Abstract
During the last part of the fifteenth and the first decades of the sixteenth centuries, the dissemination of Petrarch’s Trionfi – the so-called ‘second wave’ of Petrarchism – was characterized by the extraordinary editorial success, in Italy as well as in the rest of Western Europe, of Bernardo Ilicino’s Commento on the Trionfi. By promoting an erudite, encyclopedic, and moralizing reading of Petrarch’s poem, Ilicino’s commentary effectively became a lens through which generations of European readers approached the text. Nonetheless, the dissemination of the commentary proved not to be immune from the influence of sixteenth-century lyrical Petrarchism, which started developing almost at the same time but would not reach peak until few years later. A comparative study of the three known translations of Ilicino’s Commento in Catalan, French and Spanish – even more so, vis à vis the translation of the poem without the commentary – allows us to identify similarities among these translations, as well as important differences. Some of these differences reveal that while the commentary was still sought after by early sixteenth-century readers of Petrarch’s poem, the general approach towards the poem was already starting to shift in the direction of Petrarchism. The three European translations of Ilicino’s Commentary, when organized chronologically, help shed light on how much the reception of the Triumphs was influenced at the time by the parallel development of European Petrarchism, which promoted a more direct, literary approach towards the poem.
Highlights
During the last part of the fifteenth and the first decades of the sixteenth centuries, the dissemination of Petrarch’s Trionfi – the so-called ‘second wave’ of Petrarchism – was characterized by the extraordinary editorial success, in Italy as well as in the rest of Western Europe, of Bernardo Ilicino’s Commento on the Trionfi
A comparative study of the three known translations of Ilicino’s Commento in Catalan, French and Spanish – even more so, vis à vis the translation of the poem without the commentary – allows us to identify similarities among these translations, as well as important differences. Some of these differences reveal that while the commentary was still sought after by early sixteenth-century readers of Petrarch’s poem, the general approach towards the poem was already starting to shift in the direction of Petrarchism
The three European translations of Ilino’s Commentary, when organized chronologically, help shed light on how much the reception of the Triumphs was influenced at the time by the parallel development of European Petrarchism, which promoted a more direct, literary approach towards the poem
Summary
Dalla prima circolazione delle opere latine del Petrarca, iniziata già in vita del poeta, fino all’apparizione del Petrarchismo lirico durante la prima metà del xvi secolo, quando il Canzoniere si impose come modello poetico di riferimento, la diffusione dell’opera petrarchesca in Europa andò sviluppandosi in diverse fasi, ognuna legata alla fama di una parte specifica della produzione del poeta e, dunque, anche espressione di un particolare tipo di petrarchismo.[1]. Lo studio combinato dei dati materiali e dell’analisi delle diverse traduzioni permette di associare ognuna di queste a una tappa distinta della diffusione del Commento: la prima tappa è rappresentata dalla traduzione catalana, databile alla fine del XV secolo, la quale solo traduce il commento dell’Ilicino, lasciando i versi del poema in italiano; la seconda è invece rappresentata dalla traduzione francese, anonima, del 1503, la quale presenta la stessa soluzione di quella catalana ma allo stesso tempo rivela già un certo interesse verso la traduzione del poema; la terza, e ultima, è rappresentata finalmente da quella spagnola di Obregón (1512) e, più tardi, anche a quella di Hoces (1554), le quali non soltanto ormai traducono sia il commento che il poema, ma rivelano anche – complici le edizioni aldine dei classici in volgare curate dal Bembo (Le cose volgari di Messer Francesco Petrarca, 1501; Le terze rime di Dante, 1502) – una progressiva marginalità dell’apparato esegetico in favore di un crescente interesse verso gli aspetti più propriamente poetici dell’opera petrarchesca
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