Papers by Valentina Prosperi
Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Homer from Byzantium to the Enlightenment, 2025
The Blurred Face of a Distant Beloved: Translations of Homer in Italy from Dante to the Sixteenth... more The Blurred Face of a Distant Beloved: Translations of Homer in Italy from Dante to the Sixteenth Century
Troianalexandrina, 2025
Abstract:
Tra Quattro e Cinquecento, soprattutto a Firenze, numerosi soggetti raffigurati sui c... more Abstract:
Tra Quattro e Cinquecento, soprattutto a Firenze, numerosi soggetti raffigurati sui cassoni nuziali sembrano riflettere una crescente diffusione dei poemi omerici – tradotti in latino circa un secolo prima – anche tra le élite cittadine non strettamente umanistiche. Il presente saggio indaga il reale grado di dipendenza di queste pitture dalla tradizione omerica, considerando al contempo la coeva circolazione della vivace matière de Troie derivata da Ditti e Darete. I risultati evidenziano percorsi divergenti per Iliade e Odissea: la prima risulta ancora oscurata dalla dominante matière de Troie di matrice tardoantica, mentre la seconda viene rapidamente codificata in ambito pittorico grazie al contributo determinante delle Genealogie deorum gentilium di Boccaccio. Questo primo sondaggio suggerisce una direzione promettente per valutare la concreta ricezione dell’Iliade e dell’Odissea in una fase cruciale dello sviluppo dell’Umanesimo.
Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in Florence, numerous subjects depicted on wedding chests (cassoni) appear to reflect a growing diffusion of Homeric poems—translated into Latin roughly a century earlier—even among urban elites not directly involved in humanistic culture. This article examines the actual degree of dependence of these paintings on Homer, while also taking into account the contemporary circulation of the vibrant matière de Troie tradition derived from Dictys and Dares. The findings highlight diverging trajectories for the Iliad and the Odyssey: the former remains overshadowed by the dominant Late Antique-derived matière de Troie, whereas the latter is swiftly codified in painting thanks to the pivotal influence of Boccaccio’s Genealogie deorum gentilium. This preliminary inquiry points to a promising direction for reassessing the concrete reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey at a crucial juncture in the development of Italian Humanism.
De Falsa et Vera Historia Estudios sobre pseudoepígrafos y falsificaciones textuales antiguas Studies on pseudepigrapha and ancient text forgeries, 2024
This paper examines the intertextual dialogue between the Vandal-era Carthaginian poet Dracontius... more This paper examines the intertextual dialogue between the Vandal-era Carthaginian poet Dracontius and the pseudo-documentary novels of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius in his Trojan-themed works: Romulea VIII and IX, and Orestis Tragoedia. The per- vasive influence of Ephemeris Belli Troiani and De excidio Troiae historia in these poems has been overlooked due to a misguided focus on Homer, whereas Dracontius relies on Dictys and Dares to create a narrative that stands out from traditional Latin sources, proposing a disillusioned and pessimistic view of the Trojan War, devoid of providential purposes and dominated by the basest human instincts. Recognising Dictys and Dares as primary sources of Dracontius reshapes our understanding of his poetry and the cultural landscape of his time, highlighting a transition from Greek to Latin narratives in the transmission of the Tro- jan myth in the Western tradition.
La Cultura, 2024
Dracontius and Dictys of Crete: The Ephemeris belli Troiani as Source of Romuleon ix, Deliberativ... more Dracontius and Dictys of Crete: The Ephemeris belli Troiani as Source of Romuleon ix, Deliberativa Achillis, an corpus Hectoris vendat
This paper identifies the source of Dracontius’ Romuleon ix, Deliberativa Achil- lis, an corpus Hectoris vendat with the Ephemeris belli Troiani of the so-called Dic- tys Cretensis. By accepting Dictys and not, as has generally been done, the xxiv of the Iliad as Dracontius’ source, many open problems in the interpretation of Romuleon ix are resolved: its genre (it is a suasoria not a deliberativa), the related problem of its title, the identity of the unknown orator. Reading Dracontius’ text on the backdrop of the Ephemeris changes the overall interpretation of the Ro- muleon ix, which acquires an anti-providentialist and pessimistic perspective about the fate of the Roman empire entirely congruent with that of Romuleon viii, simi- larly derived from the Trojan pseudo chronicle of the Latin Dares. Finally, finding that Dictys (and Dares) were read, trusted, and used at such an early age in Vandal Africa will be of interest to all those studying this topic.
