Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso / Edition 1

by Valeria Finucci

Overview

The controversy generated in Italy by the writings of Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso during the sixteenth century was the first historically important debate on what constitutes modern literature. Applying current critical theories and tools, the essays in Renaissance Transactions reexamine these two provocative poet-thinkers, the debate they inspired, and the reasons why that debate remains relevant today.
Resituating these writers' works in the context of the Renaissance while also offering appraisals of their uncanny "postmodernity," the contributors to this volume focus primarily on Ariosto's Orlando furioso and Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. Essays center on questions of national and religious identity, performative representation, and the theatricality of literature. They also address subjects regarding genre and gender, social and legal anthropology, and reactionary versus revolutionary writing. Finally, they advance the historically significant debate about what constitutes modern literature by revisiting with new perspective questions first asked centuries ago: Did Ariosto invent a truly national, and uniquely Italian, literary genre-the chivalric romance? Or did Tasso alone, by equaling the epic standards of Homer and Virgil, make it possible for a literature written in Italian to attain the status of its classical Greek and Latin antecedents?
Arguing that Ariosto and Tasso are still central to the debate on what constitutes modern narrative, this collection will be invaluable to scholars of Italian literature, literary history, critical theory, and the Renaissance.

Contributors. Jo Ann Cavallo, Valeria Finucci, Katherine Hoffman, Daniel Javitch, Constance Jordan, Ronald L. Martinez, Eric Nicholson, Walter Stephens, Naomi Yavneh, Sergio Zatti

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822322955
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	03/25/1999
Series:	Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies Series , #17
Pages:	338
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	1630L (what's this?)

About the Author

Valeria Finucci is Associate Professor of Italian at Duke University. She is the author of The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto and the coeditor of Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Ariosto, Tasso, and Storytelling / Valeria Finucci

I. Crossing Genres

Two Odysseys: Rinaldo's Po Journey and the Poet's Homecoming in Orlando furioso / Ronald L. Martinez

The Grafting of Virgilian Epic in Orlando furioso / Daniel Javitch

Tasso's Armida and the Victory of Romance / Jo Ann Cavallo

II. The Politics of Dissimulation

Epic in the Age of Dissimulation: Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata / Sergio Zatti

Trickster, Textor, Architect, Thief: Craft and Comedy in Gerusalemme liberata / Walter Stephens

"Un cosi valoroso cavalliero": Knightly Honor and Artistic Representation in Orlando furioso, Canto 26 / Katherine Hoffman

III. Acting Out Fantasies

The Masquerade of Masculinity: Astolfo and Jocondo in Orlando furioso, Canto 28 / Valeria Finucci

Romance as Role Model: Early Female Performances of Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata / Eric Nicholson

"Dal rogo alle nozze": Tasso's Sofronia as Martyr Manque / Naomi Yavneh

Writing beyond the Querelle: Gender and History in Orlando furioso / Constance Jordan

Index

Contributors

Editorial Reviews

"Most of the leading and well-known scholars of the Italian Renaissance are represented here with their sundry and complementary viewpoints. . . . The presence of so many different critical voices conveys a sense of this volume as a summa of current Renaissance criticism."--Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University

From the Publisher