two camps: those who focus on (1) the problem of irony (see D.W. Robertson, Jr., “The Doctrine of Charity in Mediaeval Literary Gardens: A Topical Approach through Symbolism and Allegory,” Speculum 26 [1951]: 24–49; R.J. Schoeck, “Andreas Capellanus and St. Bernard of Clairvaux: The Twelve Rules of Love and the Twelve Steps of Humility,” Modern Language Notes 66 [1951]: 295–300; Christopher Kertesz, “The De arte (honeste) amandi of Andreas Capellanus,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 13 [1971–1972]: 5–16; and more recently, Paolo Cherchi, Andreas and the Ambiguity of Courtly Love [Toronto: Toronto UP, 1994]), and (2) whether or not the treatise ultimately promotes courtly or spiritual love (see Joan M. Ferrante, “The Bible as Thesaurus for Secular Literature,” The Bible in the Middle Ages, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 89, ed. Bernard S. Levy [Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1992]; Rhonda L. McDaniel, “‘None too Sincere’: Andreas Capellanus, the Bible, and De Amore,” Medieval Perspectives 18 [2003]: 175–92). Don Monson, however, has argued that vernacular literary scholars have historically misread the Latin treatise, which should be read in light of scholasticism, with attention paid more to the organizing principles and form of the text, rather than to authorial intent (Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, and the Courtly Tradition [Washington, DC: Catholic U of America P, 2005]). 4  “[73] Invida quoque mulier omnis generali regula invenitur, quia semper mulier in alterius feminae pulchritudine zelo consumitur et rerum felicitate privatur … [75] … Nec enim facile posset femina reperiri, cuius unquam noverit parcere lingua vel detractionis verba tacere . [76] Et in hoc mulier omnis suas per omnes credit attollere laudes et propriam accrescere famam, si aliarum insistat laudibus derogare, quae res manifeste cunctis demonstrat modicum in mulieribus dogma vigere [76].” Latin text taken from: http://www. thelatinlibrary.com/capellanus.html; English translations are taken from The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Parry (New York: Columbia UP, 1960), p. 202.

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literary depictions of women, a characteristic attributed to the female sex as a way of explaining women’s natural inferiority. Within Capellanus’s “general rule” we encounter a secondary characteristic of women that is often associated with female invidia—zelus (jealousy), an emotion fueled by the fear of losing an object to a rival. Although in the passage female jealousy appears to be directed at another woman’s beauty, the root of zelus would suggest that the object of the rivalry is a love interest.5 That is, zelus is etymologically related to zelo, -are (to love ardently), connoting a direct relation between the emotion of jealousy and love. This is further supported by Capellanus’s claim that this feeling of envy and jealousy forces women to lose pleasure in the objects they already possess. Thus, at the foundation of the trope of female invidia, and by extension, female interactions, is a rivalry for male love objects. The simultaneous fear of losing him, while coveting the one possessed by another woman, is the impetus behind women deriding one another. The trope of female invidia threads through widely disparate medieval and Renaissance discourses; one can find instances in treatises on the dignity of women, sermons, novelle, plays, and poetry. Moreover, the trope of invidia was not even restricted to writing by men. Surprisingly, we encounter a version of the trope in the Latin letters written by the first generation of women writers in Quattrocento Italy. In 1487 female neo-Latin humanist Laura Cereta penned a letter to Lucilia Vernacula in which she inveighed against the uneducated women who disparaged educated women.6 In the form of a humanist invective, she decries “these mindless women—these female counselors who emerge victorious from the cookshop jar after a prodigious vote among the neighbors—hunt down with their bilious poison those women who rise to greater distinction than they.”7 As we see here, invidia is presented as a negative trait specific to uneducated women, rather than something universal to the female sex. Cereta echoes Capellanus’s conclusion that “women have very little sense,” when she calls uneducated women “mindless” (mentis impotes), and then underscores their lack of sense by attributing professional labels to their frivolous daily activities: female gossips are  For an analysis of the different manifestations of jealousy in Stampa’s Rime see Ann Rosalind Jones’s chapter in this volume. 6  To date, the most comprehensive biography of Laura Cereta is Diana Robin’s Introduction to Laura Cereta. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997). For an examination of Cereta’s critique of marriage from the fraught position of spouse and humanist see Amyrose McCue Gill, “Fraught Relations in the Letters of Laura Cereta: Marriage, Friendship, and Humanist Epistolarity,” Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009): 1098–129. 7  “hæ mentis impotes, & inter vicinas ex vrnulâ popinali consultrices numerosissimis suffragiís extractæ, mox illas, si quæ surgunt insigniùs, indagantur aconito liuoris occidere” (Epistolae. iam primum e m[anu]s[criptis] in lucem productae a Iacobo Philippo Tomasino, qui eius vitam et notas addidit, ed. Giacomo Filippo Tomasini [Padua: Sardi, 1640], p. 54). A digital reproduction of 1640 edition is available at http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/ desbillons/cereta.html; English translation by Diana Robin, Collected Letters, pp. 122–5. 5

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referred to as “counselors” (consultrices) whose victories occur not in court but in the domestic space of the kitchen, and whose judgments about other women as referred to as “votes” (sufragiís). Cereta’s description of female invidia in uneducated women centers around their perception of her intellectual superiority, a kind of rivalry that only a century before would have been confined to the male sphere, before the advent of female education and writing.8 In separating herself from the “mindless women,” whose envious gossip is compared to poison,9 Cereta recalls traits of Ovid’s Invidia, particularly when she writes that “they would gnaw away at themselves [roduntur], if they didn’t feast [rodant] in their slanderous talk of others.”10 Cereta’s repetition of rodo (to gnaw), used both actively (rodant; against other women) and passively (roduntur; against themselves), echoes the encounter between Minerva and Invidia in Metamorphosis 2.781–2 where we see the same treatment of carpo (to gnaw) in Ovid’s description of Invidia: “Gnawing at others [carpit], and being gnawed [carpitur], she was herself her own torment [supplicium].”11 Cereta’s appropriation of the Ovidian encounter between Minerva, goddess of wisdom, and Invidia, personification of envy, restages the classical rivalry between wisdom and envy in a contemporary context that witnessed the emergence of two distinct classes of women. By attributing female invidia and a natural inclination to slander other women only to uneducated women, she both reinforces the trope Capellanus instantiated and separates educated women from the rest of their sex. Whereas Capellanus finds female invidia to be inherent in all women, Cereta argues that female education and intellectual drive may allow women to overcome their natural inclination towards invidia, to metamorphose from Ovid’s Invidia into Minerva. The case of Laura Cereta illustrates how, for the early generations of women writers, confronting medieval depictions of women was a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, by recalling misogynist tropes, early female writers like Cereta could at once praise educated women for their ability to transcend the behavior of ordinary women and chastise uneducated women both for idleness and their envious slander of more accomplished women. However, such an appropriation of the invidia trope also implicitly reinforces this negative and essentializing portrayal of women in their “natural state.” In discussing the state of contemporary women, Cereta confronted a long tradition of literary depictions of women and raised  For scholarship on female education see the Editors’ Introduction to this volume.  The image of female tongue emitting poison recalls Giotto’s fresco L’Invidia (c.

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1306)—part of the cycle depicting the seven virtues and vices in the Paduan Capella degli Scrovigni. In that image, Invidia is presented as an old woman whose tongue is transformed into a snake and turns against her, attacking her eyes. My sincerest thanks go to Unn Falkeid for leading me to this fresco. 10  “ni loquaciùs rodant alios, ipsae intro mutæ roduntur” (Collected Letters, p. 82); My sincerest thanks to Kathleen Long for directing me back to Ovid as a possible subtext for Cereta’s portrayal of Invidia. 11  “carpitque et carpitur una / suppliciumque suum est”; Latin citations and English translation are taken from Ovid, Metamorphoses, vol. III, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004), p. 115.

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two important problems for women writers: first, if she accuses other women of invidia, she might be seen as tacitly endorsing Capellanus’s position; second, if she accuses other women of invidia, tearing them down, could that act not itself be seen as an instance of invidia, a tactic of raising herself up in estimation by putting down the women around her? It is neither Capellanus nor Cereta, but rather Gaspara Stampa whose poetry helps us account for and better understand women’s use of the trope of invidia. Beginning with the intrusion of a second, female voice—that of “qualch’una”— in the tercets of the opening sonnet, Stampa’s poetry presents both her desire for the male beloved and her poetic inspiration as mediated by the invidia of a second woman who hopes to emulate her. Stampa, thus, incorporates the theme of female invidia through the use of a speaking female rival in her collection of poetry in such a way that generates a structure of triangular, mimetic desire that may be mapped to terms usually associated with René Girard’s reading of the novel genre.12 The desire of the anonymous woman is provoked by, and borrowed from, Stampa—she wants to walk “à paro” (side by side) with the poet. Within the subject-mediator-object structure, Stampa is as drawn to the female rival as she is to the object of her desire. She wants to evoke invidia in other women, to have other women desire to be her, to possess both her beloved and her poetic talents. This explicit inclusion of a female rival places Stampa’s poetry within a larger tradition of literary depictions of women: by presenting invidia as a positive and integral component to poeticizing, Gaspara Stampa challenges the classical trope as a destructive attribute that prohibits women from being trustworthy or intelligent. Examining a series of triangular paradigms within the collection elucidates not only a shifting perspective on the nature of desire, but also the role of female-homosocial bonding13 in the emerging early modern female lyric  René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1961). In adapting Girard’s theoretical framework to Stampa’s poetry, I am also challenging his assertion of symmetry within the triangular structure, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick does in her reading of the Victorian novel (Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire [New York: Columbia UP, 1985]. See especially chapter 1, “Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles,” pp. 21–7). That is, the distribution of power between the two rivals and the beloved within the triangle is not symmetrical (equal), and in the case of Gaspara Stampa’s Rime, gender especially disrupts the Platonic symmetry that defines Girard’s schemata. 13  My use of the term female-homosocial bonding is adapted from Eve Sedgwick’s theory concerning male homosociality (Between Men; see especially Introduction, part I, “Homosocial Desire,” pp. 1–5). In the same way that men may have intense, nonsexual bonds with other men, using women as a means through which they express this bond, Stampa’s triangular structure of desire in her poetry provides a male beloved as the conduit between Stampa and the female rival(s) in the formation of female homosociality. In this chapter, I use female homosociality to refer to same-sex relations between women of a nonsexual nature (friendship, mentorship, etc.), without engaging with the issue concerning the continuum between homosexual and homosocial that informs Sedgwick’s analysis. 12

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tradition. Stampa’s model of desire and poetic production emerges from her negotiation of two distinct frames of reference: her mimetic paradigm responds to classical assumptions made about women and encoded within the dominant literary discourses of early modern Europe. Rather than deny the existence of female invidia, she embraces and recodes it as a positive and productive attribute of female homosociality. *** The opening verse of Stampa’s first sonnet is a clear echo of Petrarch’s famous incipit, and reveals a studied and thoughtful engagement with his first sonnet. “Voi ch’ascoltate in queste meste rime” (“You who hear in these troubled rhymes”), she writes, replacing Petrarch’s rime sparse (RVF 1, 1: “scattered rhymes”) with a phrase that symbolizes his emotional state: troubled.14 Her imitation of the Petrarchan style is exemplary of the theory of imitation Petrarch expounded in his Latin collection of letters, the Familiares:15 it resembles the original, though is not a replica, like the relationship of a son to his father. Stampa’s diversion from her Petrarchan model begins as early as the opening verse and continues through the quatrains. She challenges her predecessor’s paradigm of desire by not professing herself a different woman than before, nor describing her love as a Petrarchan “youthful error” through religious notions of shame and repentance.16 Where Petrarch hopes to find “pietà” (pity) and “perdono” (forgiveness) from his readers and, ultimately, God, Stampa, in perhaps one of her most Petrarchan of moments, seeks “gloria, non che perdon” (v. 6: “glory and not only pardon”). “Gloria,” that slippery term which characterizes Petrarch’s crisis atop Mont Ventoux:17 glory in the Christian afterlife, but also earthly fame. In his reading of RVF 1, V. Stanley Benfell has argued that although the poet yearns for a “new  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). 15  See especially Familiares I, 8; XXII, 2; and XXIII, 19 (Francisci Petrarcae Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variaea, ed. Giuseppe Fracassetti [Firenze: Le Monnier, 1859–1863]; Rerum familiarium libri, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo [Albany: State U of New York P, 1975]). In addition to the father-son analogy, Petrarch also adapts Seneca’s apian metaphor in his imitations theory: a good poet (bee) culls material from other poets (flowers) and produces something unique (honey). 16  Patricia Phillippy argues that poems 286–91 replace Petrarch’s penitential model “with a gesture toward feminine community which is directly indebted to the model of Ovid’s heroines” (“Gaspara Stampa’s Rime: Replication and Retraction,” Philological Quarterly 68:1 [Winter 1989]: 1–23; p. 7). See also Veronica Andreani’s chapter in this volume. 17  Familiares IV, 1. 14

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fashioning of the self” through Augustinian conversion, he is unable to attain it and, thus, the collection of scattered rhymes represent a series of partial turnings or conversions, all of which is dramatized in the Secretum.18 With the exception of the term “perdono,” religious rhetoric is wholly lacking in Stampa’s first poem, thus the reader privileges the connotation of earthly fame, much sought after by Petrarch, but always masked by the laurel. As Gordon Braden has noted, Stampa’s removal of the quintessential markers of Petrarchan moral unease in this poem served as a critique of Petrarch’s “diffidence about his own ambition.”19 Yet even in light of the radical changes she makes to the Petrarchan conceits emblematized in his first sonnet, as readers we are unprepared for what we encounter in the tercets: the unexpected, almost jarring, intrusion of a second woman’s voice—that of “qualch’una” (some woman), a female rival for the affection of her beloved. Stampa writes (Rime 1, 9–14): E spero ancor, che debba dir qualch’una, felicissima lei, da che sostenne per sì chiara cagion danno sì chiaro. Deh, perche tant’Amor, tanta Fortuna per sì nobil Signor’ à me non venne, ch’anch’io n’andrei con tanta Donna à paro? (And I hope some woman will be moved to say: / “Most happy she, who suffered famously / for such a famous cause! // Oh, why can’t the fortune that comes / from loving a lord like him be mine, / so such a lady and I might walk side by side?”)

In addition to “gloria” and “perdono,” Stampa hopes her rhymes will elicit envy from an anonymous woman (“qualch’una”). The anonymous woman verbalizes her desire to be like Stampa, to reap the benefits of loving such a man, to have the same “fortuna” (fortune). The poet invites the gaze of another woman, and  V. Stanley Benfell, “Translating Petrarchan Desire in Vittoria Colonna and Gaspara Stampa,” Translating Desire in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Craig A. Berry and Heather R. Hayton (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 109–31; see especially pp. 112–15. For a comparative analysis of Gregory the Great’s consolatory dialogues on Petrarch’s Secretum see David Marsh, “The Burning Question: Crisis and Cosmology in the Secret (Secretum),” Petrarch. A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Armando Maggi and Victoria Kirkham (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009), pp. 211–17. For an analysis of Petrarch’s preoccupation with the themes of love and penitence in both the Psalmi penitentiales and Secretum, see E. Ann Matter, “Petrarch’s Personal Psalms (Psalmi penitentiales),” Petrarch. A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Armando Maggi and Victoria Kirkham (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009), pp. 219–27. 19  Gordon Braden, “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender of Petrarchism,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.2, “Revising Renaissance Eroticism” (Summer 1996): 115– 39; p. 122. 18

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welcomes her subsequent invidia, placing her in the position of a rival. That the poet desires this and explicitly proclaims it as a goal of her poetry, presents female invidia in a positive light, and an integral component to Stampa’s poetic process. She embraces being the subject of another woman’s conversation, and seeks it out with her poems. This is in stark contrast to Petrarch’s famous lament in RVF 1 for having become a “favola” (gossip) in the mouths of the people: “Ma ben veggio or sì come al popol tutto / favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente / di me medesmo meco mi vergogno” (vv. 9–11: “But now I see well how for a long time I was the talk of the crowd, for which often I am ashamed of myself within”).20 Petrarch’s shame, and the turn inward symbolized in the verse “me medesmo meco mi vergogno” (“I am ashamed of myself within”), is dismissed in Stampa’s tercets where she writes her own “favola” and has it spoken by the female rival. Thus, the envy of the female rival fuels the poetic process, and, by extension, increases Stampa’s desire for her beloved in the public recognition of his uniqueness. The rivalry between the two women is not as simple as competing for the same love object, however. The image presented in the final tercet is striking: the anonymous woman desires to walk alongside Stampa (v. 14: “Ch’anch’io n’andrei con tanta Donna à paro”). On the one hand, walking side-by-side with the poet reinforces the anonymous woman’s desire to have the same status as Stampalover; to love like she loves. On the other, the metapoetic tenor of the verse cannot be discounted. In the introduction to her translation, as well as her chapter in this volume, Jane Tylus has noted that Stampa’s use of “andare … à paro” is an allusion to Petrarch’s depiction of Sappho in the Triumphus Cupidinis 4.25–6: “una giovene greca a paro a paro / coi nobili poeti ivi cantando / et avea un suo stile soave e raro” (“a young Greek girl went singing alongside the noblest of poets, and her style was mellifluous and rare”).21 In Tylus’s reading, Stampa’s citation of these verses, ventriloquized by the anonymous woman, is a displacement of her desire to equal the ancients. I would instead argue that Stampa’s citation is self-referential, and that the use of this expression opens up a space for contemporary poetry and poetic rivalry in a way that Petrarch refuted, but that Dante had embraced a generation earlier. For Petrarch, there was no contemporary rival competing for the attention  English translations of Petrarch’s poems are from Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979), p. 36. 21  Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, p. 21 (see also p. 366 n. 36). Petrarch, Triumphus Cupidinis, Trionfi, ed. Marco Ariani (Milan: Mursia, 1988), pp. 173–147. Petrarch’s Triumphi has not received the same amount of critical attention as his other works, but worth noting are Maria Cecilia Bertolani, Il corpo glorioso: Studi sui Trionfi del Petrarca (Rome: Carocci, 2001); Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare Iannucci, eds., Petrarch’s Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle (Toronto: Dovehouse, 1990); Claudio Giunta, “Memoria di Dante nei Trionfi,” Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 11 (1993): 411– 52; Fabio Finotti, “The Poem of Memory (Triumphi),” Petrarch. A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Armando Maggi and Victoria Kirkham (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009), pp. 63–83. 20

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of Laura,22 and poetic rivalry was between the modern poet (himself) and the ancients. In the Triumphi, Sappho might walk alongside the noble poets of the past, but in his poetry Petrarch figures himself as following in their footsteps while trying to forge his own path: Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi vo misurando a passi tardi et lenti, et gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti ove vestigio human l’arena stampa. (RVF 35, 1–4) (Alone and filled with care, I go measuring the most deserted fields with steps delaying and slow, and I keep my eyes alert so as to flee from where any human footprint marks the sand.)

The metapoetic tension of this poem mirrors the father-son analogy in Fam. XXIII, 19, the cornerstone of Petrarch’s imitation theory, wherein a good imitator’s work resembles that of the original, like a son to his father.23 Petrarch continually figures himself as the inheritor of a tradition. This is most evident in RVF 70 where he creates a modern lineage of vernacular poets by including in each stanza of the canzone a verse from Arnault Daniel, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante, Cino da Pistoia, and, finally, himself. The explicit citation of his predecessors simultaneously acknowledges their accomplishments in vernacular poetry while also setting Petrarch apart from them. Stampa, however, places herself into the position normally reserved for the ancients, and idealizes a possible rival, making her poetry more concerned with opening and beginning a poetic tradition, rather than—as Petrarch’s habit of drawing himself at the end of a long lineage of classical poets shows—closing it  The only version of amatory rivalry in Petrarch’s œuvre is the tension between sacred and profane love within the poet. He figures himself as torn between his love for God and his love for Laura, but never figures Laura as being embroiled in the same crisis (whereby his rival for Laura’s love would be God). For the conflict between sacred and profane love see especially Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Petrarch’s Genius. Pentimento and Prophecy (Berkeley: U of California P, 1991); Pierre Blanc, “Petrarca ou la poétique de l’ego : Éléments de psychopoétique pétrarquienne,” Revue des Études Italiennes 29 (1983): 124–69; John Freccero, “The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Petrarch’s Poetics,” Diacritics 5 (1975): 34–40; Nicolae Iliescu, Il “Canzoniere” petrarchesco e Sant’Agostino (Rome: Società Accademica Romana, 1962); Kenelm Foster, “Beatrice or Medusa: The Penitential Element in Petrarch’s Canzoniere,” Italian Studies presented to E.R. Vincent, ed. C.P. Brand, K. Foster, and U. Limentani (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, Ltd, 1962), pp. 41–56. 23  My reading of this letter is in line with Ignacio Enrique Navarette who emphasizes that “while the possibility of deviating from the prototype offers some comfort, the analogy between model and father, and imitation and son, suggests that the model poet engenders the imitator, and this relationship of direct dependency is closer to medieval notions of midgets on the shoulders of giants than to the humanist hermeneutic” (Orphans of Petrarch: Poetry and Theory in the Spanish Renaissance [Los Angeles: U of California P, 1994], p.10). 22

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out. By ventriloquizing the female rival’s desire to “andare à paro” (“walk side by side”) with her, Stampa provides herself, not the ancients, as the (new) exemplary model, a move much more reminiscent of Dante’s use of the expression in the Commedia than Petrarch’s. In Purgatorio XXIV, scholars have long noted the metapoetic significance of Dante-pilgrim’s encounter with Forese Donati, who identifies Dante in reference to his poetry when he asks, “Ma dì s’i’ veggio qui colui che fore / trasse le nove rime, cominciando: ‘Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore’” (vv. 49–51: “But tell me if I see here the one who drew / forth the new rhymes, beginning, ‘Ladies who / have intellect of love’?”).24 Forese will later call these new rhymes the dolce stil novo (v. 57: “sweet new style”), and will present himself, and his fellow Duecento poets “’l Notaro e Guittone” (v. 56: “Giacomo da Lentini and Guittone d’Arezzo”) as closing out the tradition directly preceding Dante’s new Italian poetic movement. Forese’s authorization of the “sweet new style” is given a competitive tenor when he tells Dante-pilgrim, “Tu ti rimani omai, ché ‘l tempo è caro / in questo regno, sì ch’io perdo troppo / venendo teco sì a paro a paro” (vv. 93–5: “You stay behind now, for time is precious in / this realm, and I lose too much coming along / side by side with you”). Thus, in Purgatorio XXIV we see two poets—each representing a different phase of Italian poetry— walking side by side conversing about poetry until the earlier-generation Duecento poet Forese can no longer linger. In this presentation of poetic rivalry, Forese leaves Dante, allowing him to forge his own path. I would argue that this Dantean moment has much to offer Stampa’s first poem, where the image of two women walking side by side symbolizes poetic rivalry. The role of the second woman (rival) as a mediator for the desire for both the beloved and poetic fame thus collapses the two negative traits generally associated with female invidia: the rival’s desire for Stampa’s beloved increases her own longings for him, while the rival’s envy of her poetic accomplishments augments her desire to succeed intellectually. Female invidia becomes the foundation of a new community of female poets, a form of rivalry that ameliorates, rather than destroys, the women involved. Stampa seeks out this new community in Sonnet 16 where, after boasting of the new hourly joys she discovers with her lover, she describes two hoped-for results from her newfound pleasure: the words to describe her experience to other poets, and the envy of women. First, she turns her attention to a community of intellectuals: Così vorrei haver concetti e detti, E parole à tant’opra appropriate; sì che fosser da me scritte e cantate, E fatte conte à mille alti intelletti. (5–8)

24  References to Dante’s Purgatorio, and the English translations, are taken from Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003), p. 403.

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(I’d like to find the saying and conceits / the words to fit the work so I might / write them down and sing them, and have / a thousand learned intellects take note.)

Stampa’s preoccupation with finding the right “sayings and conceits” to describe her delights pays homage to the practice of poetic exchange, and presents her as part of a larger poetic community. In this sense, her poetic process appears more akin to what we encounter in Dante’s Vita nova —each time he documents his feelings for Beatrice in a poem, he sends the poem to his community of friends for their commentary.25 Stampa privileges communication with other intellectuals, hoping they will “take note” of her poetry; an echo of her desire to attain “gloria” in the first sonnet. She simultaneously hopes that other women will be consumed with envy when they hear of her pleasure: Et udissero l’altre, che verranno, Con quanta invidia lor sia gita altera De l’amoroso mio felice danno. (9–11) (along with all those women who someday / will be filled with such envy when they hear how proud / I went around, rejoicing in my amorous pain.) (translation amended)26

If we consider the Petrarchan oxymoron “amoroso … danno” (amorous pain) juxtaposed with Stampa’s admission of happiness (she is “felice”), we see the delights described in the first quatrain are not regretted in the end, nor are they a source of shame. Her earthly delight is not a fleeting moment, the “breve sogno” (RVF 1, 14: “brief dream”) of Petrarch’s opening sonnet. Rather, it lives on in the envy of other women—most importantly, future women—a notion that seems to increase her desire to relive the moments with the beloved through her poetry. Documenting her pleasure in rhyme is not just for herself, it is not a way for her to shun the outside world in favor of an interior space of memory and self-reflection, as Petrarch so often does in his poetry. Instead, her internal desire is mediated by the external envy of another woman. She wants other intellectuals to take note, but she also wants other women to take note. By combining the desire for poetic fame, which depends upon an intellectual audience, with the desire for a woman’s attention, Stampa is able to figure the ubiquitous intellectual woman reader, generating as an ideal what Cereta and Capellanus thought was an impossibility in fact. Although in these two poems Stampa seeks out the attention of other women— presenting female invidia as fuel for her poetic process, and as an assurance of  Dante, Vita nova, ed. Manuela Colombo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1999). For the figure of Beatrice in the Vita nova see Robert Hollander, “‘Vita Nuova’: Dante’s Perceptions of Beatrice,” Dante Studies 92 (1974): 1–18; Heather Webb, “Dante’s Stone Cold Rhymes,” Dante Studies 121 (2003): 149–68 (see especially pp. 150–52). 26  Tylus colloquially translates “con quanta invidia lor sia” as “they will die of envy.” 25

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her future glory—she does acknowledge the potential danger of the female rival. If we consider the paradigm she has established—she invites other women to gaze upon her beloved, invites them to witness her pleasure through her poetry, hoping they will envy her and desire her beloved—then the inevitable outcome is that eventually the female rival will become her beloved’s lover, and she, herself, the rival. Stampa’s repositioning within the triangular structure of desire she has created begs the question of what this change in status would do to her poetic process. That is, if she were to become the female rival, would her invidia of another woman also serve as poetic inspiration? Stampa addresses this possibility, and elucidates what this might mean for her poetics in poem 171 through the repetition of the verb torre (togliere; to take away or deprive): Voi potete Signor ben tormi voi Con quel cor d’indurato diamante, E farvi d’altra Donna novo amante; Di che cosa non è, che più m’annoi. Ma non potete già ritormi poi, L’imagin vostra, il vostro almo sembiante, Che giorno e notte mi stà sempre innante, Poi che mi fece Amor de’ servi suoi. Non potete ritormi quei desiri, Che m’acceser di voi sì caldamente Il foco, il pianto, che per gli occhi verso. (1–11; emphasis added) (True, you might turn away from me, my lord, / with that heart of obdurate diamond / and take another woman as your lover— / nothing in the world could hurt me more— // but you can never take away from me / your image, that lofty semblance of yourself / which day and night is always here before me. Since Love placed me among his servants. // You can’t deprive me of these desires / for you that burn so—along with the fire / and tears I pour forth through these eyes.)

That she could lose her beloved to another woman is presented as a distinct possibility in the first quatrain where she acknowledges his power to turn away from her. The issue of agency is an important one here, since Stampa attributes her loss to the beloved actively leaving her, rather than being taken from her by another woman. The pain of knowing her beloved has taken a new lover and the jealousy this evokes in her is tempered by the beloved’s inability to reclaim his own image from her—one of her sources of inspiration. Thus, the idea of a fleeting physical love implied in the apparent replaceability of Stampa underscores the permanence of her memories, and her ability to memorialize their love. Although losing her beloved to another woman would pain her, it would not diminish her poetic aspirations or ability to write. In retrospect, the opening verse, “Voi potete Signor ben tormi” (v. 1: “True, you might turn away from me, my lord”) signals a power struggle between the poet and her beloved. Initially, Stampa appears

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in a passive position, powerless to the decisions made by her beloved, but the repetition of “non potete ritormi” (v. 9: “you cannot take from me”) in the second quatrain and first tercet renders the beloved less in control of his destiny than would first appear: he can take other women as lovers, and take himself away from Stampa, but he cannot take control of his own poetic figuration. She emphasizes her power by inscribing herself as a slave, not to the beloved, but to something higher and immutable—the God of Love—which, as Veronica Andreani analyzes in her chapter in this volume, makes it possible for her to find a new lover. Thus, although he can physically deny himself to her, and offer himself to another lover, his image belongs to her and will remain with her. Although the basic idea of the poet possessing the beloved’s image is not novel to Petrarchan-inspired poetry—remember that Petrarch claims to carry Laura’s image in his heart, as a constant source of inspiration27—Stampa’s claim to the beloved’s image takes a particularly sinister turn in Rime 94 where she warns her beloved about the dangers to his reputation that another woman could bring him. After a long string of battle metaphors in the quatrains, Stampa warns her beloved: Guardate, che la fama de le tante Vostre vittorie, poi non renda oscura Signor quest’una sola e non ammante. Io per me stimerei mia gran ventura L’esser veduta al vostro carro innante; Ma voi del vostro honor habiate cura. (9–14) (Be careful, lord, that this woman alone / doesn’t cover up or darken the fame / that you’ve gained from your many victories, // As for myself, it would be my great fortune / to be seen leading your triumphal carriage, / but you should be mindful of your honor.)

Stampa positions herself here as the female rival and writer, warning her beloved that the love of an unworthy woman could lead Stampa to darken his fame and the way he will be remembered.28 Her desire to lead his triumphal carriage

 RVF 96. In Stampa’s rewriting of this sonnet, she described her beloved’s picture as “un pocchetto incostante e disdegnoso” (Rime 57, 14). 28  Janet Smarr makes a good point about this poem: “These accusations [of his disloyalty to her], however, offer no real threat to his reputation, as they would were similar accusations of deceitful inconstancy and lightness published against a woman. Such reproaches can be made to a man without his detriment, especially as her inferior status and his pursuit of public honor have already given him a good excuse” (“Substituting for Laura: Objects of Desire for Renaissance Women Poets,” Comparative Literature Studies 38.1 [2001]: 1–30; pp. 17–18). But, particularly in this poem, Stampa equates her position as love poet with that of an epic poet. 27

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evokes the epic genre, rather than the love lyric.29 She inscribes herself as a Vergil, the poet of the Republic given the task of immortalizing the Augustan regime, or the Petrarch of his Latin epic Africa, an endeavor aimed at immortalizing Petrarch as much as the epic hero Scipio Africanus, and the epic’s dedicatee, King Robert of Naples. Stampa privileges her ability to properly memorialize her beloved over physical acts of love with the other woman in the veiled threat that closes the sonnet: “ma voi del vostro honor habiate cura” (v. 14: “you should be mindful of your honor”). If Stampa is able to face the truth about the possibility that she could be replaced by another woman, so too must the beloved recognize the negative consequences to his public persona of taking a different lover. Stampa can assure him the good kind of fame—the kind associated with triumphal processions—but the same cannot be said of other women.30 Although the presence of a female rival is integral to her poetic process, she still warns her beloved of the dangers to his reputation in indulging this rivalry between women, and repositioning her as rival, rather than lover, within the triangular structure of desire. The foundation of the threat is that although he could deny her his love, female poet-lovers control his image, and his destiny. Stampa’s ruminations on desire in this poem reinforce the paradigm established in the opening sonnet, where the figure of the female rival is first introduced. The traditional Petrarchan theme of unrequited love later imitated in sixteenthcentury canzonieri is more fully developed and complicated in Stampa’s portrayal of triangular desire and rivalry. And, most importantly, it is gendered female. Within the economy of her collection, the triangular model she describes does not appear universal or adaptable to men desiring female beloveds; rather, it is specific to women occupying both the position of lover-poet and rival. Stampa seems to recognize the uniqueness of the female-female-male triangular structure in her rendition of unrequited love in Rime 43. Here, we see that other men’s desire for her does not elicit desire or jealousy in her beloved:

29  The entire sonnet is couched in military terms. Stampa compares dishonor in battle to choosing the wrong beloved—both sets of errors can destroy the beloved’s reputation. The reference to the “carro,” then, follows the theme established in the quatrains. In conflating the figures of the love and epic poets, she gives a place to women in a political tradition (epic) that marginalized them. 30  The threat is particularly poignant in the case of Count Collaltino di Collalto, whose military career often kept him from Stampa. Ann Rosalind Jones provides an important insight into the male public image and women’s use of the pastoral to challenge it when she writes, “Stampa and [Mary] Wroth use pastoral conventions to argue that men’s public roles belong to an impure, combative realm that disguises masculine callousness as duty and permits injustice to continue unchecked. In contrast they represent women’s fidelity in love as heroic virtue. Under its surface of simplicity and pathos, feminine pastoral questions masculine power and established a vigorous virtue for the woman who writes” (The Currency of Eros. Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620 [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990], p. 125).

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Dura è la stella mia, maggior durezza E‘ quella del mio Conte; egli mi fugge, I seguo lui; altri per me si strugge, I non posso mirar’ altra bellezza. Odio chi m’ama, & amo che mi sprezza. Verso chi m’è humile il mio cor rugge; I son’ humil con chimia speme adhugge; Aˋ cosi stranio cibo ho l’alma avezza. (1–8) (My destiny is harsh, but harsher still / is that of my lord: I follow him, he flees; / other men consume themselves for me, / while I can’t look on any other beauty. // I hate the man who loves me, love him who scorns me; / my heart protests the man who’s meek, / while I submit to him who dampens hope: / to such unusual tastes my soul is suited.)

In the first quatrain Stampa initially gestures at the model of unrequited love to which readers of Petrarch and his later imitators are accustomed: like Apollo chasing Daphne, the poet-lover is destined to pursue a beloved who holds him/her in disdain. Yet the poet and beloved are not alone in the chase, as we see in verses 2–3 where Stampa describes herself as desired by other men, but destined to follow only the one who flees from her. On the surface, it would appear that Stampa is reinforcing the Petrarchan paradigm of unrequited love by presenting a double example—her beloved flees from her, just as she flees from other men. Indeed, she opens the second quatrain stating that, “Odio chi m’ama, & amo che mi sprezza” (v. 5: “I hate the man who loves me, love him who scorns me”). However, if we read this sonnet, and the introduction of a male rival to her beloved, against the first sonnet, we see a similar triangular structure of desire, but one that fails to elicit the desired end. That is, whereas in Rime 1 the presence of a female rival increases Stampa’s desire for her male beloved, here, the presence of multiple male rivals does not elicit jealousy or increased desire in her male beloved; on the contrary, he continues to flee from her, removing the mimetic aspect of the structure that opened the collection. Within the economy of Stampa’s collection, male rivalry, it would seem, does not function in the same manner as female rivalry, making the triangular paradigm of desire and envy particular to women writers. *** By gendering female her structure of triangular desire (female-female-male) Stampa makes her poetry as much about the art of female poetry as about desire. At first glance, this model of desire nuances the more traditional model of unrequited love by introducing a rival for the beloved’s attention, but upon closer examination we see that the new paradigm in Stampa’s poetry is not universal among the sexes; rather, it is specific to women. By including a female rival in her collection, she incorporates and counters the classically misogynist tropes that

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I addressed at the onset of this chapter. Andrea Capellanus’s oft-repeated maxim that a woman is naturally “envious and a slanderer of other women” (201) is altered and overturned by the figure of Stampa’s female rival whose envy does not culminate in slander, but rather in emulation. The reputation at risk is neither Stampa’s nor the female rival’s but that of the male beloved who must safeguard his public image by loving the woman who could increase his fame. This positive portrayal of female invidia is what makes Stampa’s triangular model so unique; the anonymous female rival’s desire to walk “à paro” with the poet removes the negative connotations previously associated with female rivalry. Appropriating and revising the classically misogynist trope of female invidia, Stampa is able to open up a model of female authorship and readership that could thrive on the very energies of female envy that had traditionally been listed as a cause of female inferiority. By taking the misogynist assertion of female invidia and appropriating it into a model of female homosociality, Stampa imagines a community of female poets bonded together through rivalry. Whereas for the older tradition, women’s envy inevitably led to slander, Stampa’s poetry seeks to recover a more original continuum, in which female rivalry could be productive. Where Laura Cereta had tried to divide women into educated and uneducated, thereby generating the space of an exception to the rule of female inferiority, Stampa imagines a “republic of women” whose subjects are not only elite women.31 By taking what had classically been described as the “natural” state of all women and presenting its positive outcome, Stampa portrays female invidia as the bond between women that mediates female desire and fuels poetic production. She does not explicitly present the female rival in her collection as a poet, but gestures at her potential to become a poet when she ascribes envy to her and ventriloquizes the rival’s desire to emulate her, as both a lover and a poet. It allows the potential for women’s writing en masse, where female invidia produces a positive form of rivalry that elevates women from their depiction in a literary tradition that historically pitted them against each other as enemies. As discussed in the Editors’ Introduction to this volume, in the last ten years scholars have attempted to revise the conventional view of women’s writing as a phenomenon separate from male literary authorship be resituating its practice within the broader contexts of early modern print and publishing cultures. In this 31  I borrow the term “republic of women” (respublica muliebris) from Laura Cereta’s 1488 letter to Bibolo Semproni where she claims: “cum quibus Nicolosa Bononiensis, Isotaque Veronae & Cassandra Veneta sub silentii corusca luce transibunt” (“and accompanying them [the learned women of the past] Nicolosa of Bologna, Isotta of Verona, and Cassandra of Venice will pass away under a shimmering light of silence.” Tom. 65, 187–95; Collected Letters, p. 78). Elsewhere I have close read of this passage within the context of women’s writing (Aileen A. Feng, “In Laura’s Shadow: Casting Female Humanists as Petrarchan Beloveds in Quattrocento Letters,” in The Inner Life of Women in Medieval Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt, and Hypocrisy, ed. Jeff Rider and Jamie Friedman, New Middle Ages Series [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011], pp. 223–47.

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regard, Diana Robin’s work on the collective publication processes in early to mid-1500s has revealed a system of networking that crossed gender boundaries, making collaborations between men and women a defining characteristic of the early printing culture in Italy.32 Particularly astute is her argument concerning the creation of virtual communities of women writers constructed by early anthologists like Giolito and his senior editor Lodovico Domenichi. As she notes, these anthologies “projected images of an egalitarian city of letters: courtesans and the daughters and sons of guildsmen shared space in its pages with aristocrats at the top of the social scale. But these were utopias of an editor’s imagining, not documents reflecting real-time sodality” (xxii). Stampa’s imagined community is more grounded in the realities of sixteenth-century Venice than those offered by the early anthologies discussed by Robin. On the one hand, Stampa’s community is not a vision of egalitarian utopia; the constant reminders of her class differences with Collaltino di Collalto throughout the collection overwrite sexual difference with asymmetrical power relations. But on the other hand, Stampa’s community is not one that unequivocally champions women as wholly misrepresented by the trope of invidia as Christine de Pizan did in Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (c. 1405), a response to the misogyny of Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Roman de la Rose. Stampa does not disregard the real conditions of women’s oppression, but at the same time she does not imagine an equally utopian, equally fantastic, united sisterhood uninterrupted by tension, disagreement, jealousy, or rivalry. In her virtual community, women are just as competitive as they are depicted in earlier writings about women: they are envious, jealous, and covet the lovers of their peers. What has changed is the end result of female rivalry: it no longer prohibits women from creating the bonds necessary for maintaining a community; it bonds women through rivalry to a community, present and future.

