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Mantuan Revised: His Adulescentia in Early Sixteenth-Century Germany

2011; Canadian Comparative Literature Association; Volume: 33; Linguagem: Inglês

1913-9659

Lee Piepho,

Medieval Literature and History

In no other way is the Adulescentia, the enormously successful collection often Latin eclogues by the Italian humanist poet and Carmelite reformer Baptista Mantuanus (Mantuan, as he is known in England) more immediately distinguishable from Graeco-Roman pastoral than in an eremetically based pastoral world that he introduced into the genre. In Mantuan's eclogues this world is correlated with a second, otherworldly pastoral realm and balanced against an understanding of the role of love in shepherds' lives different from that found in Virgil's bucolics. I shall begin by considering the nature and correlation of Mantuan's two pastoral worlds and their relation to his treatment of erotic love. I want to use this discussion as a background to trick out some of the inflections that were made in the relationship between erotic love and these two worlds when his Adulescentia crossed territorial and cultural boundaries from quattrocento Italy into northern Europe, especially as the collection was adapted by a circle of German humanists associated with Jakob Wimpfeling at Strasbourg. In ways and why was the text presented in a widely disseminated version of Mantuan's Adulescentia first printed there? Especially in the early days of publishing, editions of texts were by no means stable, and in answering the first question I want to look at a short poem by Mantuan, included so as to support an evaluation of his pastoral worlds uniquely given in the selection and arrangement of verse and prose surrounding his eclogues in this edition. In comparison to Virgil's bucolics (with which the Adulescentia has much in common) Mantuan's seventh eclogue sets forth two pastoral worlds inspired by quite different sources. In this poem the shepherd Pollux, fleeing a frustrated love affair, is visited in a dream vision by the Virgin Mary. Dear boy, she asks, echoing Hercules' choice at the crossroads, what path are you taking? The grassy plain you are about to choose is filled with serpents and