Jacopo Sannazaro

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jacopo Sannazaro
Latin
NationalityItalian
PeriodHigh Renaissance
Genres
Subjects
Literary movement
Notable works
  • De partu Virginis

    • Jacopo Sannazaro (Italian pronunciation: [ˈjaːkopo sannadˈdzaːro]; 28 July 1458[1] – 6 August 1530[2]) was an Italian poet, humanist, member and head of the Accademia Pontaniana from Naples.

    He wrote easily in

    Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic Arcadia, a masterwork that illustrated the possibilities of poetical prose in Italian, and instituted the theme of Arcadia, representing an idyllic land, in European literature.[3] Sannazaro's elegant style was the inspiration for much courtly literature of the 16th century, including Sir Philip Sidney
    's Arcadia.

    Biography

    He was born in 1458 at Naples of a noble family of the

    San Cipriano Piacentino
    (hosted at the home of Family Sabato, located in Via Santilli) whose rural atmosphere colored his poetry. In 1483–85 he campaigned twice with Alfonso against papal forces near Rome.

    In the

    Frederick IV, but when Frederick capitulated to France and Aragon, he followed him into exile in France in 1501, whence he returned to Mergellina after Frederick's death at Tours (1504). The later years of the poet seem to have been spent at Naples. In 1525 he succeeded the humanist Pietro Summonte
    as head of the Pontanian academy.

    Works

    Sannazaro's humanist minuscule hand in a collection of Roman poems he copied in 1501–1503
    An edition of Sannazaro's collected works, printed in 1602

    The Arcadia of Sannazaro was written in the 1480s, completed about 1489 and circulated in manuscript before its initial publication. Begun in early life and published in

    Arcadia
    ) and listening to the amorous or mournful songs of the shepherds he meets. In addition to its pastoral setting, the other great originality of the work stems from its novel structure of alternating prose and verse.

    Sannazaro's Arcadia – coupled with the Portuguese author

    Jorge de Montemayor's Diana
    (Los siete libros de la Diana, 1559), itself indebted to Sannazaro's work – had a profound impact on literature throughout Europe up until the middle of the seventeenth century.

    With the Arcadia behind him, Sannazaro concentrated on

    Bay of Naples, which originated the genre of the piscatorial eclogue
    ; three books of elegies; and three books of epigrams. Other works in Latin include three books of epigrams, and two short works entitled Salices [Willows] and De Morte Christi Lamentatio ["Lament on the Death of Christ"].

    Sannazaro's now seldom-read sacred poem in Latin, De partu Virginis, which gained for him the name of the "Christian Virgil",[4] was extensively rewritten in 1519–21 and appeared in print, 1526. It has been characterized as "his version of Mary's Magnificat".[5]

    Among his works in Italian and Neapolitan are the recasting of Neapolitan proverbs as Gliommeri his Farse, and the Rime (published as Sonetti et canzoni di M. Jacopo Sannazaro, Naples and Rome, 1530), where the manner of Petrarch is paramount. He also wrote some savage and caustic epigrams. Most famous is the one he wrote against Pope Alexander VI after the murder of Giovanni Borgia, eldest son of the Pope, whose body was recovered from the Tiber River—Sannazaro cheekily described Alexander VI as a "fisher of men" (playing on the Christ's words to Peter). This epigram caused immense grief to the Pope.

    His portrait by Titian, painted ca 1514–18, is in the Royal Collection, part of the diplomatic "Dutch Gift" to Charles II, in 1660.

    The first complete translation into English of the Arcadia is by Ralph Nash, Jacopo Sannazaro: Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues (Detroit: Wayne State University Press) 1966. Nash returned to translate into English prose and verse The Major Latin Poems of Jacopo Sannazaro, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press) 1996. The distinguished Latinist Michael C. J. Putnam has recently published the first translation of all of Sannazaro's Latin poetry.[6]

    Sannazaro has also a long-time correspondence with some Italian humanists. The beloved

    pen-friend was Antonio Seripando, brother of the Augustinian friar Girolamo (1493-1563).[7]

    Tomb

    "Montfaucon describes the tomb of the poet Sannazaro in the church of the Olivetans, Naples, as ornamented with the statues of Apollo and Minerva, and with groups of satyrs. In the eighteenth century the ecclesiastical authorities tried to give a less profane aspect to the composition, by engraving the name of David under the Apollo, and of Judith under the Minerva".[8]

    Notes

    1. ^ "Jacopo Sannazzaro". Britannica Online. Retrieved 2022-08-11.
    2. ^ Traditional date April 27, 1530
    3. Et In Arcadia Ego
      .
    4. ^ "The poem is as Virgilian as he could make it", his translator Ralph Nash observes (Nash 1996:13).
    5. ^ Nash 1996: "General Introduction" p. 10.
    6. ISBN 9780674034068
      . Retrieved Aug 11, 2022 – via Google Books.
    7. OCLC 84285326
      ., a graduate dissertation.
    8. ^ "LacusCurtius • Rodolfo Lanciani — Pagan an Christian Rome — Chapter 1". penelope.uchicago.edu. Retrieved Aug 11, 2022.

    External links

    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jacopo_Sannazaro&oldid=1216806695"