32  Diana Robin, Publishing Women. Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007).

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Chapter 5

Voi e tu, Love and Law: Gaspara Stampa’s Post-Petrarchan Jealousy Ann Rosalind Jones, Smith College

At the beginning of the 1554 edition of Gaspara Stampa’s Rime, Plinio Pietrasanta published a small woodcut of a decorated capital P to introduce the “Poi che il Dio” with which Cassandra Stampa opens her dedication of her sister’s poems to Giovanni della Casa. Behind the P, the print depicts a nude woman embraced by a bearded man who is looking backward and upward over his shoulder. Both figures are in a chariot drawn by a racing horse with flames rising above the scene (Figure 5.1). The image most likely refers to the Ovidian tale of Pluto taking Proserpina into the Underworld. The woodblock letter, which belonged to Pietrasanta’s printer Francesco Marcolini, was probably set onto this first page arbitrarily, rather than chosen for the appropriateness of the pictured scene.1 However accidentally, though, within the context of the Rime this small image suggests a view of Stampa as the victim of a more powerful, impatient suitor. A similar kind of relationship between the poet and her lover is implied in the now well-known pair of etchings set as frontispieces to Luisa Bergalli’s 1738 edition of Stampa’s poems (Figures 1.1 and 5.2).2 The two figures’ dress and postures attribute different powers to each: a young woman in gentle drapery holding a scroll set across from an older bearded man sitting upright in armor.3 Among the other oddities in this pairing is 1  On this woodcut see Dennis E. Rhodes, Silent Printers: Anonymous Printing at Venice in the Sixteenth Century (London: British Library, 1995), p. 201, cited by Stefano Bianchi, La Scrittura poetica femminile nel Cinquecento Veneto: Gaspara Stampa e Veronica Franco (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2013), p. 42, n. 22. See also Augusto Gentili, “Il problema delle immagini nell’attività di Francesco Marcolini,” GSLI 157: 1 (1980), who argues that Marcolini’s images in the 1540s focused on the mythological texts, including the Metamorphoses, that he had been reading and illustrating. 2  The full title of Bergalli’s edition emphasizes the contributions of the men around Stampa: Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa, con alcune altre di Collaltino, e di Vinciguerra, Conti di Callalto: e di Baldassare Stampa. Giuntovi diversi componimenti di varj autori in lodi della medesima (Venice: Francesco Piacentini, 1738). 3  For a detailed history of interpretations of these prints, including interesting new conjectures about the sources for Stampa’s portrait, see Jane Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” Gaspara Stampa. The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with an introduction and translation by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010), pp. 37–41. All English translations of Stampa’s poetry are taken from this edition.

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Fig. 5.1

Gaspara Stampa, Rime (Venice: Pietrasanta, 1554). Illustrated letter P, woodcut, 3/4 by 3/4 inch, opening of dedication. Photograph by Ann Rosalind Jones, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Fig. 5.2

(left) Engraving of Count Collaltino di Collalto on the frontispiece of the 1738 volume of Rime, ed. Bergalli and Collalto. Image provided courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries. (right) Paolo Veronese, portrait of Collaltino di Collalto, c. 1550, Oil on canvas, 53.4 by 45 inches, Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou, Czech Republic. From the collection of the National Heritage Institute, collection of the National Cultural Monument Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou.

Fig. 5.3

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that it reimagines the ages of the protagonists of Stampa’s Rime. In fact, she and Collalto were the same age: both born in 1523, probably first acquainted in 1548, and both thirty-one when she died in 1554. Collalto looks very different from the older man of the 1738 volume in a portrait by Paolo Veronese, painted around 1550 and now in the castle of Jaromerice nad Rokytnou in the Czech Republic (Figure 5.3). In the Veronese painting he is shown at about twenty-seven, wearing gold-trimmed armor and holding a helmet bearing the Collalto coat of arms—two black squares and two white ones, which also appear below the frame of the 1738 engraving. Curiously, at the top right of the helmet is perched a small cupid, looking down to the left (Figure 5.4). Equally curious, pinned to the white silk cloth draped across Collaltino’s chest is a very unmilitary brooch containing a small cameo of a woman in profile (Figure 5.5). John Garton, in a thoughtful analysis of the painting, suggests that these touches are a sign of the painter’s or the subject’s “jest and bravura.”4 Most likely, Veronese and Collaltino collaborated to include details that would characterize the count as both a lover and a warrior—certainly the view Stampa presents, and one that Francesco Sansovino intimated in his history of the Collalto family at the beginning of his Dell’origine et de’ fatti delle case illustri d’Italia (1582): “a gracious and kind knight, a man of letters, and a lover of virtuosi.”5 Stampa, too, would have been twenty-seven in 1550. Count Collaltino, then, had an advantage over Stampa in social status but not in age. Their three-year relationship, according to her reckoning in sonnet 219, was a liaison between coevals, if not coequals. Another misrepresentation in the myth of Stampa has been that Collalto was the overwhelming and only significant love of her life.6 On the contrary, in addition to the sonnets in which she writes about a new relationship with Bartolomeo Zen, her sister Cassandra Stampa’s will of 1576 mentions Gaspara’s two daughters Elisabetta and Sulpizia, fathered by Andrea Gritti (most likely not the famous 4  John Garton, Grace and Grandeur: The Portraiture of Paolo Veronese (London: Harvey Miller, 2008). See also Zdenek K. Kazlepa, “The Portrait of Collaltino by Paolo Veronese, in the Light of the Reissue of Gaspara Stampa’s Rime from 1738,” Umenì/Art 56.3 (2008): 182–92. I am indebted to Garton’s chapter, “Men-at-Arms,” for both the portrait and the two details. The one problem with the identification of the portrait is the sitter’s apparently dark hair, in contrast to the “pelo biondo” described in Stampa’s Rime 7. Garton translates this as “fair complexion,” perhaps confusing pelo with pelle. Without seeing the actual painting, which may be reproduced as darker than it is, I would hesitate to call this figure’s hair blond, though it is certainly not black. It is possible, though not very likely, that Stampa uses “pelo biondo” in a purely conventional way, following the model established by Petrarch’s golden-haired Laura. In the engraving of Collalto in the 1738 edition of Stampa’s poems, he is shown as a middle-aged man with pale hair, though this is more likely white than blond. 5  Cited in Garton, Grace and Grandeur, p. 92. By virtuosi, Sansovino means skilled, even brilliant intellectuals. Stampa belonged to this group, and as a virtuosa—a musical performer as well as a poet—she was well known for her singing as well as her compositions. 6  See Veronica Andreani’s chapter in this volume.

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Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

(left) Detail of helmet with Cupid, Paolo Veronese, portrait of Collaltino di Collalto, c. 1550, Oil on canvas, 53.4 by 45 inches, Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou, Czech Republic. From the collection of the National Heritage Institute, collection of the National Cultural Monument Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou. (right) Detail of brooch, Paolo Veronese, portrait of Collaltino di Collalto, c. 1550, Oil on canvas, 53.4 by 45 inches, Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou, Czech Republic. From the collection of the National Heritage Institute, collection of the National Cultural Monument Castle Jaromerice nad Rokytnou.

doge of Venice but a younger member of his patrician clan), or by Andrea di Giovanni da San Martin.7 It is interesting, too, that she died in the house of another Venetian patrician, Hieronymo Morosini.8 Unlike Abdelkader Salza in his claims that almost every detail of Stampa’s life proves that she was a courtesan, I take  The surprising fact of Stampa’s motherhood was discovered in Cassandra Stampa’s 1576 will by Emilia Ceseracciu Veronese in the course of archival research in Padua. See her “Il Testamento di Cassandra Stampa: contributi alla biografia di Gaspara,” Atti e memorie dell’Accademia Patavina di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, vol. 89, part 3 (1976–1977) (Padova: Soc. Coop. Tip., 1977), pp. 89–96; cited by Bianchi, La Scrittura poetica femminile, p. 35, n. 1. 8  The location and supposed cause of Stampa’s death were first discussed by Abdelkader Salza in “Madonna Gasparina Stampa e la società veneziana del suo tempo: Nuove discussioni,” Giornale storico della letteratura veneziana 70 (1917): appendices, 281–99. 7

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this, rather, as evidence of the range of friendships she maintained after her rupture with Collalto. She did not die of a broken heart, rapt away and then abandoned by a cruel lord. Rather, she reoriented the language of broken hearts to construct a triumphant identity for herself as lover and poet. To do this in ways designed to win the sympathy of her readers, the poet writes her way around a lordly man, whom she elevates through her passionate idealism until it founders on a social absolute: he is to become the spouse of another woman. In foresight and retrospect, she follows an intense and complicated path through jealousy. From humiliation to rage, jealousy takes on many forms and provokes many defenses in the Rime. To tell this story, Stampa turns toward other women: as sexual rivals, as present and future allies, as competitors in intensity of feeling and in the poetic arena. In this chapter, I will analyze the interplay of objective social challenges, amorous longing, jealousy, and compensatory strategies in Stampa’s poems for and against her inaccessible aristocratic lover. Love and the Law: Petrarchism and Feudal Interest How do we recognize that a poet is going beyond a dominant convention—when her writing shifts into something new and unexpected? In three poems midway through her Rime, sonnets 178, 179, and 186, Stampa denounces Collaltino for his intended marriage—a theme unimaginable in Cinquecento Petrarchan sequences. The central poem in this trio (Rime 179) is a narrative and discursive climax of Stampa’s sequence: Meraviglia non è, se’n uno instante Ritraeste di me pensieri, e voglie, Che vi venne cagion di prender moglie, E divenir marito, ov’eri amante. Nodo, e fè, che non è stretto, e costante Per picciola cagion si rompe, e sciogle; La mia fede e’l mio nodo il vanto toglie Al nodo Gordiano, & al diamante; Però non fia giamai, che scioglia questo, E rompa quella, se non cruda Morte, Laqual prego Signor, che venga presto. Sì ch’io non vegga con le luci scorte Quello c’hor col pensier atro, e funesto, Mi fa veder la mia spietata sorte. (A marvel it’s not, if in an instant / all your thoughts and desires you’ve withdrawn from me / because it’s come into your head to take a wife / and become a husband where you once played lover. // Faith and knots that are neither constant nor tight / can loosen and break for the simplest cause; / but

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my faith and knot exceed the strength / of diamonds and the Gordian knot. // Let the knot never be undone, nor my faith / shattered by anything but cruel death itself— / which, lord, I pray you to send me at once // so I won’t have to see with eyes so sharp / what dispiriting fate now makes me glimpse / with thought alone, baleful and dark.)

I propose reading this sonnet as a new turn in the Petrarchan plot: the shocking invasion of a word and a social reality foreign to it. Amid the Petrarchan conventions that dominated Italian lyric in the 1550s, the word “marito” (husband) stands out like an exclamation mark, or neon sign. The pragmatic, public, sheerly ordinary vocabulary of “wife” and “husband” would have been shocking to an ear attuned to Cinquecento lyric in 1554. Marriage implicitly structures the plot of l’amor courtois and Petrarchan sequences: the lady is unavailable, at least in theory, because she is owned by a husband. The explicit vocabulary of marriage belonged to more popular verse forms, such as the French chanson de malmariée, in which a young wife complains about the old husband to whom she is unwillingly bound. Petrarch included five sonnets mentioning jealousy in his Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, but he never names Laura’s husband or her status as a wife. Even married women poets of the Cinquecento such as Veronica Gambara, celebrating her husband as the military hero he was and the celestial being she imagines him to be, do not call him a husband: “il mio signor,” (my lord) yes, or “il mio Sole” (my sun), but not “mio marito.” So Stampa’s use of the word is startling. This vocabulary of social contract, the official marriage bond, raises three questions I will explore here. What does this poem allow us to conjecture about the audience Stampa intended for her Rime? To what extent did Collaltino’s plan to marry—mostly likely his betrothal at this point—pull her out of the thicket of Petrarchan themes and variations that shaped the poems of her predecessors and contemporaries, and many of her own? And how does her blunt naming of his plan to take a wife relate to the poems on jealousy earlier in the Rime and those that follow? Stampa’s entire sequence can be read as a set of variations on the theme of jealousy. Fear of a possible or actual rival is a topic in forty poems, from sonnet 5 to canzone 288, and “gelosia” appears in thirteen poems, from sonnet 40 to canzoni 286 and 289.9 The jealousy in these poems is usually the poet’s own, though she intriguingly attributes it to Collaltino in sonnet 112, in which she imagines the calm mutuality that would result if he could see into her heart: “Voi più securo, e queta io più sarei, / Voi senza gelosia, senza timore” (vv. 5–6: “You’d be more trusting, I more tranquil, / you without jealousy, left without fear”). Stampa articulates her jealousy in three forms. Most often, she confesses a vague suspicion that “un’altra” (some other woman) threatens her liaison with the count. Less often,  Tylus points out, “The jealousy that dominates the latter half of the sequence is prefigured by earlier insinuations of the count’s coldness, articulated in a poem (4) that seems to bespeak nothing but praise . . . One poem later, this very lord is already threatening to leave the poet . . . And we are only at the fifth sonnet!” (The Complete Poems, p. 15). 9

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she explicitly uses the word “gelosia.” And throughout the sequence, she invokes the count’s unfaithfulness in order to use it as a foil to her own “titanic” devotion.10 I base my analysis of Stampa’s jealousy poems mainly on Benedetto Varchi’s commentary on a sonnet about jealousy written by Giovanni della Casa, which Varchi explicated in a lecture to the Paduan Accademia degl’Infiammati in 1540. The lecture, published in 1545 by an unnamed printer in Mantua, opened with a prose dedication to Stampa (eighteen at the time) written by Francesco Sansovino, a Venetian man of letters and a friend of both Stampa’s brother Baldassar and Gaspara herself.11 Della Casa’s and Varchi’s texts confirm my interpretation: sonnet 179 is meant to be shocking on personal and poetic levels alike. To start with my first question: in the larger social context of Venice and the Rime, what resonance would Stampa’s exposure of this new turn in their affair, Collaltino’s shift from “amante” to “marito,” have had? How, that is, does the ostensible privacy of the poems, which in her dedication to Collaltino she claims to have written only for him, play against this reproach, which takes its force from the exposure of his disloyalty? As early as her opening sonnet, Stampa invokes the admiring judgment of an onlooker outside the amorous couple: the future woman reader who, she hopes, will say “Deh, perche tant’Amor, tanta Fortuna / Per sì nobil Signor’ à me non venne, / Ch’anch’io n’andrei con tanta Donna à paro?” (Rime 1, 12–14: “Oh, why can’t the fortune that comes / from loving a lord like him be mine, / so such a lady and I might walk side by side?”). This sense of an audience persists up to a madrigal (Rime 305) almost at the end of the sequence, in which, this time, she imagines a future audience making a judgment both positive and negative: “la gente” who will say, “O’ che conte crudele, / O’ che Donna fedele” (vv. 9–10: “Oh what a count—so cruel! / Oh what a lady—so faithful!”). Sonnet 179 likewise is not a solitary meditation on loss, but a public denunciation. It is writing that Stampa intended to be heard and read beyond Collaltino, in the wider Venetian circles to which they belonged. The issue of private writing versus public reception is raised by Jane Tylus in an interesting question she poses in her 2010 introduction to Stampa’s Rime: if Stampa had lived to see her poems in print, would she have published her sonnets about a new lover, Bartolomeo Zen, and a new suitor, Guiscardo (possibly Giovanni Andrea Viscardo)?12 I would also ask, would she have published sonnet 179? One way it shocks is that a woman of the middling sort—a working musician from a family in commerce, the daughter of a jewel merchant—is taking the liberty of protesting the betrothal of a nobleman much more highly placed in the social hierarchy than she is. In 1557, three years after Stampa’s death, Collaltino at thirty-four did in fact marry the aristocratic Giulia Torelli, Marchesa of Cassei 10  I repeat here Eugenio Donadoni’s characterization of Stampa’s verse in Gaspara Stampa: Vita e opere (Messina: Principato, 1919), p. 58. 11  Tylus, The Complete Poems, p. 7. She points out that Sansovino dedicated two other works to Stampa, an edition of Boccaccio’s Ameto and his own Ragionamento d’amore. 12  Tylus, The Complete Poems, p. 12.

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and Montechiarugolo, with whom he would have two sons.13 Torelli could well be the woman he planned to marry at the time Stampa wrote her sonnet. Given his many absences from the Veneto as a soldier for Henri II in France, battling against the English at Boulogne in 1551, being taken prisoner supporting the Sienese in 1552, and later fighting in the Veneto, even against members of his own clan, his engagement to Torelli could have been a very long one. Several critics point to the ironic, even hostile tone of Stampa’s sonnet 179, especially her shift in line four, “E divenir marito, ov’eri amante” (v. 4: “and become a husband where once you played lover”), from the polite “voi,” which she has used throughout her preceding poems and in the second line of this one (“Ritraeste da me pensieri, e voglie”; v. 2: “all your thoughts and desires you’ve withdrawn from me”), to the “tu” of “eri amante.”14 Stefano Bianchi, for example, sees this turn as an instance of Stampa’s sometimes disrespectful treatment of Collalto, her “irony, flavored with a polished vengefulness,” in this case the “malicious shift from voi to tu.”15 But the emotional weight of “divenir marito, ov’eri amante” is not easy to define. Is it scornfully dismissive, or desperately intimate? Assuming that Stampa was writing the poem to be read not only by Collaltino but by others, she was historicizing their relationship by publicly denouncing an actual, specific betrayal: his demeaning decision to leave her in order to form a legal bond for dynastic purposes: “vi venne cagion di prender moglie” literally means “to you has come a reason for taking a wife.” From this perspective, the move from “ritraeste” to “eri” does indeed sound scornful. But is it necessarily the case that by using the intimate “tu,” Stampa dismisses Collaltino’s role as her lover? Might her “eri” instead be a way of closing the formal distance that usually marks her poetic addresses to him, of insisting on the shared language of their private retreats, such as the setting for sonnet 104, “O notte, à me più chiara e più beata?” (“O night, to me more luminous and blessed”).16 13  Bianchi, La Scrittura poetica femminile, p. 62 n. 66. See also Nicola Longo, “Collalto, Collaltino,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 26 (1982), http://www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/ricerca/collatino-dicollalto/Dizionario_Biografico/, accessed January 16, 2014. Longo points out that Collalto’s mother, Bianca Maria di Antonio Vinciguerra, was praised as a poet by Giuseppe Betussi in some of his work and by Fr. A. della Chiesa in his Theatro delle donne letterate (Mondovi, 1620). 14  Bianchi comments on Stampa’s vengeful irony in some poems, her “cutting down to size” of the count, as in this shift from the formal to the intimate pronoun (La Scrittura poetica femminile, p. 63). Tylus points out the previous sonnet’s use of “tu” as the subject of “habbi” and direct object pronoun of “t’amassi” and mentions the earlier sonnet 106 as the first instance of Stampa’s use of the intimate second-person pronoun (The Complete Poems, p. 384 n. 414; p. 377 n. 274). 15  Bianchi, La Scrittura poetica femminile, pp. 62–3. 16  Stampa also imagines Collaltino using “tu” with her, in sonnet 260 to Collaltino’s brother Vinciguerra di Collalto. Asking him to intercede with Collaltino for her, she tells Vinciguerra that all she wants is one line from the count: “Pena, spera, & aspetta il tornar mio.” (v. 11: “Suffer, hope, and wait for my return”). The imperatives hardly sound

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In this case, the force of the preceding line and this one would be “To become a husband? You have been, let me remind you [and my readers], closer to me than the institutional language of marriage could ever capture.” Leading up to this effect, Stampa uses the intimate “tu” seven times in the preceding sonnet, Rime 178, “Perche mi sij Signor crudo, e selvaggio” (“Though, sir, to me you’re cruel and wild”), also about jealousy. Here, however, she departs from her formal “voi” not mainly to confront Collalto with his marriage bond (in line 3 she mentions only his turn “elsewhere”), but to compare herself to other women who love less selflessly than she does: Perche mi sij Signor crudo, e selvaggio, Disdegnoso, inhumano, & inclemente, Perche habbi volto altrove ultimamente Spirto, pensieri, cor,’ anima, e raggio. Non per questo advien, che’l foco, ch’aggio Nel petto acceso si spegna, ò s’allente; Anzi si fa più vivo, e più cocente, Quant’ha da te più stratij, e fiero oltraggio, Che, s’io t’amassi come l’altre fanno, T’amerei solo, e seguirei fin tanto, Ch’io ne sentissi utile, e non danno; Ma perciò ch’amo te, amo quel santo Lume, che gli occhi miei visto prima hanno, Convien, ch’io t’ami à l’allegrezza, e al pianto. (Though, sir, to me you’re cruel and wild, / disdainful, inhuman, and unforgiving, / though lately elsewhere you’ve been turning / your spirit, thoughts, heart, soul and eyes— // not for this is the fire that so brightly/burns in my heart lessened or spent; / if anything, it’s quicker and more potent / the more you make it suffer fierce outrage. // If I loved you as those other women do, / I’d love and follow you only as long / as I thought it useful—not deadly. // But because I love you, I love that saintly / light my eyes took in with their very first gaze / so it’s fitting I love you in joy and pain.)

Repeating the intimate pronoun so often (in lines 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 14) allows Stampa to insist on her openness to Collalto, her willingness to endure the worst from him, in contrast to the detached self-interest of women who love only as long as they find it useful. Her “io” and “tu” assert the unity shared by two true tenderhearted, but to receive such commands, fantasized as written in the intimate second person, will turn her misery to joy: “Se ciò m’aviene, i miei sensi dispersi, / Come pianta piantata appresso il rio, / Voi vedrete in un punto rihaversi” (vv. 12–14: “and if that happens, in an instant you’ll / see me come alive; my senses, once dispersed, / revived like a plant planted by a stream”).

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lovers against fair-weather rivals—who might include the kind of woman who makes a dynastically useful marriage. All that is available to such rivals, she seems to imply, is the distance implied in “voi.” “Cura,” Jealousy, and Doubt: Love as Suspicion Given the centrality of the theme of jealousy in the Rime—almost a sixth of them—it is illuminating to look at how Stampa’s contemporary and friend Benedetto Varchi analyzed this emotion. In the small octavo volume of his lecture, Della Casa’s sonnet, which Varchi is said to have read out loud to his audience of Infiammati, begins: Cura, che di timor ti nutri, & cresci, E tosto fede a tuoi sospetti acquisti, Et mentre con la fiamma il gelo mesci, Tutto’l regno d’amor turbi, & contristi.17 (Care, you who feed and grow fat on fear, / And quickly win belief for your suspicions, / And while you mingle flame with ice, / You disturb and sadden all Love’s kingdom.)

“Care” may seem a rather vague term here, but Varchi explains that Della Casa uses it to lead the reader gradually to understand jealousy as an obsession through its actions, as Ariosto does in Orlando furioso. Varchi also praises the “gravitas” of this first line.18 The poet continues by ordering Cura to return to Cocytus and 17  I have used the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copy of this text: Benedetto Varchi, LETTURA di’ m. Benedetto Varchi, sopra un Sonetto della Gelosia di’ mons. dalla Casa, fatta nella celebratissima Accademia de gl’Infiammati a Padova, in Mantova, il dì xx. Luglio, del XXXXV. English translations are my own. Della Casa’s sonnet in its entirety is: “Cura, che di timor ti nutri, & cresci, / E tosto fede a tuoi sospetti acquisti, / Et mentre con la fiamma il gelo mesci, / Tutto’l regno d’amor turbi, & contristi. // Poi che in briev’hora entro’l mio dolc’hai misti / Tutti gli’amari tuoi, de’l mio cor esci / Torna à cocito, à i lagrimosi, & tristi / Ghiacci d’Inferno, ivi’à te stessa incresci. // Ivi senza riposo, i giorni mena, / Senza sonno lè notti, ivi tì duoli / Non men di dubbia che di certa pena. // Vattene: à che piu fiera, che non suoli, / S’el tuò velen m’è corso in ogni vena, / Con nuove Larve, à me ritorni, & voli?” (“Care, you who feed and grow fat on fear, / And quickly win belief for your suspicions, / And while you mingle flame with ice, / You disturb and sadden all Love’s kingdom. // Since you have quickly mixed with my delight / All your bitterness, leave my heart. / Return to Cocytus, to the tearful and sorrowful / Ices of Hell, where you grow larger still. // There without rest spend your days, / without sleep at night, suffer there / As much from doubt as from painful certainty. // Go away: why, fiercer still than usual, / Since your venom has filled my every vein, / Do you fly back to me with new larvae?”). 18  Varchi, Bii recto. It is possible, too, that Della Casa uses “Cura” to set his poem apart from the many others preceding his that open with an apostrophe specifically to “Gelosia.” For this suggestion, I am indebted to Erika Milburn’s excellent discussion of the

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the tearful, bitter ice of “l’Inferno” and ends by asking this cruel figure what worse she can do, having filled his veins with venom and his mind with “larve,” which Varchi explicates as “shades, or specters of the damned:” Vattene: à che più fiera, che non suoli, S’el tuò velen m’è corso in ogni vena, Con nuove Larve, à me ritorni, & voli. (Go away: why fiercer still than usual, / Since your venom has filled my every vein, / Do you fly back to me with new larvae?)

Hell, venom, and worms as metaphors for the shades of the damned: this is far from the normally elevated language of Petrarchism. At the end of Varchi’s little book Pietrasanta set a sonnet by Gaspara Stampa’s brother Baldassar, “Cura, che sempre vigilante, e desta / A persuadermi’l mal, di timor m’empi” (“Care, always vigilant and eager / To persuade me of bad things, you fill me with fear”), in which he interweaves Varchi’s various interpretations of what Della Casa says about jealousy. Of these, the most interesting observations are on the mania of jealous lovers. Because love is the sweetest and most powerful emotion, when it takes a negative turn it becomes the bitterest and most powerful one, and it always includes some form of invidia (obtrectatio, Varchi says, is Cicero’s term)—the fear of a rival who will take the beloved away.19 No jealousy, says Varchi, is free of invidia, and jealousy at its most intense is an obsessive anxiety that tends toward paranoia. (As examples, he cites some of Boccaccio’s characters and Ariosto’s Bradamante.) Jealous lovers, Varchi writes, stando sempre come in un continuo Inferno, mai al giorno non si riposano, nè dormono le notti, anzi sempre sì dolgono, et sì lamentano, ramaricando così del falso, et di quello che dubitano, imaginandosi non poche volte cose al tutto impossibili; percioche questa malatia genera ne gli’animi una continua, et perpetua inquietudine, che mai non posa, ma sempre stà con gli’orecchi tese ad ascoltar ogni voce, ogni rumore, ogni vento. (14r) (always caught in an endless Hell, never rest during the day or sleep at night; on the contrary, they constantly grieve and weep, brooding equally over what is false and what they fear, often imagining things that are completely impossible; philosophical underpinnings of Varchi’s lecture on Della Casa’s sonnet and Michelangelo Serafini’s lecture to the Accademia fiorentino, Sopra un sonetto della gelosia di M. Giovanbatista Strozzi (published in Florence in 1550), in “‘D’Invidia e d’Amor figlia sì ria’: Jealousy and the Italian Renaissance Lyric,” MLR 97.3 (July 2002): 577–91 (see especially pp. 579, 579 n. 13, and 586). On early to late Renaissance discussions of jealousy, including Varchi’s, see Werner Gundersheimer, “‘The Green-Eyed Monster:’ Renaissance Conceptions of Jealousy,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137.3 (Sept. 1993): 321–33. 19  See Aileen A. Feng’s chapter in this volume on female invidia and female poetic production.

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry for this illness generates in the soul a constant and endless anxiety, which never subsides but is always pricking up its ears to hear every word, every rumor, every breath.)

He defines suspicion as the essence of jealousy: “non troverà già mai niuno ch’io creda, che sì tolga del dubbio, . . . essendo questo il proprio di questa infelicità” (“never will anyone, I believe, free himself from suspicion, for this is the essence of this unhappy state”). He adds that jealousy may not be curable, and that its excesses lead to disaster: E dubbio anchora, se quella malattia si può guarire, o è del tutto piaga incurabile, come afferma Ariosto, et altre insieme con lui . . . l’eccesso de la Gelosia . . . cresce alcuna volta tanto, che diventa odio, et sì converte in rabbia, et questo non sola contro la cosa amata, o il suo adversario et rivale, mà contro tutti anchora i quali guidicano essergli stati in qualunque modo contrari; onde sono nate vendette . . . et fatti . . . fuor d’ogni misura, et tal volta contra l’honore et vita propria di se medesima, come sì può vedere per le storie, così antiche, come moderne. (18r) (And I wonder, moreover, whether this sickness can be cured, or is an absolutely incurable wound, as Ariosto claims, and others, as well . . . Jealousy in excess . . . sometimes increases so far that it turns into hate and then changes into fury, and not only against the object of love, or an adversary or rival, but also against everyone thought to have stood in the [lover’s] way; and from this arise vendettas and irrational acts, sometimes against one’s own honor and life, as can be seen in histories both ancient and modern.)

Nor is jealousy limited to men. Women also suffer from jealousy; in fact, they are more prone to it: “havendo naturalmente manco prudenza, et consiglio, è forza che più si diano in preda, & più si lasciano vincere da questa furia, che gli’huomini” (1v: “having by nature less prudence and good sense, they necessarily succumb more easily and let themselves be conquered by this madness more than men do”). This last remark belongs more to Aristotelian misogyny than to the chivalrous politeness of Sansovino’s dedication to Stampa, in which he praises her “purgatissimo giudicio . . . che di gran lunga avanzi la lode commune” (“highly refined taste, which exceeds by far the praise it is given by everyone”). But Varchi’s analysis of jealousy has striking relevance for Stampa’s poems, so many of which turn around “dubbio” and “inquietudine,” suspicion and anxiety. In a circular literary relay, Varchi derives axioms about jealousy from poets— Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Della Casa, and tellers of stories ancient and modern—and Stampa as a poet affirms the truth of what they say. I am not suggesting that she consciously took Varchi’s theory of jealousy as a model; the intensity of her Rime makes it impossible to believe that she was simply maintaining a literary pose. I am suggesting, though, that a shared genre

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and vocabulary for thinking about emotion can shape a particular experience of that emotion. Jealousy, after all, is a cultural phenomenon, with a cultural history. Stampa herself underlines her “lack of prudence and good sense” in poems about her youthful naiveté when she first encountered Collaltino. She tells this story first in the opening of sonnet 14: “Che meraviglia fu, s’al primo assalto / Giovane, e sola io restai presa al varco?” (vv. 1–2: “What marvel was it, if at the first assault, / I—young and alone—stayed, trapped, at the pass?”). Similarly, addressing Amor at the end of sonnet 42, she blames him for trapping her with Collaltino’s allure at such an early age: “Così misera me tradita fui / Giovane incauta sotto fè d’Amore” (vv. 12–14: “And so I was betrayed! Poor me, / A heedless girl who trusted Love’s good faith”). Where does her constant suspicion that Collaltino is turning to another woman come from? In previous poems, as early as sonnet 5, she alludes to his shifts from disdain to spring-like warmth to “horrid winter” when he threatens “di mutar pensieri, e stanze” (v. 14: “to alter thought and place”), though this could simply be a fear that he is leaving Venice for warfare, not necessarily to court a rival. She ends sonnet 14, too, with the vague possibility that he will go elsewhere, though again the “impresa” she imagines could connote a military rather than an amorous enterprise: “Ne mi duol, / pur che l’alma mia beltate, / Hor, che m’ha vinta, non faccia altra impresa” (vv. 13–14: “nor, as long as that great beauty who vanquished / me seeks no new ventures, / do I lament”). The sequence eventually narrates the cure of the poet’s jealousy by a new love, but the intervening sonnets show her denouncing the count, attacking Love for his cruelty, scorning her rivals, contemplating revenge, and even planning suicide. Della Casa’s and Varchi’s theory of love resonates throughout these poems; Stampa is a living example of the effects of jealousy in excess as it is defined in the poet’s sonnet and the scholar’s lecture. The uses she makes of her jealousy, however, show that she is not interested in a cure but in the unforeseen powers that the passion of jealousy arouses in her. One site of Stampa’s invidia toward rivals for Collaltino’s love is France, during his six-month sojourn with Henri II in 1549. The Frenchwomen he is meeting appear especially threatening as the mini-sequence about his voyage to France unfolds. In her first poem on his departure, sonnet 66, Stampa opens on a happy note, addressing France as the lucky observer of the count’s bright eyes. But soon after this (sonnet 72), she turns to a darker image, the Petrarchan trope of the lover’s psyche as a ship, to allegorize the sea that took Collalto to France as the landscape of her pain: “Le perigliose e subite tempeste / Son le teme, e le fredde gelosie, / Al dipartirsi tarde, al venir preste” (vv. 9–11: “The dangerous and sudden tempests / are my fears and ice-cold jealousy, / quick to arrive and late to leave”). She gives this fear a local habitation in a sonnet that typifies the themes of her jealousy poems—the appeals she makes to Love because they fail to have any effect on the count, whose susceptibility to other loves contrasts to her unfailing loyalty—and we note the distancing vagueness with which she refers to her potential rival. In the opening of sonnet 78, she specifies a plural category of such rivals, the women of France:

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry Gli occhi, onde mi legasti Amor,’ affrena Sì che non veggan mai altra bellezza, Altra creanza, & altra gentilezza Di belle Donne, onde la Francia è piena. (1–4) (Love, blind those eyes to which you bound me, / so they can’t gaze on any other beauty, / on the graces or the courtesies / of pretty women, of which France is full.)

To the possibility that seeing such women will draw Collalto away from her, she contrasts the unwavering passion that defines her life: Acciò che quanto hora è dolce & amena Non sia piena di lagrime e d’asprezza La vita mia; ch’ogn’altra cosa sprezza, Fuor, che la luce lor chiara e serena. (5–8) (So that my life, now sweet and pleasing, / will not be full of bitterness and tears: / my life, disdainful of all other things / besides his eyes, fair and serene.)

But such self-confidence yields to another anxious conjecture: Collalto’s affection is likely to be captured by another woman unless Love intervenes, either to stop him, or—in line with the misery of her inescapable devotion—to kill her: E s’egli advien che sia lor’ mostro à sorte Obietto, che sia degno d’esser amato, Et accenda quel cor tenace e forte, Ferisci lui col tuo stral’impombiato, O’ con quel d’oro dona à me la morte, Perche vivere non voglio in tale sorte. (9–14) (And if there’s shown to him by chance / some object worthy of his love / who fires up that heart strong and tenacious, // wound him with your arrow tipped with lead, / or since I can’t bear to live in such a state, / with your arrow made of gold, give me death.)

Putting herself in the hands of Amor may seem to emphasize the speaker’s helplessness, but in her chilly periphrasis in line 6, she reduces her possible rival to an empty type, merely “an object worthy to be loved.” By alluding to this abstract member of an abstract category, the poet, wishfully, at least, fends off the possibility that the count will be seduced by a particular Frenchwoman. Such a dismissal, however, cannot relieve Stampa’s jealous habit of thought. In other poems on Collatino’s absence in France, she swiftly declares her certainty not only that he might be unfaithful but that he already is. An example is sonnet 67, which opens with a plaintive question and then, immediately, the certainty of Collaltino’s betrayal:

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Chi porterà le mie guiste querele Al mio Signor’ al gran Re di Francia appresso, D’ogni rara eccellenza esempio spresso, E fuor, ch’à me à tutte altre fedele? (1–4) (Who shall carry my just complaints / to my lord, who now serves the great King of France— / rare example of every form of excellence— / and who’s faithful to all others but me?)

In sonnet 79, she accuses him directly of turning away from her, using her pen name of Anasilla to remind him of the river in the Veneto they both know: A’ pena vide’ voi’l Gallico Regno, Che mutaste con lei voglia e pensiero, Et Anasilla, e’l suo fedele & vero Amor sparir da voi tutti ad un segno. (5–8) (Hardly had you seen the realm of Gaul / when you changed your mind and your desires, / and Anasilla and the true and faithful / love she bears you vanished once and for all.)

Turning from Collalto, she begs Amor to assure her that some other woman is not the reason for her distant lover’s coldness: E piaccia pur à lui, che mi governo, Che non sia la cagion di questo oblio Novella fiamma nel cor vostro intorno. (9–11) (And may it please the one who governs me, / let not the cause of such forgetfulness / be some new flame that’s kindled in your heart.)

Stampa intensifies this sort of self-defensive circumlocution—alluding to a new beloved of Collalto by characterizing her vaguely as “altrui”—in sonnet 83. The vagueness here is not dismissive but anxious, the gelosa’s despairing suspicion of a loss at which she is only guessing: Et vò morir, che rimirar d’altrui Quel, che fu mio, quest’occhi non potranno, Perche mirar non sanno altri, che lui. (9–11) (And I want to die: these eyes can never see / again what once was mine if now it’s another’s; / they know not how to gaze on anyone but him.)

Stampa writes about her fear of Gallic rivals for the last time in sonnet 180, which opens as she confronts Collalto’s ungallant claim that Frenchwomen are more faithful than any others: Certo fate gran torto à la mia fede, Conte, sovra ogni fè candida, e pura,

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry A’ dir che’n Francia è più salda e più dura La fè di quelle Donna à chi lor crede. (1–4) (Surely you wrong my good faith, Count, / a faith above all others candid and pure, / to say that the faith of the women in France / is far stronger and longer endures.)

But this sonnet comes more than halfway through the sequence, long after the cluster of poems on Collaltino’s stay in France. Thematically and narratively, then, a central theme of the sequence is the persistence of jealousy. Even as the setting shifts from Collalto’s absence in France to the poet’s blissful reunion with him when he returns, she confesses that jealousy has such a firm grip on her that she feels it even as she delights in his presence. In sonnet 106, she frames her joy with jealous doubt. In the first quatrain she already suspects that their reunion may not last when she exclaims, “O’ diletti d’Amor si dubbii e fugaci” (v. 1: “O delights of love, so fleeting and unsure”). In the first line of the second quatrain, she uses “tu” for the first time in the Rime, recalling her first declaration of love to Collalto: Quegli, à cui dissi tu solo mi piaci E’ pur tornato, io l’ho pur sempre presso, Io pur mi specchio, e mi compiace in esso, E ne’ begli occhi suoi chiari e vivaci. (5–8) (He to whom I said, you alone I love— / he’s back, and I have him always near; / in him I see myself, in him I take delight. / And in those handsome eyes, lively and bright.)

But this declaration is distanced in two ways: by the formal past tense of the verb— “dissi”—which contrasts oddly to the dramatization of happy immediacy we might expect, and by the fact, which most of Stampa’s readers would have recognized, that “tu solo mi piaci” is a quotation, adjusted for gender, from Petrarch’s RVF, 205: “Tu sola mi piaci” (v. 8: “You alone please me”).20 This echo of the RVF is a reminder of its many poems of painfully unrequited love, implying that the reappearance of the count may not presage the continuation of the compiacimento Stampa claims in her third line. And, in fact, her pleasure in their reunion is abruptly deflated, as implied in the opening line’s reference to fleeting love. She uses an ugly metaphor to identify the ugly return of dubbio: E tuttavia nel cor mi rode un verme Di fredda gelosia, freddo timore Di tosto tosto senza lui vederme. (9–11) 20  Tylus identifies the line in her note 274, p. 377 (The Complete Poems). See also Marina Zancan, Il doppio itinerario della scrittura: La donna nella tradizione letteraria italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), p. 176.

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(And yet within my heart, there gnaws the ice- / cold worm of jealousy and chilling dread / that soon, too soon, I’ll be without him.)

The “ice-cold worm of jealousy:” like Della Casa’s “larve,” this gnawing fear is subhuman, an instinctive reaction that cannot be cured. To return to the trio of poems with which I began: given Stampa’s repeated assertions of her suspicions that rivals are threatening her liaison, a reader might expect that her discovery of an actual rival, and even the betrothal that definitively puts an end to her hopes for a durable relationship with Collaltino, would come as a relief—a shock, yes, but an end to her obsessive anxiety. And this does seem to be the case. In sonnet 186, she looks the fact squarely in the face. The count has sworn to his fiancée to be hers for life: Che fia di me dico, ad Amor talhora, Poi che del mio Signor gli occhi sereni Lasseran questi miei di pianto pieni, Fatto esso d’altri infin à l’ultim’ hora? (1–4) (What will become of me, I sometimes say / to Love, now that my lord’s tranquil eyes / have left my own brimming over with tears, / since he’s sworn to become another’s until death?)

But in the remaining lines, Stampa backs away from the drama of this discovery into an Anacreontic vignette. She and Amor, defeated by this turn of events, can do nothing but watch Collaltino depart in triumph: Love sees no way to recover the bow, arrows, torches, hopes, and fears he has launched from Collaltino’s eyes, because Collaltino has now taken them away with him. The poem ends with a faintly comic scene (or is it?) of Stampa and Amor huddled together as they watch Collaltino march proudly off, carrying Love’s weapons—the force of passion he has aroused in Stampa and, more literally, the privilege of the man-at-arms with the power to make a grand marriage—and leaving them bereft: In queste amare, e dispietate voglie, Restiam noi due, & ei segue di gire, Carco, e superbo de le notre spoglie. (12–14) (So do we two remain, trapped by these / bitter, pitiless wishes—while he travels / on, laden and emboldened by our spoils.)