'Recepção dos Clássicos - Intertextualidade e Tradução' , 2023
In the Sixteenth century, eight vernacular translations of the Iliad were produced in Italy, span... more In the Sixteenth century, eight vernacular translations of the Iliad were produced in Italy, spanning from the early 1540s to the 1580s. Not a small number per se. But, of these eight, two were left unprinted, five were partial, and the only complete one was printed posthumously, by a very marginal press. Furthermore, only two in this group of translators had an established literary reputation. Five were minor figures at best and one is totally unheard of, apart from his Homeric attempt. In the meantime, vernacular translation of ancient poems flourished in Italy, with some of the best Italian humanists and scholars of the time trying their hand at it, ever enlarging the Italian audience for Virgil, Ovid, Statius and many more. This chapter will investigate the reasons behind the conspicuous and protracted lack of engagement of the Italian literary milieu with Homer through the lens of this very little known cluster of vernacular translations. By way of contrasting these texts with the only successful attempt at divulging the Iliad to a wider audience (Dolce’s L’Achille et l’Enea, 1570), it will be clear that only a heavily romanticized and therefore “unfaithful” Iliad could appeal to a Renaissance audience that had been for centuries accustomed to the legends of Troy based on Latin sources.
Lucretius Poet and Philosopher (Background and Fortunes of âºDe Rerum Naturaâ¹) || Lucretian Pleasures
Six hundred years after Poggio’s retrieval of the De rerum natura, and with the recent surge of i... more Six hundred years after Poggio’s retrieval of the De rerum natura, and with the recent surge of interest in Lucretius and his influence, there has never been a better time to fully assess and recognize the shaping force of his thought and poetry over European culture from antiquity to modern times. This volume offers a multidisciplinary and updated overview of Lucretius as philosopher and as poet, with special attention to how these two aspects interact. The volume includes 18 contributions by established as well as early career scholars working on Lucretius’ philosophical and poetic work, and his reception both in ancient and early modern times. All the chapters present new and original research. Section I explores core issues of Epicurean- Lucretian epistemology and ethics. Section II expounds much new material on ancient response to and reception of Lucretius. Section III presents new material and analysis on the immediate, fraught early modern reception of the poem. Section IV offers a wide collection of new and original papers on Lucretius’ fortunes in the period from Machiavelli up to Victorian times. Section V explores little known aspects of the iconographical and biographical motifs related to the De rerum natura.
THE RECEPTION OF LUCRETIUS IN ITALY - (F.) Citti, (D.) Pellacani (edd.) Ragione e furore. Lucrezio nell'Italia contemporanea. Pp. cii + 248, b/w & colour pls. Bologna: Pendragon, 2020. Paper, €28. ISBN: 978-88-3364-203-1
The Classical Review, 2021
Legend has it that Umberto Eco once gave a lecture on the indebtedness of Dante’s Commedia to Luc... more Legend has it that Umberto Eco once gave a lecture on the indebtedness of Dante’s Commedia to Lucretius’ De rerum natura (DRN). Halfway through his speech, after discussing at length the many instances of Lucretian images in Dante, he looked up at the by then petrified audience to remark that it would have all been very well, if only the DRN had been available in Dante’s age. Eco had been poking fun both at his audience and at the vogue for unbridled Quellenforschung in texts; but in so doing he could not have chosen a better subject, given the perceived affinity between Dante and Lucretius that has struck so many Italian readers of all times. As a matter of fact, the Dantean quality of Lucretius’ poetry (or vice versa) served as a tool for many Italian translators of the DRN, especially in the nineteenth century, when translations from the classics were works of poetry in their own right. Today, as the book under discussion reveals, the Dantean approach to Lucretius is still alive in Italy in the work of the actor Roberto Herlitzka, who has devoted many years to translating the DRN into rhymed tercets. This is just one of the many revelations to be had in the present book, which deals with the reception of Lucretius in contemporary Italian culture. The book, as the editors Citti and Pellacani explain in the foreword, originated as an art exhibition and conference in Bologna in 2017, marking the sixth centenary of the rediscovery of the DRN. In this volume it appropriately falls on Dante scholar E. Pasquini to illustrate how Herlitzka’s yet unfinished translation draws on the Commedia’s metre, imagery and sound effects to reproduce Lucretius’ peculiar solemnity and expressiveness. Pasquini’s chapter brings full circle the theme of readers/translators and their approaches, which unsurprisingly covers the lion’s share in the volume. Citti leads us to a treasure trove of twentieth-century translations, adaptations and dialogues with Lucretius: in Neo-Latin, Italian and even regional dialect. Citti’s chapter follows Pellacani’s ample introduction, which, with its sixty pages and touching upon a number of Italian authors and artists that have established a fruitful dialogue with the DRN over the last hundred years, can read as a synopsis and anticipation of the rest of the volume, tracing themes that often find further expansion in the individual chapters and deftly avoiding any overlapping. The three sections of the book (‘Arti’, Filosofia’, ‘Letteratura’) vary widely in length: the fact that R. Bodei’s paper could not be included in the book because of his untimely THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 138
