Marino moderne ? Les embarras de l’interprétation

Abstract

The marinist poetics was identified as a witty, studied and amazing novelty, that is a matter of misunderstandings not only within twentieth-century baroque historiography but also among the poet’s contemporaries. This paper will shed light on the stunning impact of his Sampogna by comparing Marino’s theoretical statements with the dispute between the Ancients and the Moderns, as it is represented in the Pastoral Idylls in which Marino figuratively introduces himself under the enigmatic name of Fileno, a “modern sheperd” departing for France. The hermeneutical structure of this collection, based on the topical frame of the concordia discors, suggests an ethical interpretation rather than an aesthetical one, thus confronting the dissociative principle of the critical reason with the Aristotelian analogical thinking, the background of the humanist “poetic wisdom”.