Tredici canti del Floridoro

Renaissance Quarterly, Summer, 1998 by Stephen Kolsky

The appearance of a modern edition of an epic poem by the late sixteenth-century Venetian writer, Moderata Fonte, is a welcome addition to the relatively few texts by women writers of the Renaissance (not many of whom have been fortunate enough to have received modern editions). This edition is all the more significant because of the rarity of women composing epic poetry. Moderata Fonte's most important work, II merito delle donne, is available through the work of Adriana Chemello (Venice: Eidos, 1988), and has recently appeared in translation (in 1997) in a new series dedicated to Renaissance texts about female equality (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, University of Chicago Press). This activity bodes well for a more accurate and useful analysis of texts by women writers. It is well worth stressing that the availability of such texts can serve only to strengthen scholarship in this area.

Valeria Finucci's edition of the Tredici canti del Floridoro (originally published in 1581) brings an epic poem written in imitation of Ariosto's Orlando furioso to the attention of scholars. Her introduction to the poem is mainly concerned with the implications of a woman rewriting Ariosto. She makes interesting observations about Fonte's male characters who seem to be less convincing than her female ones: rather than viewing this as a weakness, she sees it as a deliberate act aimed at overturning the chivalric tradition. Finucci brings to the reader's attention the ways in which Fonte's rewriting of the genre emphasizes the writer's search for her own subjectivity.

The introduction does make some reference to traces (both explicit and implicit) of the Orlando furioso in the Tredici canti, but gives no systematic listing or analysis of them. One of the reasons for this is that the text itself contains no notes whatsoever - a disappointing omission that limits the usefulness of the edition. Another factor that reduces its effectiveness is the absence of an index of any description: a listing of characters would have been particularly valuable in enabling interested readers to follow easily the appearances of various characters in the poem.

The question of notes becomes quite serious in the closing encomiastic sections of the poem, particularly Canto XII. Finucci provides some useful observations on Bianca Capello in her introduction, but little else in the way of detail to prepare readers for the length and intensity of the encomium of Venice. The condensed history of Venice in Canto XII (in the form of an imitation of Ariosto's Rocca di Tristano episode) contains numerous significant dates in Venetian history that need some explanation, and many names that require a brief note of clarification. In addition, some indication of the sources would have been useful in reconstructing Fonte's intellectual horizons and historical knowledge. Fonte also inserts in this part of the text a series of octave-length encomia of some of her contemporaries who were active in the intellectual society of late Renaissance Venice (some of the names will reappear in II merito delle donne). Information here would have facilitated some provisional assessment of the intellectual circles in which Fonte moved. There are, therefore, some serious deficiencies in the apparatus of this edition of the Tredici canti. Nevertheless, its availability in a modern edition should be a stimulus to further studies of this fascinating poem.

STEPHEN KOLSKY University of Melbourne