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The laurel and the axe: Petrarchist execution lyrics in late‐ R enaissance I taly
Author(s) -
Cox Virginia
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
renaissance studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1477-4658
pISSN - 0269-1213
DOI - 10.1111/rest.12107
Subject(s) - lyrics , poetry , ballad , literature , period (music) , punishment (psychology) , conversation , history , art , documentation , diversity (politics) , tone (literature) , sociology , law , psychology , aesthetics , political science , communication , social psychology , computer science , programming language
A little‐investigated feature of the lyric tradition in late sixteenth‐century I taly is its increased engagement with the social world. Occasional poetry in this period constitutes a potentially rich resource for social historians, yet this remains almost entirely unexploited to date. This article examines a body of verse of particular interest in this regard: a collection of around eighty mainly anonymous printed and manuscript poems commemorating the execution for murder of two young lovers in B ologna in 1587. These poems represent a rare case of P etrarchist lyric intruding into a literary space more commonly associated with popular forms such as ballads and broadsheets, and they provide novel and striking documentation of gender attitudes and attitudes to crime and punishment in this period. Particularly interesting is the diversity of opinions expressed in the lyrics, and the sometimes sharply polemical tone they assume. Taken as a whole, this body of literature illustrates the continuing vitality of civic conversation in Counter‐Reformation B ologna, during a pontificate, that of S ixtus V , when the administration of papal justice was a highly politicized issue.