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Discorso sopra il sonetto del Petrarca Se lamentare augelli, o verdi fronde. Del Sig. Gabriello Chiabrera

Overview

Place of Publication

Alessandria
Italy

Printer
Date of Publication
1626
Mode of exegesis
Related to Petrarch's

RVF 279

Description

Physical Description: Format

4°; A12; 24 pp.

Physical Description: Textblock

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).

Title Page

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.

Internal Description

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

Location

Cornell University Library
Ithaca, NY
United States

Shelfmark
Petrarch PQ4482. S43 C53
Copy seen by
Giacomo
Comiati
Notes

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.

Bibliography

Petr.Cornell 1916, 259; Pet.Cornell 1974, 357