Grand Abjection and Heroic Jealousy As Aileen A. Feng shows in her chapter in this volume, Stampa peoples her Rime with other women, foreseeing their admiration as an affirmation of the intensity of her love and imagining a future solidarity with them as they emulate her example. Warning them against love, as Stampa also does, is a different maneuver, one that allows her to take the position of a wise counselor rather than a helpless lover. Her

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wish for greater happiness for other women also broadens the spatial context of her soliloquies. Women “who are to come” constitute an audience, unlike Collaltino, whom she can control, at least rhetorically. In sonnet 64, using the metaphor of the lover as a ship on dangerous seas, she delivers a sudden “beware,” sharply emphasized in the break of her fifth line: Voi, che novellament Donne entrate In questo pien di tema, e pien d’errore, Largo e profondo pelago d’Amore, Ove già tante navi son spezzate, Siate accorte, et tant’oltra non passate. (1–5) (You women who have recently embarked / upon those waters full of treachery / and full of error, Love’s deep and boundless sea / where so many ships have been snapped in two, // beware! and don’t go out too far.)

She continues her advice into her final tercet: if these ladies benefit from her wisdom, they will find noble lovers—implying, perhaps, more noble than Collaltino has been to her: Sovra tutto vì do questo consiglio. Prendete amanti nobili; e conforto Questo vi fia in ogni aspro periglio. (12–14) (Above all, let me offer some advice: / find for yourselves noble lovers, and in / every bitter danger this comfort should suffice.)

Similarly in sonnet 83, she ends with a turn away from her rival “altrui” to the less powerful “altre,” the women of a future public, in a fiction that her suffering can serve them as a monitory example: Prendano essempio l’altre, che verrano A’ non mandar tan’t oltro i disir sui, Che ritrar non si possan da l’inganno. (12–14) (May women heed this who come after me: / don’t send your desires too far away, / for then you can’t protect them from deception.)

Stampa specifies what that “inganno” is toward the very end of the Rime. In capitolo 289, she addresses listener-messengers—a turtledove, a nightingale, and Echo—asking them to carry her laments to Collaltino, whom she should have prevented from leaving: “Ch’or non m’andrei dolente lamentando, / Nè temenza d’oblio, nè gelosia / Non m’havrebber di me mandato in bando” (vv. 30–34: “Then you would not find me here lamenting, / fearful of being forgotten, prey / to the jealousy that’s banished me from myself”). In capitolo 290, however, she turns her defeat into an advantage for other women by offering them a warning about the

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damaging effects of distance. Well-advised innamorate will prevent their lovers from going so far afield: Donne, cui punge l’amorosa piaga, Di lassar dipartir l’amato bene, Non sia alcuna di voi, che sia vaga, Perche son poi maggior’ assai le pene De quel, ch’altri si crede, ò che l’aspetta, Qualhor l’amara disianza. (13–18) (Ladies stung by this amorous plague, / not a single one of you who are fond / of your beloved should let him get away— // for the torments that bitter distance brings / are always much greater than what you think / whenever that bitter desire strikes.)

Here, too, she claims the authority of long experience, generalizing from the years of anxious suspicion she has endured in Collaltino’s absence. In quasi-pedagogical poems like this and others, Stampa can move beyond the impotent dubbio and inquietudine of loving at a distance. Rather than having to confront the humiliating and shocking fact of her lover’s plan to marry, she can confidently warn other women how to avoid such pitfalls. And whether she invokes these “donne” in an immediate present or an imagined future, their company liberates her, if only temporarily, from the solitary paranoia of jealousy. Yet such self-affirming generosity is not the only story in the Rime. Stampa also invokes other women as lesser foils to her heroism in love. In her “titanic” sonnets, other women are not rivals for Collaltino’s affections; rather, she invokes them as her inferiors in the extremities of love she is able to endure. This spirit of competition is brought to the fore thematically and stylistically in sonnet 27, a virtuoso poem early in the sequence. Stampa composes a dense correlative sonnet to claim the uniqueness of her suffering and to demonstrate the power of her style. She opens the poem with a pronoun and adverb that allow her immediately to deny that anyone has ever loved as intensely as she does: Altri mai foco, stral, prigione, ò nodo Si vivo, acuto, e sì aspro, e sì stretto Non arse impiagò, tenne, e strinse il petto, Quanto’l mi’ ardente, acuto, acerbo, e sodo. (1–4) (Fire this lively, arrows this sharp, / prison or knots this bitter and constraining / never burned or punctured, confined and tightened / any breast as mine: sharp, bitter, firm, and ardent.)

In the second quatrain, piling up oxymora—death and birth, pain and pleasure, Collalto’s firm yet fickle nature—she specifies that no other woman has risen to the height of her pleasing pain or, as the “voci” and “carte” of line 9 imply, to her singing and writing:

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry Nè, qual’io moro, e nasco, et peno, e godo, Mor’ altra, et nasce, et pena, & ha diletto, Per fermo, e vario, e bello, e crudo aspetto, Ch’e’n voci, e’n carte spesso accuso, e lodo. (5–8) (And what I die for and bear, suffer and enjoy, / by another woman has never been borne; / a face fickle and steady, beautiful and cruel / that in speech and on the page I praise and accuse.)

In the first tercet, she intensifies the contrast between herself and lesser lovers by repeating the negative adverb and the pronoun with which she began the poem: Nè furo ad altrui mai le gioie care, Quanto è à me, quando mi doglio e sfaccio, Mirando à le mie luci hor fosche, hor chiare. (9–11) (Nor have others found as dear as I the joys / of suffering, when I grieve and am undone / by gazing on those lights now dimmed, now bright.)

She concludes the poem, by now a tour de force of tight parallel constructions, by combining the two-part oxymoron of the final tercet with the four-part list of nouns she used in her opening lines: Mi dorrà sol, se mi trarrà d’impaccio, Fin che potrò e viver,’ & amare, Lo stral, e’l foco, e la prigione, e’l laccio. (12–14) (I’ll regret only if I’m drawn from this impasse / of the arrow and fire, the prison and noose, / while it’s given me still to live and to love.)

In its poetic technique as well as its claim to unsurpassable intensity of emotion, this sonnet corresponds to Stampa’s exclamation in the following sonnet, “O’ mirabil d’Amore, e raro effetto!” (Rime 28, 12: “Rare wonder, one of love’s miracles”). Stampa threads brief references to women as lesser lovers than herself throughout her Rime, calling on them to verify both her extreme vulnerability and her heroic endurance. In sonnet 32, on Love’s fire and arrows, she begins with a claim formulated in an intricate syntax similar to the one in sonnet 27: nothing Love does to her can break her will, and no other women have suffered or will suffer love as sharply as she does. She writes, Per le saette tue Amor ti giuro, E per la tua possente, e sacra face, Che, se ben questa m’arde, e’l cor mi sface, E quelle mi feriscon, non mi curo. Quantunque nel passato, e nel futuro Qual l’une acute, e l’altra qual vivace

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Donne amorose, e prendi qual ti piace, Che sentisser giamai nè fian, nè furo. (1–8) (By your arrows, Love, I swear, / and by your powerful and sacred torch: / if your fire burns me and dissolves my heart / and if your arrows wound, I don’t care— // never in the past or future, have / love-stricken women ever felt, nor will they / the fire so alive as I—take whom you will.)

Moreover, her suffering has given her virtù—extraordinary strength, heroic endurance of Love’s torments. She returns to this theme as she ends the poem: Perche nasce virtù da questa pena, Che’l senso di dolor vince & abbaglia, Sì che ò non duole, ò non si sente appena. (9–11) (Because from this suffering, virtue is born / that conquers and dazzles the wrenching pain / so that I don’t notice it—or just barely.)

More briefly in sonnet 89, reproaching herself for despair, she returns to the past and future tenses with which, in sonnet 32, she dismisses all women less capable of transcendent passion: Come fuor di me stessa non m’aveggio, Che, quante hebber mai gioe, e quante havranno, Quante fur Donne mai, quante saranno Co’ miei chiari martir passo e pareggio? (5–8) (Beside myself, why couldn’t I be sure / that with my torment I equal and surpass / all women who’ve been, all those yet to come, / all who have known or ever will know joy?)

She then draws a specific and implicitly triumphant contrast between the loftiness of her love and the lowliness of other women’s: Che l’arder per cagion’ alta e gentile Ogni aspra vita fà dolce e beata Più che gioir per cosa abietta & vile. (9–11) (To burn for a cause so noble and grand / makes a bitter life sweeter, more blessed / than enjoying a thing that’s abject and lowly.)

These poems are not about jealousy in the sense of Varchi’s invidia, fear that another woman will take Collaltino away; rather, Stampa needs the women she invokes in order to show why they should be jealous of her. This is rivalry with a foregone conclusion: Stampa’s control of the discourse means that she will always be the winner. Thus she overcomes the abjection—social, emotional, literary— that she contrasts to the count’s altezza throughout the sequence. From a woman to whom Love says, “Egli è nobile, et bel, tu brutta, et vile” (Rime 150, 10: “He’s

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noble and handsome, you’re ugly and base”) and who acknowledges “vedendo la mia indegnitade, / Devea mirar’ in men gradito loco” (Rime 166, 9: “considering my lowly state, / I should have gazed toward a place less pleasing”), in sonnet 224 she becomes a writer who imagines herself as an equal to Sappho and Corinna (v. 11) and in sonnet 226 she declares to Collaltino that though she is only a woman, she dares to aspire to be a poet, to drink from the fountain of Castalia as he does: “Io Donna, e vil, cui desir’ ugual prende” (v. 5: “I, a lowly woman, [yet] seized by similar desires”).21 But invidia persists. In late poems exchanged among the participants in the Venetian intellectual circles to which Stampa belonged, she envisions female competitors not as poets but as the topic of poets. In sonnet 254, she thanks Leonardo Emo for a poem he has written in praise of her.22 Her apparent gratitude, however, depends on the superiority she claims to other women, both as the subject of the male poet’s praise and as an ambitious poet herself. At first she compliments Emo by comparing herself to a poem that he has written and revised, setting her above other women: Ben posso gir de l’altre donne in cima, Fin dove il Sole à noi nasce, e diparte, Poi ch’io son scritta da le vostre carte, EMO, e polita da la vostra lima; (1–4) (I’ve now outpaced all other women, / attained the place where the sun is born / and where it takes its leave, / now that I’m written / in your pages, Emo, and polished by your file;)

In the next lines, however, she compliments not only Emo but herself. Comparing him to Homer, who drew inspiration from the Castalian spring, she implicitly

21  For a thoughtful analysis of Stampa’s poems on her abjection as lover and poet, see Fiora Bassanese, “Gaspara Stampa’s Poetics of Negativity,” Italica 61, 4 (Winter, 1984): 335–46. She writes, “Self-deprecation abounds in Stampa’s Canzoniere . . . The humility of the artist is correlative to that of the lover. Both result in self-annulment” (p. 342). But she argues (as I do) that this humility is contradicted by Stampa’s actual practice as lover and poet. See also Zancan, Il doppio itinerario, p. 172: Stampa departs from the model of the chaste beloved by becoming the lover herself, acknowledging her “impiety” in a process that moves from abjection to a demonstration of the exemplary “virtù” of a lover faithful to love. 22  Leonardo Emo was the grandson of a distinguished political figure in Venice, also named Leonardo Emo (1472–1540). The younger man, Leonardo di Alvise Emo, commissioned a villa from Andrea Palladio, built in 1559 and still standing in Fanzolo in the Veneto. Emo wrote a commendatory sonnet published at the end of Stampa’s Rime, praising her “sacro ingegno” (blessed genius) and claiming that her “valor” (high worth) has made him fall in love with her. Her sonnet 253 is written as a response to his poem, using the same rhymes. See Tylus, The Complete Poems, pp. 358–9.

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makes herself Achilles, in a gender-switching fiction that leaves other women in the dust: Il chiaro Achille hebbe, la spoglia opima, D’honor fra gli altri gran figli di Marte, Non perche fusse tale egli in gran parte, Ma perche Omero lui alza, e sublima. (5–8) (Famed Achilles won the largest spoils / of honor of all Mars’s greatest sons— not just / for what he was but because Homer / raises him up and renders him sublime.)

As in other sonnets invoking women in order to dismiss them (no mention of Sappho or Corinna here!) she claims that overwhelming love incites her, and her alone, to compose verse, though this male poet so far is ahead of her in doing so: In me è sol’ Amor, e disianza Di ber de l’ acque del Castalio fiume, Ove voi spesso, & io ancor non fui. (9–11) (In me dwells love alone, and thirst to drink / the waters of Castalia’s font, a place / you often dwell and where I’ve not yet been.)

But she concludes the poem by upending the poet/subject relationship with which she opens. If Emo in the first quatrain had the power to create her by writing in her praise, she now fantasizes the power, granted her by a male god more powerful than any mortal poet, to create her version of him: Se questo honesto mio disir s’avanza, Se un dì m’infonde Apollo del suo nume, Andrò lodando queste rive, e vui. (12–14) (But if my honest wish is granted first, / and one day Apollo bathes me in his grace, / I’ll go praising these very shores, and you.)

This is, of course, what she has done for Collaltino, praising him throughout her Rime. But as a lover she outdoes her unfaithful count, much as she imagines outdoing Emo as a poet. In the penultimate poem of the Rime, madrigal 309, Stampa repeats her language of triumph, phoenix-like, over other women and over the worst that love can deal out: Dal mio vivace foco Nasce un’effetto raro, Ch non ha forse in altra Donna paro. Che quando allenta un poco, Egli par, che m’incresca, Sì chiaro è chi l’accende, e dolce l’esca. (1–6)

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry (From my living flame, / something wonderful is born / that may have no equal in another woman: // for when it dies down / I feel that it grows, / so great is he who lights it and so sweet the bait.)

Stampa here, and throughout her sequence, invokes plural audiences: Collaltino, yes, but also many women—those able to take him away from her, those who sympathize with her, those who need her sympathetic advice, those she needs as witnesses to her extraordinary powers as lover and as poet. Jealousy, as Varchi says, may always include an obsession with real or imagined rivals, but in the Rime, Stampa assembles a wider cast of characters—even Jealousy herself. These donne frame Collaltino as objects of the poet’s anxious suspicion, but they also provide her with a frame of reference beyond the confines of jealous isolation. I will conclude with a question. Considering, as I have, how Stampa reverses the worldly power of a socially superior woman—a Giulia Torelli, for example— by constructing her own power as a model of passion that no other woman can match, is it justifiable to say that jealous vendetta is the underlying structure of the Rime? That the poet needs other women, yes, but often as witnesses to her grandeur, which she affirms by invoking “l’altra” and “l’altre” as her inferiors in the experience of love? This is not a pretty picture, though it does account for a certain brooding coherence in the sequence. Or does Stampa by means of her expansive dramatis personae attain something more than revenge, perhaps even the cure for jealousy of which Varchi was so skeptical? Exposing the count’s infidelity, refusing the humiliation of lost love by celebrating her ability to endure its worst, placing herself among women she advises as well as rivals she dreads, and writing more than three hundred poems now famous among men and women alike: these may have been the best ways to send jealousy back to hell.

Chapter 6

Le amiche carte: Gaspara Stampa and Mirtilla Angela Capodivacca, Yale University

Celeste è questa corrispondenza d’amorosi sensi, celeste dote è negli umani; e spesso per lei si vive con l’amico estinto e l’estinto con noi [ … ] (Celestial is this Correspondence of loving sentiments It is a celestial gift to humanity; and often Through it we live with the deceased friend And the deceased lives in us.)1 —Foscolo, Dei sepolcri, vv. 29–33

In his 1838 publication of the Anello di sette gemme o Venezia e la sua storia,2 Luigi Carrer (1801–1850) included a collection of the so-called real letters written by Gaspara Stampa to her friend Mirtilla. To lend archival authority to his “falso letterario” (“literary forgery”), Carrer pretended to have transcribed the epistolary exchange from an original manuscript of Stampa’s letters, and made note of when the reputed folios were illegible or corrupted. In 1851, Gaspara’s letters to Mirtilla were reprinted as a stand-alone piece under the title Amore Infelice di Gaspara Stampa and accepted as an authentic document until the turn of the century, when, as Fiora Bassanese has remarked, it “gained wide readership throughout Italy, for it perfectly captured the tastes of the romantic public.”3 In this chapter, I argue that Luigi Carrer’s fascination with the fictive exchange between the two women poets—Gaspara and Mirtilla—was not his own romantic invention, but was at least shared by the eighteenth-century compiler of Stampa’s oeuvre, Luisa Bergalli (1703–1779). Bergalli’s first inclusion in Stampa’s Rime of a sonnet attributed to Mirtilla—but actually written by Giusto De Conti (c.1390– 1449)—contributed to the creation of this myth by presenting a correspondence between two women, staged as a poetic exchange. Carrer’s forgery is in fact based  My translation.  Luigi Carrer, Anello di sette gemme o Venezia e la sua storia (Venice: Il Gondoliere,

1 2

1838).

 Fiora Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p. 25.

3

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on a previous forgery, when Ludovico Domenichi (1515–1564) first attributed Giusto de Conti’s poem to the poetess Hyppolita Mirtilla, and then Bergalli subsequently included the poem in her 1738 edition of Stampa’s Rime, identifying the author of the funeral eulogy with the same Mirtilla to whom Stampa wrote her capitolo “Non aspettò giamai focoso amante” (Rime 291). The correspondence between Gaspara and Mirtilla in Stampa’s modern editions is thus as much of a falso as Carrer’s letters, which was partly engineered a century earlier by Luisa Bergalli to further her claims to a genealogy of female poets. Yet, the forgery is also a commentary and critical response to Stampa’s poetry, which is worth examining as it sheds light on part of the complex web of literary references (e.g., Tebaldeo, Conti, Michelangelo) and rhetorical intricacies of Stampa’s poem that are constitutive of its later critical reception. There is a sense in which it is Stampa’s own poem that demands its future forgeries by summoning Mirtilla, both the friend and the glory of love poetry. At the end of this essay, I would like to propose that Isabella Andreini’s Mirtilla (1588) might indeed have provided an early configuration of the Stampa-Mirtilla friendship that we later encounter in Bergalli and Carrer. Carrer’s choice of the epistolary style for his falso can be traced back to Stampa’s own capitolo to Mirtilla “Non aspettò giamai focoso amante” (Rime 291), which is not only written in the form of a letter, but also celebrates the ongoing “amiche carte” (“friendly exchanges”), between Gaspara and Mirtilla. Gaspara’s poem to Mirtilla, as simple and as intricate as the elegies of Catullus, is filled with complex symbolisms, multilayered references, and a sublimity of sound: Non aspettò giamai focoso amante, La disiata, e la bramata vista, Di quel, per cui versò lagrime tante, Non aspettò giamai anima trista, E distinata nel profondo Abisso, La faccia del Signor di gloria mista, Non aspettò giamai servo, ch’ affisso Fosse à dura, & acerba servitute, À la sua libertà ‘l termine prefisso. Non disiò giamai la giovintute Cara e gioiosa, un’huom già carco d’anni, In cui tutte le forze son perdute. Non disiò giamai d’uscir d’affanni Un, cui fortuna aversa afflige e preme, Scarco, e gravato d’infiniti danni. Non aspettò giamai un’huom, che teme Vicin’ à morte, la sua sanitate, Di cui era già giunto à l’hore estreme.

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Non aspettò giamai le luci amate Di dilettoso, caro, e dolce figlio, Benigna madre e carca di pietate, Non aspettò giamai di gran periglio Sì disiosa uscir nave, à cui l’onde E nemica tempesta dier di piglio. Quant’io le carte tue care, e gioconde, (Rime 291, 1–25) (An ardent lover never so waited / longed-for the face of his beloved, / for whom he poured forth so many tears; // a doomed soul destined for / the deepest abyss never so awaited / the face of God, full of glory; // a servant pledged to harsh and bitter / service never so looked forward / to his freedom, his term complete; // a man already bowed down with age / never so desired, his strength depleted, / the belated return of youth; // a man pressed upon, afflicted / by bitter misfortunes never so / hoped for an end of his trials; // a man fearing he was close to death, / having reached his final hour, never so / desire a return to health; // a loving mother full of compassion / never so awaited the beloved eyes /of her sweet delightful son; // a ship never so longed to escape / the great dangers of sea whose waves / and harmful storms threatened the worst– // as much as I desire your letters.)4

As we can see from the opening tercets, the poem is built around a series of contrasting analogies that hyperbolically stage how Gaspara’s desire for correspondence with her friend Mirtilla far exceeds any other wish on Gaspara’s part. In this sense, Carrer’s invention of a correspondence between Gaspara and Mirtilla is a fulfillment of the wish expressed in the letter/poem. The epistolary character of Stampa’s capitolo is highlighted by the repetition of the refrain “Non aspettò giamai” (“never so waited”) and the alternate “non disiò giamai” (“never so desired”). The combination of “non aspettò giamai” with a negative catalogue of desires, recalls the famous expression “non aspettò giamai con tal desio” (“never so waited with such a desire”) which was an epistolary trope at the time. Aretino, for instance, uses the expression as the envoi in one of his letters, inserting a generic “non aspettò giamai con tal desio” before signing off.5 Moreover, in the sonnet “S’io avessi l’ingegno del Burchiello,” Francesco Berni asks to be graced by the same genius that inspired Tebaldeo when he composed the  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). All translations from other texts are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 5  Aretino writes a letter (1) to the Monsignor of Prelormo (Venice, July 21, 1531), ending with “a Vostra Signoria, la qual supplico a star sana, un ‘non aspetto giamai con tal desio’” (“to your Highness, whom I pray will keep his health, I send a ‘never so longed for’”; translation mine); Il primo libro delle lettere. Scrittori d’Italia, vol. 1, ed. Fausto Nicolini (Bari: Laterza, 1913), p. 34. 4

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sonnet “Non aspettò giamai con tal desio” (Berni, xvi–xviii).6 Berni thus clarifies the origin of the commonplace by referencing the opening of poem 274 of the Rime of the well-known poet Antonio Tebaldeo (1463–1537).7 Tebaldeo writes: Non expectò giamai cum tal desio servo la libertà, né nave porto, cum quale ho il tuo ritorno expectato io (1–3) (A servant has never waited so longingly / for freedom, nor a ship for its port, / as longingly as I waited for your return.)

Stampa seems to evoke “Non expectò giamai cum tal desio” by playing directly upon the possible variations of Tebaldeo’s theme and employing his negative comparisons to both the desire of the servant waiting for freedom and to that of the ship. Regarding the latter, which closes the eight tercets, she couples Tebaldeo’s “waiting” and “yearning” in the line “non aspettò giamai … Sì disiosa … nave,” (vv. 22–3: “a ship never so longed to escape”). Stampa makes it clear, though, that the longing she feels for her friend’s words, “le carte tue care e gioconde” (v. 25), far exceeds Tebaldeo’s, as she augments his two analogies with additional comparisons to the lover, the sinner, the old, the misfortunate, the man living on borrowed time, and the mother. The human passions—from fear to amorous and familial love— fail to express how much Stampa desires the epistolary exchange with Mirtilla. By casting her poem through Tebaldeo’s subtext, Stampa’s choice of the epistolary style attempts to bridge the physical distance between the two friends. As Adriana Chemello notes, “If the letter is the medium that fills the void of physical absence, the act of writing itself … is a present, a gift, an unconditional gesture that can make love flower, a gift that can produce the presence of a soul suspended between two poles of communication.”8 By choosing Tebaldeo’s intertext, Stampa’s epistolary poem sublimates the pain of the absence of her friend. This becomes clearer when we consider how the series of negative comparison in the same poem (Rime 291) climax into an apostrophe to the friend, which is central to Stampa’s capitolo: 6  Francesco Berni and Curzio Troiano Navò & fratelli, Sonetti (Venice: Per Curtio Navò, et fratelli, al Lion, 1540). 7  While Tebaldeo is not particularly known today, his fame as a poet in the sixteenth century was such that Folengo put him in the canon of Lombard writers, albeit most likely ironically, alongside Boiardo and Ariosto. In the Caos Limerno exclaims: “Che lombarduzzo? Come se un conte di Scandiano, un Ludovico Ariosto, un Tebaldeo, … non fussero in Lombardia nasciuti!” (Matotta, dialogo primo; What do you mean by little Lombard? As though as a Boiardo, an Ariosto, a Tebaldeo were not born in Lombardy!). Teofilo Folengo, Opere Italiane. Scrittori d’Italia, vol. I, ed. Umberto Renda (Bari: Laterza, 1911), p. 269. 8  Adriana Chemello, “Tra ‘pena’ e ‘penna’: la storia singolare della ‘fidelissima Anassilla,’” L’una et l’altra chiave: Figure e momenti del petrarchismo femminile europeo, ed. Tatiana Crivelli, Giovanni Nicoli and Mara Santi (Rome: Salerno, 2005), p. 77.

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MIRTILLA mia, MIRTILLA, à le cui voglie Ogni mia voglia, ogni disir risponde MIRTILLA mia, con laqual mi si toglie Ogni mia gioia, & ogni mio diletto, Restando preda di perpetue doglie. (26–30) (dear and joyful, my Mirtilla, to whose wishes / every wish of mine, every desire answers: / my Mirtilla, who when she’s gone / steals from all joy and delight / and makes me prey to perpetual sorrow.)

The enjambment between “cui voglie” (“whose wishes”) and “ogni mia voglia” (“every wish of mine”) unites Gaspara and Mirtilla’s wills in perfect correspondence. The poetic apostrophe (Mirtilla), in turn, gives name to the desire expressed earlier in the poem through negation in the lengthy dissimilitude “non aspettò giamai.” The climatic invocation of the friend’s name embodies what Heidegger would term a “calling” whereby, “Calling brings closer what it calls.”9 In this sense, much like the choice of the epistolary genre, the repetition of the name Mirtilla makes the address in the vocative a metaphoric act of summoning. To use Lacan’s words, we could say: “In naming it, the created subject causes to emerge a new presence in the world; It introduces presence as such and in so doing hollows out absence as such.”10 Indeed, Stampa’s invocation of the female beloved’s name quite literarily brings the beloved into being. In fact, Mirtilla is not so much a person as the name of the calling that reflects the desire for mutual correspondence between women poets, as I will now argue. During the last two centuries, many scholars have speculated upon the identity of Stampa’s friend Mirtilla. Abdelkader Salza, for instance, thought that the name Mirtilla was so peculiar that it had to be in reference to Ippolita Mirtilla, rather than Marietta Mirtilla. Salza writes: Insofar as Mirtilla is concerned, who was such a good friend of Gaspara, it cannot be Madonna Marietta, because when she died Stampa had hardly begun to write verses; it is certainly instead that Hyppolita Mirtilla, of whom we have some poems in the collections of the Sixteenth Century, among which a mediocre sonnet to Madonna Gasparina.11

While Salza might conceivably be right, there is also a sense in which trying to identify Mirtilla is a bit like attempting to find the real Laura of Petrarch. It is important to note, in fact, that Mirtilla is a common name, from myrtus, the plant  Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper Row, 1975), p. 198. 10  Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, vol. II, ed. JacquesAlain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1978), p. 267; translation mine. 11  Abdelkader Salza, “Madonna Gasparina Stampa secondo nuove indagini.” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 62 (1913): 1–101; p. 61. 9

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sacred to poets and Venus, and likely an academic name, much like Stampa’s Anaxilla. Moreover, Mirtilla is indeed the perfect correspondent to Laura since, according to Ovid’s Amores (I.i.29–30), ancient poets were crowned with the laurel if they wrote epic but with myrtle if they wrote love poems. Petrarch couples the laurel with the myrtle in RVF 7, asking, “Qual vaghezza di lauro, qual di mirto?” (v. 9: “What desire for the laurel is there? or for the myrtle?’).12 Thus, Mirtilla, much like Laura, is also a literary conceit, the “gloria” (“glory”) that Stampa hopes to receive in the first sonnet for the sound of her “amorosi lamenti” (“amorous laments”), as much as the “Colle” (the beloved). One could object, though, that Mirtilla is also a poetess, the one who supposedly wrote a sonnet to commemorate the death of Gaspara; it is precisely in this exchange that much of the fascination resides. In turn, Mirtilla’s funeral eulogy for “Gasparina” has become the basis of the speculations that the poetess Ippolita Mirtilla is likely the Mirtilla to whom Stampa wrote her loving capitolo examined above. This funeral sonnet, however, was not written by Mirtilla as unanimously held—whoever she might be—but rather it was penned by Giusto de Conti; more precisely, the poem attributed to Mirtilla is none other than the fourth poem of La bella mano, a well-received canzoniere written in 1440 where Conti sings of his beloved Isabeta. Conti’s work was published for the first time in Bologna by Scipione Malpigli in 1472 and had a discreet fame in the Cinquecento (cited for example in the Vocabolario della Crusca as a paragon of style). I will give the text by Mirtilla published in Ludovico Domenichi’s anthology of women poets alongside the variations on the original text by Giusto de Conti in brackets to show the extent of the plagiarism:13 O sola qui tra [fra] noi del ciel fenice, Ch’alzata a volo il secol nostro oscura, [Ch’alzata a volo la nostra età sobscura] Et sovra l’ali al ciel passi sicura; Si ch’a vederla a pena homai ne lice. O sola a gli occhi miei vera beatrice, In cui si mostra, quanto sa’ natura: Bellezza immaculata, & vista pura, Da far con picciol cenno ogni huom felice. In Voi si mostra, quel che non comprend[h]e Altro intelletto al mondo, se no ’l mio, [al mondo Altro intelletto] Ch’ Amor tanto alto il leva[leva tanto alto], quanto v’ama.

 English translations are by Robert Durling in Petrarch’s Lyric Poems. The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976). 13  Thanks to the help of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, I was able to compare Stampa’s poem to the first edition of Giusto de Conti: Iusti de Comitibus Romani utriusque iuris interpretis ac poetae clarissimi Libellus foeliciter incipit intitulatus La bella mano (Bologna: Scipionem Malpiglium Bononiensem, 1472). 12

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In voi si mostra, quanto anchor s’accende L’anima gloriosa nel desio[disio], Che per elettione a Dio [adio]la chiama. (O solitary phoenix who came to us / from heaven, darkening our age with her flight / as she winged herself surely back to heaven, / so that now we’re deprived of her sight; // O bearer alone of true blessings to my eyes, / in whom nature shows us all she knows, / rendering beauty immaculate; one glimpse, / the slightest sign from her made a man content. // And what’s seen there can’t be fathomed / by any intelligence in the world, save mine, / for love raises it as high as my love for you. // In you we see how strongly enflamed / is that soul made glorious by desire, / whom God has elected as his own.)

We can see that the variations between Giusto de Conti (in brackets) and the funeral eulogy are mostly orthographic, a matter of spelling preferences, aside for an inversion of two words in the same verse such as in lines 10 and 11, and the use of a synonym whereby in line 2 “il secol nostro oscura” becomes “la nostra età sobscura,” which in both cases can be interpreted as “darkening our age.” The variations are so minimal, in fact, that they do not affect the meaning or English translation. Such closeness between signifiers amounts to plagiarism, but the choice of Conti’s poem gives us also an important account of a way of reading Gaspara Stampa’s poetry. For once, we will see that by choosing this poem, the 1738 compiler, Luisa Bergalli, reads in Stampa’s poetry a Dantean subtext that has long been obfuscated by the reception of Stampa as a Petrarchist poet. Indeed, the funeral elegy provides a very interesting reading of Stampa’s poetry, while providing a reply to Gaspara’s plea to Mirtilla, by creating a correspondence between a community of women poets. As Jane Tylus points out in her introduction to the translation: “Mirtilla’s epistle and the responses of members of the ‘schiera’ of writers whom she addresses in a number of poems create a reassuring community in the midst of the desolate solitude and incommunicability that mark the poet’s relationships with Collaltino and Zen.”14 The compiler’s choice creates a community both through a web of citations present in Stampa’s texts and through interpolations of poems written about Stampa by other authors. For example, by deciding to attribute the funeral elegy to Mirtilla, the compiler Bergalli seems to pick up on Tebaldeo’s intertext in Stampa’s capitolo, since Tebaldeo probably had envisioned a post-mortem reply to his poem. In “Non expectò giamai cum tal desio,” Tebaldeo requests the beloved’s final farewell: E se per caso mai tu giongi al loco ove io serò sepulta in tetra fossa, non me negare almen (questo fia poco): “Requïescite in pace, infelice ossa” 14  See Jane Tylus’s introductory essay, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, p. 20.

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry (And if by chance you come upon the place / Where my body lays buried in a gloomy grave, / Please do not deny me, (it isn’t much), a: / “Rest in peace, unfortunate bones.”)

Moreover, the 1738 compiler is answering the explicit request made by Stampa in poem 86 of her Rime to be commemorated by a woman who will be inspired by her work after her death: Piangete Donne, e poi che la mia morte Non move il Signor mio crudo e lontano, Voi, che sete di cor dolce & humano, Aprite di pietade almen le porte. Piangete meco la mia acerba sorte, Chiamando Amor,’ il ciel empio inhumano, E lei, che mi ferì, spietata mano, Che mi vegga morir’e lo comporte. E poi ch’io sarò cenere e favilla, Dica alcuna di voi mesta e pietosa, Sentita del mio foco una scintilla, Sotto quest’aspra pietra giace ascosa L’infelice e fidissima Anassilla, Raro essempio di fede alta amorosa. (Ladies, weep, and since my death moves not my / lord who’s cruel and far away, then you, / who possess hearts that are sweet and humane, / at least out of pity open your gates. // Weep with me my bitter fate, / call heaven evil and Love inhuman, / and the hand that wounded me, dispassionate, / as he sees me die and does not stop it. // And since I’ll soon be dust and ashes, / may one of you inspired by sparks from my flame / say with a voice sad and compassionate: // “Under this rough stone lies hidden / the loyal, most unhappy Anassilla, / rare example of great and amorous faith.”)

By adding Giusto de Conti’s poem to Stampa’s oeuvre, the 1738 compiler thus fulfills Gaspara’s wish in this sonnet by having a woman poet, Mirtilla, who is so inspired by Gaspara’s works that she composes a funeral elegy for her. It is not just the existence of the plagiarized poem, however, but the content as well that make this falso so interesting. In fact, the rhyme between “fenice” and “Beatrice” in Mirtilla’s commemorative sonnet to Gaspara is particularly clever in offering a reading of Stampa’s poetic influences: the rhyme intertwines Petrarch and Dante, as well as the two traditions of Italian vernacular that were by then very much at odds with each other, while reminding the reader of the resurrection implicit in mutual love. The beloved as a phoenix, in fact, is a conceit in Renaissance love poetry that may be traced back to Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, where Petrarch calls Laura a phoenix five times (RVF 135, 185, 210,

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321, 323), playing on the associations of the phoenix with the renewed pangs of the lover, who “et vive poi con la fenice a prova” (RVF 135, 15: “[my desire] lives on, vying with the phoenix”).15 Stampa uses this conceit in Rime 207, 5–8: Qual ne le più felici e calde arene, Nel nido acceso sol di vario odore D’una Fenice estinta esce poi fore Un verme, che Fenice altra diviene. (Among those warm and happy desert sands, / in a nest that burns from perfume alone, / a worm crawls forth from a dead phoenix / and becomes another phoenix in time.)

In this poem, as Mary B. Moore notes: “The presence of the phoenix, as opposed to other symbols of rebirth and other images of fire, is no accident, though. It implies another echo and transformation of Petrarch’s poetics.”16 By the Cinquecento, the fenice becomes a common topos of love poetry. Michelangelo twice uses the image of the phoenix’s love pangs in his poems to Cavalieri to indicate the death and rebirth occurring in mutual love. Michelangelo also used the phoenix to describe the rebirth of youthful love in his heart upon the meeting with Cavalieri: Né l’unica fenice sé riprende se non prim’arsa; ond’io, s’ardendo moro, spero più chiar resurger tra coloro che morte accresce e ’l tempo non offende. (62, 5–8) (Nay, nor the unmatched phoenix lives anew, / Unless she burn: if then I am distraught / By fire, I may to better life be brought / Like those whom death restores nor years undo.)17

 The story of the phoenix is often interpreted as an allegory of the death and resurrection of Christ. The phoenix also symbolized both the resurrection, and the fecund virginity of Mary, since the mythical creature was supposed to have arisen asexually from its own ashes on the funeral pyre in order to begin life anew. Beyond the Marian overtones, however, the symbol took on a range of other meanings during the sixteenth century. On the image of the “fenice” in Gaspara Stampa, see Mary B. Moore’s chapter, “Body of Light, Body of Matter: Self-Reference as Self-Modeling in Gaspara Stampa” in her book Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000), pp. 58–93. 16  Moore, Desiring Voices, p. 88. 17  Rime di Michelangelo, ed. Matteo Residori (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1998). The Sonnets of Michelangelo Buonarotti, now for the first time translated into rhymed English, trans. John Addington Symonds (London & New York: Smith, Elder, & Co., C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904), p. 66. 15

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Most interestingly in Michelangelo’s sonnet 61 the phoenix is not the self, but instead the beloved, who is described as the “alma fenice” in the opening quatrain: S’i’ avessi creduto al primo sguardo di quest’alma fenice al caldo sole rinnovarmi per foco, come suole nell’ultima vecchiezza, ond’io tutt’ardo (1–4) (Had I but earlier known that from the eyes / Of that bright soul that fires me like the sun, / I might have drawn strength my race to run, / Burning as burns the phoenix ere it dies.)18

Like Michelangelo, Stampa also uses the conceit of the phoenix and the expression “alma fenice” to indicate the beloved rather than the lover, in her sonnet 224: Alma Fenice, che con l’auree piume, Prendi fra l’altre Donne un sì bel volo; Ch’ Adria, et Italia, e l’uno, e l’altro Polo Tutto di meraviglia empi, e di lume. Bellezza eterna, angelico costume, Petto d’honeste voglie albergo solo, Deh, perche non poss’io, come vi colo, Versar scrivendo d’eloquentia un fiume? Che spererei de la più sacra fronde Così Donna qual sono, ornarmi il crine, E star con Saffo, e con Corinna à lato. Poi che lo stil’ al desir non risponde Fate voi co’ be’ rai luci divine, Chiare voi stesse, e questo mar beato. (Noble phoenix, who with your golden plumes take flight, / soaring beautifully above other women, / filling Adria and Italy / and both the world’s poles with marvel and light, // eternal beauty, bearing like an angel, / breast that harbors only chaste desiring, / ah, why can’t I pour forth a stream / of eloquence as I honor you in writing? // What I would give for that most sacred wreath / to adorn my tresses, woman that I am, / and stand alongside Sappho and Corinna! // But my style doesn’t answer to my desire, / so use your lovely eyes and lights divine, / and make yourself renowned and this sea blessed.)