This paper aims to reappraise the famous Lucretian proem of the "shipwreck with spectator&qu... more This paper aims to reappraise the famous Lucretian proem of the "shipwreck with spectator". The analysis of early commentaries of the poem shows that our current interpretation, as reflected by present-day commentaries and scholarship, is biased by previous, Humanistic readings. These early readings, in turn, pointed to supposed parallels and antecedents to the Lucretian proem, which are not related to it. Once we discard the supposed parallels, we can fully appreciate the poignancy and singularity of the image, which in any case was not a topos in antiquity. Literary responses to the image have usually taken an antagonistic stance towards Lucretius and voiced the protests of the shipwreck victim rather than the serenity of the spectator. The question remains as to the significance of the image, which seems to voluntarily shake and subvert common ethics. The answer is to be found in Lucretius' Epicureanism, which reveals the passage as being devoid of any callous overt...
Il punto di vista del naufrago: il II proemio lucreaziano nell'opera di Tasso
Maia-rivista Di Letterature Classiche, 2015
Classical Models and National Theatre in Dryden’s «Troilus and Cressida,Or the Truth Found Too Late»
Of the three Shakespeare’s plays that Dryden adapted for Restoration audiences, Troilus and Cress... more Of the three Shakespeare’s plays that Dryden adapted for Restoration audiences, Troilus and Cressida, Or Truth Found too Late hardly stands out as artistically memorable. The lavish, loose structure of Shakespeare’s original play had come across as redundant and inconclusive ever since its appearance; this encouraged Dryden to reduce it drastically according to Aristotelian principles of unity and retribution. Accordingly, he turned the traditionally cheating Cressida into an unlikely paragon of virtue. Despite its flaws, Truth Found too Late is important to understand Dryden’s theoretical posi- tion on the theatre at the time. Not only is the play preceded by an important theoretical text that extols Shakespeare’s theatre: it features Shakespeare as a character. It is “Shakespeare’s Ghost”, in the Prologue, that reaffirms the superior value of the national tradition over Hom- er’s authority as source for the Trojan events, thus revealing Dryden’s loyalty to the British myth of the Trojan founders. Ultimately, though, Dryden came to consider Shakespeare and Homer as deeply akin, and his long-standing admiration of Shakespeare extended to Homer. In his final years, Dryden translated the first book of the Iliad with great gusto and success and helped Homer make his entrance into the Western canon
Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius
In the Renaissance admiration for Lucretius was widespread, but it nevertheless had to comply wit... more In the Renaissance admiration for Lucretius was widespread, but it nevertheless had to comply with a set of unwritten rules in order for the De Rerum Natura to be read and allowed into humanist culture. Spared from the index of forbidden books, humanists had to be particularly careful when handling this epicurean, materialistic, soul's-immortality-denying poem. The key factor was probably the prohibition on translating the poem into the vernacular: the fate met by Alessandro Marchetti's belated attempt is usually proof enough of the perils that awaited the transgressors. What became explicit in Marchetti's case had implicitly been the rule since the poem's unearthing: this only partially discouraged humanists enticed by the charm of Lucretius' poetry. Not only did the DRN serve as model for vernacular or neo-Latin poetry in general, but also literal translations of Lucretian lines or groups of lines appear everywhere in Italian vernacular poetry of the time. Not surprisingly then, the scholarship keeps tenuous trace of not one but two complete, unpublished sixteenth-century vernacular translations of the DRN: one by Neapolitan aristocrat Giovan Francesco Muscettola, the other by professional letterato and philosopher Tito Giovanni Ganzarini from Scandiano. Nothing remains of either translation, but much can be inferred regarding their quality, relevance and circulation from the two authors' circumstances, their epistolaries, their surviving writings. The aim of this paper is to outline this neglected but all-important episode within the history of Lucretius' Renaissance reception.
