Overview
Alessandria
Italy
RVF 279
Description
4°; A12; 24 pp.
paper; text in roman type; printed numbering; Petrarch’s sonnet (in italic type) at fol. A2r, followed by a dialogue (in roman type) between two characters (letters – in italic type – for initials of their names are used throughout to indicate their respective interventions).
DISCORSO | SOPRA IL SONETTO | DEL PETRARCA | Se lamentare augelli, o verdi fronde. | Del Sig. | GABRIELLO CHIABRERA | [Printer’s mark] | IN ALESSANDRIA, Per Gio. Soto. 1626. | Con licenza de’ Superiori.
A1r: title page;
A1v: blank;
A2r: title ‘Discorso sopra il sonetto del Petrarca’; below are RVF 279 and the names of the two speakers of the Discorso (‘Gio[van] Vincenzo Verzellino, e Gio[van] Battista Forzano’);
A2r-A12r: Chiabrera’s Discorso (<inc> V. Donde, e doue Sig[nor] Gio[van] Battista? F. Hieri venni da Genoua; questa mattina fui ad adorare la Madonna Santissima di Misericordia hora io cercaua à casa il Sig[nor] Chiabrera, ma non è uero, ch’io ve l’habbia trouato; ecco onde io vengo; doue mi vada non mel so; <exp> F. O molto fauorito scoglio, ma perche appellato Siracusa? V. Per la vicina Chiesa della santa, che patria hebbe quella Città. F. Ottimamente; ma annottasi, è da mouersi, volendo entrar nella Terra, perche i soldati serrano le porte à bon’hora);
A12r: colophon: Il fine;
A12v: blank.
Copy Seen
Cornell University Library
Ithaca, NY
United States
The two protagonists of the dialogue, Verzellino and Forzano, go to Chiabrera’s suburban villa, hoping to meet the poet, but he is not there. They, nevertheless, enter Chiabrera’s house, find his recently-delivered lecture on RVF 279 on a table, and read it. In this lecture, Petrarch’s sonnet appears as a pretext for Chiabrera to speak about amorous and moral matters: the author deals first with both love, as a desire for beauty, and the sufferings that it can cause, and then focuses on solitude (by presenting it as a condition that can bring human beings to celestial contemplation, but also to bestial behaviour), and finally, while pausing on Laura’s consolation addressed to Petrarch from the Heavens, discusses poetry’s consolatory function. Reference is made (among others) to Apollonius of Rhodes, Euripides, Homer, Petrarch (RVF 278), Theocritus, and Virgil.
Petr.Cornell 1916, 259; Pet.Cornell 1974, 357