In this poem, on the one hand, the phoenix is the beloved Venetian fellow poetess who stands alongside the greatest poetesses of the past such as Sappho and Corinna, engendering the female poetic genealogy in which Stampa wishes to  Symonds, The Sonnets of Michelangelo, p. 54

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place herself. On the other hand, in the hands of the compiler Bergalli who adds Mirtilla’s funeral elegy as an integral part of Stampa’s oeuvre, the mentioning of Sappho in connection with the “alma fenice” might seem an allusion to the theme of homoerotic love, whereby Gaspara’s poetry could be seen as initiating a genre of Sapphic verses which will become fashionable in the following two centuries.19 There is definitely a sense in which the rhetorical construction of Stampa’s poem to Mirtilla, as well as the amplification of and variations on the theme of Tebaldeo’s poem, proclaim that this capitolo is much more than a letter; verily, a love poem. For instance, the poem enlists the conventional poetic language of erotic love to express the perfect union and correspondence envisioned between Stampa and Mirtilla. Stampa describes her relationship to Mirtilla in these terms (Rime 291, 55–7): Perch’un sol duol due corpi insieme punge, Si come un solo amor,’ & una fede Et una voluntà due cor congiunge. (For a single sorrow strikes two bodies / just as a single love, one faith, / a single will conjoins two hearts)

These verses are reminiscent of Michelangelo’s poem 89 to Cavalerieri, “Veggio co’ be’ vostr’occhi un dolce lume” (“With your eyes I see a sweet light”) where Michelangelo envisions a similarly perfect correspondence of desire. Michelangelo writes: “Nel voler vostro è sol la voglia mia, i miei pensier nel vostro cor si fanno, nel vostro fiato son le mie parole” (vv. 9–11: “In your will alone is mine, my thoughts are made into your heart, and in your breath my words speak”); a comparable concurrence of feeling is expressed by Stampa’s verses “MIRTILLA mia, MIRTILLA, a le cui voglie / Ogni mia voglia, ogni disir risponde” (vv. 26–7: “my Mirtilla, to whose wishes / every wish of mine, every desire answers”). Stampa is likely to have known Michelangelo’s poems that were disseminated as madrigals to be sung.20 However, Stampa, who was the dedicatee of a lecture by Benedetto Varchi on Giovanni della Casa’s poem,21 most likely knew Michelangelo’s poetry through Varchi who, in 1547, delivered two public lectures quoting six of Michelangelo’s poems in their entirety and giving brief citations from twenty-one sonnets and madrigals.22 The link between Varchi and Stampa 19  See Amanda Powell, “Baroque Flair: Seventeenth-Century European Sapphic Poetry,” Humanist Studies & the Digital Age 1.1 (2011): 151–65. 20  See Janet L. Smarr, “Gaspara Stampa›s Poetry for Performance,» Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 12 (1991): 61–84. 21  See Jane Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, p. 30. 22  Due Lezzioni di M. Benedetto Varchi, nella prima delle quali si dichiara un sonetto di M. Michelagnolo Buonarroti: nella seconda si disputa quale sia piu nobile arte la scultura, o la pittura, con una lettera d’esso Michelagnolo & piu altri eccellentiss. pittori et scultori sopra la quistione sopradetta. (Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1549). http://books. google.it/books?id=Bek9AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false

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deserves more attention than can be given in this essay; for now, let it suffice to remember that Plinio Pietrasanta published Stampa’s verse in 1554 and Benedetto Varchi’s in 1555, and the opening of Stampa’s volume with Varchi’s poems might serve to alert the reader to the connections between Stampa, Varchi, and Michelangelo. In these lectures, Varchi represents Michelangelo as a paragon of Socratic love, both as a practitioner in his life and as a teacher in his poems, explaining that “that our poet knew well this type of art and love is clearly shown, age and honest customs asides, by the fact that all of his poetic works are full with Socratic love and Platonic concepts.”23 Varchi is referring to the Neoplatonic principles espoused in Ficino’s De Amore.24 More precisely, by casting the relationship with the addressee as a perfect correspondence with a same-sex beloved, Michelangelo’s poems to Cavalieri seem to echo Ficino’s theory of amore reciproco (mutual love) from the eighth chapter of Book Two of De Amore.25 In this work, Ficino presents his concept of a “mutual love” between two men. According to Ficino, through the act of loving, the lover is completely absorbed into the beloved and forgets himself, which brings both a kind of death and a kind of resurrection. Ficino writes:

 Varchi, Due lezioni di M. Benedetto Varchi, p. 52: “il poeta nostro intendesse di questa arte e di questo amore, lo mostrano manifestissimamente, oltra l’età e costumi suoi onestissimi, tutti i componimenti di lui pieni d’amore Socratico e di concetti Platonici.” 24  Ficino’s De Amore locates the schema of mutual love as perfect correspondence within an all-male context, declaring the Socratic love of males superior to that of love for females for its intellective purposes. Marc Schachter observes that Ficino’s De Amore is unique in espousing such love in an all-male context, as other commentaries on the Symposium and related Neoplatonic concepts tend not to draw this distinction (“Louis Le Roy’s Sympose de Platon and Three Other Renaissance Adaptations of Platonic Eros,” Renaissance Quarterly 59: 406–39; p. 415). On Ficino’s treatment of Socratic love, see Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Under the Mantle of Love: The Mystical Eroticisms of Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno,” Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Leiden, Tokyo, and Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 175–208 and Schachter, “Louis Le Roy’s Sympose de Platon.” On related discussions of love in the Symposium itself, see Daniel Boyarin, “What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Platonic love,” Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline, ed. Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham UP, 2006), pp. 3–22. 25  Marsilio Ficino, Sopra lo amore ovvero convivio di Platone, ed. Giuseppe Rensi (Lanciano: R. Carabba, 1914), pp. 37–41. Michelangelo would have known of the De Amore through his education as a youth and through manuscripts circulating in Florence since 1469. On the importance of Ficino’s De Amore in Michelangelo’s poetry, see especially Pier Luigi De Vecchi, “Studi sulla poesia di Michelangelo I,” Il Giornale storico 140 (1963): 30–66 and Raymond Carlson, “‘Eccellentissimo poeta et amatore divinissimo’: Benedetto Varchi’s Formulation of Michelangelo’s Poetic Persona at the Florentine Academy,” MPhil thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. 23

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The lover takes possession of himself through another, and the farther each of the lovers is from himself, the nearer he is to the other, and though he is dead in himself, he comes to life again in the other. In fact, there is only one death in mutual love, but there are two resurrections, for a lover dies within himself the moment he forgets about himself, but he returns to life immediately in his loved one as soon as the loved one embraces him in loving contemplation. He is resurrected immediately once more when he finally recognizes himself in his beloved and no longer doubts that he is loved. O, happy death, which is followed by two lives. O wondrous exchange in which each gives himself up for the other, and has the other, yet does not cease to have himself.26

For Ficino, in a relationship of mutual love each of the lovers has the same experience of surrendering themselves to the other, whereby there is a type of exchange in which each lives only in the other. This exchange brings about a death of the self and a resurrection into the beloved.27 As a result, the soul of the lover no longer operates within itself but resides in the beloved, which marks both a death and a resurrection. The image that Michelangelo, and, mutata mutandis Stampa, employ to indicate the cycle of rebirth brought about by perfectly corresponding love between same-sex lovers, is that of the phoenix. By adding the forged poem by Mirtilla, which calls Stampa a “fenice,” Bergalli seems to subtly underline that the mention of Sappho might be read through the lens of Gaspara’s desire for Mirtilla. The trope of Stampa as Sappho was deployed most heavily in the 1738 edition (the edition of Luisa Bergalli).28 Among the laudatory poems written by “modern” authors, there is a poem by Antonio Rambaldo (the supposed artifex of the book that opens with a poem by Bergalli to him: “Tu che onori ogni scienza ed arte,  Ficino, Sopra lo amore, vol. II, viii, p. 51: “Amator per alium se complectitur; et uterque amantium longior a se ipso, fit propinquior alteri, ac in se mortuus in alio reviviscit. Una vero duntaxat in amore mutuo mors est, reviviscentia duplex. Moritur enim qui amat, in se ipso semel cum se negligit. Reviviscit in amato statim cum amatus eum ardenti cogitatione complectitur. Reviviscit iterum, cum in amato se denique recognoscit, et amatum se esse non dubitat. O felicem mortem, quam duae vitae sequuntur. O mirum commercium, quo quis se ipsum tradit pro alio, alium habet nec habere se desinit.” Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, trans. Sears Raynold James (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1944), p. 145. 27  James, Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary, p. 38. 28  On the figure of Sappho in Stampa see Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, p. 30. See also Madeleine de Scudéry, The Story of Sappho, ed. and trans. Karen Newman, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003); and Harriette Andreadis, Sappho in Early Modern England: Female SameSex Literary Erotics, 1550–1714 (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001). In Love’s Remedies: Recantation and Renaissance Lyric Poetry (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses [Bucknell UP], 1995) Patricia Phillippy has demonstrated that the letters of Ovid’s Heroides—particularly those “written” by Sappho and Dido—shaped Stampa’s conception of the voice of the abandoned woman. 26

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Rambaldo”) at the end of the book, that disavows the comparison between Sappho and Gaspara while asserting it (Rime 211, 225). As Ann Rosalind Jones notes, one of Stampa’s great achievements is fashioning a public that goes beyond the count.29 Bergalli creates such a community both around Stampa and through time by balancing the opening laudatory poems for Stampa discursively imagined as Sappho by her contemporaries (Varchi and Stufa), to a final section of modern poems.30 It cannot be overstressed, however, that in Stampa’s poem to the “alma felice” (Rime 224), what seems to be most at stake in citing Sappho is represented not so much as the search for love between women as the desire to create a female genealogy, however interconnected the two projects might be. What better testament of mutual love, then, could be made by Bergalli than calling Stampa herself such a “fenice” by including the funeral elegy written by a fellow poetess, thus granting Gaspara a similar position in the poetesses canon? Indeed, the expression of the desire for a female genealogy is particularly important, as it seems to condition the very choice of attribution to the funeral elegy to the friend Mirtilla, and further identifies Mirtilla as the contemporary poet Ippolita Mirtilla. By committing the forgery, Bergalli further underlines the importance to Stampa’s oeuvre of the poem dedicated to the “alma fenice” and interprets the desire in Stampa’s poem as desire for female correspondence, for a poetic exchange with a woman poet. Interestingly, while the false attribution of this poem belongs to the sixteenth century, the one who seems responsible for the inclusion of the funeral eulogy in Stampa’s own Rime seems to be Luisa Bergalli, a Venetian poetess herself,31 in her new edition of the Rime in 1738. Jane Tylus writes: “The following poem by Ippolita Mirtilla, written upon Stampa’s death first appeared in the Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime, et virtuosissime donne, raccolte per M. Lodovico Domenichi, published in Lucca by Vincenzo Busdragho in 1559 … . It is published in the front matter of the 1738 edition, as ‘Rime di poeti antichi. In lode di Gaspara Stampa,’ and in the ‘Rime di diversi’ of the 1913 edition.”32 The funeral eulogy appears for the first time compiled with Stampa’s poems in Bergalli’s edition, and there is a sense then in which Bergalli anticipates Carrer, in trying to envision a relationship 29  Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540– 1620 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), p. 137. 30  See Jane Tylus’s chapter in this volume. 31  Luisa Bergalli was a pupil of Apostolo Zeno and Rosalba Carriera: From her first work, Agide (1725), her main interest was the theatre. On Bergalli see Stuart Curran, “Recollecting the Renaissance: Luisa Bergalli’s Componimenti poetici (1726),” Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France and Italy, ed. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005), pp. 263– 86; and Adriana Chemello, “Le ricerche erudite di Luisa Bergalli,” Geografie e genealogie letterarie: erudite, croniste, narratrici, épistolières, utopiste tra Settecento e Ottocento, ed. Adriana Chemello and Luisa Ricaldone (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2000), pp. 69–88. 32  Tylus, “Appendix B. Poems to Stampa from Poets She Addresses in the Rime,” The Complete Poems, p. 357.

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between friends, Gaspara and Mirtilla, in which the two poetesses exchanged “amiche carte.” By looking at Luisa Bergalli’s earlier 1726 anthology Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo (Verses of the Most Illustrious Women Poets of Every Century) we note the development of Bergalli’s long-standing interest in the friendship between Gaspara and Mirtilla. In this anthology, Bergalli juxtaposes the poems by Gaspara Stampa33 with those penned by Ippolita Mirtilla34 enacting the friendly exchange. She further engages Stampa in a conversation with 113 other female poets, where she has a preeminent position outnumbering the other in the selection of poems (with 35). Bergalli does not limit herself to creating an imaginary community for Stampa, but attempts to provide a “real” friend to her. In the “tavola delle rimatrici” (“the index of women-poets”) at the end of the book, Bergalli announces her intent to find Stampa’s friend by denying that Mirtilla was a fictive persona.35 Bergalli does not adduce any reason whereby she would be justified in going against the common opinion that Mirtilla was a fictive name, but asserts both Mirtilla’s existence as well as her relationship to Stampa. One reason for Bergalli’s attribution might be found, though, in the meaning of the poem that Bergalli choses to include in Stampa’s work. By including Giusto De Conti’s poem (the source of Mirtilla’s elegy) in her book on Gaspara Stampa, Bergalli is a bit of a Pierre Menard antelitteram. Like Jorge Luis Borges’s imaginary author who writes a fragmentary Quixote that is line-for-line identical to the original, Bergalli’s choice of Mirtilla’s funeral eulogy is to be considered “much richer in allusions” than Giusto De Conti’s original work insofar as it must be studied as a posthumous reply to Stampa’s poetry. In this context, for instance, the phoenix does not allude only to Petrarch’s and Michelangelo’s use of the image, but it is a clear reference to Stampa’s poem to the “Alma fenice” (Rime 224) picking up on Stampa’s desire for a female genealogy; the same desire behind Bergalli’s own work as stated in the dedicatory letter to cardinal Pietro Ottoboni of her anthology of women poets where she places Mirtilla. Bergalli writes: I don’t believe that you would disdain to look at this poem only because it is the product of female genius. Your erudition and your sublime intellect makes you far from any possible prejudice that we Women do not have the talent in the beautiful arts to distinguish and make a name for ourselves. You will certainly find in these poems such style, concepts and ideas capable to occupy your mind

 Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo‬oche contiene le rimatrici antiche fino all’anno 1575‬, vol. I, ed. Luisa Bergalli (Venice: Antonio Mora, 1726), pp. 77–100. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ 34  Bergalli, Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici, vol. I, pp. 100–103. 35  Bergalli, Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici, vol. I, p. 262: “Ippolita Mirtilla: Many believe it to be a nom de plume; she was a dear friend to Gaspara Stampa, and she flowered in her time, that is, in 1548. She has poems in this anthology.” 33

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occupied by such ministry, no less as if you were reading anthologies written by the men who so honor our Italian poetic tradition.36

The captatio benevolentia is also a bit of a threat: by stressing “Noi Donne,” (“we Women”) Bergalli places herself into the feminine Italian tradition she is reclaiming. A very interesting statement on the relationship between Stampa and Bergalli is provided by the poem supposedly attributed to Bergalli’s coeditor Rambaldo di Collalto (maybe Bergalli herself?) at the end of the laudatory poems written by contemporaries to honor Stampa, which are present in the 1738 edition of her Rime. The sonnet imagines a fictitious dialogue between Rambaldo and Fama (Fame) where he urges Fame to go find Stampa to tell her about the new edition they were preparing: Rapide movi per gli Elisi campi, O Fama, l’ale, ove altro Sole avvampa; E vestigio mortale il suol non stampa; Ma notte o mostri non temer, né inciampi. Là fra le vaghe apriche piagge, e gli ampi Giardini scorgerai l’inclita STAMPA, Non far che al guardo ti si celi o scampi. Baciale umil la rilucente gonna; E dille: su nel mondo si prepara Nuova gloria al tuo nome in nuova guise. Se ti risponderà: Come? Altra donna, Dirai, ti fa la su famosa e chiara; Ma chi sia questa? E tu: Sarà LUISA.37 (Hurry, move your wings across the Elysian fields, / Oh Fame, where another sun is burning; / And no mortal image imprints [stampa] the soil. / Do not fear the night and the monsters, and do not stumble. / There, among the beautiful and luminous beaches and vast / Gardens you will notice the illustrious STAMPA / Do not let her hide and escape you gaze, / But humbly kiss her radiant skirt / And tell her: up in the world new glory / Is being prepared for your name in new ways. / If she were to ask you “How,” you will reply / “Another woman is making you famous and recognized” / To her “Who is she?,” you’ll answer “LUISA.”)

Stampa and Luisa are the only two names that appear in the poem: Stampa with an equivocal rhyme at the end of the third and sixth lines, and Luisa at the end of the sonnet. Fame unites the two women: as Luisa restores Stampa’s fame by editing  Bergalli, Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici, vol. I, p. 3.  Gaspara Stampa, Rime di Gaspara Stampa, con alcune altre di Collaltino, e di

36 37

Vinciguerra, Conti di Collalto: e di Baldassare Stampa. Giuntovi diversi componimenti di varj autori in lodi della medesima, ed. Luisa Bergalli and Rambaldo di Collalto (Venice: Francesco Piacentini, 1738), p. 233.

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the volume, it is through the “stampa” (“the print”) of the volume that Bergalli’s name appears, creating the link between the two women poets. As we have seen, the senhal employed for such fame is “Mirtilla.” The same wish to create a female genealogy of poets in which to place herself as their female editor is unveiled in the introduction to the volume of women poets where Bergalli states that she composed the work because of a two-pronged desire: I was taken by the desire of wanting to honor the hard work undertaken: two reasons for indulging myself in this: one because then I open the road in order to restitute Glory and honor to the lesser known, the other because I hope myself to buy me some compassion.38

It is this desire that seems to prompt Bergalli’s inclusion of Mirtilla’s poem to Gaspara, thus legitimizing the friendly exchange between two women poets. In this sense, we can understand the very identity of the woman poet, Mirtilla, not as a fictive persona but as the naming of such desire. This becomes clearer if we consider the concept of relational identity proposed by Adriana Cavarero in Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood.39 Cavarero follows Hannah Arendt in locating our own identity as “narratability.” Hanna Arendt writes that when seated incognito at the court of the Phoenician and, upon hearing his story told by the blind rhapsod, Ulysses weeps. Cavarero interprets Ulysses as moved to tears not because the events were painful, but that “when he had lived them directly he had not understood their meaning. … before hearing his story, Ulysses did not know who he was: the story of the rhapsod, the story told by an ‘other,’ finally revealed his own identity.”40 The exchange between Gaspara and Mirtilla enacts that kind of identity that Adriana Cavarero has proposed, not as an innate quality or inner self that we are able to master and express, but the outcome of a relational practice among women, something given to us from another, in the form of a poem. In the end, we really do not have even one poem that testifies that Mirtilla, whoever she might be, ever replied to Stampa’s epistolary capitolo, as the relationship that Carrer envisions was as much a falso as the one crafted by Luisa Bergalli. Nevertheless, there is something even more fascinating, in a sense, when considering Stampa’s appeal to Mirtilla through the lens of Tebaldo’s poem as an unsent letter. As Janet Malcolm writes in her book The Silent Woman: By saving the letter, we are in some sense “sending” it after all. We are not relinquishing our idea or dismissing it as foolish or unworthy (as we do when we tear up a letter); on the contrary, we are giving it an extra vote of confidence. We are, in effect, saying that our idea is too precious to be entrusted to the gaze

 Bergalli, Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici, vol. I, p. 5.  Adriana Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. and intro.

38 39

Paul A. Kottman (London: Routledge, 2000). 40  Cavarero, Relating Narratives, p. 18

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of the actual addressee, who may not grasp its worth, so we ‘send’ it to his equivalent in fantasy, on whom we can absolutely count for an understanding and appreciative reading.41

One could even affirm that the only letter which fully and effectively arrives at its destination is the unsent letter—its true addressee is not a flesh-and-blood other, but what Lacan would call “the big Other” itself. In this sense, Stampa’s letter did reach its destination, if only by engendering a series of literary plagiarisms. The fiction of the unsent letter is that we are all potential addressees. I would like to propose, for instance, that Stampa might have gotten get a partial reply for her plea to Mirtilla from the Paduan poetess known as the Phoenix of Italian theatre, “O de’ Teatri Italici Fenice,”42 Isabella Andreini (1562–1604). The proximity in both space and time makes it most likely that Andreini knew of Stampa’s work. Stampa’s Mirtilla, whoever she might be, is in fact also the Mirtilla to whom Isabella Andreini addresses her madrigal CXVIII, which plays so much upon Ficino’s idea of exchanging souls through amore reciproco (mutual love). Andreini writes: Se nel tuo dipartire, L’alma che fu già mia Bella Mirtilla, e pia Stata non fosse nel tuo seno amato, M’era forza morire, Felice sfortunato. Io vivo perché son dell’alma privo, E l’alma havendo non sarei più vivo. (If in your leaving, / the soul that once was mine, / Beautiful and pious Mirtilla, / was not to be in your beloved breast, / I would have had to die, / Happy unfortunate that I am. // I live insofar as I have no soul / And with my soul I would not / be any more alive.)43

The lover is resurrected into the beloved almost in a perfect paraphrase of Ficino’s description of mutual love, previously cited. It is important to note, however, that whereas Stampa’s capitolo to Mirtilla thematizes the possibility of a love between fellow women poets, by recasting the relationship in terms of heterosexual love, Andreini exposes the working of male poetic conventions whereby the love poetry

 Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman (London: Picador 1994), p. 172.  Chiabrera Gabriello, Sonetto CLXXI (v. 1601), in Isabella Andreini, Rime

41 42

d’Isabella Andreini comica gelosa intenta detta l’Accesa (Naples: Antonio Bulifon, 1696), p. 213. 43  Isabella Andreini, Rime d’Isabella Andreini padovana (Milan: Girolamo Bordone, 1611).

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serves the purpose of self-fashioning. Andreini assumes the male voice in order to possess Mirtilla, as the poetic glory of love poetry. Indeed, Andreini’s emphasis on being able to interpret many parts, and cross gender boundaries, is staged in the opening sonnet of her Rime, and seems to function as a poetic manifesto which I think is the key to all of Isabella Andreini’s production. She writes, E come ne’ Teatri hor Donna, ed hora Huomo fei rappresentando in vario stile Quanto volle insegnar Natura, ed Arte. Così la stella mia seguendo ancora Di fuggitiva eta’ nel verde Aprile Vergaui con vario stil ben mille carte. (And, as in theaters, in varied style, / I now have played a woman, now a man, / As Nature would instruct and Art as well, / So in green April, following once more / My star of fleeting years, with varied style / I ruled lines for at least a thousand leaves.)44

Crossing gender boundaries through her acting, Isabella tells us, empowered her to cross over also as a writer. Celebrated as one of the first women to play “a man’s role,” Andreini was famous for her interpretation of the title-character Aminta in Tasso’s renowned pastoral. Mirtilla, a rewriting of Tasso’s Aminta, is hailed as the first known pastoral play written by a woman. Whereas in Stampa’s poem Mirtilla is probably as much a person as a senhal that operates with the same function as the name Laura (laurel of fame), in Andreini’s poem to Mirtilla, it also clearly refers to her own text titled Mirtilla. Andreini’s choice of title for her pastoral play, Mirtilla, in turn, along with the staging of female loving friendship in the play seems to point back to Stampa’s capitolo. First of all, formally speaking, as Maria Luisa Doglio has noted, the character of Filli, usually played by Andreini herself, expresses her own torments of love in a language that recalls the model of the “feminine lyric tradition along the line that goes from Veronica Gambara, to Gaspara Stampa to Veronica Franco.”45 Moreover, the friendship between Filli, quite literarily the lover, and the nymph Mirtilla, is cast in the terms of mutual love when Filli promises “D’amar Mirtilla al par di me medesma” (“to love Mirtilla as much as I love myself”). 46 Lastly, Filli, as Julie D. Campbell notes, “participates in Andreini’s subversion of the traditional theatergram, the damsel in distress, and … along with Mirtilla,

44  Selected Poems of Isabella Andreini, trans. James Wyatt Cook (Lantham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2005), p. 31. 45  Introduction to Andreini’s Mirtilla (Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1995), p. 9. 46  Andreini, Mirtilla, p.104 (III, 1813).

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privileges female friendship over unrequited love.”47 In this sense, Andreini’s portrayal of the friendship between Filli and the nymph Mirtilla, both textually and interextually, might be seen as a first anticipation of, and perhaps influence on, Bergalli’s and Carrer’s creation of a loving correspondence between fellow women poets, as well as providing an answer to the moving plea of Stampa’s capitolo. In the end, Stampa’s poem seems to have managed to summon both Mirtilla and the myrtle crown. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous first Duino elegy, for example, Gaspara Stampa is portrayed as the epitome of the romantic myth of the sublime poetry written by an abandoned lover. Rilke asks, Hast du der Gaspara Stampa Den genügend gedacht, dab irgend ein Mädchen, Dem der Geliebte entging, am gesteigerten Beispiel Dieser Liebenden fühlt: dab ich würde wie sie? (Duineser Elegie, I) (Have you memoralized Gaspara Stampa / So fully, that now any woman / Whose beloved has eluded her might feel, thanks to this lover’s / Heightened example “If only I could be like her?”)48

Rilke’s Stampa is deployed as an epigone to Ovid’s heroines such as Sappho in the Heroides to cast the Duino elegies in such tradition. Yet, even here, Stampa’s fame as love poet is inextricably intertwined to her potential to give a voice to another woman, as she herself portrays in her first sonnet, creating a correspondence between poets that bridges both space and time.

47  Julie D. Campbell, “Love’s Victory and La Mirtilla in the Canon of Renaissance Tragicomedy: An Examination of the Influence of Salon and Social Debates,” Women’s Writing 4.1 (1997): 103–25; p. 113. 48  Translation by. Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann in V. Stanley Benfell, “Translating Petrarchan Desire in Vittoria Colonna and Gaspara Stampa,” Translating Desire in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Craig A. Berry and Heather R. Hayton (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 109–31; p. 109.

Chapter 7

Writing as a Pro: Gaspara Stampa and the Men in Her Rime William J. Kennedy, Cornell University

Early in 1553, about a year before she died, Gaspara Stampa saw three of her poems (sonnets 51, 70, and 75) published by Andrea Arrivabene and edited by Girolamo Ruscelli in the sixth volume of the celebrated anthology series launched by Gabriel Giolito eight years earlier.1 Though this volume includes twenty poems by seven other women (her friend Ippolita Mirtilla, whose dialogue with the poet Angela Capodivacca has illuminated above, along with Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, Maria Spinola, Virginia Salvi, Tullia d’Aragona, and Coletta Pasquale), its preponderant authorship (as in the rest of the series) is male.2 As it happens, the latter include sixteen men whom Stampa commemorates by name in the edition of her Rime prepared by her sister Cassandra for posthumous publication in 1554. Together the series of anthologies presents 347 poems attributed to Stampa’s male addressees, with 95 poems by eleven of them appearing in the sixth volume itself.3 These addressees, approached by Stampa in varying degrees of intimacy, play enigmatic roles in her Rime. 1  Arrivabene’s dedicatory letter to Girolamo Artusio is dated December 1, 1552, implying that publication occurred the following spring. For Giolito’s initiative, see JoAnn Della Neva, Unlikely Exemplars (Newark: The University of Delaware Press, 2009), pp. 92–9 and passim; Angela Nuovo and Christian Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del XVI secolo (Geneva: Droz, 2005), pp. 110–15; and Louise George Clubb and William G. Clubb, “Building a Lyric Canon: Gabriel Giolito and the Rival Anthologists,” Italica 68 (1991): 332–44. 2  In addition to these twenty female-authored poems, volume 6 includes a sonnet by a pseudonymous “madonna Diamante D” and it further comprises 608 poems by 103 male authors. Associated with this series is Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime, & virtuosissime donne, edited by Lodovico Domenichi and published at Lucca by Vincenzo Busdragho in 1559, composed of 276 poems authored by fifty-three women. See Deanna Shemek, “Lodovico Domenichi’s Gallery of Women,” Strong Women, Weak History. Early Modern Women Writers and Canons in England, Franca, and Italy, ed. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005), pp. 239–62, and Diana Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007), pp. 205–42. 3  Sixteenth-century editions of the volumes in Giolito’s series, from which I quote in the following pages, are available on-line through ALI RASTA, Antologie della Lirica Italiana: Raccolte a stampa, Università di Pavia, at http://rasta.unipv.it/).

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A paucity of biographical information about Stampa limits us from documenting her connections with these literary personalities, or even from certifying whether she dealt directly with each of them. Their designation does, however, work to certify that Stampa was a professional. I will argue that in the company of male writers named in her Rime—most of them amateur poets at best—Stampa comes to represent a precocious professionalism all her own, disowning their amateur status and reinforcing the seriousness of her career aspirations. Stampa, as I will further argue, accomplishes this feat precisely by sustaining the paucity of biographical information that I mentioned. Instead of verifying details about her personal life, she projects her voice in anonymity as a dramatic persona. This persona—as her sister understood when she assembled the Rime for publication— invites a public readership beyond the coterie of audiences that first received her poems, bestowing upon them an indelible mark of professionalism. A glance at yet another poetic anthology that included one of Stampa’s poems will help to define her professionalism. The volume honors Giovanna d’Aragona, granddaughter of King Ferrante of Naples and wife of Vittoria Colonna’s brother Ascanio. Titled Del tempio alla divina signora donna Giovanna d’Aragona and published in 1555 by Plinio Pietrasanta who had issued Stampa’s Rime a year earlier, it was supervised by Girolamo Ruscelli (1504–1566), editor of the 1553 anthology that marked her debut in print.4 Ruscelli was a humanist-educated polygraph who had translated Plato and Ptolemy, supervised editions of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and the respective poetry of Petrarch and Vittoria Colonna, and composed discourses on the Italian vernacular, poetic style, and principles of translation. In 1551 he proposed the Tempio to members of the newly formed Accademia degli Dubbiosi in Venice and began gathering its Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek verse from 277 authors who included the celebrated Neapolitan poets Luigi Tansillo and Laura Terracina, the Roman author and translator Annibal Caro, and the Florentine academician Benedetto Varchi.5 Stampa’s contribution to this volume was a reprint of sonnet 268 from her Rime, “Questo felice, e glorioso Tempio” (“This glorious happy temple”). Here in the company of writers from Naples, Rome, and Florence whose printed poems constitute a “virtual academy,”6 Stampa devalues her “basse rime” (“lowly rhymes”) as the work of a neophyte: Dietro à voi, che di Morte fate scempio Fra i più famosi, e più saggi scrittori, Dotti figli d’Esperia, almi Pastori Di queste basse rime adorno, & empio. (5–8)

 For discussion, see Robin, Publishing Women, pp. 106–11.  See Michele Maylender, Storie delle accademie d’Italia, 5 vols. (Bologna: Capelli,

4 5

1926–1930), 3: pp. 224–6. 6  I model the phrase on Robin’s “virtual salon” in Publishing Women, pp. 62–71.

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(I follow you—among the most famous / and wisest of writers who wreak havoc on death, / learned children of Hesperia, shepherds divine— / to adorn and fill [this temple] with these lowly rhymes.)7

Nowhere does Stampa’s Rime address Ruscelli by name, nor those celebrated authors from the Tempio mentioned above. By contrast the writers whom it does name are for the most part younger than the latter, usually Venetian, and decidedly amateur. How might we distinguish between amateurs and literary professionals in the context of these anthologies? I propose five considerations. One is membership in a salon, academy, or literary society. Such a group may welcome amateurs as well as professionals, but while the former subscribe to it to acquire a veneer of culture and sophistication, the latter do so to find sodality among other poets and writers. For them, the self-regulated gathering of literati emulates professional guilds to which visual artists, musicians, and diverse intellectuals belonged, but for which writers had no comparable institution. Another consideration is entrepreneurship. In an elite culture of self-presentation and advancement, amateur poets use literary polish as a social asset, but emerging numbers of professional writers direct their energies toward earning a critical reputation, attracting and securing patronage, and acquiring a readership beyond the confines of their immediate time and place. A third consideration is focus. While amateurs may be attracted to variety, experimentation, and dilettantish indulgence, professionals pursue an in-depth concentration upon themes, motifs, styles, and literary conventions that provide an outlet for their productivity. A fourth is their commitment to perfecting skills, patiently acquired techniques, and craftsmanship. While amateurs may display an inspired degree of talent and virtuosity, professionals ground their work in a mastery of execution and detail through a tireless process of redaction, revision, and wholesale contraction and expansion. A final consideration is some degree of metaliterary reflection by professionals upon their work, bolstered by a larger overview of the artistic enterprise. Amateurs perform spontaneously as they choose. Professionals will themselves to perform upon the demands of others and according to the norms of genre and code that they have theorized. Measured against literary amateurs in her salon environment, Stampa hones her professional credentials as she cultivates an entrepreneurial outlook, focuses on her artistic development, masters the technical skills of her craft, and theorizes the significance of her work. These concerns appear fully evident in her addresses to literary men who are named in her Rime and were published in the anthology series begun by Giolito in 1545. This series includes forty-nine poems by three men close to her: her brother Baldassare Stampa, her reputed lover Collaltino di Collalto, and his brother Vinciguerra II di Collalto. It also includes Domenico  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). 7

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Venier, the sponsor of one of Venice’s leading literary salons whom Stampa represents in sonnet 227 as having “sì gran stil, rime sì pronte” (v. 3: “rhymes at the ready / and such fine style”) though without claiming her participation in his salon. An important addressee in Stampa’s Rime is the figure of “Coridon,” a poet-musician whom sonnets 261–2 designate as “Pastor, che d’Adria il fortunato seno / Di tanti honori, e tanti pregi ornate” (Rime 261, 1–2: “Shepherd who adorns the fortunate breast / of Adria with many glories and honors”) but whose pastoral pseudonym obscures his identity. Another addressee not mentioned by name is likely the admired poet Giovanni Della Casa, bishop of Benevento and the dedicatee of Cassandra Stampa’s preface to her sister’s Rime. Sonnet 266, “Cercando novi versi e nove rime” (“As I was searching for new rhymes and ways”) refers to him as “il Riverendo” (v. 11: “the Reverend”) but alludes neither to his poetic skill nor to his close association with the author. Giovanni Della Casa as Addressee It seems no accident that the Rime begins with a dedicatory epistle to Della Casa.8 Born in 1503, he grew up in Florence, studied law in Bologna, and pursued humanist studies in Padua. As a young man in the 1530s, he attracted critical attention from Pietro Bembo for his early verse, most of it amatory sonnets for various mistresses and some of it Berniesque satires.9 In 1534 he went to Rome to join an administrative service in Paul III’s papacy, and ten years later was appointed apostolic nuncio to Venice, possibly with a portfolio to stanch Lutheran heresy. Careful to avoid scandal that might damage his ecclesiastical career, Della Casa had long refrained from publishing his poetry.10 When Pope Julius III terminated his appointment in 1552, he retired for the next three years to a monastery north  See Jane Tylus’s analysis in “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, pp. 26–34. For Stampa’s poem addressed to Della Casa, see Giorgio Forni, “‘L’orrecchie mi tirò ne l’ore prime.’ Nota su Giovanni Della Casa e Gaspara Stampa,” Giovanni Della Casa: Un seminario per il centenario, ed. Amedeo Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), pp. 289–300; see also Italo Pantani, “Le corrispondenze poetiche di Giovanni Della Casa,” Giovanni Della Casa: Un seminario per il centenario, ed. Amedeo Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), pp. 241–88, esp. pp. 266–7. 9  For his Petrarchism as influenced by Bernardino Daniello’s edition of Petrarch, see Francesca D’Alessandro, “Il Petrarca di Giovanni Della Casa,” Giovanni Della Casa: Un seminario per il centenario, ed. Amedeo Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), pp. 191–228. A few of Della Casa’s satires were anthologized in the 1552 volume Primo libro dell’opere burlesche. 10  One of his poems appeared in Ludovico Domenichi’s inaugural anthology at the press of Gabriel Giolito in 1545. Thirteen others (nine sonnets and four canzoni) followed it in four succeeding anthologies over the next decade (1549, 1551, 1553, 1555). For the unwieldy textual history of his poetry, see Stefano Carrai, “La tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Della Casa e il problema della loro edizione,” Giovanni Della Casa: Ecclesiastico e scrittore, ed. Stefano Carrai (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007), pp. 87–109. 8

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of Treviso at Nervesa, whose abbot was Collaltino’s brother Vinciguerra. There he devoted himself to revising and augmenting his Italian poetry and various prose works, including Il Galateo. He returned to Rome in 1555 as papal secretary to Paul IV before his death a year later on November 14. The posthumous publication of his Rime in 1558 cemented his reputation as the era’s consummate literary stylist, broadly fulfilling some of the considerations for professionalism that I’ve outlined.11 Evidence of these considerations occurs in Della Casa’s sonnet 33, “Ben veggio Titiano in forme nove / L’idolo mio” (“Well do I see, Titian, my idol in new forms”). The poem, first published in the fourth volume of Giolito’s series in 1551, addresses the great Venetian painter about his portrait of Elisabetta Quirini, and sketches an implied aesthetics governing Della Casa’s work, as well as Titian’s.12 The artist, it acknowledges, has portrayed Elisabetta in such a way that observers can’t distinguish her represented image from her actual appearance, “che [’l cor] l’un volto e l’altro mira, / brama il vero trovar, né sa ben dove” (“While my heart looks upon one face and the other, it yearns to discover the true one but doesn’t know where”). Poets can only wish to portray Elisabetta as well, but the medium of language makes this task doubly difficult because it deals not with external images but with the interna parte (internal quality) of spirit, mind, and virtue.13 At the end of the first tercet, Della Casa’s speaker characterizes himself as an “oscuro fabbro a sí chiara opra eletto” (“confused craftsman, chosen for such a distinctive task”). The key words here are fabbro (craftsman) and opra (work), with their contrasting adjectives oscuro and chiara, (dark and bright). Together they resonate with confusion and uncertainty on the artist’s part in relation to the craftsmanship that he seeks as a fabbro and to the opera which results. At the same time, these words relate the speaker to several literary predecessors. Fabbro, “craftsman,” echoes from Dante’s Purgatorio XXVI, 117, where Guido Guinizelli acknowledges Arnaut Daniel as one who “fu miglior fabbro” (“was a better craftsman”) in a community of poets who support one another’s moral as well as aesthetic endeavors.14 Dante’s commendation of both Guinizelli and Arnaut appears oblique. In the verse just quoted, Guinizelli credits Arnaut as 11  The published volume comprises sixty-four poems. Its first half—exactly thirtytwo poems—likely predates the poet’s arrival in Venice, and it includes twenty love poems (nineteen sonnets and one canzone, but also five palinodes renouncing love). Beginning with sonnet 33, its second half takes a distinctly non-amatory turn and focuses upon addresses to friends and acquaintances on various topics. 12  Quotations from Giovanni Della Casa, Le Rime, 2 vols, ed. Roberto Fedi (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1978). 13  See Federica Pich, “‘Né in ciò me sol, ma l’arte insieme accuso.’ I sonetti a Tiziano nella tradizione delle rime per ritratto,” Giovanni Della Casa: Giovanni Della Casa: Ecclesiastico e scrittore, ed. Stefano Carrai (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007), pp. 401–44. 14  Quotations from Dante refer to Le opera di Dante, ed. Michele Barbi et al., 2nd ed. (Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960).

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miglior, displacing the origin of his own style to the Provençal poet. But in lines that precede this one, Dante acknowledges Guinizelli as “il padre / mio e de li altri miei miglior” (vv. 97–8: “my father, and [father] of others, my betters”). The enjambment between padre and mio distances Dante from his supposedly poetic “father” and, further, the crediting of other poets who mediate between Guinizelli and himself as “miei miglior” (presumably Guido Cavalcanti and possibly Cino da Pistoia and Lapo Gianni) widens this distance. Dante’s play with the humility topos puts into question the origin of the “stil nuovo” that he cherishes. As close analysis of Dante’s revisions to early poems selected for his Vita nova shows, he reinvented the mode and would claim authority over it in painstaking transpositions of earthly desire into transcendent love.15 So too does Stampa deploy the humility topos in relation to Collaltino and other male poets in her Rime even as she reinvents the mode and claims authority over it. She does so chiefly through her rewriting of Petrarch. In the verse that I’ve already quoted from Della Casa’s sonnet 33, “oscuro fabbro a sì chiara opra eletto,” the noun opera echoes from Petrarch’s sonnets 77 and 78 (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta), two poems about Simone Martini whose “opera gentile” (“noble work”) figures the latter’s art as inspired by a Platonic intuition of Laura in Paradise (RVF 77, 9–10: “L’opra fu ben di quelle che nel cielo / si ponno imaginar”; “The work is one of those which can be imagined only in Heaven”) and then as a product of Aristotelian craftsmanship (RVF 78, 3–4: “a l’opera gentile / colla figura voce ed intelleto”; “to his noble work, voice and intellect along with form”).16 Craftsmanship and the finished product—the former dark and difficult, the latter bright and beautiful—figure as Della Casa’s dominant professional concerns. Stampa summons these concerns in her Rime 55–8. Whereas Della Casa and Petrarch each focus on a single artist, Stampa in sonnet 55, “Voi che’n marmi in colori, in bronzo, in cera / Imitate, & vincete la Natura” (vv. 1–2: “You who with paints and marble, wax and bronze, / imitate and even defeat nature”) calls upon an entire community of artisti in the plural, evoking the community of intermediary poets in Dante’s Purgatorio XXVI, 98, “li altri miei miglior.” Like Petrarch in relation to Simone’s Platonic and Aristotelian practices, Stampa emphasizes the artist’s praxis in a pair of contrasting poems in relation to Collaltino and herself. As she addresses her community of unnamed artists, she evokes a set of facing portraits, one of the beloved in sonnet 55, “Ritraggete il mio Conte, e siavi à 15  For these revisions, see Dante Alighieri, Rime giovanili e della Vita Nuova, eds. Teodolinda Barolini and Manuele Gragnolati (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009); for Dante’s sense of authorship, see Albert Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008), esp. pp. 178–200. 16  Quotations from Petrarch refer to Francesco Petrarca, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Canzoniere, ed. Marco Santagata, 2nd ed. (Milan: Mondadori, 2004). English translations by Robert Durling in Petrarch’s Lyric Poems. The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976).

