Heroicomic poetry and poetical satire: Tassoni, Bracciolini, Marino

Abstract

The essay concentrates on the satire of contemporary poetry in the two first mock-heroic poems (Alessandro Tassoni’s Secchia rapita and Francesco Bracciolini’s Scherno degli dèi), and reflects on their complex interaction with the project of Marino’s Adone. This paper also aims at pointing out some problematic aspects of the relation linking Tassoni to Marino that apparently conflict with the idea of an essential harmony between their poetic conceptions. With the publishing of Bracciolini’s Scherno – often readable as a parody of the Adone – Marino must have become particularly sensitive towards the new poetic genre: the article therefore reconsiders the reasons why Marino was entrusted with the publishing of the Secchia rapita in Paris, and tries to the explain the intertextual dialogue with Tassoni and Bracciolini’s poems in the Canto VII of the Adone.

Andrea Lazzarini
andrea.lazzarini@sns.it
Scuola Normale Superiore