Giraldi Cinthio on Romances

Authors

Henry L. Snuggs, Wake Forest University

Access Type

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Description

Giraldi Cinthio’s Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi, here translated into English for the first time, was one of the most important critical works of the Renaissance. Written as a defense of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Giraldi’s discourse is an inquiry both into the nature of poetry and into the characteristics of the “heroic” or epic genre, in which some of the world’s richest poems fall.

Henry L. Snuggs introduces this translation with an incisive interpretation of Giraldi’s critical theory. Giraldi was the first, Snuggs states, to make a significant plea in sixteenth-century criticism for the poetry of that (and our) time. The modern heroic poem cannot imitate the ancient in every respect, he held, for the principles of both decorum and verisimilitude required it to reflect the mores of its own age, although this did not mean the creation of a new genre. That which distinguishes Giraldi as a critic perhaps more than anything else, Snuggs concludes, was his recognition of a poetic unity other than that defined by Aristotle.

Henry L. Snuggs is professor of English at Wake Forest University.

Publication Date

1968

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813154756

eISBN

9780813164588

Keywords

Italian literature

Disciplines

Italian Literature

Notes

Being a translation of the Discorso intorno al comporrc dci romanzi with introduction & notes by Henry L. Snuggs.

Recommended Citation

Snuggs, Henry L., "Giraldi Cinthio on Romances" (1968). Italian Literature. 2.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_italian_literature/2