NARRATING THE NATIONAL IDENTITY: MYTH, POWER, AND DISSIDENCE

The subject matter, life, death and the physical ravages of unrequited love, that Gaspara Stampa chooses for her sonnet “Signor, io so che ‘n me non son più viva”^[1] is not unusual for sixteenth-century Italian love poetry. In many ways the narrator’s lament for her beloved is quite typical of Petrarchan love lyric. Of particular interest however are the figures of Echo and the Chimaera, the concluding images of the poem. Stampa’s use of Ovidian mythological figures presents an imitative strategy that was critical for the early modern period. Her beloved’s rejection brings the poet so much sorrow that she is in a death-like state. Writing and crying become manifestations of her lament. In her suffering she becomes mentally detached from her physical actions. The narrator describes life as a strange miracle in which one feels everything and also nothing. She concludes by revealing that her true form is “un’imagine d’Eco e di Chimera.” I believe that Stampa’s evocation of Echo and the Chimaera as representations of the despair of the poet-lover is part of a systematic imitative technique prevalent among many women writers of the Renaissance.

As has been well documented sixteenth-century Italian lyric poets owe a great deal to the writers who preceded them. The early modern writer, through the use of imitatio, strove to integrate past and present by manipulating a ‘subtext’ or a prior text to mold it to his/her personal needs. Petrarch’s Canzoniere was perhaps one of the most important of these ‘subtexts.’ Thomas Greene, in the Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry, has labeled the Canzoniere a classic: “Before the current spent itself, Petrarch’s poetry was itself to achieve the status of a classic . . . his work joined the ancients’ as the object of innumerable attempted resuscitations.”^[2] Greene describes these Renaissance texts as chronomachias or “battlegrounds for a conflict of eras, a struggle of period styles.” While this conflict of eras could easily be read in other terms (ideological, class, religious), I view it as a struggle that centers on the search for a poetic voice and a means of self-expression. As Greene describes it, the process entails an understanding of primary text and a creative, self-expressive act that produces the modern text. Petrarch has commented on the use of imitatio in his own letters. In one written to Giovanni Boccaccio he uses a physiological metaphor to describe the process:

I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening, I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as an older man. I have thoroughly absorbed these writings, implanting them not only in my memory but in my marrow, and they have become one with my mind that were I never to read them for the remainder of my life, they would cling to me, having taken root in the innermost recesses of my mind.^[3]

Petrarch’s description shows that the imitative process was central to the writer’s life. The passage describes an internalization and personalization of the borrowed literary text that was a necessary condition for the invention of the new text.

In the Light in Troy Greene discusses four types of imitation: reproductive, eclectic, heuristic and dialectical.^[4] Reproductive or sacramental imitation, the most basic of the four, simply copies the primary text. The model is considered beyond reproach and cannot be improved. The reproduction will never equal the original. Eclectic or exploitative imitation plunders a number of sources and authors for phrases, images, or references. This type of contamination of different sources leaves the reader aware of the imitation, yet does not fully integrate source and imitative text. In the third type, heuristic imitation, the source text is ‘visible,’ yet the imitative text distances itself from the subtext. The reader is forced to recognize the difference between primary and imitative text. Heuristic imitation as it appears in the humanist poem is in many ways a “modernization” of the text. It recognizes a text from the past and rewrites it, or as Greene describes it, “the poem becomes a kind of rite de passage between a specified past and emergent present.” The fourth type of imitation, dialectical imitation, is an outgrowth of heuristic imitation. The new text is “a point of struggle between two rhetorical or semiotic systems that are vulnerable to one another and whose conflict cannot easily be resolved.” By examining specific imitative instances we are then able to evaluate the relationship between writer and source text and also note the innovations of such writers.

Ann Rosalind Jones in commenting upon the particular situation of women writers and imitation states that what appears to be sacramental imitation may in fact be something more:

Strict adherence to Neoplatonic ideals on the part of the woman poet, then, cannot be read simply as adulatory imitation (even if this is the reading she aspires to). It is rather, the strategic adoption of a prestigious discourse that legitimates her writing. When a member of the sex systematically excluded from literary performance takes a dominant/hegemonic position toward an approved discourse, she is, in fact destabilizing the gender system that prohibits her claim to public language—although with limited disturbance to that system.^[5]

Jones’ statement tells us that even when a woman writer wrote most imitatively, the very act of writing still represented a challenge to the accepted norms of Renaissance poetics. I believe that the destabilization of a gender system to which Jones refers is actually visible in two different areas. One must first consider the Renaissance woman writer’s approach to the act of writing itself. She threatens the accepted position of ‘woman’ within society. Although there were educated women in Renaissance society, writing was not usually highly encouraged. Through publication of her writing she left the private world of the house and fell under the gaze of the reading public. She then could become a focus of public discourse, not usually on the merits of her writing, but more often because her behavior challenged the boundaries of respectability for women of the time. One must also consider the structure of lyric poetry itself. The woman poet writing in a Petrarchan or Neoplatonic vein borrows stylistic nuances—images, metaphors, etc. Yet she shifts or reverses the so-called “purpose” of the lyric poem. The “purpose” of male written Petrarchan poetry was the praise of a female love object. The woman poet, however, inverts that formula and addresses her poetry to a male object of desire. By definition, then, a woman lyricist entering the realm of Renaissance lyric poetry destabilized the accepted norm. She had to manipulate in some way the ‘standard’ to accommodate her personal interests and desires. One of those forms of accommodation is evident in the use of imitatio. Recognizing what type of imitative technique these poets use is, in fact, essential to understanding how they fit into a previously established patriarchal poetic tradition.

