Abstract
Writing about oneself in an age when autobiography was at most a hybrid category means taking a stand as well as trying to define one’s own identity. The two motivations often mingle, and they are inseparable in the case of people that perceive of their own identity as fundamentally different or distinct. Self-representation easily becomes apologetic and polemic. As such an act of defiance, we find the autobiographical urge in what is no doubt the most impressive text the Italian Renaissance produced in this (until then) informal genre, Cellini’s Vita. Written around 1560 as a celebration of the extraordinary accomplishments of this Florentine goldsmith and sculptor, the text documents the unprecedented social advancement of the Renaissance artist as much as the psychological attitude of arrogant boasting which seems to come naturally with it. Cellini’s shameless but highly amusing inclination to exaggerate his own achievements should, however, not only be seen as a reflection of his pathological conceitedness, but as an indication that his autobiographical writing springs from the urge to construct as well as document his own personality. In the exaggeration we may uncover his ambitions: what he is constructing by way of hyperbolic expression is not just an ordinary private person, but an artist worthy of praise and admiration, and especially of social and material recognition.
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Notes
Edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama (Weimar, 1897) p. xi, claims to have collected over 500 references to Aretino, against only 395 references to Machiavelli. A survey of the English, particularly the Elizabethan, reception of Aretino is still lacking. For a discussion of aspects of this reception, see Claudia Corradini Ruggiero, ‘La fama dell’Aretino in Inghilterra e alcuni suoi influssi su Shakespeare’, Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate, 29 (1976) pp. 182–203; Maria Palermo Concolato, ‘Aretino nella letteratura inglese del Cinquecento’, in Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita (Rome, 1995), vol. I, pp. 471–8.
For a reconstruction of this episode, see David C. McPherson, ‘Aretino and the Harvey-Nashe Quarrel’, PMLA, 84 (1969) pp. 1551–8.
Gabriel Harvey, A New Letter of Notable Contents (1593), in Works, ed. A.B. Grosart (London, 1884), vol. I, pp. 272–3; Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works, ed. J.B. Steane (London, 1971) p. 309.
Thomas Nashe, Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Devill (1592), in Works, ed. R.B. McKerrow (London, 1904), vol. I, p. 242.
Gabriel Harvey, Works, ed. A.B. Grosart (London, 1884), vol. II, p. 91.
Gabriel Harvey, Works vol. I, p. 93; Marginalia, ed. C.G. Moore Smith (Stratford, 1913) p. 124. For the evolution in Harvey’s attitude toward Aretino, see in particular McPherson, ‘Aretino and the Harvey-Nashe Quarrel’.
Oscar James Campbell, ‘The Relation of Epicoene to Aretino’s Il Marescalco’, PMLA, XLVI (1931) pp. 752–62; Donald A. Beecher, ‘Aretino’s Minimalist Art Goes to England’, in Pietro Aretino nel cinquecentenario della nascita (Rome, 1995), vol. II, pp. 775–85; Christopher Cairns, ‘Aretino’s Comedies and the Italian “Erasmian” Connection in Shakespeare and Jonson’, in Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (London, 1991) pp. 113–37.
George B. Parks, ‘The First Italianate Englishmen’, Studies in the Renaissance, 8 (1961) pp. 197–216; Leo Salingar, ‘Elizabethan Dramatists and Italy: A Postscript’, in Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (London, 1991) pp. 221–37, especially p. 228.
Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier (Cambridge, 1995) especially pp. 110–16.
For information on this edition, see Pietro Aretino, Sei giornate, ed. Giovanni Aquilecchia (Bari, 1969) pp. 393–401. On its impact, see S. El-Gabalawy, ‘Aretino’s Pornography and English Renaissance Satire’, Humanities Association Review, 28 (1977) pp. 9–19.
See J.M. Lothian, ‘Shakespeare’s Knowledge of Aretino’s Plays’, MLA, 25 (1930) pp. 415–24; Marvin T. Herrick, Italian Comedy in the Renaissance (Urbana, Il, 1960) especially p. 227; Leo G. Salingar, Shakespeare and the Tradition of Comedy (Cambridge, 1974), passim.
Gabriel Harvey, Works, ed. A.B. Grosart (London, 1884), vol. I, p. 93; Marginalia, ed. C.G. Moore Smith (Stratford, 1913) p. 124.
On Wyatt’s adaptation, see C. Marengo Vaglio, ‘Originalità e tradizione nella poesia di Sir Thomas Wyatt’, Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 113 (1979) pp. 91–120; Rivkah Zim, English Metrical Psalms. Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535–1601 (Cambridge, 1987) pp. 43–79.
[William Thomas], The Pilgrim. A Dialogue of the Life and Actions of King Henry the Eighth, ed. J.A. Froude (London, 1861) pp. 1–2.
For a reconstruction of this episode, see GianMaria Mazzuchelli, La vita di Pietro Aretino (Milan, 1830) pp. 67–9.
Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works, ed. J.B. Steane (London, 1971) p. 309.
Gabriel Harvey, Marginalia, ed. C.G. Moore Smith (Stratford, 1913) p. 156.
Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works, ed. J.B. Steane (London, 1971) p. 309.
On Aretino’s writing techniques, see Christopher Cairns, Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice (Florence, 1985).
Another qualification by Harvey; Works, ed. A.B. Grosart (London, 1884), vol. II, p. 94.
The letter to Francesco degli Albizi, dated Mantua 10 December 1526, now in Pietro Aretino, Lettere. Libro primo, ed. Francesco Erspamer (Parma, 1995) pp. 16–27.
The letter to Titian, dated May 1544, in Pietro Aretino, Lettere, ed. Paolo Procaccioli (Milan, 1991), vol. I, pp. 531–3; see on the same subject also the letter to his landlord Domenico Bollani, dated 27 October 1537, now in Pietro Aretino, Lettere. Libro primo, ed. Francesco Erspamer (Parma, 1995) pp. 440–5.
Slightly altered translation by Thomas Chubb in Pietro Aretino, The Letters, ed. Thomas Caldecot Chubb (Yale, 1967) p. 238. The original: ‘Io, Catarina, ti prego che non mi preghi, e ti impongo che non mi imponga, e ti consiglio che non mi consigli a dare Austria a la balia di prima, né Adria a la maestra di adesso: però che l’una è di latte sterile, e l’altra di costumi mendica. Sì che stiansi le due mie figliuole in casa nostra, che al manco quella sarà nutricata di vezzi, e questa disciplinata d’amore’, now in Pietro Aretino, Lettere, ed. Paolo Procaccioli (Milan, 1991), vol. II, pp. 446–7.
The original: ‘Essendo maggior la félicità del donare che quella del ricevere, io ho caro fuor di modo che dal présente degli scudi, de la impresa e del saio del raso bianco, che mi fate, nasca in voi il sommo grado de la consolazione. Ed è vostra gran Ventura che tanto possa la vertu de la cortesia; perché facendo voi l’essercizio de la libéralité nel donar continuo, continuamente sete felice. Per la qual cosa farei ingiuria a la signoria vostra prolungandomi in ringraziarla di quello che, per aver accettato is suoi doni, merito di essere ringraziato io’; now in Pietro Aretino, Lettere. Libro primo, ed. Francesco Erspamer (Parma, 1995) pp. 49–50.
Thomas Nashe, Works, ed. R.B. McKerrow (London, 1904), vol. II, p. 265.
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Hendrix, H. (2000). The Construction of an Author: Pietro Aretino and the Elizabethans. In: Dragstra, H., Ottway, S., Wilcox, H. (eds) Betraying Our Selves. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62847-6_3
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