«La vaga et bella fiammeggiante Aurora»: A cycle of poetry by the Accademia degli Umidi for the birth of Francesco I de’ Medici (1541)

Abstract

The Statutes of the Accademia degli Umidi of Florence dictated the rules of collective and plural poetic practice, in which individual character is elided in favor of a collective logic. With this in mind, my paper specifically takes, as a case study, a cycle of poems composed to celebrate the birth of the first male heir of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1541). The hypothesis is that the approach taken by this academy is likely to affect the structure of the texts, both in a preliminary way during composition, and at a later stage during correction and revision, so that what we see is a constant contamination and transfusion of themes, motifs, and images.