Imitation of Ovidian poetic themes involved Stampa and other women writers in a process of personalization and assimilation of mythological stories as a means of self-expression. Ovid’s writings surface as the classical subtext for a number of medieval and Renaissance texts; among them we find Petrarch’s Rime Sparse. Robert Durling has called Ovid “omnipresent” in the Rime and finds that the classical text surfaces on different levels in the Petrarchan text.^[6] It is apparent in themes and motifs. Metamorphosis is visible in the unstable nature of the Petrarchan lover and of human nature in general. The most obvious and broad-based Ovidian manifestation is found in Petrarch’s use of the Daphne and Apollo myth as a “background” for the Rime itself. Change, transformation, or metamorphosis itself is an important aspect of a number of Petrarchan poems. The most famous perhaps is canzone 23, “Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade,” in which Petrarch evokes six Ovidian tales to describe the metamorphosis undergone by the poet in love. According to Durling, “the myths were not chosen at random, and Petrarch expects the reader to know Ovid and to be alert to subtle changes.”^[7] The connection between Ovid and Petrarch is a significant reason to consider Ovid’s importance to Renaissance women. Because the Cinquecento was a period that relied heavily upon imitation, any text critical to Petrarch by default becomes critical for the early modern writers.

Another reason to evaluate Ovid’s importance to women writers was the popularity of his writing during the Renaissance itself. It is, of course, difficult to comment on what these women may or may not have read as no substantial documents remain to inform us. But as they were upper-class women or important cortegiane, it is possible to infer that they followed significant literary trends. One of these trends was public interest in two important sixteenth-century vernacular translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the first by Lodovico Dolce and the second by Giovanni dell’Anguillara. Dolce’s Trasformationi first published in 1553, was subsequently republished eight times. Anguillara’s Metamorfosi, first published in 1561, was republished more than twenty-five times, and continued to be published into the seventeenth century. Daniel Javitch in Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso, has discussed how these two translations were similar in form to the then very popular Orlando Furioso.^[8] He notes that the public did not embrace the translations simply because they were “a volgarizzamento of Ovid all’Ariosto.” There were in fact attempts to transform works such as the Aeneid, the Thebaid and the Iliad. None of these translations ever had the huge success of the Metamorphoses.

A third reason for linking Ovid with women writers is the number of Ovidian references that can be found in their poetry. Reading through the published poems of Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, and Chiara Matraini, I found that each of these woman writers has roughly twenty distinct mythological figures in the corpus of her poems. A similar number of named mythological figures can also be found in Petrarch’s Rime sparse. In many of the poems the writer makes only a fleeting reference to an Ovidian story. This is usually done in the form of a name that is incorporated into the poetic text. How then may we infer that the poet hopes to recall the entire myth and its implications within her own poetry? I would suggest that this is, in fact, part of the imitative strategy used by the poet. By evoking a mythological figure, the writer recalls the history of a particular myth, deeply enriching her own story through a simple one—or two—word reference. In cases where the poet may have altered or adapted the myth in some way, she also sets up a series of contrasts that acknowledge tradition while highlighting her own invention. Through an examination of selected Ovidian mythological figures we can see how imitation as a poetic practice was used by women writers.

Both Veronica Franco and Gaspara Stampa mention the figure of Alcmena in their poems: yet each chooses very different facets of the myth. The Alcmena of Stampa’s sonnet, “O notte, a me più chiara e più beata,” is the lover reveling in the sexual pleasure of an unending night while Franco’s Capitolo XV speaks instead of Alcmena’s pain as she gives birth. We find two different presentations of Alcmena’s story in Ovid’s own writings. In the Amores we read of Jove’s night of pleasure. In the first book of the Amores the narrator addresses Aurora, whom he asks to delay her arrival so that he may spend more time with his mistress. He uses the story of Jove and Alcmena as an example of happy lovers:

ipse deum genitor, ne te tam saepe videret,

commisit noctes in sua vota duas.

The very father of the gods, that he need not see thee so oft, made two nights into one to favour his desires.^[9]

Stampa’s sonnet establishes instead a relationship between the poet and the night:

O notte, a me più chiara e più beata

che i più beati giorni ed i più chiari,

notte degna da’ primi e da’ più rari

ingegni esser, non pur da me, lodata;

Tu de le gioie mie sola sei stata

fida ministra; tu tutti gli amari

de la mia vita hai fatto dolci e cari,

resomi in braccio lui che m’ha legata.

Sol mi mancò che non divenni allora

la fortunata Alcmena, a cui stè tanto

più de l’usato a ritornar l’aurora

Pur così bene io non potrò mai tanto

dir di te, notte candida, ch’ancor

da la materia non sia vinto il canto.

Night appears as a confidant for the poet. Although the poet specifically identifies herself with Alcmena, in some ways she seems more similar to Jove—lover. In the mythological story it was Jove who conspired with Dawn in order to prolong his sexual pleasure. Here the poet thanks the Night for what she has done. The iteration of several key words in the first quatrain—“notte,” “più,” “chiara,” and “beata” underscores the insistence on excess, which is the very essence of the Alcmena tale from the Amores—an excess of sensual pleasure. In the last line of the quatrain the poet tells us that the night is praised not only by her but by all beings, implying that she is not the only one to enjoy such pleasures. In the second quatrain night is not only praised but we learn that it has been the poet’s “fida ministra,” the dispenser of all her joys. The use of contrasts continues as night changes all that is bitter to something sweet. The poet declares that all she lacks in life is to become Alcmena; qualified as, “la fortunata Alcmena.” Stampa stops the myth at the point where everyone is happy. However Alcmena’s joy was not long lived after her three nights with Jove.

