:Renaissance Humanism at the Court of Clement VII: Francesco Berni's Dialogue against Poets in Context

Abstract

This new exciting study is the first scholarly critical edition the first ever translation into English of Berni's Dialogue Against Poets. The original publication of the dialogue in 1526 set it historically in the highly charged context of Rome the court of the Medici pope, Clement VII. Not only is Berni presented here with reference to his historical literary status, but other contemporary figures are also sketched against the politico-cultural background of Rome in the 1520s: the humanist poet, secretary, envoy to Henry VII, Giovanni Battista Sanga; Bishop Giovan Matteo Giberti, Clement's datary Berni's patron at the time of composition of the dialogue; the notorious poet publicist, Pietro Aretino, indirect target of many of the barbs of the dialogue; Alessandro Ippolito de' Medici; Desiderius Erasmus; the printer publisher of the first edition, Francesco Minizio Calvo.Although there is a considerable literature on Berni's poetry, there is relatively sparse comment on his life as a letterato and no extended investigation of his first published work. This study seeks to redress this imbalance to illuminate the dialogue's literary historical dimensions. Berni's place in history is ripe for re-evaluation: Dialogue Against Poets reflects Berni's contemporary Italy in innumerable the high level of its literary allusiveness is a model of Renaissance humanist literary practice. This new presentation reveals the impact which Berni had upon his contemporaries. Berni was an original writer who thought deeply about the intellectual religious debates of the age who, as a humanist secretary resident in the Vatican palace, experienced its political other crises first-hand.