Strategie di autoconservazione del mito : la guerra di Troia tra Seconda Sofistica e prima età moderna
The Trojan War: Between History and Myth
Curiositas e caligo. Sondaggi sulla sopravvivenza di due topoi da Boezio a Tasso
Nella vicenda umana e letteraria di Tasso ha da tempo acquisito rilievo la lettera che il poeta i... more Nella vicenda umana e letteraria di Tasso ha da tempo acquisito rilievo la lettera che il poeta invio a Scipione Gonzaga il 15 aprile 1579, all’inizio della sua prigionia in S. Anna. E stato in particolare gia notato come in questo testo Tasso dia voce all’angoscia della sua situazione presente secondo modalita letterarie, e come in particolare la perorazione a Dio che nella lettera tiene la posizione centrale contenga la memoria di due canti della Liberata, il XIV e il XVIII, relativamente agli episodi della conversione del pagano Mago d’Ascalona e della purificazione di Rinaldo che precede la liberazione della selva incantata. Piu esattamente, e stata notata la forte somiglianza delle ottave XIV, 42-44 con un passo dell’epistola, passo nel quale spicca il sintagma «caligine del mondo» gia usato da Tasso per descrivere la condizione di Rinaldo nel canto XVIII.
The Place of the Father: The Reception of Homer in the Renaissance Canon
Building the Canon through the Classics, 2019
Our perception that Homer was always the cornerstone of the Western canon needs a profound rethin... more Our perception that Homer was always the cornerstone of the Western canon needs a profound rethinking. Unlike other classical and especially Greek authors, Homer never faded from the West’s collective memory: his name was revered even in the Middle Ages, despite the impossibility of actually reading his poems. Such was the longing to hear his voice that already in the fourteenth century, Petrarch and Boccaccio managed to have his poems translated into Latin. From that moment on, we would have expected Homer to have received a hearty welcome and rapid progress in the literary canon. The reality is that it took more than two centuries for the Iliad and the Odyssey to earn real jurisdiction in the Renaissance cultural discourse. New translations − both into Latin and the vernacular – were fragmentary and tentative, despite the calls from authoritative patrons to replace Leontius Pilatus’ early attempt. Also, the very text that in antiquity had given birth to philology as a discipline, the Iliad, benefited strikingly little from editorial care, precisely at the time when Renaissance editors and printers worked towards ever better editions of classical texts.
Enrico o Bisanzio acquistato : poesia di genere/poesia di gender
Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana, 2011
Lucretius in the Italian Renaissance
The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, 2007
... work ignored, or worse, by later Lucretian 13 Ficino later repented of his adherence to Epicu... more ... work ignored, or worse, by later Lucretian 13 Ficino later repented of his adherence to Epicureanism in his youth (see p. 210 n. 30), but he never renounced an admiration for Lucretius, evident throughout his works. On the influence of Epicureanism in Ficino see Kristeller 1943. ...
Renaissance Quarterly, 2007
La Cultura (in press)
This paper identifies the source of Dracontius' Romuleon IX, Deliberativa Achillis, an corpus Hec... more This paper identifies the source of Dracontius' Romuleon IX, Deliberativa Achillis, an corpus Hectoris vendat with the Ephemeris belli Troiani of the so-called Dictys the Cretan. By accepting Dictys and not, as has generally been done, the XXIV of the Iliad as Dracontius' source, many open problems in the interpretation of Romuleon IX are resolved: its genre (it is a suasoria not a deliberativa), the related problem of title, the identity of the unknown orator. Reading Dracontius' text on the backdrop of the Ephemeris changes the overall interpretation of the Romuleon IX, which acquires an anti-providentialist and pessimistic perspective about the fate of the Roman empire entirely congruent with that of Romuleon VIII, similarly derived from the Trojan pseudo chronicle of the Latin Dares. Finally, finding that Dictys (and Dares) were read and used at such an early age in Vandal Africa will be of interest to all those studying this topic.
