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Genette's Seuils considers the dramatic paratext as the odd one out, and, indeed, the early‐modern theatrical paratext has remained understudied. This article discusses the paratexts of the comedies of Giovanni Battista Calderari, a sixteenth‐century author quite neglected by scholars, whose works were published in Vicenza and Venice. By focusing on the paratexts of La Mora (The Moorish Woman, 1588), La schiava (The Slave Woman, 1589), and Armida (1600), the article stresses Calderari's attempts to clarify his poetic ideas and his endeavours to create a network of intellectuals and obtain their opinions about his work. These interlocutors belonged to the knights of Malta and the Vicenzan Accademia Olimpica, two circles to which Calderari himself belonged, but they also were authoritative Venetian intellectuals. His insertion of poems and letters that praise his person and work, reveals his attempt to promote himself and his writings. He tries to promote himself not only as a military man or a great Vicenzan poet, but as a scholar of theatre who is able to juggle poetic discourse and is worthy to be considered by intellectuals, though he ultimately seems to have failed to really assert himself on the Venetian cultural scene and the Vicenzan stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review of Massimo Scalabrini, Commedia e civiltà. Dinamiche anticonflittuali nella letteratura italiana del Cinquecento. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2022.

In the language of theory and drama, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469- 1527) continues the normative discourse of Boccaccio’s novels and at the same time marks the differentiation between the political and the private spheres, which began in the 14th century. In his treatise The Prince (written around 1513), Machiavelli outlines the foundations of a modern political ethics, and in the comedy The Mandrake (written around 1518) he shows how the Medieval normative system has turned into an ideology. He also delineates a modern private ethics that goes far into the future; in the course of modernity, this ethics remains dialectically related to the ethics of the political. The message of The Prince is frequently reduced to a purely “Machiavellian” theory of power and success, and The Mandrake is interpreted as an illustration of The Prince. However, Machiavelli is not a “Machiavellian”, and The Mandrake is not just a political allegory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A study deals with a comparison of Ancient Roman comedy palliata and Renaissance commedia erudita. Aft er stating terms, authors and artistic or non-artistic rules, these conclusions are applied to one example of both types of comedies. In the case of palliata, Aulularia by Plautus will be discussed and erudita will be represented by La Cassaria by Ariosto. On the basis of given examples, it will be demonstrated that in spite of diff erences in author's status, target theatre audience or theatre surroundings, both types of comedies confi rm period social structure in society. According to Aristotle's description of a social role of a master, a slave and a woman in his Nicomachean Ethics, it will be examined whether writers of both discussed types of comedies accept or disprove Aristotle's opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Plautus enjoyed a modest reputation in earlier transalpine Europe, between 1500 and 1530, he rose to major status owing mainly to the work of German humanists building on that of fifteenthcentury Italians. These humanists also fostered the production of Plautine comedies and imitations on stage. Despite the qualms of Erasmus and others, who preferred the milder comedies of Terence, appreciation of his plays soared, especially at the University of Leipzig, where Plautus's great editor Camerarius studied under Veit Werler (1480s-1520s?). Werler's poems on Plautus help explain the reasons for the new enthusiasm, soon to be enhanced, counterintuitively, by the Reformation confessionalization of humanism. Newly understood, then recognized as the quintessential comic dramatist, Plautus rehabilitates comedy as a worthwhile art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]