In the Metamorphoses an old Alcmena is the narrator of her own tale. In her recollections of the past she identifies herself not as the happy lover but as a distraught mother. She offers advice and comfort to Iole, her grandson’s wife who is pregnant:

cui sic incipit Alcmene: faveant tibi numina saltem,

conripiantque moras tum cum matura vocabis

praepositam timidis parientibus Ilithyiam,

quam mihi difficilem Iunonis gratia fecit.

namque laboriferi cum iam natalis adesset

Herculis et decimum premeretur sidere signum,

tendebat gravitas uterum mihi, quodque ferebam,

tantum erat, ut posses auctorem dicere tecti

ponderis esse Iovem. nec iam tolerare labores

ulterius poteram. quin nunc quoque frigidus artus,

dum loquor, horror habet, parsque est meminisse doloris

septem ego per noctes, totidem cruciata diebus,

fessa malis, tendensque ad caelum bracchia, magno

Lucinam Nixosque pares clamore vocabam.

illa quidem venit, sed praecorrupta, meumque

quae donare caput Iunoni vellet iniquae

utque meos audit gemitus, subsedit in illa

ante fores ara, dextroque a poplite laevum

pressa genu et digitis inter se pectine iunctis

sustnuit partus. tacita quoque carmina voce

dixit, et ingrato facio convicia demens

vana Iovi, cupioque mori, moturaque duros

verba queror silicis. (IX, 280–304)

Thus spoke Alcmena to her: “May the gods be merciful to you at least and give you swift deliverance in that hour when in your need you call on Eileithyia, goddess of frightened mothers in travail, whom Juno’s hatred made so bitter against me. For when the natal hour of toil-bearing Hercules was near and the tenth sign was being traversed by the sun, my burden was so heavy and what I bore so great that you could know Jove was the father of the unborn child; nor could I longer bear my pangs. Nay, even now as I tell it, cold horror holds my limbs and my pains return even as I think of it. For seven nights and days I was in torture; then, spent with anguish, I stretched my arms to heaven and with a mighty wail I called upon Lucina and her fellow guardian deities of birth. Lucina came, indeed, but pledged in advance to give my life to cruel Juno. There she sat upon the altar before the door, listening to my groans, with her right knee crossed over her left, and with her fingers interlocked; and so she stayed the birth. Charms also, in low muttered words, she chanted, and the charms prevented my deliverance. I fiercely strove and, mad with pain, I shrieked out vain revilings against ungrateful Jove. I longed to die, and my words would have moved the unfeeling rocks.^[10]

This is the Alcmena that we find in Veronica Franco’s Capitolo XV, a poem lamenting the departure of her beloved. The capitolo begins with an address to a “Signor.” She excuses herself to this gentleman for not having come to visit him and asks him to hear her reasons. Echoing stilnovistic tradition, she claims that all who hear her tale will be moved: “Signor, non solo io son degna di scusa; ma che ciascun, c’ha gentil cor, m’ascolti; di tristo pianto con la faccia infusa” (19–22).^[11] Her love for a marvelous man is ruining her life and his slightest whim seems to rule her behavior. In fact, through a pair of contrasts we see the extent of her pain: “anzi pur dal girar de le sue ciglia; la mia vita depende e la mia morte; e quindi gioia e duol l’anima piglia” (31–33). We learn that he has left the city at the time she most longs for his company. According to the poet he does this with no regard for her misery. In the following lines the ravages of her grief are visible:

. . . di ch’è rimaso in me duolo infinito,

e ‘l core e l’alma e ‘l meglio di me tutto,

col mio amante, da me s’è dipartito.

Corpo dal pianto e dal dolor distrutto,

ne l’allegrezza senza sentimento,

rimasta son del languir preda in tutto:

quinci ‘l passo impedito, e non pur lento,

ebbi a venir in quella vostra stanza,

secondo ‘l mio devere e ‘l mio talento,

perochè i membri avea senza possanza,

priva d’alma; e, se in me di lei punto era,

dietro ‘l mio ben n’andava per usanza.

Così passava il di fino a la sera,

e le notti più lunghe eran di quelle,

ch’ad Alcmena Giunon fe’ provar fiera. (43–57)

In this passage the destructive nature of her love is evident. Not only does her beloved’s departure bring her sadness but he takes with him her heart, soul, and the very best of her. All that remains for her is the “duolo infinito.” The poet describes herself not as a whole being; rather she has been reduced to pieces. She defines herself through negation, what she is not—her limbs are without strength and she has no soul. His neglect and her words do real violence to the integrity of her being. In the dichotomy between the lover and beloved the equilibrium here has been violently unbalanced. The metaphor used to underscore that relationship is the story of Alcmena from the Metamorphoses. In contrast to Stampa’s description of unending nights of joy, here we see entire days and nights of pain. Franco even mentions Juno’s name, ignoring Jove, eliminating any possible misunderstanding of her reference to the classical tale. She does not recall the joy and passion of the past but is completely involved in the pain of the moment.

The narrator declares that without the beloved she wanted to die and turned to writing for solace, but found herself without words: “Standomi senza lui volea morire: spesso levai, e ricorsi agli inchiostri, nè confusa sapea che poi mi dire” (61–63). In the next few lines we learn that he has written to her, in fact, more than promised. It is perhaps these letters that allow her to keep a hold on life. She again addresses the Signor asking how she could approach him in such a condition:

Come doveva over potea, con questa

oppressa dal martìr gravosa spoglia,

venir da voi, meschina, inferma e mesta,

a crescer con la mia la vostra doglia

e, in cambio di parlare con buon discorso,

aver di pianger, più che d’altro, voglia? (91–96)

She admits that her life has been ruled by her love for her departed beloved, all of her time and thought is spent on him. She declares that having been reduced to such a state she would die the following day if he were not to return. The dissolution of her corporeal entity culminates in the reduction of her body to ashes: “Ed ora a stato tal io son ridutta; che, s’ei doman non torna, com’io spero; fia la mia carne in cenere distrutta” (109–111). The figure of Alcmena then is representative of the transformation the poet undergoes as she suffers in love. The capitolo then moves into a hypothesized future, in which the poet dreams of the time when her beloved will return: “Egli verrà, l’abbraccerò” (118). This projection into a future, happy state is a recurring motif in Franco’s poetry. After a narrative of pain and sadness, it allows her to come to a resolution with some hope of future reconciliation and happiness.

