Il Canzoniere per Ginevra Luti di Bernardo Ilicino. Edizione critica e commento.

Abstract

My thesis is focused on the philological, historical and cultural significance of Bernardo Ilicino’s fifteenth-century Canzoniere, dedicated to Ginevra Luti, of which I provide a critical and annotated edition.
Bernardo Ilicino, a doctor by profession, as well a diplomat, poet, narrator, commentator, was a multifaceted personality in the Italian Renaissance. He came into contact with several culture circles: Siena, where he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming lecturer of medicine in the Studio and similarly taking an interest in philology, philosophy and literature, and where his lyrical works earned a reputation for contributing to develop the local production of vernacular poetry; Rome, where he performed diplomatic tasks; Ferrara, where he was called by Duke Borso d'Este to teach medicine in the academic year 1468-69. In the same city he worked on the exposition of Francesco Petrarca’s Trionfi, dedicated to Borso d’Este.
In the first part of my thesis I examine the fortuna of Bernardo Ilicino’s lyrics among his contemporaries, and the relationships existing between his Canzoniere for Ginevra Luti and the main Canzonieri of the second half of the fifteenth Century. In particular, I focused on the lyrical production modelled on Petrarch’s poems, that was produced in the two geographical areas of Siena and Ferrara over the period 1460-1480. The reason for this choice is twofold: firstly, during that time Ferrara and Siena saw a noticeable increment in the production of Petrarchan Canzonieri. Secondly, while we have scanty information about Bernardo’s life and movements, it is certain his origin by Siena and that he taught in Ferrara. With an eye to the chronology of their lives and works, the poets that offer themselves for suitable comparison are: in Siena, Benedetto da Cingoli, who wrote his Canzoniere in the same years of Bernardo and was his friend and estimator, and Nicolò Angeli; in Ferrara, Ludovico Sandeo and Filippo Nuvoloni, who belonged to the entourage of Alberto d’Este; Matteo Maria Boiardo; and Agostino Staccoli. The comparative study has been primarily conducted on unpublished material preserved in Siena (Biblioteca Comunale) and in Rome (Biblioteca Vaticana).
In the second part of my thesis I provide a critical and annotated edition of Ilicino’s Canzoniere with commentary.  The copy-test of my edition is that transmitted by manuscript S (Siena, Biblioteca Comunale, MS I XI 24).  The apparatus includes the variants attested by manuscript R (Roma, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi M.V.102). My study also includes detailed analysis – presented in the ‘‘Nota al testo’’ – of the varia lectio offered by copious emendations to Ilicino’s text, introduced in S by an early-sixteenth-century hand (S1). The analysis in the commentary is developed along the lines of three main direction: 1. Metatextual elements (sources, inter and intratextuality); 2. Textual elements (motifs, themes, images, allegorical figurations); 3. Macrotextual elements (narrative cycles, series, ligaments between different texts).