Panormita's Reply to His Critics: The Hermaphroditus and the Literary Defense

Abstract

In her discussion of Imitatio, Julia Haig Gaisser describes how humanist scholars and poets justified their light, titillating compositions, based on Catullus, Martial, and The Priapea, by invoking the ancient literary defense, whose purpose was essentially to ward off potential critics or else to justify their oeuvre by making a sharp distinction between their life and their art. One locus classicus is Catullus 16.5-6: “Nam castum esse decet pium poetam/ ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est” (The devoted poet ought to be chaste himself, his verses need not be so). Another is Martial, Epigrams 1.4.8, which, modeled as it is on Ovid, Tristia 2.354, speaks not of poets in general but of Martial himself: “Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba“ (My writing is lascivious, my life pure). The classical defensio or apologia was thus revived and given new meaning by the humanists as they sought to justify their literary endeavors in light of an emerging and ultimately puritanical sense of decorum.