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mente / Qual’è dentro ritrarlo, e qual’è fore” (vv. 9–10: “Portray my count, and don’t forget to show / what lies within him, what without”) and the other of herself in sonnet 56, “Ritraggete poi me da l’altra parte, / Come vedrete, ch’io sono in effetto” (vv. 1–2: “There on the other side [of the page] you must portray me too, / just as you see me, as I am in truth”). These portraits evoke the urnshaped engravings of Petrarch and Laura facing each other in Gabriel Giolito’s 1544 edition of Petrarch’s Rime sparse with Vellutello’s commentary, reprinted six times up to 1560.17 The significance is double: first, that Stampa focuses her attention upon the publication of her work and second, that she focuses upon it as a professional venture which embellishes her texts with engravings (many of them rendered anonymously) and commentaries (usually by signed authors and scholars), much in the way that, in the 1540s, deluxe printed editions had presented the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto. Already, it would seem, Stampa is exercising her entrepreneurial instincts as she aspires toward publication with graphic designs and paratextual materials that affirm her professional status. Baldessare Stampa, Collaltino di Collalto, and Vinciguerra II di Collalto: Salon Sociability and the Role of Entrepreneurship This status emerges clearly when we compare Stampa’s work with her brother’s. Of Baldassare’s poems, thirty sonnets and one madrigal appear in the first three anthologies associated with Giolito. The distribution of Baldassare’s topics and themes seems roughly proportional to that of his sister’s sonnets: seven amatory compliments, twelve amatory complaints, ten encomiastic poems addressed to friends, two devotional poems. Undeniably Petrarchan, they nonetheless appear through-composed and unaffected by the dramatic turns or counterclaims typically associated with Petrarchism. Often they express a state of mind that we don’t quite believe; we keep looking in vain for a hook or a dip or a counterclaim to complicate the speaker’s attitude. An example is his commendatory sonnet, “Vera umiltà con gravi modi unita” (“True humility joined to dignified manners”) first published in the second volume of the Giolito series in 1547. Its honoree is a nephew of the late fifteenth-century Venetian humanist, Ermolao Barbaro— either Daniele Barbaro (1514–1570) or his younger brother Marcantonio Barbaro (1518–1595), both Venetian noblemen, and each notable for diplomatic service to the Republic as well as for amateur skills in architectural design under the tutelage of Andrea Palladio. As a salon poem, it exemplifies the casual qualities of sociability characteristic of dilettante writers, but not the more probing skills of a professional poet. Baldassare’s poem begins with the Petrarchan phrase “vera umiltà” (true humility) that serves as subject of its first quatrain where, joined with “Gli atti cortesi, il senno, & il valore . . . / Ad amar voi Signor ciascuno invita” (“Courteous 17  Based on a sketch embellishing a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Rime sparse in the Laurentian Library.

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behavior, judgment, and valor … / it beckons everyone to love you, my lord”). As it turns out, “vera umiltà” is a stock phrase in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta where it generates the climax of sonnets 179 and 196 about Laura’s Medusan effects upon the poet. But Baldassare stops short of evoking its remarkable context there. In Petrarch’s sonnet 179, the phrase presents both a challenge and a victory for the speaker as he explains to his friend Geri Gianfigliazzi how he would subdue Laura’s wrath if she rebuked him. Laura, he points out, is a Medusa whose angry glance can turn him to stone, petra, making him fulfill the etymology of his name, petra arca (stone coffer), but also making him the poet Petrarca, who sings about his misfortunes in love.18 Simply put, Petrarch would pretend to look upon Laura with a “vera umiltà” that might temper her anger. Gaspara Stampa grasps this context and in her sonnet 113, “Deh foss’io almen sicura” (“Ah, were I at least assured”), she turns “vera umiltà” into an expression of her speaker’s dramatic situation. There she finds herself caught between the competing responses of an aggressive Cupid and her indifferent lover. Whenever the latter rejects her, she deploys Cupid’s gift of dissimulation to bear down upon his scorn: “Viene Amor poi con l’altra compagnia, / Vera umiltà ch’ogni alto sdegno atterra” (vv. 13–14: “Love arrives with other company—true / humility, who defeats all proud disdain”). Partly feigning this humility to stop Collaltino in his tracks, and partly experiencing it as she succumbs to his allure, she is formulating a critique of the Petrarchan ethos that offers cynical advice about feigned submission. Her critical use of the phrase functions as an insinuation, an attack, a decoy, a defense, perhaps even as a trap in a web of meanings that pit her against the originator of Petrarchism itself. In doing so, Stampa constructs a lyric persona in opposition to her own propria persona, itself a mark of professionalism that exemplifies what Ulrike Schneider in this volume shows to be a concern of contemporary theorists such as the Neapolitan Marantonio Minturno.19 In entrepreneurial fashion, Stampa is promoting a new poetics that dramatizes her love for Collaltino. Recalling Dante’s strategy with respect to Guinizelli in Purgatorio XXVI, 97–8, she puts into question the poetic authority of the man whom she cherishes while claiming her own authority over the Petrarchan mode that she shares with him. Like Baldassare Stampa, Collaltino di Collalto (1523–1569) was a young man when, at the age of twenty-two, three of his sonnets were published in the first Giolito anthology of 1545; a year later he saw eight more published in the second anthology of 1546. One example is a poem addressed to Girolamo Muzio, “Muzio, se di saper pur hai desio” (“Muzio, if you still have a wish to know”). Though it concerns the beauty of Elena Barozzi, praised in Stampa’s sonnet 255,  See William J. Kennedy, “Public Poems, Private Expenditures: Petrarch as Homo Economicus.” Mediaevalia 32 (2011): 99–122. 19  See also Ulrike Schneider, Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento: Transformationen des lyrischen Diskurses bei Vittoria Colonna und Gaspara Stampa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), pp. 264–312, for the role of the speaker’s persona in shaping Stampa’s Rime as a canzoniere. 18

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it is not an amatory poem. Like Baldassare’s poem to Barbaro’s nephew, it is a commendatory sonnet that originates in a sociable salon culture and it refers chastely to the wife of his and Muzio’s mutual friend, Antonio Zantani.20 It is also a self-congratulatory poem that commends its speaker’s poetic abilities to preserve Elena’s beauty, “e gli occhi suoi leggiadri tôr a morte” (“and snatch her lovely eyes from death”). In its final lines the speaker boasts that “altèra non vada ‘l empia morte, / ch’ella qui resti in sempiterna vita” (“pitiless death might not grow proud, / that she might remain here among us in eternal life”). Whether or not this flatfooted style accomplishes its aim is arguable. There is a sincerity here, but no sign of an entrepreneurial willingness or ability to channel the poem to a readership beyond the environment in which it originated. Evidently Collaltino went on to write poems and perhaps sing them as songs. Stampa’s sonnet 31 urges readers to come and listen to him—“Quando solete cantando addolcire / La terra, e’l cielo, et ciò, che fè Natura” (vv. 7–8: “For your singing sweetens heaven and earth / and everything that nature’s fashioned”). But no new poems of his were published after 1546, and no manuscripts dedicated to Stampa survive. Collaltino’s brother Vinciguerra II also wrote poetry. Six of his poems (four sonnets, a madrigal, and an ode in praise of Venice) appeared in the fifth and sixth volumes of the Giolito series in 1552 and 1553. Three of them address a goldenhaired woman identified in pastoral terms as “la mia vaga e leggiadra pastorella” (“my lithe and graceful shepherdess”), praised in wholly conventional Petrarchan figures for her ruby lips and enameled teeth. Stampa’s sonnet 237 commends Vinciguerra for pursuing an austere lifestyle, “Per questa disusata a rara via” (v. 8: “while this rare, uncommon life that’s yours”), evidently referring to his life in the monastery at Nervesa, but leaving out the character of the shepherdess in his poems. Whether a youthful flirtation, an affair pursued beyond the cloister, or simply a fictional creation, Vinciguerra’s pastoral idylls emblematize his penchant for writing genteel poems. Stampa’s sonnet 260 commends his eloquentia and asks him to soften Collaltino’s heart toward her: Vedete voi, cui sò ch’egli ama tanto, Se scrivendogli humile un mezo foglio, Per vincer l’ostinato, e fiero orgoglio Di quel petto poteste haver’ il vanto. (4–8) (You could try to gain control over that breast / by conquering his fierce, obstinate pride— / see if half a page humbly inscribed / from one that he adores might do it.)

One way to read this poem is to see in the talent that she projects upon Vinceguerra not so much the qualities that he possesses but instead those that  With Zantani, Barozzi presided over a ridotto that featured musical performances by Perissone Cambio and Girolamo Parabosco. For the Barozzi-Zantani salon, see Martha Feldman, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (Berkeley: U of California P, 1995), pp. 63–81. 20

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she modestly refrains from imputing to herself. By evoking them she exalts his eloquence as a commodity that she would market on behalf of her own writerly talent. Respecting Vinciguerra’s piety and literary sophistication, she respects by implication the salon culture that encourages amateurs like her brother, her lover, and his brother to express themselves in verse. In contrast to theirs, Stampa’s poetry displays a concentrated effort to attract the attention, patronage, and esteem of a wider readership than theirs. From this perspective, Stampa enlists her commendatory poems to bolster her reputation and secure her place in a predominantly male pantheon. Domenico Venier and the Problem of Focus To Domenico Venier (1517–1582), mentor and friend of poets, writers, scholars, and musicians such as Girolamo Molino, Pietro Aretino, Sperone Speroni, and Girolamo Parabosco, Stampa addresses sonnet 227. There she would ask him to plead with Collaltino on her behalf, “Se voi non foste à maggior cose volto” (v. 1: “If you weren’t turned to greater things”). Disparaging her own talent, she confesses her limitations: “Poi che’l poterlo fare à me è tolto” (v. 8: “since the means to do so myself are denied me”). Still, in the poem’s second tercet she summons her pride and vows an attempt for herself: Ma poi degno rispetto nol consente, Vedrò tal qual’ io sono adombrarn’io Una minima parte solamente. (12–14) (But respect for you doesn’t let me ask, / and I’ll see if I can venture such as I am / to adumbrate the smallest part of my passion.)

Again we can see in the qualities of talent, piety, and sophistication that she projects upon her addressee those that she refrains from imputing to herself. Her reticence, however, suggests a surplus of modesty that risks dissipating rather than reinforcing her own energy. Stampa’s concern is to focus her skills upon expressing her love for Collaltino, the theme that dominates her attention, in contrast to the scattered “maggior cose” that divert Venier’s attention. This concentration distinguishes Stampa’s professionalism from her addressee’s amateur diversions. As a member of the nobile class, Venier didn’t venture directly into publishing his work, though 102 of his poems appeared in Giolito’s anthologies during the 1550s and 1560s. Still, the freedom and ease of his patrician circumstances and his early retirement from public life (he suffered from gout) permitted him a luxury to experiment denied to others. Accordingly he ventured into amatory sonnets, commendatory poems, satiric verse, classical epigram, erotic elegies, elevated stilnovist lyrics, devotional verse, and more. Venier’s restless experimentation, his willingness to sample and resample forms and styles, to toss them off and search for something new, characterizes his verse. Instead of seizing upon a distinctive voice and working

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with it, he projects many different voices, even and especially if each makes competing demands upon his skill. In the sixth Giolito anthology published in 1553—the volume that first brought Stampa into print with three of her poems—thirty-one of Venier’s poems mark the scope of his experimentation. Two of them bear particular relevance to Stampa’s Rime. The first, on Sig. 129v—“Ahi chi mi rompe il sonno? ahi chi mi priva / Misero di quel ben’ (“Alas, who disturbs my sleep? who deprives me, / wretch that I am, of that bliss which surpasses all else”), is an erotic divertissement that adapts to the Petrarchan sonnet form the erotic playfulness of an Anacreontic lyric, the Hellenistic mode published in Janus Lascaris’s Anthologia Graeca in 1494 and imitated widely in the sixteenth century. Its speaker recounts that while he slept, his beloved came to him. Emboldened, he confesses his love to her. At the end of its first tercet, she replies with startling frankness: “In premio di cotanto amore / ‘Eccomi,’ disse, ‘à le tue voglie presta’” (“In recompense for such love, / “Here I am,” she said, “ready for what you want’”).21 Then in a hilarious jumble of past and present tenses when “pien d’ardore / la stringo” (“full of ardor / I’m clutching her”), the morning sun interrupts his wet dream, wakes him up, and dispels his ardor: “Che ferendomi gli occhi uccise il core” (“So that prying open my eyes, it slew my heart”). As it happens, an echo from this poem reverberates in Stampa’s sonnet 88, “Lasso, chi turba la mia lunga pace? / Chi rompe il sonno e l’alta mia quiete?” (vv. 1–2: “Alas, who’s disturbing my lengthy peace? / Who’s breaking into my sleep and its quiet?”). Here the intruder is Love, who awakens the speaker to seek out Collaltino. Instead of slaking her thirst, Love brings her to the river Lethe: Tu ber mi desti del tuo fiume Lete, Che più mi noce, quanto più mi piace. Ahi, quando fia giamai ch’un giorno possa Voler col mio voler resa à me stessa? (7–10) (You wake me to drink from the river of Lethe / that harms the more the more that it pleases. / When will finally come the day I can / will with my own will, say I’m myself again?)

To deepen the import of these lines, a distant echo from Purgatorio XXVIII poses a counterexample in which Dante’s Matelda refers to Lethe and Eunoe  In an eighteenth-century edition of Venier’s work, comprising ninety-eight sonnets and eight canzoni culled from Giolito’s anthologies, along with a translation in ottava rima from book 1 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the editor prudishly deletes this offer of sexual submission. The poem appears on p. 57 as sonnet 94, devoid of narrative context. In general, there is scant contextualization of Venier’s amatory poems and little characterization of the beloved(s) addressed. Many poems are commendatory sonnets to Venier’s associates, such as Bembo, Trifone Gabriele, Girolamo Ruscelli, Ludovico Dolce, Celio Magno, and Bernardo Tasso. Rime di Domenico Veniero senatore veneziano raccolte ora la prima volta ed illustrate dall’ab. Pierantonio Serassi (Bergamo: Lancellotto, 1751). 21

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as waters in which “a tutti altri sapori esto è di sopra” (v. 133: “its sweetness surpasses all others”). Stampa’s speaker instead reproaches Amor for leading her to water that pains rather than pleases her when it erases the memory of her pleasure. By reinforcing her amatory commitment to Collaltino, her rhetorical questions reverse the self-indulgence of Venier’s complaint. We can ask which poem might have prompted the other, perhaps in some performative dialogue, replicating the give-and-take of medieval tenzoni for an elegant and highly literate audience. We have no direct report that Stampa frequented Venier’s ridotto, or for that matter the ridotti of Elena Barozzi and Antonio Zantani that I have mentioned, or of the patrician Leonardo Emo whose support she acknowledges in sonnets 253–4 and 257. Stampa’s self-assertive poetry may have originated in any number of circumstances, prompting Venier’s response. Or perhaps the other way around: his poems may have prompted her response, either within his salon or elsewhere. Venier spins out a different kind of poem in a sonnet commending a woman’s qualities, “Se beltà, se virtù, se cortesia” (“If beauty, if virtue, if courtesy”) on Sig.132r in the sixth volume of Giolito’s series. Ample precedent for this poem exists in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, notably in his sonnet 248, “Chi vuol veder quantunque pò Natura / e’l Ciel” (“Whoever wishes to see all that Nature and Heaven can do”). Venier’s “Tutte queste tre gratie il Ciel’aduna / Con mill’altri suoi doni in compagnia” (“Heaven unites all three graces / with a thousand other gifts in their company”), echoes Petrarch’s argument, for example, but his poem proceeds to mix exclamatory, interrogative, and declarative statements (“Deh perche come i più bei pregi tolti”; “Ah, why, as though the most beautiful qualities had been siphoned off”) with subjunctive moods (“Qual gloria, e quanto il pregio sia”; “What glory and how much of our esteem would there be”). Instead of following Petrarch to his conclusion, Venier moves in a different direction at the poem’s end. After yet another jumble of indicative and subjunctive moods, past and present tenses, and singular and plural substantives, his speaker confesses on the final line that “non posso . . . / col gran merito vostro agguagliar l’arte” (“I can’t match my art to your supreme desserts”). As it happens, the echoes of Petrarch’s sonnet 248 in this poem find a complementary echo in Stampa’s sonnet 121, “Chi vuol veder l’imagin del valore” (“Who wants to see the image of valor”), but a world of difference distinguishes between the two treatments. Here Collaltino is, like Petrarch’s Laura, a work of art, an imagin (image) of valor, an albergo (repository) of cortesia (courtly style), a nido (incubator) of “bellezze e leggiadria” (beauty and comeliness), and a stanza (room; but also “unit of verse”) that invites fame and glory. Stampa’s octave, like Petrarch’s, urges its reader to come and look directly at Collaltino: “Venga à veder l’illustre mio Signore” (v. 5: “come my illustrious lord to see”). Her first tercet, however, qualifies this response if the viewer happens to be a woman: Ma, s’ella è Donna, non s’affissi molto, Che resterà subitamente presa Fra mille meraviglie del bel volto. (9–11)

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(But if you’re a woman, don’t look too closely— / for you’ll immediately be taken in / by a thousand marvelous things in that face”).

For Stampa, an aesthetic, dialectical, more powerful outcome results from this crisis. It stems from the power and volatility of the meraviglie that confound every woman whom Collaltino might charm and then discard. With the term meraviglia Stampa anticipates the poetics of wonder later elaborated in treatises on poetry from Giraldo Cinthio to Torquato Tasso and affirming a poetics of sublimity that Unn Falkeid has adduced in this volume.22 In Stampa’s poem, the term conveys the sheer force of Collaltino’s sexual attraction upon the speaker, but it also assimilates her response to this force with her artistry as a poet. In still other ways Stampa anticipates concerns of a later poetics by developing approaches to character, style, voice, and address that focus her own lyric persona. Among Stampa’s commendatory poems we can find this persona yoked to a recurrent topos of humility. With more than just a dash of wit, the speaker is conceding excellence to her male colleagues and admirers who happen to be amateur poets. In doing so, she displays skills that playfully expose their small talents and assert the contrary about her own. Flattering Collaltino in sonnet 236, “Conte, quel vivo, & honorato raggio” (“Count, whose lively honored ray of light”), she acclaims him for doing exactly what she is doing better than he does when he expresses his “chiaro ingegno / Per via di rime” (vv. 2–3: “celebrated wit / by means of rhyme”). The difference is that, as she perceives it, “Amor, che me lo dà, dammi anche l’arte” (v. 11: “Love, who caused it all, gives me the art to tell it”). The key word is arte. Collaltino may be a natural versifier—“Voi per voi sol potete al ciel” (v. 12: “You can soar to heaven on your wings alone”)—but she has the reinforcement of craftsmanship and acquired techniques that take over when inspiration fails.23 The same feature applies to her commendation of poets associated with Venier’s salon. Sonnets 240–41 address Venier’s protégé Girolamo Molin (1500– 1569) with a plea to approach her beloved with his formidable style: “Voi far fiorir potete eternamente / Il Colle, ch’amo” (Rime 240, 9: “You can make the hill I love spring forth in flowers / for all time”). Both poems follow appeals to other poets in sonnet 238 (possibly to Vinciguerra) and sonnet 239 (likely to Sperone Speroni), both valued by Stampa as more accomplished than she considers herself to be. Sperone Speroni (1500–1588), professor of philosophy at Padua, author of dialogues on rhetoric and the vernacular and on the poetry of Dante, Ariosto, and Virgil, and represented by nine poems in the fifth edition of Giolito’s series in 22  The term meraviglia figures prominently in Giraldi Cintio’s Discorsi intorno al comporre de i romanzi (1554) and Pigna’s I romanzi (1554); and later in Minturno’s De poeta (1559) and Tasso’s Discorsi del poema eorico (1575–1580, pub. 1594). 23  See Justin Flosi, “On Locating the Courtesan in Italian Lyric: Distance and the Madrigal Texts of Costanzo Flosi,” The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (New York: Oxford UP, 2006), pp. 133–43, for strategies of representing the female voice in musical settings.

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1551, receives Stampa’s sonnet 228 and possibly sonnet 269 asking him to guide her literary efforts. Giacomo Zane (1529–1560), author of nine sonnets and two odes in the fifth and sixth volumes of 1552 and 1553, receives in Stampa’s sonnet 235 her boundless compliment: “Ogn’altro stil, che’l vostro verria meno” (v. 11: “all other styles but yours will fail”). To either Domenico Michiel or Marcantonio Michiel, both published in the third and fourth volumes of Giolito’s anthologies in 1550 and 1551, she protests in sonnet 248 that “cosa non haggio / D’esser cantata da le vostre note” (vv. 12–13: “I have nothing / worth being sung by your notes”). Other correspondents whose poems have appeared in Giolito’s anthologies include Giovanni Giacomo Balbì (three sonnets in the sixth volume of 1553) in sonnet 250 where his poems “à la speme mia mostrano il porto” (v. 12: “show my hopes the way to the harbor”); Trifon Gabriele (1470–1549), a teacher of Della Casa at Padua and author of a scant three sonnets in Giolito’s first and third volumes in 1545 and 1550, in Stampa’s sonnet 252 eulogizing him as “Socrate suo celeste, e santo” (v. 10: “their holy and celestial Socrates”), in reference to his principled Socratic refusal to write and publish his scholarly discoveries; and Fortunio Spira (twenty-five sonnets and one ballata in the same volumes as Gabriele) in sonnet 272 where Stampa claims that “qualunqu’ io mi sia, / Per via di stile, io son vostra mercede” (vv. 9–10: “whatever’s mine / by way of style I owe to you”). Stampa’s commitment to perfecting her acquired craftsmanship and technique, by contrast to theirs, displays a concentrated effort to attract the attention, patronage, and esteem of Venetian nobili and, perhaps more probably, of wealthy and highly regarded cittadini. Parabosco and Della Casa: Craftsmanship and Theoretical Reflection This commitment to craftsmanship brings us to the penultimate consideration of technique and skill that I’ve posited as a mark of professional status. I’ve mentioned Ruscelli’s Tempio to Giovanna d’Aragona along with his volume of Diversi autori as instantiations in print of a salon assemblage. Stampa’s representation of participants in Ruscelli’s Tempio as “almi pastori” connects sonnet 268 to her sonnets 247, 251, and 261–4 which offer tributes to what may be several different groups of writers. Stampa presents their leader in pastoral guise as Coridon, addressed by the speaker in her own guise as Anassilla (after Anaxum, the Latin name for the Piave river bordering Collaltino’s estate at Collalto). Coridon is a musician—“Havete omai cantando il mondo pieno” (Rime 261, 4: “You’ve filled the world with song”) and “Fate col canto il ciel fosco e sereno” (Rime 261, 8: “You make the sky serene or dark with song”)—and is evidently not a stand-in for the exclusively literary Ruscelli. Nor is he a stand-in for Vinciguerra, whose poems to his beloved “pastorella” I’ve mentioned. Sonnet 262 honors him for having exalted Gaspara Stampa and her sister Cassandra,24 “l’una, e l’altra Stampa,” (v. 2: “one 24  For an alternate interpretation of “l’una e l’altra Stampa” see Federico Schneider’s chapter in this volume.

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and the other Stampa”) and to repay him Anassilla yearns for the “stil, vaghezza, & armonia, / . . . rime e concento” (vv. 9–10: “the style, the art, / the harmony, the balance, and the rhyme”) that will enable her to elevate him as well. Earlier the persona of Anassilla addresses Venus and the Graces in sonnet 247, “Gratie che fate il ciel fresco e sereno” (v. 1: “You who make the sky serene and fresh”), praying that they might bestow favor and protection upon “questi chiarissimi Pastori” (v. 7: “these renowned shepherds”). In sonnet 251, she addresses these shepherdesses, praying that Apollo and the muses may protect their cenacle: A voi sian Febo, e le Sorelle amiche Schiera gentil, che col vivace ingegno Con l’arte, e con lo stil giungete à segno, Ove non giunser le memorie antiche. (1–4) (May Phoebus and the Muses be your friends, / gentle flock, and may you reach the mark / with your lovely wit, with a style and art / that no one in ancient times attained.)

Anassilla expresses her wish in sonnet 263 that it might continue its work for many years and in sonnet 264 that its members might honor her beloved with their attention: “Rivolgete la lingua, e le parole / A dir di cosa più degna, e più chiara” (vv. 1–2: “You should direct your tongue and words / to speak of things more worthy and renowned”). Indications point to Girolamo Parabosco (1524–1557) as the prototype for Coridon. The multitalented Parabosco was primarily a professional musician (he served as organ-master at St. Mark’s from 1551 until his death) and secondarily a prolific writer. His prose publications include parodic handbooks on the art of writing love letters in an exaggerated Petrarchan style, the Lettere amorose (1546, revised and expanded in three editions from 1549–1561); a half-dozen carnivalesque plays, including Il viluppo (The Tangle, 1547) and L’Ermaphrodito (The Hermaphrodite, 1549); and I diporti (Pastimes, 1550), and a collection of seventeen prose narratives and several short poems linked by a dialogue among their authors reflecting the give-and-tale of a literary salon.25 In 1546 he published a volume of musical settings for madrigals based upon texts by various poets (including Petrarch) adapted and altered by him for polyphonic vocal effects, and in 1547 and 1555 he published two books of his own Rime in various meters, including a capitolo that describes the sorts of literary discussions and presentations held at Venier’s salon.26  Sixteenth-century editions of these texts are available on Google Books through books.google.com/advanced_book_search. For analysis of them, see Feldman, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice, pp. 54–62, 84–7, and 93–6. 26  For analysis of Parabosco’s musical texts, see Feldman, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice, pp. 311–41. A modern edition of his madrigal book is Il primo libro dei madrigali, 1551, ed. Nicola Longo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1987). 25

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Parabosco’s lyric poems balance contrasting tones and stylistic elements. Their Petrarchan diction alternates with colloquial Venetian vernacular and their grammatical structures range from simple paratactic strings of words and phrases to complex, often convoluted, hypotactic sentences and clauses. Their artful arrangement lends itself to sharply defined metrical units punctuated with pauses, stops, echoes, and repetitions amenable to musical performance.27 His poems offer a density of metaliterary reflections. In his “S’ un sol uostr’atto, una parola, un guardo / Tutto il poter d’Amore hà in se raccolto” (“If a single act of yours, a word, a glance / has brought together in itself all Love’s power”) Parabosco offers his version of Della Casa’s and Stampa’s topos comparing poets to portrait painters. Parabosco’s sonnet appears in the sixth volume of the Giolito series along with Stampa’s first published poems (thirty-eight other sonnets, eleven madrigals, two ballate, and one canzone by Parabosco appear in the first three volumes of the series in 1545–1550.) Here we find Parabosco’s technical skills as a poet joined with his metaliterary reflections on the artistic enterprise. The poem’s first line displays a preference for paratactic clusters of words, while its sestet indulges in idiosyncratic sentence structures and exaggerated double negatives: O beltà senza essempio, in cui Natura Mostrò l’infinità del suo ualore; E d’assai uinta sè chiamarsi l’arte. Che non poria non pur saggio pittore, Finger il bel di sì bella figura, Ma non n’hanno l’Idee la minor parte. (O beauty without equal in which Nature / showed the infinity of its valor and made it declare itself sufficiently conquered. // Not that a smart painter / could not even depict the beauty of so beautiful a figure, / but that his ideas do not convey the tiniest bit of it.)

The poem, with its emphasis on imaginative fashioning as implied in fingere, conveys Parabosco’s exuberance, and its energy underscores his commitment to craftsmanship, even if the results appear eccentric. This double-channeled professionalism brings us back to Della Casa’s poetics with which I began this exploration. Della Casa’s retreat to Nervosa signaled his engagement with writing on a professional level as he concentrated on revising his poetry and prose. His celebrated canzone 47, “Errai gran tempo, e del camino 27  For speculation about Stampa’s solo singing styles extrapolated from Parabosco’s polyphonic principles, see Martha Feldman, “The Courtesan’s Voice: Petrarchan Lovers, Pop Philosophy, and Oral Traditions,” The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (New York: Oxford UP, 2006), pp. 105–23; and Dawn De Rycke, “On Hearing the Courtesan in a Gift of Song: The Venetian Case of Gaspara Stampa,” The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (New York: Oxford UP, 2006), pp. 124–32.

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incerto” (“I wandered for a long time and on a dubious road”), first published in the fourth volume of the Giolito series in 1551, reappears three-quarters through his posthumous sequence. Its speaker forcefully rejects his earlier modus vivendi and begins to write devotional verse. The poem may of course be read as an expression of penitence—and in this respect Stampa’s expressions of penitence and devotion concur with it in her sonnets 275–82. But Della Casa’s poem can also be read as an expression of his new poetics. Turning from what Federico Schneider in this volume describes as Petrarchan pathos, it aspires to a more strenuous poetic mode defined by intellectual engagement, meditative involvement, and professional enterprise.28 Here the poet confesses that earlier he had traveled “seguendo pur alcun ch’io scorsi lunge, / e fur tra noi cantando illustri e conti” (vv. 72–4: “following anyone whom I saw from afar, and anyone among us luminous and acclaimed for singing”). This imitation of fashionable writers brings popular acclaim, but Della Casa confesses his unease with it when he adds that volse il penser mia folle credenza a seguir poi falsa d’onore insigna, e brammai farmi a i buon di fuor simile. (86–8) (foolish belief pushed my thought / to pursue false signs of honor, / and I yearned to make myself seem like those who appeared grand to others.)

He has already chosen another route, a “novo camino” (v. 83), which demands a rigorous evaluation of one’s skills and an application of them to time-tested models and paradigms forged by literary forebears. As he evolves a “canzon mia mesta” (v. 104: “rueful song of my own”), he hopes to arrive at the end of his journey “per secura via, se’l ciel l’affida, / si com’io spero, esser mia luce e guida” (vv. 111–12: “on a sure road if, as I hope, heaven consents to function as my light and guide”). Della Casa no doubt viewed devotional poetry as an extension of his ecclesiastical career. In this sense, writing poetry complemented that career while defining his sense of literary professionalism. Here I would note that the usual sixteenth-century Italian noun for “profession,” mestiere, conveys something of its sacred origins. The word derives from the Greek nouns μυστήριον (mysterion; secret ritual, religious ceremony) and μύστης (mystas; one who is initiated among the followers). But mestiere also has a secular meaning that evokes the incorporation of someone into a secular practice, trade, or craft whose skills require special training or instruction. With his emphasis upon intellectual gravità, Della Casa commits himself to the mystery of his high poetic calling as he performs its rites in his quiet study at Nervesa. But it is precisely there in that monastic space

28  See also Stefano Jossa, “Poesia come filosofia: Della Casa fra Varchi e Tasso,” Giovanni Della Casa: Un seminario per il centenario, ed. Amedeo Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), pp. 229–40.

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that he comes to expand the field of his professional competence beyond sacred verse to embrace its secular forms as well. Gaspara Stampa, no less dedicated to the mastery of poetic form and style, also gives herself over to her quiet study as she pursues the imitation and innovation of her Petrarchan models. Here she directs her professional efforts to performance and publication in the worldly space of sixteenth-century Venice. In doing so, she announces her own understanding of a resolutely secular professionalism. As with both Parabosco and Della Casa, its conditions derive from dedication and concentration, rewriting and revision, the careful selection of models and ingenuity in reshaping them. Her participation in social gatherings with other poets and writers, her entrepreneurial strategies to promote her work, her steady focus on sharply defined modes and styles, her persistent attention to craftsmanship and technique, and her capacious vision of what her writing might accomplish mark her—as it does them—as a consummate professional. The difference is that Parabosco and Della Casa divided their time with pursuits that each considered complementary and adjacent to his poetic interests. Parabosco sharpened his musical focus with explorations in poetry and prose. Della Casa supplemented his ecclesiastical career with poetry grounded in an evolving moral seriousness. Stampa, by contrast, was and remained a poet first and foremost. Doubtlessly her musical improvisations—and almost certainly she engaged in them as complements to her poetic performances—enhanced her technical skills in managing assonance, consonance, rhythm, and rhyme. And doubtlessly her close associations with other poets and writers deepened her sense of involvement in the social, cultural, and political life of the city in which she lived and of which her Rime offers a dramatic critique. More than any poet of her time, and better than any poet whom she addresses in her Rime, Stampa calibrates her many talents and coordinates them in meaningful verse, in every instance writing as a pro.

Part III Personae

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Chapter 8

Playing (with) Personae: Gaspara Stampa’s Rime as an Implicit Reflection on the Fictional Status of Poetry Ulrike Schneider, Freie Universität Berlin [Translated from German by Achim Hescher]

Gaspara Stampa’s Rime, published in 1554, can be situated in the heyday of Cinquecento Petrarchism, which has Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta as the most influential model, in terms of structure as well as in its underlying concept of love. What is characteristic of Petrarchist poetry of this period is the variation of the model, which nonetheless maintains the dominant reference to Petrarch. This manifests itself in the diverse compensation strategies that, despite all the variatio, demonstrate the effort to stay inside the confines of the “Petrarchan system,” as contemporaries defined it.1 Nevertheless, the sixteenth century saw the emergence of its own Petrarchist models: the most important representatives of this development are Pietro Bembo and Vittoria Colonna. Especially, Colonna’s widely circulating Rime amorose, published in 1538, established a particular model of women’s poetry in the wake of Petrarch. This is evidenced by not only the fact that her poetry appeared in multiple editions and, as is assumed, that they already circulated in manuscript form, but also by the numerous, verifiable references to  An awareness of what was compatible with Petrarch’s love poetry is already evident in the works of contemporaries, be it in explicitly metapoetical statements or in implicitly poetical adjustment proceedings in their poetry itself. See particularly the Germanophone research on Petrarchism as a system in the context of a revaluation of Petrarchism with respect to the debate on intertextuality in the 1980s, for example Klaus W. Hempfer, “Probleme der Bestimmung des Petrarkismus. Überlegungen zum Forschungsstand,” Die Pluralität der Welten. Aspekte der Renaissance in der Romania, ed. Wolf-Dieter Stempel and Karlheinz Stierle (Munich: Fink, 1987), pp. 253–77 (Italian trans. Klaus W. Hempfer, “Per una definizione del petrarchismo,” Testi e contesti. Saggi post-ermeneutici sul Cinquecento, trans. Laura Bocci [Naples: Liguori Editore, 1998], pp. 147–76); Gerhard Regn, Torquato Tassos zyklische Liebeslyrik und die petrarkistische Tradition. Studien zur Parte prima der Rime (1591/1592) (Tübingen: Narr, 1987); and Gerhard Regn, “Petrarkismus,” Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, vol. 6, ed. Gerd Ueding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003), pp. 911–21, and finally, Ulrike Schneider, Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento. Transformationen des lyrischen Diskurses bei Vittoria Colonna und Gaspara Stampa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), especially chapter 2.1. 1

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this collection by other women poets. In brief, Colonna’s Rime are marked by a clear reference to the Petrarchan model, which they modify at the same time. Besides the modeling through Neoplatonic elements, the gender-specific recoding is especially pertinent: in the case of women-penned poetry, a female speaker now takes the role of the lover and the woman poet, addressing a male beloved. This constellation—simply and already for reasons of decorum—entails several other modifications which concern not only the shaping of the roles of lover and beloved but also their mutual relation and how to talk about it. Here—apart from the reference to Petrarch—a “second legitimation”2 of the writing emerges and, accordingly, how to discuss it now becomes relevant: it resulted in recourse to the elegiac tradition, namely as it was shaped in Ovid’s Heroides, the collection of letters from mostly mythological women figures to their absent husbands or lovers. This represented a model—fictive, in this case—of female writing and talking about love which had already been mediated in the Italian tradition through Boccaccio’s Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and succeeding (male) authors, and to which women poets could refer in various ways.3 Colonna’s Rime d’amore already explore this link to the elegiac tradition in its female variant; for the women poets succeeding her, these Rime form a complex model of reference with specific emphases and shifts. Gaspara Stampa’s Rime refer to the existing models and are especially linked to Colonna’s love poetry with its female recoding of the communicative stance and love constellation while simultaneously striving to surpass it. The metapoetical dispute with Petrarch and Bembo can already be verified in the proem; the last canzoniere sonnets in the 1554 edition, however, refer particularly clearly to Colonna. It is highly significant that at the end of the first edition, there are neither Rime varie nor remorse texts as are found in the commonly used modern edition by Abdelkader Salza, thus projecting a distorted image that largely influenced the  The term is borrowed from Alfred Noyer-Weidner, “Lyrische Grundform und episch didaktischer Überbietungsanspruch in Bembos Einleitungsgedicht,” Romanische Forschungen 86 (1974): 314–58. Regarding the epic reference in Pietro Bembo’s proem, Noyer-Weidner speaks of a “second legitimation” of his poetry (apart from the one referring to Petrarch). 3  On the reception of the Heroides in the poetry in volgare in fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Italy, see Heinrich Dörrie, Der heroische Brief. Bestandsaufnahme, Geschichte, Kritik einer humanistisch-barocken Literaturgattung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968), and Ulrike Schneider, “Volkssprachliche Transformationen der Heroides in der italienischen Renaissance. Zu Formen und Funktionen des Ovid-Rekurses am Beispiel zweier Episteln von Niccolò da Correggio und Vittoria Colonna,” Abgrenzung und Synthese. Lateinische Dichtung und volkssprachliche Traditionen in Renaissance und Barock, ed. Marc Föcking and Gernot Michael Müller (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007), pp. 89–107. On Stampa’s recourse to the Heroides model, see also Patricia Phillippy, “‘Altera Dido’: The Model of Ovid’s Heroides in the Poems of Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco,” Italica 69 (1992): 1–18; and Virginia Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy 1400–1650 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008), p. 49f. and 111. See also Veronica Andreani’s chapter in this volume. 2

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reception of Stampa’s poetry.4 Instead, at the end of the editio princeps, we find three sonnets (Rime 283–5) that, in opposition to the preceding sonnet-corpus, suggestively refer to a new form of love poetry—a type of love poetry precisely representative of Vittoria Colonna.5 And in fact, at the end of the Rime (Rime 285) references to the Neoplatonic love discourse can be identified through the reference to the figure of Colonna as modeled in Bembo’s Rime: Canta tu Musa mia non più quel volto, Non più quegli occhi, e quell’alme bellezze, Che’l senso mal’ accorto par che prezze, In quest’ombre terrene impresso, e involto; Ma l’alto senno in saggio petto accolto, Mille tesori, e mille altre vaghezze, Del Conte mio, e tante sue grandezze, Ond’ oggi il pregio á tutti gli altri ha tolto. Hor sarà, il tuo Castalia, e’l tuo Parnaso, Non fumo, et ombra, ma leggiadra schiera Di virtù vere, chiuse in nobil vaso. Quest’ è via da salir’ à gloria vera, Questo può farti da l’Orto, à l’Occaso, E di verace honor chiara, et altera. (Sing, my Muse, no more that face, no more those eyes, / those godly beauties that seemed priceless / to my ignorant senses, when confounded / and absorbed by earthly shadows, // but sing the wisdom of that wise breast, / its thousand treasures and its thousand charms / and all the loftiness of my count / who from all others has taken the prize. // Now your Castilian spring, your new Parnassus / are not smoke and shade, but this deligthful band / of virtues closed

 On the deviation of Abdelkader Salza’s 1913 critical edition, on which the commonly used edition by Rizzoli is oriented (Gaspara Stampa, Rime, ed. Maria Bellonci and Gustavo Rodolfo Ceriello [Milano: Rizzoli, 1954, 2002]), as opposed to the 1554 Rime, see Ulrike Schneider, “Die Rime Gaspara Stampas als Makrotext: Ein Plädoyer für die Rückkehr zur Erstausgabe von 1554,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 54 (2003): 115–45 (with concordance), and Ulrike Schneider, Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento. Transformationen des lyrischen Diskurses bei Vittoria Colonna und Gaspara Stampa (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), as well as Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy 1400–1650, p. 110. Now, the recent Italian-English edition of Gaspara Stampa’s Poems by Jane Tylus and Troy Tower represents a historically appropriate reference edition with its orientation on the first edition from 1554. However, an Italian historically critical edition of the Rime is still missing. 5  In the editio princeps, these three sonnets are followed by only two series of capitoli and madrigali, with different concepts of love poetry. 4

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within a noble vessel. // This is the way to gain real glory, / this can make you proud, and famous, / and bring you true honor from east to west!)6

Here, in the last sonnet of the Rime, Stampa’s woman speaker not only turns away from her own hitherto existing poetry and the concept of love connected with it; in the end, the poetess Stampa puts herself at a clear distance from Petrarch, whose poetic syntagmas she had emulated in the proem to her Rime, albeit in shades of distance. With the epic incipit and the calling upon the Muse, she at first recalls Bembo’s proem (I: “Piansi e cantai lo strazio e l’aspra guerra”; “I cried and sang about the torture and the bitter war”) and with it his claim to outdo Petrarch.7 Stampa declines to accept a poetry that preferably sings the praise of outward qualities (Rime 285, 1–4)—and with this, the poetry representing the main part of her own preceding Rime. Instead, love poetry of the Neoplatonic type, for which Vittoria Colonna stands—“Di virtù vere, chiuse in nobil vaso” (v. 11: “virtues closed within a noble vessel”)—is presented as a “via da salir à gloria vera” (v. 12: “the way to gain real glory”). Here, a poem by Bembo to Vittoria Colonna (CXXV: “Cingi le costei tempie de l’amato”; “Crown her temples with that lovely”) is quoted almost literally, in which he praises her assets as a grieving wife and poetess who “con gran passi a vera gloria sale” (“ascending to true glory with great strides”).8 This reference to a single text of Bembo’s is thereby functionalized as a systemic reference: with the figure of the poetess, the intertextual reference to Bembo’s praise of Colonna also recalls the love discourse used by her. In a noticeable passage shortly before the end of the Rime, and on a metaliterary level, a reflection on the appropriate love discourse is in process, whose object is the “conte” and, for this reason, the dominating love: at the end comes no remorse for her love, but a reflection on poetry, and with it the metatextual level. Accordingly, the “Colonna system” with its Neoplatonic elements is here suggestively referred to as a successful model—“Questo può farti da l’Orto, à l’Occaso, / E di verace

 All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). 7  See Noyer-Weidner, “Lyrische Grundform,” 343ff. This is picked up again in Stampa in the first tercet in the invocation of “il tuo Castalia, e’l tuo Parnaso” (v. 9). 8  Bembo, Rime 125, 9–14: “Felice lui, ch’è sol conforme obietto / a l’ampio stile, e dal beato regno / vede, amor santo pote e vale; // e lei ben nata, che sì chiaro segno / stampa del marital suo casto affetto, / e con gran passi a vera gloria sale” (“Happy that man who is the sole deserving object of her noble style and who sees from the realm of the blessed the power and worth of holy Love; and well born she, who is stamping such brilliant marks of her chaste marital affection and ascending to true glory with great strides”; translated by Virginia Cox, Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2013], p. 268). 6

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Honor chiara, et altera” (vv. 13–14: “This can make you proud, and famous, / and bring you true honor from east to west”)—but is not further elaborated upon.9 I do not want to examine the specific conception of love and its differences from Colonna more closely in this chapter. What is most important here is the observation that in Stampa’s Rime there generally is a stronger, often even explicit, reflection on writing than in Colonna, just as there is a specific analysis not only of prior models but also of the different discourses about love available at the time. In the following chapter, I want to examine above all the metafictional strategies characteristic of Stampa’s poetry. Some of these strategies were already mentioned in the conspicuous passages in the Rime just referred to: the proem and the last sonnet (285) of the 1554 collection. Now, we shall look at a particularly interesting, yet rarely recognized phenomenon in the Rime: the complex way different roles or personae are played with. First and foremost we have the intermittent split of the speaker’s position into three different personae, namely the figure of the (nameless) first-person speaker, the figure of “Anassilla,” and the figure of “Stampa.” Some of the “role-playing poems” operate quite overtly with these multiple personae. In addition, there is the function of the correspondence poems, those exchanged between poets and referring to each other. There is a number of correspondence verses to be found in the corpus of the 1554 Rime, and in these poems the distinction between the different personae becomes important on another level. The different facets of such playing (with) personae betray, I would like to argue, an implicit reflection on the fictional status of poetry. The fundamental distinction bound up with this is the one between the real extratextual poet Gaspara Stampa and the intratextual poet and lover, who speaks and writes. This distinction can be contextualized historically by referring to the poetological discussions in the Cinquecento on the one hand, and to the practice of the Renaissance academies on the other. Only when read through this foil do certain specifics of the Rime gain a clear profile, which in turn makes us aware of the historical constellations beyond poetological debates. One function of playing (with) personae in Stampa’s Rime lies in a constant shifting between authentication and ambiguation: on the one hand, the real life basis of the Rime is confirmed repeatedly; on the other, it is made decidedly ambiguous, again and again. This shifting is of particular relevance because in the contemporary reception of women’s writing poetry already, a clear interference between extraand intratextual level can be observed. On the one hand, Petrarchist writing gave women writers the freedom for fictional self-fashioning; on the other, recipients not seldom were prone to conclude from the (self-)fashioned personae to the real poetess and person—as also in Stampa’s case. After all, this playing (with) personae guides our attention to what fascinates literary studies most: Gaspara Stampa as a female poet in the context of her time. The so-called rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics in the Renaissance is accompanied by a comprehensive interest in literary theory. To identify the place 9  On this last sonnet, Rime 285, and on the implications of the Colonna reference, see Ulrike Schneider, Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento, p. 259ff.