We see the transformative nature of love in another Stampian sonnet “Una inaudita e nova crudeltate.” Unlike “O notte, a me più chiara e più beata,” this poem focuses on the destructive qualities of love:

Una inaudita e nova crudeltate,

un esser al fuggir pronto e leggiero,

un andar troppo di sue lodi altero,

un tôrre ad altri la sua libertate,

un vedermi penar senza pietate,

un aver sempre a’ miei danni il pensiero,

un rider di mia morte quando pèro,

un aver voglie ognor fredde e gelate,

un eterno timor di lontananza,

un verno eterno senza primavera,

un non dar giamai cibo a la speranza

m’han fatto divenir una Chimera,

uno abisso confuso, un mar, ch’avanza

d’onde e tempeste una marina vera.

The narrator recounts her suffering due to rejection by her beloved and concludes by stating that love and its consequences made her a Chimaera, a mythological monster, which took its shape from a lion and snake. The Chimaera, found in Book IX of the Metamorphoses, was a fire-breathing monster (“Chimaera iugo mediis in partibus ignem, pectus et ora leae, caudam serpentis habebat,” IX 647–48). In Stampa’s sonnet the horror of the mythological monster is evoked as an expression of her inner torment. The first part of the sonnet, centering on an opposition between the io-narrator and the lui-love object, uses the anaphora of “un”/”una” to present a list that stresses the repetitive nature of the beloved’s faults and cruelties (1–8). An insistence on the infinitive form of verbs, used as substantives, presents a story with no time references, a vague realm in which the poet suffers continually. The first quatrain complains of what we can only assume are the beloved’s offenses: his readiness for flight, his pride. The second quatrain focuses his—and our—gaze on the poet (“vedermi”). Seeing the lover suffer, the beloved has no pity; his thoughts focus on her demise, and he eagerly awaits her death. The second half of the poem turns away from the opposition “io”/”lui” to focus solely upon the lover. In the first tercet the repetition of “eterno” continues the emphasis on the timeless nature of the suffering, while the opposition of “verno”/”primavera” evokes images of perpetual pain and suffering that are never abated by the happiness of love. The cruelty of the beloved makes the lover a Chimaera.

The narrator identifies herself with a monster that used to raid the land of Lycia and was eventually killed by Bellerophon. Ann Rosalind Jones finds that Stampa uses the Chimaera to represent a figure of power: “The aspect of the creature emphasized by Stampa, however, is not her defeat by the hero but her miraculous nature . . . Stampa claims the Chimera’s power to strike awe into men’s hearts.”^[12] While I do agree with Jones that “the poem is not directed at the male beloved as an appeal for pity,” I do not see the larger audience as other awe-struck men. At times Stampa seems to be almost introspective; and the figure of the Chimaera mirrors her suffering. In the fashion of other classical monsters, it roamed free and terrorized people. It was a solitary creature, and this helps express the loneliness of the rejected lover. However, it is the composite nature of the monster that is central to the sonnet. While Ovid describes it as part lion and part snake, other classical texts describe it as part lion, part goat, and part snake or dragon, with three heads. I do not think the exact composition of the monster was critical to Stampa. It is necessary, however to realize that the varied pieces of the monster represent the fragmentation of the poet. The Chimaera, a monster of parts, expresses the confusion and disarray of the lover abandoned.

The anguish of unrequited love is also evident in the story of Echo, another Ovidian figure from the Metamorphoses. Echo used to detain Juno with chatter, giving Jove enough time to hide from his wife when he was having an extra-marital affair. Juno saw through the ruse and as her punishment Echo was only able to repeat another’s speech. One day the nymph saw Narcissus wandering in the fields and fell in love with him. She wanted to approach him, but was too shy and knew that she couldn’t communicate clearly. Narcissus, separated from his hunting companions, called out to find them. When he queried “ecquis adest?” (is anyone here?) (III, 379), Echo saw her opportunity and answered “adest” (here). At his invitation “huc coeamus” (here let us meet) (III, 386), she approached and attempted to embrace him, only to be rebuffed. She then spent the rest of her days in caves pining for her unrequited love. She eventually withered away, and only her voice remained.

In Stampa’s sonnet “Io vorrei pur ch’Amor dicesse come,” the poet assumes the identity of Echo as she describes the effects of love upon herself:

Io vorrei pur ch’Amor dicesse come

debbo seguirlo, e con qual arte e stile

possa sperar di far chi m’arde umìle,

o diporr’io queste amorose some.

Io ho le forze omai sì fiacche e dome,

sì paventosa son tornata e vile,

che, quasi ad Eco imagine simìle,

di donna serbo sol la voce e ‘l nome; (1–8)

The first two quatrains focus on the figure of “Io,” the narrator, who tells us that she needs Amor’s instruction. She must either humble her tormentor or rid herself of the pain of love. In the classical tale Echo was inflamed by her love—”vidit et incaluit, seguitur vestigia furtim, quoque magis seguitur, flamma propiore calescit” (she was inflamed by love and followed him by stealth; and the more she followed, the more she burned by a nearer flame) (III, 371–372). The Renaissance lover also burns in love, “m’arde.” But unlike the Ovidian Echo, the Stampian Echo presents an alternative to wasting away due to unrequited love; she wonders how she may lift the burden of love, “o diporr’io queste amorose some.” How this can be accomplished must be revealed by “Amore”; nevertheless it is offered as a possibility.

