Della imitatione poetica

4to (206x155 mm). [16], 248, [4] pp. Collation: *8 A-P8 Q6. Printer's device on the title page, other version of Giolito's device on l. Q6r. Errata on l. Q5r-v. Italic type. Woodcut ornaments, initials, and head-pieces. 18th-century stiff vellum, inked title on spine, all edges colored (vellum with some warping, scuffs to front cover, and small wormholes along spine and joints with a small number at the bottom edge of the back cover, endpapers with small wormholes). Bookplate on the front pastedown "Bibliothecae Petri Buononsigni Senis 1814". From the collection of Prof. Roberto Severino, Washington, D.C. Scattered light foxing and toning, stonger in places, a good copy.

First edition, dedicated to Monsignor Melchiorre Biglia, of Partenio's major work, which, in 1565, the author translated into Latin and printed in Venice with a new dedication to Emperor Maximilian II.

"A number of the literati whose names had appeared in recent years in connection with Horatian criticism appear again as interlocutors in Bernardino Parthenio's lengthy dialogue, Della imitatione poetica, of 1560. Trifon Gabriele, Giovan Giorgio Trissino, Paolo Manuzio, Francesco Luisini, and Parthenio himself gather together to discuss the matter of poetic imitation and how it differs from rhetorical imitation. In so doing, they pretend to be supplementing the work of Aristotle and Horace, who spoke only of tragedy and the epic and of plot and character in connection with those genres; their own concern will be broader, since they will treat of words, figures of speech, and sententiae (which are common to all genres) and of such general subjects as invention and the universal topics. In his preface Parthenio defends poetry not only by adducing the customary arguments but pointing out the multitude of kinds of knowledge which one may derive from such a poet as Homer […] Throughout Parthenio's treatise, the assumption is implicit that the really important thing about poetry is the diction that it uses. Poetic diction, in fact, is different from that of oratory in several aspects […]" (B. Weinberg, A history of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago, 1961, pp. 145-147).

In 1538, Bernardino Partenio (whose given name was Bernardino Franceschini) founded the Accademia Parteniana in Spilimbergo del Friuli, his hometown, and it remained active until 1543. The academy was in fact a sort of college, funded by Count Adriano di Spilimbergo, father of the famous painter Irene. The college, a true collegium trilingue, intended to promote the learning of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew in order to allow the reading of the sacred texts in their original language. Francesco Stancaro (ca. 1501-1574), whose religious views were already quite heterodox, was called to the chair of Hebrew (cf. A. Cuna, L'ideale umanistico-rinascimentale del "trilinguis homo" e l'insegnamento dell'ebraico a Spilimbergo, in: "Bernardino Partenio e l'Accademia di Spilimbergo 1538-1543. Gli statuti, il palazzo", C. Furlan, ed., Venice, 2001, pp. 144-153).

The religious approach of the college soon met with the opposition of the authorities. The sudden end in 1543 of the academy, whose statutes had been published only three years earlier, was probably due to the hostility of the newly founded Inquisition and by the death of Count Adriano (1541), whose library contained numerous works by such Italian heretics as F. Brucioli, B. Ochino, F. Zorzi, and Protestant authors, such as Luther, Erasmus, U. von Hutten, A. Osiander, and Margaret of Navarre.

After the closing of the academy, Parthenio was called to teach in Venice, Ancona, and Vicenza, where, in 1554, he founded a new Accademia Parteniana to teach Greek and Latin, this time with a less pronounced religious approach. After 1560 he returned to Venice, where he taught Greek at the Marciana and Latin at the College of Notaries. He died in Venice in 1589 (cf. U. Rozzo, Per una bibliografia di Bernardino Partenio, in: "Op. cit.", pp. 31-51).

Edit 16, CNCE26304; USTC, 846902; Weinberg, op. cit., p. 1138; A. Cuna, Le opere di Bernardino Partenio: contributo per una bibliografia, in: "Op. cit.", p. 164, no. 4a; S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari da Trino di Monferrato stampatore in Venezia, Rome, 1890-1895, II, pp. 83-84.