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of poetry in the literary system is of central concern. The Cinquecento does not yet possess an established genre code that would allow for a classification of individual poems or lirica in general as a separate form of “poetry” in the traditional hierarchy of genres.10 However, linked to the attempt to identify lirica as a separate literary genre is the question of its fictional status. These efforts are by far neither uniform nor consistent; in general, a strong effort can be observed to establish lyric poetry as a fictional genre (in modern terms)—analogous to other forms of poetry and different from historiography. Implicitly or explicitly, no less is at stake here than the question of whether and to what extent Petrarch, the model author of the sixteenth century, may be called a “poet” at all. In this regard, we must clearly distinguish between the question of the ontological status of what a poem refers to—is what is said real or invented?—and the status of the text itself—can it be classified as fictional or factual? Because of the specific communicative situations of most of the cited texts, this has to be done with a particular focus on genre, that is, in opposition to drama or epic. Three categories are of particular relevance to the debate over the status of the lirica between fact and fiction. They are: (1) the category of imitation, of mimesis, to which, among others, the question of the “plot” in lyric poetry is bound, (2) the category of probability, or verosimile, that functionally motivates the multiple references to reality in the poetry in the sense of an alleged self-expression of the speaking poet, and (3) the speech criterion (the contrast between report and representation), as formulated by Plato and Aristotle and later taken up in the poetics of the Cinquecento. In the following, I want to concentrate solely on the last aspect: the speech criterion. This links up with the central question: who is actually speaking in poetry? It’s well known that Aristotle, in his Poetics, distinguishes the arts with regard to their medium, their subject matter, and their mode of imitation. The so-called speech criterion refers to the aforementioned distinguishing feature, the mode or manner of imitation, as we see in this central, often quoted passage from chapter 3 of the Poetics: For the means being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may imitate by making all his actors live and move before us. 11 10  Dealing specifically with Petrarca’s canzone “In quella parte dove Amor mi sprona,” Agnolo Segni, for example, as late as 1573, puts in front of his Lezioni intorno alla poesia the question, “che genere di poesia è la presente canzona e l’altre canzone e generalmente tutte le rime del Petrarca.” Agnolo Segni, Lezioni intorno alla poesia [1573], Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, ed. Bernard Weinberg, 4 vols (Bari: Laterza, 1970– 1974), vol. 3, 1972, pp. 5–100; p. 19. A differentiated elaboration on theories of poetry in the Italian renaissance is given in Bernhard Huss, Florian Mehltretter, and Gerhard Regn, Lyriktheorie(n) der italienischen Renaissance (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2012). On the problem of poetry as a macro-genre, see chapter 2.1. 11  Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle, translated with a critical text by S.H. Butcher (London: Macmillan, 1895) p. 11f.

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The question of who is speaking is clearly related to the respective mode of imitation. A binary distinction is made between narrative report and dramatic presentation, but the mode of narration is further differentiated: Does the speaker “speak in his own person” or does he, like Homer, “take another personality,” take on another role? This passage posed an obvious problem for the theorists of the Cinquecento: lyric poetry, especially the lyric poetry modeled on Petrarch, does not, as in drama or epic, tell or present stories, which, it must be said, happened to people other than the poet or the speaker. In lyric poetry, a poet-subject speaks “on his own behalf,” and it at least deals with the suggestion or illusion of an account of one’s own experiences, or in modern terms, a postulate of experience. If the sixteenth-century poetics only referred to the just-quoted passage from Aristotle’s Poetics about the speech criterion, the problem could be easily solved. If you leave aside the possible content of the “report”—and with it the question of narrativity—the lirica can, at least at first glance, be assigned to the reporting mode, and accordingly you sometimes find the following argument: the poet in this case can speak in persona propria, “speak in his own person” or “unchanged” (or better yet “invariably as the same”) as well as to vestirsi l’altrui persona, “take another personality” or take on another role.12 However, if we consider the more precise definition that Aristotle gives in chapter 24, another line of argument is needed. In that chapter, Aristotle states that “[t]he poet in his own person should speak as little as possible; it is not this that makes him an imitator.”13 In the poetic theory of the Secondo Cinquecento, there is a strong tendency to apply this passage not only to epic but also to poetry in general. Here, in fact, we run into problems since this calls for a gradation of the imitative quality in the different genres or texts. A possible solution is proposed by Sebastiano Minturno in his Arte poetica from 1564. He praises Petrarch’s RVF as exemplary, in particular because “this collection, just as an epic text, exhibits the shift between narrare and vestirsi l’altrui persona.”14 In the poems that have an addressee, the poet would no longer speak as a poet, but as a lover: quando il Poeta parla ad altrui; par, che deponga la persona del Poeta; e ne prenda, ò tenga un’altra. Percioche nel Petrarca due persone intender possiamo: 12  Thus, for example, in Pomponio Torelli, Trattato della poesia lirica [1594]. Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, ed. Bernard Weinberg (Bari: Laterza, 1974), vol. 4, pp. 237–317; p. 268. At the end, he concedes, however, that the poet could also have others speak and quotes as one example among several, “il dialogo degli occhi del Petrarca, quello con l’anima” (p. 315). 13  Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle, p. 89. Ingram Bywater translates this sentence as, “The poet should say very little in propria persona, as he is no imitator when doing that” (Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Ingram Bywater [Oxford: Clarendon, 1920], p. 77). 14  Gerhard Regn, “Mimesis und autoreferentieller Diskurs. Zur Interferenz von Poetik und Rhetorik in der Lyriktheorie der italienischen Spätrenaissance,” Die Pluralität der Welten—Aspekte der Renaissance, ed. Karlheinz Stierle and Wolf-Dieter Stempel (Munich: Fink, 1987), pp. 387–414; p. 391.

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First of all, this passage shows that Minturno differentiates between two “roles”16 that Petrarch takes on in his poetry: at times he speaks as a poet, at times as a lover. On the basis of the precise wording of the quote it is possible to go one step further: a threefold division is suggested here, within which it is already possible to discern different “instances.” One could distinguish between (1) Petrarch as an extratextual poet, a historical person and author of his vernacular Lyrics; (2) an intratextual figure of the poet (la persona del Poeta), whose speech, however, refers to the “real” Petrarch; and (3) the figure of the lover (la persona dell’amante), also conceived intratextually and by way of the pronoun “io”/“I” converging with the intratextual poet-subject. From this, the following thesis can be derived: The phrase “parlare in persona propria,” fashioned from Aristotle’s discussion of the speech criterion as discussed in the poetics of the Secondo Cinquecento, stands as a paradigm for the fundamentally ambiguous communicative set-up of lyric texts—and this ambivalence cannot be resolved. Against the background of the typical constellation in love poetry—an intratextual speaker using the first person, who presents himself simultaneously as lover and poet, against this background the formula persona propria suggests a reference to the extratextual poet as the author of the text and as a historical person. Obviously, this undercuts the postulate of mimesis in the sense of a finzione, or of an “as-if” scenario. Something is “imitated” that/as it did not really happen, yet, could have happened—just herein lies the difference between poetry and historiography.17 The specific communicative situation of such lyric texts in the poetological debates of the Cinquecento is neither consistently nor even systematically defined as the border between text and world, which appears 15  Sebastiano Minturno, L’arte poetica (Venice, 1564, reprint Munich 1971), p. 175; my emphasis. 16  The term persona here means the respective “role.” Already since the time of the Romans, this referred to a role played by an actor as well as of a role people play in society. See Manfred Fuhrmann, “Person,” Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 13 vols, ed. Joachim Ritter et al. (Basel: Schwabe, 1989), vol. 7, pp. 269–72. The first meaning (an actor’s mask/role) is called up in the (dramatic) mode of speech, which is subject to the poetological debates; as for the second meaning, see Seneca (Epistulae morales 85) and Cicero (De Officiis I). 17  Giulio Del Bene talks about the poet “imitating himself” (imitare se stesso). See Giulio Del Bene, Due Discorsi [1574]. Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, ed. Bernard Weinberg (Bari: Laterza, 1970–1974), vol. 3 (1972), pp. 175–204.

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as established and permeable at the same time. But the debates of that time show what was conceivable against the background of the creation of a new genre system that included lyric poetry: the poetological tracts do not account for the referential ambivalence as such, but in some cases they reflect the nonpragmatic status of lyrical texts as well as the referentiality of their statements. This suggests that even at that time, a conceptualization of the lirica as a fictional genre was at least beginning to be conceivable, although it was not developed systematically. That the poetic practice was often ahead of the theoretical classification of lirica’s possibilities can be shown in Gaspara Stampa’s poetry and her playing with different personae in the Rime. It is based on a constellation analogous to Petrarch’s, but this time with a female intratextual first-person speaker who is simultaneously the lover and the poet. Repeatedly at her side we find an alter ego, the figure/persona “Anassilla,” who metonymically refers to the loving “I” of the texts, in so far as her name is derived from the Latin name “Anaxum” of the river Piave, which runs through the lands of the beloved conte. This persona Anassilla, in a certain sense, embodies the “role” of the first-person speaker as the lover and enables her to deviate from the “parlare in persona propria.”18 A closeness as well as a distance between the two instances is thus established, and the postulate of mimesis, as I have just described it, is accounted for. Some poems, in which Anassilla herself is speaking, bear witness to this, and she speaks (in quoted oral speech) as a lover, not as a poetess.19 Conversely, it can be seen that the persona Anassilla allows the first-person female speaker and poetess to distance herself at times from the role and the figure of lover.20 The interplay between the designated identity and the (missing) referential identity gains momentum and complexity because “Anassilla” was also the name that the real poetess Gaspara Stampa used as a member of a literary society.21 In  In her analysis of Stampa’s “pastoral strategy,” Ann Rosalind Jones (The Currency of Eros. Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620 [Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990], p. 125) underscores that the use of the pseudonym Anassilla makes it possible for Stampa—and her speaker, respectively—to speak “in the character of a detached thirdperson observer” (p. 129); likewise, this is to allow and mask Anassilla’s—and also her speaker’s/lover’s—self-praise (see p. 129 with reference to sonnet 65). 19  See, for example, in Rime 202, 247, and 261. In the first or second tercet of these role-playing poems, the speaker (or more neutrally, a speaker’s voice) respectively names the preceding speech as Anassilla’s. See, for example Rime 261: “Così, lodando il suo saggio Pastore; / Anassilla dicea, di dolci aspetti / Ripieno il cielo, à l’aer chiaro, e puro” (vv. 12–14: “So said Anassilla, praising her wise / shepherd to the air, clear and pure, / and the sky was full of lovely sights”). 20  It is important to note that in Stampa’s dedication “Allo illustre mio signore,” Anassilla is already mentioned; the mentioning of this persona is principally part of an ambiguation strategy with regard to the closeness-distance relation between the lover and the conte. See Schneider, Der weibliche Petrarkismus im Cinquecento, p. 245ff. 21  The identity of the literary society has not been definitively established; presumably, Stampa was a member of several circles. It is significant that she was a member of the Accademia dei Dubbiosi, founded in 1551 by Fortunato Martinengo. Although not much 18

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Rime 262, “Anassilla” and “Gaspara Stampa,” both mentioned by name, even meet up: Mentre al cielo il Pastor d’alma beltate Coridon’ alza l’una e l’altra Stampa, E mentre l’una, e l’altra arde, et avampa Di far lui chiaro à questa nostra etate, In note di vivace Amor formate D’Amor, che solo in gentil cor s’ accampa, Dice Anassilla al Sol volta, che scampa Le forze havendo à più poter legate. Deh, perche stil, vaghezza, & armonia, D’ alzar lui non ho io rime e concento À segno, ove Pastor mai non è stato? Perche à voglia sì santa, e così pia Non risponde il poter, che in un momento Faria lo stato mio chiaro e beato? 22 (While Coridon, a shepherd of divine beauty, / raises one and the other Stampa to the sky, / and while one and the other sister rage and burn / to make him illustrious in this our age, // Anassilla, in notes nourished by lively love, / a love that takes root only in gentle hearts, / turns to the sun and speaks in words / more forceful for their having been constrained: // “Why then don’t I have the style, the art, / the harmony, the balance, and the rhyme / to raise him to where no shepherd’s been before? // Why can’t the powers above fulfill / this pure and holy wish, and in an instant make / my own state blessed and acclaimed?”)

Who precisely is speaking in this text, and in which role, as lover or poet? Gaspara Stampa uses the whole repertoire of possibilities offered through the is known about this academy, it was famous for its marked interest in poesia volgare, and it was strongly influenced by Neoplatonic thought. Among others, Girolamo Ruscelli’s Lettura, a text about women, can be traced back to the initiative of this academy. See Marco Faini, “Fortunato Martinengo, Girolamo Ruscelli e l’Accademia dei Dubbiosi tra Brescia e Venezia,” Girolamo Ruscelli dall’accademia alla corte alla tipografia. Atti del Convegno, Viterbo, 6–8 ottobre 2011, ed. Paolo Marini and Paolo Procaccioli (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2012), vol. II, pp. 455–519. Ruscelli himself was in charge of Stampa’s first publication; three of her sonnets appeared in the Sesto libro delle Rime di diversi eccellenti autori novamente raccolte et mandate in luce con un discorso di Girolamo Ruscelli (Venice: Giovam Maria Bonelli, Al Segno del Pozzo, 1553). However, it is also important that Stampa belonged to the circle around Domenico Venier (see Martha Feldman, “The Academy of Domenico Venier. Music’s Literary Muse in Mid-Cinquecento Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 44 [1991]: 476–512) since it is there that Stampa supposedly met Collaltino di Collalto. 22  My emphasis.

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boundary drawn between text and world, and she uses them in a way that allows her to make statements about herself as a real person and poet, which cannot be clearly attributed to her. The poetic utterances can neither be read as purely fictional nor as referring to the real world—they skillfully undermine this distinction, on which they nevertheless build for this particular effect. The play with authentication and ambiguation as it concerns the real-life content of the Rime is staged masterfully. We cannot really reconstruct the setting of this poem, but Coridone seemed to be a young academic, admirer of the sisters Gaspara and Cassandra Stampa (Rime 262, 2: “l’una e l’altra Stampa”). In this sense, the sonnet calls up the context of a literary circle. Also, the concept of the different personae gains in importance, as can clearly be seen when “Stampa” and “Anassilla” meet: is Anassilla’s speech in the tercets a usual female gesture of modesty, as numerously found in the Rime? Or does it not rather contain—in their contrastive confrontation—Stampa’s indirect (self-)praise as a poet? Or do we here recognize Stampa’s distancing from her (own) love poetry? Or are there not allusions to, at least, different forms of poetry—love poetry vs. encomiastic poems—which means to say poetic roles?23 Thus, the category of persona has a special relevance in the poetological debates about the communicative situation of lyrical texts—be it in the sense of persona propria or altrui persona. And this concerns not only fundamental questions of the theory of poetry and genre theory. We are also bound to think of Cicero’s concept of different personae as he developed it in De officiis (On Duties), and as it is highly relevant for parts of the Renaissance culture. For our purposes it is important to note that Cicero was not interested in a definition of individuality in the modern sense, but in a theory of fixed roles, which an individual would fill out within the social framework.24 Cicero understands the term persona as a “mask,” in the sense of a role.25 His concept of personae is relevant for us because it is also significant within the different social contexts of the Cinquecento—academies, for

 This would fit Virginia Cox’s assumption that the existence of encomiastic series, occasional verses and correspondence poems in the collection mean that Stampa did not only want to be received as a poetess of love (Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy 1400–1650, p. 110 and p. 310 n.143). 24  See Manfred Fuhrmann,“Persona. Ein römischer Rollenbegriff,” Identität, ed. Odo Marquard and Karlheinz Stierle (Munich: Fink, 1979), pp. 83–106, on the Romans’ concept of role (p. 91): “persona always means something typical, a typical location within a given system.” Indeed, this statement could also be transferred onto the constellation of the Petrarchan system in Cinquecento poetry. 25  The four personae that Cicero distinguishes concern (1) the characteristics of the human species (humans as rational beings); (2) the psychological constitution (the different character types); (3) the historical context and the social environment, and (4) the profession or the personal decision for an occupation (see Cicero, On Duties, Book I, 107–16, pp. 42–6). The way in which these different roles intertwine can be understood through the rhetorical category of aptum, which in itself is also an important poetic category. 23

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example, were thriving at the time.26 In this sense, I want to briefly mention to what extent the context of the academies is also important for Gaspara Stampa and for her poetry. As we know, her Rime were only published posthumously, and to her contemporaries she was known mainly as a virtuosa in different ridotti or cenacoli. Martha Feldman has stressed that “the most lauded solo singer usually associated with the first decade of [Domenico] Venier’s ridotto was the eminent female poet Gaspara Stampa,”27 and at least part of her own poetic collection was set to music. If we follow Feldman’s thesis that Stampa in her Rime makes a clear-cut semantic distinction between scrivere (writing) and cantare (singing), and does not—as did Petrarch—use the words synonymously, it implies a similarly clear-cut distinction between her two “roles” or personae as a poet and as a singing virtuosa. In fact, as a poetess, she apparently was the member of an academy in her role as well under the pen name “Anassilla,” which, in turn, refers directly to her own Rime. In the series of correspondence verses which are integrated into the corpus of the Rime in the 1554 edition, the first-person speaker stylizes herself as a poet within a circle of fellow poets with whom she not only exchanges poems but with whom she also competes. The correspondence poems illustrate this agonistic component, which partakes in the general concepts of imitatio and aemulatio in poetry and tie it to the real-life context of the Renaissance accademie, ridotti, and cenacoli through the attribution of roles. This is another way in which a metafictional level of speaking about poetry—and that includes Stampa’s own poetry—is implemented within the Rime. The integration of the correspondence poems into the macrostructure of the Rime can be thought as a link between the intratextual role of poet28 and the empirical author, which is strengthened by diverse references to reality such as mentioning (real) poets and other circumstances. But the correspondence verses illustrate something else: by indicating an equal status of the speaker/poet and 26  About 600 academies are known to have existed in Italy during the period from 1525 to 1700. Multifariously composed, often already institutionalized by a mere body of rules, often only in the loose compound of a club or an association, their elaborate research remains a desideratum, also, and especially, with respect to the role of women. See Amadeo Quondam,“L’accademia,” Letteratura italiana, vol. 1: Il letterato e le istituzioni, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), pp. 823–98; and see the list in Michele Maylender, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, 5 vols, ristampa dell’ed. di Bologna, 1926–1930 (Bologna: Forni, 1976). See also the project database The Italian Academies 1525–1700 at http:// italianacademies.org/. 27  Feldman, “The Academy of Domenico Venier,” p. 500. 28  See Regn, Torquato Tassos zyklische Liebeslyrik, p. 35. References to reality may be facts, location names, or data which were decipherable by contemporary readers; it may be, however, that the “I” in the text, who constitutes herself as a lover or poet, comes into contact “with the other characters who embody an empirical reference and who stand in a factual or, at least for the intended readers, probable relation to the empirical poet.” A “transparently constructed, empirical reference to the donna” can be added (Regn, Torquato, p. 35)—the equivalent in Stampa is just such an empirical reference to the (male) beloved.

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her addressees, who are mostly fellow poets, they contradict the multiple topoi of humility which can be found throughout the Rime and which thematize the failings of female writing.29 These gestures of self-withdrawal are thus deconstructed as topoi and transformed into a strategy of female writing. And in fact, Stampa shows herself in the correspondence verses as an equal member of a schiera, a literary circle; to this, encomiastic poems addressed to Stampa by male colleagues also bear witness.30 Likewise, within this group of texts, the fictional status of the other texts in the Rime becomes an implicit theme. This is the case, for example, with a sonnet addressed to the Venetian poet Leonardo Emo (Rime 254), which claims that Achilles’s fame is based less on his “real” deeds but rather on Homer’s praise of him: “Il chiaro Achille hebbe, la spoglia opima, / D’honor fra gli altri gran figli di Marte, / Non perche fusse tale egli in gran parte,/ Ma perche Omero lui alza, e sublima” (vv. 5–8: “famed Achilles won the largest spoils / of honor of all Mars’s great sons—not just / for what he was, but because Homer / raises him up and renders him sublime”; my emphasis).31 Although here the primary concern is idealization, implicitly the real-life basis is questioned, as the negative phrasing “non perche fusse tale egli in gran parte” emphasizes.32 Moreover, it is significant that the communicative situation within the group of dedication and correspondence texts is set on a metalevel compared to the love poems that precede them. By frequently referring to these love poems they presuppose them, as I mentioned before, as already having been written. This again means that the firstperson speaker of the Rime here primarily reflects on the texts and their content in 29  See also Elisabeth Tiller’s “thesis of the inherent critique of roles” in Stampa (Elisabeth Tiller, Frau im Spiegel: Die Selben und die Andere zwischen Welt und Text, 2 vols. [Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 1996], p. 714). This aspect is all the more noticeable as in the love poems yet in a stricter sense—in relation also to Colonna’s Rime—topoi of modesty marked as female are harder to find, yet instead, a distinct claim to poetic competence is made at times quite self-confidently. This contrast thus additionally marks the modesty gestures as specific to genre: female encomia addressed to men are obviously more problematic than women writing poetry in itself. 30  Thus, Benedetto Varchi, for example, calls Stampa “la bella e buona Saffo de’ nostri giorni” (see Stampa, Rime, ed. Bellonci and Ceriello, p. 57), and similarly, Giulio Stufa calls her a “Saffo novella, pari a la greca nel tosco idioma” (Stampa, Rime, ed. Bellonci and Ceriello, p. 58). In several of Stampa’s correspondence poems, her fame among the contemporaries is thematized, as, for example, in a correspondence sonnet addressed to an unknown poet (Rime 244): “Che mi giova Signor, che fra la gente; / Illustre, come dite, & chiara io sia / Se dentro l’alma mia gioia non sente?” (my emphasis) (vv. 12–14: “No matter, lord, that I’m as well-known / and famous as you say, what boots it if / I know no joy within my soul?”). 31  See also Rime 114 and 265. 32  This passage is remarkable also because in Stampa’s Rime—as generally in poetry by women—it is repeatedly underscored that the (male) object of praise is so great that (female) poetry is not enough for him. Here, the relations are significantly converse or relativized.

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the role of a poet, and all this within the Rime. Therefore, she marks them as poetry in the first place, whose link to experienced reality seems problematic, not least because of the agonistic environment in which competing poets pay her tribute. The strategies which Stampa uses to create and simultaneously blur or even deny traces of referentiality could be shown in far more detail. The intense changing between authentication on the one hand and ambiguation on the other can be linked to the simultaneous struggle to define the status of lirica, as it is brought up in the poetological debates of the time. The marked play with different personae, conceptualized as figures or masks and (ambiguous) roles, points to the argumentative relevance of the speech criterion in these debates, and more specifically to the dichotomy of a parlare in persona propria and a vestirsi l’altrui persona. The persona category, however, is far more important for the sociocultural conditions of the time, which is further supported by the example of the popular academies and ridotti in the Cinquecento, where the attribution of roles as well as the use of masks, pen names, etc. were important. It is in her Rime, however, that Gaspara Stampa put to use the concept of persona that is so vital for the Renaissance, in a masterly fashion.

Chapter 9

Gaspara Stampa as Salamander and Phoenix: Reshaping the Tradition of the Abandoned Woman* Veronica Andreani, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

The myth of Gaspara Stampa’s unhappy relationship with the Venetian nobleman Collaltino di Collalto is recounted throughout the poet’s Rime, a narrative whose details are well known: Stampa and Collaltino met in 1548 and they remained together, through highs and lows, for three years. Their mutual feelings were deeply unbalanced, however, with the poet showing an intense and unflinching commitment to her beloved, while he is generally characterized as having a cold and inconstant attitude towards her. For this reason, with the exception of sporadic moments of fulfillment, Stampa presented herself as living in a state of constant frustration until the count eventually ended their relationship, at which point she was struck with a seemingly interminable despair that she continued to document in her poetry. By presenting herself as a neglected, rejected, and ultimately abandoned woman, Stampa includes her poetic narrative within a longstanding Greco-Roman literary tradition of abandoned female lovers, identifying herself with iconic figures like Medea, Ariadne, Sappho, and Dido, as well as their medieval and early modern Italian counterparts, such as Boccaccio’s Fiammetta and Ariosto’s Olimpia. In her poetry she recalls the archetypal model for tales of abandoned women—Ovid’s Heroides, at the time a new genre devoted to the representation of female sorrow that would continue be popular for centuries to come. The fictional letters contained within the Heroides are addressed to distant husbands and beloveds and recall unhappy relationships through passionate and afflicted monologues. The Heroides are a poetry of lament, where mythical affairs of the epic and Hellenistic traditions are gathered and adapted to an epistolary mode built on women’s fictional voices. Scholars have already pointed out the influence that works like Ovid’s Heroides and Boccaccio’s Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta exerted on Stampa’s oeuvre, noting the stylistic similarities between the laments described in these earlier texts and Stampa’s own.1 Thus, although we acknowledge that the affair immortalized *  I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Aileen A. Feng for helping me with the translation of this chapter. 1  Maria Pia Mussini Sacchi, “L’eredità di Fiammetta. Per una lettura delle Rime di Gaspara Stampa,” Studi italiani 10 (1998): 35–51. Patricia Phillippy has underlined the

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in Stampa’s Rime is grounded in autobiographical details, it is also undeniable that the elegiac tradition played a pivotal role in the creation of Stampa’s poetic persona. Thoughtfully constructed from the very first sonnet of the collection, the literary self-portrait of the author contains all the features commonly related to elegy: she is in love with a man to whom she dedicates all her feelings, loyalty, and devotion, while he is mostly detached, indifferent, and cruel. The expression of grief and sorrow from unrequited love is a topical foundation of elegy, as is the fact that usually the female lover becomes, through her faithfulness, an exemplary heroine of love who achieves moral supremacy over the beloved. In the classical tradition, the abandoned woman typically remains so faithful to her beloved that she ultimately meets her fatal end (like Sappho and Dido). However, although Stampa’s self-portrait in the Rime appears to follow the same trajectory as her abandoned predecessors, particularly in her two epitaph poems (Rime 86 and 151), she significantly alters the portrait of the abandoned woman and rewrites the Petrarchan model of desire upon which her poetry is based when she takes on a second lover. As I will argue in this chapter, Stampa rejects the notion of devoting herself to a single beloved by identifying herself with the salamander and the phoenix when she begins writing about her new flame, the nobleman Bartolomeo Zen. Her radical diversion from both her classical and Petrarchan subtexts leads us to a fundamental question at the heart of her poetics: how can the portrait of the faithful lover, whose loyalty is exemplary, stand side by side with the presence of another flame within the same poetic collection? Although Stampa adopts Petrarch’s erotic canzoniere as a model,2 rather than his penitential mode of writing, Stampa does not respect one of its fundamentally defining features: the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the beloved. While Laura is the only star of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, in Stampa’s Rime Collaltino may be the brightest star, but he is decidedly not the only one. This departure from the Petrarchan subtext has led the critic Maria Pia Mussini Sacchi to suggest that the poems for Bartolomeo Zen are inconsistent with the rest of the collection.3 The scholar has argued that the last part of Stampa’s love canzoniere, where the poet introduces a second love, especially clashes with the dedicatory epistle of the influence of Heroides epistles (especially VII and XV, Dido Aeneae and Sappho Phaoni) in “Gaspara Stampa’s Rime: Replication and Retraction,” Philological Quarterly 68 (1989): 1–23 and “‘Altera Dido’: The Model of Ovid’s Heroides in the Poems of Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco,” Italica 69 (1992): 1–18. 2  As Virginia Cox has noted, the choice of the erotic canzoniere as a model for her collection was an unusual choice, since by the mid-sixteenth-century the structure of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta was a “faintly archaic form,” which “remained a vastly important model … linguistically and stylistically” while “in other respects, it had been largely superseded. Male, as well as female, writers had by this point more or less abandoned the Petrarchan model of a love canzoniere narrating a sole erotic trajectory for the less solipsistic and more dispersive model of verse collection evolved with such success by Bembo.” See Virginia Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 89. 3  Mussini Sacchi, “L’eredità di Fiammetta,” pp. 47–51.

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Rime, “Allo illustre mio signore” (To my illustrious lord), which is addressed only to Collaltino. She has claimed, The dedicatory letter clearly refers to a unique love story, has a single purpose (to obtain pity, if not love), expresses one hope only, namely that the Count could go back to visit, once again, the woman at her house … With what legitimacy are therefore placed—without interruption from the rhymes dedicated to Collaltino—poems in which it is shown the clear intention to break off a relationship considered impossible, and there is exultation for the recovered peace of heart? … or worse, it is announced the appearance of a new love? A too sharp dissonance with the content of the dedicatory epistle leads us to believe that the “canzoniere” for Collaltino—at least that one presented by the same letter—should properly be concluded before the intrusion of a new love story.4

Besides omitting the fact that the arrival of a second love is long prepared for in the Rime 5 Mussini Sacchi misinterprets the dedicatory epistle, which is not a dedication of the entire collection, but a letter that probably accompanied a number of poems—called a “povero libretto” (poor little book) by the poet—that Stampa sent to the beloved when he was away and had forgotten her, in order to restore the memory of his suffering, abandoned partner. The tone of the letter clearly reveals that it was written when Collaltino was Stampa’s only beloved, before the entrance of Bartolomeo Zen into the poet’s life. Thus, the letter is not a “sigillo conclusivo della raccolta” (conclusive seal of the collection)6 or a dedication of the entire Rime, as argued by Mussini Sacchi. Instead, it is more probable that the curators of the posthumous edition published this letter at the beginning of the Rime because it could effectively introduce the predominant theme of the collection. Mussini Sacchi’s remark also implies that the authorship of the macrostructure of the Rime should be questioned. That Stampa’s volume was published posthumously, shortly after the poet’s death, and that we lack any manuscript documentation of the Rime, has never been disputed. However a close reading of the poems makes it clear that at least a number of them do form a sequence explicitly constructed to imitate the narrative of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.7 Much like  Mussini Sacchi, “L’eredità di Fiammetta,” pp. 49–50. My translation.  The fact has been noted by Fiora Bassanese, who recalls Rime 127: “E se questo

4 5

non basta, un’altro Amore / Si prenda, e lassi questo, onde hora avampo, / E così vinca l’un l’altro dolore” (vv. 9–11: “And if that’s not enough, another love / we’ll take, and leave this one for which I burn, / and so one grief will defeat another”). See Fiora Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982) p. 127. All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). 6  Mussini Sacchi, “L’eredità di Fiammetta,” p. 37. 7  The sequence to which I refer to is poems 1–220 in Tylus’s edition, The Complete Poems, where the original ordering of the collection as it appeared in the 1554 editio princeps is restored.

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Petrarch’s oeuvre, the sequence in question has a proem, an innamoramento poem (detailing the moment the poet fell in love), as well as anniversary poems that signal both the passing of time and, consequently, the development of a love story.8 The fact that the second flame is explicitly mentioned in an anniversary poem that celebrates the third year since the beginning of the relationship with Collaltino9 is quite revealing of the fact that the poet herself could conceive of the mixing of these two erotic experiences. Thus, as I shall examine in this chapter, the presence of a second lover does not imply any structural problem or inconsistency in the Rime: on the contrary, it highlights the originality of Stampa’s conception of love and ultimately serves as the last stroke of the brush in her poetic self-portrait. *** Gaspara Stampa describes herself in the Rime as indissolubly linked to the figure of the count Collaltino di Collalto. As V. Stanley Benfell has noted, the poems “present us with a Petrarchan lover, who looks to her beloved for fulfillment and who can define herself only as the lover of her beloved.”10 The poet rejoices and suffers, hopes and despairs, depending upon Collaltino’s demeanor. Her yearning after professional and personal success is based on the excellence she attributes to the beloved, who is praised as a source of poetic inspiration and as a medium 8  With respect to this point I completely agree with V. Stanley Benfell, “Translating Petrarchan Desire in Vittoria Colonna and Gaspara Stampa,” Translating Desire in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Craig A. Berry and Heather R. Hayton (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 123–4: “There is compelling evidence that Stampa was concerned with the organization of her collection. … It also seems clear, however, that she died before she could complete the final ordering of her collection, as the last eighty to ninety poems do not have the same narrative force as the earlier poems.” The last poems of the Rime—marked off typographically from the canzoniere—are divided in three parts depending on theme (occasional poetry) and metrics (tercets and madrigals). Again with Benfell’s words, “I assume … that these poems indicate some kind of actual shift in the collection” and so that the first 220 poems—those forming a downright canzoniere—need to be treated “as a unit,” whose ordering can be attributed to Stampa herself. Eventually for this reason I will not consider—as Benfell does—any poems outside of the first section of the Rime. On Stampa’s use of the Petrarchan model of love canzoniere see also Gordon Braden, “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender of Petrarchism,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.2 (1996): 115–39, and Fiora Bassanese, “Gaspara Stampa’s Petrarchan Commemorations: Validating a Female Lyric Discourse,” Annali d’italianistica 22 (2004): 155–69. 9  Rime 219, 1–4; 9: “A` mezo il mare, ch’io varcai tre anni / Fra dubbi venti, & era quasi in porto, / M’ha ricondotta Amor, che à si gran torto, / È ne’ travagli miei pronto e ne’ danni. … Un foco eguale al primo foco io sento” (“Just when I was in harbor, Love / led me back to the midst of the sea / I traversed three years amidst uncertain winds—/ Love does me wrong, ever ready to ensure my grief … A fire equal to the first I feel”). 10  Benfell, “Translating Petrarchan Desire,” p. 124.

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through which the poet-lover can distinguish herself from other women in love. Indeed, throughout the Rime she often claims that all her achievements are due to the count11 and that the love for him is her only merit.12 As some critics have noticed, Stampa grants such an elevated position to her beloved that she often risks debasing herself in her praise of the count.13 However, although she often belittles her own talents in praise of the count, there is one case in which she challenges her own paradigm: fidelity. By drawing on one of the essential polarities of elegiac rhetoric, Stampa stresses the opposition between her fidelity and that of her partner. She depicts herself as an “albergo di fe salda e costante” (Rime 7, 12: “a resting place for firm and constant faith”), while the count is depicted as “incostante e disdegnoso” (Rime 57, 14: “inconstant and disdainful”); she has “stupenda fede” and “immenso e smisurato amore” (Rime 9, 5–6: “boundless faith,” “love immeasurable and deep”), while he has, instead, “poca fede, e molto oblio” (Rime 47, 3: “little faith and great forgetfulness”). This contrast is particularly emphasized in the poems describing Collaltino’s service to King Henry II’s military campaign, and his broken promises: while away in France, he does not write to the poetlover as he had promised before leaving. In this respect, Collaltino is similar to other famous, male beloveds of the elegiac tradition who also broke their word: Theseus, who abandons Ariadne in Naxos after having promised to marry and bring her to Athens, and Panfilo of Boccaccio’s Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, who breaks his promise to Fiammetta that he would return to Naples. Even so, just like the abandoned women of the past, the poet presents herself as eternally faithful to her beloved and ready to sacrifice everything in order to experience even short moments of happiness with him. Stampa’s emphasis on her fidelity is strategic. It allows her to inscribe her story within the longstanding tradition of the abandoned woman, who honors her passion with strength and perseverance despite the beloved’s unreliability. As Ann Rosalind Jones has noted, one of the ways in which Stampa is able to express her fidelity is through the use of the pastoral, which allows the poet to redistribute “the characteristics traditionally ascribed to each sex: the count becomes an inconstant

11  Rime 157, 9–11: “Se da me dunque nasce cosa buona, / E` vostra non è mia, voi mi guidate, / A` voi si deve il pregio, e la corona” (“If anything of worth from me is born, / none of it is mine, but yours; you guide me, / and to you goes all of value, and the crown”). 12  Rime 115, 9–11: “E non ho parte in me d’esser cantata, / Se non perch’amo e riverisco voi / Oltra ogni humana, oltra ogni forma usata” (“and nothing in me is deserving of your song, / were it not that I love you—revere you / far beyond all that’s human, beyond all custom”). 13  For an in-depth analysis of Stampa’s rhetoric of self-debasement see Fiora Bassanese, “Gaspara Stampa’s Poetics of Negativity,” Italica 61 (1984): 335–46 and Ann Rosalind Jones, “Feminine Pastoral as Heroic Martyrdom. Gaspara Stampa and Mary Wroth,” The Currency of Eros. Women’s Love Lyric in Europe 1540–1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 118–43.