Ho scritto un libro di 108 pagine compresi gli indici; la recensione di cui mi onora Fabio Guidet... more Ho scritto un libro di 108 pagine compresi gli indici; la recensione di cui mi onora Fabio Guidetti prende in esame due capitoli su tre (pagg. 1-38, 67-100). A queste 71 pagine Guidetti ne devolve ben 36 di ravvicinata analisi, con un rapporto contenuto/commento superiore a 1:2. Guidetti si propone d'altra parte non una vera e propria recensione quanto un saggio di commento: Non è questa la sede per affrontare i tanti problemi non approfonditi dalla Prosperi: lascio quindi a volenterosi recensori il compito di sottolineare i punti di forza e le manchevolezze del volume. Né ho certo la pretesa, nelle pagine che seguono, di fornire una trattazione organica sulla ricezione classica e post-classica del mito di Troia: mi accontenterò, piuttosto, di soffermarmi su alcuni momenti-chiave della vicenda letteraria e culturale ricostruita dall'Autrice, cercando di delineare meglio l'evoluzione delle leggende troiane e il diverso ruolo con cui esse contribuirono, nel corso dei secoli, alle continuità e alle trasformazioni della cultura letteraria europea.
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Papers by Valentina Prosperi
Tra Quattro e Cinquecento, soprattutto a Firenze, numerosi soggetti raffigurati sui cassoni nuziali sembrano riflettere una crescente diffusione dei poemi omerici – tradotti in latino circa un secolo prima – anche tra le élite cittadine non strettamente umanistiche. Il presente saggio indaga il reale grado di dipendenza di queste pitture dalla tradizione omerica, considerando al contempo la coeva circolazione della vivace matière de Troie derivata da Ditti e Darete. I risultati evidenziano percorsi divergenti per Iliade e Odissea: la prima risulta ancora oscurata dalla dominante matière de Troie di matrice tardoantica, mentre la seconda viene rapidamente codificata in ambito pittorico grazie al contributo determinante delle Genealogie deorum gentilium di Boccaccio. Questo primo sondaggio suggerisce una direzione promettente per valutare la concreta ricezione dell’Iliade e dell’Odissea in una fase cruciale dello sviluppo dell’Umanesimo.
Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in Florence, numerous subjects depicted on wedding chests (cassoni) appear to reflect a growing diffusion of Homeric poems—translated into Latin roughly a century earlier—even among urban elites not directly involved in humanistic culture. This article examines the actual degree of dependence of these paintings on Homer, while also taking into account the contemporary circulation of the vibrant matière de Troie tradition derived from Dictys and Dares. The findings highlight diverging trajectories for the Iliad and the Odyssey: the former remains overshadowed by the dominant Late Antique-derived matière de Troie, whereas the latter is swiftly codified in painting thanks to the pivotal influence of Boccaccio’s Genealogie deorum gentilium. This preliminary inquiry points to a promising direction for reassessing the concrete reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey at a crucial juncture in the development of Italian Humanism.
This paper identifies the source of Dracontius’ Romuleon ix, Deliberativa Achil- lis, an corpus Hectoris vendat with the Ephemeris belli Troiani of the so-called Dic- tys Cretensis. By accepting Dictys and not, as has generally been done, the xxiv of the Iliad as Dracontius’ source, many open problems in the interpretation of Romuleon ix are resolved: its genre (it is a suasoria not a deliberativa), the related problem of its title, the identity of the unknown orator. Reading Dracontius’ text on the backdrop of the Ephemeris changes the overall interpretation of the Ro- muleon ix, which acquires an anti-providentialist and pessimistic perspective about the fate of the Roman empire entirely congruent with that of Romuleon viii, simi- larly derived from the Trojan pseudo chronicle of the Latin Dares. Finally, finding that Dictys (and Dares) were read, trusted, and used at such an early age in Vandal Africa will be of interest to all those studying this topic.