In the second quatrain we witness the degeneration of the poet as she withers away to nothingness. The before—and—after picture is stressed through the use of antithesis and alliteration in line 5; a tension is created in which past strength (“forze”) is juxtaposed to present weakness (“fiacche e dome”). The adjective “vile” brings to mind not only physical, but also mental dissolution. The same physical degeneration is evident in Ovid’s description of Echo:

sed tamen haeret amor crescitque dolore repulsae;

extenuant vigiles corpus miserabile curae

adducitque cutem macies et in aera sucus (III, 395–397)

But still, though spurned, her love remains and grows on grief; her sleepless cares waste away her wretched form; she becomes gaunt and wrinkled and all moisture fades from her body into the air.

In the last line of the quatrain Stampa’s narrator tells us all that remains of her are her voice and name.

At the volta in Stampa’s sonnet the focus shifts from the poet by herself to the poet and her beloved:

né, perché le vestigia del mio sole

io segua sempre, come fece anch’ella,

e risponda a l’estreme sue parole,

posso indur la mia fiera e dura stella

ad oprar sì ch’ei, crudo come suole,

s’arresti al suon di mia stanca favella. (9–14)

Just as Echo followed Narcissus through the field, the narrator follows “le vestigie del mio sole.” But even this mimicry of Echo’s actions will not help her win her beloved. In fact, she differs slightly from Echo in that she is not able to persuade him to listen. The nymph was able to make Narcissus stop and listen at the sound of her voice, although eventually she too was rejected. Stampa’s narrator is not even given an opportunity to voice her desire and love as she is ignored by her beloved.

As we saw above both Echo and the Chimaera appear in “Signor, io so che ‘n me non son più viva”:

sì che può dirsi la mia forma vera,

da chi ben mira a sì vario accidente,

un’imagine d’Eco e di Chimera.

The Chimaera of “Una inaudita e nova crudeltate” clearly presents the rage and pain of the abandoned lover. Here we see a lover moving deeper into her sorrow, beyond the initial anger at rejection. She approaches the edges of despair; although still alive, she is deadened emotionally. Rather than a reflection of her confusion, the Chimaera serves as an image of the fragmentation of her very being. The presence of Echo in this sonnet intensifies the idea of the disintegration of the body and the disconnection between mind and body.

Echo is also evoked in Veronica Franco’s poem in terza rima, “Questa la tua fedel Franca ti scrive.” In the first tercet the separation of lover and beloved is clearly established. The poet suffers in her exile: “misera vive.” She describes how she changed “. . . io mutai voglia e sembiante: perduto de la vita ogni vigore, pallida e lagrimosa ne l’aspetto” (6–7). In her world turned upside down, life is death and pleasure a torment: “. . . ’l viver senza voi m’è crudel morte, e i piaceri mi son tormenti e guai” (14–15). The poet is just beginning to experience the changes undergone by Echo, who then appears in the poem to help solace her.

Spesso, chiamando il caro nome forte,

Eco, mossa a pietà del mio lamento,

con voci tronche mi rispose e corte; (16–18)

Franco does not compare herself to Echo but incorporates the figure into the landscape of her poem. Echo is not a referential figure with a similar fate, but actually joins in the action of the poem to commiserate with the narrator. This is Echo in her last and final phase, simply a voice. By the middle of the lament the narrator states that life has become desolate.

Vivo, se si può dir che quel, ch’assente

da l’anima si trova, viver possa;

vivo, ma in vita misera e dolente:

e l’ora piango e ‘l dì, ch’io fui rimossa

da la mia patria e dal mio amato bene,

per cui riduco in cenere quest’ossa. (40–45)

Repetition of “vivo,” “viver,” “vita” insists upon the present state of the narrator, which is simply existence, similar to the life that Echo now lives. The lament then culminates in the disintegration of the body, “riduco in cenere quest’ossa.” We realize at this point that the narrator and Echo seem to have parallel stories; and the narrator undergoes the same degeneration as the classical figure. Towards the end of the capitolo, she addresses her beloved directly, stating that she lives only to be able to see him again. Once again the last lines of Franco’s poem enter a type of dream state in which the narrator returns to the beloved and to her “patria” (Venice). In her imagined scene the actions of the lover are all described in the future—“m’inchinerò,” “seguirò,” “ristorerò.” This is a future of reconciliation, of a return to life. Unlike Echo, the narrator sees her future ending in happiness.

For both Franco and Stampa, Echo seems to represent the moment of grief in a broken relationship. Her story in many ways portrays the transformative nature of the forsaken lover. The gradual physical disintegration of Echo becomes a metaphor for the poet who suffers because of unrequited love. Ovid’s Echo is forever locked within her moment of pain and sorrow. Stampa’s sonnet focuses on the perpetual mourning of the classical figure. She, along with the figure of the Chimaera, becomes representative of the poet’s despair at rejection from a cruel beloved. Franco’s use of the Echo story in “Questa la tua fedel Franca ti scrive” is slightly different from that of Stampa. While presenting the despair of unrequited love the poem also seems to hinge on the future hopes of the lover. This is evident in the final dream sequence in the poem. This female lover will not give in to her despair, as did the classical Echo. She instead allows herself to give vent to anger at her beloved. In my reading of the poem, this anger leads her towards strength and the ability to cope with that despair. In an instance of dialectical imitation Franco rewrites the Echo myth in order to portray a woman lover who has been rejected but still retains some hope. She evokes the classical myth, but also moves beyond it. This creative re-appropriation of myth is also evident in the Renaissance poets’ use of the Procne and Philomela figures in lyrical expressions of lament.^[13]

Gaspara Stampa, in her sonnet “Cantate meco, Progne e Filomena,” focuses on the bond that the narrator establishes with the two sisters. She begins with an apostrophe asking the sisters to sing with her:

Cantate meco, Progne e Filomena,

anzi piangete il mio grave martìre,

or che la primavera e ‘l suo fiorire

i miei lamenti e voi, tornando, mena.

A voi rinova la memoria e pena

de l’onta di Tereo e le giust’ire;

a me l’acerbo e crudo dipartire

del mio signore morte empia rimena. (1–8)

Theirs is a friendship based upon lament and pain. While Ovid’s story is concerned with a woman’s lack of voice, Stampa’s poem speaks to the sisters after they regain their ability to express themselves. They are invited not only to sing with her but also to weep (“piangete”). Spring, usually a sign of beauty and growth, brings the usual “fiorire,” but also the negative, “i miei lamenti.” The second quatrain is divided between “voi” (Procne e Philomela) and “io” (the narrator), and what spring brings for each. For the sisters, it is the memory and pain of Tereus’ crime. Almost as a caveat, the narrator adds “le giust’ire,” that is, the justified anger of the women at Tereus’ rape of Philomela and its results. For the io-narrator, spring means the cruel departure of her “signore” and the death it brings her. The first half of the sonnet insists on the cyclical aspect of time and nature through words such as “mena,” “rimena,” and “rinova.”

The opening of the first tercet with “Dunque” brings the poem immediacy, a concern with the here and now.

Dunque, essendo più fresco il mio dolore,

aitatemi amiche a disfogarlo,

ch’io per me non ho tanto entro vigore.

E, se piace ad Amor mai di scemarlo,

io piangerò poi ‘l vostro a tutte l’ore

con quanto stile ed arte potrò farlo. (9–14)

The narrator pleads with her friends to share her grief because she doesn’t have the strength to face it alone. Just as Procne once helped her sister, the two sisters are now helping another, and the circle of support is widened. If the narrator’s pain should diminish, then she would turn her energies to the sisters’ “dolore.” While the first half of the sonnet sets up a pair of oppositions (Procne and Philomela vs. Tereo; and “io” vs. “il signore”), in the second part of the poem the men are left behind and the focus becomes a circle of women and their suffering. The poet does not beseech her lover to return. She seems well beyond the hope of reconciliation and seeks only to heal herself.

Procne and Philomela also appear in the above-mentioned “Questa la tua fedel Franca ti scrive” by Veronica Franco. In a single terzina the sisters appear and join their “tristo canto” to the poet’s words. The poet does not present the violence or tragic nature of the classical tale; rather she focuses on the sadness of the aftermath. The women are given voice through their song and keep the poet company day and night. But in Franco’s Capitolo we find that the Ovidian pair are part of a larger natural landscape. They are part of a listing of natural elements that empathize with the poet’s suffering.

talor fermossi a mezzo corso intento

il sole e ‘l cielo, e s’è la terra ancora

piegata al mio sì flebile concento;

da le loro spelunche uscite fuora,

piansero fin le tigri del mio pianto

e del martìr, che m’ancide e m’accora;

e Progne e Filomena il tristo canto

accompagnaron de le mie parole,

facendomi tenor dì e notte intanto.

Le fresche rose, i gigli e le viole

arse ha ‘l vento de’ caldi miei sospiri,

e impallidir pietoso ho visto il sole;

nel mover gli occhi in lagrimosi giri

fermârsi i fiumi, e ‘l mar depose l’ire

per la dolce pietà de’ miei martìri. (19–33)

Each tercet moves back and forth between the natural phenomena and the poet. Each of their movements or actions is a response to her pain and suffering. While Franco’s evocation of Procne and Philomela is not quite as forceful as Stampa’s, we nevertheless see the establishment of a shared community, as well as interaction between poet and mythological figure. This is in marked contrast to Petrarch’s presentation of Procne and Philomela in his sonnet “Zephiro torna, e ‘l bel tempo rimena.”^[14] In Petrarch’s poem the sisters are given voices but they are part of a distant natural landscape. Petrarch establishes no sense of community and the poet is presented as suffering in isolation.

Tullia d’Aragona also used the figure of Philomela prominently in one of her sonnets. However, d’Aragona has eliminated Procne and given no voice to Philomela at all. The sonnet begins with the latter’s escape from Tereus’ prison.

Qual vaga Philomena, che fuggita

E da la odiata gabbia, et in superba

Vista sen’va tra gli arboscelli, et l’herba

Tornata in libertate, e in lieta vita;

Er’io da gli amorosi lacci uscita

Schernendo ogni martire, et pena acerba

De l’incredibil duol, ch’in se riserba

Qual ha per troppo amar l’alma smarrita.^[15]

D’Aragona’s evocation of the raped sister in many ways suppresses much of the classical myth. In the Metamorphoses we find a very different Philomela who emerges from her solitary confinement.

. . . sed non attollere contra

sustinet haec oculos paelex sibi visa sororis

deiectoque in humum vultu iurare volenti

testarique deos, per vim sibi dedecus illud

inlatum . . . (VI, 605–609)

But Philomena could not lift her eyes to her sister, feeling herself to have wronged her. And, with her face turned to the ground, longing to swear and call all the gods to witness that that shame had been forced upon her . . .

The moment chosen by d’Aragona is actually one of the most shameful moments in the tale—the moment of public disclosure. The crime was previously known only to Tereus, Philomela, and a handful of servants. With escape, the rape becomes a matter of public knowledge, and perhaps even more distressing to Philomela is the realization that her sister also knows the truth. Yet if we look closely at the Renaissance sonnet we find no indication of that shame. The poet’s description of Philomela as “vaga” and in “superba vista” is perplexing. How can a woman who has been repeatedly raped and had her tongue cut off become suddenly graceful? Would such a woman make a public display of herself? The last line of the quatrain insists upon liberty and a resumption of the “lieta vita.” Yet Philomela’s return was not “lieta” and in fact ended in her death rather than a return to life.

The remainder of the poem focuses on the figure of the poet. She compares herself to the “vaga” Philomela and speaks of her own escape from the prison of love. She would leave behind the “tempio di Ciprigna,” but “Amore” made her a prisoner again and this begins again the process of suffering. Jones finds that this sonnet is directly related to d’Aragona’s profession as a cortegiana onesta. “As a courtesan, she was constantly on view, the target of many men’s gazes, and the self-consciousness in her reworking of Ovidian material corresponds to the visibility and the skill in flattery required by her career.”^[16] The critic concludes that “Tullia’s sonnet . . . is significantly shaped by the multiple audiences she woos throughout her Rime. Nonetheless, its opening permits a glimpse of a transformed speaker, a free bird-woman singing a melody as yet unheard in the cities and courts of the Cinquecento.” D’Aragona’s Philomela has decidedly been transformed, but can we really call her “a free bird-woman singing a melody?” Philomela neither speaks nor sings in this sonnet, unlike her counterparts in Stampa’s and Franco’s poems. If Jones is referring to the poetic narrator as the transformed speaker, we must ask ourselves if she is really “free.” The sonnet describes a woman who tries to escape from the bonds of love, but does not succeed. The cycle of her imprisonment comes of support and healing. Sara Maria Adler has discussed the communal aspect in Franco’s love lyric. For her,

Franco presents love as a universal martyrdom, a cause for common weeping . . . the traditional vertical hierarchy of the lover aspiring upward, hopelessly and all alone, is full circle, Love recaptures her, and she finds herself in her previous position of one who suffers through love.

Each of these three Renaissance poets presents the classical figures of Philomela and Procne in a different manner. D’Aragona does not look to the sisters for support. Instead she becomes Philomela, a Philomela that she constructs within the boundaries of her own poetry. It is noteworthy that unlike Stampa and Franco, d’Aragona’s narrator does not seems to establish a dialogue with Philomela. While she compares herself to Philomela, the Ovidian figure is a distant role model, not presently commiserating with the narrator’s pain. For Stampa and Franco the classical pair becomes incorporated in a circle flattened into a horizontal chain that stretches across humanity and leaves no human being untouched. And along with the notion of loneliness is automatically squelched the notion of the typical Petrarchan lover . . . ^[17]

Adler’s comment is certainly pertinent in an analysis of the Procne and Philomela poems. The lover in Petrarch’s sonnet clearly sees himself separated from the natural setting that surrounds him. In the last tercet we note that the beauty and rebirth of nature only serve to remind him of what he does not have. Zephyrus, Procne, Philomela, Jupiter, and the animals cannot offer any solace to the poet suffering alone the loss of his beloved. Franco and Stampa, on the other hand, expressing the pain of the abandoned lover, use the figures of Procne and Philomela as an expression of community. They present, as Adler states, “a cause for common weeping,” and their anguish evokes a response from other women who have suffered. Franco and Stampa, ostensibly the victims in these poems, draw strength from nature and those that surround them. I agree with Adler’s comment on Franco and would go so far as to state that this is true for many of the women poets in the Renaissance. In many of these lyric poems the female poet expresses a concern for and a connection with other women, particularly those in love.

In several of these poems the woman writer uses heuristic/dialectical imitation as a means of creative re-appropriation. Tullia d’Aragona in her re-writing of the Procne and Philomela story seems to adapt the actions of the classical story, while re-inventing the character. Her Philomela follows the same motions as her Ovidian model, yet the personalities are completely different. While she attempts to recall the Ovidian tale in mentioning Philomela, d’Aragona seems, at times, ready to re-create Philomela’s character. She invents a woman who does not seem to be a victim of hardships, or perhaps one who is ready to walk away from them. Her return to the “lieta vita” suggests that she is able to forget the trauma of her imprisonment and rape. In another example of heuristic/ dialectical imitatio Franco actually re-writes the Echo myth, or more specifically the Echo personality, to fit the character into her poem. She adopts the basic plot of the Ovidian myth, while giving the story a different ending. Her refusal of the Ovidian Echo’s state of mourning implies that all does not end with unrequited love. The Renaissance poem shows an interest not just in the future, but more specifically future joy. Franco uses both the Echo and Alcmena myths to depict the despair of the woman rejected in love. She diverges from tradition by writing of a future that Ovid did not see. It is a future in which the rejected woman retains hope.

Mythological figures in the poems of these Renaissance writers obviously are critical to an understanding of their poetry. They were not chosen at random, and each figure brings its own history to the poem. I believe that in most instances we must return to Thomas Greene’s idea of “modernization” to understand the heuristic imitative technique. Franco, Stampa, and d’Aragona in their poems return to classical mythological figures, but also adapt the figure to suit their own personal requirements. At times, the dynamics of their lyric poetry require such changes or “modernizations,” in order to render the figure compatible to their needs as women poets. It is through these mythological figures that they are able to bridge the distance between classical literary model and Renaissance poem.