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waverer and the woman takes on the virtues of a chivalrous hero.”14 Through her unshakeable fidelity, Stampa is able to reverse the lovers’ respective roles and overcome a seemingly impossible challenge; namely, rising above the beloved, who is often metaphorically described as an unreachable summit. A second strategy through which she accomplishes this is through the poetic construction of her epitaphs where she memorializes herself as an extraordinary lover and highlights her position as a modern heroine. In two poems, in particular, her epitaph begins with the same opening, “Piangete donne,” which echoes Petrarch’s famous sonnet commemorating the death of Cino da Pistoia, one of the greatest Dolce stil novo poets in Italy, and Petrarch’s master.15 In the first epitaph poem (Rime 86), Stampa hopes to be remembered for her rare faith: Piangete, donne, e poi che la mia morte Non move il Signor mio crudo e lontano, Voi, che sete di cor dolce & humano, Aprite di pietade almen le porte. … E poi ch’io sarò cenere e favilla, Dica alcuna di voi mesta e pietosa, Sentita del mio foco una scintilla, Sotto quest’aspra pietra giace ascosa L’infelice e fidissima Anassilla, Raro essempio di fede alta amorosa. (1–4; 9–14) 14  Jones, The Currency of Eros, p. 135. This attitude has been underlined also by Patricia Phillippy (“Gaspara Stampa’s Rime: Replication and Retraction,” Philological Quarterly 68 [1989]: 1–23; p. 13): “the heroic virtue of constancy is attributed not to the hero, but to the poet herself. This … is consistent with the relationship of feminine fidelity and masculine cruelty that is present throughout the Rime.” 15  Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 92, 1–4: “Piangete, donne, et con voi pianga Amore; / piangete, amanti, per ciascun paese, / poi ch’è morto colui che tutto intese / in farvi, mentre visse, al mondo honore.” (Weep, Ladies, and let Love weep with you; weep, Lovers, in every land, since he is dead who was all intent to do you honor while he lived in the world). All citations of Petrarch’s poems are from Canzoniere, ed. Marco Santagata (Milano: Mondadori, 1996), and the translations are from Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. and ed. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976). Apostrophe to women is not frequent in Petrarch’s poetry, while it is a typical motif in Dolce stil novo. Stampa felt this opening congenial to her for two reasons: first because women are the privileged witnesses of her erotic trajectory (addresses to women can be found in Rime 7, 1–4; 64, 1–5; 89, 4–8; 90, 1–2, 5–8; 143, 12–14), and so she wants to evoke them when imagining the dramatic event of her death; second because by addressing to them, the poet assumes the role of praeceptor amoris (teacher of love), a typical feature of the elegiac lover who is always ready to tell his unhappy story to let this be a warning to the readers.

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(Ladies, weep, and since my death moves not / my lord who’s cruel and far away, then you, / who possess hearts that are sweet and humane, / at least out of pity open your gates. … And since I’ll soon be dust and ashes, / may one of you be inspired by sparks from my flame / say with a voice sad and compassionate: // “Under this rough stone lies hidden / the loyal, most unhappy Anassilla, / rare example of great and amorous faith.”)

Stampa addresses women and imagines that, from a group of them gathered around her gravestone, one would rise and commemorate the story of the unfortunate and loyal “Anassilla” (the poet’s pen name).16 Here, Stampa recalls the motif of the unhappy lover’s epitaph from the elegiac tradition: it expresses the longing for death, an end to the unbearable sufferings, and is often exploited both as an extreme attempt to shake the aloof partner as well as to suggest his responsibility in the poet’s impending death—a motif made famous by Propertius’s Elegies and Ovid’s Heroides. Propertius’s first elegy of the second book ends with the poet imagining his patron Maecenas, who has come by chance to his tombstone, saying that the cause of his death was a cruel woman: “When, therefore, fate claims back from me my life, and I become a brief name on a tiny marble slab, then, Maecenas, … should your travels chance bring you close to my tomb, halt … and, shedding a tear, pay this tribute to my silent embers: ‘An unrelenting girl was the death of this poor man!’”17 Like Propertius, whose epitaph is spoken by Maecenas and not actually written on stone, Stampa imagines that a woman “dica” (would say or pronounce) the words of her ideal inscription. Stampa’s second epitaph poem (Rime 151) contains other echoes of Propertius, particularly the choice of the word “favilla” (“warm ash”) and in the motif of the “viandante” (“wayfarer”), which is typical of funeral poems: Piangete Donne, e con voi pianga Amore, Poi che non piange lui, che m’ha ferita; Sì che l’alma farà tosto partita Da questo corpo tormentato fuore. E se mai da pietoso, e gentil core L’estrema voce altrui fu essaudita; Dapoi ch’io sarò morta, e sepelita Scrivete la cagion del mio dolore. Per amar molto, et essere poco amata, Visse, e morì infelice, & hor qui giace La più fidel’ amante, che sia stata.

 For an analysis of the name “Anassilla” see Troy Tower’s chapter in this volume.  “quandocumque igitur vitam me fata reposcent, / et breve in exiguo marmore

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nomen ero, / Maecenas, … / si te forte meo ducet via proxima busto, / … siste … / taliaque illacrimans mutae iace verba favillae: ‘huic misero fatum dura puella fuit’” (II.1:71–78). Propertius, Elegies, trans. and ed. G P. Goold (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990).

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This second epitaph—written this time, rather than spoken as in the first epitaph poem—contains an explicit address to the “viator” (wayfarer, traveler), who assumes the same role that Maecenas played for Propertius. The beloved is called “cor’ crudo, e fugace” (fickle and cruel heart), with the adjective “crudo” (cruel) recalling Propertius’s “dura puella” (unrelenting girl), while “fugace” (“fickle,” but also literally “fleeing”) seems to convey more explicitly the idea of flight. Through these intertextual allusions, the poet refers back to the theme of the abandoned woman, and consequently to two other well-known epitaphs of Latin culture: those of Phyllis and Dido in the Heroides.18 Phyllis, daughter of the Thracian king, falls in love with Demophon, son of the king of Athens. She marries him and brings her kingdom as a dowry. Then Demophon, desiring to see Athens again, leaves, promising to come back; instead, he settles in Cyprus and never returns to his wife who, after having cursed him, commits suicide. At the end of the Ovidian epistle that describes her unhappy story, Phyllis says she wants to redeem her husband’s offensive gesture with death, and constructs both of their epitaphs: “Demophon ’twas sent Phyllis to her doom; / her guest was he, she loved him well. / He was the cause that brought her death to pass; / her own the hand by which she fell.”19 Phyllis’s story has much in common with that of the most renowned abandoned woman of Latin literature: Dido, to whom Virgil dedicates book IV of the Aeneid, and whose story is also immortalized in the seventh epistle of Ovid’s Heroides. Queen of Carthage, she welcomes the Trojan prince Aeneas into her kingdom after he has fled from Troy. She falls in love with him, and although her love is reciprocated, Aeneas eventually must follow his destiny towards Italy and the founding of Rome. When Dido’s attempts to convince him to stay—or to at least delay his departure—fail, abandoned and dishonored she stabs herself to death. At 18  In Ovid’s work there is a third epitaph, that of Hypermnestra (XIV.129–30). I will not consider it here because the story of this heroine is quite unique in Ovid’s collection: being recalled by the poet for her act of mercy towards the husband, she is not in love with, nor deserted, by him, so she has little to do with the tradition of the abandoned woman. 19  “Inscribere meo causa invidiosa sepulcro; / aut hoc aut simili carmine notus eris: / Phyllida Demophoon leto dedit hospes amantem; / ille necis causam praebuit, ipsa manum” (II.145–8). Ovid, Heroides and Amores, trans. Grant Showerman (London: Heinmann, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1952).

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the end of the epistle, the queen describes her own epitaph in a manner that very closely recalls Phyllis’s: “There shall be on the marble of my tomb these lines: ‘From Aeneas came the cause of her death, and from him the blade; from the hand of Dido herself came the stroke by which she fell.’”20 The epitaphs of Phyllis and Dido are similar: in both of them the beloveds are explicitly named and proclaimed as guilty for the lover’s death. The women committed suicide by their own hands, but the actual murderers are the fleeing beloveds who broke the laws of reciprocity, whose desertion looks even more cruel and dishonorable since both of them had been welcomed and protected as guests. Compared with the classical epitaphs of the earlier Latin tradition, Stampa’s epitaph poems show a peculiar engagement with the use of this topos. Traditionally, the principal purpose of the epitaph is to indicate for whom the lover is dead, in order to condemn him. Propertius blames his “dura puella,” Phyllis her Demophon, and Dido her Aeneas. In the case of Stampa’s two epitaph poems, however, it is interesting to note that while in sonnet 151 the beloved is mentioned within the inscription that closes the poem, in sonnet 86 he appears early in the quatrains. Thus, in its organization, the second epitaph is more in line with the classical tradition of the unhappy lover’s epitaph, which emphasizes the beloved’s responsibility in the poet-lover’s death, but the first epitaph poem does not appear to explicitly assign him blame. Although in both of Stampa’s epitaph poems she launches accusations against the beloved, I would argue that the aim of the funeral poems seems to be predicated upon the self-glorification of the lover. The poet celebrates her unique level of fidelity by defining herself as the exemplum of a faithful woman in love when she calls herself “L’infelice e fidissima Anassila, / Raro essempio di fede alta amorosa” (Rime 86, 13–14: “the loyal, most unhappy Anassilla, / rare example of great and amorous faith”), and “la più fidel’ amante, che sia stata” (Rime 151, 11: “most faithful lover of all time”). However, unlike Phyllis and Dido, Stampa does not die when she realizes that the count is going to abandon her definitively. Although the epitaph poems of her predecessors traditionally conveyed the idea of a woman who does not survive a fatal passion, Stampa overcomes her first unfortunate relationship and finds another man to love. For this reason, she presents herself as starkly different from Phyllis and Dido, as well as other mythical feminine characters evoked in the Rime as embodiments of unwavering loyalty:21 Evadne, the giant Capaneus’s wife, who throws herself on the funeral pyre of the husband so as not to outlive him; Penelope, wife of Ulysses, who waits years for his return to Ithaca, rejecting all other men; and Echo, the nymph who metamorphoses into a disembodied voice after being rejected by Narcissus. Stampa’s narrative simultaneously evokes the tradition of the abandoned woman in her appropriation of the epitaph genre while also rewriting the destiny of the abandoned woman, in a move that seems to follow more closely the poetic aspirations in Petrarch’s sonnet 82 where he draws on the epitaph motif 20  “Hoc tamen in tumuli marmore carmen erit: / ‘Praebuit Aeneas et causam mortis et ensem; / ipsa sua Dido concidit usa manu’” (VII.195–6). 21  See Rime 80 and 152.

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to say that he would prefer to have an uncarved tombstone than one indicating that he died for love of Laura.22 Stampa refuses to die for unrequited love, but she also refuses a Petrarchan conversion. That is, Stampa does not replace the count with God, or turn to God for salvation. Instead she finds another man to live for, Bartolomeo Zen, to whom she dedicates several poems at the end of her love canzoniere.23 There is neither a suicide, nor dissipation, nor palinode—instead, there is a rebirth.24 So how can the powerful portrait of Collaltino’s faithful lover exist side by side with the celebration of a second love? The paradox inherent in this disavowal of the figure of the abandoned woman is not subtle, and Stampa consciously deviates from the tradition of the abandoned woman and the Petrarchan model. When the poet-lover understands that the relationship with the count is doomed to end, she experiences the surprising chance to love again. This allows her to recognize her profound identity as a lover and to overcome the count’s infidelity in a new, unproven way: he can deny his love but he cannot deprive the poet of the possibility to love. She does not focus on religion, like Petrarch, nor is she won over by despair, like the classical, abandoned heroine: she embraces her desire to love, live, and share beauty and joy without censoring her emotions, thereby embodying a modern concept of love which is earthly and, at the same time, free from sin. The poet finds two symbols to convey her new condition of a lover whose faithfulness is no longer directed towards the cruel count but is devoted to the higher authority of “Amore” (god of Love): the salamander, which lives in fire, and the phoenix, which dies and rises again from its own ashes. These mythical beasts appear exclusively in the last section of the Rime where she describes her love affair with Zen, and both are present in a sonnet that exemplifies the new portrait of Stampa (Rime 206): Amor m’ha fatto tal, ch’io vivo in foco Qual nova Salamandra al mondo, e quale L’altro di lei non men stranio animale, Che vive, e spira nel medesmo loco. Le mie delitie son tutte e’l mio gioco Viver’ ardendo, e non sentire il male, 22  RVF 82, 5–7: “et voglio anzi un sepolcro bello et biancho, / che ’l vostro nome a mio danno si scriva / in alcun marmo … ” (“and I would rather have a blank tombstone than that your name should be accounted to my loss on marble”). This poem confirms that the principal purpose of the epitaph is to accuse the beloved for the poet’s death. 23  Zen is the subject of a dozen poems (206–19) among the last of the love canzoniere. Abdelkader Salza discovered the second beloved’s name in the acrostic sonnet 216 (the initial letters of each verse, from top to bottom, form his name). See Abdelkader Salza, “Madonna Gasparina Stampa secondo nuove indagini,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 62 (1913): 1–101: p. 91. 24  See for example sonnet 218, 12–14: “Il vivo foco, ond’io arsi e cantai / Molti anni, à pena è spento, che raccende / D’un’altro il cor, che tregua non ha mai” (“The vibrant flame with which I burned and sang / for many years was hardly spent, when this heart / that knows no truce burned for another”).

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E non curar ch’ei che m’induce à tale, Habbia di me pietà molto, nè poco. A` pena era anche estinto il primo ardore, Che accese l’altro Amore, à quel ch’io sento Fin qui per prova più vivo e maggiore. Et io d’ arder’ amando non mi pento, Pur che chi m’ha di novo tolto il core Resti de l’arder mio pago, e contento. (Love has fashioned me so I live in flame. / I’m some new salamander in the world, / and like the animal who also lives and dies / in one and the same place, no less strange. // These are all my delights, and this my joy: / to live in burning and never notice pain, / nor do I ask him who reduced me to this state / to pity me, much or little. // Hardly was that first passion spent / when Love lit another, and what I’ve sensed thus far / suggests this one’s more alive, more forceful. // Of this consuming love I won’t repent, / as long as he who’s newly taken my heart / is satisfied with my burning, and content.)

On the surface, Stampa’s self-identification with the salamander and the phoenix echoes Petrarch’s. The symbol of the phoenix, in particular, is quite frequent in Petrarch’s collection25 and although it usually represents the incomparable uniqueness of Petrarch’s beloved, Laura, in his famous metamorphosis canzone— RVF 135, a catalogue of the poet’s contradictory and tormented condition as a lover, expressed through a series of similes—the phoenix symbolizes the everresurgent desire of the poet-lover: Qual più diversa et nova cosa fu mai in qual che stranio clima, quella, se ben s’estima, più mi rasembra: a tal son giunto, Amore. Là onde il dì vèn fore, vola un augel che sol senza consorte di volontaria morte rinasce, et tutto a viver si rinova. Così sol si ritrova lo mio voler, et così in su la cima de’ suoi alti pensieri al sol si volve, et così si risolve, et così torna al suo stato di prima: arde, et more, et riprende i nervi suoi, et vive poi con la fenice a prova. (1–15) (Whatever most strange and new thing ever was in whatever wondrous clime, if judged aright it most resembles me: to such a pass have I come, Love. There 25  It appears five times (RVF 135, 185, 210, 321, 323) and it is alluded to in a sixth poem (RVF 320).

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whence the day comes forth flies a bird that alone, without consort, after voluntary death, is reborn and all renews itself to life. Thus my desire is unique and thus at the summit of its high thoughts it turns to the sun, and thus it is consumed and thus returns to its former state; it burns and dies and takes again its sinews and lives on, vying with the phoenix.)

Petrarch opens the canzone with the figure of the phoenix, the mythical animal of the Arab desert that was reborn from its ashes in cycles of five hundred years. Petrarch presents the phoenix as an emblem of his continually resurgent and inextinguishable desire (“voler”) for his beloved Laura. Stampa recalls this precise symbolism in the first tercet of Rime 206 above when she writes, “A` pena era anche estinto il primo ardore / Che accese l’altro Amore” (vv. 9–10: “Hardly was the first passion spent / when Love lit another”). Here, she experiences a resurgent desire, like Petrarch, but she alters his paradigm of desire by attributing this renewed desire to another man, rather than the original beloved. In doing so, and despite drawing on Petrarch’s macrostructure for her book of Rime, Stampa challenges the model regarding one of its most distinguishing features; that is, the uniqueness of the beloved, introducing a significant shift of paradigm.26 The second emblem of Stampa’s desire in sonnet 206 is the salamander, the amphibian that, according to medieval bestiary, can live in fire. Stampa draws this image again from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, where Petrarch explicitly mentions the salamander only once, in canzone 207, where the animal represents another symbol of the poet’s infinite, burning desire. The poem deals with one of Petrarch’s treasured topics, Laura’s eyes: the beloved is reluctant to direct her glances towards the lover, but since he cannot live without them, he is obliged to become a thief of that sight. It is within this context that Petrarch presents the salamander (RVF 207): L’anima, poi ch’altrove non à posa, corre pur a l’angeliche faville; et io, che son di cera, al foco torno; et pongo mente intorno ove si fa men guardia a quel ch’i’ bramo; et come augel in ramo, ove men teme, ivi più tosto è colto, così dal suo bel volto, l’involo or uno et or un altro sguardo; et di ciò insieme mi nutrico et ardo. Di mia morte mi pasco, et vivo in fiamme: stranio cibo, et mirabil salamandra; ma miracol non è, da tal si vole. (30–42)

 She goes beyond Petrarch as well in rejecting another fundamental feature of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta: the unattainability of the beloved. In fact, Stampa joyfully celebrates the few moments of fulfillment and reciprocated love (see for example sonnet 104, which praises a night of love). 26

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(My soul, since it finds rest nowhere else, still runs to those angelic sparks, and I, who am of wax, return to the fire; and I consider where what I desire is least guarded, and as a bird on the branch is soonest taken where he is least afraid, so from her lovely face I steal now one, now another glance, and by them I am both nourished and set on fire. I feed on my death and live in flames: strange food and a wondrous salamander! But it is no miracle, it is willed by such a one.)

This passage—where the theme of fire is central, and paves the way to the image of the salamander—has a strong presence in Stampa’s poem. Petrarch symbolically represents his desire through the expression “stranio cibo” (strange food), an allusion to the fact that Laura’s eyes, despite feeding the poet’s soul, are actually fatal nourishment (RVF 207, 49: “al viver curto,” “for a short life”). In Petrarch’s Augustinian scale of values, in fact, the eyes metaphorically stand for the seduction of earthly desire that diverts mankind from the ultimate human goals, which are religious ones. Thus, the food is “strange” because love is intertwined with sin, simultaneously nourishing and all-consuming. The salamander is particularly appropriate as a metaphor here because of its extraordinary power to live while burning in flames. Furthermore, Stampa’s use of the same alternative adjectival form “stranio” (instead of “strano”) directly recalls Petrarch’s use of the adjective to describe the phoenix (RVF 323, 49: “strania fenice,” “strange phoenix”), and evokes the remote places where it lives, as we have already seen in the metamorphosis canzone (RVF 135, 1–2: “Qual più diversa et nova / cosa fu mai in qual che stranio clima,” “Whatever most strange and new thing ever was in whatever wondrous clime”). The expression “stranio cibo” also appears earlier in Stampa’s Rime, in sonnet 43: Dura è la stella mia, maggior durezza E` quella del mio Conte; egli mi fugge, I seguo lui; altri per me si strugge, I non posso mirar’ altra bellezza. Odio chi m’ama, & amo chi mi sprezza. Verso chi m’è humile il mio cor rugge; I son’ humil con chi mia speme adhugge; A` così stranio cibo ho l’alma avezza. (1–8) (My destiny is harsh, but harsher still / is that of my lord: I follow him, he flees; / other men consume themselves for me, / while I can’t look on any other beauty. // I hate the man who loves me, love him who scorns me; / my heart protests the man who’s meek, / while I submit to him who dampens hope: / to such unusual tastes my soul is suited.)

Built upon antithesis and replication, the sonnet recalls Petrarch’s theme of the “fera stella” (cruel star), namely the destiny of suffering and unfulfillment reserved for the unrequited lover. In her poem, Stampa associates her “stranio cibo” with the irrationality of passion: she is destined to despise those who desire her and to follow the one who rejects and runs away from her (namely, the count). At the end

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of collection, Stampa finds that the “stranio cibo” is strange in a new way, because it enables her to burn for a different man, and to overcome the hopelessness into which she had fallen. Becoming a salamander signifies the recognition of a wider personal fate, as we see in Rime 219: Un foco eguale al primo foco io sento; E se in sì poco spatio questo è tale, Che de l’altro non sia maggior, pavento. Ma, che poss’io, se m’è l’arder fatale, Se volontariamente andar consento D’un foco in altro, e d’un’in altro male? (9–14) (A fire equal to the first I feel, / and if it’s like this now after such brief time, / I fear it will be greater than the other. // But what can I do if this burning is fatal, / if willingly I consent to go from one / fire to another, one evil to the next?)

The act of burning is “fatale,” both fatal (meaning “mortal,” in the Petrarchan sense) and an unavoidable fate. The poet understands that she is bound to love and that loving is a necessary condition for living. Faithful to a single man at first, Stampa then becomes faithful to the god of Love and to his unpredictable laws. For this reason, it appears that she remains subject to Collalto at the beginning of the collection, and to the god of Love in the end. But just as the praise of Collalto turns out to be a great exaltation of the poet herself, so too does the acceptance of the laws of Love actually signify the recognition of a personal and self-determined destiny. The key word in this sonnet is “volontariamente” (willingly) because of its Petrarchan history. As previously mentioned, RVF 135 is the only poem in which Petrarch compares the phoenix to himself: “un augel sol senza consorte / di volontaria morte / rinasce, et tutto a viver si rinova” (vv. 6–8: “a bird that alone, without consort, after voluntary death, is reborn and all renews itself to life”). Most importantly, this is also the only occurrence of the word “volontaria” (voluntary) in the entire Rerum vulgarium fragmenta; thus, in her poem Stampa implicitly quotes these Petrarchan verses to allude, once more, to the image of phoenix, with whom she shares a profound resemblance. The adverb “volontariamente” also stresses the fact that there is a strong agency behind the rewriting of the Petrarchan paradigm of desire made by Stampa, the same agency that also supports her rewriting of the abandoned woman tradition. Modeling her destiny as an abandoned woman in a Petrarchan-like structured canzoniere, Stampa intentionally challenges the previous paradigms and finds a way to depict her self-portrait in her Rime lending also coherence to the existence of poems dedicated to the second beloved Bartolomeo Zen. Altering the common portrait of the abandoned woman, she substitutes the ultimate death or the inconsolable despair with a new enthusiasm towards love, showing that her ultimate destiny is not to be Collaltino’s beloved but a great lover herself. Reborn as a lover, Stampa follows her own nature to the end and thus reshapes the exemplum of the abandoned woman, and the paradigm of desire in the Petrarchan tradition, by expressing a modern way of loving and of being a woman and poet.

Chapter 10

Anassilla: Stampa’s Poetic Ecology* Troy Tower, Johns Hopkins University

The Romantic vision of Gaspara Stampa crying out, “io sola vinco l’infinito” (Rime 91, 14: “I alone defeat the infinite!”), is being corrected by scholarship that better understands her poetry alongside the social and literary environments in which it was produced.1 The present study suggests that Stampa herself invites such a reading through her choice of pseudonym, Anassilla. Derived from Anaxus, the Latin name for the River Piave that ran through the estate of her beloved Count Collaltino in the Veneto region of Collalto,2 Anassilla represents Stampa’s poetic voice as a confluence of actors and environments. While the adoption of a pastoral persona is itself unremarkable—it was a common practice in sixteenthcentury Italian literary societies3 such as the Accademia dei Pellegrini (Academy *  Sincere thanks for their input are owed to Jane Tylus, Unn Falkeid, Aileen A. Feng, Katharine Urbati, Bryan Brazeau, Diana Tower, Kalle Lundahl, and the anonymous reviewer from Ashgate. 1  All texts and translation of Stampa’s Rime are taken from Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition, ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with translation and introduction by Jane Tylus (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010). On the Romantic interpretation of Stampa see Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, pp. 34–5. See also the Editors’ Introduction to the present volume. 2  Collaltino di Collalto was first proposed as Stampa’s unnamed beloved in Alessandro Zilioli’s early seventeenth-century manuscript Istoria delle vite de’ poeti italiani and has since been universally accepted; see Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, p. 11, n33. On Zilioli see Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, pp. 3–4, and Michele Cataudella, “Introduzione alla lettura delle ‘Vite dei poeti’ di Alessandro Zilioli,” Esperienze letterarie 4 (1979): 103–11. For a history of the Collalto family in the Veneto see Pier Angelo Passolunghi, I Collalto. Linee, documenti, genealogie per una storia del casato (Villorba: B&M, 1987), pp. 40–81. For another pseudonym inspired by the Piave, the nineteenth-century poet Angela Veronese’s Aglaia Anassillide, see Manlio Pastore Stocchi, “Introduzione,” in Angela Veronese, Notizie della sua vita scritte da lei medesima, ed. Manlio Pastore Stocchi (Breda di Piave: Biblioteca Comunale Breda di Piave, 2003), pp. 8–13. Veronese was close with Luigi Carrer, who fictionalized Stampa’s life in his novels the Anello di sette gemme of 1838 and the Amore infelice di Gaspara Stampa of 1851. 3  On emblems and Italian academies see Donato Mansueto and Elena Laura Calogero, “Introduction,” The Italian Emblem: A Collection of Essays, ed. Donato Mansueto and Elena Laura Calogero (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2007), pp. v–xi.

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of the Pilgrims) and the Dubbiosi (Doubters) to which Stampa belonged4—the particular valences of Anassilla demand a more thorough analysis than criticism has thus far afforded it. Although the pseudonym has generally been understood as a “sign of devotion” to her beloved,5 the dynamics of referentiality implied by her identification with Collaltino’s river betray a more complex self-representation than mere devotion conveys. No study at present has treated the metaliterary implications of Stampa’s identification with a river that is in turn identified with her beloved. Stampa does not adopt a pre-existing persona from pastoral poetry, as was common, nor does she select a name that refers directly back to herself, like the slightly later poet Torquato Tasso’s Pentito, a rather typical nickname derived from his characteristic melancholy.6 She instead refers to herself with something tangible (the river) that intrinsically refers to something else (the count). Her persona is not a simple mask like Tasso’s Pentito, but a mask that itself wears a mask, the river that refers metonymically to Collaltino. The automatic interpretation of the river offered by most scholarly treatments of Anassilla demonstrates the pseudonym’s almost invisible referentiality. So what might this referential identity say about the poetics Stampa presents as her own? A reading of three moments in Stampa’s canzoniere where the speaker dwells on her identification as Anassilla—Rime 35, the pair of sonnets 138 and 139, and Rime 86—reveals the poet’s keen awareness of her dependence on elements from her social, literary, and geographic environments, particularly the river. This awareness is reflected throughout her canzoniere, where poetic expression is often figured as water. The present study evidences Stampa’s understanding of the networks of agency that produce literature and her inclusion of these networks into the most self-conscious moments of her poetry. The invention of Anassilla offers a perfect emblematization of Stampa’s engagement with what is now understood as literary ecology. The contemporary literary methodology of material ecocriticism argues that “every material configuration, from bodies to their contexts of living, is ‘telling,’ and therefore can be the object of a critical analysis aimed at discovering

4  On the Dubbiosi see Marco Faini, “Fortunato Martinengo, Girolamo Ruscelli e l’Accademia dei Dubbiosi tra Bresca e Venezia,” Girolamo Ruscello dall’accademia alla corte alla tipografia. Atti del convegno, Viterbo, 6–8 ottobre 2011, ed. Paolo Marini and Paolo Procaccioli (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2012), vol. 2, pp. 455–519; pp. 475–81. On the Pellegrini see Maria Giovanna Miggiani and Piermario Vescovo, “‘Al suono d’una suave viola’: convenzione letteraria e pratica musicale in ambienti accademici veneziani di metà Cinquecento,” Recercare 5 (1993): 5–32; pp. 7–16. 5  Fiora Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p. 17, but see also Bassanese’s article, “What’s in a Name? Self-Naming and Renaissance Women Poets,” Annali d’italianistica 7 (1989): 104–15; pp. 105–8. 6  On Tasso’s academic persona see Angelo Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso (Turin and Rome: Loescher, 1895), 1, pp. 92–3.

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its material and discursive interplays.”7 Stampa’s interaction with the river invites quite a similar ecological perspective, and in the sonnets where she imagines the origin and death of her river pseudonym she gives notable attention to the material networks whose telling contributes to the production of her poetry. *** Readers of the posthumous 1554 collection published by Giorgio Benzone and Cassandra Stampa, Gaspara’s sister, first encounter the name Anassilla in the poet’s dedicatory letter to her beloved, though these mentions do not mark her earliest use of the pseudonym. Given its appearance in a memorial poem by Benzone,8 it is probable that Stampa used this name at performances and functions associated with her intellectual societies. When or how she first chose the name is unknowable, but one moment early in her canzoniere depicts the speaker’s first attempt to relate the river to her poetic situation. In Rime 35, she asks the count’s estate to receive her poetic treatment: Accogliete benigni ò Colle, ò fiume, Albergo de le Gratie alme e d’ Amore, Quella, ch’arde del vostro alto Signore, E vive sol de’ raggi del suo lume; E se fate, ch’amando si consume Men’ aspramente il mio infiammato core; Pregherò, che vi sieno amiche l’ore, Ogni Ninfa silvestre, et ogni Nume. E lascerò scolpit[a] in qualche scorza La memoria di tanta cortesia, Quando di lasciar voi mi sarà forza (1–11) (O kindly hill and river, dwelling place / of Love and the divine Graces, welcome / this woman who is burning for your lord / and lives solely off his lights’ rays; // if you can make my inflamed heart / consume itself less harshly in its love, / I’ll implore the winds to be your friends / along with every woodland nymph and god, // and when I’m finally forced to leave you, / into the trunks of trees I’ll carve / the remembrance of your courtesies).

 Serena Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, “Material Ecocriticism: Materiality, Agency, and Models of Narrativity,” Ecozon@ 3.1 (2010): 75–91; p. 79. On the ecology of poetic expression see also Timothy Morton, “Ecology as Text, Text as Ecology,” Oxford Literary Review 32.1 (2010): 1–17. 8  For Benzone’s poem see Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe 1540–1620 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), p. 126. 7

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This sonnet crystallizes the poetic process detailed by subsequent poems. First, the poet must encounter her subject matter, the physical landscape of her beloved’s estate. Here and elsewhere this environment is valued exclusively for its proximity to the count, as she makes explicit in Rime 135: … ho invidia al bel Colle, al Pino al Faggio, Che gli fanno ombra; al fiume, che bagnare Gli suole il piede, & à me nome dare, Che godono hor del vostro vivo raggio. E se non che egli è pur quell’il bel nido, Dove nasceste; io pregherei, che fesse Il ciel lui hermo, lor secchi, e quel torbo (5–11) (I feel // envy for the lovely hill, the pines, / the beech that brings you shade, the river / that often bathes your feet and gives my name to me, / all of which enjoy your lovely rays. // And were it not that it’s the handsome nest / that bore you, I’d beg heaven to transform it / to a desert, with dry plants and clouded waters.)

This image of the river giving the poet her name will relate to the sonnets discussed below, but most important with respect to her valorization of the river is the association made of the environment. As with poetic signifiers, Stampa finds no value in the landscape except in its capacity to refer beyond itself. A favorite construction of Stampa’s, the capitalized noun “Colle” (Hill) often qualified as “alto” (high), is doubly inscribed with references to the Collalto family, not only as a metonym for their role as overseers of the land but also as a homonym for their name.9 Once the poet has gained access to the potent referentiality of the hill on Collaltino’s estate, its topographical associations with the river reveal a relationship analogous to her own, and the river’s attachment to the hill will serve as a foil for her love for the count throughout the canzoniere. Various early sonnets exploit the metaphorical potential afforded by this topography: the river is inferior to the hill (Rime 3) and sits in its shadow (Rime 11), while the hill in turn supports the river with its incline (Rime 10). As with the components of an impresa—the half text– half image puzzles much in fashion with sixteenth-century literary academies—the relationship between the polyvalent symbols of a river and a hill can be plumbed for countless associations.10 Adriana Chemello, for example, notes that the river’s 9  Rime 3, 8; 10, 1; 35, 1–3; 46, 1; 138, 2; 139, 2; 158, 4–5; 273, 4; and 277, 5 feature plays on both Colle and alto, while Colle recurs on its own in 33, 4; 38, 4; 68, 7; 134, 10; 135, 5; 146, 5; 147, 10; 183, 5; 240, 10; and 241, 4–6. 10  On imprese and the later emblem see John Manning, The Emblem (London: Reaktion, 2002), pp. 13–26. On emblematic poetry see Peter Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 2nd ed. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998), pp. 122–52.

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surface reflects the hill just as the speaker reflects the count’s beauty,11 while others might read the perpetually fleeting contact between the hill and the coursing river as mirroring the beloved’s continual departure from the speaker. To become symbolic mirrors, though, the river and its surrounding environment must first accept the poet who will re-create their relationships in the world of her text.12 Such re-creation takes time and requires the active cooperation of the landscape as subject matter. Stampa details the agency the landscape exercises in their relationship to the speaker, attributing several verbs to it. She opens sonnet 35 with the imperative accogliete (“welcome”), beseeching the landscape to welcome her poetic intervention. Once admitted, she will join the company of the count, to whom the landscape is already an “albergo” or host. The landscape has thus become synecdoche for the diegetic world imagined in Stampa’s canzoniere, hosting characters in its capacity to refer beyond itself symbolically. The “cortesia” or pattern of courtesies with which the river and hill receive the speaker and her beloved initiates a relationship where the symbols interact with the poet, generating emotional changes in her: calling out to the elements in the poetically charged landscape, the speaker hopes that “fate, ch[e] … si consume / Men’ aspramente il mio infiammato core” (vv. 5–6, “you [hill and river] make … my inflamed heart / consume itself less harshly”). The grammatical agency she ascribes to the environment bespeaks the suggestive symbolic agency of her subject matter, which subsequent compositions, particularly those that dwell on the origin of her name, will treat explicitly. A final aspect of the multiplicity of agents in Rime 35 concerns Stampa’s promise to carve into a tree verses that would credit her interaction with the poetic landscape with subduing her amorous frustration. The tree here can refer doubly back to her canzoniere. First, it is part and parcel of the idyllic world in which her macro-narrative unfolds, implying that she will thank the landscape using vocabulary and imagery derived from it. But the verses she will carve into the “scorza” or bark could as well refer to the verses she is presently inscribing into her portable rag-paper notebook, a fourteenth-century model of the liber form that Romans and other ancient cultures had long associated with the inner layers of  Adriana Chemello, “Tra ‘pena’ e ‘penna’: la storia singolare della ‘fidellissima Anassilla’” L’una et l’altra chiave: Figure e momenti del petrarchismo femminile europeo, ed. Tatiana Crivelli, Giovanni Nicoli, and Mara Santi (Rome: Salerno, 2005), pp. 45–77; p. 53. 12  Twentieth-century scholars have termed the practice of reorganizing external situations “worldmaking,” though it is characteristic of Italian vernacular poetry prior and contemporaneous to Stampa. The twentieth-century philosopher Nelson Goodman, for example, claims that the task of all artists is to build worlds, or networks of symbolic functionality, out of the symbols and networks already familiar to the poet and the reader; see Nelson Goodman, “Words, Works, Worlds,” Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), pp. 1–22; 4. On worldmaking in early modern poetics see Harry Berger Jr., Second World and Green World: Studies in Renaissance Fiction-Making, ed. John Patrick Lynch (Berkeley: U of California P, 1988), pp. 3–17 and 36–58. 11

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tree bark.13 Regardless, the promise certainly underlines Stampa’s awareness of her dependence on material, both on the subject matter that will generate future verses and on the physical materials with which her lyrics will be transmitted, the “carte” (Rime 138, 9) or paper mentioned in a later poem. Sonnet 35 thus presents the first of several moments in the canzoniere that use the river to represent Stampa’s practice of poetry as the cooperation of multiple actors. Each of these actors introduces pre-existing relationships—the hill’s topography, the tree’s materiality, their shared subjugation to the count—that in turn generate further poetic possibilities for the poet who has embraced them and been embraced by them. A pair of sonnets on the origin of her pseudonym further explicates the poetic ecology imagined in this inaugural poem. Rime 138 and 139 offer two visions of the origin of her name associated with this river. In sonnet 138, the poet presents herself as she did in 35, benefiting from the agency of her subject matter: Sacro fiume beato, à le cui sponde Scorgi l’ antico, vago, & alto Colle, Ove nacque la pianta, c’hoggi estolle Al Ciel’ i rami, e le famose fronde, … Tu mi dai nome, & io vedrò se’n carte Posso con le virtù, che la mi rende Al secol, che verrà famoso farte. O` pur non turbi il ciel, cui sempre offende La gioia mia, i miei disegni in parte; Altri ch’ella so ben, che non m’intende (1–14) (Holy, blessed river, along whose banks / you see that ancient hill, so lovely, so high, / where the tree was born that lifts to the sky / its branches and famous greenery— // … // You [give] me my name, and in these pages / I’ll try to use the skill that’s given me / to make you famous in centuries to come. // Oh, may not heaven, so offended / by my joy, disturb my designs, / which none understand except for my tree).

 On the author’s notebook see Armando Petrucci, “Minuta, autografo, libro d’autore,” Atti del convegno internazionale Il libro e il testo, Urbino 20–23 settembre 1982, ed. Cesare Questa and Renato Raffaelli (Urbino: Università degli studi di Urbino, 1984), pp. 397–414; p. 412. On paper in Venice see Jonathan Bloom, Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001), p. 212. On the ancient associations between trees and bound volumes of writing see Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (New York: Dover, 1978), 2nd ed., pp. 9–12. 13

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The roles each actor plays are also similar to those in the earlier sonnet: the river provides symbolic potential, be it a name or the evocative topography of Rime 35, which the poet then hopes to translate into verse. Instead of promising to carve a tree with the verses sprung from the potential of the environment, the speaker here imagines herself writing on paper. The metaliterary import of the sonnet is clear, as the verses she hopes will “famoso farte” (“make you [the river] famous”) are the very verses of this poem, included with other “carte” (“pages”) that treat the same landscape. She expands the domain of literary agency to include the heavens, whose designs dictate the success of her poetic ambitions. Thus by taking her name from the river, having her virtues rendered to her and entrusting her verse to the heavens, Stampa presents a concise portrait of the ecology that she imagines produces her poetry. In Rime 139, immediately following this sonnet, however, she depicts a quite contrary situation: Fiume, che dal mio nome, nome prendi, … Prego’l Ciel, ch’altra pioggia, ò nembo avverso Non turbi Anasso mai le tue chiar’ onde, Se non quel sol, che da quest’occhi verso (1–14) (River who take your name from mine / … / I ask heaven: may no rain or hostile cloud, / my dear Anasso, darken your clear waves, / other than the waters my own eyes pour forth).

