This is a non-commercial resource site for the diffusion and understanding of the publications of the Folengo brothers and a few other writers of the Renaissance era offered by Ann E. Mullaney, PhD. [For adults only.]
Toward an understanding of the works of Giovanni Battista Folengo, which pose as biblical commentary but might better be called parody.
Giovanni Battista Folengo: A Tool Kit for Adults
PDFs on Google Docs: GB Folengo PDFsIf you are in a rush, just scroll down to the brief biography and portrait by Romanino of Teofilo right below the list of all their publications. Or see a brief presentation: Overview of Teofilo Folengo's writings no. 1
Or take a Quiz designed to encourage scholars to become fluent in the lexique erotique: The Adult Renaissance: A QuizPacificus Maximus (c.1406-1506). Before Covid-19 shut down much of the world's population, I had been at home for nearly two months with an unnamed virus. During this time, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the poetry of Pacifico Massimi in a helpful French edition by Juliette Desjardins, 1986. The only problem with the volume by Desjardins, was that the original text is presented as a photocopy and is hard to read. So, once we were under lockdown here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I set to work digitizing Pacifico's 1489 edition of 100 poems, Hecatelegium. I think the best way to present this work for now, is to get people to read it and translate it. Very funny elegies: Pacifico is disarmingly self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. He also wrote another hundred poems which Desjardins has translated and annotated, and if our quarantine continues you may hear more from me about that. For now, here is Pacifico Massimi's book of 100 elegies, -- which he published when he was already 80 years old -- just waiting for your translations (which I will happily add, with or without your name):
Hecatelegium by Pacifico Massimi 1489 April 2020Description: Called Paganini (P) after the publisher), this is a beautiful work printed in graceful Italic font, just 27 lines to a page, with explanatory and humorous glosses on the margins of the pages. The volume is written in Macaronic Latin, it contains a 10 page letter of presentation about the author Merlin Cocaio, a pseudonym personality, by Aquario Lodola (likely another pseudonym). This if followed by two eclogues and then the main work, an epic poem called Baldus (for the titular hero): 6,114 hexameters in 17 books with argomenti preceding each book.
The volume is online, at Google Play Books: Merlini Cocai poetae mantuani liber macaronices libri 17
A copy one may download is available through Open Library: http://openlibrary.org/books/OL26220262M/Merlini_Cocai_poetae_mantvani_Liber_macaronices_libri_.xvii._non_ante_impressi
Selections found at Poeti d'Italia in lingua latina: http://mqdq.cab.unipd.it/mqdq/poetiditalia/; also at the Perseus Digital Library, Renaissance Collection, Teofilo Folengo: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collection?collection=Perseus:collection:Renaissance.
These texts are offered from the critical edition by Massimo Zaggia, Macaronee minori, all four editions of the shorter Macaronic works (Zanitonella, Moscheide and Epigrammi): translation into Italian, detailed notes and a glossary (Torino: Einaudi, 1987).
A reprint, roughly, of the Paganini edition above, with claims of an expurgated text, and some illustrations.
Digital photocopy of the Arrivabene edition from the French National Library: http://gallica.bnf.fr.
3. Comparison of glosses from the 1517 Paganini and the 1520 Arrivabene: A painstaking work of questionable utility: the 1517 and 1520 Glosses of Baldus compared and translated into English:
The greatly expanded second edition is known as the Toscolana, for the town in Northern Italy where Paganini had his press. There are many more prefatory pieces (see list below), and the Baldus is now twice as long (12,668 hexameters). 51 woodcut prints illustrate the story nicely. Additionally there many more eclogues, a mock-epic between flies and ants, a list of errors corrected, a table of contents, a sonnet, and more. Each page is packed: there are 37 lines per page on a smaller area of print than the 1517 edition. About 100 copies of this edition are still in existence today. Some of these also feature a dialogue about the poet and letters from him to and from the editor.
There were many republications of this popular edition: 1564, 1572, 1573, 1580, 1585, 1613, 1692 and on.
Both the 1613 and the 1692 editions offer new woodcut prints -- both sets are quite beautiful.
1. A new Angry letter from Aquario Lodola to Scardaffus
2. A significantly altered version of the 1517 Prefatory letter by Aquario in Praise of Merlin
Aquario Lodola in Praise of Merlin (1521)
3. An Apologetica by Merlin
4. A "Normula macaronica de sillabis" a few paragraphs explaining Macaronic Latin metrics
5. A letter from Merlin to the printer Paganini, claiming that he does not want to relinquish his own copy for publication, and a response from Paganini telling him that he got a copy of the text from Federico Gonzaga; a letter to the reader from Paganini, and a response from the author (Merlin); plus an archival letter to Paganini from Federico Gonzaga with the offer of his copy. These letters are found in a small percentage of the 1521 copies known, sometimes the letters are accompanied by the Dialogus Philomusi (below).
Five letters concerning the publication of the 1521 volume
6. Dialogus Philomusi a dialogue in Latin which reveals information about the author (Philomusus) as a young man, found only in a small fraction of the 100 known exempla.
__________________________Description: 8 books of Italian octaves, a polemical work, containing Lutheran ideas and many sexual allusions, ostensibly the story of young Orlando (Roland in French chivalric epics).
Orlandino: Online from the critical edition annotated by Mario Chiesa, (Padova, Antenore, 1991).
http://www.liberliber.it /mediateca/libri/f/folengo/orlandino/pdf/orland_p.pdf
There could be earlier versions available online as well as the 1773 Orlandino with notes:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Teofilo_Folengo_Opus_Merlini_Cocaii_Macaronicorum?id=HvM7AAAAcAAJTranscription of the original, based on the much altered text of U. Renda, and still in need of correction
but with all the marginal glosses and
Transcription of the original with ongoing draft of English translation: Chaos del Triperuno, with English April 18 2016
Commentaries:
Some aspects of the epic Baldus and the autobiographical Chaos compared:
Allegorical Reading article July 2011Other editions of Chaos:
Teofilo Folengo: Opere Italiane, edited by Umberto Renda, Scrittori d’Italia, Bari: Laterza, 1911, vol. 1:
Le opere maccheroniche di Merlin Cocaio edited by Attilio Portioli, Mantova: Mondovi, 1889, vol.3:
http://books.google.com/books
Commentario provvisorio sul Janus, translated by Gabriele Codifava and Ann Mullaney
Varium poema and Janus online: currently available in versions altered from the original:
Poeti d'Italia in lingua latina: http://mqdq.cab.unipd.it/mqdq/poetiditalia/home.jsp
Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
Known as V, for Vigaso Cocaio: