The Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance. Salvatore Di Maria
Comedy' which justly connects allegorical love poetry to the idea of the resurrection of the body, from sensuality to contemplation. Solomon, the quintessential love poet, is assuredly a central figure in the Commedia. The next two essays deal with Tasso. The first one, "Tasso as Ulysses," by Walter Stephens, details Tasso's Ulysses role both in life and poetry. We are dealing with the Homeric Ulysses here, not the Dantean. This is a fascinating, stimulating, and well-written piece. David Quint's essay "The Debate between Arms and Letters in the Gerusalemme Liberata" originates from an episode in canto 8 of the poem which Tasso deleted. The episode is based on Ovid's debate between Ulysses and Ajax on the inheritance of Achilles' arms (Metamorphoses 13.1-383). In this well-presented, comprehensive and learned article David Quint makes his case that Tasso's Gerusalemme establishes the superiority of letters over arms and that this is, in effect, contrary to the values held at the court of Ferrara. Tasso did firmly believe in this new noble class. The essay by Eileen Reeves, "Representing Invention: The Telescope as News," considers as "old news" (267) the newsletter of October 1608 announcing the telescope and probes the fact that its technical capabilities were made known three-anda-half centuries earlier by Bacon and his followers. It also examines the idea of the newsletter, "the story of the invention of the telescope," and "the story itself (267) and documents the importance of the telescope in the Richardot incident of 1608. This is a fascinating, lively, intelligent, and historically informative piece. The same can be said of the essay by Patricia Parker's "Fatti Maschii, Parole Femine: Manly Deeds, Womanly Words," which provides a stimulating, intelligent, and suggestive reading on the history of the Tuscan motto and the misogyny connected to it, spanning from Cicero to Montaigne. This very serious scholarly reflection originates from the discovery that the motto is stamped on every single law item passed by the State of Maryland, having been brought from England by Lord Calvert. The last two essays bring us to the world of postwar Italian cinema and the contemporary Italian novel. Rebecca West's essay "Desire, Displacement, Digression: Rhetorical Ramifications in Giorgio Manganelli's Amore and Tutti gli errori" and Millicent Marcus' "The Italian Body Politic is a Woman: Feminized National Identity in Postwar Italian Film" — with Dante and Machiavelli implanted in the title — represent a fresh, original, and brilliant approach to these subjects by way of the most modern and sharp critical appraisal of these two genres. This attractive volume is highly recommended to the scholar and specialized reader.