Reversing the dynamic of the preceding poem, Rime 139 sees the speaker give the river her name, which she then modifies into the masculine Anasso (in fact, the original Latin name Anaxus Italianized) as an apostrophe to its waters.14 Here she also retains the efficacy to dissuade the heavens from generating inclement weather, despite her fear one poem prior that the same all-powerful heavens would thwart her poetic ambitions. So who names whom? It is possible to read this sonnet literally, in that she has mentioned the name Anasso, her stylization of Anaxus, only after choosing to self-identify as Anassilla, if the occasionally calendrical sequence of the canzoniere constitutes its temporality.15 This interpretation presents a world of text where all names derive from the poet writing them into existence. But a reading of sonnet 139 that better coheres with the poems in its orbit— Rime 138 and 135, discussed above, where she dwells on the routine of inspiration by which the river “suole … à me nome dare” (Rime 135, 7: “often … gives my  Curiously, the Italian name for the river, Piave, had historically been a feminine noun until cultural representations related to the river’s pivotal role in World War I imposed the masculine gender; see Alessandro Magno, Piave. Cronache di un fiume sacro (Milan: Il saggiatore, 2010), pp. 15–16. 15  On the tenuous temporality of Stampa’s canzoniere see Chemello, “Tra ‘pena’ e ’penna,’” p. 61; and Tylus, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” The Complete Poems, p. 15. 14

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name to me”)—sees such paradoxical or palinodic claims of authorship as signs of a holistic vision of poetic production where no one body is the author.16 The river provides the name, the subject matter, the topographical relationships with the hill, and the socioeconomic relationship with Collaltino—“Il tuo Signor’ e mio” (Rime 37, 13: “your lord and mine”)—without which Stampa could never have produced her many verses about Anassilla. Not only does the river provide her with the basis of her pseudonym, it also provides the means for Stampa to “make a name for herself.” Once established as a poet, Stampa in turn has the paper, skill, and sympathetic audience who from then on will imagine the river through Stampa’s personification of it. She brands the river as much as the river brands her. Thus the two cooperate in the generation of a name, the smallest act of poetic production and one that Stampa imagines as a give-and-take between author, subject, and the celestial will governing their environment. Just as Stampa describes the origin of her pseudonym as a cooperation with the object of her poetic investment, so too does she emphasize her dependence on other actors while depicting the death of her persona. The attention she pays to her readers in the last poem under consideration, Rime 86, underscores the same ecological awareness seen in her other identifications as Anassilla, but in this memorial poem the emphasis lies on the potential to transcend her body. The sonnet opens with a call for sympathy from women poets to whom Stampa alludes throughout her canzoniere but nowhere more poignantly than here: Piangete Donne, e poi che la mia morte Non move il Signor mio crudo e lontano, Voi, che sete di cor dolce & humano, Aprite di pietade almen le porte. Piangete meco la mia acerba sorte, … E poi ch’io sarò cenere e favilla, Dica alcuna di voi mesta e pietosa, Sentita del mio foco una scintilla, Sotto quest’aspra pietra giace ascosa L’infelice e fidissima Anassilla, Raro essempio di fede alta amorosa (1–14) (Ladies, weep, and since my death moves not / my lord who’s cruel and far away, then you, / who possess hearts that are sweet and humane, / at least out of pity open your gates. // Weep with me my bitter fate, / … // And since I’ll soon

 Indeed, Patricia Phillippy argues that most semblances of palinode in Stampa’s work are aesthetic exercises in variation; see Patricia Phillippy, Love’s Remedies: Recantation and Renaissance Love Poetry (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses/ Bucknell UP, 1995), p. 104. An ecologically minded Stampa would have understood the practice of variation as a creative reaction to the generative limitations of its theme. 16

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be dust and ashes, / may one of you inspired by sparks from my flame / say with a voice sad and compassionate: // “Under this rough stone lies hidden / the loyal, most unhappy Anassilla, / rare example of great and amorous faith.”)

Much can be said concerning Stampa’s evocation of a community of women writers and readers,17 but most salient for the present study are the metaliterary implications of the passerby remarking on Stampa’s tombstone. That “aspra pietra” (“rough stone”) can be read as an allusion to the formulaic Petrarchism under which Stampa necessarily operated. In the wake of Pietro Bembo’s distillation of the vocabulary and thematics of Francesco Petrarca’s canzoniere, vernacular lyric throughout the sixteenth century was expected to take Petrarch as its starting point.18 Stampa does not disappoint in this regard, citing Petrarch directly in her first poem and on nearly every page thereafter—and perhaps never more boldly than in these verses, reprised from Petrarch’s elegy for the poet Cino of Pistoia but rewritten to memorialize herself.19 But, as she implies with this poem, there is a unique character “hidden” (“ascosa”) beneath the uniformity and dryness of her Petrarchan form. Indeed, this character, the unhappy Anassilla, is described as a raro essempio (“rare example”) of unbreakable faith. To be an example—like a literary exemplum or cautionary tale—is to become a symbol for a specific set of characteristics, divorced from their bodily container. As such, Stampa is depersonalized to serve as an enduring example of her faith. Every example is always a sample, in Nelson Goodman’s philosophy of the symbol,20 and thus demands its creator and interpreter share an understanding of the characteristics being sampled. The tombstone memorializes Anassilla as one of the several paragons of devotion mentioned in the canzoniere, such as Dido (referenced in Rime 93 and 206) and Niobe (in 180).21 The unnamed “Donna,” a lady of a certain literary breeding, recognizes the name advertised by the stone—the physical presence of Stampa’s exemplarity, her Petrarchist poetry—and also what that name exemplifies. The reader is performing Stampa in that she is voicing the poet’s words, but she is also re-performing Stampa’s original act of poiesis by recognizing Anassilla as a figure of fidelity. So

 See especially the chapters in this volume by Aileen A. Feng and Ann Rosalind

17

Jones.

18  On sixteenth-century Petrarchism see Luigi Baldacci, “Introduzione,” Lirici del cinquecento, 2nd ed., ed. Luigi Baldacci and Giuseppe Nicoletti (Milan: Longanesi, 1975), pp. xv–xxxii. 19  See poem 92 in Francesco Petrarca, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. and ed. Robert Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976), hereafter cited as RVF. On Stampa’s relationship to Petrarchism see Gordon Braden, “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender of Petrarchism,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.2 (1996): 115–39. 20  See chapter 4, “When Is Art?”, in Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, pp. 57–70. 21  See Veronica Andreani’s chapter in this volume.

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while the reader acts, the poet is passive,22 literally passed by those who can read her as an example, a text. Thus, the poetic invention of the pseudonym Anassilla becomes a name only when spoken and understood by others. Stampa’s direct invocation of both her model author and her intended audience demonstrates, perhaps more clearly than her origin poems, how keenly she understood her dependence on others for her poetry to survive. Considering her premature death and the personal motivations behind her reintroduction to European readers in 1738—the collaboration of a proud descendant of the Collalto family and an ambitious advocate of women writers—Rime 86 demonstrates Stampa’s eerily prescient understanding of the ecology through which her literary fame was achieved.23 These networks of value and agency are implied by the inscription recited by Stampa’s unnamed admirer: as direct dialogue attributed to another yet authored by Stampa and coterminous with her rhyme scheme, the verses function like the pseudonym itself, as an invention that lives only when hosted by others’ voices and intentions. Rime 86 imagines the songbook acknowledging its future performer, who will then sing of her own future admirers, and it should not surprise that in one of the most self-conscious moments of her canzoniere Stampa emphasizes the community or ecology that keeps her voice alive. A last metaliterary aspect of this sonnet concerns its linking of tears and song. The tears generated by lovesickness here (Rime 86, 5: “piangete meco,” “weep with me”) recur throughout her canzoniere as a stand-in for poetry,24 as do rivers (Rime 84, 6: “D’eloquentia profondi e larghi fiumi,” “wide, deep rivers overflowing / with … eloquent speech”), lakes (Rime 108, 19: “d’eloquentia … sì largo mare,” “eloquence as vast as the sea”) and fountains (Rime 226, 6: “l’acque di Castalia ho viste à pena,” “I … / have scarcely caught a glimpse of Castalia’s spring”). Stampa finds in Petrarch the perpetual approximation of tears and song,25 each arising almost instantaneously from the same emotional disturbance, and she reiterates this link throughout her canzoniere, advancing her overarching simile  For a gender-conscious reading of the authorial agency and passivity Stampa ascribes to herself see Mary Moore, Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000), pp. 63–93. 23  Antonio Rambaldo celebrates this member of his family nearly two centuries after his ancestor supposedly inspired Stampa’s verse, which had not been published or widely read since the 1554 edition. Stuart Curran argues that Luisa Bergalli, Rambaldo’s co-editor, saw the publication as an opportunity to “cast … herself … as the legitimate inheritor of Gaspara Stampa’s poetic legacy”; see Stuart Curran, “Recollecting the Renaissance: Luisa Bergalli’s Componimenti Poetici (1726),” Strong Voices, Weak History. Early Modern Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, ed. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005), pp. 263–86, 267. On the quick wane of Stampa’s celebrity see Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, pp. 22–3. 24  For links between crying and poetic production see Rime 25, 4; 59, 1–6; 68, 45; 136, 1; 139, 10; 167, 3; 290, 2; and Stampa’s introductory letter. 25  For the twin Petrarchan verbs piangere and cantare, see Petrarch’s RVF 229, 1–2; 230, 1; 252, 1; 259, 8; 332, 34; 344, 12; and 353, 1–2. 22

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between poetry and water. The “Donne,” those noble ladies asked to cry with the speaker here, are thus also poets, able to cry—and sing—about a situation for which their poetic education has prepared them. Though many of Stampa’s aquatic metaphors for poetry are not original inventions, her very scheme of citations and allusions constitutes her originality in a period that favored innovative imitation over absolute novelty. Stampa’s artistry, then, is her amplification of established associations between water and poetry through selective, even revisionist citations. But beyond the inspiration from Petrarch, what might Stampa have seen in water that would have suggested a metaphor for poetry? Water is shapeless and entirely dependent on its surroundings for an identifiable form, just as poetic impulses wholly depend on their formal expressions. Water also spills, moving simultaneously in several directions, much like the highly suggestive metaphors that appear in Stampa’s emblem-like verses. For in these the river never appears alone—it laps at the foot of the hill, enjoys the shade of the family tree and the light of the sun-like lover, or flows into the sea beside which the speaker often walks—so it thus necessarily introduces other actors. The name Anassilla, the best example of Stampa’s polyvalent metaphors, at once conjures the poet, her beloved, his estate, its river, its ancient name, name games in literary academies, their pastoral origins, and anything else that might resonate in the reader’s imagination. But perhaps most importantly for a resident of Venice then as now, water is pure potentiality. Lillyrose Veneziano Broccia argues convincingly for Stampa’s appreciation of water as the source of all life and the ultimate resting point of the dead.26 Even without taking Veneziano Broccia’s twentieth-century phenomenological bent, readers of Stampa’s original verses can see in Anassilla precisely this enduring, bodiless possibility. For even when the river flows fatally into the Adriatic Sea, Stampa imagines Anassilla’s referentiality surviving past the stagnation of her waters: Qui, dove avien, che’l nostro mar ristagne; Conte la vostra misera Anassilla, Quando la Luna agghiaccia, e’l Sol favilla, Pur voi chiamando, si lamenta & agne. (Rime 82, 1–4) (Where it so happens that our sea slacks off, / here, Count, is your wretched Anassilla; / when the moon ices over and the sun sparkles, / weeping, tormented, on you alone she calls.) 26  See “Aquatic Poet,” chapter 1 of Lillyrose Veneziano Broccia’s Columbia University dissertation, Woman on Fire: Mapping the Four Elements in Gaspara Stampa’s Rime (Ann Arbor: UMI, 2008), esp. pp. 15–8. On Stampa’s imagination of Venetian waters see also Fiora Bassanese, “Defining Spaces: Venice in the Poetry of Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco,” Medusa’s Gaze: Essays on Gender, Literature, and Aesthetics in the Italian Renaissance, in Honor of Robert J. Rodini, ed. Robert Rodini, Paul Ferrara, Eugenio Giusti, and Jane Tylus (Lafayette: Bordighera. 2004), pp. 91–105; pp. 103–4.

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In calling out his name even in death—like Stampa after her imagined death from lovesickness—the potential for poetic reference survives the dissolution of Anassilla’s bodily unity. The symbol of Anassilla still calls, long after its initial embodiment, ready for readers and performers to relive her passion. In each of the three moments examined in this study, Stampa depicts the river in terms of its vital referential potential. In Rime 35 she recognizes relationships that could reflect her own and entreats the actors in those relationships—the river and its surrounding landscape—to accept her poetic intervention. Her origin sonnets dwell on the potential for literary success that is encapsulated in the river’s name, a potential that requires the participation of multiple actors and materials to be realized. Once committed to a durable physical form, Stampa imagines, this name may endure well beyond her lifespan, if only she can induce sympathetic readers to empathize with her and thereby perpetuate her poetry. *** The link between poetic potential and water is most evident in the introduction to Stampa’s project, by necessity written after the poetic project had already taken shape and thus a fitting point to conclude this study. In her prefatory letter to her beloved, printed under the title “allo illustre mio signore” (“To my illustrious lord”), she introduces her “libretto” (“little book”) as the “depositario delle mie lagrime” (“depository of my tears”).27 She promises that in the volume he will encounter “non il pelago delle passioni, delle lagrime, et de’ tormenti miei, perche è mar senza fondo; ma un picciolo ruscello solo di esse” (“[not] the ocean of my passions, tears, and torments—for such a sea can’t be sounded—[but] only a little brook”). The emotional experiences that arise from Stampa’s relationships have pooled into a boundless sea, as she sums up in Rime 72: “La mia vita è un mar, l’acqua è’l mio pianto” (v. 1: “My life’s a sea and the waves are my tears”).28 So her tears, the waters making up her ocean of poetic inspiration, become her verses, which themselves drift into thematic and formal currents. From this “pelago” of experience, a recurrent image in the canzoniere,29 she siphons out only a small selection. Assuming she sent Collaltino neither the nine poems about her second lover (Rime 211–19)—a cluster that replicates much of  The original Italian text and English translation are found in Tylus, “Allo illustre mio signore,” The Complete Poems, pp. 56–9. 28  On Stampa’s particularly Venetian identification with the sea see Bassanese, “Defining Spaces,” pp. 102–3. 29  Perhaps inspired by the opening of Dante’s Inferno (Inf. I, 22–3): (“come quei che con lena affannata / uscito fuor del pelago a la riva,” “as he who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore”), Stampa employs this term as a symbol for inner turmoil in Rime 44, 5 and 150, 4, as a sum of amorous experience in Rime 64, 3 and as the depths of the Count’s oblivion in Rime 80, 9 and 278, 10. The citation follows The Divine Comedy, trans. and ed. Charles Singleton (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970–5). 27

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Stampa’s lyric range yet eschews Anassilla—nor the occasional poetry addressed to others, her selection would have been limited to the poems concerning her primary love for the recipient. What she asks him to read (“Legga”) are only “le note delle cure amorose, et gravi della sua fidissima, et infelicissima Anassilla” (“these notes of the burdensome and passionate cares of your most faithful, most unhappy Anassilla”). From a boundless sea, then, flows the little stream named Anassilla, the emblematization of her amorous macro-narrative. This narrative, which will render Stampa exemplary, is inconceivable without the active neglect shown to Stampa by her beloved, the symbolic fecundity of Stampa’s chosen subject matter, the suitability of the materials onto which her verses are committed, and the future readers who will perpetuate Stampa’s inventions in their own voices. All of these patterns of activity are implied in the dense crystallization of Stampa’s poetic project that is her pseudonym. Anassilla is her most compressed act of poetic production, combining into one word both references to herself and much of her subject matter and imbuing these with the functionality of a circulating pseudonym. Only over time, in its uses by the poet and those who refer to her, does this word become a name. Understood as a representative for Stampa’s entire project, then, the figure of Anassilla serves as a fitting emblem for a poetic project that understands and exploits its dependence on an ecology of actors, animate and inanimate, who effect significance by interacting with the others in their networks. Stampa was acutely aware of the dependence of her poetry on its social and literary environments, and by condensing her thematics, imagery, and literary ambitions into a one-word impresa, she invited her contemporaneous and future admirers to meditate on and, indeed, perform their role in determining her literary success. The figure of Anassilla thus perfectly introduces the reader to their involvement in Stampa’s status as a poet, be that reader Collaltino seeing the prolific use his admirer has made of his estate or an inspired virtuosa who repeats the name and thus replicates the process of referentiality installed into it. As is seen in Anaxilla, the most recent in a tradition of fictionalized biographies of Stampa spanning the centuries,30 it is through the voices and imagination of her readers that Anassilla lives on.

 See the recent e-book by Raffaella Pagliaro, Anaxilla. Gaspara Stampa (Caserta: Società delle Lettere, delle Arti, delle Scienze, 2012). The earliest biographical fiction includes Carrer’s novels, mentioned above, and Francesco Proto Pallavicino’s 1858 play Gaspara Stampa. 30

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Bibliography Editions, Translations, and Anthologized Poems of Gaspara Stampa (in chronological order) Il sesto libro delle rime di diversi eccelenti autori, nuovamente raccolte et mandate in luce. Con un disorso di Girolamo Ruscelli. Al molto reverend. et honoratiss. Monsignor Girolamo Artusio. Edited by Ruscelli, with a dedicatory letter by Andrea Arrivabene to Monsignor Artusio. Venice: Giovam Maria Bonelli, Al Segno del Pozzo, 1553. Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa. Venice: Plinio Pietrasanta, 1554. Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime, et virtuosissime donne. Ed. Lodovico Domenichi. Lucca: Busdragho, 1559. Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo‬ oche contiene le rimatrici antiche fino all’anno 1575, 2 vols. Ed. Luisa Bergalli. Venice: Antonio Mora, 1726. Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa, con alcune altre di Collaltino, e di Vinciguerra, Conti di Collalto: e di Baldassare Stampa. Giuntovi diversi componimenti di varj autori in lodi della medesima. Ed. Luisa Bergalli and Rambaldo di Collalto. Venice: Francesco Piacentini, 1738. Rime. Ed. Abdelkader Salza. Bari: Laterza e figli, 1913. Rime. Ed. Maria Bellonci and Gustavo Rodolfo Ceriello. Milan: Rizzoli, [1954, 1976] 2002. The Complete Poems: The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” A Bilingual Edition. Ed. Troy Tower and Jane Tylus, with an introduction and translation by Jane Tylus. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. Other Primary Sources Cited Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. and ed. Charles Singleton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970–1975. ———. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Volume II, Purgatorio. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling. Introduction and notes by Ronald R. Martinez and Robert Durling. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. ———. Le opera di Dante. Ed. Michele Barbi et al. 2nd ed. Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960. ———. Rime giovanili e della Vita Nuova. Ed. Teodolinda Barolini and Manuele Gragnolati. Milan: Rizzoli, 2009. ———. Vita nova. Ed. Manuela Colombo. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1999. Andreini, Isabella. Mirtilla. Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1995.

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Index Accademia degli Dubbiosi 8n25, 138, 165n21 Africa (Petrarch) 88 Alighieri, Dante Commedia 62, 64, 84, 196n29 Inferno 196n29 Paradiso 66n48, 67 Purgatorio 84, 141–2, 144, 147–8 Vita nova 85 Allard, G.H. 50 Ameto (Boccaccio) 19 Amore Infelice di Gaspara Stampa 117 Amores (Ovid) 122 Anassilla 12, 71, 107, 151, 161, 165, 167, 168, 177, 185–97 Andreani, Veronica 11, 87, 171 Andreini, Isabella 134–6 madrigal CXVIII 134 Mirtilla 11, 118, 135 Anello di sette gemme o Venezia e la sua storia (Carrer) 117 Anthologia Graeca (Lascaris) 147 Antipater 32n46 d’Aragona, Giovanna 138 d’Aragona, Tullia 137 Arendt, Hannah 133 Aretino, Pietro 42, 119 Ariosto, Ludovico 23–4, 102 Aristotle 161, 162–3 Arrivabene, Andrea 137 Arte poetica (Minturno) 163–4 Auerbach, Erich Literary Language and its Public in the Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages 49 Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature 49–50 Augustine 60 Balbì, Giovanni Giacomo 150 Bassanese, Fiora 2, 3, 4, 43

Gaspara Stampa 5, 41, 117 “Gaspara Stampa’s Poetics of Negativity” 114n21 Battiferra, Laura 7, 8n25 Belleau, Remi 16 Bellonci, Maria 24 Belting, Hans 51 Bembo, Pietro 39, 40, 54, 57, 58, 64, 68, 140, 157, 193. see also Rime (Bembo) Benfell, V. Stanley 41, 80–81, 174 Benjamin Major (Richard of St. Victor) 51 Benzoni, Giorgio 4, 8, 187 Bergalli, Luisa 11, 117, 123, 131–3 Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo 4, 131–2, 133 Rime (1738 edition) 5, 21, 32–3, 93, 118, 129–30 Berni, Francesco 119–20 Bertoli, Daniel Antonio 35 Bertussi, Giuseppe 4 Bianchi, Stefano 100 Bible, The 49, 53 Birgitta of Sweden 52–3 Boccaccio, Giovanni Ameto 19 Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta 158, 171, 175 Bonaventure On the Five Feasts of the Child 52 Itinerarium mentis in Deum 50 Meditationes Vitae Christi 51–2 Braden, Gordon 28n37, 48, 81 Broccia, Lillyrose Veneziano 195 Call, Michael 37 Cambio, Perissone 1 Campbell, Julie D. 135–6 Campbell, Stephen 15n1 Capellanus, Andreas 79, 90 De Amore 75–7

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De reprobatione amoris 75–6 Capodivacca, Angela Matilde 11, 117, 137 Caravaggio 54 Carrer, Luigi Anello di sette gemme o Venezia e la sua storia 117 Unhappy Love of Gaspara Stampa 3, 5 Catallus 51 15–16, 25–6, 27, 28, 32, 46 Cattaneo overo de gli idoli, Il (Tasso) 72 Catullus, et in eum commentaries M. Antonii Mureti (Mureti) 16, 18, 19 Cavarero, Adriana 133 Celestial Hierarchy, The (PseudoDionysius the Areopagite) 50 Cereta, Laura 77–9, 90 Chang, Leah 17, 18 Chemello, Adriana 120, 188 Christine de Pizan 91 christological imagery 10, 59–60, 61–2, 66 Cicero 167 Collalto, Collaltino di 3–4, 6, 10, 24, 27, 30, 45, 59, 61, 88n30, 95, 98, 99–100, 105, 106, 116, 146, 149, 172, 173, 174, 184, 185 likeness of 33, 94, 95, 96 poems of 11, 139, 144–5 relationship with Stampa 3, 171 Collalto, Vinciguerra II di 24, 100n16, 139, 145–6, 149 Colonna, Vittoria 7, 24, 32n45, 54, 62, 63, 137, 158, 159, 160 Rime amorose 157–8 Rime spirituali 40, 62, 64n42 Commedia (Dante) 62, 64, 84, 196n29 community of women writers 8, 91, 123, 131, 132–3, 193 Componimenti poetici delle più illustri rimatrici d’ogni secolo (Bergalli) 4, 131–2, 133 Confessions (Augustine) 60 Costa, Gustavo 19 Cox, Virginia 9, 40, 167n23, 172n2 Croce, Benedetto 2–3, 42 Curran, Stuart 194n23 Currency of Eros, The (Jones) 5–6, 88n30, 130 Curtius, Ernst Robert 49 De Amore (Capellanus) 75–7 De Amore (Ficino) 128–9

De officiis (On Duties) (Cicero) 167 De reprobatione amoris (Capellanus) 75–6 DeJean, Joan 17, 26 Del tempio alla divina signora donna Giovanna d’Aragona (Ruscelli) 138, 150 Dell’ origine et de’ fatti delle case illustri d’Italia (Sansovino) 95 Della Casa, Giovanni 5, 8, 10, 19, 59, 93, 99, 102–3, 127, 140–43, 152–4 canzone 47 152–3 Il Galateo 141 Rime 65, 141 sonnet 33 141, 142 Demetrius 15, 19 Derbes, Anne 51 Dionysius 15, 29, 32 Discorso sulla diversità dei furori poetici (Patrizi) 19 Doglio, Maria Luisa 135 dolce stil novo 27, 56, 68, 84, 176 Domenichi, Lodovico 8, 91, 118, 122, 130 Donadoni, Eugenio 43 Donati, Forese 84 Duino Elegies, no. 1 (Rilke) 47, 136 eco-criticism 12, 186–7, 188–92, 194–7 Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Boccaccio) 158, 171, 175 Elegies (Propertius) 177 Emo, Leonardo 114, 115, 148, 169 envy. see invidia “Epitaph of Sappho” (Antipater) 32n46 Eriugena, Johannes Scotus 50 L’Ermaphrodito (Parabosco) 151 Estienne, Henri 16 ethos 10, 58, 59, 64, 65, 67, 69, 71 Euvres (Labé) 16, 17 Falkeid, Unn 1, 10, 39, 149 falso 11, 118, 133 Familiares (Petrarch) 80, 83 Feldman, Martha 168 female homosociality 79, 90 Feng, Aileen A. 1, 10, 75, 109 Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia 33 Fiamma, Gabriele 62, 63n35, 64 Ficino, Marsilio 39, 128–9 Forni, Giorgio 19, 22

Index Fragment 31 (Sappho) 15–16, 19, 25–7, 28–9, 32, 46, 47–8 Franco, Veronica 3, 7 Fuhrmann, Manfred 167n24 Fumaroli, Marc 19 Gabriele, Trifon 150 Gaisser, Julia Haig 16n3 Galateo, Il (Della Casa) 141 Gambara, Veronica 40, 98, 137 Garton, John 95 Gaspara Stampa, The Complete Poems. The 1554 Edition of the “Rime,” a Bilingual Edition (Tower and Tylus) 12, 98n9, 99, 123, 130 Gaspara Stampa (Bassanese) 5, 41, 117 “Gaspara Stampa’s Poetics of Negativity” (Bassanese) 114n21 “Gaspara Stampa’s Rime: Replication and Retraction” (Phillippy) 176n14 Giolito, Gabriel 91, 137, 139, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153 Giornale storico della letteratura italiana (Salza) 3 Giovanni da San Martin, Andrea di 96 Girard, René 79 Giusto de Conti 11, 117, 122–3, 124, 131 Goodman, Nelson 189n12, 193 Greene, Ellen 27n35 Gritti, Andrea 95 Guercino da Cento 33, 35 Guiscardo 99 Heroides (Ovid) 15, 18, 65, 158, 171, 177, 178–9 I diporti (Parabosco) 151 Inferno (Dante) 196n29 invidia 10, 75–91, 103, 105, 114 Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Bonaventure) 50 Jacopone da Todi 52 Jaeger, C.S. 51 Jaffe, Irma 33 jealousy 10, 77, 98–9, 101–9, 116. see also invidia Jean de Meun 91 Jones, Ann Rosalind 5–6, 10, 88n30, 93, 130, 175–6

217

Kablitz, Andreas 55n2 Kennedy, William J. 11, 137 King, Margaret 8n27 La bella mano (Conti) 122–3 Labé, Louise 16, 17, 20 Lacan, Jacques 121 Lando, Ortensio 4 Lascaris, Janus 147 Laura 40n4, 87, 121–2, 172 Lettere amorose (Parabosco) 18, 151 Lipking, Lawrence 27 Literary Language and its Public in the Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (Auerbach) 49 Livre de la Cité des Dames, Le (Christine de Pizan) 91 Longinius. see On the Sublime (Longinius) love pains 10, 55, 58–9, 64, 65, 66, 69, 71 Madonna di Loreto (Caravaggio) 54 “Madonna Gasparina Stampa e la società veneziana del suo tempo: Nuove discussioni” (Salza) 18n14, 121 Malcolm, Janet 133 Malipiero, Girolamo 62 Malpigli, Scipione 122 Marcolini, Francesco 93 Marie de Champagne 75 martyrologic language 67–8 Meditationes Vitae Christi (Bonaventure) 51–2 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 43, 78 Michelangelo 125–6, 127–8 poem 89 127 sonnet 61 126 Michiel, Domenico 150 Michiel, Marcantonio 150 Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Auerbach) 49–50 Minturno, Marantonio 144 Minturno, Sebastiano 163–4 Mirollo, James V. 53 Mirtilla, correspondence with 3, 11, 117–25, 127, 130, 131, 133, 134 Mirtilla, Ippolita (Hyppolita) 3, 11, 118, 121, 122, 130, 131, 137 Mirtilla, Marietta 121

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Mirtilla (Andreini) 11, 118, 135 misogyny 75, 78, 89–90, 104 Molin, Girolamo 149 Mondo Creato (Tasso) 72 Moore, Mary B. 125 Morosini, Hieronymo 96 Morra, Isabella di 7 Mount Parnassus (Raphael) 35, 36 Muret, Marc-Antoine 16, 18, 19, 25–6 musica, La 33, 35 Mussini Sacchi, Maria Pia 172–4 “Muzio, se di saper pur hai desio” (Collalto) 144–5 Natalino da Murano 33 Navarette, Ignacio Enrique 83n23 Neoplatonism 9, 10, 39, 40, 44, 51, 54 Niccolò da Correggio 65 “Ode to Apphrodite” (Sappho) 15, 16n3, 32 O’Donoghue, Clare 35 On Literary Composition (Dionysius) 15, 29, 32 On Style (Demetrius) 15, 19 On the Five Feasts of the Child (Bonaventure) 52 On the Sublime (Longinius) 15, 16, 18, 19–20, 26, 28–9, 30, 46, 47–8, 49, 51 Orlando furioso (Ariosto) 23–4, 102 Ottoboni, Pietro 131 Ovid Amores 122 Heroides 15, 18, 65, 158, 171, 177, 178–9 Metamorphoses 43, 78 Paleotti, Gabriele 67n51 Parabosco, Girolamo 1, 151–2 I diporti 151 L’Ermaphrodito 151 Lettere amorose 18, 151 Rime 151 Il viluppo 151 Paradiso (Dante) 66n48, 67 Pasquale, Coletta 137 pathos 10, 56, 58, 65 Patrizi, Francesco 19 Peckham, John 52

personae 11–12, 138, 162–70, 172. see also Anassilla; phoenix; salamander abandoned woman 6, 11, 15, 171, 172, 175–80, 184 Petrarch, Francesco 1, 87, 164, 193. see also Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Petrarch) Africa 88 Familiares 80, 83 Rime sparse 143 Secretum 81 Trionfi 22–3, 31 Triumphus Cupidinis 22–3, 82–3 Petrarchism 4, 6, 39, 58–9, 62–5, 68, 89, 98, 143–4, 157, 174, 181, 193, 194 Phillippy, Patricia 18, 80n16, 176n14 Philomena (Peckham) 52 phoenix 23, 31, 124–7, 131, 172, 180, 181, 182, 184 Pietrasanta, Plinio 93, 94, 103, 128, 138 “La poesia” 33, 35 Poetics (Aristotle) 161, 162–3 Porto, Francesco 19 Primo libro di madrigal a quatro voci (Cambio) 1 Prins, Yopie 29 professionalism 7, 11, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 150, 154 Propertius, Sextus 177 Pseudo-Dionysius 50 pseudonym. see Anassilla Purgatorio (Dante) 84, 141–2, 144, 147–8 Quirini, Elisabetta 141 Rambaldo di Collalto, Count Antonio 5, 33, 35, 59n18, 129, 132, 194n23 Raphael 35, 36 realism 39, 41, 44, 49–50, 52 Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (Cavarero) 133 Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Petrarch) 10, 40, 48, 56, 57, 64, 98, 157, 163, 172, 173, 184 RVF 1 30n44, 57, 80–81, 82, 85 RVF 3 61 RVF 7 122 RVF 35 83 RVF 70 83

Index RVF 77 142 RVF 78 142 RVF 82 179–80 RVF 92 176n15 RVF 96 87n27 RVF 135 124, 125, 181–2, 183, 184 RVF 179 144 RVF 185 124, 181n25 RVF 196 144 RVF 205 108 RVF 207 182–3 RVF 210 124, 181n25 RVF 221 66n46 RVF 229 194n25 RVF 230 194n25 RVF 248 148 RVF 252 194n25 RVF 259 194n25 RVF 286 66n46 RVF 287 66n46 RVF 288 66n46 RVF 289 66n46 RVF 290 66n46 RVF 291 66n46 RVF 320 181n25 RVF 321 125, 181n25 RVF 323 125, 181n25, 183 RVF 332 194n25 RVF 344 194n25 RVF 353 194n25 Richard of St. Victor 51 Rilke, Ranier Maria 16n5, 47, 136 Rime amorose (Colonna) 157–8 Rime (Bembo) 57, 59, 71, 159, 160 Rime (Della Casa) 65, 141 Rime diverse d’alcune nobilissime, et virtuosissime donne (Domenichi) 8, 130 Rime (Parabosco) 151 Rime sparse (Petrarch) 143 Rime spirituali (Colonna) 40, 62, 64n42 “Le rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna nel codice vaticano donato a Michelangelo” (Scarpati) 64n40 Rime spirituali (Fiamma) 62, 63n35, 64n41 Rime (Stampa) 2, 4, 6, 10, 16–17, 39, 48, 59, 157 1554 edition 2, 4–5, 11, 21, 33, 35n51, 93, 94, 137, 158, 161, 187

219 1738 edition 2, 5, 21, 32–3, 34, 35, 37, 59n18, 93, 94, 95, 118, 123, 124, 129–30, 132, 194 1913 edition 41 dedicatory address 55, 173, 196 Proem 65, 158 Rime 1 21–2, 24, 38, 45, 55, 59, 80, 81–2, 89, 99 Rime 2 44–5, 52, 53, 54, 60–61, 62, 68 Rime 3 45, 188 Rime 5 98, 105, 173 Rime 7 95n4, 175, 176n15 Rime 8 45 Rime 9 175 Rime 10 61n25, 188 Rime 11 188 Rime 12 59–61, 62 Rime 13 45 Rime 14 105 Rime 15 45–6, 69–70 Rime 16 84–5 Rime 17 68–9 Rime 25 194n24 Rime 27 111–12 Rime 28 24–5, 27, 28n37, 29, 32, 46–7, 112 Rime 31 145 Rime 32 67, 68, 112–13 Rime 33 188n9 Rime 35 186, 187–8, 189–90, 191, 196 Rime 37 192 Rime 38 188n9 Rime 40 98 Rime 42 105 Rime 43 88–9, 183 Rime 44 196n29 Rime 46 188n9 Rime 47 175 Rime 51 4, 137 Rime 55 142–3 Rime 56 142, 143 Rime 57 87n27, 142, 175 Rime 58 142 Rime 59 194n24 Rime 64 110, 176n15, 196n29 Rime 66 105 Rime 67 106–7 Rime 68 188n9, 194n24 Rime 70 4, 137

220

Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry Rime 72 105, 196 Rime 74 48 Rime 75 4, 137 Rime 78 105–6 Rime 79 107 Rime 80 179n21, 196n29 Rime 82 195 Rime 83 107, 110 Rime 84 194 Rime 86 124, 172, 176–7, 179, 186, 192–3, 194 Rime 88 147–8 Rime 89 113, 176n15 Rime 90 176n15 Rime 91 185 Rime 93 193 Rime 94 87–8 Rime 103 41 Rime 104 42–4, 100, 182n26 Rime 106 100n14, 108–9 Rime 108 194 Rime 112 98 Rime 113 144 Rime 114 30–31, 169n31 Rime 115 175n12 Rime 118 30 Rime 121 148–9 Rime 127 173n5 Rime 134 188n9 Rime 135 188, 191–2 Rime 136 194n24 Rime 138 186, 188n9, 190–91 Rime 139 186, 188n9, 190, 191, 194n24 Rime 143 176n15 Rime 146 188n9 Rime 147 188n9 Rime 150 24, 113–14, 196n29 Rime 151 172, 177–8, 179 Rime 152 179n21 Rime 157 175n11 Rime 158 28n38, 188n9 Rime 166 114 Rime 167 194n24 Rime 171 86–7 Rime 178 27, 97, 101–2 Rime 179 97–8, 99, 100 Rime 180 107–8, 193 Rime 183 188n9

Rime 186 97, 109 Rime 188 19 Rime 202 165n19 Rime 206 31, 180–81, 182, 193 Rime 207 31, 125, 180n23 Rime 208 32n45, 180n23 Rime 209 180n23 Rime 210 180n23 Rime 211 44n15, 130, 180n23, 196 Rime 212 180n23, 196 Rime 213 180n23, 196 Rime 214 180n23, 196 Rime 215 180n23, 196 Rime 216 180n23, 196 Rime 217 180n23, 196 Rime 218 180n23, 180n24, 196 Rime 219 68, 95, 174n9, 180n23, 184, 196 Rime 224 23, 24, 31, 46, 114, 126, 130, 131 Rime 226 114, 194 Rime 227 140, 146 Rime 228 150 Rime 235 150 Rime 236 149 Rime 237 24, 145 Rime 238 149 Rime 239 149 Rime 240 149, 188n9 Rime 241 149, 188n9 Rime 244 169n30 Rime 247 150, 151, 165n19 Rime 248 150 Rime 250 150 Rime 251 150, 151 Rime 252 150 Rime 253 114n22, 148 Rime 254 114–15, 148, 169 Rime 255 144 Rime 257 148 Rime 260 100n16, 145–6 Rime 261 140, 150, 165n19 Rime 262 70–71, 140, 150–51, 166–7 Rime 263 150, 151 Rime 264 150, 151 Rime 265 169n31 Rime 266 140 Rime 268 138–9, 150 Rime 269 150

Index Rime 272 150 Rime 273 188n9 Rime 275 61, 153 Rime 276 61, 153 Rime 277 61, 153, 188n9 Rime 278 61, 153, 196n29 Rime 279 61, 153 Rime 280 61, 153 Rime 281 61, 153 Rime 282 61, 153 Rime 283 159 Rime 284 159 Rime 285 37, 159–61 Rime 286 66, 68, 98 Rime 288 98 Rime 289 98, 110 Rime 290 37n52, 110–11, 194n24 Rime 291 118–19, 120–21, 127 Rime 305 99 Rime 309 31–2, 115–16 Rime 274 (Tebaldeo) 119–20, 123–4 Robin, Diana 8, 20, 91 Robortello, Francesco 15, 18, 19, 46 Roman de la Rose 91 Ross, Sarah Gwyneth 7 Ruscelli, Girolamo 137, 138, 150 Sahlin, Claire L. 53 salamander 31, 32n45, 172, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184 salons 8 Salvi, Virginia 137 Salza, Abdelkader 5, 41, 96, 158, 180n23 Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 3 “Madonna Gasparina Stampa e la società veneziana del suo tempo: Nuove discussioni” 18n14, 121 Sansovino, Francesco 19, 95, 99 Sappho 9–10, 15, 16, 19, 22–3, 30, 35, 127 Fragment 31 15–16, 19, 25–7, 28–9, 32, 46, 47–8 “Ode to Apphrodite” 15, 16n3, 32 Stampa as 5, 17, 19, 21, 32, 129–30 Scarpati, Claudio 64n40 Schneider, Federico 10, 55, 153 Schneider, Ulrike 11, 144, 157 Secretum (Petrarch) 81 sermo humilis 49–50

221

Silent Woman, The (Malcolm) 133–4 “S’io avessi l’ingegno del Burchiello” (Berni) 119–20 Smarr, Janet Levarie 6, 87n28 Speroni, Sperone 149–50 Spinola, Maria 137 Spira, Fortunio 150 Stabat mater dolorosa (Jacopone da Todi) 52 Stampa, Baldassare 3, 11, 19, 99, 103, 139, 143–4 Stampa, Cassandra 3, 4, 5, 8, 21n22, 93, 95, 137, 167, 187 Stampa, Gaspara likeness of 32–3, 34, 35, 37 personal life 1, 2, 3, 4, 95–6 works see Rime (Stampa) Stufa, Giulio 5, 17, 18, 21 sublime 9–10, 29, 30 love pains as 10, 69, 71–2 realism 39, 44, 45, 47–54 Tasso, Torquato 186 Cattaneo overo de gli idoli, Il 72 Mondo Creato 72 Tebaldeo, Antonio 119–20, 123–4 Terracina, Laura 7, 8n25 Titian 141 Torelli, Giulia 99–100, 116 Tower, Troy 12, 185 “Translating Petrarchan Desire in Vittoria Colonna and Gaspara Stampa” (Benfell) 80–81, 174 Trionfi (Petrarch) 22–3, 31 Triumphus Cupidinis (Petrarch) 22–3, 82–3 Tylus, Jane 2, 9, 12, 15, 46, 47, 82, 98n9, 99, 123, 130 Unhappy Love of Gaspara Stampa (Carrer) 3, 5 Varchi, Benedetto 5, 10, 19, 21, 99, 102–4, 116, 127–8 “Veggio co’ be’ vostr’occhi un dolce lune” (Michelangelo) 127 Venier, Domenico 11, 139–40, 146–50 Sig. 129 147 Sig. 132 148 “Vera umiltà con gravi modi unita” (B. Stampa) 143–4

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Rethinking Gaspara Stampa in the Canon of Renaissance Poetry

Vernacula, Lucilia 77 Veronese, Paolo 94, 95, 96 viluppo, Il (Parabosco) 151 virtuosa 1, 18, 168 Viscardo, Giovanni Andrea 99 Vita nova (Dante) 85 Vitiello, Justin 42 women abandoned 6, 11, 15, 171, 172, 175–80, 184

community of writers 8, 91, 123, 131, 132–3, 193 envy between 76–80 Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650 (Cox) 9, 40, 167n23 Zancan, Marina 19, 27 Zane, Giacomo 150 Zen, Bartolomeo 11, 95, 99, 172, 173, 180, 184 Zilioli, Alessandro 18–19