^[1]Gaspara Stampa, Rime, ed. Abdelkader Salza (Bari: Laterza, 1913). All subsequent quotations of Stampa’s poetry are taken from this edition.

^[2]Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1982), 100. For further information on imitatio see the following: Martin L. McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford UP, 1995); G. W. Pigman III, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 1–32; Giorgio Santangelo, Il Bembo critico e il principio di imitazione (Florence: Sansoni, 1950); Ferruccio Ulivi, L’imitazione della poetica del Rinascimento (Milan: Mazorati, 1959); Riccardo Scrivano, Il manierismo nella letteratura del Cinquecento (Padova: Livinia, 1959).

^[3]Rerum familiarium libri, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1975). (Book XXII, Letter 2)

^[4]Greene, The Light in Troy, 40. Greene discusses the four types of imitation in his chapter “Imitation and Anachronism,” specifically pages 37–48. Subsequent quotes in this paragraph are from that section.

^[5]Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe 1540–1620 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), 4. For further discussion of imitation and women writers see Luciana Borsetto, “Narciso ed Eco: figura e scrittura nella lirica femminile del cinquecento,” in Nel cerchio della luna: figure di donna in alcuni testi del XVI secolo, ed. Marina Zancan (Venice: Marsilio, 1983).

^[6]Francis Petrarch, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics trans. and ed. Robert Durling (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1976), 9.

^[7]Ibid, 9. For a detailed analysis of the development of this poem see Dennis Dutschke, Francesco Petrarca: Canzone XXIII from First to Final Version (Ravenna: Longo, 1977).

^[8]Daniel Javitch, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991), 71–75. Javitch presents a very detailed discussion of the genesis of these two important sixteenth-century texts.

^[9]Ovid, Heroides and Amores, trans. Grant Showerman (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986), I,xiii, 45–46. Both English and Latin texts are taken from the Showerman edition.

There is also a mention of an endless night in the Petrarchan poem, “A qualunque animale alberga in terra.” In that poem the poet, longing for a sign from his lady, speaks of how his days and nights are spent in torment. In an imagined future he talks of spending a never-ending night with her:

Con lei foss’io da che si parte il sole,

et non ci vedess’altri che le stelle,

sol una notte et mai non fosse l’alba, (31–33)

In the succeeding lines Petrarch returns to the Daphne-Apollo myth to show what should not happen:

et non se transformasse in verde selva

per uscirmi di braccia, come il giorno

ch’Apollo la seguia qua giù per terra! (34–36)

In his imaginary time with Laura, Petrarch moves beyond the vision of spending one night with her. She would also remain with him unlike Daphne escaping from Apollo.

^[10]Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Miller (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984). All subsequent quotations, Latin and English, of the Metamorphoses are taken from this edition.

^[11]Veronica Franco, Rime, ed. Abdelkader Salza (Bari: Laterza, 1913). All subsequent quotations of Franco’s poetry are taken from this edition.

^[12]Ann Rosalind Jones, “New Songs for the Swallow: Ovid’s Philomela in Tullia d’Aragona and Gaspara Stampa,” in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), 263–277. Jones, in discussing the ending of the sonnet, actually mis-identifies one of the Ovidian figures. She states “The aspect of the creature emphasized by Stampa, however, is not her defeat by the hero but her miraculous nature, which the poet intensifies by associating herself with a tumultuous sea, the “abyss” or lethal whirlpool into which Scylla, another victim of love, was transformed.” The ‘whirpool’ of which Jones speaks is actually Charybdis, which was supposed to be opposite Scylla, a multiheaded monster who ate men. We must also note that the Chimaera was a monster who was born that way. Charybdis was an ordinary woman punished for stealing cattle; she was not transformed by love. Scylla was the only of the the three to suffer because of Glaucus’ love for her.

^[13]Procne and Philomela’s story, found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, centers on violence and deceit. Pandion, the king of Greece, had two daughters, Philomela and Procne. The latter marries Tereus, the king of Thrace. Procne asks Tereus to arrange a visit by her sister Philomela. Tereus agrees, goes to Athens, convinces Philomela to visit her sister, and brings her back to Thrace. Instead of taking her directly to the palace, he takes her to a secluded building in the woods and rapes her. When she voices recriminations against him and begs for her death, he responds by cutting out her tongue, so that she can never tell anyone of his crime. Procne is told that her sister died, and she mourns for her. Philomela, kept in the woods, weaves her story into a tapestry which she sends to her sister. Procne, understanding the message sent to her, rescues her sister and plots her revenge. She murders her son Itys and cuts him to pieces, which she feeds to Tereus. Upon realizing what has happened, he chases after the sisters who beg the gods for help. The gods respond by changing the three into birds, a nightingale, a swallow, and a hoopoe. Tereus becomes the hoopoe while it is unclear which sister becomes the nightingale and the swallow.

^[14]^{Zephiro torna, e ‘l bel tempo rimena,}

^{e i fiori
et l’erbe, sua dolce famiglia,}

^{e garrir
Progne et pianger Filomena,}

^{et
Primavera candida et vermiglia;}

^{Ridono i
prati, e ‘l ciel si rasserena,}

^{Giove
s’allegra di mirar sua figlia,}

^{l’aria et
l’acqua et la terra è d’amor piena,}

ogni animal d’amar si riconsiglia.

^[15]Tullia D’Aragona, Rime della Signora Tullia di Aragona; et di diversi a lei (Venice: Giolito, 1547), 10.

^[16]Jones, “New Songs for the Swallow,” quotations in this paragraph come from pp. 272–274.

^[17]Sara Maria Adler, “Veronica Franco’s Petrarchan Terze Rime: Subverting the Master’s Plan,” Italica 65 (1988), 218.